Behind the Berlin Wall: East Germany and the Frontiers of Power

Abstract

The ‘frontiers of power’—more commonly the ‘limits’ of power or ‘extent’ of government control—have been at the centre of historical debates on East Germany for some time. Once the opening of German Democratic Republic (GDR) archives permitted the study of different levels of East German society, the classic totalitarian model was necessarily challenged and refined. Patrick Major, Professor of Modern History at the University of Reading, has undertaken an exploration of the nature of these ‘frontiers of power’ through ‘an everyday history of high politics’ (p. 10). His book follows the increasingly popular recent trend of histories of the Cold War ‘from below’, but with the uncommon admission that such a history is always structured by the decisions and events ‘above’. The zippy title Behind the Berlin Wall marks the focus of the three-part book. Nearly equally long first and third sections are dedicated to Berlin ‘Before the Wall’ and ‘Beyond the Wall’. But these chapters are no more historical surveys of the years preceding and following the caesuras of August 1961 and November 1989 than the central chapters under the title ‘Behind the Wall’ chronicle the years in between. Instead Major keeps the reader's attention strictly on the ultimately spatial dimensions of the Communist government's efforts to gain full control (presumably to carry out its revolution) and the range of reactions from various sections of the population as defined by social and geographic categories.

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