Over the past 35 years, meaning the period following the Wende (the turning point of 1989-90, when the Wall fell and Germany unified), much of the historiography of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that was written in unified Germany has been largely shaped by Western ideological narratives, which have selectively translated East German history into stories of state control, censorship, and political repression. These perspectives served to both legitimize the unification of the two Germanys and reinforce the ideologies and (victorious) outcome of the Cold War. Such narratives have reinforced a binary view that positioned the “restrictive East” against the “liberated West.” However, like linguistic translation, historiography is not a neutral process—it involves interpretation, selection, and omission. Just as a translator can make choices about which meanings to prioritize and which to downplay, Cold War historiography in unified Germany has filtered the past through a Western ideological lens to emphasize political history, with its censorship and state control in the cultural sphere (see e.g., Löffler, 2011), while largely ignoring or downplaying the complexities and relevance of everyday life and individual experiences in the respective time and space (see e.g., Wolle, 1998). This paper argues that through this selective narration of the past, historiography itself functions as a form of translation, which shapes historical narratives in ways that reinforce existing power structures.

In response to this one-dimensional historical “translation,” Alltagsgeschichte (the history of everyday life) offers a retranslation, a historiographical reorientation that shifts focus from state policies to the lived experiences of ordinary citizens to include more diverse viewpoints on past events. By foregrounding personal agency, social adaptation, and daily routines, Alltagsgeschichte challenges Cold War historiography by revealing the nuances and contradictions of GDR society often obscured by traditional political narratives—it is an important step to view people’s history not always in relation to the political history of the country they lived in. This paper applies the concept of historiography-as-translation to explore how everyday-life history can reshape our understanding of the GDR, particularly through the lens of professional translators. The experiences of GDR translators and interpreters, figures who themselves mediated between languages and ideologies, offer a compelling case study of how individuals navigated political constraints while exercising agency in their work. By analysing their testimonies, this study demonstrates that, much like historians, translators and interpreters in the GDR were not, as often depicted, mere instruments of state ideology but active negotiators of meaning with their own, very normal, private life separate from political structures.

To summarize, this paper claims that the history of the GDR has been misrepresented through an ideological act of translation, one that prioritizes grand political narratives over the subtleties of daily life. By treating historiography as a process of selective translation, we can expose its biases and blind spots and recognize the need for a more nuanced historical retranslation. Through the application of Alltagsgeschichte, this study seeks to recover the erased voices and lived realities of East German citizens to move beyond the dichotomy of oppression versus freedom toward a more complex and humanized understanding of the past.

History as translation

Building on Hayden White’s (1973) insight that historical writing is never neutral but always shaped by narrative choices, this paper contends that historiography itself can be understood as a form of translation. Translation, in this context, is more than a linguistic practice—it is an act of interpretation, negotiation, and adaptation. This is particularly evident in historiography, which ‘translates’ past events into narratives that shape present understandings. As White (1990) observed, the central problem of historiography is “how to translate knowing into telling, the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning” (p. 1). Much like a translator navigating between languages, readers, and cultures, the historian mediates between historical evidence and contemporary interpretive frameworks. In this process, historiography functions as a form of “cultural translation”—filtering past events through modern lenses and determining which aspects of the past are emphasized or omitted (Koselleck, 2002).

Moreover, the notion of historical interpretation as translation is especially relevant in contexts where memory politics play a crucial role. The competing narratives surrounding the GDR are not merely academic debates; they have direct implications for how unified Germany understands itself, how former East Germans perceive their own past, and how collective memory is shaped within public discourse. The act of translating history thus has ideological stakes and very much influences national identity, political legitimacy, and social cohesion. By reassessing the translation of GDR history, we not only gain a deeper understanding of the past from an ideological and political point of view but also challenge assumptions that continue to shape post-unification narratives.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, much of the historiography on the GDR has been shaped by what can be described as a “victor’s history”,1 a form of historical narration in which the past is framed primarily through the lens of the prevailing political order. In this process, history is not simply recorded but actively constructed to affirm the legitimacy of the dominant system while delegitimizing its predecessor. Cold War historiography has largely relied on a master narrative of state repression, in which the GDR is depicted as a society fundamentally defined by dictatorship, coercion, and surveillance—the GDR was pejoratively seen as the “unjust state” (Unrechtsstaat) (for a discussion, see e.g., Jarausch, 1995, p. 10–14). Engagement with GDR history outside the totalitarian paradigm was largely rejected and seen by some as an attempt to excuse or relativize dictatorship (see e.g., Knabe, 2007). Such an approach has not only foregrounded political oppression but has also implicitly framed the trajectory of unification as the inevitable and natural progression toward liberal democracy and neo-liberal capitalism. The underlying premise of this historical translation is teleological—it treats the collapse of the GDR as the predetermined outcome of an unworkable system rather than as a complex and contested historical process (Sabrow, 2009, p. 18).

Beyond individual scholarly interpretations, the function of victor’s history extends beyond academia—it actively shapes public memory and national identity. As Handro & Schaarschmidt (2022, p. 6), for example, argue, the emphasis on dictatorship and oppression in post-unification narratives was not just an academic exercise but part of a broader project to establish a unified democratic memory culture in Germany. The goal was to construct a common historical foundation for a unified nation, reinforcing liberal democracy as the unquestioned norm. However, in doing so, this approach often excluded or dismissed the lived realities of those who had experienced life under socialism, relegating them to the margins of historical discourse. Rather than recognizing the GDR as a complex society with internal contradictions and adaptive social structures, much of its historiography has functioned as an act of historical distillation, reducing the multiplicity of socialist-era experiences into a singular moral lesson on the perils of dictatorship.

