Rejecting Radbruch: The European Court of Human Rights and the Crimes of the East German Leadership

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 653-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Miller
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Central Line ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
European Court ◽  
East German ◽  
East And West

The European Court of Human Rights found no violation of the Convention in its judgement in the complaints of the former East German political and military leaders Streletz, Kessler, and Krenz. All three were convicted and sentenced to terms in prison by German courts in relation to the deaths of East Germans who were killed in attempts at fleeing across the fortified border between East and West Germany. Nonetheless, the Court's decision constitutes a clear rejection of the Radbruch Formula, which served as a central line of reasoning in the decisions of the German courts in the cases. The author addresses the Court's rejection of the Radbruch Formula, focusing especially on the distinct historical and political circumstances that existed after World War II and in 1989.

scholarly journals The Separation and Reunification of Germany: Rethinking a Natural Experiment Interpretation of the Enduring Effects of Communism

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sascha O. Becker ◽  
Lukas Mergele ◽  
Ludger Woessmann
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
World War ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Cautious Interpretation ◽  
East And West ◽  
And Gender ◽  
And Control

German separation in 1949 into a communist East and a capitalist West and their reunification in 1990 are commonly described as a natural experiment to study the enduring effects of communism. We show in three steps that the populations in East and West Germany were far from being randomly selected treatment and control groups. First, the later border is already visible in many socio-economic characteristics in pre-World War II data. Second, World War II and the subsequent occupying forces affected East and West differently. Third, a selective fifth of the population fled from East to West Germany before the building of the Wall in 1961. In light of our findings, we propose a more cautious interpretation of the extensive literature on the enduring effects of communist systems on economic outcomes, political preferences, cultural traits, and gender roles.

scholarly journals A Post-World War II Tragedy: The Expulsion of Ethnic Germans From Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1945-49

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Lamontagne
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
World War ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Ethnic Germans ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Third Reich

Through a comparative approach, this essay examines the cruel and inhumane way in which ethnic Germans were expelled from Poland and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in the years immediately following the end of World War II. It compares the nature of the expulsions in Poland and Czechoslovakia and how this negatively impacted the two countries in the aftermath of the expulsions. In Czechoslovakia especially, the nature of the expulsions of ethnic Germans greatly resembled Nazi policy toward Jewish people during the Third Reich. This essay also briefly examines the integration of ethnic German refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia into both East and West Germany. As a result of ideological differences in East and West Germany, expellees had very different experiences upon resettlement, depending on where they arrived in Germany. The purpose of this essay is to break through the common misconception that most, or all, Germans at the end of World War II were criminals. Many ethnic Germans expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia saw themselves as Poles or Czechoslovaks, and did not associate themselves with Nazi Germany. 

Returning to Stay? Jews in East and West Germany after the Holocaust

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 393-413
Author(s):  
Andrea A. Sinn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Central Council ◽  
East And West ◽  
German Jewish

ABSTRACTTo better understand the position of Jews within Germany after the end of World War II, this article analyzes the rebuilding of Jewish communities in East and West Germany from a Jewish perspective. This approach highlights the peculiarities and sometimes sharply contrasting developments within the Jewish communities in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, from the immediate postwar months to the official East-West separation of these increasingly politically divided communities in the early 1960s. Central to the study are the policies of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, which exemplify the process of gradual divergence in the relations between East and West German Jewish communities, that, as this article demonstrates, paralleled and mirrored the relations between non-Jewish Germans in the two countries.

Post-unification (East) German Documentary and the Contradictions of Identity

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barton Byg
Keyword(s):  
West Germany ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
East German ◽  
Innovative Enterprise ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Individual

This chapter focuses on the three major themes that have helped make the integration between East and West German documentary filmmakers successful and have contributed new strengths to German independent documentary as a productive and innovative enterprise. It first illustrates the phenomenon of collaboration between filmmakers from both East and West Germany, which preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall and provides the basis for unique accomplishments in documentary. Then, partly based on these East–West collaborations, it discuss examples of German documentary's frequent explorations of non-European topics, which challenge the clear separation of European and non-European in both politics and film art. Here, the film collaborations between Helga Reidemeister and Lars Barthel will serve as a case study. Finally, also as a result of decades of experimentation with the nature of the film medium's presentation of ‘reality’, ‘history’, and the individual human subject, Thomas Heise's German ‘portrait film’ Barluschke (1997) is explored as an example of this defining quality of independent German documentary filmmaking in the context of the post-Cold War.

