Katja Hoyer has done a magnificent job, providing a rounded insight into what life was like in the GDR. The more controlling aspects of the regime are not given much coverage which is fine by me, as I feel I have a solid grounding of the Stasi and their methods. A reader less aware of this aspect of the regime might conclude the GDR was a wonderful place for its citizens especially as great efforts were made to cater to the needs of the people who enjoyed the highest standard of living of any socialist state. Consummately fair-minded as she is as a historian, Katja Hoyer tells the stories of both those GDR citizens who experienced the desperation of those needing to escape across the wall, but also those residents who built ordinary lives under the regime and came to appreciate its unchallenging stability. Aside from the state’s inherent paranoia (understandable given its “precarious position on the faultlines of the Cold War divide”), what ultimately did for the GDR was that it was a system utterly incapable of renewing itself. Once the supply of cheap Soviet oil was choked off, the regime crumbled. East Germany never managed to renew its ideology and instead remained dominated by ‘the old men’ (and their intransigent mindsets) who had founded it over 40 years earlier.

From rampaging teens to female assassins: why has East German

While the English translation of Kairos is relatively hot on the heels of the German original, which appeared in 2021, older East German fiction is also being discovered by British publishers. Another book now found on British shelves is Clemens Meyer’s While We Were Dreaming. The novel appeared in Germany in 2006, where it was awarded several prizes and made into a film. The fact that it appeared in the UK this year speaks volumes about the increasing interest in its subject matter. a b Jeffries, Stuart (29 March 2023). "Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer review – overturning cliches of East Germany". The Guardian . Retrieved 25 July 2023.

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The acclaim for this in Britain astounds me. It is, at best, a competent popular history – but groundbreaking scholarship this emphatically is not. East Germany's socialist founders certainly had it tough when young. They had been persecuted by the Nazis before the war, and those that survived and fled to the USSR were soon caught up in the deadly Stalin Terror of the late 1930s. Amazingly, incredibly, their Marxist convictions remained firm.

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer | Hachette Book Group Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer | Hachette Book Group

Yet the process of dismissing the GDR as a footnote in German history is, for Hoyer, “ahistorical”. Like her, millions of Germans alive today “neither can nor want to deny that they had once lived in the GDR”. The system was far from perfect, but along with the “tears and anger”, “oppression and brutality”, there was “laughter and pride”, “opportunity and belonging”. Hence her decision to write a new “warts and all” history of the GDR that places it firmly in the wider German narrative.I would have loved to have read a deeper analysis of the East German alcohol industry, and what role it played. While Katja Hoyer relates the troubled gestation of the GDR, the subtlety of “Beyond the Wall” is that it shows that the East German state had some laudable achievements to its name. East German state socialism was able to realise relative female equality and career progression for their citizens - for much of its existence attaining the highest rate of female participation in the workplace in the world - and maintaining a high level of access to university education and lifelong learning. And this book isn’t just dry historical analysis; “Beyond the Wall” is replete with quirky socio-cultural stories such as the tale of Dean Reed (the ultimately doomed ‘Red Elvis’) and the surreal spectacle of the East German state buying up 1 million pairs of Levi’s jeans in a vain attempt to keep a lid on youthful rebellion. This book has enlightened me to a lot of what happened in the country and why. I did feel, however, that the really dark stuff was rather glossed over. Yes, the word "dictator" was used a time or two. The number of people Stalin made disappear in horrific circumstances was stated. It is accepted that the Stasi was feared. Mielke was mentioned many times, but not in any real depth. Also, no light was shone on the ordinary citizens who spied on their families, friends, neighbors, colleagues. Based on first-hand accounts and extensive new research, Hoyer presents the history of the GDR as never before -- as a kaleidoscope of perspectives, experiences and stories. From the ashes of the Second World War to the fall of the USSR, this is the definitive story of the other Germany, the one beyond the Wall.