Bøker av Mary Fulbrook

Perpetration and Complicity under Nazism and Beyond analyses perpetration and complicity under National Socialism and beyond. Contributors based in the UK, the USA, Canada, Germany, Israel and Chile reflect on self-understandings, representations and narratives of involvement in collective violence both at the time and later - a topic that remains highly relevant today. Using the notion of 'compromised identities' to think about contentious questions relating to empathy and complicity, this inter-disciplinary collection addresses the complex relationships between people's behaviours and self-understandings through and beyond periods of collective violence. Contributors explore the compromises that individuals, states and societies enter into both during and after such violence. Case studies highlight patterns of complicity and involvement in perpetration, and analyse how people's stories evolve under changing circumstances and through social interaction, using varying strategies of justification, denial and rationalisation. Each chapter also considers the ways in which contemporary responses and scholarly practices may be affected by engagement with perpetrator representations.

The communist German Democratic Republic, founded in 1949 in the Soviet-occupied zone of post-war Germany is, for many people, epitomized by the Berlin Wall; Soviet tanks and surveillance by the secret security police, the Stasi, appear to be central. But is this really all there is to the GDRs history? How did people come to terms with their situation and make new lives behind the Wall? When the social history of the GDR in the 1960s and 1970s is explored, new patterns become evident. A fragile stability emerged in a period characterized by 'consumer socialism', international recognition and dtente. Growing participation in the micro-structures of power, and conformity to the unwritten rules of an increasingly predictable system, suggest increasing accommodation to dominant norms and conceptions of socialist 'normality'. By exploring the ways in which lower-level functionaries and people at the grass roots contributed to the formation and transformation of the GDR from industry and agriculture, through popular sport and cultural life, to the passage of generations and varieties of social experience the contributors collectively develop a more complex approach to the history of East Germany.

What was life really like for East Germans, effectively imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain? The headline stories of Cold War spies and surveillance by the secret police, of political repression and corruption, do not tell the whole story. After the unification of Germany in 1990 many East Germans remembered their lives as interesting, varied, and full of educational, career, and leisure opportunities: in many ways perfectly ordinary lives.Using the rich resources of the newly-opened GDR archives, Mary Fulbrook investigates these conflicting narratives. She explores the transformation of East German society from the ruins of Hitlers Third Reich to a modernizing industrial state. She examines changing conceptions of normality within an authoritarian political system, and provides extraordinary insights into the ways in which individuals perceived their rights and actively sought to shape their own lives.Replacing the simplistic black-and-white concept of totalitarianism by the notion of a participatory dictatorship, this book seeks to reinstate the East German people as actors in their own history.

The two Germanies, arising from the unpromising ashes of defeated Nazi Germany, came to represent opposing models of state and society. The Federal Republic established itself as a remarkably stable democracy and successful social market economy: the German Democratic Republic developed an apparently exemplary form of 'actually existing socialism' and became a pillar of the Soviet bloc. Then in 1989, the 'gentle revolution' in East Germany added a new twist with the collapse of Communist rule. With rapid reunification, the united Germany of 1990 faced new challenges as the unprecedented transformation created a multitude of economic problems and social tensions.Previously published in 1992 as The Two Germanies, this book has been fully revised and updated to take account of all the latest developments in contemporary German history.

This collection brings together an international team of distinguished scholars to produce an innovative and accessible guide to the controversial course of modern German history. Exploring the main issues in social, economic, cultural, and political history, the book reflects the diversity and liveliness of the field.

In the context of continuing debates over Protestantism, capitalism and the absolutist state, this book presents a fresh historical and theoretical analysis of religion and politics in early modern Europe. The author undertakes a systematic comparative-historical analysis of the very different contributions made by the Puritan and Pietist movements to the success or failure of absolutist rule in England, Wurttemberg and Prussia. While Puritans and Pietists shared similar religious ideas, aspirations and ethos, they developed quite different political attitudes and alliances in each case. English Puritans made a crucial contribution to the overthrow of attempted absolutism, as the English Revolution helped ensure the further development of parliamentary rule. Pietists in Wurttemberg shared the anti-absolutist attitudes of the English Puritans, yet tended to remain politically passive in the constitutional struggles against absolutism. And in complete contrast, Pietists in Prussia made a vital positive contribution to the successful establishment of the militaristic, bureaucratic Prussian absolutist state.