Resistenza e opposizione nella Repubblica democratica tedesca 1949-1989

The essay analyses the history and characteristics of resistance and opposi- tion in the German Democratic Republic (Gdr). A very varied and complex phenomenon in an authoritarian State that officially denied the existence of any form of dissent. The debate is made even more delicate by the compari- son with the forms of dissent of the other dictatorial experience of contempo- rary Germany, the National Socialist regime. The essay, after defining some methodological choices, divides the history of resistance in the Gdr into two stages: the first from the foundation of the Democratic Republic to the con- struction of the Berlin Wall in 1961; the second from 1961 to the fall of the communist regime in 1989. In these two periods the forms of resistance, the behaviour of the authorities, the methods of repression and control and the methods of adaptation of East German citizens to the political and social reality of the Gdr changed. [Publisher's text].