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East German Music and the Problem of National Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Laura Silverberg
Laura Silverberg*
Affiliation:
Department of Music Columbia University, 2960 Broadway, MC 1813 New York, NY 10027 USA. Email: [email protected]
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Extract

Caught between political allegiance to the Soviet Union and a shared history with West Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) occupied an awkward position in Cold War Europe. While other countries in the Eastern Bloc already existed as nation-states before coming under Soviet control, the GDR was the product of Germany's arbitrary division. There was no specifically East German culture in 1945—only a German culture. When it came to matters of national identity, officials in the GDR's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) could not posit a unique quality of “East Germanness,” but could only highlight East Germany's difference from its western neighbor. This difference did not stem from the language and culture of the past, but the politics and ideology of the present: East Germany was socialist Germany.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , July 2009 , pp. 501 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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