scholarly journals Salmon migration and fertility in East Germany – An analysis of birth dynamics around German reunification

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3-2018) ◽  
pp. 247-268
Author(s):  
Michaela Kreyenfeld ◽  
Anja Vatterrott
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Large Fraction ◽  
West Germany ◽  
German Population ◽  
German Reunification ◽  
Region Of Origin ◽  
Regional Mobility ◽  
Deutsche Rentenversicherung ◽  
East German

This paper uses rich administrative data from the Deutsche Rentenversicherung (German Pension Fund) to describe changes in the timing and the spacing of births that occurred in the period following German reunification. We examine differences in the birth dynamics of East Germans, West Germans, and women who migrated between the two parts of Germany in these years. As the pension registers provide monthly records on whether a person is living in East or West Germany, they also allow us to examine the role of regional mobility in birth behaviour. In particular, we test the “salmon hypothesis”, which suggests that migrants are likely to postpone having a child until after or around the time they return to their region of origin. Our investigation shows that a large fraction of the cohorts born in 1965-74 migrated to West Germany after reunification, but that around 50% of these migrants returned to East Germany before reaching age 40. The first birth risks of those who returned were elevated, which suggests that the salmon hypothesis explains the behaviour of a significant fraction of the East German population in the period following German reunification.

scholarly journals Stalin's German Policy After Stalin

Slavic Review ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Baras
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
East Germany ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
German Reunification ◽  
German State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
East German ◽  
The Stability

Stalin's “last word” on German reunification was contained in the Soviet diplomatic note of March 10, 1952, which proposed a peace treaty with Germany. Until the middle of 1953, Stalin's heirs continued to press for reunification on the basis of the 1952 note. The East German uprising of June 17, 1953 (which is commemorated in West Germany, with unintended irony, as the “Day of German Unity“) marked the de facto termination of the Soviet reunification initiative. As a result of the uprising, the rulers of the Soviet Union and East Germany were forced to place greater emphasis on the consolidation of the Communist regime in the GDR—that is, the stability of East Germany required policies explicitly directed toward the development of a separate, socialist East German state. Thus, the uprising and the subsequent Soviet intervention further undermined the credibility of an already questionable Soviet reunification initiative.

scholarly journals Denying Difference to the Post-Socialist Other: Bernhard Heisig and the Changing Reception of an East German Artist

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 45-74
Author(s):  
April A. Eisman
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
German Unification ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Before And After ◽  
East German

This article traces the reception of East German artist Bernhard Heisig’s life and art—first in East Germany and then in the Federal Republic of Germany before and after the Wall. Drawing on post-colonial and post-socialist scholarship, it argues that Heisig’s reception exemplifies a western tendency to deny cultural and ideological difference in what the post-socialist scholar Piotr Piotrowski calls the “close Other.” This denial of difference to artists from the eastern bloc has shaped western understandings of Heisig’s life and art since reunification. Once perceived as an intellectually engaged, political artist, both in East and West Germany, after the fall of the Wall and German unification, Heisig was reinterpreted as a traumatized victim of two dictatorships, distorting not only our understanding of the artist and his work, but also of the nature of art and the role of the artist in East Germany.

Salts, Sewage, and Sulfurous Air

2019 ◽  
pp. 125-158
Author(s):  
Astrid M. Eckert
Keyword(s):  
Water Pollution ◽  
Sulfur Dioxide ◽  
Ecological Restoration ◽  
Industrial Waste ◽  
Environmental Problem ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
West Germany ◽  
German States ◽  
East German

This chapter addresses a typical borderland environmental problem—transboundary air and water pollution. During the 1970s and 1980s, rivers carried eastern industrial waste and sewage into West Germany; the wind blew sulfur dioxide both ways. Their environmental interdependency forced both German states to the negotiating table, eventually producing the ineffectual Environmental Accords of 1987. The western encounter with eastern pollution through the interface of the inter-German border confronted West German authorities with early signs of East Germany’s dissolution. While they failed to grasp the message, their experience with East German pollution and the futile diplomatic efforts to curb it nonetheless generated the knowledge about the nature and extent of the GDR’s environmental problems that became the prerequisite for the post-1990 ecological restoration of East Germany.

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.

scholarly journals Realism, Pansophy and Mentality in the Work of the Czech and World Pedagogue J.A. Comenius: An Analysis of Three Fundamental German Works and Their Significance for International Comeniology

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dietmar Waterkamp
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
World View ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Theoretical Structure ◽  
International Reputation ◽  
East German ◽  
Teacher Trainer

Three fundamental scientific works on the pedagogy of Comenius will be considered from newperspectives. These are the works of the East German comeniologist Franz Hofmann and the two WestGerman comeniologists, Klaus Schaller and Andreas Lischewski. Germany has produced numerous scientific analyses of Comenius since 1945, but these three habilitation theses were selected for comparative analysis because their authors gained an international reputation as comeniologists through these works. By illuminating the different views of Comenius, new aspects of his world view and pedagogy can be carved out. Differences arise not only due to certain peculiarities of Comeniology between East Germany and West Germany, but also between Protestant and Roman Catholic interpretations. Each of the three works describes the pedagogy of Comenius from its own perspective. Hofmann wrote as a historian of pedagogy and at the same time as a teacher-trainer who passes on the intellectual heritage to a younger generation of pedagogues; Schaller wrote as a pedagogue and philosopher who provided a philosophical deepening of Comenius' pedagogy; Lischewski, as a younger scientist, undertook a scientific-critical effort to delve into the hidden theoretical structure of Comenius' work. A look at the three works shows that there are still unresolved questions despite the renewed upswing in Comenius research since the 20th century.

