Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee by Victor Grossman
Informed by lived experience, an insider's view challenges stereotyped cold-war perceptions of the GDR
PIC CAP Victor Grossman with some of the works he published in the GDR Pic: Uli Kohls
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
IN THE popular imagination, the German Democratic Republic is indelibly linked with ideas of authoritarianism, poverty, secret police, stuffy bureaucracy and a generalised absence of democracy.
Victor Grossman is uniquely well placed to challenge this McCarthyite narrative. Born in New York in 1928, he joined the Communist Party while studying at Harvard in the late 1940s. Drafted into the army, he defected to the GDR while stationed in Austria.
Marrying a German woman, studying and working, raising children and grandchildren, he lived in East Germany until its 1990 absorption into the Federal German Republic (FRG). He still lives in Germany today.
More from this author
CARLOS MARTINEZ condemns Europe’s failure to develop genuine autonomy from US hegemony, as leaders like Starmer and Macron cling to a declining imperial order rather than building good relations with the emerging powers
Chinese socialist planning and action over decades have created the world’s greatest reforestation programme, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ, and now its lessons in fighting desertification and climate change are taking root worldwide
Despite relentless hostility, the People’s Republic of China has lifted millions out of poverty, and become a global leader in innovation and climate action, while pursuing peaceful development in a multipolar world, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
Brussels is following the US’s lead in slapping punitive duties on China’s electric vehicles, sabotaging Europe’s climate goals and economic interests to appease Biden’s anti-Beijing crusade, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
