Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany

By Katja Hoyer

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - From the ashes of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, "an expansive and generous history" of East Germany (New Republic)

In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics.

In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country, revealing the rich political, social, and cultural landscape that existed amid oppression and hardship. Drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews and documents, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, beyond the Wall.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1541606361
• ISBN13: 9781541606364
• Release Date: February 2025
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.5" x 8.3"