The postwar economic boom, the building of the Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, the conflict in Vietnam--rigid frontlines defined the years between 1945 and 1968. The atmosphere of the Cold War informed the visual arts; East and West were divided by figuration and abstraction. In the East, Socialist Realism was the basis for any innovation; the West glorified Abstract Expressionism and, later, Pop Art as symbols of freedom. This book, which documents the second in a series of major exhibitions held by the Nationalgalerie, deliberately transcends such divisions to focus on the coexistence of styles and the simultaneity of disparate tendencies as artists charted new terrain in Happening and light, video, and performance art. Thomas Wagner has selected excerpts from the works of contemporary writers--Christa Wolf, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Ernst Jandl, Elfriede Jelinek, Bob Dylan, Ray Bradbury, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Bertolt Brecht, Heiner Müller, Paul Celan, Mao Zedong, Oswald Wiener--to complement the survey of the art of the period. With essays by Philip Ursprung and Joachim Jäger as well as a preface by Udo Kittelmann.