Burned Bridge : how East and West Germans made the Iron Curtain / Edith Sheffer ; foreword by Peter Schneider.
2011
DD284.5.G3 S54 2011 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection
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Details
Title
Burned Bridge : how East and West Germans made the Iron Curtain / Edith Sheffer ; foreword by Peter Schneider.
Author
Sheffer, Edith.
ISBN
9780199737048 (alk. paper)
0199737045 (alk. paper)
0199737045 (alk. paper)
Publication Details
New York : Oxford University Press, c2011.
Language
English
Description
xvii, 357 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm.
Call Number
DD284.5.G3 S54 2011
Dewey Decimal Classification
943.087
Summary
The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 shocked the world. Ever since, the image of this impenetrable barrier has been a central symbol of the Cold War. Based on vast research in untapped archival, oral, and private sources, this book reveals the hidden origins of the Iron Curtain, presenting it in a startling new light. Historian Edith Sheffer's in-depth account focuses on the intersection between two sister cities, Sonneberg and Neustadt bei Coburg, Germany's largest divided population outside Berlin. Sheffer demonstrates that as Soviet and American forces occupied each city after the Second World War, townspeople who historically had much in common quickly formed opposing interests and identities. Sheffer describes how smuggling, kidnapping, rape, and killing in the early postwar years led citizens to demand greater border control on both sides--long before East Germany fortified its 1,393-kilometer border with West Germany. Indeed, Sheffer shows that the physical border was not simply imposed by Cold War superpowers, but was in some part an improvised outgrowth of an anxious postwar society.--From publisher description.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Table of Contents
Foundations : Burned Bridge
Insecurity : border mayhem
Inequality : economic divides
Kickoff : political skirmishing
Shock : border closure and deportation
Shift : everyday boundaries
Surveillance : individual controls
Home : life in the prohibited zone
Fault line : life in the fortifications
Disconnect : East-West relations
Epilogue : new divides.
Insecurity : border mayhem
Inequality : economic divides
Kickoff : political skirmishing
Shock : border closure and deportation
Shift : everyday boundaries
Surveillance : individual controls
Home : life in the prohibited zone
Fault line : life in the fortifications
Disconnect : East-West relations
Epilogue : new divides.