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Justice in Lüritz: Experiencing Socialist Law in East Germany. By Inga Markovits. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. 244 pp. $26.95 paper.
Reviewed by Karl F. Schumann, University of Bremen
This book describes the everyday routines of the justice system in East Germany (the GDR) between 1945 and 1990. This system perished on October 3, 1990, the day of the unification of Germany; from that day forward only the laws ofWest Germany were in force.
Inga Markovits, an expert on GDR law, discovered a treasure trove of court files spanning 45 years in the courthouse of "Lüritz," an East German town to which she has assigned a pseudonym. In addition she found personnel files, search and arrest warrants, citizens' letters and complaints, judges' notebooks, etc. By conducting retrospective interviews with judges, plaintiffs and defendants, and functionaries, the author added accounts to the content of the files, which enabled her to draw a picture of law enforcement "in action" in theGDRfrom different points of view. Until then the knowledge about the GDR laws was mostly based on codified rules and their official interpretations. Of course, court files as source for descriptions of the everyday practice of justice may suffer from selectivity. Not so for the GDR justice system,...