Book contents
- Frontmatter
- POLITICS: Détente and Multipolarity: The Cold War and German-American Relations, 1968-1990
- SECURITY: German-American Security Relations, 1968-1990
- ECONOMICS: Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict: Economic Relations Between the United States and Germany, 1968-1990
- CULTURE: Culture as an Arena of Transatlantic Conflict
- SOCIETY: German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968-1990
- 1 “1968”: A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences
- 2 Social Movements in Germany and the United States: The Peace Movement and the Environmental Movement
- 3 Women and the New Women’s Movement
- 4 Transatlantic Networks: Elites in German-American Relations
- 5 Bridging Constituencies: German Political Foundations in German-American Relations
- 6 Normalizing German-American Labor Relationships in a Changing International Environment
- 7 German and American Churches: Changes in Actors, Priorities, and Power Relations
- 8 The Twisted Road Toward Rapprochement: American Jewry and Germany Until Reunification
- 9 Difference and Convergence: Immigration Policy in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany
- 10 Urban Planning, Transportation, and Suburban Development: Striking a Balance
- 11 Relations Between Right-Wing Extremists in Germany and the United States, 1945-1990
- 12 With America Against America: Anti-Americanism in West Germany
- 13 The Maturation of a Relationship: The Image of America in West German Public Opinion
- 14 Between Private Opinion and Official Pronouncement: Images of America in the German Democratic Republic, 1971-1990
- 15 The American Image of Germany, 1968-1991
- OUTLOOK: America, Germany, and the Atlantic Community After the Cold War
- Index
14 - Between Private Opinion and Official Pronouncement: Images of America in the German Democratic Republic, 1971-1990
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- POLITICS: Détente and Multipolarity: The Cold War and German-American Relations, 1968-1990
- SECURITY: German-American Security Relations, 1968-1990
- ECONOMICS: Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict: Economic Relations Between the United States and Germany, 1968-1990
- CULTURE: Culture as an Arena of Transatlantic Conflict
- SOCIETY: German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968-1990
- 1 “1968”: A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences
- 2 Social Movements in Germany and the United States: The Peace Movement and the Environmental Movement
- 3 Women and the New Women’s Movement
- 4 Transatlantic Networks: Elites in German-American Relations
- 5 Bridging Constituencies: German Political Foundations in German-American Relations
- 6 Normalizing German-American Labor Relationships in a Changing International Environment
- 7 German and American Churches: Changes in Actors, Priorities, and Power Relations
- 8 The Twisted Road Toward Rapprochement: American Jewry and Germany Until Reunification
- 9 Difference and Convergence: Immigration Policy in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany
- 10 Urban Planning, Transportation, and Suburban Development: Striking a Balance
- 11 Relations Between Right-Wing Extremists in Germany and the United States, 1945-1990
- 12 With America Against America: Anti-Americanism in West Germany
- 13 The Maturation of a Relationship: The Image of America in West German Public Opinion
- 14 Between Private Opinion and Official Pronouncement: Images of America in the German Democratic Republic, 1971-1990
- 15 The American Image of Germany, 1968-1991
- OUTLOOK: America, Germany, and the Atlantic Community After the Cold War
- Index
Summary
Translated by Margaret Ries
East German images of America during the 1950s and 1960s were at no point simply a mental construct, divorced from the realm of politics. They were firmly anchored in the shifting systemic clash between East and West, and were thus part and parcel of the ideological conflict of the Cold War. In the 1970s and 1980s, “official,” “private ” and “intellectual” conceptions of America continued to be intimately bound up with political, ideological, and cultural developments in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Nonetheless, the period following Erich Honecker's assumption of office in 1971 was more strongly marked by the tension between continuity and change than the 1960s had been.
The announcement by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or SED) at its eighth party conference (June 1971) that it would focus on “further increasing the people's material and cultural standard of living” seemed to suggest a move toward modernization and liberalization. But the party showed no sign of retreating from its insistence, familiar from the 1950s and 1960s, on the irreconcilability of socialism and capitalism. The SED again felt compelled to paint a picture of capitalism as politically unstable, parasitic, and degenerate and to pursue the related objective of “exposing the inhumane nature of imperialism even more completely.” Nevertheless, reestablishment of contact to West Germany helped to initiate a process of change, as did the UN's admission of both German states into its ranks, the diplomatic recognition extended to the GDR by a number of countries between 1973 and 1976, and the signing of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).
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- The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–1990A Handbook, pp. 519 - 526Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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