A comparison of Australian and German literary journalism

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and compare the traditions shaping the development of literary journalism in Australia and Germany. Tracing the different historical developments of the form in the two countries provides the contextual basis for an in-depth comparative analysis, which concentrates on the concepts of credibility and authenticity. The thesis explores whether different attitudes to news and opinion in journalism in the two countries influence these notions that are central to literary journalism. However, in the comparative analysis other significant factors become apparent. In four case studies, two from each country, consisting of book-length examples of literary journalism, distinct journalistic and literary criteria are applied to gain insights of how credibility and authenticity are achieved and to what extent this influences the perception of these works. One key finding is that in Germany the main instrument to achieve authenticity and credibility is eyewitness reporting in the strict sense of the word, that is, the writer experienced what he or she writes about first-hand. Australia, on the other hand, allows more room and greater emphasis for narrative techniques combined with well-researched and verifiable facts. This difference in understanding of authenticity is also supported by the other key finding that diverging media laws and regulations, above all the laws protecting privacy and personality, greatly influence the production and reception of literary journalism in the two countries. For Germany, this means that the scope for the form is far narrower than in the Anglo-American world, to which Australia belongs

GDR development policy with special reference to Africa, c. 1960-1990

This thesis explores the political, economic and theoretical underpinnings of the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR’s) development policies towards the Third World between c.1960 and 1990. Particular attention is paid to Africa. Case studies of assistance to SWAPO and the ANC further focus the attention of the reader on southern Africa in particular. Aspects of both military and civilian aid are considered, including both development initiatives overseas in Africa, and development training for Africans within the GDR itself. Since German “reunification”, the GDR’s history has been explored largely from a West German perspective. The present work attempts to provide a more balanced view of successes and shortcomings of the GDR’s policies towards, and interaction with, African countries and liberation movements. It also aims to bring to the attention of English-speaking readers German archival sources, other primary sources and published works which they would otherwise have been unlikely to encounter. From its formation, the GDR made strenuous efforts to develop relations with countries which were either free from colonial dependency or were struggling for freedom. Over the course of thirty years, it followed a number of different approaches, and developed diverse objectives. These were shaped in the wider context of the cold war, the Hallstein doctrine (which established that the FRG – and, in effect, its allies - would not establish or maintain diplomatic relations with any state that recognised the GDR), the relationships between the GDR and partner socialist states, and the economic difficulties faced by the GDR. Arising from this complex situation, from time to time, both internally in the GDR and in terms of its foreign affairs, tensions and discrepancies arose between theoretical objectives and political and economic reality. Despite these severe constraints, during the period under review, the volume and range of the GDR’s relationships with developing countries increased dramatically. For example, between 1970 and 1987, the number of developing countries with which the GDR had foreign economic relations on the basis of international agreements grew from 23 to 64. Viewed within its economic context, the state was arguably far more committed to development aid than the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, there is a great deal of evidence that “solidarity” with developing nations and the oppressed enjoyed a considerable degree of popular support

Saving Nature in Socialism: East Germany's Official and Independent Environmentalism, 1968-1990

This dissertation explores the social, political, and environmental implications at home and abroad of East Germany’s (German Democratic Republic, GDR) mounting pollution problem. Placing the rise of environmental consciousness in East Germany in conversation with developments in West Germany and Poland, my project examines how the communist dictatorship and the small but growing opposition each grappled with the mounting pollution problem. Specifically, the dissertation considers why the dictatorship embraced environmental protection—even codifying the right to a clean environment in its 1968 constitution—and how it implemented this mandate. Yet, as the new environmental regulation and social policies raised East Germans’ expectations for a cleaner environment and a higher quality of life, their failures became increasingly manifest. As a result, a protest movement formed in the only institution not controlled by the communist party, the Protestant Church. I argue that Christian activists formulated a critique that challenged not only official environmental practices, but ultimately, the system as a whole. Although this criticism figured prominently in the Round Table discussions leading to reunification in 1990, our understanding of the connections between the environment and communism as well as their legacies remain as yet understudied. This examination of pollution, policy, and protest challenges traditional narratives about environmentalism. First, within the GDR, studying the interactions between institutions, politics, and society illuminates the complex negotiations between state and society under communism. Because environmentalism was not strictly viewed as oppositional, actors engaged in a range of activities for a common cause. Second, I argue that environmental consciousness arose for a variety of domestic and international reasons under communism, neither simply borrowing from western, liberal democracies nor developing in isolation from them. In fact, environmentalism in the GDR drew on a multitude of outside influences, such as western green movements, Christian texts, Soviet rhetoric, and Eastern European dissidents, to respond to serious, local degradation. This broadens the accepted narratives of environmentalism as originating solely in western, liberal democracies and highlights how both Germanys engaged with the environment to support their claims to legitimacy. Environmentalism in the GDR bridged the Iron Curtain, demonstrating the limitations of bipolar understandings of Europe during the Cold War. Its largest success, perhaps, was how uncontentious environmental cleanup proved to be during the unification process in the 1990s. Both East and West Germans had accepted its importance.Doctor of Philosoph

