East Germany Research Articles

In memory of Kristaps Juris Keggi — a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Kristaps Juris Keggi was born on August 9, 1934 in Riga in the family of surgeon Janis Keggi. In 1944, the family moved to Germany and then to the United States, where Kristaps received his medical education at Yale University. In 1966, he became an associate professor at the University’s Orthopaedic school and focused on hip and knee arthroplasty. In the 70s of the twentieth century, Kristaps Keggi developed direct anterior approach to the hip joint and started to do arthroplasty using a minimally invasive technique. Over the years, he performed more than 10,000 total hip replacements with his technology at hospitals in New Haven and Waterbury, Connecticut, and authored 135 scientific papers and monographs. In 1989, Kristaps became a Clinical professor of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation at Yale Medical School and in 2008 was elected a Full professor. During this time, he trained hundreds of residents and became the founder of his own orthopedic school. Keggi was known for a variety of innovative technologies that were widely used all over the world. In 1988, Keggi organized a non-profit Orthopedic Foundation to provide educational programs for official academic exchanges between the United States and the republics of the USSR. For 10 years, more than 300 doctors from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic States, Central Asia, Vietnam and East Germany have received scholarships and the opportunity to learn the basics of the hip and knee arthroplasties In parallel, he traveled to the clinics with lectures, seminars and demonstration surgeries. For outstanding services to national healthcare, in 1993 he was elected a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and, subsequently, the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2012, Professor Keggi was awarded the silver medal “For Medical Dignity and Service to Russian Medicine”. A brilliant surgeon, inventor, scientist and teacher, successful athlete, philanthropist, Kristaps Juris Keggi died on July 4, 2023, leaving in our hearts a feeling of deep respect and vivid impressions from communicating with him.

School maturity and the quest for normalcy: how parental complaints shaped expertise and state policies in socialist Hungary and East Germany, 1960s-1980s

ABSTRACT After World War II, socialist states developed a new schooling system aimed at building an egalitarian society. While there is a solid body of research discussing the relationship between the intent and effect of the egalitarian design of socialist school systems, the importance of school maturity assessments for the socialist project has received only minor attention. This article discusses how the introduction of school maturity assessments developed by experts in medicine, psychology, and pedagogy in 1960s Hungary and East Germany contributed to the visibility of children who were deemed immature. It shows that both socialist states developed institutional solutions beyond the standard school system for tackling the problem of school immaturity in children; these solutions, in turn, evoked different reactions from parents. As the article discusses, parents used various avenues to oppose the official expert assessments with which they disagreed. In both countries, parents increasingly voiced their opinions in complaint letters addressed to the state in a quest to overcome what they perceived as a severe threat to their children’s ‘normal’ development. By tracing parental bottom-up initiatives, the article investigates how parental agency ultimately shaped state policies and expertise despite the asymmetrical power relations that were present in these authoritarian societies. To show the interplay of parental agency, experts, and the state, we employ a combination of two methodological approaches, the sociology of expertise and the concept of Eigensinn, for understanding the spaces of negotiation and the role expertise plays in it. This article thereby sheds light on parental agency and its impact on expertise and state policies concerning school maturity in two socialist states that offered very different institutional answers to the problem; bureaucratic approaches towards complaint letters also varied significantly.

Specific challenges of researching stress in the context of quiet political repression

Political repression beneath the threshold of criminal prosecution is a phenomenon of past and present, predominantly authoritarian, regimes. This so-called quiet repression includes measures such as the limitation of freedom of speech, surveillance of (perceived) political opponents, or the spreading of rumors to socially isolate targets. Such experiences of chronic stress show significant psychological and physiological health consequences in affected individuals. However, societal awareness of quiet repression measures remains limited, hindering victims' access to support and complicating healthcare interventions. In the current paper, we present the design of a study conducted with individuals who endured quiet repression measures in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), a socialist state closely aligned with the former Soviet Union. We discuss the challenges encountered over the course of the study, and present the solutions found. Although every study population has their unique challenges and needs, we wish to inform future sensitive research within the realm of quiet political repression. Given the limited understanding of the phenomenon, there is a pressing need for further investigation aiming to improve acceptance and care for past and future victims.

