This open access book explores the German Democratic Republic's local and global relationships. It considers the extent and nature of relationships both established and attempted by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) within the fields of national security and power projection, labour relations, medicine, science, and health, visual media and aesthetics, and philosophy and culture.

The GDR Goes Global shows that the GDR, while often viewed as a vivid symbol of the physical and ideological post-war division of Europe, was far from an insular state. The book shines a light on the GDR's shared culture and myriad relationships with West Germany, as well as its efforts to seek global recognition and international leverage with socialist and non-socialist countries alike.

Bringing together established and emerging scholars from diverse disciplines and regions in both East and West Europe, this volume offers rich interdisciplinary discourse that fosters a nuanced and multifaceted understanding of the GDR's international networks, partnerships, rivalries, and exchanges.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council.

Ulf Schmidt is Senior Professor of Modern History at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He is the author of Secret Science: A Century of Poison Warfare and Human Experiments (2015), Karl Brandt - The Nazi Doctor (Bloomsbury, 2007) and Justice at Nuremberg (2004).

James Farley is Senior Research Fellow and at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He is the 'Taming the European Leviathan' Project Manager.

Will Studdert is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He is the author of The Jazz War: Radio, Nazism and the Struggle for the Airwaves in World War II (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).