In the opening chapter of this excellent and diverse collection, Thomas Lindenberger posits that Germany was a “border region” of the Cold War. This may not seem like a controversial statement, but, in fact, its implications are huge and echo through many of the essays in the book. Lindenberger notes that border regions contain both borderlines, which demarcate and separate, and border zones, which allow for mutual perception and, under the right circumstances, interaction. As he notes, “within the European Cold War theatre Germany was a region where in principle generic features of borders and their adjacent territories deeply impregnated Cold War experience” (14). The editors set the interpretive stage for the essays in the book by citing Christoph Kleβmann's phrase “asymmetrical entanglement,” which refers to both “separation and interconnection” (3). Not all of the chapters focus as much on these interconnections between the German states and the Germans as might be expected given such an introduction. But the book nonetheless achieves its overall goal admirably.

Given the immediate historical context out of which Germany's division arose, it comes as no surprise that that history was a contested territory for the two German states. Matthew Stibbe addresses the similarities and differences between East and West German historiography, from 1945 to 1959, about the origins of World War I. Scholars in both states sought to use history instrumentally to “claim exclusive authorship over the past and future of the German nation” (35). Yet, one also sees a much greater scope for diversity of interpretation in the West, with historical scholarship in the East suffering in this period from a need to reflect the SED's ideological line.

Even more significant was the struggle over the interpretation of the National Socialist past. Bill Niven addresses this issue in one of the collection's standout chapters. This debate over the past was hardly an “academic” affair: at stake was the issue of the legitimacy of one regime and the illegitimacy of the other. Each side sought to associate itself with the antifascist traditions and actors of Germany's recent past. Each sought to “mire the other in allegations that it embodied the bad German traditions” (49-50) that had brought about the Nazi dictatorship, and was thus illegitimate. Niven speaks of the “sideways gaze” with which Germans on both sides of the divide looked at the Nazi past during the period he investigates. Looking “East or West respectively for the guilty party” (59) was much less difficult, he argues, than looking backward.

If looking backward presented problems, looking forward was no less fraught with challenges, especially in the East. Patrick Major's fascinating chapter on the precensorship of science fiction literature in East Germany portrays a complicated relationship among official censors, writers, publishers, and an international community of science fiction authors and readers. Out of this came, over time, a surprising degree of latitude for sci-fi authors in the East. Also surprising was the extent to which West German film became a staple in the East German market, as demonstrated in Rosemary Stott's chapter on West German film import in the GDR. After all, as she notes, “at an official level, the FRG was (with the possible exception of the United States) the most mistrusted of all the western film-producing nations” (164). The West Germans did not, it seems, have the same appetite for film from the East—a clear instance of the symmetrical entanglement that is the main focus of most, if not all, of the contributions in this collection of essays that originated at a symposium.