From the author of Blood and Iron comes an admirably balanced and truly fascinating new history of East Germany, utilising both first-hand accounts and the latest research to paint a multi-layered picture of a vanished country.
Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2023
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
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780141999340
Number of pages: 496
Weight: 362 g
Dimensions: 198 x 128 x 21 mm
Forget everything you thought you knew about life in the GDR. This terrifically colourful, surprising and enjoyable history of the socialist state is full of surprises - Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times
What makes this meticulous book essential reading is not so much its sense of what East Germans lost, as what we never had. A history of the GDR that adds stability, contentment and women's rights to the familiar picture of authoritarianism - Stuart Jeffries, Guardian
Brilliant. . . Hoyer is a historian of immense ability. . . Exhaustively researched, cleverly constructed and beautifully written, this much needed history of the GDR should be required reading across her homeland. Five stars - Saul David, Daily Telegraph
A from-start-to-finish account of the East Germany where Hoyer was born, which means not just the Stasi but also day jobs, picnics and rock albums. The result is a complete reconstruction of a country that stopped existing 23 years ago’ - Prospect Magazine, Books of the Year 2023
Absolutely fascinating - Andrew Marr, LBC
A rich, counterintuitive history of a country all too often dismissed as a freak or accident of the cold war - Observer
Myth-busting, artfully constructed history. . . Katja Hoyer displays a special understanding and wants to present a corrective to previous reductive assessments of the GDR that depict it as a field-grey Stasiland. . . Her command of detail, broad historical brush strokes and evident sympathy for her interview partners make for a fascinating read - Roger Boyes, The Times
Enthralling, fascinating and very readable. An extraordinary book. Five stars - Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday
A fast-paced, vivid and engaging book. Beyond the Wall does much to combat amnesia and Cold War prejudice, and to normalize the GDR and the people who lived there - TLS
Having begun her life behind the wall, Hoyer tells the story of the GDR with emotional intensity; but also with the detachment and balance of a professional historian who is determined to portray both the good and bad. And a very interesting stroy it is, too - Oliver Letwin, The Tablet
Katja Hoyer returns with another fascinating recount of the complex history of Germany, this time focusing on The German Democratic Republic. Hoyer provides an extremely comprehensive insight into what life was like... More
Katja Hoyer's book is a brilliantly told story of East Germany- from the beginning, to the end. From its foundation, by Germans who had escaped the Nazi's, and survived Stalin's brutal purges, to its... More
By happenstance I was in East Berlin the night the border was opened. I remember the streams of East Berliner flocking to the East/West Berlin border posts , some with suitcases, to cross over into the west. Before... More
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