In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Jewish-Communist Writers in East Germany.By Thomas C. Fox. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2022. 210 pages. $99.00 hardcover, $29.95 eBook.

In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Jewish-Communist Writers in East Germany.<i>By Thomas C. Fox. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2022. 210 pages. $99.00 hardcover, $29.95 eBook.</i>

Normalizing capitalism: East Germans experiencing the market economy during the 1990s

ABSTRACT This article examines the experiences of East Germans and their adaptation to economic transformations before, during, and after 1989/90. It re-uses social science interviews from the 1990s as historical sources to show how notions of normalization, economic change, and subjectivity were intertwined. Unlike previous research on the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the article conceptualizes “normalization” not as a specific period, but as a way of organizing social and economic change. The concept of normalization, as used in this article, allows experiences of both the socialist planned economy in East Germany and the capitalist market economy that emerged after reunification to be connected as a coherent period. Taking a bottom-up perspective, the article argues that East Germans framed their self-normalization as a process of catching up with Western economic normality, thereby aligning themselves with highly contested theories of modernization. From the subjects’ standpoint, there is little to no mention of ideas or concepts of neoliberalism playing a significant role in this process.

Design for disassembly and cultural sites. The use of modular architecture and prefabrication in exhibition venues

The article discusses the use of modular architecture and prefabrication in exhibition venues, looking at the possibility of designing installations with multiple temporalities. Through four concrete experimentations, we discuss ways of repurposing precast modules in new layouts with different functional programs in line with the “design for disassembly” concept. The article also emphasises the relevance of the massive residential construction programme based on modular and prefabricated systems launched by the German Democratic Republic in the mid-1970s, and the importance of reducing the environmental impact of concrete production today. Moreover, aiming at the need to devise new strategies, it presents a research agenda towards the adoption of prefabricated modules or the cultural sector. The four cases presented here are derived from the experimental use of modular solutions by the Porto-based practice SUMMARY: the GOMOS system indicates that prefabricated modules may have a longer lifespan than traditional building layouts, as they can be repurposed, making their reuse economically viable and environmentally friendly; the “Infrastructure-Structure-Architecture” installation at La Biennale 2016 reflects on possible adjustments in the construction industry; the project for the 2018 YAP MAXXI showcases the design process of a temporary installation that becomes a permanent building; and the VR exhibition “The Reasons Offsite” addresses prefabrication as a portable dissemination project.

X. „Eycke von Repkow war kein Revolutionär“ – Festrede von Hilde Benjamin am 28. Juni 1959 im Eike-von-Repgow-Dorf Reppichau

Summary The village Reppichau in Sachsen-Anhalt, situated near the towns Dessau, Köthen and Aken (former principality of Anhalt), is closely connected with Eike von Repgow – the author of the most famous mediaeval German law book “Saxon Mirror” (Sachsenspiegel). The law book was written by him between 1220 and 1235. Based on this fact, representatives of science, politics and justice periodically organized in collaboration with the villagers anniversary celebrations, for example 1934 (700st year of the death of Eike von Repgow) and 1959 (800st year of the first documented mention of the village Reppichau). So it happened that the minister of justice of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Hilde Benjamin (1902–1989), held a keynote speech in Reppichau on 28 June 1959. She was one of the leading representatives of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany during the early years of the GDR. She became famous as a presiding judge in political show trials with court rulings including exceptionally harsh punishments up to the death penalty. This women, who was also known as “Red Hilde” or “Bloody Hilde”, used the opportunity of her speech in Reppichau in order to integrate Eike von Repgow, the Saxon Mirror and the villagers into the ruling ideology of the early GDR. Furthermore, she attacked the NATO in general and the Federal Republic of Germany in particular with propaganda phrases. The text of this speech, representing an interesting example of contemporary legal history, is edited here for the first time based on an original copy.

