Racism and Neo-Nazism in Times of Change

Ed.: Miteinander e.V./Arbeitsstelle Rechtsextremismus, 2nd corr. and ed. edition, Magdeburg and Halle (Saale) 2015, 64 pp.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary, public attention to events in contemporary history is focused on the period of upheaval in the GDR and reunification. This period is remembered by many people in the eastern German states as a liberating awakening in politics, society, culture and everyday life, which was associated with an increase in the quality of life.

In view of this, it is lost sight of the fact that the period of the early 1990s did not only stand for the dawn of democracy, and in what way. In the shadow of the memory of the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification are the massive increase in racist violence, the temporary hegemony of a right-wing youth culture, and the electoral successes of right-wing parties in the 1990s. This polemic deliberately turns its attention to these dark sides. It describes how people were marginalized and discriminated against in the course of the social upheaval (not only) in East Germany.