scholarly journals Industrial Espionage and Productivity

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (4) ◽  
pp. 1055-1103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albrecht Glitz ◽  
Erik Meyersson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Economic Returns ◽  
The West ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Industrial Espionage ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Flow Of Information

In this paper, we investigate the economic returns to industrial espionage. We show that the flow of information provided by East German informants in the West over the period 1970–1989 led to a significant narrowing of sectoral TFP gaps between West and East Germany. These economic returns were primarily driven by relatively few high-quality pieces of information and particularly large in sectors closer to the West German technological frontier. Our findings suggest that the East-to-West German TFP ratio would have been 13.3 percent lower at the end of the Cold War had East Germany not engaged in industrial espionage in the West. (JEL L16, N44, O33, O38, O47, P24)

scholarly journals Germans Suffering in Spain: Cold War Visions of the Spanish Civil War in Fünf Patronenhülsen (1960) and Solange du lebst (1955)1

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Stefan Soldovieri
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
East Germany ◽  
The West ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Since 1989 connections between the once geopolitically divided German movie industries have received increasing attention. This article considers how two films of the early post-war period—one produced in East Germany and one from the West—mobilized in different ways figurations of German suffering and sacrifice. The author argues that despite their diverging politics, the two films participate in a trans-German discourse of suffering that persisted in historically variable ways throughout the Cold War period.

Soldiers, Citizens, and the State: East German Army Officers in Post-Unification Germany

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-287
Author(s):  
Andrew Bickford
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The State ◽  
Smooth Transition ◽  
The West ◽  
German Government ◽  
German State ◽  
German Army ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War

Despite official narratives of a relatively smooth transition, of the merging of “those things which belong together,” German unification and the formation of a new German state has been an uneven project filled with friction and animosity. While the West German government celebrated the “victory” of unification, and stated that all East Germans wanted unification, one group of East Germans did not look forward to the dissolution of the GDR: members of the East German military, the Nationale Volksarmee (National People's Army, or NVA). Disbanded immediately upon unification, the overwhelming majority of NVA officers were left unemployed overnight, stripped of their status as officers and portrayed by the West Germans as the “losers” of the Cold War. For these men, unification was not a joyous, desired event; rather, it represented the end of their careers, security, status, and the state they had sworn to defend. As such, the “fall” into democracy for these men was from the start fraught with uncertainty, disappointment, anomie, and a profound sense of loss.

From “National Style” to “Rationalized Construction”

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Pugh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
German Journal ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Architectural Discourse ◽  
Housing Developments ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Architectural Modernism ◽  
National Style

From “National Style” to “Rationalized Construction”: Mass-Produced Housing, Style, and Architectural Discourse in the East German Journal Deutsche Architektur, 1956–1964 examines architectural critique of housing and style as it unfolded in the East German journal Deutsche Architektur (German architecture) from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. Through an analysis of articles published in the journal as well as primary source documents, Emily Pugh investigates the reception of newly built housing developments in East Germany by a group of influential socialist architects, historians, and critics who were then writing for Deutsche Architektur. Pugh highlights individual architects’ attempts to subvert or resist the control of state and party authorities and considers how these individuals’ efforts might have influenced the development of the East German building economy. She also argues that these architects’ understanding of architectural modernism differed from that of their counterparts in the Cold War West, having been influenced by political and economic circumstances specific to East Germany.

The Failure of the Socialist Declaration of Human Rights

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 318-341
Author(s):  
Ned Richardson-Little
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
The West ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Increased Pressure

In the mid-1980s, the Eastern Bloc faced increased pressure on the issue of human rights from western governments, ngos, and indigenous dissident. Although the Socialist Bloc had claimed to represent the ideals of human rights throughout the Cold War, by 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev called on the leaders of the Eastern Bloc to work together on a coordinated response to this threat and in response East Germany proposed the creation of an international declaration based on the principles of socialist—rather than bourgeois—human rights. Within a few years, however, the project collapsed in ignominious failure as it provided a vehicle for reformers to challenge the status quo in the name of human rights by demanding greater democratization. Although the project was originally devised to refute the human rights claims of the West, it instead acted to spur on the intellectual collapse of the Eastern Bloc’s ideological unity at its time of greatest crisis.

Computer Chess and Chess Computers in East Germany

ICGA Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 152-164
Author(s):  
Ingo Althöfer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Computer Chess ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War

After World War II, Germany was split into four occupation zones, from which two states arose in 1949: West Germany (officially called FRG) and East Germany (officially GDR). East Germany was under Soviet control until 1989. In both states, computer chess and chess computers followed interesting, but rather different paths. We give an overview of East German developments: on commercial chess computers, problem chess programs, the book of 1987, the Serfling tournaments, and correspondence chess pioneer Heinrich Burger. There exist important interrelations between topics. The starting point is a short description of the Cold War situation with its harsh economic consequences for the socialist states, including East Germany.

Islam and the West: Coexistence or Clash?

