Prof. Dr. Ingrid Thea Miethe

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Biographies and the Division of Europe
Experience, Action and Change on the 'Eastern Side'

Roswitha Breckner, Devorah Kalekin-Fishman, Ingrid Miethe (eds)
Verlag Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2000, ISBN 3-8100-2887-8

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 peoples's lives since 1989 are highlighted relating to Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yogoslavia, 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:

Introduction

Part 1: Approaching Europe - Theoretical Considerations

Erhard Stölting
The East of Europe: A Historical Construction

Martin Peterson
The Pursuit of a European Identity

Wolfram Fischer-Rosenthal
Address Lost: How to Fix Lives. Biographical Structuring in the European Modern Age

Devorah Kalekin-Fishman
Looking In at Europe from Outside: Stories of Exclusion and Inclusion

Part 2: Between Past and Present - Experiences of Violence and Destruction

Victoria Semenova
The Message from the Past: Experience of Suffering Transmitted Through Generations

Gabriele Rosenthal
Social Transformation in the Context of Familial Experience:
Biographical Consequences of a Denied Past in the Soviet Union

Bettina Völter
Intergenerational Dialog in Families of Jewish Communists in East Germany: A Process-Oriented Analysis

Lena Inowlocki
Doing "Being Jewish": Constitution of "Normality" in Families of Jewish Displaced Persons in Germany

Júlia Vajda and Éva Kovács
Jews and Non-Jews Living Together After the Transition in Hungary

Mirjana Morokvasic-Müller
Escaping Nationalism and Violence: Interethnic Marriages in the Post-Yugoslavian Region

Kaja Kazmierska
Polish-German Relationships in Narratives on the Experiences of World War II from Poland's Eastern Border Region

Mihai Dinu Gheorghiu
Narratives of Extreme Experiences in Four Model Life Stories: Mircea Eliade, Mihail Sebastian, Nicolae Steinhardt, Paul Goma

Zdzislaw Krasnodebski
Dilemmas of Collective and Individual Memory in Eastern Europe: Reflections on the Example of Poland

Part 3: Challenges in the Crossing of 'Borders'

Ina Dietzsch
The Construction of Cultural Difference Between East and West Germans in Bowing Letters

László Kürti
The Socialist Circus: Secrets, Lies, and Autobiographical Family Narratives

Vera Sparschuh
The Biographies of the Biographers: Some Remarks on the History of the Social Sciences in GDR

Ingrid Miethe
Changes in Spaces of Political Activism: Transforming East Germany

Ingrid Oswald and Viktor Voronkov
Tricky Hermeneutics: Public and Private Viewpoints on Jewish Migration from Russia to Germany

Yvonne Schütze and Tamar Rapoport
"We are similar in that we're different": Social Relationships of Young Russian Jewish Immigrants in Israel and Germany

Roswitha Breckner
The Meaning of the Iron Curtain in East-West Migration Biographies

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