E
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Can and should we write a joint history of East and West Germany? The
Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam (ZZF) has had a long tradi-
tion of researching and analyzing the history of Germany on both sides
of the Berlin Wall, not only through a comparative lens, but also with an
eye to entanglements. Nevertheless, a systematic overview for the period
after 1970 was still lacking for a long time. Then, beginning in 2011,
a group of Potsdam-based scholars of contemporary history began to
develop a concept that would allow for an analysis of the fundamental
transformations that had taken place since the 1970s and after the fall
of the Berlin Wall in both East and West Germany. This process sparked
an intense, productive debate between specialists of West German and
East German history, and I am particularly grateful to all those who were
involved. The collective book project sponsored by the ZZF that resulted
from these discussions also benefi ted from the contributions of a num-
ber of external authors who were willing to join in our eff orts to off er a
German-German perspective. Although the intention was never to create
a fully comprehensive handbook, this book nonetheless covers several
important fi elds of inquiry in a systematic way. We are grateful to all
those who participated in the discussion of those articles for their com-
ments and suggestions. Our thanks also go out to Judith Koettniz, Jakob
Mühle, Jakob Saß, and Beate Schiller for adapting and proofreading the
endnotes and bibliographies in the English edition.
This translation has been made possible through the generous sup-
port of the Geisteswissenschaften International translation prize awarded
by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Booksellers’
Association). We would like to sincerely thank Jennifer Neuheiser for un-
dertaking this translation, which was surely not an easy task. And, fi nally,
we would like to thank Marion Berghahn and Chr is Chappell at Berghahn
Books, who quickly jumped on board to help make this translated edition
happen.
Frank Bösch, Potsdam