Cultural Transmission Versus Perceptions of the Economy

1996 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT ROHRSCHNEIDER
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
German Economy ◽  
West Germany ◽  
West German Economy ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Values ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Economic Culture ◽  
Social Market

The formal division of Germany in 1949 and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 demarcate a monumental quasi-experiment. Whereas the political culture aspects of this experiment have been studied extensively, the implications of these events for the economic culture in West and East Germany have received less attention. This article attempts to fill this gap in scholarship by examining the basic economic values of parliamentarians in East and West Germany. To this end, I interviewed 168 parliamentarians from the united Parliament in Berlin (79 from the East, 89 from the West). The study finds that the socialist order successfully imbued East MPs with socialist economic values—especially among the postwar cohort—independent of MPs' evaluation of contemporary economic conditions. In contrast, West MPs' economic values reflect the social market system of the West German economy. These results suggest that basic institutional arrangements, once put into place, have a substantial influence on individuals' ideological predispositions.

scholarly journals Hidden Behind the Wall: West German State Building and the Emergence of the Iron Curtain

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 506-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sagi Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
German Economy ◽  
State Building ◽  
West Germany ◽  
State Agencies ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
German State ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
East German

It is widely accepted that the inter-German border was constructed by East German authorities to halt the emigration to the west, which had damaged the East German economy and undermined the East German state agencies' power. This article argues that this is an inaccurate understanding, which mistakenly treats perceptions and insights gained from studying the Berlin Wall as representative of the mostly rural border between East and West Germany. It emphasizes crucial transformations of frontier society during the 1950s, highlighting the important role of western as well as eastern policy in shaping them.

scholarly journals Form Follows Function

2020 ◽  
pp. 10-49
Author(s):  
Katrin Schreiter
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Design ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
The West ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Economic Culture ◽  
East And West

This chapter looks at immediate postwar economic culture in both East and West Germany. It starts by looking at German modoernism in the postwar period. Historical scholarship on German industrial design has established that aesthetics did not change very much from 1925 to 1965. The chapter looks then at the different developments in culture and aesthetics in the East compared to the West. It considers the rise and crisis of functionalism and how German design reacted to this.

Human Capital, Job Tasks and Technology in East Germany After Reunification

2007 ◽  
Vol 201 ◽  
pp. 97-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Spitz-Oener
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The West ◽  
Job Tasks ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
East German ◽  
Surprising Finding

At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, employees in East Germany were at least as well educated as employees in West Germany in terms of formal educational qualifications. However, it is unclear to what extent the skills and knowledge acquired through the East German education system, and through employment in a socialist labour market, are transferable to the new market-based economy. This study aims to shed light on this issue by giving a comprehensive description of the work of those employees who remained employed after the first phase of restructuring (i.e. in 1991) in East Germany, and comparing it with work in West Germany. Overall, the similarity between workplaces in East and West Germany soon after reunicication is striking. In addition, the patterns of task changes between 1991 and 1999 were very similar in both parts of Germany. Neither the level of task inputs in1991 nor the changes in task inputs between 1991 and 1999 were driven by cohort effects, a surprising finding given how differently the age groups were affected by the historical event. The Largest difference between the east and the west exists in terms of workplace computerisation. Although East Germany has caught up rapidly, it was still lagging behind the west in terms of computer use in 1999.

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.

Wage Adjustment, Competitiveness and Unemployment – East Germany after Unification

2009 ◽  
Vol 229 (2-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Werner Smolny
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
East Germany ◽  
German Economy ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Relative Wage ◽  
Wage Setting ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Market Situation ◽  
East German ◽  
Wage Adjustment

SummaryNearly 20 years after unification large differences of the labor market situation in East and West Germany persist. Wages are still considerably lower, the unemployment rate is about twice of the West German level, and the competitiveness of the East German economy seems to be low. This paper analyzes the process of (relative) wage adjustment in East Germany and the resulting development of competitiveness and unemployment differentials. We present estimates of the wage adjustment in East vs. West Germany based on wage convergence and effects of unemployment on wage growth. The central focus of the paper is the empirical analysis of the interaction of the development of competitiveness and the labor market situation. The results reveal large equilibrium gaps for wages and unemployment which are based on the wage-setting process, the behavior of competitiveness and the adjustment of unemployment.

1989 in European Vernacular Memory

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 456-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Breuer ◽  
Anna Delius
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Special Section ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
National History ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Made In

This article is part of the special section titled The Genealogies of Memory, guest edited by Ferenc Laczó and Joanna Wawrzyniak In our contribution, we examine the vernacular memory of the end of Communism and the year 1989 in Europe. Analyzing sixteen focus groups conducted in Germany, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, we concentrate on the question whether the events related to 1989 might have the disposition to become a transnational European lieu de mémoire. We show that 1989 is not a salient historical event for British and Spanish participants, while Polish and German respondents do connect it with patterns of national identity building. Differences between vernacular and official memories could be revealed as respondents hardly mentioned the democratic achievements made in the course of the transitions. A transnational dimension was only found in Poland, where respondents articulate a feeling of neglect toward their own national history. The Solidarity movement is being interpreted as a motor of liberation and Europeanization of Poland and as a pioneer of democratization on a European scale. German respondents remain in their national frame, focusing on flashbulb memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the issue of social integration of East and West Germany after 1990, which they evaluate as imperfect. The strong national bias of Polish and German focus groups raises doubts as to whether 1989 can become a transnational basis for a shared European memory.

The technological strength of the West German economy: better than its reputation

1995 ◽  
Vol 32 (9) ◽  
pp. 9-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dieter Schumacher ◽  
Kurt Homschild ◽  
Florian Straßberger ◽  
Harald Trabold
Keyword(s):  
German Economy ◽  
West German Economy ◽  
The West ◽  
Technological Strength ◽  
Better Than
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