Bringing culture to the masses; control, compromise and participation in the GDR.

9781845454586

Bringing culture to the masses; control, compromise and participation in the GDR.

Richthofen, Esther von.

Berghahn Books

2009

239 pages

$90.00

Hardcover

Monographs in German history; v.24

DD286

This study of cultural life in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) explores interactions and contestations between three groups of actors: everyday participants in cultural life, party leaders of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) keen to regulate the cultural field, and intermediate cultural functionaries working in the widespread cultural institutions established by the SED. He argues that participants' strategies towards cultural life were dominated by withdrawal and nonconformity in the early 1950s, accompanied by a heavy-handed approach by the SED, but that by the mid-1960s the three groups of actors had developed a high degree of communication and interdependence. By the 1980s, however, participants and grassroots functionaries increasingly felt that higher authorities were no longer responsive to their concerns and began to withdraw from dialogue.

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