The dominance of the victor’s history is also embedded in school curricula and history textbooks used in unified Germany. Educational materials have largely framed the GDR as an illegitimate state defined solely by state surveillance, censorship, and human rights abuses, while minimizing aspects of social stability, economic security, or public welfare that many former East Germans recall as positive. Studies of German textbooks reveal that Cold War binaries remain deeply entrenched, with the GDR frequently depicted as a “lesson in dictatorship” (Müller-Zetzsche, 2020) rather than as a complex society with both repressive and adaptive elements, especially in the first ten years after unification (Mätzing, 2004). This holds true also for schoolbooks in other, neighbouring countries, such as Austria (Brait & Kronberger, 2019) or France (Müller-Zetzsche, 2020).

What needs to be addressed here is the fact that the historiographical treatment of the GDR is distinct from that of other former socialist states because it is the only example of a socialist country that was fully absorbed into a Western counterpart rather than undergoing an independent transition to democracy and capitalism. While countries like Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia dismantled their socialist regimes and restructured their political and economic systems internally, the GDR was dissolved and subsumed into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). This meant that the post-1989 history of the GDR was written not as a narrative of transformation, but as one of replacement—authored by those who had effectively absorbed the very subject they were documenting. In this process, the GDR ceased to exist not only politically but also historiographically, as its identity and legacy were overwritten by the dominant perspective of the unifying West. The result is that the GDR is always evaluated in direct comparison to the FRG, inevitably framed as the ‘loser’ in the Cold War confrontation. Unlike other post-socialist societies, whose transitions were judged on their own terms, the GDR’s legacy is measured against the already established success of West Germany. This unique dynamic has further reinforced a victor’s history, wherein the GDR is often reduced to a cautionary tale of socialist failure. West German historiography has largely dictated how the East German past is framed, often sidelining alternative interpretations that emerge from the lived experiences of former GDR citizens.

An Orientalist framing of the GDR

The historiographical framing of the GDR within Cold War narratives shares structural similarities with Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, in which the (ideological) “Other” is constructed as inferior to reinforce Western superiority. Said argues that Orientalism is not merely a way of describing the East but a discourse that serves to legitimize Western dominance by portraying the non-West as stagnant, oppressive, and incapable of self-determination (Said, 1978). Similarly, post-1989 historiography has frequently depicted the GDR as a monolithic, repressive state, reducing the complexities of life under socialism to a narrative of totalitarianism and failure. This process can be understood as a form of what Said (1978) terms “cultural representation,” in which knowledge production is shaped by power structures that determine which voices and experiences are emphasized or marginalized. The depiction of the GDR as an ideological antithesis to the West functions not only as a historical analysis but also as a means of legitimizing the post-Cold War global order and the integration of two German states (Sabrow, 2009, p. 17).

This Orientalist framing of the GDR as an inferior, repressive Other was not limited to academic discourse but continues to shape public memory and socio-political attitudes in contemporary Germany. The persistent marginalization of East German perspectives in public discourse has fuelled Ostalgie (Ost being “east” in German), a nostalgic reassessment of GDR life that, while sometimes romanticized, also reflects dissatisfaction with the way Eastern experiences have been dismissed in unified Germany (Ahbe, 2011, pp. 237–238).

This debate over memory politics highlights how the historiographical framing of the GDR is not merely a Cold War relic, but a narrative with ongoing political implications. One factor in the recent success of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in former East Germany may be the lingering sense of exclusion many East Germans feel in unified Germany. In the 2025 elections, the AfD made significant gains in the eastern states, becoming one of the strongest parties in the region and securing over 30% of the vote in some constituencies. While this surge reflects a complex set of social, economic, demographic, and cultural factors, how the GDR has been framed as a failed state in mainstream historiography likely contributes to this discontent. Research from Leipzig University (Decker et al., 2023) has shown that many East Germans still feel politically and economically marginalized, reinforcing the perception that they remain ‘second-class citizens.’ This sense of exclusion has provided fertile ground for populist forces like the AfD, which have effectively positioned themselves as defenders of East German identity, emphasizing economic disparities, cultural loss, and the perceived marginalization of Eastern perspectives within the national narrative. In this sense, the political success of the AfD in the East is not just a response to current economic conditions, but also a reflection of deeper, historically rooted narratives of exclusion and power asymmetry. This underscores the idea that historiography, as a form of translation, actively shapes political identities and contemporary power structures, influencing how communities understand their place in modern Germany.

Furthermore, in line with Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe (2000), the Cold War historiography of the GDR can be seen as rooted in a Eurocentric framework that imposes Western norms of political and economic progress on socialist societies. Chakrabarty’s call to challenge the linear models of modernity and development underscores the need for a historiography that recognizes the agency and complexity of East Germans beyond the binary of East versus West. The prevailing historical narratives, shaped by what Chakrabarty (2000) terms “the imaginary of Europe” (p. 16), often frame the trajectory of non-liberal societies as deviations from an assumed Western norm rather than as distinct historical experiences with their own internal logic. In the case of the GDR, this has resulted in a historiographical tendency to view East German socialism as an aberration—a system whose collapse signified its historical redundancy rather than an alternative modernity with its own contradictions and possibilities. This framing reflects a broader tendency in post-unification historiography, namely the inclination to interpret the GDR primarily through the lens of its eventual, even inevitable, collapse, thereby reducing it to a failed deviation from Western democratic development rather than analysing it as a historically specific society in its own right (see e.g., works by Kocka: Kocka, 1994, pp. 9–26; 1999, pp. 18–24; 2010).

