German Unification Research Articles

Dynamic Synthetic Controls: Accounting for Varying Speeds in Comparative Case Studies

Abstract Synthetic controls (SCs) are widely used to estimate the causal effect of a treatment. However, they do not account for the different speeds at which units respond to changes. Reactions may be inelastic or “sticky” and thus slower due to varying regulatory, institutional, or political environments. We show that these different reaction speeds can lead to biased estimates of causal effects. We therefore introduce a dynamic SC approach that accommodates varying speeds in time series, resulting in improved SC estimates. We apply our method to re-estimate the effects of terrorism on income (Abadie and Gardeazabal [2003, American Economic Review 93, 113–132]), tobacco laws on consumption (Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller [2010, Journal of the American Statistical Association 105, 493–505]), and German reunification on GDP (Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller [2015, American Journal of Political Science 59, 495–510]). We also assess the method’s performance using Monte Carlo simulations. We find that it reduces errors in the estimates of true treatment effects by up to 70% compared to traditional SCs, improving our ability to make robust inferences. An open-source R package, dsc, is made available for easy implementation.

Laissez-Faire or Sensitive Policymaking: The Legacy of Creative Clusters on Brownfield Sites in Berlin

With his saying “Berlin—poor, but sexy!,” former Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit framed the motto for a decade of transition in which the German capital became a Mecca for artists, media industries, and creative people from all over the world. Building on a longstanding tradition of tolerating diversity and as a centre of high culture and bohemians, the city developed a new cultural-political identity from a deep transformation crisis after German unification and the extensive loss of its industrial base. In conjunction with a blossoming of temporary uses in a wide variety of vacant properties, often abandoned production, infrastructure, or storage areas, an intense creative scene unfolded. Since the 2010s, this scene has been massively threatened by displacement due to the changed real estate market situation. Over the years, the city has tried to counteract this situation through cultural policy initiatives and niche projects for bottom-up initiatives, with limited success. Against the backdrop of accelerated development of former brownfield sites and funding cuts in urban cultural policy, the question currently arises as to what place subculture can occupy in urban policy in the future. Based on official documents, books, scholarly articles, project websites, newspaper articles, and own observations, this article attempts to evaluate the respective policies in the city over time, to place them in the context of approaches to a more land-security-oriented policy, and to make clear what role the re-used spaces and buildings from the industrial age play in this.

What works to reduce regional health inequalities? A case of East vs West Germany post reunification

Abstract Regional inequalities in mortality are rising across the globe. The case of German reunification offers a unique opportunity to explore how such inequalities can be reduced, or even eliminated: following reunification, a long-standing life expectancy gap between East and West Germany was closed for women and markedly reduced for men in a period of less than 15 years. Drawing from theory on health inequalities, we investigate the contribution of material, behavioural and psychosocial factors likely related to the narrowing of the life expectancy gap between East and West Germany following reunification. We used regional data from official national statistics covering the period 1994-2020 for 15 regions in East and West Germany. Using fixed-effects models with an interaction term for regions in the East, we investigated whether within-region changes in key hypothesised factors (social security expenditure, healthcare improvements, changes in alcohol consumption, and life satisfaction), have had differential impacts on life expectancy at birth and at 65 years. We find that increases in social security benefits in the East following reunification has been the most important factor for lowering inequalities between the two parts of Germany: for every standard deviation increase in social security benefits, life expectancy at birth increased by an additional 0.20 [0.07,0.33] years for males and by 0.15 [-0.01,0.31] years for females in East relative to West Germany. We find the protective effect of social security benefits also for women at 65 years (additional 0.14 years [0.006,0.268]) but not for men. Overall, our findings suggest that increasing social security expenditure could be an effective policy-based tool for reducing health disparities across regions with different levels of economic development. This provides additional support for the relevance of the materialist hypothesis and the political economy of root causes of health inequalities. Key messages • Our findings suggest that increasing social security expenditure could be an effective policy-based tool for reducing regional health disparities. • We find support for the materialist and political economy approaches to explaining health inequalities.

