Based on interviews and the voluminous materials in the archives of the SED, the Stasi and central and regional authorities, this volume focuses on several contrasting minorities (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, ‘guest’ workers from Vietnam and Mozambique, football fans, punks, and skinheads) and their interaction with state and party bodies during Erich Honecker’s rule over the communist system. It explores how they were able to resist persecution and surveillance by instruments of the state, thus illustrating the limits on the power of the East German dictatorship and shedding light on the notion of authority as social practice.
Table of Content
List of Tables
Preface
Chapter 1. State, Society and Minority Groups in the GDR
Mike Dennis and Norman Laporte
Chapter 2. Between Torah and Sickle: Jews in East Germany, 1945-1990
Mike Dennis
Chapter 3. Jehovah’s Witnesses: From Persecution to Survival
Mike Dennis
Chapter 4. Asian and African Workers in the Niches of Society
Mike Dennis
Chapter 5. Football Fans, Hooligans and the State
Mike Dennis
Chapter 6. Sub-cultures: Punks, Goths and Heavy Metallers
Mike Dennis and Norman Laporte
Chapter 7. Skinheads and Right Extremism in an Anti-fascist State
Norman Laporte
Conclusion
Mike Dennis
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Norman La Porte is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Glamorgan. He has published widely on German Communism, including The German Communist Party in Saxony, 1924–33 (Peter Lang, 2003) and, with Stefan Berger, Friendly Enemies: Britain and the GDR, 1949–1990 (Berghahn, 2010). He is co-founding editor of the journal Twentieth Century Communism.
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