Becoming East German is a volume of twelve essays on East German society and culture from scholars in North America and the United Kingdom (UK). It emerged from a series of panels at the German Studies Association annual conference in 2010 that sought to bring together work from both sides of the Atlantic on East Germany. The UK side is mostly represented by Mary Fulbrook and her current or former students, who form almost half of the contributors to the volume, while the North Americans represent a more varied group. The resulting text, however, does nothing to explore this “Atlantic divide” and thus, represents a missed opportunity. It neither speaks to the real state of the field of research on East Germany, nor seems to have a clear and coherent goal, though there are some individual essays that stand out as important contributions to the field.

Andrew Port's introduction dwells on the issue of whether the GDR was a “totalitarian” state. This provides a useful introduction to the contours of this debate for those unfamiliar with the last two decades of GDR historiography. It does not contribute anything particularly new to this well-trodden territory, however, or indeed argue why in 2013 this is still a relevant issue. Surprisingly, it neither ties this particular tension between “totalitarian” and “normalisation” to the actual essays in this volume, nor speaks to the subtitle of the volume (“after Hitler”).

Thinking about the GDR in terms of a broader continuum of history going back to the Third Reich has been a focus of Fulbrook's work, and many of the UK contributors do attempt to touch on issues that span both sides of 1945, though the North Americans largely do not. Here, one misses a commentary on the “Atlantic divide.” Why is this question of continuity a bigger issue for the UK contributors as opposed to the North Americans? It seems an opportunity for a real discussion of the current historiographical state of the field was missed here.

Mary Fulbrook's essay on East Germans in a “post Nazi-State” contains some interesting personal narratives of the legacy of Nazism in the lives of East Germans, and shows convincingly how effective the use of personal history, oral history, and everyday life history can be in illuminating the complex issues of continuity in the GDR. One wishes there were more of an argument as to the specific significance of 1945, or the relevance of German history prior to the 1930s for the GDR. Why not examine the longer-term history of the working-class movement in Germany, for example—especially if the overall goal here for her is, as one assumes it is, to move away from a top-down, SED and U.S.S.R.-centric view of the GDR.

Andreas Agocs's essay on the First German Writers' Congress of 1947 is an interesting behind-the-scenes account of the internecine political battles that took place as the Cold War rent cultural politics in Berlin. His argument that the Cold War divisions did not have to do with the U.S.S.R. versus the U.S. but rather with older divisions dating back to the 1930s does not seem supported by the evidence he presents, however. Joanne Sayner's essay on the legacy of Greta Kuckhoff, a member of the 1930s resistance group the “Red Orchestra,” is sidetracked by a longish exposition on the basic ideas of Michel Foucault (well known by now, at least on this side of the Atlantic, one would think), which then play little or no role in her narrative of the essential irrelevance of Kuckhoff in the later GDR. (A side note: Sayner erroneously makes reference to the “University of Madison” in Wisconsin; it is actually the “University of Wisconsin-Madison.”)

Three contributions tackle the issue of health, which is an interesting direction for the field. Jeannette Madarász-Lebenhagen's essay on the GDR and FRG's attitudes toward heart disease is well researched, but misses an opportunity to put the GDR in a broader context—for example, that of globalization and the role of the World Health Organization in the GDR, questions that Young-Sun Hong has explored in interesting ways. And Neula Kerr-Boyle's essay on dieting in the GDR is interesting, though she does not cite similar work that has already been done by Alice Weinreb. In both cases, more attention to American work on similar topics might have helped the arguments made by these scholars on the other side of the Atlantic. Donna Harsch's essay on the GDR's changing policies toward fighting tuberculosis (quarantining versus vaccination) is probably the best contribution in this volume, though it raises a number of interesting questions—for example, does the “collective” penetrate inside the body, is there a “collective” immune system?—that it seems could be followed up on further.

The remaining contributions do not offer anything particularly groundbreaking or new to the field—the definition of humiliation (the subject of Phil Leask's essay) is well known, as is the fact that communist parties used it as part of their coercive repertoire, and it is unclear what new contribution to the field Port's essay on working-class rebellion in the GDR and the Third Reich makes, as it is not based on new research nor does he draw any conclusions in it. Alan McDougall's essay on football clubs in the GDR, on the other hand, is a densely researched and thoughtful article that explores the tension between the emphasis that the GDR placed on sports, both at the international and the local level, and the lack of resources that the state provided for everyday East Germans to fulfill the goals of Sportkultur that they had built up. Nonetheless, as McDougall himself admits, it largely confirms the preexisting scholarship on the late GDR rather than breaking new ground.

The original impetus to this volume, abandoned by the editors in the process of writing, is well taken. There is a clear disconnect throughout the volume between the British and North American contributions. It is regrettable that this volume did not explore the reasons for this disconnect and work through ways to overcome it.