How language power, white subalternity and compressed modernity frame highly-skilled non-Western migrants in an East-German company: insights from multi-sited ethnography

PurposeThis paper shows the benefits of multi-sited ethnography for global migration studies in management, in particular when cosmopolitan self-initiated expatriates meet a local setting.Design/methodology/approachThe author conducted a multi-sited ethnography to trace how a local East German research organization’s well-intended approach to integration becomes condescending.FindingsHighly skilled non-Western migrant employees who represent English-language cosmopolitanism are framed as negatively “foreign” by corporate discourses and practices. This phenomenon can only be understood if one follows the interconnections of language power, White subalternity and compressed modernity and if one considers the immediate surroundings, the historical context of East German identity and wider migration frames in Germany.Research limitations/implicationsMulti-sited ethnography, if power-sensitive and historically-aware, is suitable for understanding the multi-level phenomenon of global migration and identifying limiting framing-effects on management and organizations. Researcher standpoint is both its strength and its limitation.Practical implicationsManagers and companies can “imagine otherwise” and move beyond the unquestioned dominant frames limiting their problem analyses and, consequently, their strategies and actions.Social implicationsManagers and companies are enabled to move beyond individual- and corporate-level approaches to managing migration at work and can thus take up full social responsibility in the sense of good corporate citizenship on a global level. Global mobility researchers can work towards an inclusive migration theory.Originality/valueMulti-sited ethnography, in particular, one that is power-sensitive and historically aware, is an approach not yet applied to migration in the context of management and organization. By means of an example, this paper illustrates the value of this approach and enables researchers to understand its main principles. Compressed modernity and White subalternity are introduced as novel concepts structuring migration, and language power emerges as relevant far beyond the scope of the multinational corporation.

A Politics of Working-Class Culture and the Culture of Working-Class Politics: The Aesthetics and Activism of Amber Film and Photography Collective and the Berwick Street Film Collective

This paper examines how Amber Film and Photography Collective’s working-class affiliations and Berwick Street Film Collective’s middle-class makeup shaped their divergent approaches to depicting ‘working-class issues’ by drawing on the films of both collectives, alongside archival materials and oral testimonies. By engaging in a comparative reading, I highlight the breadth of Amber’s oeuvre, tracing the development of their filmmaking strategies—which included agitprop, the fusion of factual and fictional formal elements and transnational collaboration with the German DemocraticRepublic’s film production company, Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA)—to demonstrate that, contrary to criticisms levelled by contemporary theorists clustered around Screen magazine and the British Film Institute, Amber transcended the constraints of Documentary Realism by incorporating radical avant-garde aesthetics into their oppositional practice. Concomitantly, Amber’s radical filmmaking is positioned as relative to its members’ working-class solidarities, with their concern for championing working-class cultures contrasted with Berwick Street’s broader political agendas. Through foregrounding this politics/culture dialectic, the practical repercussions of Berwick Street’s middle-class representation of ‘working-class interests’ are investigated while the theoretical criteria by which avant-garde depictions of ‘working-class issues’ are evaluated are themselves assessed.

The Triumph of HUMINT: The GDR Foreign Intelligence Services’ Collection of Defense Intelligence, 1951–1989

During the Cold War, the German Democratic Republic (GDR)’s foreign intelligence agencies collected much defense intelligence from human sources in West Germany. By the mid-1960s, the two services had created agent networks in their principal targets in West Germany’s government, armed forces, industry and universities. For the next 25 years, these agent networks supplied a wealth of varied and valuable military intelligence and scientific and technological intelligence. At their heart was a small number of outstanding human sources. The GDR’s intelligence agencies significantly strengthened the Soviet Bloc’s intelligence collection. The intelligence they obtained was more valuable to the Warsaw Pact than the GDR’s armed forces and would have been of great benefit to the Pact if war had broken out. Their success ran counter to the trend of military intelligence collection at that time, which was to rely increasingly heavily on technical collection.

