Paul Betts

The Twilight of the Idols: East German Memory and Material Culture*

By now it is commonplace to assert that the events of 1989 have radically and irreversibly transformed the face of Central European politics and culture. Where only a decade ago the political topography of Europe seemed to be set in cold war concrete for years to come, the speed and sweep of the East Bloc revolutions recast everything anew. Empires fell, walls were breached, and dictators toppled in what amounted to perhaps the greatest of all bicentennial tributes to the “spirit of 1789.” Even though the late French historian Francois Furet disqualified the upheavals as truly revolutionary on grounds that they produced no new political idea, there was no stopping the rush of millennial fervor attending the so-called annus mirabilis, or “year of miracles.” Indeed, the events were hailed as nothing less than the long-awaited renaissance of civil society, the emancipation of the second world, the “rebirth of Eastern Europe,” the “rebirth of history,” and even the “end of History.”1 While it is true that the wellsprings of reform lay in Poland, Hungary, and former Czechoslovakia, Germany enjoyed a preeminent place in this historical drama. Not only did the sudden dismantling of the cold war’s most potent political monument provide the most memorable media event symbolizing those wildfire revolutions; in addition, its unfolding Reunification saga effectively framed global discussion about the fate of post–cold war Europe. That the political map of Central Europe was splintering into ever smaller geopolitical units while Germany was consolidating and enlarging its territory was not the only cause for concern. Recollections of the German past and, in turn, the international anxiety about its bullish political future predictably invited widespread

German Modernity as New Historical Object

GERT KAEHLER, ed., Geschichte des Wohnens 1918-1945: Reform Reaktion Zerstoerung [History of Living 1918-1945: Reform Reaction Destruction]. Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1996, vii, 742 pp., charts, notes, bibliography, DM 90. AXEL SCHILDT, Moderne Zeiten: Freizeit, Massenmedien und ‘Zeitgeist’ in der Bundesrepublik der 50 Jahre [Modern Times: Leisure, Mass Media and ‘Zeitgeist’ in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 50s]. Hamburg, Germany: Hans Christians Verlag, 1995, ix, 733 pp., notes, bibliography, index, DM 88. INA MERKEL, ed., Wunderwirtschaft: DDR-Konsumkultur in den 60 Jahren [Miracle Economy: GDR Consumer Culture in the 60s]. Cologne, Germany: Boehlau Verlag, 1996, vi, 240 pp., illustrations, notes, bibliography, DM 35.

Religion, Science and Cold War Anti-Communism: The 1949 Cardinal Mindszenty Show Trial

This chapter explores the controversy surrounding the arrest, show trial and imprisonment of the conservative anti-communist Hungarian prelate, Cardinal Joszef Mindszenty. No case exercised the international Catholic world more in the early Cold War, as his plight became a cause celėbre of Soviet aggression, religious persecution and human rights. While the trial mobilized the transnational Catholic community, it had equally important effects in the world of social science. Arguably the trial’s most ardent student was no other than the US government, as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) became particularly fascinating by how the trial seemed to showcase the USSR’s new scientific techniques to extract confessions. How and why the 1949 Budapest trial emerged as an international flashpoint for politicizing both religion and science in the Cold War West is the subject of this chapter.

Dirk Verheyen. United City, Divided Memories? Cold War Legacies in Contemporary Berlin. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books. 2008. Pp. viii, 301.

Reviewed work(s): Dirk Verheyen. United City, Divided Memories? Cold War Legacies in Contemporary Berlin. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books. 2008. Pp. viii, 301.

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A Joint Preface

All nation-states are creations of physical topography, historical circumstance, political claims, and cultural imagination. A countrys identity may be the result of its material place, legal self-understanding, and (invented) national traditions, but it is also defined by certain founding myths and historical associations born of dreams and distance. The histories of the United States, Liberia, and Israel are obvious examples, in that their territories have become mythic “landscapes of memory” in their own right for many around the world, even among those who have never been there.