Vers une histoire sociale de la RDA

Towards a social history of the GDR, Niethammer. Based on the results of a vast oral history study undertaken in the GDR in 1987 and on additional interviews after German unification, the author sketches a social history of the GDR. He analyzes the relations between the life experience and the political socialization of the successive generations, the effects of selective migration on the structure and the composition of the leading strata and the consequences of the demographic imbalance favoring women on social and economic institutions. Supplementing these approaches with an analysis of the economic and political dimensions, he makes the case for setting GDR in the framework of a continuous German history, and for comparisons with German society under Nazism and that of the other socialist countries.Niethammer Lutz. Vers une histoire sociale de la RDA. In: Vingtième Siècle, revue d'histoire, n°34, avril-juin 1992. Histoires d'Allemagnes. pp. 37-52