Beyond the Wall: Art and artifacts from the GDR

<div class="margin-bottom" id="description_text_headlines"> <strong>Life behind the Iron Curtain: The East German collection of the Wende Museum</strong> &nbsp; <div class="description_text"> <div class="margin-bottom" id="description_text"> <strong>For 40 years, the Cold War dominated the world stage</strong>. East and West Germany stood at the frontlines of the global confrontation, symbolized by the infamous Berlin Wall, which separated lovers, friends, and families, coworkers and compatriots.<br /> <br /> The <strong>Wende Museum</strong> in Los Angeles, California, is named after the period of change following the wall&#39;s destruction. It was established in 2002 to study the <strong>visual and material culture of the former Eastern Bloc</strong>, and, with physical and psychic distance, to foster multiple perspectives on this <strong>multilayered history that continues to shape our world</strong>.<br /> <br /> This encyclopedic volume features <strong>over 2500 items</strong> from its extraordinary collections. <strong>Never before has a book included this full a spectrum of art, archives, and artifacts from socialist East Germany</strong>: official symbols and dissident expressions, the spectacular and the routine, the mass-produced and the handmade, the funny and the tragic. Packaged in a slick, portable box, the book also comes with a <strong>facsimile of a GDR family scrapbook, </strong>documenting real and imagined travels both within East Germany, and across the border.<br /> <br /> Accompanying these remnants of a now-vanished world are<strong> texts from scholars and specialists </strong>from across Europe, Canada, and the United States, with themes ranging from the <strong>secret police to sexuality</strong>, from <strong>monuments to mental-mapping</strong>. <ul> <li> More than 900 pages, featuring over 2500 objects. </li> <li> Color-coded tabs for swift navigation throughout the eight main chapters. </li> <li> Most comprehensive overview of GDR visual and material culture to date. </li> <li> Several dozen images of everyday life and public events from the most famous GDR photographers. </li> <li> Bonus material inside the handy shipping box: 56-page facsimile of a GDR family scrapbook, documenting real and imagined travels both in East Germany, and across the border. </li> <li> Enhanced, multimedia content, providing original videos and audio recordings from the GDR. </li> </ul> Text in English and German — Testi: Jampol Justinian. pagg. 900; rileg. rigida. Editore: Taschen, Köln, 2014.