G. W. F. Hegel's “Commentary on the Published Proceedings of the Estates Assembly in the Kingdom of Württemberg, 1815–1816” is the notoriously recondite philosopher's most lucid account of Germany's political transformation after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. Written in a punchy, polemical style, yet brimming with philosophical distinctions, the 130–page essay features concrete analyses of political institutions, social groups, and parliamentary debates in Hegel's home state. He published it in the 1817 Heidelberg Yearbooks, hoping to reach the educated public and influence the shape of Germany's constitutional order after Napoleon's defeat. The work has never been fully translated or adequately interpreted; it earns but a few, albeit astute, remarks in Terry Pinkard's recent biography. The 1999 Cambridge edition of Hegel's Political Writings omits it entirely, citing its focus on “esoteric and antiquarian matters peculiar to the political history of Württemberg.” As Hegel himself realized, however, Württemberg's experience dramatized the most profound civic upheaval of the age: the shift from a corporate society composed of particular estates (Stände) to a civil society governed by universal precepts and a “rational” state.

Following the GDR's surprising collapse in 1989, historians have produced a range of studies that have added new contours to its state and society and contributed to a much fuller understanding of the reasons for East Germany's implosion. As scholars became more aware of the “limits of dictatorship” in the GDR, however, the longevity of a state that lasted for almost as long as the second German Empire became all the more perplexing. In response to this problem, a number of historians reflected on approaches practiced by historical anthropologists and sociologists, to explore the distinctive nature of GDR life in its everyday manifestations. Inspired by the pioneering work of Alf Lüdtke and Lutz Niethammer, they began to investigate the history of everyday life at the workplace, within and across generational and gender divides, and in areas such as consumption and leisure.

Throughout its history, the East German Communist Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, hereafter SED) organized campaigns to overcome the economic and political challenges facing it and to launch new program initiatives. Whether the aim was to increase factory safety, beautify a village, or raise standards of living, the party and the East German government used mass mobilizations to shape society, or at least certain social groups. Communist campaigns were directed attempts to improve diverse sectors of society by concentrating resources on arenas marked as economically deficient and socially resistant. By directing their efforts at revolutionizing narrowly defined critical areas, Communist leaders felt that they could enact overarching societal changes. Campaigns thus served as a means to initiate new policies and to correct problems that developed later. They were an essential part both of the state planning so prevalent in Communist systems, and of the often hectic short-term initiatives endemic in such economies. These mobilization efforts were so critical to the regime that one scholar has declared that the German Democratic Republic (GDR) possessed a campaign, rather than a command economy.