Stereotypical descriptions showcase West Germany as an "economic
miracle" or cast it in the narrow terms of Cold War politics. Such
depictions neglect how material hardship preceded success and how a
fascist past and communist sibling complicated the country's image
as a bastion of democracy. Even more disappointing, they brush over
a rich and variegated cultural history. That history is told here
by leading scholars of German history, literature, and film in what
is destined to become the volume on postwar West German culture and
society.
In it, we read about the lives of real people--from German
children fathered by black Occupation soldiers to communist
activists, from surviving Jews to Turkish "guest" workers, from
young hoodlums to middle-class mothers. We learn how they
experienced and represented the institutions and social forces that
shaped their lives and defined the wider culture. We see how two
generations of West Germans came to terms not only with war guilt,
division from East Germany, and the Angst of nuclear threat, but
also with changing gender relations, the Americanization of popular
culture, and the rise of conspicuous consumption. Individually,
these essays peer into fascinating, overlooked corners of German
life. Together, they tell what it really meant to live in West
Germany in the 1950s and 1960s.
In addition to the editor, the contributors are Volker R.
Berghahn, Frank Biess, Heide Fehrenbach, Michael Geyer, Elizabeth
Heineman, Ulrich Herbert, Maria Hohn, Karin Hunn, Kaspar Maase,
Richard McCormick, Robert G. Moeller, Lutz Niethammer, Uta G.
Poiger, Diethelm Prowe, Frank Stern, Arnold Sywottek, Frank
Trommler, Eric D. Weitz, Juliane Wetzel, and Dorothee
Wierling."
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