Researcher ORCID Identifier
0009-0009-9889-5992
Graduation Year
2026
Date of Submission
4-2026
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
International Relations
Reader 1
Jean-Pierre Murray
Reader 2
Friederike von Schwerin-High
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
@ 2026 Diana Z Zhou
Abstract
From the 2015 migration influx onward, xenophobic and nationalist sentiments permeated Germany’s national political discourse. The former socialist territories in eastern Germany have proven particularly susceptible to far-right, anti-immigration, and anti-integration rhetoric. This thesis explores the mnemonic foundations of xenophobic sentiments in former East German states, tracing the development of an antifascist yet ethnically nationalist mnemonic framework to the state-sanctioned myths and invented traditions of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). As the loss of a collective GDR identity produced a reactionary rehabilitation of this framework post-unification, the racial and ethnic “other” — migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees — became constructed as an existential threat to the ethnically homogeneous German homeland.
Recommended Citation
Zhou, Diana, "The Vestiges of the German Democratic Republic: Memory Politics and Xenophobia in Former East Germany" (2026). CMC Senior Theses. 4153.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/4153
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