German Reunification of 1990 Collection

The process of German (re-)unification, which began in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is the subject of several hundreds of materials in the Van Pelt Library collection.

Collection Overview

Germans continue to refer to the integration of East and West Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) with the Federal Republic of Germany--in German, die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD) using the terms die Wiedervereinigung (literally, reunification), or die Wende, “the Turn,” representing a time and process of reconciliation, reintegration, and healing which, in some respects, continues to this day. These holdings broadly represent both non-fiction and fiction works, from novels and poetry to literary criticism, to historical writing and memoir as well as scholarly work in the social sciences.