07/10/2023
Historian and journalist Hoyer (Blood and Iron ) captivates with this compassionate narrative of a lost nation. The German Democratic Republic was founded on October 7, 1949, and “vanished literally overnight” when Germany unified in 1990. Arguing that the German national obsession with Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“the process of ‘overcoming’ history”) has denied East Germans their past, Hoyer retells the country’s short history through the eyes of its soldiers, workers, mothers, and students, capturing the ardor and joy of people striving to build a new nation. Hoyer astutely analyzes East Germany’s formative moments, such as Stalin handpicking the country’s inaugural leaders—president Wilhelm Pieck and Communist Party head Walter Ulbricht. She heaps criticism on Ulbricht for his lack of charisma and for his harsh work quotas that led to the June 1953 uprising; when Moscow sent in tanks to quell the protests, at least 55 people were killed. She writes that the Berlin Wall, constructed in 1961, was “undoubtedly a human tragedy,” but stresses that “the most abiding memories many East Germans have of this time are shaped by the large-scale building projects, new professional opportunities especially for women, families obtaining their first cars,” and other modernizations. While readers may question whether this economic gain and social stability made up for the regime’s repressiveness, Hoyer’s sympathetic chronicle succeeds in reclaiming East German history for the East Germans. (Sept.)
"In this impressively researched history of East Germany, Hoyer excavates the human and the worthwhile from the rubble of a police state. Her lens is primarily on geopolitics, but her narrative kicks into gear when she lingers on the lives of ordinary East Berliners." —New York Times Book Review Stuart Jeffries, Guardian Foreign Affairs Beyond the Wall ...Crafting an expansive and generous history of East Germany, Hoyer brings long-standing academic scholarship to a broader audience, explaining how the GDR evolved over its 40-year existence, the triumphs and travails of everyday life under state socialism, and why so many East Germans continue to pine for the country they have lost." —New Republic Foreign Policy Times Literary Supplement Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times Saul David, Daily Telegraph Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday Observer Economist Los Angeles Review of Books Literary Hub Roger Boyes, Times (London) Oliver Letwin, The Tablet Beyond the Wall , there hadn’t been an English-language history of the GDR with which to color in that vanished country’s past.” —Peter Hoskins, Prospect John Kampfner, Literary Review Beyond the Wall is not just a superb history of East Germany. It is most certainly that, but it is also an outstanding history, full stop. Hoyer’s blend of deeply personal and human stories with high politics and culture brings the story of the GDR vividly to life and shows how the legacy of East Germany is very much alive in Germany and Europe today." —Diplomatic Courier The Interpreter Law & Liberty Blood and Iron ) captivates with this compassionate narrative of a lost nation." —Publishers Weekly Peter Frankopan, New York Times-bestselling author of The Silk Roads Beyond the Wall , Hoyer confirms her place as one of the best young historians writing in English today. On the heels of her superb Blood and Iron , about the rise and fall of the Second Reich, comes another masterpiece, this one about the aftermath of the Third Reich in the East. Well-researched, well-written, and profoundly insightful, it explodes many of the lazy Western cliches about East Germany.” —Andrew Roberts, New York Times-bestselling author of Churchill Simon Sebag Montefiore, New York Times-bestselling author of The Romanovs Serhii Plokhy, New York Times-bestselling author of The Gates of Europe Beyond the Wall is a unique fresco of everyday reality in East Germany. Elegantly moving between diplomatic history, political economy, and cultural analysis, this is an essential read to understand not only the life and death of the GDR but also the parts of it that still survive in the emotions of its former citizens.” —Lea Ypi, author of Free Frederick Taylor, author of The Berlin Wall Julia Boyd, author of Travelers in the Third Reich
A bold, deft history of the forty-one years of the German Democratic Republic. Hoyer is a historian with skin in the game.”
Forget everything you thought you knew about life in the GDR. This terrifically colorful, surprising, and enjoyable history of the socialist state is full of surprises.”