Ethnicity and gentrification. Exploring the real estate's perspective on the revaluation of a "dangerous" street in Leipzig (Germany)

The relationship between ethnicity and gentrification is understudied. However, it is a highly relevant albeit paradoxical relationship where upgrading due to “multiculturalism” and “authenticity” might be paralleled by discrimination and displacement. This paper takes up the case of Leipzig’s Eisenbahnstrasse as an arrival space with one of the highest shares of foreigners in East Germany. The media has labeled Eisenbahnstrasse as “Germany’s most dangerous street”. Simultaneously, considerable dynamics on the housing market are observed that add to the juxtaposition between medial perception and real estate. Our paper takes up this paradoxical situation and investigates the role of ethnicity on Leipzig’s Eisenbahnstrasse, seen from the supply side of real estate, which is an often neglected perspective. By means of qualitative interviews with local stakeholders, our aim is to understand their role in the revaluation process, and how ethnicity is linked to this process. Our findings reveal a gap between the predominantly negative news coverage and the neighborhood’s actual values from the real estate perspective. According to the interviewees, the image of the Eisenbahnstrasse prevents families from moving to the area but attracts students and artists who cherish the international atmosphere in the area. In this context, ethnicity plays a crucial but ambiguous role in the revaluation process. This paper also reveals how discrimination on the housing market takes place, and how real estate stakeholders construct ethnicity and apply strategies to promote a revaluation, which they consider as social mixing. Therefore, we present further evidence of the ongoing processes on Leipzig’s Eisenbahnstrasse and provide insights into the complex relationship between gentrification and ethnicity.

Earnings assimilation of post‐reunification East German migrants in West Germany

AbstractWe investigate the wage assimilation of East Germans who migrated to West Germany after reunification (1990–99). We compare their wage assimilation to that of ethnic German immigrants from Eastern Bloc countries and international immigrants to West Germany who arrived at the same time. The analysis uses administrative as well as survey data. The results suggest that East Germans faced significant initial earnings disadvantages in West Germany, even conditional on age and education. However, these disadvantages were smaller than those of international immigrants, supporting the beneficial role of cultural similarity. The earnings gap relative to West German natives narrowed over time for all immigrants. These findings are robust to controlling for potentially endogenous return migration and labor force participation. Controls for fixed effects reveal that positive assimilation for East German and international immigrants was concentrated among highly educated immigrants.

Sanat Bağlamında Berlin Duvarı’nın İzleri

Germany was the place where the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union took place, planning to establish an ideological domination over the world. After the end of the Second World War, although the city of Berlin remained within the borders of East Germany, as per an agreement between the Soviets and the Western bloc countries. divided. In order to prevent their escape to East and West Germany, the German administration began to build a wall around East Berlin on August 13, 1961, closing all passages to the western part, telling its citizens that they had a freer and more prosperous life. Hundreds of people lost their lives trying to escape to West Berlin by crossing the Berlin Wall until it collapsed on November 9, 1989. The walls of the public space create a political language and a space used against the system. The aim of this study was investigated in the context of the division of Germany, represented by the wreckage of the Berlin Wall, on a social and political plane. The resistance and political discourse function of graffiti in public spaces is examined through the example of the Berlin Wall. Artistic traces with a predominant protest aspect were investigated through literature review and visual concepts. Keywords: Public art, Berlin Wall, War, Graffiti, Politics, Street Art

Placing animals in the Plantationocene: The plantation after/lives of nutria in Eastern Germany

