Why and how East Germans rebelled

Theory and Society

Volumn 25, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 263-299

  Thompson, Mark R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 26444600829     PISSN: 03042421     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF00161143     Document Type: Article

References (5)

1. Egon Krenz, Honecker's short-term successor, coined the term die Wende, which, along with the opening of the wall, was his government's major contribution to the country's political transformation: Hannes Bahrmann and Christoph Links, Chronik der Wende: Die DDR zwischen 7. Oktober und 18. Dezember 1989 (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1994), 39. "Die Wende" had earlier been used by Helmut Kohl upon his assumption of office as West German Chancellor in 1982 to describe the policy and value changes his conservative government hoped to initiate. Thus, Krenz's choice of the word Wende reflected his reformist aims; the failure of his government was due, in large part, to the revolutionary course of events. The tragedy of this old-style communist who did too little, too late is captured in his memoirs when he writes: "I gave all that I was capable of to my party, which expelled me [in December 1989], and my country" (which ceased to exist in October 1990):
2. Krenz, Wenn Mauern fallen: Die friedliche Revolution: Vorgeschichte Ablauf - Auswirkungen (Vienna: Paul Neff, 1990), 8.
3. Timothy Garton Ash, "Und willst du nicht mein Bruder sein...": Die DDR heute (Hamburg: Spiegel Verlag, 1981), 197-199.
4. A. James McAdams, Germany Divided: From the Wall to Reunification (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 177.
5. Of respondents, 18 percent said they saw it coming but not so soon while 76 percent admitted to have been completely surprised. Survey by the Institut fur Demoskopie, Allensbach, 17 February-15 March 1990. Cited in Timur Kuran, "Now out of never: The element of surprise in the East European revolution of 1989," in Nancy Bermeo, editor, Liberalization and Demoralization: Change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 10.