End Game

The 1989 Revolution in East Germany

Focusing on major shifts in East Germany leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall, End Game accounts for everyday life from the autumn of 1989 to the first free elections in March of 1990. With an understanding of the events of 1989 as a citizens movement as a whole, the volume contextualizes the societal reactions to a nations large scale political changes.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, and the chain of events leading up to it, arguably constitute one of the most thoroughly documented episodes in recent history. Nonetheless, most accounts have focused predominantly on high-level politics and diplomacy along with the most dramatic and photogenic public displays. End Game, a rich, sweeping account of the autumn of 1989 as it was experienced on the ground in the German Democratic Republic, powerfully depicting the desolation and dysfunction that shaped everyday life for so many E