The historiography of the GDR thus exemplifies a process of ‘historical translation’—events and realities have been reframed through the concerns of the post-1989 world, yielding a narrative focused on dramatic oppression at the cost of nuance. The prevalence of Cold War rhetoric in writing about the GDR has marginalized themes such as social stability, professional life, and personal agency, focusing predominantly on more sensational aspects like state violence and the Stasi surveillance apparatus. This selective top-down narrative aligns with Aleida (and Jan) Assmann’s (2008) distinction between cultural memory and communicative memory. Cultural memory denotes the institutionalized, collective memory transmitted through media, education, and official commemoration; it typically emphasizes major historical events that shape a collective identity. In the case of the GDR, post-1989 cultural memory in the West fixated on the GDR’s authoritarianism and its ultimate collapse. This narrative was reinforced through textbooks, popular media, and public discourse in united Germany, dovetailing with the political ideology of the victorious West. In contrast, communicative memory is the informal, interpersonal memory of a living generation—comprised of individual experiences and day-to-day stories shared in families and communities. The Western historiography of the GDR after 1989 largely ignored the communicative memory of ordinary East Germans: the nuanced recollections of those who actually lived under socialism, which often run counter to the official story of unrelieved oppression. These personal recollections reveal a far more complex and multifaceted view of life in the GDR, one that includes not just fear and repression but also normalcy, adaptation, personal joys, and relationships, as well as routines. Indeed, many former East Germans insist that they led “perfectly ordinary lives” despite living in a dictatorship (Fulbrook, 2005, p. xi). Such testimonies do not deny the GDR’s lack of political freedoms, but they demand that historians acknowledge the coexistence of the mundane and the oppressive in everyday life. In sum, what might be called the cultural memory of the GDR (a triumphalist story of an evil empire overcome by freedom) has dominated at the expense of the communicative memory (the diverse, lived experiences of East German citizens). Of course, applying these terms in a distinctive way that avoids common pitfalls can be challenging. The GDR exists not only as a historical entity but as a lived past for millions, a past that has not yet fully settled into the fixed, distant frame of cultural memory. Understanding the GDR thus requires navigating this tension between the institutionalized, often politicized narratives of cultural memory and the diverse, sometimes contradictory recollections of individual lives. This study attempts to engage with this complexity, drawing on first-hand accounts to capture a more diverse picture of life in the GDR.

The Orientalist lens, by reducing the GDR to a static Other defined mostly by its ideological divergence from the West, not only perpetuates Cold War binaries but also erases the agency and complexity of East German lived experiences. This flattening of history into a morality tale of socialist failure mirrors Said’s critique of how power structures dictate whose stories are deemed eligible in dominant narratives. To move beyond this reductive framework, Alltagsgeschichte offers a methodological intervention: by recentring the everyday practices and voices of ordinary citizens like translators, workers, and families, it disrupts the Orientalist gaze and retranslates the GDR’s history from a human-centred perspective. Just as Said exposed the politics of representation in Orientalism, Alltagsgeschichte challenges historians to ask not only what the GDR was, but how its people navigated, adapted to, and even reshaped the socialist system in their daily lives.

Alltagsgeschichte as retranslation

In response to the limitations of traditional, top-down approaches, West German historians in the 1970s developed Alltagsgeschichte, or “history of the everyday”. This historiographical approach sought to prioritize the lived experiences of ordinary people to move away from an exclusive focus on high politics, state institutions, and the actions of elite figures (Lüdtke, 1989, p. 9). Instead, it emphasized a bottom-up perspective, examining how individuals navigated, adapted to, and resisted the socio-political structures that shaped their lives. Alltagsgeschichte emerged as part of a broader reaction against elitist historiography and the so-called “great men” narratives that had long dominated the field and seeks to establish a democratic historiography (Niethammer, 1982, p. 13). Traditional historical studies often presented history as a series of pivotal events driven by powerful leaders and major institutions and thus often overlooked the agency and resilience of everyday citizens. It was also seen as a countermovement against social history, a well-established field in (West) German historiography that was interested in societies but rather their structures and commonalities rather than the individual stories and experiences (see e.g., Hardtwig, 1994, p. 20). The scholars who developed Alltagsgeschichte sought to redress this imbalance by shifting the historian’s gaze to the daily lives of ordinary people. This approach recognizes that history is not only made through large-scale political transformations but also through the micro-level interactions, decisions, and struggles of individuals.

Methodologically, Alltagsgeschichte draws on a wide range of sources, including oral interviews, personal memoirs, letters, diaries, workplace documents, and other everyday records that provide insight into how individuals experienced and understood their world (Stender, 1994, p. 157; see e.g., other contributions in Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt, 1994). By analysing these sources, historians can reconstruct subjective dimensions of historical experience and thus shed light on how people interpreted and reacted to the political and social forces shaping their lives. According to historian Alf Lüdtke, a leading proponent of Alltagsgeschichte, the goal of this approach is to understand how individuals not only responded to but also subtly shaped their socio-political environment (Lüdtke, 1989). Rather than treating people as passive subjects of historical forces, Alltagsgeschichte highlights their capacity for adaptation, negotiation, and even defiance within restrictive systems.

One of the most significant contributions of Alltagsgeschichte is its ability to recover perspectives that are often absent from official archives. Traditional historiography frequently relies on state documents, governmental records, and institutional reports, which inherently reflect the viewpoints of those in power. By contrast, Alltagsgeschichte seeks to uncover the experiences of those who lived within these systems but may not have left behind formal records. Historian Lutz Niethammer’s oral history work on East German workers, for example, demonstrated how Alltagsgeschichte could reveal the everyday struggles of ordinary people and small acts of resistance that are often overlooked in state archives (see, e.g., contributions in Niethammer et al., 1990). These insights challenge monolithic narratives about life under authoritarian regimes and illustrate that even within highly controlled societies, individuals maintained personal agency and carved out spaces of autonomy. Unlike microhistory, which often focuses on a single, extraordinary case study, Alltagsgeschichte identifies broader patterns in everyday life while still acknowledging contradictions and diversity within a society (for a comparison of Alltagsgeschichte and microhistory see e.g., Lüdtke, 2007). This distinction is crucial, as it allows for a more comprehensive understanding of historical dynamics.