Glasnost in the GDR?: the East German Writers Congress of 1987

By the late 1980s many East German authors had for years called for expanding what could be said publicly about the ruling regime. The ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) was quick to suppress such rhetoric, however, and many fellow writers condemned outspoken colleagues for providing ammunition to the West. Yet after years of struggle, the year 1987 witnessed an eruption of public criticism during the Tenth Writers Congress, hosted by the East German Writers Union, the governmentdominated organization to which all authors had to belong. These congresses were typically propaganda events, but in 1987, inspired by Mikhail Gorbachev's calls for greater openness in the USSR, several authors, in front of the media, interrogated many aspects of the dictatorship, stunning the SED elite and secret police in the process. This article explores the congress, tracing the Writers Union's role in shaping debates about freedom of expression. Changes in the preceding years meant that by 1987, critical views had become more widespread, including among those who had once condemned nonconformists. Consequently, at the congress a critical mass of writers succeeded in expanding the limits of speech, joining a wider call for liberalization across the communist world

Weimar – a Personal Tribute

Weimar is a relatively small town in the centre of Germany. Around 1552 it became the capital of the small Herzogtum Sachsen-Weimar (Principality Saxony-Weimar), from 1741 until 1918 the capital of the (still relatively small) Principality – since 1815 Grand Principality – (Groß-) Herzogtum Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach (Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach). After World War I all monarchic structures in Germany were abandoned, the democratic Free State of Thuringia was founded in 1920, and Weimar became its capital until 1950. Despite its moderate size, Weimar managed to gain a cultural profile that extended and still extends far beyond the borders of the (Grand-) Principality, even beyond Germany. The foundations were laid in the 18th and early 19th century, connected to writers and pilosophers like Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottfried von Herder, and Friedrich von Schiller who all lived and worked in Weimar. In the late 19th and early 20th century more writers, musicians and artists contributed to Weimar’s reputation, e.g. Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Harry Graf Kessler, Henry van de Velde, Edvard Munch, Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger. In politics, Weimar played ambiguous roles between a comparatively liberal (Grand) Principality, the birth place of the first democratic state in Germany (Weimar Republic), turning “brown” (National-Socialist) from the late 1920s, Communist after World War II, democratic again after the German re-unification in 1990. Weimar is a very special, even intriguing place. This book tries to convey its aura by telling its story from the early beginnings in the 16th century until today, with a main focus on the last three centuries – embedded into pan-German, even pan-European developments

With Vietnam We Are Bound as Brothers : Theorizing Socialism, Internationalism, and the Politics of Public Agency Among Vietnamese Contract Workers in the German Democratic Republic

This thesis considers the social, economic and ideological climate in the German Democratic Republic in the last decade of its existence (the 1980s) when excessive labor demands lead the country to import tens of thousands of “contract workers” from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Focusing primarily on theoretical contradictions in GDR socialism, and their impact on the day to day lives Vietnamese workers, I will argue that ideologically freighted pronouncements of “socialist fraternity” with Vietnam functioned to obscure the true, economic reasons for labor importation

The Nationale Volksarmee in German reunification : aspects of policy and process

Disposing of the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA), the armed forces of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was viewed as the initial step of a comprehensive German post Cold War defence reform programme. The author of this study intends to challenge a generally accepted perspective originated by the political leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany and subsequently recited by many politico-military commentators that this effort of managing the NVA had significant positive impact on the overall German reunification process. The author assumed that such a political myth was caused by an insufficient basis of judgment, only focused on the initial stage of accommodating former NV A members into the Bundeswehr. Therefore, this study will re-examine the essence and significance of managing the NVA from two new angles, which received less attention from previous researchers. From a study of the negotiating process regarding the NVA in the last days of the GDR regime, the author proves that the future of the NVA never was the core issue to any party other than its military professionals. Hence, it could not be drastically elevated as a key factor in facilitating the post-reunification German national unity. Furthermore, re-visiting the process of disposing of NVA assets other than personnel proves that this had no effect on promoting national consolidation. On the contrary, many scandals that happened in transferring the NY A assets could have had the potential of undermining the national unity. At least, those problems caused numerous criticisms from the citizens of eastern Germany. By summarising the newly explored facts from these new angles, the author still genuinely believes that the Bundeswehr did positively contribute to the German national unity by appropriately managing the NVA thus defusing potential negative impacts on German post-reunification society. Nevertheless, the significance of their task should not be overrated in history

