The aim of this project is to explore the significance of transnational processes for the construction of national identities with the example of folk music in the GDR 1960–1995. Folk music is an interesting object of study for transnational processes in Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea region because, on the one hand, it is an international movement and, on the other, it is used to carve out its own national and local characteristics. The central question of the project is how folk music was “nationalized” in the GDR through transnational processes to create not only new sounds but also new meanings of central concepts such as “the people” and “nation”? The GDR is an interesting example here because the folk music scene had been flourishing since the 1960s, picking up on international musical trends, despite the political repression in the GDR, and many GDR folk music groups were striving for social change. GDR folk musicians were particularly inspired by Sweden, which is why the project focuses on the connections between GDR musicians and their Swedish colleagues. With a historical discourse analysis of archival sources, life-historical interviews and public sources in the media and in book form, the project aims to show which discourses on music and politics were actualized, which subject positions they made possible and what this meant for the careers of folk musicians.