Importantly, Alltagsgeschichte offers a necessary counternarrative to dominant historiographical trends on the GDR in unified Germany. Much like producing a new translation of a familiar text, it serves as a critical tool for revisiting and revising established narratives. Rather than accepting a simplified story of East German history as one of unbroken repression, this approach challenges the ossified cultural memory of the GDR that defines the era solely by top-down political control. Everyday-life history brings to light internal contradictions, complexities, and instances of personal agency within East German society. It acknowledges both the constraints placed upon individuals and the spaces of autonomy they carved out for themselves, refusing to present the past as a static, monolithic entity.

Although the term Alltagsgeschichte itself originated in West Germany and became a significant historiographical trend there from the 1980s onward, similar approaches were present within the GDR itself, albeit within a distinct ideological framework. Given its left-wing orientation and interest in the experiences of ordinary working-class people, this perspective was particularly well-suited to the East German context. In fact, a form of “Marxist Alltagsgeschichte” (Dehne, 1989, p. 138) developed in the GDR, reflecting a commitment to understanding the everyday lives of the working class as part of the broader socialist project. A prominent example is Jürgen Kuczynski’s five-volume Geschichte des Alltags des deutschen Volkes (History of the everyday life of the German people) (1982), which sought to capture the lived experiences of ordinary East Germans. By shifting focus from grand political ideologies to human-centred accounts, Alltagsgeschichte captures the intricacies of daily life and the subtle ways people coped with or adapted the system to their needs, or, and this is even more important, experienced their lives entirely separate from the political and ideological system. History, as this approach reminds us, is not only about party leaders, secret police, and dissidents, but also about how a factory worker, a schoolteacher, or a translator managed work, family, and leisure. In recovering this communicative memory, Alltagsgeschichte bridges the gap between official narratives and lived reality. It illuminates how ordinary East Germans experienced the state from within, often in ways that complicate the neat story of an all-powerful regime facing a uniformly oppressed populace.2

This perspective is particularly valuable in fields traditionally viewed as instruments of the state, such as translation and cultural mediation. The history of translation in the GDR, for example, has often been framed in purely top-down terms: research mostly focused on state control in the form of censorship of literary works (see e.g., among others, work by Thomson-Wohlgemuth, e.g., 2009). Studies showed what was censored and what was possible despite the regime, but so far, translation and interpreting practice that happened separate from political and ideological control has not been of interest at all. One of the reasons for this is that, despite some exceptions that also included the voices of the actors involved (see e.g., Pokorn, 2012), many scholarly works dealing with translation and interpreting in authoritarian regimes in Translation Studies in general have relied mostly on state archives, with their many censorship files of literary works that naturally reflect the regime’s viewpoint, to examine how official policies shaped the translation of foreign literature.3 Such studies, valuable as they are, often reinforce the image of the translator as an adjunct of the regime because the archival sources highlight rules and censorship decisions rather than personal experiences. Consequently, according to the conventional narrative, often shaped by the dominant cultural memory, translators and interpreters in East Germany were expected to serve as the regime’s mouthpieces—faithfully transmitting approved socialist viewpoints and sanitizing or suppressing any content deemed ideologically dangerous. An Alltagsgeschichte lens encourages us to question such a one-dimensional view. Instead of only considering the official line and the political history of a given time and space, this approach examines translation and interpreting as a professional practice involving individual agency, negotiation, or subtle resistance. Indeed, testimonies from oral histories, workplace records, and memoirs, including the testimonies discussed in this study, suggest that translators in the GDR did not see themselves merely as obedient clerks of the state or always feel the pressure of censorship in their everyday professional experience. Much as the everyday experiences of other citizens complicate the image of a totally controlled society, the experiences of translators and interpreters shed a more colourful light on the day-to-day practices and experiences of this professional community. In this sense, Alltagsgeschichte listens to more diverse stories to allow for perspectives that go beyond the political history of an autocratic regime.

Ultimately, Alltagsgeschichte, as we have seen, offers a valuable tool for rethinking the historiography of the GDR. By treating history as a form of translation and focusing on everyday actors, it allows historians to move beyond binary narratives of oppression versus resistance that has dominated many post-1989 accounts. Focusing on lived experiences, such as those of translators, uncovers the subtleties of daily life under socialism and challenges the dominant narratives that have shaped collective memory. In doing so, we move beyond simplistic narratives and develop a deeper, more empathetic understanding of history.

In the following sections, these methodological insights are applied to explore the working world of GDR translators. How they balanced ideology and professional autonomy in practice is examined, as is how their personal stories challenge conventional Cold War binaries. This exploration aims to cast translators as active participants in the intellectual life of the GDR, offering new insights into their professional autonomy and creative agency within a highly controlled state apparatus.

Challenging Cold War binaries: Lived experiences of GDR translators

Dominant Cold War historiography has long reinforced stark dichotomies: East vs. West, repression vs. freedom, ideology vs. neutrality, communism vs. capitalism. The personal accounts of GDR translators and interpreters, however, serve to complicate and even overturn these binary frameworks. By listening to the voices of the translators themselves, we uncover realities that do not fit neatly into the conventional narrative. Many of these individuals experienced professional autonomy, stability, and even creative fulfilment in their work—facets of life rarely acknowledged in mainstream portrayals of the GDR. Their stories provide empirical weight to the argument that the GDR was not a uniform grey zone of fear and conformity; instead, life behind the Iron Curtain had textures and variations that historians must account for. This analysis also incorporates narratives related to the Wende, the period surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent unification of Germany. Although this topic was not explicitly included in the initial interview framework, nearly all participants raised it spontaneously, indicating its profound and far-reaching impact on their professional and personal lives. Including these reflections not only acknowledges the centrality of this transformative period in their narratives but also honours the voices of the interviewees, allowing them to articulate their experiences in their own words.

