Bringing Culture to the Masses: Control, Compromise and Participation in the GDR

Media type: E-Book

Title: Bringing Culture to the Masses : Control, Compromise and Participation in the GDR

Contains: Frontmatter
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
Prelude NONCONFORMITY, COERCION AND ALIENATION: THE 1950S
PART I Bending the Rules While Upholding the Structures: Cultural Functionaries
Introduction
Chapter 1 NEITHER PUPPETS NOR OPPONENTS
Chapter 2 ORGANISING CULTURE Compromise and Communication
PART II Attempted Self-determination – Pursuing an Interest: The Participants
Introduction
Chapter 3 PATTERNS OF PARTICIPATION
Chapter 4 COMMUNICATION WITH CULTURAL FUNCTIONARIES
PART III From Utopianism to Pragmatism: Cultural Policy
Introduction
Chapter 5 RESPONDING TO DEVELOPMENTS AT THE GRASS ROOTS
Chapter 6 FROM ART TO CULTURE
Aftermath BREAKDOWN OF COMMUNICATION: THE LATE 1970S AND 1980S
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Contributor: Richthofen, Esther von [Author]

Published: New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, [2009]

Extent: 1 Online-Ressource (252 p.)

Language: English

DOI: 10.1515/9781845458942

ISBN: 9781845458942

Identifier:

Keywords: Alltag ; DDR ; Deutschland ; Freizeitgestaltung ; Germany (East) -- Cultural policy ; Germany (East) -- Intellectual life ; Germany (East) -- Social life and customs ; Kommunistische Partei ; Kultur ; Kulturleben ; Kulturpolitik ; Massenkultur ; Politische Propaganda ; Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands ; HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century

Origination:

Footnote: In English

Description: Cultural life in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was strictly controlled by the ruling party, the SED, who attempted to dictate how people spent their free time by prohibiting privately organized leisure time pursuits and offering instead cultural activities in state institutions and organizations. By exploring the nature of dictatorial rule in the GDR and analysing the population’s engagement with state-organized cultural activity, this book challenges the current assumptions about the GDR’s social and institutional history that ignore the interaction and inter-dependence between ‘rulers’ and ‘ruled’. The author argues that the people’s cultural life in the GDR developed a dynamic of its own; it was determined by their own interests and by the input of cultural functionaries, who often aimed to satisfy popular demands, even if they were at odds with the SED’s cultural policy. Gradually, these developments affected SED cultural policy, which in the 1960s became less focused on educationalist goals and increasingly oriented towards popular interests

Access State: Restricted Access | Information to licenced electronic resources of the SLUB

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