18. Human Rights II: Emergent Principles

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Loveland
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Political Order ◽  
European Convention ◽  
World War ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
European Court ◽  
English Law

This chapter presents an overview of the European Convention on Human Rights, an International treaty originating in the reconstruction of Europe’s political order following World War II. The chapter is organised as follows. Section I discusses the main procedural and substantive features of the Convention itself, whilst Section II assesses its status and use in English law up until (approximately) the early-1990s. Sections III and IV examine the leading judgments of the European Court on Human Rights in the areas of privacy and freedom of expression.

After the Wall: Parental attitudes to child rearing in East and West Germany

2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Uhlendorff
Keyword(s):  
Parental Attitudes ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Path Analyses ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family Orientation ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
East German ◽  
East And West

In the years following German reunification, East and West German parents (282 mothers and 207 fathers) were interviewed about attitudes to the rearing of their 7- to 13-year-old children and about their social networks. Path analyses show that East German parents engage in more protective and less permissive parenting, and that East German fathers raise their children in a more traditional and authoritarian manner than their West German counterparts. In part, these differences can be attributed to the strong family orientation of East German parents (many and intensive kinship relations, few friends). Further analyses show that corollaries of the social upheavals in East Germany, namely closer cohesion of the immediate family and a decrease in the social support provided by the extrafamilial environment, are associated with protective attitudes to parenting and hence with the tendency to limit children’s freedom of decision-making.

Evolution and Normalization: Historical Consciousness in Germany

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Philipp Lutz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Strong Continuity ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Era

German political culture has been undergoing gradual but significant changes since unification. Military engagements in combat missions, the introduction of a professional army, and a remarkable loss of recent historical knowledge mostly within the younger generations are hallmarks of the new millennium. Extensive education about the Holocaust is still prevalent and there is a strong continuity of attitudes and orientations toward the Nazi era and the Holocaust reaching back to the 1980s. Nevertheless, a lack of knowledge about history-not only the World War II period, but also about East and West Germany-in the age group of people under thirty is staggering. The fading away of the generation of victims who are the last ones to tell the story of persecution during the Holocaust and a parallel rise of new actors and technologies, present challenges to the educational system and the current political culture of Germany.

scholarly journals Germany: Twenty Years After The Union

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pete Mavrokordatos ◽  
Stan Stascinsky ◽  
Andrew Michael
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Final Section ◽  
German Economy ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The World ◽  
Before And After

One of the most important events in the world after World War II was the reunification of Germany, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The aim of this paper is to discuss the general economic conditions in Germany, before and after the reunification. This paper is divided into four parts. The introductory section provides a summative discussion of the economic conditions in East and West Germany from World War II until the time of reunification. The second section presents an evaluation of the German economy since the reunification. The third section presents macroeconomic data to illustrate the general impact of the unification on the German economy. The final section offers concluding remarks and recommendations.

Catching-up of East German Labour Productivity in the 1990s

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Barrell ◽  
Dirk Willem te Velde
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Labour Productivity ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Foreign Firms ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
East German ◽  
East And West ◽  
Organization Of Production

Abstract We provide empirical evidence for exogenous and endogenous catching-up of East German labour productivity to West German levels. We argue that labour productivity in East Germany has caught up faster than has happened elsewhere. The sudden formation of the German Monetary Union was followed by large transfers to East Germany, migration of workers to West Germany, reorganization and privatization of East German firms. This has quickly led to a partial closing of the organizational, idea and object gaps that existed between East and West Germany. This paper analyses labour productivity in East and West Germany using both aggregate German data and unbalanced panel analysis of developments in East and West Germany. Factors affecting the organization of production, and especially privatization and `foreign' firms, are found to be particularly important in this context.

Romania

2019 ◽  
pp. 359-378
Author(s):  
Michael J. Bazyler ◽  
Kathryn Lee Boyd ◽  
Kristen L. Nelson ◽  
Rajika L. Shah
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
World War ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Communal Property ◽  
Second Wave

Romania was allied with Germany for most of World War II. Extensive “Romanianization” (akin to Germany’s Aryanization) of Jewish property took place. More than 400,000 Romanian Jews died during the Holocaust. After switching sides in the war, Romania promptly enacted legislation to reverse the theft of property. Little was done, however, to act on these commitments during the Communist regime (1945–1989). Instead, widespread nationalization resulted in a second wave of confiscation. Restitution only began to take place after 1989. However, restitution laws have not been effectively applied, and to date only limited restitution has taken place in Romania. A 2013 restitution law was recognized by the European Court of Human Rights as providing, in theory, an accessible and effective framework for the restitution of nationalized or confiscated property. In the post-Communist period, Romania has enacted a number of laws relating to the restitution of communal property belonging to religious organizations and national minorities. These laws chiefly cover communal property taken during the Communist era. Romania endorsed the Terezin Declaration in 2009 and the Guidelines and Best Practices in 2010.

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