In what follows, several of these narratives are presented: first, I begin with whether the interviewees mention censorship, and if so, which aspects they highlight. I do this not to perpetuate the same restrictive focus on censorship, but rather to critically assess its resonance in translators’ retrospective accounts. By understanding how translators and interpreters remember and articulate their experiences in relation to censorship, we can better identify the parameters of this influence and, importantly, highlight those aspects of their professional practice that go beyond them. This step is necessary to disentangle the complex factors that shaped their work, moving the discussion beyond a singular, constraint-focused framework. Next, the focus will be on the social and financial status of translators and interpreters, as they experienced it, to understand how these professionals felt about their work life. Last, their experiences after the Wende will be analysed to see how this massive transition affected their lives, both professionally and privately. Each interview offers an independent historical account of personal experience, and together they paint a more intricate picture of translation and interpreting in the GDR.

The testimonies analysed in this study are drawn from, so far, 27 oral history interviews conducted between 2020 and 2025 with individuals who worked as (literary) translators and/or interpreters in the GDR. The interviewees have varied professional backgrounds: four worked exclusively as literary translators, three combined freelance literary translation with translation work in technical fields, ten worked solely as specialized translators, six worked both as translators and interpreters, and four were solely interpreters employed by Intertext, the largest and most important translation agency in the GDR. The literary translators were employed by various publishing houses, while the technical translators and interpreters were employed by Intertext, either with a permanent contract or as freelancers, or they were employed by other VEB (Volkseigene Betriebe, Publicly Owned Enterprises) or the military. The participants in this study worked in the GDR for a varied range of years, with some starting their professional lives in the 1960s, others in the 1980s, offering perspectives shaped by different historical contexts and professional experiences. To gain insights into their work, identity, and reflections on their roles, semi-structured interviews were conducted. These interviews included initial questions about background and education, but the greater part of the interviews asked for open-ended reflections by the interviewees, who were invited to talk freely about what they remember about their professional but also private lives in the GDR. Interview lengths varied from 38 to 312 minutes, depending on the participants’ availability and willingness to share their experiences. Contextual information about the respective interviewee will be given in the analysis if relevant.4

It is important to acknowledge that the perspectives shared by these translators and interpreters are shaped by both personal memory and the passage of time. As Aleida Assmann (2008) notes, personal recollections are often influenced by contemporary contexts, meaning that nostalgia or disillusionment may colour retrospective accounts. This study does not aim to establish definitive facts or construct a universally true version of GDR life; rather, it seeks to add nuance to our understanding by allowing individuals to share their own narratives. Given the significant role literary translators play in shaping cultural discourse, their reflections are particularly valuable, as they often occupy unique positions of agency within the field. Understanding how these professionals navigated their roles within the GDR adds an essential layer to the historical narrative, highlighting both the constraints and opportunities they faced.

Narratives of censorship and working life

Concerning translation censorship in the GDR, an important distinction needs to be made. An established censorship process existed only for literary translations; specialized translations, the far larger proportion of translations, were not systematically checked or submitted to a censorship process.5 Since the oral history interviews were designed to let each interviewee speak freely, it is highly interesting to see if translators or interpreters raise the topic of censorship themselves and if so, the extent to which they felt constrained by it. Most translators do not bring up censorship at all, but if they do, they usually do not describe it as the all-defining element of their work. One literary translator who worked extensively in the GDR’s publishing industry recalled that political censorship was far from the constant, invasive force that outsiders might assume. “Nobody ever demanded that from me” (Also von mir hat man nie sowas verlangt), they said, referring to overt ideological manipulation of their translations. “I wasn’t trained for it. No one ever came to me and said, ‘You’re in the GDR now, so you need to translate with a partisan perspective’” (Ich wurde nicht geschult. Kein Mensch ist zu mir gekommen, hat gesagt‚ Du bist jetzt in der DDR, du wirst bitte parteilich übersetzen) (Interview A, my translation). In their experience, there was no moment where a Party official dictated how they should phrase a passage or twist an author’s words to fit Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The absence of such direct demands allowed them a sense of normalcy in their work—they approached translating literature in East Berlin much as a translator in the West might, with attention to language, tone, and meaning rather than propaganda. While they were undoubtedly aware of the political context and likely exercised self-censorship on occasion, they did not feel under constant political surveillance while at their desk, which is consistent with what other literary translators have said about their work in the GDR. Another translator expanded on this theme by describing how they handled potentially sensitive content:

Also ich selbst habe nie einen Text verändert. Ich habe ihn ein bisschen gefärbt. Es gibt ja manchmal mehrere Übersetzungsmöglichkeiten und da habe ich die schärfste genommen, immer. Immer. Aber möglichst so, dass es nicht auffiel. Aber da konnte man schon was machen.

Well, I personally never changed a text. I might have coloured it a bit. Sometimes there are multiple translation options, and I always chose the most pointed one. Always. But as discreetly as possible, so it wasn’t noticeable. But you could still do something. (Interview B, my translation)

This candid reflection shows a translator actively engaging with their text, olouring it, which implies adding subtle emphasis or nuance, while staying within allowable boundaries. They acknowledge doing this “as discreetly as possible” so that their small interventions would not be noticed by editors or censors. Yet, the important takeaway is their mindset: “you could still do something.” In other words, rather than self-censoring or diluting texts to fit propaganda, this translator would occasionally take the opportunity to sharpen a phrase or preserve a provocative nuance, doing so carefully enough to slip under the ideological radar. Such decisions reflect personal agency and the liberty to translate outside the boundaries of state control. Indeed, as one interviewee succinctly put it about the translation process, “in the end, it was the translator who had the final say” (am Ende hatte der Übersetzer das letzte Wort) (Interview A). This remark highlights that, despite working under a censorious regime, the individual translator’s judgments and choices ultimately determined the final form of the text that readers encountered. Together, these accounts illustrate that literary translators were conscious of their responsibility and power as mediators of content. They were certainly aware of the political boundaries, but within those bounds they found ways to maintain professional integrity and even express subtle viewpoints. Instead of seeing themselves as mere mouthpieces, many translators took pride in their role as skilled craftspeople of language and culture in literature.