Nutria ( Myocastor coypus), also known as coypu or ‘river rats’, are big semi-aquatic rodents that originate from South America and were shipped to Europe for fur production in the late 1800s. Today, the animals live in wild populations in many places around the globe. One of these places is the Eastern German city of Halle is where they have been able to establish themselves in large populations along the river Saale. This article situates the history and presence of nutria in Eastern Germany in the Plantationocene. The Plantationocene concept regards the plantation as a structuring feature of our present. In the plantation, humans and nonhumans are separated, hierarchically ordered and exploited along different power axes, so that standardised, scalable production becomes possible. In this sense, we argue that the nutria farms of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) followed plantation logics that resembled that of ‘actual’ plantations and that exploited their forced animal labour for fur production. With German reunification, however, nutria lost their economic value and, in many cases, were simply released to save on ‘disposal costs’. Outside the nutria farms, they developed plantation afterlives, where similar logics continued to exert violence on their bodies, such as in their recent classification as ‘invasive alien species’, but were also challenged in a number of ways. Taking cue from recent discussions on the Plantationocene, this article can be considered as an intervention and invitation to move beyond the plantation in the literal sense of the term, so as to study how the Plantationocene works across different species, spaces and times, while being attentive to its limitations.

Lessons from Germany for levelling up in the UK

This paper suggests how lessons from Germany’s national-level, comprehensively focused place-based regeneration (or levelling up) efforts could be applied in the UK. It draws the direct linkage between spatial inequality and the decline of large-scale heavy manufacturing industry at the end of the 20th century in Germany and the UK. It also posits that rapid deindustrialisation, poor-quality education and other indices of poverty and economic inequality have fuelled political fragmentation — including loss of public trust in government, national and civic institutions — in both countries. The paper explores and compares two sets of German redevelopment efforts over time, in the industrial heartland of the former West German Ruhr region and across the former East Germany, to assess their impacts on reducing political polarisation as well as bolstering redevelopment. It highlights which elements of these efforts have been most successful and why. The German experience, as described in the paper, clearly demonstrates that it takes decades to achieve measurable positive economic outcomes from redevelopment programmes. Political outcomes can also be mixed, even negative, if grassroots sentiment and public well-being are ignored or discounted in the process. In the former East Germany, despite huge transfers of development funds, grievances rooted in the economic and political dislocation of German unification in the 1990s have fuelled anti-establishment politics. The paper also examines how grassroots, philanthropic and private sector actors work alongside regional and federal governments in Germany in shaping positive political as well as socio-economic outcomes and how this might be most effectively adapted for the UK.

Architectural and structural methods for modernization of buildings of the first mass series

Currently, about 100 million m2 of housing are built annually in the Russia. The existing housing stock is estimated at 3.3 billion m2. In the volume of the existing housing stock, a significant share is made up of buildings of the so-called first mass series. They were built in the 50s—80s of the XX century according to standard designs, among which panel buildings predominate. As the housing market becomes saturated, the emphasis in the construction industry will gradually shift from new construction towards the renovation and modernization of existing buildings. The issues of modernization and reconstruction of buildings of the first mass series are relevant not only for our country. A significant number of such buildings were built in East Germany and the Baltic countries. Examples of the implementation of modernization programs for serial buildings in East Germany and Russia are shown. Specific activities and recommendations that can be implemented within the framework of such programs are given, the risks of their implementation and sources of financing are described.

