Selling the Economic Miracle: Public-Opinion Research, Economic Reconstruction, and Politics in West Germany, 1949-1957

2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark E. Spicka
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Miracle ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Christian Social Union

Perhaps the most remarkable development in the Federal Republicof Germany since World War II has been the creation of its stabledemocracy. Already by the second half of the 1950s, political commentatorsproclaimed that “Bonn is not Weimar.” Whereas theWeimar Republic faced the proliferation of splinter parties, the riseof extremist parties, and the fragmentation of support for liberal andconservative parties—conditions that led to its ultimate collapse—theFederal Republic witnessed the blossoming of moderate, broadbasedparties.1 By the end of the 1950s the Christian DemocraticUnion/Christian Social Union (CDU), Social Democratic Party(SPD) and Free Democratic Party (FDP) had formed the basis of astable party system that would continue through the 1980s.

Troubling Territory: West Germany in the European Airwaves

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-93
Author(s):  
Alexander Badenoch
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Second World War ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

Until recently, broadcasting in Europe has been seen by historians and broadcasters alike as intricately related to national territory. Starting immediately after the Second World War, when West German national territory was still uncertain, this article explores how the broadcasting space of the Federal Republic (FRG) shaped and was shaped by material, institutional, and discursive developments in European broadcasting spaces from the end of World War II until the early 1960s. In particular, it examines the border regimes defined by overlapping zones of circulation via broadcasting, including radio hardware, signals and cultural products such as music. It examines these spaces in part from the view of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the federation of (then) Western public service broadcasters in Europe. By reconstructing the history of broadcasting in the Federal Republic within the frame of attempts to regulate European broadcasting spaces, it aims to show how territorial spaces were transgressed, transformed, or reinforced by the emerging global conflict.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Heins
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Private Life ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Third Reich

This concluding chapter reflects on the development of German melodrama in the aftermath of World War II. It traces a sense of disillusionment with the Nazi “deployment of sexuality” in films and how it had prepared the ground for the renewed postwar cultivation of domesticity and feminine nurturance in West Germany. The return to private life and to puritanical mores in the postwar era was partly a response to the attack on “bourgeois” sexual morality that had been carried out by the mass culture of the Third Reich. Turning against nudity and licentiousness in the early 1950s could be represented and understood as a turn against Nazism. Thus, this “reprivatization” and newly conservative culture left its mark on West German melodramas of the 1950s.

Sport popolare italiano e Arbeitersport tedesco-occidentale (1945-1950)

2009 ◽  
pp. 65-88
Author(s):  
Leo Goretti
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Post War

- Focuses on the sport policies of the Italian Communist Party and the West German Social Democratic Party in the post-war period. Whereas the Pci leadership decided to build up a flanking sports association (the Unione Italiana Sport Popolare, established in 1948), the Spd abandoned the pre-Nazi tradition of the Arbeitersport (workers' sport). Based on a research undertaken in the archives of the two parties, the article analyses their sport policies in a comparative perspective. Particular attention is paid to the legacy of the Nazi and Fascist regimes and the different political contexts in the two countries after World War II.Keywords: Italian Communist Party, West German Social Democratic Party, Sport, Labour Movement, Leisure.Parole chiave: Partito comunista italiano, Partito socialdemocratico tedesco-occidentale, sport, movimento operaio, tempo libero.

From Popular Front to Liberalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bell
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Economic Equality ◽  
The West ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
The 1950S

This chapter situates the consumer boom and suburbanization of California after World War II in the context of the changing dynamics of liberal politics on the West Coast. The rise of the Democratic Party to power in California took place at a time in which a range of interest groups demanding greater racial, sexual, and economic equality began to gain political traction and found that the existing avenues of party political action were inadequate for their needs. The California Democratic Party in the 1950s acted as a meeting ground for a range of cross-class interests searching for political meaning in a suburbanized, consumerist political marketplace. Creating the Democratic Party anew in the 1950s, at a time of a sharp right turn in state Republican politics, set the tone of political debate for the next generation.

Five Theses on German Everyday Life after World War II

1993 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred J. Enssle
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
German Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Structuralist View

To order an untidy past, historians identify and interpret significant pivots in the development of nations. One such pivot in the fractured history of twentieth-century Germany was the period between 1945 and 1949. In these brief postwar years, a remarkable “mutation” of German politics and society began under Allied tutelage. In this interregnum between Hitler and Adenauer, a war-devastated West Germany started on the path “from shadow to substance.” As the Bonn Republic endured, historians started to trace its origins back to certain political and economic structures first erected in the postwar years. Increasingly, they emphasized postwar Weichenstellungen, or turning points, which influenced later events. By the 1980s, this structuralist view strongly suggested that contemporaries of the years 1945–1949 had actually lived through the Vorgeschichte, or prehistory, of the Federal Republic, and of affluence.

Germany's Postwar Socialism: Nationalism and Kurt Schumacher (1945–52)

1965 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Stanley Vardys
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Socialist Movement

Although the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) did not officially abandon Marxism until the Bad GodesbergParteitagin 1959, both intellectually and politically the party's ideology was revised under the leadership of Kurt Schumacher whose “passion, intellect, and will” dominated the SPD for seven years following World War II (1945–52). The final disintegration of German Marxism under Kurt Schumacher can be demonstrated by examining the three crucial elements of Marxist socialist ideology: (1) motivation for socialism, (2) theory of the socialist movement, and (3) relations between German nationalism and socialism.

The SPD, the Welfare State, and Agenda 2010

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Braunthal
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Major Party ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Agenda 2010 ◽  
The Welfare State

The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) celebrated its 140 yearsof existence on 23 May 2003 with the appropriate fanfare in Berlin.Not too many other political parties in the world can match this survivalrecord, especially given the hostility of Chancellor Bismarck,who in 1878 outlawed the fledgling party as an organization fortwelve years, and of Adolf Hitler, who in 1933 drove the party intoexile for twelve years. During the post-World War II era, the SPDreestablished itself as a major party and shared in governing thecountry from 1966 to 1982 and again from 1998 to the present. Ithas left an imprint on the country’s domestic and foreign policies.But in the twenty-first century’s initial years, the SPD, despite beingin power, is facing serious problems of maintaining membership andelectoral support.

The German Party System and the 1961 Federal Election

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Barnes ◽  
Frank Grace ◽  
James K. Pollock ◽  
Peter W. Sperlich
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Federal Election ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Christian Democratic Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Near Future

Each German federal election since 1949 has resulted in a reduction in the number of parties securing representation in the Bundestag. While this trend continued in 1961, there is evidence that the party system is becoming stabilized, making it unlikely that any of the present parties will disappear in the near future. This article examines the 1961 election and its significance for the German party system.The major outlines of the present German party system became apparent as early as 1946, when party activities were resumed on a zonal basis. The principal parties then in the field were the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Christian Democratic Union, and the Free Democratic Party. The last two of these were known differently in different sections of West Germany, but today, with very few exceptions, the designation for each group is the same throughout the Federal Republic.

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