Authoritarian Regimes and the “Everyday Time”

This chapter examines how the German Democratic Republic (GDR) used law to shape citizens’ everyday experiences of time, morality, and community. Focusing on the 1953 trial of Greta Wolff, a midwife accused of embezzling common property under the 1952 Law on the Protection of Common Property ( Volkseigentumsschutzgesetz ), it explores how the socialist regime transformed ordinary infractions into moral and political offenses against the state. The case reveals how the GDR's concept of legality was intertwined with a particular “historicity of the indisputable rule” – a temporal narrative portraying socialism as the inevitable course of history. Through this lens, law became both a moral weapon and a means of enforcing conformity, defining loyalty and dissent in temporal rather than merely legal terms. Yet, Wolff's case also illustrates the persistence of local solidarity and subtle resistance within rural communities, where moral reputation and communal bonds mediated the impact of state power. By tracing the intersections between property, justice, and temporality, the chapter argues that authoritarian regimes sustain themselves not only through coercion, but by colonizing everyday time – transforming legality into a lived experience of historical inevitability.