Approaches the topic of classical music in the GDR from an interdisciplinary perspective, questioning the assumption that classical music functioned purely as an ideological support for the state.

Introduction: Music and Heritage in the German Democratic Republic
Provincialism, Modernity, and the Classical Heritage: The Administrative Structure of the GDR and the Situation of Music Production
Classicism as Anti-Fascist Heritage: Realism and Myth in Ernst Hermann Meyer's Mansfelder Oratorium (1950)
Positioning Georg Knepler in the Musicological Discourse of the GDR
Ehrt euren Deutschen Meister: Reproducing Wagner in the GDR
The Embodiment of Collective Memory in Neue Odyssee
Marxism and Feminism in Ruth Berghaus's Staging of Don Giovanni
Beyond the Gewandhaus: Mahler and the GDR
Hanns Eisler's Funeral and Cultures of Commemoration in the GDR
Exile-Remigration-Socialist Realism: The Role of Classical Music in the Works of Paul Dessau
"What a Satisfying Task for a Composer!": Paul Dessau's Music for The German Story (.Du und mancher Kamerad)
Friedrich Schenker and the Third Way
A Prism of East German Music: Lothar Voigtländer
Notes on the Contributors
Index