Katja Hoyer Libros

In 1990, a country disappeared. When the iron curtain fell, East Germany simply ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the GDR presented a radically different German identity to anything that had come before, and anything that exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire- this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics. In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer offers a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country. Beginning with the bitter experience of German Marxists exiled by Hitler, she traces the arc of the state they would go on to create, first under the watchful eye of Stalin, and then in an increasingly distinctive German fashion. From the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, to the relative prosperity of the 1970s, and on to the creaking foundations of socialism in the mid-1980s, Hoyer argues that amid oppression and frequent hardship, East Germany was yet home to a rich political, social and cultural landscape, a place far more dynamic than the Cold War caricature often painted in the West. Powerfully told, and drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews, letters and records, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, the one beyond the Wall

The enthralling story of the German Empire, from its violent rise to its spectacular fall

In this vivid fifty-year history of Germany from 1871-1918—which inspired events that forever changed the European continent—here is the story of the Second Reich from its violent beginnings and rise to power to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. Before 1871, Germany was not yet a nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? How would he convince proud Prussians, Bavarians, and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France—all without destroying itself in the process? In this unique study of five decades that changed the course of modern history, Katja Hoyer tells the story of the German Empire from its violent beginnings to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. This often startling narrative is a dramatic tale of national self-discovery, social upheaval, and realpolitik that ended, as it started, in blood and iron.

From the ashes of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the definitive new history of East Germany     In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics.     In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country, revealing the rich political, social, and cultural landscape that existed amid oppression and hardship. Drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews and documents, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, beyond the Wall. 

Ein erfrischender Perspektivwechsel. Sachbuchbestenliste von ZEIT, ZDF und DLF Kultur Juni 2023. Eine bahnbrechende Analyse des Lebens in der DDR zeigt, dass das andere Deutschland mehr war als nur Mauer und Stasi. Die Historikerin Katja Hoyer beleuchtet auf profunde und unterhaltsame Weise, dass die Geschichtsschreibung der DDR oft vom westlichen Blick geprägt ist, der die Diktatur und ihre Verfehlungen in den Vordergrund stellt. Dabei wird häufig übersehen, dass die Mehrheit der 16 Millionen DDR-Bürger ein relativ friedliches Leben mit alltäglichen Herausforderungen, Freuden und Sorgen führte. Trotz der Einschränkungen durch die Mauer fielen andere gesellschaftliche Barrieren. Hoyer schildert vierzig Jahre deutschen Sozialismus aus der Perspektive derjenigen, die ihn erlebt haben, und führt zahlreiche Interviews mit ehemaligen DDR-Bürgern aus verschiedenen Schichten. Das Ergebnis ist eine neue, lebendige Geschichte der DDR, die nichts beschönigt, aber den bisherigen Blick auf diese Zeit erweitert und präzisiert. Diese spannende Lektüre spricht besonders diejenigen an, die diese Epoche nicht selbst erlebt haben, und ihre Erzählweise stellt die Menschen in den Mittelpunkt, die in der DDR geblieben sind.