Tag: East Germany

Controlling“Socialist Integration:” Transnational Cooperation between East German and Polish Customs Agents

22/11/2025

Presented at the 2025 Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies conference in Washington, D.C. as part of the panel “Revisiting ‘Socialist Integration’: Transnational Cooperation and Its Challenges under State Socialism” Introduction: On January 8th, 1989, East German customs officials at a jointly operated checkpoint on the Polish side of the border in Zgorzelec…
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Review: Kloiber, Brewing Socialism

03/11/2025

Monograph reviewed for H-Soz-u-Kult (3.11.2025). Summary: Kloiber does a particularly good job using a commodity history of coffee to link together East-West conflict and North-South relations, domestic and international politics, state policies and citizen responses, and the GDR’s four decades of existence with pre-1945 and post-1989 continuities. This concise, engaging monograph thus manages to be…
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„Sozialistische Integration“ als Beruf: Ostdeutsche und polnische Zollangehörige im Kalten Krieg

20/02/2025

Online-Beitrag (Projektbeschreibung) für das Themenportal der Max-Weber-Stiftung Die sozialistische Integration Osteuropas wird im Nachhinein oft als gescheitert betrachtet – doch was bedeutete sie für Zeitgenoss*innen? Besonders zwischen der DDR und Polen gab es komplexe wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Verflechtungen. Der Zoll spielte dabei eine zentrale Rolle: Er kontrollierte, regulierte und beeinflusste den Austausch zwischen beiden Ländern…
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Caught in the Net: Fish, Ships, and Oil in the GDR-Poland Territorial Waters Dispute, 1949–1989

24/04/2023

Article published in Central European History 56 (2023), Special Issue ‘Everyday Transnationalism, Global Entanglements and Regimes of Mobility at the Edges of East Germany’, pp. 173-195. doi:10.1017/S0008938922001029. Abstract: The 1945 Potsdam Agreement established a new border between Poland and Germany at the so-called “Oder-Neisse line,” but it left unsettled the question of the maritime boundary…
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Review: Augustine, Taking on Technocracy

01/02/2021

Monograph reviewed for German Studies Review 44 (1), 2021 (pp. 208-210). Summary: Taking on Technocracy covers a broad range of developments in the domains of technology, policy, and protest, analyzing them with nuance in the different contexts of East and West Germany. For those wanting to understand why the issue of nuclear power has remained…
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Pracujący nad granicą: Kontrola Polek i Polaków zatrudnionych w NRD, 1980-1989

11/12/2020

Prezentacja w seminarium naukowym Ośrodku Badań Regionalnych i Obszarów Pogranicza (OBROP) w Uniwersytecie Wrocławskim Pomimo, że NRD zdecydowało o zamknięciu granicy z PRL w 1980 r., a w kolejnym roku został w Polsce ogłoszony stan wojenny, tysiące Polek i Polaków nadal codziennie przekraczało granicę w latach osiemdziesiątych, żeby pracować we wschodnioniemieckich fabrykach. Dla nich praca…
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Working the Border: Policing Labor along the Polish-East German Border, 1980-1989

09/03/2020

Project outline presented for DAAD PRIME seminar in Bonn. See also the page devoted to this research project.

Caught in the Net: GDR-Poland Border Conflicts in Everyday Life

10/07/2019

Presentation at the “New Transnational and Global Approaches to the GDR Border” international workshop at the University of Erfurt, 10 July 2019.

Fließende Grenzen? Der Alltag am Rhein und an der Oder, 1949–1989

24/04/2019

Gastvortrag für das “Research Factory” des Viadrina-Centers B/orders in Motion.

Fishing in the Wrong Pond: GDR-Poland Border Conflicts in Everyday Life

29/09/2018

Presented at the 2018 annual conference of the German Studies Association in Pittsburgh, PA

Two Germanys, ‘One People’? Central Europe, 1945-1990

07/02/2018

I designed and regularly teach this second-year module on post-war German history. It examines the social, political, and cultural history of East and West Germany in comparative and transnational perspective.

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