What makes this meticulous book essential reading is not so much its sense of what East Germans lost but of what we never had.”
A vivid political story of the communist German state.
Hoyer brilliantly shows the history of East Germany was a significant chapter of German history, not just a footnote to it or a copy of the Soviet Union.”
New York Times bestselling author Serhii Plokhy
The joke has it that the duty of the last East German to escape from the country was to turn off the lights. In Beyond the Wall , Hoyer turns the light back on and gives us the best kind of history: frank, vivid, nuanced, and filled with interesting people.
author of After Europe Ivan Krastev
A fantastic, sparkling book, filled with insights not only about East Germany but about the Cold War, Europe, and the forging of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”
New York Times bestselling author Peter Frankopan
With Beyond the Wall , Hoyer confirms her place as one of the best young historians writing in English today. A masterpiece.”
New York Times bestselling author Andrew Roberts
What makes this meticulous book essential reading is not so much its sense of what East Germans lost but of what we never had.”
Enthralling, fascinating, and very readable history.
Mail on Sunday Peter Hitchens
[F]ast-paced, vivid and engaging.
Times Literary Supplement
A colourful and often revelatory re-appraisal of one of modern history’s most fascinating political curiosities.”
author of The Berlin Wall Frederick Taylor
Elegantly moving between diplomatic history, political economy, and cultural analysis, this is an essential read to understand not only the life and death of the GDR but also the parts of it that still survive in the emotions of its former citizens.”
Superb, totally fascinating, and compelling, Hoyer’s first full history of East Germany’s rise and fall is a work of revelatory original research—and a gripping read with a brilliant cast of characters. Essential reading.”
New York Times bestselling author Simon Sebag Montefiore
With a calm, even feel, actor/director and German native Sam Peter Jackson presents this detailed and intense insider's history of a newly minted post-WWII country that was often caught between Russian political purges and American Cold War pressures. This account is told from a fresh non-Western point of view, and Jackson's tone reflects the defiant pride in the author's persistent use of superlatives that somehow give the "largest" economy in East Europe, the "highest" rate of employment of women, and the "most" ruthless police state in the world the same sounding weight. Nevertheless, even though the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and East and West Germany reunited a year later, East Germany's economic, political, and cultural confrontations and accomplishments should not be forgotten. B.P. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
★ 2023-06-02
British historian Hoyer, the author of Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire , was born in East Germany. She begins her latest eye-opening history in 1933, when thousands of German communists fled to Russia after Hitler took power. Almost all were arrested, and 75% were killed because the paranoid Stalin assumed that many were Gestapo spies. Lucky survivors returned to revive a devastated land with no help from reparations-hungry Russia, which vacuumed up farms, machinery, infrastructure, and even the products of rebuilding factories. In 1953, after years of deprivation, the nation exploded in violence, which required Soviet troops to suppress. Shocked East German leaders paid more attention to economics and, aided by Stalin’s death in 1953 and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 (which cut off a crippling brain drain), accomplished a good deal. Although no fan of communism, Hoyer points out that, by the 1960s, “East German women enjoyed greater professional and economic autonomy than their Western counterparts.” Though the Stasi was pervasive, only a minority suffered. The vast majority came to terms with life in East Germany. By the 1970s, they enjoyed the communist world’s highest living standards, but the 1980s brought difficulties as the declining Soviet Union reduced subsidies, loans, and cheap oil. Desperate leaders made overtures to West Germany, which responded favorably. The decade saw an easing of travel restrictions and censorship, and in the final years, there was an explosion of activism, the wall’s destruction, and a free election followed by unification. Hoyer incisively examines the consequences. Unemployment skyrocketed as Western entrepreneurs took over, and working women lost cheap, universal child care in favor of the West’s skimpy, expensive version. Today, former East Germans often vote for extremist far-right and -left parties, but few long for the old regime.
The definitive history of “the other Germany, beyond the Wall.