European construction and the franco-soviet summit in Kiev (december 6, 1989). part II

Since 1990, and especially after the Franco-Soviet meeting of December 6, a large number of opinions, studies, and articles in the Romanian historiography have spoken of a „plot” of the West (NATO & EEC), in agreement with the Soviet Union, against socialist Romania. In spite of this fact, the official documents of the EEC and NATO, the stenographic records from the meetings of the European Council, as well as other documentary testimonies and memorialistic works, show that the year 1989 was dominated by the collapse of the strategic glacis of the USSR and the amplification of the European construction process. The franco-soviet Summit that took place in Kiev on December 6, 1989 represents an essential milestone on the way to the Maastricht Treaty (February 7, 1992) rather than an episode of the Soviet-Western „plot” against socialist Romania. The President of France was involved in a complicated political-diplomatic game whose stake was European unity in which Chancellor Helmut Kohl had to make major political concessions in favor of President François Mitterrand’s geopolitical plans: 1) launching the negotiations on the creation of the Economic and Monetary Union, as a prelude of the future European Union; 2) recognizing of Germany’s borders with Poland on the Oder-Neisse line; 3) maintaining Germany unified in NATO and 4) confirming Germany’s denuclearization. These were the necessary conditions without which President François Mitterrand did not want to discuss with Mihail S. Gorbachev about „German reunification”.

Health implications of housing retrofits: Evidence from a population-wide weatherization program

This study provides the first population-representative quasi-experimental estimates on the impact of housing upgrades on occupant health. We analyze the exceptional period of renovations in East Germany following the German reunification during the 1990s. Triggered by one of the largest governmental loan programs in history, 3.6 million dwellings were renovated, focussing on upgrades to the building insulation, windows and heating systems. Using rich survey data based on the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) as well as administrative records of hospital admissions in Germany, we consistently show that housing weatherization upgrades sustainably reduce the demand for health care among the elderly sample of the population.

Landscape in Transition, Heritage in the Making: A Research Agenda for Understanding Lusatia’s Post-mining Landscape as a Practice of Past Presencing

The region of Lusatia in Germany is characterised by a permanent state of uncertainty – as a consequence of decades of resettlements due to lignite mining as well as structural changes resulting from the German reunification. This article discusses an inclusive concept of post-mining landscapes and the presencing of their pasts in regional discourses, given that lignite mining in Lusatia mainly took place in the settlement area of the autochthonous minority of the Sorbs/Wends. Since the end of lignite mining is planned for 2038, historicizing perspectives such as a World Heritage initiative are becoming increasingly important, leading to a new conceptualisation of the post-mining landscape primarily as a practice of past presencing itself, which functions as a coping mechanism for facing up to new uncertainties, thereby emerging as a new action arena for the negotiation of regional identity, belonging and power structures.

The contribution of employer changes to aggregate wage mobility

Abstract Wage mobility reduces the persistence of wage inequality. We develop a framework to quantify the contribution of employer-to-employer movers to aggregate wage mobility. Using three decades of German social security data, we find that inequality increased while aggregate wage mobility decreased. Employer-to-employer movers exhibit higher wage mobility, mainly due to changes in employer wage premia at job change. The massive structural changes following German unification temporarily led to a high number of movers, which in turn boosted aggregate wage mobility. Wage mobility is much lower at the bottom of the wage distribution, and the decline in aggregate wage mobility since the 1980s is concentrated there. The overall decline can be mostly attributed to a reduction in wage mobility per mover, which is due to a compositional shift toward lower-wage movers.

Indian Buffet process factor model for counterfactual analysis

This article proposes a factor model-based counterfactual analysis. We explicitly estimate the underlying factor structure of the outcome variables and estimate the counterfactual values of the unit subject to an intervention. With the help of the non-parametric Bayesian Indian Buffet Process prior, our approach is capable of exploring heterogeneous factor exposures, and the number of latent factors is endogenously determined in the estimation process. The flexible Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm utilizes the maximal intervention-free information provided by the data, whereas the original synthetic control only uses pre-intervention data. The counterfactual values are estimated by simulating from the posterior predictive distribution so that we can integrate out any parameter estimation uncertainty. We also calculate the posterior predictive upper- and lower-quantile bounds for inference. The two applications, namely California’s Tobacco Control Program and the West German Reunification, demonstrate the usefulness of our approach compared to the synthetic control method and the elastic net model. The Monte Carlo simulation study also shows the robustness of our approach with respect to nonlinear dynamics in the underlying factor process.