Outside the realm of literature and the arts, translators and interpreters working in technical, scientific, and diplomatic fields often operated with minimal ideological interference. Oral histories and archival evidence suggest that many such professionals experienced stable working conditions, reasonable deadlines, and also high social status in their workplaces. The GDR, despite its political authoritarianism, invested in education and professional development, producing highly trained translators and interpreters. Many were employed by state-run agencies, which provided predictable salaries and workloads. For freelance translators, there existed an official fee schedule (honorarium rates) negotiated by their professional association to ensure that they were fairly compensated for their work (see e.g., Honorarordnung, 1984). These conditions meant that, unlike many translators and interpreters in capitalist contexts, GDR translators and interpreters did not face cut-throat competition or extreme market pressure. One veteran translator noted that in the GDR they had more time to produce high-quality translations compared to their experience after unification, when market competition forced them to work faster (Interview C). They and others also recalled that there was little monetary pressure in the GDR thanks to standardized fees, and that translators enjoyed considerable prestige. The profession of translator was well-respected; practitioners were often invited to important cultural events and treated as valued cultural mediators. As one translator reminisced about the status of their occupation,

Und in Westdeutschland ist er auch nicht so gut, wie er in der DDR war. Er war weltweit nirgends so gut wie in der DDR. Die DDR musste aufhören, das war klar. Das ging nicht mehr. Das war nicht auszuhalten. Aber für die Übersetzer war es gut. Sie wurden gut bezahlt. Sie hatten einen ganz hohen Sozialstatus. Genossen Ansehen, wurden eingeladen. […] Ja, so war das in der DDR. Und sich als Übersetzer zu fühlen, das war schon was besonders Gutes.

And in West Germany it is not as good as it was in the GDR. Nowhere in the world was it as good as it was in the GDR. The GDR had to stop; that was clear. It couldn’t go on anymore. It was unbearable. But for translators, it was good. They were well paid. They had very high social status. They were respected, invited to events. […] Yes, that’s how it was in the GDR. And being a translator, that was something really special. (Interview D, my translation)

This remarkable testimony underscores that, within the East German system, translators and interpreters could flourish professionally. Even though the speaker acknowledges the GDR’s political failings (“the GDR had to stop […]. It was unbearable”), they draw a sharp contrast with the professional sphere, which they found highly rewarding. It reflects the planned economy’s ability (at least in this sector) to provide stable careers and societal esteem without the uncertainties that equivalent professionals might face in a market economy. While it is widely recognized that certain aspects of GDR work culture, such as job security and professional respect, were significant advantages, the interviews also reveal that many individuals deeply valued these aspects on a personal level. For these translators and interpreters, their professional lives were not just secure on paper, but also a genuine source of pride and personal identity, challenging simplified narratives of uniformly negative GDR experiences.

In light of these perspectives, it becomes clear that an exclusive focus on censorship, isolation, and state control provides an incomplete picture of translation and interpreting in the GDR. If we examine only censorship directives or banned books, we risk reinforcing the old binary of the “restrictive East” versus the “liberated West”, and we also risk stripping translators and interpreters of their agency by portraying them as mere operators of state will. The evidence suggests a more complex reality: these individuals possessed significant agency and acted as self-determined professionals within their roles. By broadening our lens to include the everyday practices of translators and interpreters, including those in non-literary fields, we gain a fuller understanding of their work. None of the 27 translators interviewed identified censorship as the defining element of their day-to-day work.6 Censorship was, at most, a background factor—something to be aware of, especially during the editorial revision process, but not something that consumed their creative and intellectual energies at every turn. The translators interviewed enjoyed their work, took pride in its quality, and felt their contributions were appreciated by colleagues, clients, and even officials. This does not mean censorship was irrelevant, but it was one influence among many, and often secondary to considerations of accuracy, style, and domain-specific requirements. By recognizing this, we restore a sense of professional dignity and complexity to the translators of the GDR. They were not simply obeying orders; they were making constant judgments—linguistic, cultural, political, and ethical—much like translators in any other context. In doing so, they navigated the lines between adherence to the system and the exercise of their own expertise. This understanding prepares us to delve into the personal narratives of those translators, which further illustrate how their experiences challenge oversimplified binaries of Cold War discourse.

Narrative of freedom after the Wende

The oral histories not only shed light on the GDR period but also reveal the profound challenges experienced by these translators during and after the Wende. Many translators and interpreters who had built their careers in the GDR suddenly found themselves in an entirely new socio-economic system, and their testimonies provide a poignant counter-narrative to triumphalist accounts of unification. “When the Wall fell” (Als die Mauer fiel), one translator recalled, “we knew that things were going to change, not necessarily for the better. We knew that many of us would lose our jobs and that it would be much harder to find work in the West” (wussten wir, dass sich die Dinge ändern würden, nicht unbedingt zum Besseren. Wir wussten, dass viele von uns ihre Stelle verlieren würden und dass es viel schwerer wird, im Westen Arbeit zu finden) (Interview E). This quote punctures the illusion that East Germans universally celebrated the coming of Western-style freedom and prosperity. For professionals like translators, whose positions in state organizations or state-supported publishing houses were now at risk, there was a very real fear of instability. Indeed, many did lose their positions as East German institutions closed or were absorbed by West German counterparts who often already had their own staff. Those who continued working as translators had to navigate a sudden shift to freelance or competitive employment. Another translator shared the emotional toll of this transition:

Ich hatte wirklich das Gefühl, schizophren zu sein, weil ich hatte viel Arbeit und tagsüber war ich bei Menschen, die immer Arbeit hatten, anderen Menschen, und dann bin ich abends nach Hause gekommen, um die meisten Leute, Freunde und Nachbarn waren arbeitslos. Das war eigenartig. Und dann hatte ich zwei kleine Kinder, und viele werden erzählen, das war schwierig für Familien damals, viel schwieriger als in der DDR. […] Das war eigentlich eine erschöpfende Zeit, seelisch und körperlich.

