The period following the fall of the Berlin Wall was one of tremendous tumult and upheaval, one which involved the total transformation of the everyday lives of 17 million East Germans as they transitioned from Sovietised socialism to market capitalism in a collapsed period of time. And Life Was Good and Happy seeks to explain and examine the phenomenon of Ostalgie – nostalgia for the GDR – as a product of this era, looking at economic, social, political, and historical change in the 1990s, tackling such topics as unemployment, the welfare state, the Stasi, and memorialisation. The essay also challenges the fundamental assertion that East Germans were naturally predisposed to the West prior to 1989, instead arguing that attempts to carve out an eastern identity in unified Germany come out of a visceral objection to unification as act of colonisation.

• Red Love: The Story of an East German Family
• In Times of Fading Light
• Generation Wall
• 1989: The Berlin Wall: My Part in Its Downfall
• Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall