The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the beginning of one of the most interesting natural experiments in recent history. The East German transition from a Communist state to part of the Federal Republic of Germany abruptly created a new social order as old institutions were abolished and new...

What happens when an entire modern state's material culture becomes abruptly obsolete? How do ordinary people encounter what remains? In this ethnography, Jonathan Bach examines the afterlife of East Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall, as things and places from that vanished socialist...

Rudolf Hickel: V O R W O R T: Mut zur erfolgreichen Alternative. Nach über 15 Jahren der deutschen Einigung fällt die Bilanz der politisch propagierten ökonomischen Angleichung Ostdeutschlands an die westdeutschen Produktions- und Le­bensverhältnisse enttäuschend aus. So erreichte das...