ABOUT BOOK

Anyone who wants to learn how the GDR was analyzed and classified half a decade after its founding by a German-American team of outstanding experts in more than 600 pages will hardly find a better source than this largely forgotten and barely received work, published only in hardback (1956). It is published in the Hannah Arendt Institute's series "Paths of Totalitarian Research" because it was created in direct connection with the development of the most discussed concept of totalitarianism under the aegis of political scientist Carl J. Friedrich at Harvard University. One of his closest collaborators and co-authors was the later US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The list of authors and advisors (including Gerhard Abeken, Fritz Baade, Erich Matthias, Carl Mayer, Heinrich Rittershausen, Otto Stammer, Carola Stern, Karl C. Thalheim, and Siegfried Unseld) reads like a who's who of early GDR research.