What’s in a landscape? Nature, memory, and tourism in Bitterfeld-Wolfen’s post-mining landscape, East Germany

This paper addresses the transformation of the region around the twin-town Bitterfeld-Wolfen in Eastern Germany from a highly polluted industrial hub into a lakeland idyll and destination for recreation and nature-based tourism. From the perspective of local residents of age, the significance of this transformation was fundamentally shaped by German reunification, in particular by the experience of stigmatisation related to high levels of pollution in Bitterfeld-Wolfen in the context of general bias that devalued East German subjectivities in the course of German reunification. As I detail through both historical and ethnographic research, I show how mine restoration and the clean-up of contaminated sites have subsequently acquired meaning beyond ecological recovery and the improvement of public health. Tied up with the uncertainties and ambivalences of the transformation of East Germany and its integration into a West German entity, I demonstrate how the (im)possibility of restoring a destroyed landscape became inseparable from the postulated need of fundamental recovery of an East German region and its inhabitants from, so-perceived, socialist ruination. Consequently, I argue, the clean-up of contaminated sites and the remediation of a large open-cast mine in (former) East Germany produced not only an idyllic post-mining landscape, but a post-socialist one. Furthermore, as an archive of local history, the restored landscape became a way for elderly people to re-appropriate their past through its transformation into a remarkable present. In tracing this contested history, this paper contributes to landscape-centred analyses of post-socialist transformations in Europe.

Socialism's legacy: the impact of political socialization on citizens’ conceptions of democracy

ABSTRACT Political culture literature asserts that congruence between the existing democratic system and citizens’ views and expectations of democracy is crucial for democratic stability. Consequently, citizens’ conceptions of democracy not only influence political attitudes or vote choice, but also the endurance of democracy. For the German case, research has shown that differences in political socialization in East and West have caused differences in what conceptions of democracy citizens hold, suggesting that attitudes of young generations socialized in re-unified Germany are converging. However, persistent disparities between East and West and a surge in support for the right-wing populist AfD, especially in East Germany, raise the questions of how sustainable political socialization effects are, and how a populist conception of democracy might be related to political socialization. Using ESS 10 data, the article tests cohort effects on a liberal, a social democratic, and a populist understanding of democracy in Germany. The results show that cohorts socialized in a socialist system are more committed to a socialist, but also to a populist conception of democracy, while attitudes of young people are indeed converging.

Information science in the German Democratic Republic

PurposeThe article aims to give an overview of the history and the achieved status of information science in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with an emphasis on the organisation of information science and practice in the GDR and on the theoretical foundations of information science.Design/methodology/approachPrimarily, this article is based upon critical literature studies, especially German-language books and journal articles, but the empirical basis also includes some unpublished sources (e.g. letters from information scientists from the GDR).FindingsThere are interesting results concerning the roots of information science in cybernetics, philosophy and the practical area of documentation. The naming of this knowledge field as “informatics”, “informatics of science” or “information and documentation science” is partly very distinct from Western conceptions. We found different theoretical foundations for information science including the approaches of Bonitz, Engelbert, Koblitz and Groß and Fuchs-Kittowski. In the GDR, information science and information practice were centralised, but through the information system science and technology, they were consistently accessible at all levels of professional work. With German reunification, information practice and its institutions, as well as GDR’s information science efforts, disappeared.Research limitations/implicationsThe article gives hints on the importance on and the survival of some GDR approaches in contemporary information science, but those developments should be analysed in much more detail.Originality/valueThis is the first overview article on the state and entire development of information science in the GDR.

