Last week I decided to check in with the close to 2,500 people who follow me on twitter to ask the simple question: what about East German history would you want to know more about?
I started this blog about a year ago to give myself the chance to talk about some topics in greater length than my twitter account (@historyned) allowed for. In the past few months, I haven’t been producing as much – I’m trying to finish up a book manuscript and research two new projects – but I want to get back to the blogging soon.
One of the great privileges of being an academic is the chance to share your nerdy interests with others, but since I currently have a position with no teaching responsibilities, the chances to talk about my field with non-experts is rarer than I would like. As such, I’m happy to offer up my expertise on this narrow sliver of human history to the curious public as an alternative.
Until now, I’ve been choosing topics for Superfluous Answers to Necessary Questions based entirely around a) things I want to rant about and b) things that people ask me a lot of questions about on twitter. I thought that since I was already following strategy b) as a way of coming up with topics, I might as well actually tell everyone so they could have the opportunity to let me know what piques their interest.
There has a been a great response to my call so far and here are some of many questions/topics that you asked about:
https://twitter.com/tessaapproves/status/756441278481432576
https://twitter.com/teachafrica/status/757677524553981954
I’ve contacted some of you directly when there has been good material already published on the topic, but I’m going to get around to all of you eventually in some way. It may take a while and I can’t promise that every post is going to be equally in-depth, but I’ll make it there at some point.
If I have missed your request, or if you want to add a question/topic to the queue, just leave a comment and I’ll do my best.
********
Some later additions to the queue:
Superfluous Answers to Necessary Questions 
Ned
I would be really interested in counter culture stuff in the GDR, eg punks, football hooligans plus lives of young people in general both FDJ type experiences and those rebelling against it.
Plus daily lives of East Germans and their reflections on this. Also interested to know more about how ordinary folk bough into sporting prowess of GDR however tainted this is nowadays. But how did they feel about and did it arouse any national pride etc
One day if I ever had time and money I would love to do a PhD on this! cheers Dominic aka dommodernist on Twitter
LikeLiked by 1 person