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 363-374
Author(s):  
Noor Mohammad Osmani ◽  
Tawfique Al-Mubarak
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
The West ◽  
Comprehensive Review ◽  
The World ◽  
Islamic Civilization ◽  
The Cold War

Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) claimed that there would be seven eight civilizations ruling over the world in the coming centuries, thus resulting a possible clash among them. The West faces the greatest challenge from the Islamic civilization, as he claimed. Beginning from the Cold-War, the Western civilization became dominant in reality over other cultures creating an invisible division between the West and the rest. The main purpose of this research is to examine the perceived clash between the Western and Islamic Civilization and the criteria that lead a civilization to precede others. The research would conduct a comprehensive review of available literatures from both Islamic and Western perspectives, analyze historical facts and data and provide a critical evaluation. This paper argues that there is no such a strong reason that should lead to any clash between the West and Islam; rather, there are many good reasons that may lead to a peaceful coexistence and cultural tolerance among civilizations

The Western Connection: Western Support for the East German Opposition

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Financial Support ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
The West ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
East German ◽  
Environmental Network ◽  
The Relationship

Without help from the west, the small East German opposition,such as it was, never would have achieved as much as it did. Themoney, moral support, media attention, and protection provided bywestern supporters may have made as much of a difference to theopposition as West German financial support made to the East Germanstate. Yet this help was often resented and rarely acknowledgedby eastern activists. Between 1988 and 1990, I worked withArche, an environmental network created in 1988 by East Germandissidents. During that time, the assistance provided by West Germans,émigré East Germans, and foreigners met with a level of distrustthat cannot entirely be blamed on secret police intrigue.Outsiders who tried to help faced a barrage of allegations and criticismof their work and motives. Dissidents who elected to remain inEast Germany distrusted those who emigrated, and vice versa,reflecting an unfortunate tendency, even among dissidents, to internalizeelements of East German propaganda. Yet neither the helpand support the East German opposition received from outside northe mentalities that stood in its way have been much discussed. Thisessay offers a description and analysis of the relationship betweenthe opposition and its outside supporters, based largely on one person’sfirst-hand experience.

‘There shall be no musical servitude’: Towards a Multitudinous Shostakovich in the West

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
EIRINI DIAMANTOULI
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

Ideologically motivated attempts to elucidate Shostakovich’s political views and to determine whether and how they may be coded into his compositions have come to characterize the Western reception of the composer’s works since his death in 1975. Fuelled by the political oppositions of the cold war, Shostakovich’s posthumous reputation in the West has been largely shaped by two conflicting perspectives. These have positioned him on the one hand as a secret dissident, bent and broken under the unbearable strain of totalitarianism, made heroic through his veiled musical resistance to Communism; and on the other hand as a composer compromised by his capitulation to the regime – represented in an anachronistic musical style. Both perspectives surrender Shostakovich and his music to a crude oversimplification driven by vested political interests. Western listeners thus conditioned are primed to hear either the coded dissidence of a tragic victim of Communist brutality or the sinister submission of a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’.1 For those prepared to accept Shostakovich as a ‘tragic victim’, the publication of his purported memoirs in 1979, ‘as related to and edited by’ the author Solomon Volkov, presents a tantalizing conclusion: bitterly yet discreetly scornful of the Stalinist regime, Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissident and this dissidence was made tangible in his music.

Stereotypes and Jewish Musical Topics in East German Film: Ambiguities and Allosemitism in Hotel Polan und seine Gäste

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Frühauf
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Jewish Family ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
German Film ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract The miniseries Hotel Polan und seine Gäste tells the story of three generations of a Jewish family of hoteliers in Bohemia from 1908 to National Socialist persecution. Produced by GDR television in the early 1980s, the series was subsequently broadcast in other European countries and met with a mixed reception. Later on, scholars evaluated it as blatantly antisemitic and anti-Zionist. This essay seeks to re-evaluate these prerogatives by centring the analysis of the miniseries on a close reading of its music—a method not often used in Jewish studies, but a suitable lens through which to interrogate the employment of stereotypes, especially in film, and in light of textual sources from the Cold War era often being reflective of ideologies rather than facts. Employing critical theories of cultural studies and film music, it seeks to identify stereotypes and their dramatic placement and to analyse their operation. It asserts that story, image, and sound constitute both synchronous and asynchronous agents that perpetuate various stereotypes associated with Jews, thereby placing Hotel Polan in the liminal space of allosemitism. Constructed through difference from a perceived norm, Hotel Polan ultimately represents a space in which the egregious stereotype and the strategic employment of types meet. Its deployment of Jewish musical topics specifically shows that it is less their dramatic function that is of relevance, but the discourse that they have the power to enable.

The Neue Marx-Lektüre and the ‘Monetary Theory of Value’ in the East German Labour-Value Measurement Debate

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-60
Author(s):  
Paula Maria Rauhala
Keyword(s):  
Social Relation ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Monetary Theory ◽  
Measurable Quantity ◽  
The West ◽  
East German ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
Value Measurement ◽  
Labour Time

Abstract Proponents of a monetary interpretation of Marx’s theory of value (monetäre Werttheorie) argue that one cannot estimate the amounts of socially necessary labour time that lie behind the prices, an interpretation usually ascribed to the West German Neue Marx‑Lektüre. As Hans-Georg Backhaus began fleshing out his monetary interpretation in the early 1970s, he referred explicitly to debate among economists in early‑1960s East Germany about the possibility of estimating quantities of labour value in terms of commodities’ labour content. In fact, scholars who articulated a powerful position in the latter discussion closely approximated the Neue Marx-Lektüre’s ‘monetary interpretation’. They held that expressing labour value in terms of labour time is impossible: the substance of value is not a measurable quantity of labour time but, rather, a social relation. Hence, it is problematic that Neue Marx-Lektüre adherents today should maintain an inaccurate contrast between their reading of Capital and that of ‘traditional Marxism’.

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