Educational Policy and Activities of East India Company (1600-1765)

Abstract: The 19th century witnessed a profound transformation in the political landscape of many regions, characterized by the rise of nationalism and the subsequent formation of nation-states. This research work delves into the historical context, key drivers, and consequences of this significant historical phenomenon. The research offers light on a crucial time in global history by investigating the causes of nationalism and its effects on the formation of nation-states. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, the research draws from historical, political, and sociocultural perspectives to analyze the rise of nationalism. It delves at how many peoples inside established empires and territories felt a feeling of commonality due to their shared cultural, linguistic, and historical identities. The work delves into the influence of Enlightenment ideas, Romanticism, and intellectual movements that fueled the concept of self-determination and the sovereignty of distinct nations. The study also scrutinizes the role of key historical events and figures that catalyzed the nationalist fervor. From the unification of Italy led by Giuseppe Garibaldi to the German unification orchestrated by Otto von Bismarck, the work examines the strategies employed to consolidate fragmented territories into cohesive nation-states. It also considers the implications of these transformations on regional stability, diplomacy, and balance of power. Furthermore, the research investigates the potential tensions arising from the juxtaposition of national identities and existing imperial structures. It delves into instances where nationalism clashed with multiethnic empires, often leading to complex negotiations of autonomy, self-governance, or secession.

German Claims for Leadership: From a Federalist to a Geopolitical Leadership Master Narrative

ABSTRACT Ever since the beginning of the European integration process, Germany’s role within the EU has been a contentious topic in political and intellectual debate. Following German unification, this has been further exacerbated by various crises. On the one hand, many have expressed concerns about power politics aimed at establishing a ‘German Europe’ or a ‘European Germany’, as Thomas Mann declared in 1953. On the other hand, voices across Europe have criticised Germany for its lack of more forceful power politics. At the same time, German leaders have repeatedly pledged to assume greater responsibility after being accused of showing insufficient commitment, no doubt borne out of pacifist sentiments, reflecting the dark shadow of Germany’s history. In this paper, we examine not only how the coalition government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz that came into office in 2021 has articulated a tacit and increasingly explicit claim for leadership, but also how the Chancellor has transformed his narrative in line with the ‘Zeitenwende’ following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We argue that the key to understanding Germany as a driving force is its remarkable shift from a federalist narrative to an adapted geopolitical, security-driven master narrative covering a broad set of policy fields.

Unfinished German Unification. Reflecting on 30 Years of German Unity

Unfinished German Unification. Reflecting on 30 Years of German Unity

Trajectories of Satisfaction with Life Following a Collective, Critical Life Event and Their Relationship with Sociodemographic Factors and Internal Migration: The Example of the German Reunification 1989/90

There are considerable interindividual differences in adjustment processes in satisfaction with life (SWL) following critical life events. We focused on a collective life event, the German reunification in 1989/90, which prompted fundamental changes in the political, social, and economic conditions to investigate the heterogeneity of short- and long-term trajectories of SWL and their association with sociodemographic factors and internal migration. Using data (short-term: 1990–1994, long-term: 1990–2019) from the German Socioeconomic Panel (N = 5548), we applied growth mixture modelling with categorical time for short-term and continuous (quadratic) time for long-term trajectories. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine associations of the trajectories with internal migration (West German (reference)/East German non-migrants, East-West/West-East migrants), baseline characteristics (sex, age, education, marital status, employment status, household income) and changes (becoming not employed, becoming divorced/separated, change in household income). The best models indicated four classes both long- and short-term, with the majority showing high stable SWL (86.7% (short-term) vs. 62.3% (long-term)); other classes were ‘improvement’ (2.5%, vs. 16.4%), ‘decline-improvement’ (5.2% vs. 9.4%), and ‘decline’ (5.6% vs. 11.9%). For short-term trajectories, East German non-migrants and East-West migrants were more likely to show unstable trajectories. Long-term, both East German non-migrants and East-West migrants had higher odds of increasing SWL, whereas West-East migrants had higher chances for decline-improvement. Differential associations with baseline sociodemographic characteristics and changes thereof were found. The study highlights distinct SWL trajectories following the collective event of German reunification. These trajectories vary based on short- versus long-term perspectives, sociodemographic background, and internal migration patterns.

