Material and Books on the

Berlin Wall, the German Partition and the GDR

(last update: 4 March 2010)
Leaflets and small books for a quick impression
(Anonym): Divided City. The Berlin Wall. Photos and Facts Personal Accounts Traces
Today, Berlin: Jaron, 2002.
Camphausen, Gabriele et al.: Berlin Wall. Memorial Site, Exhibition Center and the Chapel of
Reconciliation on Bernauer Strasse, Berlin: Jaron, 1999.
Epler, Doris: The Berlin Wall: How It Rose And Why It Fell, Millbrook Press, 1992.
Flemming, Thomas/ Hagen Koch: The Berlin Wall. Division of a City, Berlin: be.bra, 2000.
Grant, Reg: The Berlin Wall, Wayland Publishers, 1998.
Hertle, Hans-Hermann: The Berlin Wall, Monument of the Cold War, Berlin: Ch. Links, 2007.
Laabs, Rainer/ Werner Sikorski: Checkpoint Charlie and the Wall. A Divided People Rebel,
Berlin: Ullstein, 1997.
Tusa, Ann und John: The Berlin Wall, Hodder & Stoughton, 1994.
Slter, Gerhard: Relicts of the Berlin Wall. The Dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the Visible
Remains in the Berlin City Center, second edition, Berlin: Verein Berliner Mauer