RECONSTRUCTION OF BUILDINGS AS A METHOD OF PRESERVING HISTORICAL BUILDINGS

Reconstruction of buildings is an important method of preserving historic buildings, as it allows to combine the preservation of architectural and historical values with the needs of modern life. The preservation of historical and cultural heritage is a key strategic direction for the development of modern cities and a way of self-identification of peoples. Historic buildings, regardless of their functional, constructive and aesthetic qualities, allow us to pass on to future generations the material evidence of the past, the spirit of the era, and the unique atmosphere of cities. Modern urban planning policy, despite its offensive nature, provides for the maximum preservation of historic buildings and structures, their reconstruction, modernisation or renovation. The only way to avoid oblivion and destruction is to make full use of them. In today's world, countries' desire for cultural self-identification and interest in authentic architectural surroundings contributes to the preservation of not only unique buildings and structures listed in the registers of architectural and historical monuments, but also high-quality "background architecture" - second-plan architecture, inconspicuous, less valuable, but which is essential for the formation of the "image of the city". It is this type of building that most often becomes the object of active reconstruction. The purpose of the article is to explore the significance of the impact of historical buildings on the formation of the urban environment, to study the experience of reconstruction of historical buildings, and to show the possibilities of reconstruction as a method of preserving cultural heritage. For this purpose, the article analyses the practical principles of foreign experience in reconstruction, renovation, adaptation and modernisation of buildings and structures for various purposes - residential, public, industrial, and engineering. The article provides examples of completed projects for the reconstruction of residential (East Germany, Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Norfolk, Copenhagen, Paris), public (Berlin, Brisbane, London, Hanover, Hong Kong, Nuremberg, Venice) and industrial buildings (Barcelona, Riga, MontjuХre, Leshno, Villars de Dalt, Kyiv, Brooklyn, Roskilde, Brussels, Eindhoven, Lviv) and engineering structures (Bankside, Toronto, Dorset, Utrecht, London) that show a variety of architectural and planning techniques of reconstruction. The study of foreign and domestic experience in the reconstruction of buildings and structures expands the possibilities for the effective use of historic buildings, improves the methods of volumetric and spatial organisation of development, and prolongs the life of historic buildings.

TBE In Germany

The beginning of research on TBE in Germany was influenced and inspired by the results and developments of TBE research in the former Czechoslovakia. There, TBE virus was detected in the Czechoslovak Republic in 1948. In Germany, the first evidence of the presence of TBE virus was found by Sinnecker and his group in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR).1 The first virus strains were isolated also by Sinnecker’s group in the early 1960s.2 In the former Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) TBE research started with research on TBE virus in the region of Franconia by Scheid and Ackermann.3,4 In the region of Lower Franconia a virus was isolated which was called “Zimmern Virus” after the location of the isolation.5 Unfortunately, all these virus strains were lost but it can be assumed that they all belonged to the Western (European) subtype of TBE virus.

Complementary assistance: multilateral exchanges between the Soviet Union, China and Eastern European countries in Cold War Mongolia

ABSTRACT During the Cold War, large-scale urban development projects were launched in Mongolia with technical assistance from various socialist countries – China, East Germany (the GDR), Poland, Czechoslovakia and, above all, the Soviet Union. Looking at the involvement of these dissimilar countries to Mongolia, this article challenges simplistic narratives about bilateral East-South exchanges, and frames socialist development assistance as multilateral, asymmetric and complementary. It argues that some of the iconic projects of socialist development in Mongolia could hardly be called products of any one donor’s aid programme, and instead required the cooperation of various providers, collaborating on multiple, interconnected fronts. Such multilateral assistance was marked by highly hierarchical racialised divisions of labour, and created strong interdependencies between various countries involved in Mongolia.

A city of newcomers: Migration and solidarity in the former East Germany

AbstractThis article examines how urban temporalities have come to alternately foster and hinder migrants' incorporation into the larger social body. It draws on ethnographic and archival research conducted in Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany, and focuses on the so‐called “migrant crisis” of 2015, which resonated with earlier migration histories in the region. When Eisenhüttenstadt was founded in 1950, nearly one‐third of its residents were naturalized East German citizens. Yet under the socialist regime, any acknowledgment of their migration background was expressly forbidden and perceived as a threat to Eastern Bloc geopolitical alliances. Around 2015, however, this history reemerged, first at the local cultural history museum and later, in public discourse. This article attends to the shifting positionality of migration histories within the context of the former East Germany, which was perceived as European in a global context but post‐socialist in a German context. In doing so, it reveals how tensions between individual and urban futurities influence solidarity, integration, and national belonging.