Between Dictatorship and Dissent: Ideology, Legitimacy, and Human Rights in East Germany, 1945-1990

The project examines how the idea of human rights developed in East Germany, first as a tool of legitimization by the socialist state, and eventually by East Germans themselves, in a citizen-based social movement, to radically alter the Cold War status quo in 1989. In response to West German attacks against their control over East Germany after the Second World War, the ruling East German Socialist Unity Party (SED) adopted the language of human rights in order to undermine its opponents and legitimize its rule. The deployment of the language of human rights by the East German state went well beyond simple sloganeering: in 1959, the SED created the Eastern Bloc's only state-sponsored human rights organization - two years before the founding of Amnesty International. East German intellectuals loyal to the state developed a unique ideological conception of socialist human rights, that reimagined the SED dictatorship as a champion of human rights superior to those in the imperialist West. These ideas were internalized by the SED leadership, disseminated to the population, and became central to diplomatic efforts to secure support from the developing world. The project examines how the idea of human rights developed in East Germany, first as a tool of legitimization of the socialist state, and eventually by East Germans themselves, in a citizen-based social movement, to radically alter the Cold War status quo in 1989. In response to West German attacks against their control over East Germany after the Second World War, the ruling East German Socialist Unity Party (SED) adopted the language of human rights in order to undermine its opponents and legitimize its rule. The deployment of the language of human rights by the East German state went well beyond simple sloganeering: in 1959, the SED created the Eastern Bloc's only state-sponsored human rights organization - two years before the founding of Amnesty International. East German intellectuals loyal to the state developed a unique ideological conception of socialist human rights, that reimagined the SED dictatorship as a champion of human rights superior to those in the imperialist West. These ideas were internalized by the SED leadership, disseminated to the population, and became central to diplomatic efforts to secure support from the developing world. The SED's appropriation of the discourse of human rights works to explain how a dissident movement that was non-existent in 1985 could grow so rapidly as to underpin a revolution by 1989. East German human rights activists were not working in an ideological vacuum, but were fighting against an entrenched hegemonic discourse of human rights to legitimize state socialism and the status quo. Only in the late 1980s did activists re-appropriate the language of human rights for the cause of democratization, drawing on inspiration from Western activists, Eastern dissidents, and South American human rights activists, to claim that they - and not the state - were the true champions of both socialism and human rights. The successes of the human rights movement in 1980s East Germany was thus not simply the result of Western diplomatic pressure, but of a transnational process that began with the SED appropriation of the mantle of human rights, and ended in 1989 when East Germans finally took it back.Doctor of Philosoph

Ethnicity, Nationalism and the European Cold War

Explores the continuity of ethnic and national politics during the Cold War

Separation after unification? The crisis of national identity in eastern Germany.

On October 3, 1990 Germany was formally reunified through an extension of the legal, political and economic structures of West Germany into the former GDR. For East Germans this transformation represented a challenging process. Former values, orientations and standards were subject to severe scrutiny which affected virtually every realm of an individual's life. The thesis analyses the development from the divided to the unified Germany and asks to what extent East Germans have adopted a collective orientation in line with that of the western part. Such identity markers are conceptualized into five distinct categories consisting of orientations in the realm of territory, economics, ethnicity, mass culture, as well as in the civic-political sphere. The study relies to some extent on public opinion surveys and on qualitative data including media sources, literature and impressionistic accounts. Political-historical analyses of the identities of the Federal and the German Democratic Republic are followed by interrogations into the state of the East German identity as it evolved between 1990 and 1996. The study provides a deeper understanding of those processes and determinants which brought continuity or change to the German political system. Although interrogations into national identities are neither able to determine the precise moment of change, nor the precise scope and direction of political action they offer well-defined tracks along which political decisions are received in a supportive or oppositional manner. The study of national identity therefore does not represent the universal remedy for the explanation of complex political phenomena. Nonetheless, it is indispensable in enhancing the explanatory power and predictive capacity of political analyses since it broadens understanding and enriches political sensitivity. The thesis identifies a significant range of commonalties, as well as striking features of mutually exclusive areas which prevent the establishment of a common national identity shared by east and west