Albrecht Betz: Hanns Eisler, Political Musician (1976/1982)

Eisler’s role in German music is similar to that of Brecht in German literature and the two men worked together for nearly thirty years. Together with Webern and Berg, Eisler is considered one of the three great pupils of Schoenberg. Albrecht Betz divides Eisler’s life and music into four periods. The early formative period as student of Schoenberg includes compositions written in Vienna up to 1925. From 1926 to 1933, the second period, Eisler lived in Berlin and made his greatest impact with his political vocal music. The third phase of Eisler’s life, fifteen years of exile, was spent principally in the USA, and the fourth (from 1948) in East Germany. The author shows how Eisler is distinguished from other great twentieth-century composers in his belief that music had a social function, and how he liberated modern music from what he and others felt was its isolation. Originally published in German in 1976, this English edition is illustrated with music examples and includes a complete list of works, and a bibliography which has been adapted for the English-speaking reader.

Originally published in German as Hanns Eisler, Musik einer Zeit, die sich eben bildet by Edition text und kritik GmbH, Munich 1976
Translated by Bill Hopkins
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1982
ISBN 0521240220, 9780521240222
326 pages

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Edward Larkey (ed.): A Sound Legacy? Music and Politics in East Germany (2000)

Collection of papers from a one-day workshop organized by Edward Larkey under the title “A Sound Legacy? Music and Politics in East Germany” at AICGS on December 3, 1999.

The volume brings together practitioners as well as music historians in an effort to reflect upon the development of music culture in preunification East Germany, and to provide a background perspective for aspects of music culture in the postunification period.

Published by American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2000
Harry & Helen Gray Humanities Program Series, Volume 8
ISBN 0-941441-53-9
74 pages

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Raymond G. Stokes: Constructing Socialism: Technology and Change in East Germany, 1945-1990 (2000)

With a cloud of blue smoke and a high-pitched whine, Trabant cars carried many East Germans westward after the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989. The car’s 1950s design, obvious environmental incorrectness, and all-plastic body became a symbol of the technological limitations of East German communism. Though unfair and oversimplified, the famous image from the early 1990s of the rear of a Trabi protruding from a dumpster seemed to imply that the car, like the system which had produced it, had been consigned to the dustbin of history.

But as Raymond G. Stokes points out in Constructing Socialism, eastern Germany in 1945 was one of the most highly developed, technologically sophisticated industrial areas in the world. Despite the evident failings of its technology by the late 1980s, the German Democratic Republic maintained advanced technological capability in selected areas. If the system itself was fundamentally flawed, what explains successes under the very same system? Why could the successes not be repeated in other areas? And if examples of success are so isolated, how did East Germany last as long as it did?

To answer these questions, Constructing Socialism examines the system of innovation that delivered some minimal level of technological excellence into the East German economy and industry. Focusing on success rather than failure, Stokes offers a general history of East German technology between 1945 and 1990. He combines an overview and synthesis of emerging scholarly literature with an examination of newly opened archival material in order to explore issues that include automation, standardization, technology transfer and technological tourism, and espionage.Constructing Socialism investigates specific technologies and machines but also emphasizes the people who designed and implemented them and the cultural context and meanings of technological systems.

Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000
Johns Hopkins studies in the history of technology
ISBN 0801863910, 9780801863912
260 pages

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