West Germany

The Beginnings of Queer Citizenship in West Germany

by Samuel Clowes Huneke

An emerging gay activist culture in West Berlin in the 1970s made substantial gains in building cultural spaces and expanding tolerance, but struggled to build political solidarity out of sexual identity amid other social divisions.

Ghosts in the Mirror: France's Crusade Against Former Nazis in the Algerian Insurgency

by Danny Orbach

Nazi fugitives and mercenaries took on an outsize significance in the strategic imaginations of both French and West German governments and intelligence agencies in the Cold War; they were most influential not through their actions but through distorting government policy through these delusions of power.

‘The day the wall came down’: How The Post covered the Berlin Wall’s fall 30 years ago

by Robert McCartney

Thirty years ago, East German officials abruptly announced it would open its border, ending 28 years of separation between East and West Berlin. This story ran on the front page of The Washington Post the next morning.

Malte Herwig's new book reveals Germany's postwar Nazi coverup

For the last seven years, the German journalist Malte Herwig, a reporter at Suddeutsche Zeitung magazine, has arduously, conscientiously tackled the challenge of researching and writing a book about the postwar German government’s “double game,” as he calls it. In Die Flakhelfer (DeutscheVerlags-Anstalt), which comes out in Germany on Monday, he reveals that, for half a century, the German leadership sought to suppress the names of prominent citizens who were Nazi Party members in the Second World War while pretending to seek them, and while simultaneously pursuing the soul-searching process of coming to terms with Germany’s grievous Second World War history—a process Germans call Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Herwig finds this behavior troubling. In New York this week he explained the genesis of his book.

German anglers call Cold War truce

They are known for nothing if not their patience – which may be one explanation as to why it has taken anglers from the former East and West Germany 23 years to call a cold war truce.What gymnasts, chess players, swimmers and footballers managed fairly soon after unification in 1990, Germany's anglers have finally achieved, but only after years of bitter recrimination, deep suspicion and copious amounts of cultural prejudice on both sides.From autumn, the West German Association of German Sport Fishers (VDSF) and the East German Anglers' Association (DAV) will come together to form the Deutsche Angelfischerverband (German Anglers' Association) or DAFV....