“Beyond the Wall” adds depth to caricatures of East Germany
“There was oppression and brutality,” Katja Hoyer writes, but also “opportunity and belonging”
In the eyes of its critics, the communist-run part of Germany was never a proper country. The Kremlin-backed puppet state belied its moniker, being neither German, nor Democratic, nor a Republic. To the day of its incorporation into West Germany in 1990, it was at most the “GDR”, written with inverted commas, or more contemptuously, the Zone—recalling its original status as the Soviet-occupied bit of defeated Nazi Germany.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The lives of others”
Culture March 25th 2023
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- The narrator of “Chlorine” longs to escape her human body
- “Beyond the Wall” adds depth to caricatures of East Germany
- A bold “Guys & Dolls” holds lessons for the future of theatre
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