The first part of this lecture reconstructs, by help of survey data, the development of objective welfare and subjective welfare of the population of the former GDR (East Germany) since 1990. It can be observed how a definite improvement of incomes concurs with a clear deterioration of the...

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...