One of the first books to extend the currently burgeoning scholarship on East Germany to the visual arts, revealing that painting, like literature and film, was a space of contestation. East German studies today is thriving. Scholars have shown East Germany to be a complex society where culture played an important, if contested, role in the making of the socialist person. In English-language scholarship, however,the visual arts-and especially painting-have been largely ignored, the result of the misperception that East German art was little more than kitsch or propaganda. This book focuses on one of East Germany's most successful artistsas a point of entry into the vibrant art world of the "other" Germany. In the 1980s, Bernhard Heisig (1925-2011) was praised on both sides of the Berlin Wall for his neo-expressionist style and his commitment to German history and art. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt chose him to paint his official portrait, major museums collected his work, and in 1989 he had a major solo exhibition in West Germany. After unification, Heisig was a focal point in the Bilderstreit, a virulent debate over what role East German art should play in the new Germany. Challenging current understandings of Heisig and East German art, this book focuses on Heisig's little-known fight for modern art in EastGermany. Examining major debates of the 1960s, it shows the key role he played in expanding the country's art from the limits of Soviet-style socialist realism to a socialist modernism that later gained recognition in the West. April A. Eisman is Associate Professor of Art History at Iowa State University.

A reassessment of the journey Germans in East and West have taken during the past two and a half decades: even today, an open-ended, unfinished journey. On October 3, 1990, just a year after the Berlin Wall fell, the German Democratic Republic was absorbed into the Federal Republic of Germany, officially ceasing to exist. What was the GDR and how do we remember it? According to the dominant Western narrative, it was a country that brought neither unity nor justice nor freedom to its citizens. But if so, why does a virtual wall still seem to exist in Germany today between the erstwhile citizens of the GDR and FRG? The GDR very much remains in the public debate, and while political integration is well on its way, the cultural integration of the two former states has proven much more challenging. This volume analyzes the culturaltransformation - or lack thereof - that has followed political unification. The contributions are interdisciplinary: essays on history and politics provide a framework and others on art, film, literature, museums, music, and education provide specific examples. These case studies allow us to examine the state of unification beyond statistics, opinion polls, and glib generalizations. The volume, then, is a reassessment of the journey Germans in East and West have taken during the past two and a half decades. Even today, it is an open-ended, unfinished journey. But such journeys tend to be the most interesting. Contributors: Kerstin Barndt, Stephen Brockmann, Michael Dreyer, Andreas Eis, April A. Eisman, Peter Hayes, Franziska Lys, Charles S. Maier, Andreas Niederberger, Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien, Daniel Ortuno-Stuhring. Franziska Lys is Professor of German at Northwestern University. Michael Dreyer is Professor in the Institute for Political Science at the University of Jena.

The catalogue Angela Hampel – The Artistic Work is being published on the occasion of the exhibition with the same title at the Städtische Galerie Dresden. It contains more than 180 illustrations, as well as scholarly texts on Hampel’s artistic media: painting, graphics, installation, performance, artist books, and work in public space. A look back at her reception in the 1980s, a discussion of her current artistic work, and an extensively illustrated biography provide never-before-published insights into Angela Hampel’s life and oeuvre. Text in English and German.