The project aims, with the help of serial report sources, to reconstruct the informal formation of and shift in opinions and attitudes among the East German population. The basis of the study is provided by two source groups: on the one hand, mood and situation reports on ‘reactions of the public’ by the Ministry of State Security of the GDR from 1958 to 1989 as well as status reports by the West German Federal Intelligence Service (as far as they are available), and on the other hand the results of demoscopic and sociological research programmes of Infratest in Munich as well as various East German bodies (ZIJ, IfM attached to the Central Committee of the SED, Institute for Market Research, East German Radio Broadcasting, etc.). With the aid of such an approach, recent micro-historical findings on the form and structure of communicative spaces in state-socialist society are to be referred back to the level of society as a whole using reliable, generally representative data.
The starting point for this approach in the history of science is the upsurge in (or, in East Germany itself, the constitution of) sociological-quantitative survey methods in the 1960s and their ongoing importance as an instrument of control and feedback for state authorities, to the empiricism of which the SED regime cultivated a sceptical and even hostile relationship.
In cooperation with analogous projects on other state-socialist systems (including Poland and the Soviet Union), the project furthermore aims at a comparative reconstruction of communicative processes of the subcutaneous constitution of ‘society’ under communist regimes, with a glance at the conditions of social stability and its erosion in the post-Stalinist era and during late state socialism.
Publications
- Aufsatz: Annäherungen und Fragen an die „Meldungen aus der Republik“, in: Jens Gieseke (Hg.): Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft. Studien zum Herrschaftsalltag in der DDR, Göttingen 2007
- Aufsatz: Bevölkerungsstimmungen in der geschlossenen Gesellschaft. MfS-Berichte an die DDR-Führung in den 60er und 70er Jahren, in: Zeithistorische Forschungen 5(2008)2, S. 236-257 (erschienen 2009), http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/16126041-Gieseke-2-2008
- Aufsatz: „Seit langem angestaute Unzufriedenheit breitester Bevölkerungskreise“ - Das Volk in den Stimmungsberichten des MfS, in: Klaus-Dietmar Henke (Hg.): Revolution und Vereinigung 1989/90. Als in Deutschland die Realität die Phantasie überholte, München 2009, S. 130-148
- Aufsatz: Machtfaktor – Utopie – Hypothek. Die SED und die Sowjetunion, in: Gieseke/Wentker (Hg.): Die Geschichte der SED – eine Bestandsaufnahme, Berlin 2011, S. 84-113.
- Hg. mit Klaus Bachmann, The Silent Majority in Communist and Post-Communist States. Opinion Polling in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Frankfurt/Main 2016.
- Mit Frank Bösch: Der Wandel des Politischen in Ost und West, in: Frank Bösch (Hg.), Geteilte Geschichte, Göttingen 2015, S. 39-78.
- Auf der Suche nach der schweigenden Mehrheit Ost. Die geheimen Infratest-Stellvertreterbefragungen und die DDR-Gesellschaft 1968-1989, in: Zeihistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History 12 (2015) 1, S. 66-97. (Online Version)
- Who did the East Germans trust? Popular Opinion on Threats of War, Confrontation and Détente in the GDR,1968-89, in Kreis, Klimke, Ostermann (eds.), "Trust, but verify" Confidence and Distrust From Détente to the End of the Cold War, Stanford UP 2016
Presentations (to be published)
- Egalitarianism vs. Westernism? Social Values and Popular Opinion in East German Society, 1971-1989; GSA, Oakland/CA, 8.10.2010.
- Whom Did the East Germans Trust? Popular Opinion on Threats of War, Confrontation and Détente in the GDR, 1968-1989; Conference „Trust, but Verify“. Confidence and Distrust from Détente to the End of the Cold War; GHI/CWIHP Washington DC, 8.11.2011
- Die ostdeutsche Volksmeinung. Was Geheimdienstberichte und geheime Meinungsforschung aus Ost und West verraten, Dresden, 24.11.2011.
