Teachers in the Transformation of the School System in German Unification

Abstract

After more than forty years of the separation into two different states and social systems that resulted from World War II, the German people compelled the GDR government to resign and open the border, setting in motion a process of democratization and liberalization. This was the first ever peaceful revolution in Germany. In October 1990, one year later, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) joined the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) on the basis of a unification treaty (Einigungsvertrag). Five new federal states were added to the eleven old federal states. Organizational arrangements and regulations in the Eastern states were adapted to Western regulations and traditions. In effect, what took place was far less an ‘Einigung’ or unification than a ‘Ver-Einigung,’ where the prefix ‘ver,’ in its usual German sense, strikes a negative and hierarchical note. Those affected, their representatives, interest groups, intellectuals, and the public in both the East and West had little say in the decisions, about the conditions of unification that were fixed by a few politicians and were largely approved by the state parliaments and administered in a top-down fashion.