Government, Administration, and Politics in East Germany: A Selected Bibliography

Abstract

Research on the Soviet Zone of Germany, the Soviet Sector of Berlin, and the German Democratic Republic is difficult for a number of reasons. In the face of the steadily increasing importance of governmental and political developments in Mitteldeutschland-as the Germans call the area-no monographs arc available in English and only a slowly increasing number of documented studies in German. Only two West German research institutes appear to sponsor concentrated research work on the SBZ,2 East Berlin, and the DDR, though their population includes some seventeen million people separated from the main stream of German life. They are the Institut fur politische Wissenschaft at the Free University in Berlin and the Archiv fur Gesamtdeutsche Fragen in Bonn. D1)R scholars are conscious of the occupational hazards of social scientists in Communist-controlled regimes and are not very productive of publications. Mainly condemnatory or laudatory publications are numerous on both sides of the ideological border. They have to be used with caution, though some of them include valuable information or insights. There are useful perio(licals in both camps, but in West Germany the articles are for the most part widely scattered. Bibliographies are scarce, fragmentary, and mostly outdated. The East German source material available to the Western scholar is largely of the formal type: the texts of constitutions, laws, decrees, and speeches. In addition, of course, the student of Mitteldeutschland has to master Communist terminology, which adds complications to the German language happily unknown to Mark Twain. He also has to keep track of changing party lines and the fluctuating fortunes of government and political leaders.