State and Minorities in Communist East Germany

Dennis (modern German history, U. of Wolverhampton, England) and LaPorte (history, U. of Glamorgan, Wales) examine the experiences of minority groups in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in relation to state policy of the former communist government and societal attitudes, from the consolidation of the rule of the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) in the mid 1960s to its disintegration shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which they characterize as a period of post-totalitarian (but still authoritarian) stability in which the state concentrated on system maintenance, bureaucratization of rule, and the retention of the Communist Party's monopoly of power, but was frequently stymied in its efforts to control minority groups because of numerous factors, not least the agency of the groups themselves. Individual chapters are presented on East German Jews, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Asian and African immigrant workers, football fans and "hooligans," rock sub-cultures, and skinheads and other forms of right-wing extremists. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Mike Dennis is Professor of Modern German History at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of several monographs on the GDR, including Social and Economic Modernization in Eastern Germany from Honecker to Kohl (Pinter, 1993) and The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic 1945-1990 (Longman, 2000). He has co-edited numerous books on modern Germany, notably, with D. Steinert, Deutschland 1945-1990 (Wochenschau Verlag, 2005) and is currently engaged on a research project on elite sport in the GDR.

Norman LaPorte 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, 1949-89 (Berghahn, 2010). He is co-founding editor of the journal Twentieth Century Communism.