Regionale Identität und Regionalkultur in Demokratie und Diktatur

A regional consciousness constituted an important factor in social mobilization and integration both in the democratic and federally structured social orders of the Weimar Republic and the Federal Republic, and in the centralistic power structures of the Nazi dictatorship and the SED state, and was connected with social concepts of value and political concepts of order. Using the example of the Catholic region of Eichsfeld, which was divided by the inner German border after 1945, this study examines the development of regional cultural activities between 1918 and 1961. A further focus of attention is the process of construction of the region, and its symbolic significance in the light of political upheavals and East-West conflict. The author thus makes an important contribution to comparative research into regional milieus under National Socialism and in the GDR, and into the political culture of the Weimar Republic and the early Federal Republic.