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Lütten Klein

Life in the East-German Transformative Society
With numerous images
Translation SampleSuhrkamp | Insel
Rights sold to:

France (MSH)


Lütten Klein / Lütten Klein
Life in the East-German Transformative Society
With numerous images
Highly topical: A tale of two countries — 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall

An important work of East-West German social history

Steffen Mau grows up in the 1970s in Lütten Klein, a neighbourhood of newly constructed residential buildings in Rostock. When the Berlin Wall falls, he is serving with the National People’s Army, after the reunification he goes to university, eventually becomes a professor. All the while his home is battling with the drawbacks of the reunification: Instead of a prospering economy, rusty industrial ruins dominate the landscape. With new freedom and mass consumerism come the experiences of...

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Steffen Mau grows up in the 1970s in Lütten Klein, a neighbourhood of newly constructed residential buildings in Rostock. When the Berlin Wall falls, he is serving with the National People’s Army, after the reunification he goes to university, eventually becomes a professor. All the while his home is battling with the drawbacks of the reunification: Instead of a prospering economy, rusty industrial ruins dominate the landscape. With new freedom and mass consumerism come the experiences of social downgrading.


30 years after 1989 Mau takes stock from the perspective of a Lütten Klein-born sociologist that is both sharp and empathetic. He talks to people who left and people who stayed, he looks back on life in a state that no longer exists. How did the social structure, did mindsets change? What are the reasons for the current dissatisfaction and political alienation in the new eastern federal states? How did the city in which he spent his youth together with children from all kinds of backgrounds become a place of social division? His conclusion: many of the divisions that can be observed in eastern Germany stem from the time of the GDR. But they weren’t dissolved by the transformation. Rather, they were aggravated into the societal fractions that shape our country to this day.

»With Lütten Klein, Stefan Mau presents a book that is both personal and informative. His greatly empathetic study enables readers from West and East Germany to understand not only life in the GDR better but also the subsequent system change as well as the resulting consequences and ›societal fractures‹.« Jürgen Schupp, Soziopolis.de

»The reference to the overlooked feminization of the migration to the West is just one of the many epiphanies that make reading Steffen Mau’s book so rewarding.« Rainer Hank, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

»Steffen Mau‘s study of the residential neighbourhood Lütten Klein in the GDR is full of stimulating provocations.« Frank Pergande, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

» [...] masterful and inspiring.« René Schlott, Der Tagesspiegel

»A well-informed study on the rupture that runs through East Germany.« DIE ZEIT

»Steffen Mau provides differentiated socio-psychological ideas.« Irmtraud Gutschke, Neues Deutschland

»Those who wish to understand East Germany should read Steffen Mau’s sociological survey Lütten Klein.« Thomas Steiner, Badische Zeitung

»Steffen Mau talks about his own experience and that of other inhabitants of Lütten Klein and supports the anecdotes – wherever necessary – with numbers just enough to create a multi-faceted description of a specific society without overwhelming the reader with garrulity, lachrymosity, or facts.« Silke Hasselmann, Deutschlandfunk

»It’s like a story of two countries. […] The conclusion of this extremely remarkable book that is moreover an enjoyable read: Many tensions we can now observe in East Germany originate in the GDR.« Jürgen Christen, Buchmarkt

»With Lütten Klein, Stefan Mau presents a book that is both personal and informative. His greatly empathetic study enables readers from West and East Germany to understand not only life in the GDR better but also the subsequent system change as well as the resulting consequences and ›societal fractures‹.« Jürgen Schupp, Soziopolis.de

»The reference to the overlooked feminization of the migration to the West is just one of the many epiphanies that make reading...

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2019, 284 pages

DISCOVER

Nachricht
On German Unity Day, we’ve put together a collection of works by writers who were born or worked in East Germany.
Nachricht
On German Unity Day, we’ve put together a collection of works by writers who were born or worked in East Germany.

DISCOVER

Nachricht
On German Unity Day, we’ve put together a collection of works by writers who were born or worked in East Germany.

Persons

Steffen Mau, born in 1968, is professor of Macrosociology at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Steffen Mau, born in 1968, is professor of Macrosociology at the Humboldt University of Berlin.


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

The Metric We
Year of Publication: 2017
Steffen MauYear of Publication: 2017

Whether education, health or consumption: by now, data is gathered on almost every aspect of our personalities and behaviour. Step by step we are becoming a society of stars, scores, likes...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Polity), Spanish rights/Mexico (UNAM), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press), Czech Republic (Karolinum)


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News
11.12.2020
We are delighted to announce that Steffen Mau has been honoured with the Leibniz Prize.