Death in East Germany, 1945-1990

"Felix Robin Schulz's insightful and thoroughly researched book makes a significant contribution to the growing scholarship on the history of East Germany. It is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive study of sepulchral culture in the GDR. Schulz is to be strongly commended for his extensive archival research in Berlin and in a number of city archives. He also visited numerous sites personally, which lends him a further layer of authority over his subject matter and allows him to make observations on how quickly certain spatial elements of socialist sepulchral culture are disappearing." * Helena Toth, Ludwig Maximilians Universitat, Munich "[A] book on a fascinating subject, and one that offers a genuinely new perspective on the history of the German Democratic Republic. It links a number of topics that are of considerable interest - Although the GDR has attracted an enormous historical literature over the past couple of decades, the subject here has not been investigated until now - no one has attempted anything like this before - a book that links, among other things, the social aftermath of Nazism, the political history of the German Democratic Republic, the long-term developments in funeral and burial practices and cultures, and the relations between church and state in the GDR." * Richard Bessel, University of York