Ulrike Winkler has written an excellent book that enriches our historical understanding on multiple levels. It adds valuable dimensions to the history of disabled people in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), it sheds new light on the history of everyday life from the perspective of a hitherto overlooked group, and it engages with the history of the built environment. The book draws on archival sources, journals and magazines that focus on and specialize in rehabilitation, architecture and care. It also utilizes Eingaben (petitions expressing discontent or certain practical needs that were sent to the government) and interviews with disabled people, family members and professionals such as architects, doctors and physiotherapists. These sources permit an approach that does not privilege either “top-down” or “bottom-up” perspectives. Instead, it presents the history of the official and grassroots efforts to improve the accessibility of private and public spaces. Moreover, it also reveals the interactions and tensions between these two levels. It shows that accessibility was both an individual and a societal issue. Like everywhere else in Europe, disabled people in the GDR were subject to societal prejudices, although they could also be met with empathy and understanding.

The book begins with a discussion of the different words that were used to designate and categorize disabled people in the GDR: “geschädigt”, “versehrt”, and “behindert”. Semantic variation of this sort, which was a common phenomenon in the 1970s in numerous languages and cultures, often signals changing perspectives on the concept being described. The book then goes on to explain the principles of complex rehabilitation, a tool that was meant to help achieving the citizens’ “certainty of safety and security” (Gewissheit des Geborgenseins). Rehabilitation included complementary medical, pedagogical, professional, and social measures. It required involvement not only from the Ministry of Health, but also from the departments of other ministries responsible for transport, architecture and design, as well as from the local districts’ rehabilitation units and health and social care authorities. These measures aimed to bring about improvements, but they were also intended to control disabled citizens’ integration into society, and above all their integration into the work force.

In the 1970s, the paternalistic state promised to improve citizens’ quality of life in various ways, including the provision of adequate, healthy, and safe living conditions; the right to one’s own apartment; and roads and urban infrastructure usable by everyone. In the spirit of socialist humanism, victims of fascism, children, and elderly, sick and disabled people were the primary targets of such interventions. Yet, Winkler demonstrates the yawning gap between these ideals and the quotidian realities. The intention to cater to everyone’s needs applied only to people whose needs were typical: the principle of treating everyone equally did not serve those whose requirements diverged from the norm.

This is not to say, however, that efforts on a smaller scale were not made. From the 1970s onwards, more attention was paid to the elimination of architectural barriers in urban planning, undertaken in consultation with the target group, as the micro-level case study of the book demonstrates. This focuses on the old city of Halle (Saale) and the model socialist city of Halle-Neustadt in the region of Saxony-Anhalt, but the general conclusions apply to the GDR as a whole. Halle-Neustadt was the largest newly established independent city in the history of the GDR, where between 1964 and 1985 around 35,000 apartments and various accompanying social service units were built for 94,000 people. However, these were primarily meant for young families with children and for able-bodied workers, so accessibility was not a priority.

The book reveals that architects and urban planners were well-informed about international developments in the field of accessible urban design. In the 1970s, a working group on architectural barriers began discussing this with experts of rehabilitative medicine. They knew not only what directions they wanted to take, but also what models to avoid. For example, they were dismissive about the Het Dorp community in the Netherlands, a village built for disabled people based on the ideals of the early 1960s. These no longer resonated two decades later when such an establishment was regarded as (at best) a golden cage or (worse) a ghetto. East German experts also contributed to the activities of relevant international organizations, such as the International Society for Rehabilitation of the Disabled. Moreover, the GDR was the leading participant from the socialist camp in the International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981, the motto of which was “full participation”. Preparation for the Year also motivated initiatives at the local level, not least because of the socio-political competition between the two German states. For example, in Halle-Neustadt, where in 1977 the number of severely disabled residents was 119 (of whom 71 were adults and 48 were children), a rehabilitation center was opened and six designated working places were created.

Barriers in private and public spaces included curbs, steps and narrow doors. As one wheelchair user complained, when she was travelling in the old city on the Tatra-Bahn (a tram built in Czechoslovakia and widely used in the GDR, which also features in the title of the book), there were two or three steps at the entrance. This meant that another person was always required to assist her, and her wish to travel independently remained an unfulfilled dream. Yet integration was and remains not merely a technical, organizational or economic problem, but also an ideological and social one. The stigma that many people assigned to disability becomes evident from the episode in the 1970s when a ramp was to be constructed around an apartment to serve the needs of one wheelchair-using citizen. The neighbors objected to this on the grounds that they did not want to live in a house that carried “signs” of disability. In the 1980s, a small number of apartments were designed in an accessible way, and for the first time, attention was paid to the accessibility of supermarkets and the necessity of having accessible toilets in restaurants. However, these were very modest steps; the norm remained that wheelchairs needed to be stored in rubbish containers or in cellar spaces that were designated for practicing hobbies.

The final chapter documents the establishment in the 1980s of a self-help group of people with multiple sclerosis who sought better accessibility and higher living standards. They were initially greeted with suspicion by officials because the mere existence of the group could be taken as a critique of the socialist health system and the policy of complex rehabilitation. When members made unfavorable parallels with West Germany, these were rejected on the grounds that the kind of state support offered in the GDR was allegedly not available on the other side of the wall, hence their West German counterparts needed to rely on self-help. Nevertheless, the group’s small successes and their activities such as social events and information campaigns testify to the presence of a self-empowerment and negotiation space that one does not naturally associate with an authoritarian state.

Although the book does not elaborate on comparative dimensions, it does hint at them. Its references to the international context, especially in the field of accessible architecture, indicate that physical barriers, societal attitudes, and the difference between ideals and realities were by no means specific to East Germany or even to state socialism. In fact, these were common circumstances in Europe across ideological divides. These issues around the inclusion and exclusion of marginalized groups, viewed from a comparative and European perspective, deserve further research. Ulrike Winkler’s book, in which the interviews provide an important, enriching “human touch” to the extensive archival research, can provide both an inspiration and a model for the fulfilment of that ambition.