Biographies and the division of Europe: experience, action, and change on the 'Eastern side'

Abstract

The challenge taken on in this book is to confront a division that has separated Europe by an Iron Curtain for over 40 years. The contributions deal with the historical background of this division and its impact on Eastern European biographies. Empirical and theoretical investigations of transformations in people's livessince 1989 are highlighted relating to Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Yugoslavia, as well as the German Democratic Republic. The historical period covered by the articles in this book extends from the Soviet Revolution of 1917 to the present. Contents: Erhard Stölting: The East of Europe: A Historical Construction (23-38); Martin Peterson: The Pursuit of a European Identity (39-53); Wolfram Fischer-Rosenthal: Address Lost: How to Fix Lives. Biographical Structuring in the European Modern Age (55-75); Devorah Kalekin-Fishman: Looking In at Europe from Outside: Stories of Exclusion and Inclusion (77-89); Victoria Semenova: The Message from the Past: Experience of Suffering Transmitted Through Generations (93-113); Gabriele Rosenthal: Social Transformation in the Context of Familial Experience: Biographical Consequences of a Denied Past in the Soviet Union (115-137); Bettina Völter: Intergenerational Dialog in Families of Jewish Communists in East Germany: A Process-Oriented Analysis (139-157); Lena Inowlocki: Doing "Being Jewish": Constitution of "Normality" in Families of Jewish Displaced Persons in Germany (159-178); Julia Vajda/ Eva Kovacs: Jews and Non-Jews Living Together After the Transition in Hungary (179-194); Mirjana Morokvasic-Müller: Escaping Nationalism and Violence: Interethnic Marriages in the Post-Yugoslavian Region (195-215); Kaja Kazmierska: Polish-German Relationships in Narratives on the Experiences of World War II from Poland's Eastern Border Region (217-231); Mihai Dinu Gheorghiu: Narratives of Extreme Experiences in Four Model Life Stories: Mircea Eliade, Mihail Sebastian, Nicolae Steinhardt, Paul Goma (233-252); Zdzislaw Krasnodebski: Dilemmas of Collective and Individual Memory in Eastern Europe: Reflections on the Example of Poland (253-267); Ina Dietzsch: The Construction of Cultural Difference Between East and West Germans in Bowing Letters (271-282); Laszlo Kürti: The Socialist Circus: Secrets, Lies, and Autobiographical Family Narratives (283-302); Vera Sparschuh: The Biographies of the Biographers: Some Remarks on the History of the Social Sciences in GDR (303-314); Ingrid Miethe: Changes in Spaces of Political Activism: Transforming East Germany (315-333); Ingrid Oswald/Viktor Voronkov: Tricky Hermeneutics: Public and Private Viewpoints an Jewish Migration from Russia to Germany (335-348); Yvonne Schütze/Tamar Rapoport: "We are similar in that we're different": Social Relationships of Young Russian Jewish Immigrants in Israel and Germany (349-267); Roswitha Breckner: The Meaning of the Iron Curtain in East-West Migration Biographies (367-387).

Das Thema dieses Buches ist die Konfrontation mit der über 40-jährigen Teilung Europas durch den Eisernen Vorhang. Die Beiträge beschäftigen sich mit dem historischen Hintergrund dieser Teilung und seinen Auswirkungen auf osteuropäische Biographien. Empirische und theoretische Untersuchungen zum Wandel im Leben der Menschen seit 1989 in Ungarn, Polen, Rumänien, Rußland, Jugoslawien und insbesondere der DDR werden hervorgehoben. Der historische Zeitraum, der durch die Artikel in diesem Buch abgedeckt wird, erstreckt sich von der Russischen Revolution 1917 bis heute.