Popular Socialism Put to the Test: How Illustrated Periodicals of the GDR Address the ‚Turnaround‘.

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Madleen Podewski
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 512638968

The project focuses on how illustrated periodicals of the GDR dealt with the ‚turnaround‘ and the period afterwards. It asks how they changed, what kind of thinking and perception and what forms of guidance they offered in the middle of grave political, social and cultural restructuring. At the current state of research, the project has an exploratory character. Accordingly, the analysis of three quite different periodicals will illustrate the range of its research question. These examples are specifically chosen for their wide range of format options: The NBI (Neue Berliner Illustrierte, 1945-1991) as a traditional weekly for a mass audience with a wide range of interests is accompanied by two special interest magazines: the armeerundschau (1956-1990) on the one hand, which presents itself as a valuable guidebook and as a medium for entertainment and information for army servicemen and their families, and by the filmspiegel on the other hand, which offers a mixture of contributions on film and TV. In order to build a good foundation for analyzing the periodicals’ late socialist character the period of investigation begins in 1985. Only on this basis it is possible to assess how the periodicals change when the GDR was in the process of being dissolved. The project links diverse perspectives from communication science and the history of knowledge to the current periodical and magazine studies to consider illustrated periodicals as a specific form of journalistic activity with epistemic implications. They are determined by rules and routines suitable for the moderation and coordination of a twofold demand: to support the development of the socialist society (party political concept of print media) and to continue and modify the tradition of illustrated weeklies (history of a print genre). This gives rise to a ‚popular magazine-socialism‘ which delegates the conceptualization of ‚socialism‘ to the magazine’s own mediality while being under state control. The focus lies on the analysis of the issue’s mixed character and the magazine’s periodicity. Here the project intends to explore the fundamental epistemic modes of perception, orientation, and valuation that reside within the popular socialism and also about its inner tensions and their outbreak in times of change. In doing so the project identifies the GDR’s popular magazines as important tools for modelling ‚late socialism‘, ‚turnaround‘ and the period afterwards. It will be a fundamental contribution to a more differentiated consideration of the GDR’s respectively East Germany’s late socialism and the complex dynamics of the ‚turnaround‘‘.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants