East German Higher Education Policies and Student Resistance, 1945–1948

1995 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Connelly
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Political ◽  
Student Resistance ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Higher Education Policies ◽  
East German ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Disproportionate Number ◽  
Socialist Unity

Those who opposed Communist rule in East Germany often did so because Communism in practice strongly reminded them of the fascism they had experienced in the Third Reich. The new East German regime was also one that attempted total control of people's lives; therefore it became natural to describe it as totalitär. Most sensitive to the similarities between the old and new regimes were university students. They displayed stronger direct opposition to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the years from 1946–1949 than any other social group. This is reflected in the political battles that were fought in universities during these years, leading to SED election failures in the elections of the postwar years: 1946/47 and late 1947. The latter were the last freely contested elections in East Germany until 1989. It is also reflected in the disproportionate number of students arrested by Soviet and East German authorities in the early postwar years.

The Production of “Official Memory” in East Germany: Old Communists and the Dilemmas of Memoir-Writing

1999 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Third ◽  
Museum Exhibitions ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Ruling Party ◽  
Socialist Unity

In East Germany, official memory was reputedly embodied in Old Communists, those men and women who had joined the German Communist Party (KPD) before Hitler's rise to power in 1933. After 1945, the Socialist Unity Party (SED), East Germany's ruling party, exploited the tragic experiences of Old Communists during the Third Reich—exile, resistance, and concentration–camp incarceration—to foster a triumphant official memory of heroic, Communist-led antifascist struggle. Intended to legitimate the SED regime, this official memory was rehearsed in countless “lieux de mémoire,” including films, novels, school textbooks, museum exhibitions, and commemorative rituals. Concurrently, party authorities encouraged Old Communists to share their past lives with younger East Germans; in particular, they urged Old Communists to write memoirs of their participation in the antifascist struggle against Hitler.

The Workhouse Dresden-Leuben After 1945: A Microstudy of Local Continuities in Postwar East Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-144
Author(s):  
Markus Wahl
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
State Level ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Social Deviance ◽  
German State ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
East German ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Impact

By using the workhouse of Dresden as a microstudy, this article explores local continuities in postwar East Germany. It argues that this example not only illustrates the persistence of mentalities towards ‘sexual and social deviance’, not least as a legacy of the Third Reich, but also questions the assumption of a strictly centralized state and 1945 as a caesura. In a first step, the article shows the continuity of personnel at the state level, who decided that the workhouse as an institution should have a future in the new East German state after 1945, before revealing that local authorities were also unable to dissociate themselves with the views towards this institution of the past. In the end, the article enters this institution with help of archival sources, architectural plans, and photographs, exploring the impact of this state and local continuity on the everyday lives of inmates in this workhouse in Dresden. In doing so, it contributes to the historiography of East Germany by revealing the agency of different individuals, even if confined to a ‘total institution’.

scholarly journals “… and he flew out of the window on a wooden spoon”

2007 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-193
Author(s):  
Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
The Third ◽  
East German ◽  
The Third Reich

Abstract Translation may be viewed in part as a transfer of cultural elements from one text to another and, under certain circumstances, this may occur between texts written in the same language. This is indeed the situation researchers find when analysing the early East German versions of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales and comparing them with their (same language) originals. East Germany was a country with a mission to overcome capitalist thinking and to create a new kind of society. Motivated by this, the establishment permitted only certain kinds of texts to reach their audiences. One of the genres vehemently debated in the early days was fairy tales and particularly so the Grimms’ tales due to their high standing in the Third Reich. This article explores the first ‘translations’ of the Grimms’ fairy tales in East Germany, investigating elements that were regarded as ideologically valuable and hence emphasized in the texts and those that were deemed harmful to a socialist education and hence modified.

Issues Surrounding the Development of the Neo-Nazi Scene in East Berlin

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Brothers
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Culture ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

The rise of neo-Nazism in the capital of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was not inspired by a desire to recreate Hitler's Reich, but by youthful rebellion against the political and social culture of the GDR's Communist regime. This is detailed in Fuehrer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Naxi by Ingo Hasselbach with Tom Reiss (Random House, New York, 1996). This movement, however, eventually worked towards returning Germany to its former 'glory' under the Third Reich under the guidance of 'professional' Nazis.

scholarly journals Neurosciences in the Third Reich: from Ivory Tower to Death Camps

