On the other hand, an American depositary receipt, which also represents shares of an international company, lists only on U.S. stock exchanges. The depositary bank will hold the underlying shares and issue an ADR for domestic trading. The Main Task, introduced by Honecker in 1971, formulated domestic policy for the 1970s. During this period, the SED launched a massive propaganda campaign to win citizens to its Soviet-style socialism and to restore the “worker” to prominence. The Main Task restated the economic goal of industrial progress, but this goal was to be achieved within the context of centralized state planning.
The Federal Republic of Germany
Unemployment and homelessness were virtually nonexistent and women enjoyed higher levels of equality than their counterparts in West Germany. On the other hand, however, people were plagued by a lack of opportunities, personal freedoms, and access to consumer goods enjoyed in the West, which ultimately led to widespread disgruntlement that played into the collapse of the GDR. The Wall itself spanned about 155 km (96 miles) and stood at about two meters high. Access to cross to the other side could only be granted at certain heavily controlled checkpoints. In some areas, the Wall was buffered by the Death Strip—complete with armed guards, mines, beds of nails, and more.
- Because women constituted nearly 50% of the labor force, child-care facilities, including nurseries and kindergartens, were provided for the children of working mothers.
- Following the remilitarisation of East Germany in 1956, the Deutsche Grenzpolizei was transformed into a military force in 1961, modeled after the Soviet Border Troops, and transferred to the Ministry of National Defense, as part of the National People’s Army.
- We’ll also take a look at some of this society’s more infamous elements, like the Stasi and the Berlin Wall, and balance that with some reflections on why some still hold onto their nostalgia (Ostalgie) for this bygone era.
- He announced that more than one-third of all party members and candidates, nearly two-thirds of the party secretaries had completed a course of study at a university, technical college, or trade school, and that four-fifths of the party secretaries had received training in a party school for more than a year.
- As Dietrich Orlow elaborates in A History of Modern Germany, “East Germany was the Soviet Union’s most important European ally and a member of the now-defunct Warsaw Pact” (2018).
- Following Germany’s surrender, the Allied Control Council, representing the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, assumed governmental authority in postwar Germany.
Economic demilitarization however (especially the stripping of industrial equipment) was the responsibility of each zone individually. It had close ties with the Soviets, which maintained military forces in East Germany until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 (Russia continued to maintain forces in the territory of the former East Germany until 1994), with the purpose of countering NATO bases in West Germany. A global depositary receipt is a bank certificate that represents shares in an international company.
Political and social emblems
Namely, this is true in light of the crises and shortcomings of capitalism that have made themselves increasingly known in recent decades. By contrast, unemployment and homelessness were virtually eliminated in the GDR and, along with it, many of the financial anxieties people live with in capitalist society. Rents and utilities were heavily subsidized, and all citizens were guaranteed a place to live and a job as a right under the Constitution.
The work of the Chamber was directed by the Presidium, to which the Volkskammer secretariat was subordinated. All of the parliamentary groups in the People’s Chamber were represented on the Presidium, but the office of President (Speaker) was held by an SED member, Horst Sindermann, from 1976 until 1989. After the death of the first President of the GDR, Wilhelm Pieck, the country was no longer legally represented by an individual head of state but by the State Council (Staatsrat). Legislative bills were discussed by the 15 parliamentary committees, while the Council of Ministers was responsible for the implementation of the economic plans and for foreign policy. The first free and democratic elections to the People’s Chamber on 18 March 1990 were also the last, for on 23 August 1990 a total of 299 out of 380 Volkskammer representatives approved the Unification Treaty.
East German doping victim fights for the truth
In this study guide, we will cover how the GDR came into being, its political structure, economic realities, and what everyday life was like for those living in Germany behind the Iron Curtain. We’ll also take a look at some of this society’s more infamous elements, like the Stasi and the Berlin Wall, and balance that with some reflections on why some still hold onto their nostalgia (Ostalgie) for this bygone era. Finally, we’ll conclude by recounting the GDR’s final days and what followed after it collapsed. While at the time, the fall of the Wall was received as a victory for freedom—and free-market economics—the reality is more nuanced. Declared in 1949, the German Democratic Republic was a Socialist-run state in the Soviet-occupied east after World War II. Following protests in 1989, the GDR ceased to exist with the reunification of Germany in 1990.
years after Berlin Wall, East German football struggling
As a result of the Ninth Party Congress in May 1976, East Germany after 1976–77 considered its own history as the essence of German history, in which West Germany was only an episode. It laid claim to reformers such as Karl Freiherr vom Stein, Karl August von Hardenberg, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Gerhard von Scharnhorst. The statue of Frederick the Great was meanwhile restored to prominence in East Berlin.
