The French historians Agnès Arp and Élisa Goudin-Steinmann explore the question of how the GDR as a society continues to have
in the lives of East Germans to this day. The interviews they conducted with former
with former citizens of the GDR reveal closeness and immediacy
and immediacy, nuances and differentiations – beyond the one-sided public
beyond the one-sided public perception of “life in the dictatorship”.
After the descriptions of devaluation,
reappropriation and reappraisal of East German lives already met with a positive response in France, the book now also opens up to a West and East German readership.
a diverse view of important issues such as educational opportunities, gender
such as educational opportunities, gender relations, dealing with art and culture
and culture, or the possibilities of political participation and its interpretation in a united
united Germany.
Elisa Goudin-Steinmann has been a lecturer (Maître
de conférences) for contemporary history at the University of Paris
3 – Sorbonne nouvelle. She is a former student of Sciences-po
Paris and from the Ecole normale supérieure. Her dissertation was
2002 on the topic ” Les inflexions de la politique culturelle
allemande après l’unification, à l’exemple de la ville de Leipzig
(1990-1998) “. It was published in 2018 on the topic ” Pour une
socio-histoire des politiques culturelles en RDA et dans les nouveaux
Länder : histoire du quotidien et histoire des politiques publiques “.
habilitated. Her research topics are the history of the GDR and the transformation mechanisms after the
transformation mechanisms after the fall of communism, especially the
cultural policy, and memory.
She is co-editor of the blog Regards sur la RDA
et les nouveaux Länder. This academic blog presents the
current research landscape in French German studies on the GDR and the
and the new countries. It serves as a documentation platform and
and at the same time provides texts and information, event
reviews of publications in the fields of history, culture,
literature, economics, politics and on social issues in the GDR and in
East Germany today, in French.
AGNÈS ARP, born in Paris in 1973, studied Philosophy
of philosophy, German studies and history in Paris, Berlin and
Jena. 2006 doctorate on the biographies of private entrepreneurs in the
GDR with Lutz Niethammer (oral history). She has lived for twenty years in
Jena. Since 2021, she has been building a research unit on oral history with the
focus on GDR and transformation history. Main research areas
are oral history, history of the GDR and transformation, biography work
and narrative medicine.