Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic. By Donna Harsch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. xviii plus 350 pp. $29.95)

2010 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 256-258
Author(s):  
D. L. Augustine
2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-144

E.P. Hennock, The Origin of the Welfare State in England and Germany, 1850-1914: Social Policies Compared (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007)Reviewed by Christopher S. AllenLars Fischer, The Socialist Response to Antisemitism in Imperial Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Reviewed by Eric KurlanderDevin O. Pendas, The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963-1965. Genocide, History, and the Limits of the Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Reviewed by Klaus L. BerghahnDonna Harsch, Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007)Reviewed by Elizabeth MittmanJeffrey K. Olick, The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility (New York: Routledge, 2007)Reviewed by Cora Sol Goldstein


Author(s):  
Martin Löhnig

When World War II ended in 1945, the plan was to build a society in the Soviet occupation zone and, later on, in the German Democratic Republic, which would break with the previously dominant bourgeois rules and traditions. Marriage and the family were utilized to achieve this goal. As the marriage law in force was the same in all parts of Germany between 1938 and 1955, this development has to be illustrated by analyzing the divorce files of the East German courts of Dresden and Leipzig in the late 1940s. By reviewing these documents, one cannot only reveal political and economic influences, but also discover the new household and family models of a socialist society.



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