Mario Keßler
Completed book project

With German reunification and the demise of the German Democratic Republic in 1990, East German historians and their traditions of historiography were removed from mainstream discourse in Germany and relegated to the periphery. By the mid-1990s, few historians trained in the GDR remained in academia. These developments led to a greater degree of intellectual pluralism, yet marginalised many accomplished scholars. The project ‘East German Historians since Reunification’ assesses what was gained and lost in the process of dissolving and remaking GDR institutions of historical scholarship. The edited collection utilises both primary and secondary sources: younger scholars offer analyses of East German historiography, while senior scholars who lived through the dismantling process provide first-hand accounts. Contributors address broad trends in scholarship as well as particular subfields and institutions. What unites them is a willingness to think critically about the achievements and shortcomings of GDR historiography, and its fate after German reunification.