Beyond the Wall

Forget everything you thought you knew about life in the GDR. This terrifically colourful, surprising and enjoyable history of the socialist state is full of surprises -- Dominic Sandbrook * The Sunday Times * What makes this meticulous book essential reading is not so much its sense of what East Germans lost, as what we never had. A history of the GDR that adds stability, contentment and women's rights to the familiar picture of authoritarianism -- Stuart Jeffries * Guardian * Brilliant. . . Hoyer is a historian of immense ability. . . Exhaustively researched, cleverly constructed and beautifully written, this much needed history of the GDR should be required reading across her homeland. Five stars -- Saul David * Daily Telegraph * Absolutely fascinating -- Andrew Marr * LBC * A rich, counterintuitive history of a country all too often dismissed as a freak or accident of the cold war * Observer * Myth-busting, artfully constructed history. . . Katja Hoyer displays a special understanding and wants to present a corrective to previous reductive assessments of the GDR that depict it as a field-grey Stasiland. . . Her command of detail, broad historical brush strokes and evident sympathy for her interview partners make for a fascinating read -- Roger Boyes * The Times * Enthralling, fascinating and very readable. An extraordinary book. Five stars -- Peter Hitchens * Mail on Sunday * A fast-paced, vivid and engaging book. Beyond the Wall does much to combat amnesia and Cold War prejudice, and to normalize the GDR and the people who lived there * TLS * Having begun her life behind the wall, Hoyer tells the story of the GDR with emotional intensity; but also with the detachment and balance of a professional historian who is determined to portray both the good and bad. And a very interesting stroy it is, too -- Oliver Letwin * The Tablet * Tremendous. Until the publication of Beyond the Wall, there hadn't been an English language history of the GDR with which to colour in that vanished country's past -- Peter Hoskins * Prospect * A bold, deft history of the forty-one years of the German Democratic Republic. Hoyer is a historian with skin in the game -- John Kampfner * Literary Review * Humane, deeply historically informed and compelling * Country Life * Now a historian and commentator, Hoyer tells the country's human story with a compelling eye for detail in a book that deftly unpicks the complexities and contradictions of the so-called People's State -- Jeremy Cliffe * New Statesman * With Beyond the Wall, Katja Hoyer confirms her place as one of the best young historians writing in English today. On the heels of her superb Blood and Iron, about the rise and fall of the Second Reich, comes another masterpiece, this one about the aftermath of the Third Reich in the East. Well-researched, well-written and profoundly insightful, it explodes many of the lazy Western cliches about East Germany -- Andrew Roberts Utterly brilliant. This gripping account of East Germany sheds new light on what for many of us remains an opaque chapter of history. Authoritative, lively and profoundly human, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand post-WW2 Europe -- Julia Boyd A gripping and nuanced history of the GDR from its beginnings as a separate German socialist state against the wishes of Stalin to its final rapprochement with its Western other against those of Gorbachev. Beyond the Wall is a unique fresco of everyday reality in East Germany. Elegantly moving between diplomatic history, political economy and cultural analysis, this is an essential read to understand not only the life and death of the GDR but also the parts of it that still survive in the emotions of its former citizens. -- Lea Ypi Superb, totally fascinating and compelling, Katja Hoyer's first full history of East Germany's rise and fall is a work of revelatory original research - and a gripping read with a brilliant cast of characters. Essential reading -- Simon Seba

Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian, journalist and the author of the widely acclaimed Blood and Iron. A visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she is a columnist for the Washington Post and hosts the podcast The New Germany together with Oliver Moody. She was born in East Germany and is now based in the UK.