I really felt like I was schizophrenic because I had a lot of work, and during the day I was around people who always had work… But then, in the evening, I would come home, and most of the people, friends and neighbours, were unemployed. It was strange. And then I had two small children, and many will tell you that it was difficult for families back then, much harder than in the GDR. […] It was an exhausting time, both mentally and physically. (Interview F, my translation)

Her vivid description conveys the disorienting whiplash of 1990s East Germany: by day she inhabited the busy world of work and by night a community wracked by joblessness. The reference to feeling “schizophrenic” underscores the internal split she experienced between optimism (professional engagement) and despair (seeing her community suffering). Moreover, she explicitly compares family life unfavourably to that in the GDR, noting it was now “much harder”—challenging the narrative that political freedom automatically improved everyone’s daily life. This testimony highlights a truth often lost in political accounts: the transition to capitalism was socially and psychologically stressful, even traumatizing, for many East Germans.

These reflections underscore the profound challenges faced by translators and interpreters who navigated the transition from the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). While they were officially expected to embrace the newfound freedoms of a capitalist society, the reality was far more complex. The loss of guaranteed employment, the erosion of professional status, and the need to compete in an unfamiliar market economy took a significant toll on both their professional and personal lives. Many found that they had to reinvent their careers, taking on freelance work, learning new terminologies and technologies, or even changing fields entirely. One interpreter described the transition bluntly: “In the GDR, we had clear fee structures and a strong professional network. After the Wende, everything was uncertain. Suddenly, we were competing in a free market that valued speed over quality” (In der DDR hatten wir klar vorgegebene Honorarsätze und ein starkes berufliches Netzwerk. Nach der Wende war dann alles unsicher. Plötzlich mussten wir uns am freien Markt durchsetzen, auf dem Geschwindigkeit mehr zählte als Qualität) (Interview F). This statement contrasts the predictable, regulated environment of the GDR with the fast-paced, profit-driven environment of the unified Germany. Where once a translator could take pride in crafting a careful and precise translation (knowing that quality was valued and time was provided), now there was pressure to deliver work quickly and cheaply, often at the expense of quality. Another translator reflected on how professional recognition changed: “In the GDR, translators were respected. We were seen as important cultural mediators. In reunified Germany, we became just another service provider” (In der DDR war Übersetzer ein angesehener Beruf. Wir wurden als wichtige kulturelle Mittler gesehen. Im wiedervereinigten Deutschland waren wir nur noch Dienstleister) (Interview G). This conveys the pain of lost status. In the GDR, to be a translator was to be a bridge between cultures, a custodian of knowledge and literature—hence a person with cultural capital and respect. After unification, however, translators entered a marketplace where they felt commodified, valued primarily for output and speed, and largely invisible in the cultural hierarchy. The professional identities they had built over decades were thus destabilized.

These experiences invite a critical reassessment of conventional notions of freedom and opportunity as they relate to the East-West German transition. For many of these professionals, the economic predictability and social protections of the GDR provided a form of security that was abruptly lost in 1990. This does not romanticize the GDR’s political repression, but it does challenge a one-sided narrative that equates Westernization with unmitigated improvement. In the words of one translator and interpreter,

Die meisten sehen die Freiheit im Reisen und im Konsumismus. Freiheit ist, dass man die Möglichkeit hat, etwas bewusst zu entscheiden. Das, was man tut, bewusst zu entscheiden. Es gibt ja einen Unterschied zwischen Freiheit und Freizügigkeit. Und die meisten identifizieren Freiheit mit Freizügigkeit. Aber Freiheit ist auch, ein Leben in Sicherheit zu führen, in einem Land, wo man sich auf den Staat verlassen kann.

Most people see freedom in terms of travel and consumerism. [But] freedom is really about having the ability to make conscious decisions—deciding what you do with intention. There’s a difference between freedom and liberty, and most people equate freedom with liberty. But it is also freedom to live a life in safety, in a country where you could rely on the state. (Interview H, my translation)

Their reflection differentiates “freedom” into different dimensions: the commonly celebrated freedoms of movement and consumption versus the more existential freedom that comes from a feeling of security and the capacity to shape one’s life path. In their view, the latter was something the GDR, for all its lack of political liberty, provided in some measure (a reliable if paternalistic state), whereas the former came with trade-offs. Another interviewee went so far as to say,

Ich muss ehrlich sagen, ich fühlte mich da insofern freier, als die Leute miteinander vielleicht mehr nachgedacht haben. Und heute habe ich oft das Gefühl, wenn ich irgendwas sage, was n bisschen aus der Reihe fällt, dass ich groß angeschaut werde, aber nicht verstanden. 

