ABSTRACT
By using a ‘fraud’ doctor as the red thread throughout, this introduction establishes the themes of the book, providing a brief overview of important historiographical debates and establishing the analytical tool of medical memories and experiences for the main chapters. The principal aims of the book are twofold: firstly, to illustrate that the German Democratic Republic (GDR) cannot be analysed as a single phenomenon. Instead, the analysis highlights the long traditions embodied in the concepts, views, and mentalities that affected, for example, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. Therefore, 1945 was not the deep caesura in terms of political and social matters that it is often ascribed to be (no Stunde Null or Zero Hour). Secondly, East Germany was also not a strictly centralised or Soviet-dominated state construct in the postwar era. Recent publications have utilised on microstudies to overcome such outdated assumptions and thus this book contributes to this trend to establish a more differentiated scholarship of the GDR and the everyday life under Socialism.
