Vol. 21 · No. 3 · Issue 68 · Fall 2003

Thomas A. Baylis

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Abstract

Peter Christian Ludz, for many years the Federal Republic's most influential analyst of East German affairs, broke something of a taboo in 1964 when he published an edited volume under the title Soziologie der DDR. As he related at the time, the government's Ministry of All-German Affairs declined to reprint the book for free distribution because of its unfortunate use of the three "forbidden initials" at a time when most writers still referred to the entity in question as the "SBZ" or, more simply, the "zone." GDR reviewers, for their part, complained that, in spite of its grudging recognition of at least the proper initials designating their state, the book was still a compilation of familiar imperialist calumnies against it.