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A gripping account of East Germany in the late '70s and early '80s, and of one man's fated struggle for freedom.
Friday, April 10th, 1981: 23-year-old Mathias Domaschk boards the fast train from Jena to Berlin, on his way to a birthday party. But he never arrives . . .
The packed train is held up en route, and Mathias and three of his friends are apprehended, suspected of being part of a cell intent on disrupting the socialist party congress. Forty-eight hours later he is dead, following interrogation in the Stasi detention centre in Gera.
What happened over those two days?
Peter Wensierski's captivating book draws on multiple witness statements and extensive Stasi documentation to build a riveting and dramatic account, switching between Mathias's journey and the Stasi activities up to and through his arrest. He also places this tragedy against its broader political and social context to reveal the lives of a whole generation of young East Germans who just wanted live freely - and the contempt that the GDR authorities displayed for their humanity.
Part reportage, part true crime, Generation GDR offers unique insights into the secret corridors of an authoritarian regime and delivers a powerful warning from history.
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch
Peter Wensierski
PETER WENSIERSKI is a German author, journalist and documentary filmmaker who has worked for the news magazine Spiegel since 1993. Prior to this, he was a correspondent for the Protestant press service EPD in the German Democratic Republic publishing numerous reports, books and documentaries about the opposition movement in the churches, among young people and in artistic and intellectual circles across the state. In 1985, the government of the German Democratic Republic imposed a work and entry ban on him.
Jamie Bulloch
Translated by
Jamie Bulloch has translated almost fifty books from German, including works by Timur Vermes, Robert Menasse, Sebastian Fitzek and Daniela Krien. His translation of Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast won the 2014 Schlegel-Tieck Prize, an award for which he has been runner-up on two further occasions. He is also the author of Karl Renner: Austria. Jamie lives in London with his wife and three daughters.
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