When the Iron Curtain fell in 1990, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics.

Today’s guest is Katja Hoyer, author of “Beyond the Wall,” who was born in the GDR. She saw beyond the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR and experienced the political, social, and cultural landscape that existed amid oppression and hardship to see the other Germany, beyond the Wall.

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