The East Germany portal offers an overview of the most important and newest articles on the subject of East Germany, the former Communist state officially known as the German Democratic Republic or GDR The portal contains links to a cross-section of articles from the areas of history and politics, geography and economy, art and culture, and some of the important personalities from the region.
Aufbauliteratur (literally: construction literature) is the name given to the literature produced in Eastern Germany between state foundation and construction of the Berlin Wall, that is between 1949 and 1961, by authors close to the state's ideology and congruent with the ruling party's political program. It was aimed at the intellectual construction of the Socialist state. The area is preceded by the less directed and only marginal literature produced post the Second World War, and followed by Ankunftsliteratur, the literature written to internalize a sense of arrival which was much less ideological but practical and realistic, still aligned with the SED.
Between 1949 and 1961, the East German communist party (SED) was keen to establish its newly founded "proletarians' and peasants' state", in a program called Aufbau des Sozialismus which involved a promotion of Marxist-Leninist ideology not only in economic but more so social means dominated by literature (Aufbauliteratur). This is to be understood in a general context of nation building and hence Aufbauliteratur functions to "educating citizens for loyalty towards the state and its socialist ideology". (Full article...)
The German Democratic Republic, which consisted geographically of what is now eastern Germany, had an area of 107,771 km2 (41,610 mi2), bordering Czechoslovakia in the south, West Germany in the south and west, the Baltic Sea to the north, and Poland in the east.
Much of the territory of the former East Germany lay on the North German Plain and was largely flat and agricultural apart from low morainic hills left by the ice age. However in the south the land rose to the Ore Mountains and Elbe Sandstone Mountains that formed the border with its Communist neighbour, Czechoslovakia.
Image 5Occupation zone borders in Germany, 1947. The territories east of the Oder-Neisse line, under Polish and Soviet administration/annexation, are shown as white, as is the likewise detached Saar protectorate. Berlin is the multinational area within the Soviet zone. (from History of East Germany)
Image 12Map showing the different borders and territories of Poland and Germany during the 20th century, with the current areas of Germany and Poland in dark gray (from History of East Germany)
Image 13Logo for the 40th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic in 1989 (from History of East Germany)
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