Lucky Children of Unity?

"We know both systems, spent almost half of our lives in the East and the other in the West. We are well-trained hermaphrodites. We, the lucky children of unity," wrote Jana Simon, born in 1972, in 2004 about her school class. But how did the late SED dictatorship and its collapse shape the youthful citizens? What influence did the transformation process have on this age group after 1990?

On the basis of narrative interviews, Volker Benkert shows the range of political socialization of those born between 1967 and 1973 in the GDR. It becomes clear that despite repression and compulsory conformity, a wide range of socialization patterns existed. These differences culminated after 1990 in equally different attitudes toward the transformation process, so that this age group could not form a single generation. The work makes important contributions to both generation and biography research.