2007.
Historiography
Ahonen, Pertti: After the Expulsion. West Germany and Eastern Europe 1945-1990, Oxford
2003.
Allen, Debra J.: The Oder-Neisse Line. The United States, Poland, and Germany in the Cold
War, Westport 2003.
Berlin Wall Memorial Books and Material on the Berlin Wall and the GDR
2
Bahrmann, Hannes/ Christoph Links: The Fall of the Wall. The Path to German Reunification,
Berlin: Ch. Links, 1999.
Beschloss, Michael R.: The Crisis Years, Kennedy and Khrushchev 1960-1963, New York
1991.
Bornstein, Jerry: The Wall came tumbling down, New York: Random 1993.
Catudal, Honore M.: Kennedy and the Berlin Wall: A Case Study in Decision Making, 1980.
Darnton, Robert: Berlin Journal 1989-1990, New York, Norton, 1991.
Fenemore, Mark: Nonconformity on the borders of dictatorship. Youth subcultures in the
GDR (1949-1965), London 2002.
Feversham, Polly/ Leo Schmidt: The Berlin Wall Today, Berlin: Verlag Bauwesen, 1999.
Fulbrook, Mary: Anatomy of a Dictatorship. Inside the GDR, 1949-1989, New York 1997.
Fulbrook, Mary (ed.): Twentieth-Century Germany: Politics Culture and Society 1918-1990,
Oxford 2001.
Fulbrook, Mary: The Peoples State. East Germany Society from Hitler to Honecker, New
Haven: Yale University Press 2005.
Gearson, John and Kori Schake (eds.) The Berlin Wall Crisis: Perspectives on Cold War Alli-
ances. Cold War History Series. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Harrison, Hope M.: Driving the Soviets Up the Wall. Soviet-East German Relations, 1953-
1961, Princeton 2003.
Hilton, Christopher: The Wall. The Peoples Story, Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 2002 (pa-
perback edition).
Hofmann, Arne: The Emergence of Dtente in Europe. Brandt, Kennedy and the Formation
of Ostpolitik, London: Routledge, 2007.
Madarasz, Jeanette: Conflict and Compromise in East Germany, 1971-1989: A Precarious
Stability, New York 2003.
Maier, Charles S.: Dissolution. The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany,
Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.
Major, Patrick: Behind the Wall. East Germany and the Frontiers of Power, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, forthcoming.
Major, Patrick and Jonathan Osmond (eds.): The Workers and the Peasants State: Com-
munism and Society in East Germany under Ulbricht 1945-71, Manchester: Man-
chester University Press 2002.
Meinhof, Ulrike: Living (with) Borders. Identity discourses on East-West borders in Europe,
Berlin Wall Memorial Books and Material on the Berlin Wall and the GDR
3
Aldershot 2002.
Mitter, Rana/ Patrick Major (eds.): Across the Blocs. Cold War Cultural and Social History,
Portland (Oregon) 2004.
Naimark, Norman: The Russians in Germany. A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation,
1945-1949, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Port, Andrew I.: Conflict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2006.
Ross, Corey: Constructing Socialism At the Grass-Roots. The Transformation of East Ger-
many, 1945-65, London: St. Martin's Press, 2000.
Ross, Corey: The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation
of the GDR, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Schmidt, Leo/ Axel Klausmeier: Wall Remnants, Wall Traces. The Comprehensive Guide to
the Berlin Wall, Berlin 2004.
Schmidt, Leo/ Henriette von Preuschen (eds.): On Both Sides of the Wall. Preserving Monu-
ments and Sites of the Cold War Area, Berlin 2005.
Schne, Jens: The Peaceful Revolution. Berlin 1989/90: The Path to German Unity, Berlin:
Berlin Story Verlag, 2009.
Sewell, Mike: The Cold War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Shears, David: The Ugly Frontier, London 1970.
Taylor, Frederick: The Berlin Wall. 13 august 1961 9 november 1989, London: Bloomsbury
1996.
Turner, Henry A. jr.: Germany from Partition to Reunification. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1992.
Windsor, Philip: City on Leave. A history of Berlin, 1945-1962, New York.
Articles
Ahonen, Pertti: Victims of the Berlin Wall; in: Bill Niven (ed.), Germans as Victims: Remem-
bering the Past in Contemporary Germany, London 2006, pp. 130-146.
Betts, Paul: The Twilight of the Idol: East German Memory and Material Culture, The Journal
of Modern History 72 (2000), pp. 731-765.
Bruce, Gary: In our District, the State Is Secure: The East German Secret Police Response
to the Events of 1989 in Perleberg District, Contemporary European History 14
Berlin Wall Memorial Books and Material on the Berlin Wall and the GDR
4
(2005) 2, pp. 219-244.
Dennis, Mike: Constructing East Germany: Interpretations of GDR History since Unification;
in: Mike Dennis/ Eva Kolinsky (eds.), United and Divided: Germany since 1990, New
York: Berghahn Books, 2004, pp. 17-32.
Dolff-Bonekmper, Gabi: The Berlin Wall: an archaeological site in progress; in: John
Schofield/ William Gray Johnson/ Colleen M. Beck(ed.), Matriel culture. The ar-
chaeology of twentieth-century conflict, London 2002, pp. 236-248.
Harrison, Hope M.: Driving the Soviets Up the Wall: A Super-Ally, a Superpower, and the
Building of the Berlin Wall, 195861, Cold War History, vol. 1.1 (1999).
Harrison, Hope M.: Ulbricht and the Concrete Rose: New Archival Evidence on the Dynam-
ics of Soviet-East German Relations and the Berlin Crisis, 1958-61, Cold War Inter-
national History Project Working Paper, No. 5 (2000).
Knischeweski, Gerd/ Ulla Spittler: Remembering the Berlin Wall: Memorial ensemble Ber-
nauer Strasse, German Life and Letters 59 (2006) 2, pp. 280-303.
Knischeweski, Gerd/ Ulla Spittler: Competing pasts: A comparison of NS and GDR remem-
brance in two Berlin memorial sites; in: Louise Purbrick/ G. Dawson (eds.), Con-
tested Spaces: Representation and the histories of conflict, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007, pp. 166-187.
Knischeweski, Gerd/ Ulla Spittler: Coming to Terms with the Past: Reconstructing the Berlin
Wall; in: Barrie Axford/ D. Berghahn/ N. Hewlett (eds.), Unity and diversity in the
New Europe, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000, pp. 97-110.
Leuenberger, Christine: Constructions of the Berlin Wall: How Material Culture Is Used in
Psychological Theory, Social Problems, vol. 53 (2006), issue 1, pp. 18-37.
Murphy, David: Berlin Contingency Plans for the USA - A View from the CIA; in: Heiner
Timmermann (ed.), 1961 Mauerbau und Auenpolitik, Mnster 2002, S.103-109.
Ross, Corey: Before the Wall. East Germans, Communist Authority, and the mass exodus to
the west, Historical Journal 45 (2002) 2, pp. 459-480.
Ross, Corey: East Germans and the Berlin Wall: Popular Opinion and Social Change before
and after the Border Closure of August 1961, Journal of Contemporary History 39
(2004) 1, pp. 25-44.
Sheffer, Edith: On Edge. Building the Border in East and West Germany, Central European
History 40 (2007), pp. 307-339.
Zubok, Vladislav M.: Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis (1958-1962), Cold War International
History Project, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,
Berlin Wall Memorial Books and Material on the Berlin Wall and the GDR
5
1993.
Photos, fiction and biographical accounts
Bailey, George/ Sergej A. Kondraschow/ David E. Murphy: Battleground Berlin, Berlin 1997.
Butler, Ewan: City divided. Berlin, New York 1955.
Clare, George: Before the Wall. Berlin Days 1946-1948, New York 1990.
Darnton, Robert: Berlin Journal, 1989-1990, New York 1991.
Friedrich, Thomas/ Harry Hampel: Where the Wall Stood, Berlin: Nicolai, 2003 (fourth edi-
tion).
Hoffmann, Matthias: Living with the Wall, Berlin: Nicolai, 2002.
Schneider, Peter: The Wall Jumper. A Berlin Story. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1983, reprinted in 1998.
Video tapes
Ode to Joy and Freedom. The Fall of the Berlin Wall, SFB/NDR: 1990, 54 min.
When The Wall Came Tumbling Down. 50 hours that changed the world, SFB: 1999, 89 min.
The Vanishing Border. A Search for Traces in Berlin, by Thomas Kutschker, ZDF: 1999, 81
min.
Berlin During the Cold War, 1949-61, by Michael Kloft and Irmgard von zur Mhlen, Chronos:
2002, 90 min.
Berlin Under the Allies, 1945-49, by Irmgard von zur Mhlen and Michael Kloft, Chronos:
2002, 90 min.
Audio books and audio documents
Tusa, Ann: The Last Division: A History of Berlin, 1945-1989, read by Nadia May, Blackstone
audiobooks, 2000.