scholarly journals Undoing Gender with Institutions: Lessons from the German Division and Reunification

2020 ◽  
Vol 130 (629) ◽  
pp. 1445-1470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quentin Lippmann ◽  
Alexandre Georgieff ◽  
Claudia Senik
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Household Income ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
East Germany ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Male Breadwinner ◽  
East German

Abstract Using the 41-year division of Germany as a natural experiment, we show that the German Democratic Republic’s gender-equal institutions created a culture that has undone the male breadwinner norm and its consequences. Since reunification, East Germany still differs from West Germany not only because of its higher female contribution to household income, but also because East German women can earn more than their husbands without having to increase their number of housework hours, put their marriage at risk or withdraw from the labour market. By contrast, the norm of higher male income, and its consequences, are still prevalent in West Germany.

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.

How Udo Wanted to Save the World in ‘Erich's Lamp Shop’: Lindenberg's Concert in Honecker's East Berlin, the NATO Double-Track Decision and Communist Economic Woes

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
LORENZ M. LÜTHI
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
East Germany ◽  
West Germany ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
East German ◽  
Peace Activist ◽  
Nuclear Missiles ◽  
Double Track

AbstractThe concert given by the West German rock star Udo Lindenberg in East Berlin on 25 October 1983 links cultural, political, diplomatic and economic history. The East German regime had banned performances by the anti-nuclear peace activist and musician since the 1970s, but eventually allowed a concert, hoping to prevent the deployment of American nuclear missiles in West Germany. In allowing this event, however, East Germany neither prevented the implementation of the NATO double-track decision of 1979 nor succeeded in controlling the political messages of the impertinent musician. Desperate for economic aid from the West, East Germany decided to cancel a promised Lindenberg tour in 1984, causing widespread disillusionment among his fans in the country.

scholarly journals Where is the Hoechst Insulin?: The Role of Diabetics and Their Doctors as Consumers During the German Democratic Republic’s Autarkic Policy of ‘Making Free From Disturbance’, 1961–1966

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 924-945
Author(s):  
Kathrin A Hiepko
Keyword(s):  
West Germany ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Medical Ethos ◽  
East German ◽  
Insulin Dependent ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
German Diabetes

Summary This article examines the treatment of the chronic disease, diabetes mellitus, during and immediately after the German Democratic Republic (GDR)’s autarkic policy of Störfreimachung, literally translated as ‘making free from disturbance’. I look specifically at an insulin favoured by East German diabetes specialists and their patients delivered from the West German pharmaceutical company, Hoechst AG, and the consequences of preventing this insulin from being imported. By using insulin as a case study, a medication necessary for the survival of insulin-dependent diabetics, the article offers a close analysis of the complex relationship between ordinary citizens, medical professionals and the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) following the building of the Berlin Wall. I argue that the intense focus on the issue of consumption in the competition between the GDR and West Germany shaped both the attitude of the SED and those responding to the policy of Störfreimachung. The SED regime and leading health officials espoused a highly ‘productionist’ medical ethos that was somewhat at odds with their growing desire to meet increasing consumer demands. This collision opened up ideological contradictions, which provided an opportunity for those on the receiving end of the policy to discredit it, and, by extension, justify the continued use of their preferred choice of insulin from Hoechst. I draw, in particular, on patient Eingaben (petitions) and reports by district diabetologists in order to uncover this trend.

Cohort Changes in the Level and Dispersion of Gender Ideology after German Reunification: Results from a Natural Experiment

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 814-828
Author(s):  
Christian Ebner ◽  
Michael Kühhirt ◽  
Philipp Lersch
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Female Employment ◽  
German Reunification ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
East German ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Modernization theorists’ ‘rising tide hypothesis’ predicted the continuous spread of egalitarian gender ideologies across the globe. We revisit this assumption by studying reunified Germany, a country that did not follow a strict modernization pathway. The socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) actively fostered female employment and systematically promoted egalitarian ideologies before reunification with West Germany and the resulting incorporation into a conservative welfare state and market economy. Based on nationally representative, pooled cross-sectional data from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) from 1991 to 2016, we apply variance function regression to examine the impact of German reunification—akin to a natural experiment—on the average levels and dispersion of gender ideology. The results show: (i) East German cohorts socialized after reunification hold less egalitarian ideologies than cohorts socialized in the GDR, disrupting the rising tide. (ii) East German cohorts hold more egalitarian ideologies than West German cohorts, but the East-West gap is less pronounced for post-reunification cohorts. (iii) Cohorts in East Germany show higher conformity with gender ideology than their counterparts in West Germany; yet conformity did not change after reunification. (iv) Younger cohorts in West Germany show higher conformity with gender ideology than older cohorts.

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