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael I. Shevell
Keyword(s):  
Medical Practice ◽  
Physical Disabilities ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Slippery Slope ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The Political ◽  
Racial Hygiene ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Third Reich

Abstract: It is commonly thought that the horrific medical abuses occurring during the era of the Third Reich were limited to fringe physicians acting in extreme locales such as the concentration camps. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that there was a widespread perversion of medical practice and science that extended to mainstream academic physicians. Scientific thought, specifically the theories of racial hygiene, and the political conditions of a totalitarian dictatorship, acted symbiotically to devalue the intrinsic worth to society of those individuals with mental and physical disabilities. This devaluation served to foster the medical abuses which occurred. Neurosciences in the Third Reich serves as a backdrop to highlight what was the slippery slope of medical practice during that era. Points on this slippery slope included the “dejudification” of medicine, unethical experimentation in university clinics, systematic attempts to sterilize and euthanasize targeted populations, the academic use of specimens obtained through such programs and the experimental atrocities within the camps.

The Prelude to Nationwide Surveillance in East Germany: Stasi Operations and Threat Perceptions, 1945–1953

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary S. Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Republic ◽  
East Germany ◽  
German State ◽  
Threat Perceptions ◽  
State Security ◽  
West Berlin ◽  
East German ◽  
Nationwide Surveillance ◽  
Vast Network ◽  
Socialist Unity

Many observers have been puzzled by the extent of the uprising that swept through East Germany in June 1953, given the legendary efficiency of the East German state security (Stasi) forces and their vast network of informants. Some scholars have even attempted to explain the Stasi's inability to foresee and prevent the uprising by arguing that the Stasi conspired with the demonstrators. The opening of the archives of the former German Democratic Republic has shed valuable light on this issue. Based on extensive research in the archives of the Stasi and of the former Socialist Unity Party of East Germany, as well as materials from the West German archives, this article shows that the Stasi did not fail its party superiors in being unable to foresee the uprising of June 1953. There was, in fact, no way that the organization could have foreseen the rebellion. Prior to 1953 the Stasi was not outfitted with a massive surveillance apparatus, nor was it mandated for broad internal surveillance. Rather, it primarily targeted well-known opposition groups at home and anti-Communist organizations based in West Berlin. The criticism directed against the Stasi after the uprising was attributable mainly to Walter Ulbricht's embattled leadership position and his need for a scapegoat.

Moving against Disappearance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Richard Giersdorf
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The West ◽  
Pedestrian Movement ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Social ◽  
East German

Nearly a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany was subsumed into the West German national structure. As a result, the distinct political systems, institutions, and cultures that characterized East Germany have nearly completely vanished. In some instances, this history was actively—and physically—eradicated by the unified Germany. This chapter works against the disappearance of East German culture by reconstructing the physicality of the walk across the border on the day of the opening of the Berlin Wall and two choreographic works depicting East German identities on stage. The initial re-creation of the choreography of a pedestrian movement provides a social, political, and methodological context that relates the two dance productions to the social movement of East German citizens. Both works take stances on the political situation in East Germany during and after the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989, although one is by a West German artist, Sasha Waltz, and the other by East German choreographer Jo Fabian.

Building a Rival Fourth Estate: RIAS’s Campaign against East Germany

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Professional Staff ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Fourth Estate ◽  
Personal Investment ◽  
East German ◽  
Socialist Unity

This chapter considers the development of models for news broadcasting at both RIAS and the stations of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). By this time the station had aimed to establish itself as a rival fourth estate in East Germany in order to compete with the official news organs of the Socialist Unity Party. Yet in performing this task, the station's staff confronted a range of apparent contradictions; in attempting to resolve these, RIAS crafted a style of journalism that drew on principles it had forged during the Berlin Airlift: it eschewed neutrality in favor of engagement, but worked to insure the news it broadcast was accurate. It also built a professional staff of reporters who, for a variety of reasons, felt a strong personal investment in seeing the collapse of the East German Communist regime and the reunification of Germany.

Teaching in Vain

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
State Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
German State ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter traces Carl Schmitt’s attempt, in his 1932 book The Concept of the Political, to quell the near civil war circumstances of the late Weimar Republic and to reinvigorate the sovereignty of the German state through a reappropriation of Thomas Hobbes’s political philosophy. The chapter then examines Schmitt’s reconsideration of the Hobbesian state, and his own recent reformulation of it, in light of the rise of the “Third Reich,” with particular reference to Schmitt’s 1938 book The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes.

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