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.

The Intellectual Class and the Rise of German Cultural Nationalism

German cultural nationalism emerged in the context of the invasion of French culture. This cultural nationalism was different from the nationalism represented by Britain and France, which focused on the expression of nationalism from the cultural level, and made use of cultural connection and unity to achieve the establishment of a nation state. In the 17th and 18th centuries, French culture invaded Germany in all aspects, and the aristocrat and the middle classes of the German states were proud of speaking French, while German was neglected as a national language. Against the background of the political and economic unification of the German region, a group of Deutsch intellectuals began to actively propagate and promote the German culture and language, hoping to establish a unified German national identity from the cultural identity to complete the unification of the country, and to make the German state regain its historical glory. The subsequent historical development proved that German cultural nationalism became the foundation stone of German unification. After the Napoleonic Wars, German cultural nationalism was further transformed into German political democracy, and Prussia finally completed the unification. How did German cultural nationalism emerge from all this, and what was the role of the German intellectual class in it? By studying this period of history, this paper is able to further understand the intricate international context and international situation in Western Europe at that time. At the same time, it draws on the positive factors of German cultural development.

The <i>Krabat</i> Motif in the Songs and Musicals of <i>Liedermacher</i> Gerhard Gundermann

This article looks at Gerhard Gundermann’s use of the Krabat motif from Jurij Brězan’s novel Krabat or the Transformation of the World in his Liedertheater productions with Brigade Feuerstein in the GDR and, post-unification, in his solo songs. From Hoyerswerda in South-East Germany, Gundermann was simultaneously an open-cast miner and a singer/songwriter and dramatist who died prematurely in 1998 at the age of 43. Emerging out of the GDR singing club movement in the late 1970s, he relentlessly exposed the ruling SED Party’s monopoly on power in his work with Brigade Feuerstein. After German unification, as a solo performer, he became the mouthpiece of culturally disenfranchised East Germans. Twenty-five years after his death—in the wake of renewed interest in this performer as evidenced by Andreas Dresen’s film Gundermann (2018) and Grit Lemke’s documentary Gundermann Revier (2019)—it is time for a proper academic assessment of his work. This study breaks new ground, firstly in its analysis of the unpublished works of Brigade Feuerstein and secondly by exploring the extent to which Gundermann’s life work was underpinned by the philosophy of Krabat, in its exposing of humans’ exploitation of one another and their environment. In this, one can see how Gundermann created an aesthetic approach that successfully spanned two political systems.

Linguistic representation of the concept BERLIN WALL in German eonyms

The article is devoted to the study of linguistic representation of the concept BERLIN WALL in modern German. The main goal of the article is to identify and describe eonyms (key words of the epoch) that preserve the historical memory of the Berlin Wall in modern German. The material of the study was eonyms selected from the rating lists of the linguistic action of the German Language Society (Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache e. V.) «Word of the Year» for the period from 1978 to 2020, verbalizing the concept BERLIN WALL. The application of comparative-historical and descriptive methods made it possible to identify eonyms representing the result of linguistic reflection of the most important political phenomenon in modern German history. The article provides a linguocultural analysis of the selected eonyms in synchronic and diachronic aspects. The author describes the influence of the BERLIN WALL concept on the perception of East and West German citizens of each other, analyses the linguistic reflection of changes in political and social life in Germany in the critical era after German reunification. The description of the socio-historical contexts of the emergence of eonyms as representatives of the BERLIN WALL concept allows us to characterise the existing linguistic stereotypes in the German language. The analysis highlights the eonyms and their derivatives, which appear with certain cyclicity, linking historical events with each other and characterising the dynamic development of society and language. The unfolding of the meanings projected in the eonyms allows us to identify the most significant historical events reflected in the concept of BERLIN WALL, to interpret the differences in communicative behaviour between the inhabitants of East and West Germany.