However, from the 1960s onward, East Germany began recognizing itself as a separate country from West Germany and shared the legacy of the united German state of 1871–1945. This was formalized in 1974 when the reunification clause was removed from the revised East German constitution. West Germany, in contrast, maintained that it was the only legitimate government of Germany. From 1949 to the early 1970s, West Germany maintained that East Germany was an illegally constituted state. It argued that the GDR was a Soviet puppet-state and frequently referred to it as the “Soviet occupation zone”. East Germany was recognized primarily by socialist countries and the Arab Bloc, along with some “scattered sympathizers”.50 According to the Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country – except the Soviets – that recognized East German sovereignty.
Political tensions
After unification, the existing network was largely replaced, and area codes and dialing became standardised. The Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse (Combat Groups of the Working Class; KdA) numbered around 400,000 men for much of their existence, and were organised around factories. The KdA was the political-military instrument of the SED; it was essentially a “party army”. They received their training from the Volkspolizei and the Ministry of the Interior. Membership was voluntary, but SED members were required to join as part of their membership obligation. The first military agreement was signed in 1973 with the People’s Republic of the Congo.
The public reaction was one of anger, when it was revealed that National Front candidates had won the majority of seats, with ‘only’ 98.5% of the vote. In August 1989, Hungary’s reformist government removed its border restrictions with Austria—the first breach in the so-called “Iron Curtain”. In September 1989, more than 13,000 East Germans managed to escape to the West through Hungary. The Hungarian government told their furious East German counterparts that international treaties on refugees took precedence over a 1969 agreement between the two countries restricting freedom of movement.
The peaceful revolution in East Germany and the end of the GDR
- Membership was voluntary according to the statutes, but there was high pressure to join from line-loyal teachers and societal expectations.
- The Soviet Union therefore recommended that East Germany implement the reforms of Soviet economist Evsei Liberman, an advocate of the principle of profitability and other market principles for communist economies.
- Moscow subsequently pressured East Germany to begin bilateral talks with West Germany.
- At the sittings of the plenary chamber, which served as a constituent and legislative institution, decisions were taken on fundamental political issues, including the state economic plans, which had the status of laws from the second electoral term onwards.
Germany was divided following the Second World War as a result of political tensions between the Western Allies (USA, Great Britain, France) and the Soviet Union. Sports clubs were highly subsidized, especially sports in which international fame was possible. For example, the major leagues for ice hockey and basketball just included two teams each.clarification needed Football was the most popular sport. Many East German players such as Matthias Sammer and Ulf Kirsten became integral parts of the reunified national football team. Sports teachers at school were encouraged gdr meaning to look for certain talents in children of ages 6 to 10.
Traders dealing in GDRs often compare the, for example, U.S. dollar price of the GDR with the U.S. dollar equivalent price of the shares trading on the international company’s domestic exchange. Eventually, this arbitrage trading activity causes the underlying shares and the GDRs to reach parity. The trading process involving GDRs is regulated by the exchange on which they trade. For example, in the U.S., global depositary receipts are quoted and trade in U.S. dollars. They’re subject to the trading and settlement process and regulations of the exchange where their transactions take place.
Those who feel nostalgic for East Germany long for simpler times when their lives were more economically stable and they shared a collective identity and sense of community over the individualism of capitalist societies, particularly as the free market grows increasingly crisis-prone. Ostalgie also endures because the east still lags behind the west in Germany economically, due to the decline of East German industry and the long-term impacts of shock therapy. There also remain significant prejudices against East Germans by those in West Germany due to “West German stereotyping of East Germans as backward, naive, and provincial” (Petra Fachinger, Rewriting Germany from the Margins, 2001). To learn more about the enduring effects of the fall of the Wall on East Germany, check out Chris Flockton and Eva Kolinsky’s Recasting East Germany, 2012. First and foremost, the sittings of the People’s Chamber symbolised the political unity of the people and the state, even though they purported to have a decision-making function. Whereas 50 sittings were held during the first electoral term, in its eighth term the Volkskammer sat only 12 times.