I have to be honest, I felt freer then in the sense that people perhaps thought things through more with each other back then. Today, I often feel that when I say something that’s a bit out of the ordinary, I get stared at, but I’m not understood. (Interview I, my translation)

This admission—that they felt freer in certain social respects under the communist system—further complicates our understanding of freedom. They suggest that discourse in the GDR had its own kind of openness among trusted circles (perhaps because everyone knew the external limits, they valued honest talk in private), whereas in the modern capitalist society, they experience a different kind of conformity or alienation (being “stared at” for unusual opinions). Moreover, others noted that even in today’s supposedly free society, people practice a form of self-censorship or guarded communication—they describe a “double audience” phenomenon: “A statement can be interpreted in different ways. It’s not necessarily dishonest. But knowledge is always filtered, and that was understood back then. Perhaps today, people are less aware of this” (Eine Aussage kann man unterschiedlich auslege. Das ist nicht unbedingt unehrlich. Aber Wissen ist immer gefiltert, das hat man damals gewusst. Vielleicht weiß man das heutzutage zu wenig) (Interview H). This observation draws a parallel between the consciousness of censorship in the GDR and the perhaps more subtle social filterings in contemporary discourses, which can also be considered a kind of censorship. In general, one could argue that, in unified Germany, a form of “market censorship” replaced political censorship where the demands of clients, cost-efficiency, and speed of delivery began to shape translation outcomes more than careful, reflective work. This shift complicates the binary notion of “freedom” often associated with capitalist liberalism, revealing instead a reconfiguration of constraints rather than their disappearance.7

Taken together, these personal narratives stand as independent historical accounts that add depth and texture to our understanding of the GDR and its aftermath. They have been presented here largely on their own terms, to let the speakers describe their experiences without immediately reducing their words to a simple function of oppression or resistance or always associating them with their political environment. Yet, the implications of their stories are clear. Their recollections challenge simplistic narratives that contrast a uniformly ‘unfree’ East with a uniformly ‘free’ West. The promise of Western freedom did not translate into unalloyed benefits or ease for everyone; for GDR translators, it often meant economic precariousness, loss of status, and a sense that the dignity of their work had been undermined. These accounts force us to reconsider the binary categories of Cold War thinking. They suggest that concepts like freedom, fulfilment, and security were experienced in complex ways that do not map neatly onto East or West. For instance, a translator’s freedom to do good work, to be respected for it and make a living from it, might actually have been greater in the GDR, even though the broader political context was repressive. On the other hand, the freedom to speak one’s mind openly or to travel was obviously far greater in the West, yet even that came with new social nuances and challenges. By integrating the voices of these translators—their Alltagsgeschichte—we challenge the reduction of their lives to Cold War tropes. We also begin to overcome the hierarchical binary that places the West’s perspective above the East’s lived reality. None of this is to deny the very real atrocities and coercion committed by the GDR’s political system (the Stasi’s surveillance, the political prisons, etc.). Rather, it is to enrich the historical narrative so that it can accommodate both the oppressive structures and the human agency of those who lived within them.

Conclusion: Towards a more complex understanding of the GDR

The historiography of the GDR has long been shaped by Cold War binaries that prioritize political repression over the complexities of everyday life. This paper has argued that treating historiography as a form of translation allows us to recognize the ideological framing that has governed mainstream narratives about East Germany. By applying Alltagsgeschichte as a historiographical expansion, we can move beyond a one-dimensional portrayal of the GDR and incorporate the lived experiences of its citizens—experiences that challenge the rigid opposition between dictatorship and freedom. Through the lens of translation, we have seen how dominant historical narratives selectively emphasize certain aspects of the past while downplaying others. This is particularly evident in the way Cold War historiography has privileged state control, censorship, and political oppression, while largely neglecting the social and professional spheres in which many East Germans exercised agency, adaptation, and personal autonomy.

By integrating the testimonies of translators and interpreters, this paper has further demonstrated that life under socialism was neither a simple story of submission nor a heroic tale of resistance. Instead, it was a negotiated reality, where individuals found ways to assert professional agency, maintain personal integrity, and engage in subtle forms of manoeuvring within the system’s constraints. Their voices, often excluded from mainstream historical accounts, highlight a key limitation in Cold War historiography: the failure to recognize that even within authoritarian structures, life was dynamic, not static.

This perspective carries important implications for historiography beyond the GDR. The selective translation of history is not unique to Cold War narratives—it is a phenomenon that can be observed in postcolonial studies, Soviet historiography, and transitional justice narratives across the world. Just as postcolonial scholars have challenged Eurocentric depictions of former colonies by recovering indigenous voices and perspectives, historians of the GDR must continue to interrogate whose voices have been amplified and whose have been silenced in dominant narratives. The same historiographical mechanisms that framed the GDR as an ideological failure have also shaped the ways in which the Soviet Union, China, and other socialist states have been represented in Western historical discourse. A retranslation of these histories—one that prioritizes lived experience and diverse perspectives—would similarly reveal a more nuanced and multidimensional view of socialist societies.

Additionally, this paper highlights the broader methodological importance of examining history through the lens of translation. If historiography is inherently an act of interpretation, then historians must remain conscious of their own positionality, narrative framing, and selection biases. Just as translators make decisions about which words, tones, and interpretations to prioritize, historians make decisions about which events, figures, and themes to emphasize in their narratives. This recognition demands a more reflexive approach to historical writing—one that actively questions dominant frameworks and seeks out alternative voices.

Finally, the political relevance of this discussion cannot be overstated. The way history is translated into public memory has direct consequences for national identity, political legitimacy, and social cohesion. In the German context, the continued marginalization of East German perspectives in mainstream historiography has contributed to socio-political divides that persist today. The rise of the AfD in eastern Germany, the lingering economic disparities between East and West, and the sense of exclusion felt by many former GDR citizens are not merely the results of policy failures; they are also the product of a historical narrative that has too often dismissed or distorted the Eastern experience. If historical writing continues to privilege a victor’s perspective, the wounds of the past will remain unhealed. A more inclusive historiography—one that integrates Alltagsgeschichte, oral histories, and the perspectives of those who lived through socialism—can help foster a more nuanced and empathetic national memory.

In conclusion, the historiography of the GDR need not be a battleground between ideological extremes but can be rather a field of inquiry that embraces complexity, contradiction, and multiplicity. Moving forward, scholars can challenge Cold War binaries, integrate diverse perspectives, and remain aware of the ways in which history is translated and mediated through contemporary political frameworks. Such work requires a commitment to historical plurality—an approach that does justice to the full range of human experiences, including those that do not fit neatly into ideological categories.