Author Archives: Sebastian Gehrig

About Sebastian Gehrig

Sebastian Gehrig is senior lecturer in modern European history at the University of Sheffield. His book, Legal Entanglements: Law, Rights, and the Battle for Legitimacy in Divided Germany, 1945–1989 (2021), explores how opposing ideological notions of what the law and rights constituted became simultaneously the object and means by which the two German governments contested each other’s political legitimacy at home and abroad. He has published on the politics of human rights, the clash of sovereignty doctrines within the United Nations, citizenship rights and freedom of movement, Sino-German cultural diplomacy, Maoism and militant subcultures during the 1960s/70s, and 1970s gender politics.

Criminalizing Nazism and Neo-Fascism: East German Anti-Racial Discrimination Law, Socialist Legality, and Human Rights

November 8, 2024 by
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The East German criminalisation of fascism was about more than atonement for Nazism. While its law makers certainly focussed on outlawing Nazism after the foundation of their state in 1949, they also opened up to international law and new human rights norms in the 1960s. This was not a mere diplomatic move to garner international support for the GDR’s existence as a sovereign state —especially in the Third World—but also became part of an attempt to build a new kind of international legal order grounded Continue reading → Continue reading →