ABSTRACT
In the period after the fall of Eastern Europe's communist states, "the historian was robbed of his or her historical monopoly over interpreting the past". In East German society, people demonstrated an immense desire to investigate the past, if only in the form of their own biographies. A broad spectrum of protagonists in the story of the revolution of 1989 has crystallized around several groups. Institutionally, they encompass state entities, public bodies such as victims' associations, the Robert Havemann Foundation, the archive of the Leipzig protest movement, and private initiatives such as the German Democratic Republic (GDR) Museum. Gorbachev's policy of reforms, which sought to rescue Leninism and make it compatible with the future, occasioned popular hopes in the GDR. East German economic history in the 1980s has been well researched, as have the histories of the opposition and the Stasi.
