Author Description

At first glance, 1957 was not an "exciting" year. The previous year, with Khrushchev's de-Stalinization speech and the uprisings in Poland and Hungary, had witnessed the most serious crisis in the communist world since the postwar period. However, the consequences of this crisis had not yet been overcome in the eastern part of Germany, as the persecution of writers and intellectuals in the GDR demonstrated. Under the banner of the "economic miracle," the Federal Republic seemed to have caught up with the standard of living of its Western European neighbors: The phrase "No experiments" also embodied the zeitgeist. The "Sputnik shock," the Treaties of Rome, the eve of the second major Berlin crisis, the unprecedented achievement of an absolute majority in a federal election, pressure for reform in society, and the beginning of a visible generational and mental shift in the West all shaped this year. Other challenges characterized the GDR: The Ministry for State Security reoriented itself and initially distrusted its own people. According to the plans of the SED leadership, the economy was to develop at an accelerated pace, while experts searched for new concepts for the stagnating agricultural sector. Writers and scientists found themselves caught between all fronts. A broad range of political, economic, social, mental, and intellectual history problems in East and West come into focus. This volume does not aim to present a chronicle of 1957, but rather to use the events of that year as a starting point for further consideration. The key question is to what extent 1957 represented a turning point in both German states, or at least a "soft," symbolic caesura for processes of change from the end of the 1950s onward. Not only "Sputnik," but the entire year 1957 serves as a probe to explore the late 1950s based on individual observations, events, and processes.