Jon Berndt Olsen

Welcome to my personal homepage here at UMass-Amherst. I am an Associate Professor in the Department of History. My primary research interests involve issues of memory and historical consciousness in modern Germany, especially in post-1945 East Germany. My first book,Tailoring Truth was published by Berghahn Books in 2015. In that book, I explored attempts by the East German regime to manipulate perceptions of the past by examining different monuments, museums, and commemoration festivals.

My current research focuses on East Germans going on vacation. My manuscript is tentatively titled Visa-Free to Hawaii and explores the experiences of East Germans carving out areas of privacy in which to relax and recuperate from thier jobs. One might not think of communist countries placing a high value on personal vacations, yet East Germany made it a priority. The "right to rest and relaxation" was embedded in its very first constitution and granted workers 12 days of vacation a year. This quickly rose to 15 and eventually most received over 21 days each year. The state, however, also had a vested interest in controlling that time off and influencing the experience of vacationing. I explore that power dynamic and the negotiations made by individuals and families to carve out and make that experience one that had meaning for themselves. While some East Germans did have opportunities to travel abroad (mainly to the neighboring East European countries of the Warsaw Pact), about 90% of the population remained within its borders each year and spent thier vacations at lake-side resorts, up on the Baltic Sea, or hiking in the mountains of Thuringia and Saxony. City tourism was also popular - taking in museums, concerts, and shopping in a larger city. In the end, however, the desire to travel even further abroad and retake more control over how, when, and where they could travel elevated the demand for the freedom to travel to be one of the main issues of protest when East Germans took to the streets in 1989.