STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
Latest editorial
A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee by Victor Grossman
Informed by lived experience, an insider's view challenges stereotyped cold-war perceptions of the GDR
Victor Grossman with some of the works he published in the GDR
[Uli Kohls]
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
IN THE popular imagination, the German Democratic Republic is indelibly linked with ideas of authoritarianism, poverty, secret police, stuffy bureaucracy and a generalised absence of democracy.
Victor Grossman is uniquely well placed to challenge this McCarthyite narrative. Born in New York in 1928, he joined the Communist Party while studying at Harvard in the late 1940s. Drafted into the army, he defected to the GDR while stationed in Austria.
Marrying a German woman, studying and working, raising children and grandchildren, he lived in East Germany until its 1990 absorption into the Federal German Republic (FRG). He still lives in Germany today.
Similar stories
The decision highlights the tension between freedom of expression and the state’s role in shaping historical memory at former concentration camps, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
The fall of the Berlin Wall enabled neofascist activity to spill over into East Germany, laying the groundwork for the strengthening of right-wing forces today, writes JACOB YASKO
JOHN GREEN wades through the autobiography of Angela Merkel in search any trace of political vision or historical awareness
Cuba deserves, in its hour of need, a far greater international support than it receives, writes GREG GODELS