Soviet Zone Of Germany Research Articles

Право на образование в Конституциях ГДР и СССР

The article considers the right to education recorded in the Constitutions of the German Democratic Republic and the Soviet Union, as well as some related norms applied in the Soviet zone of Germany. The author used the comparative legal method, e.g., the method of normative comparison, to compare the education laws in East Germany and the USSR. The state regulation of education started in East Germany in the pre-republic period. The period of 1945–1949 saw a ban of private schools, a single structure for all comprehensive schools, and a stipulation of equal rights to education. The constitution of the German Democratic Republic, which appeared in 1949, enshrined these norms at the statutory level. However, the new Constitution inherited a lot from the Weimar Constitution. The consolidation of education rights in the Constitution of 1968 differed from the variant of 1949. The Constitution of 1968 did not follow the education model of the Soviet Constitutions of 1936 and 1977, which were almost identical in structure and content. Despite the strong influence of both Soviet law and Marxist-Leninist ideology, the Constitutions of East Germany were independent in terms of education rights.

THE LIFE WAY OF THE COLLABORANT: ON THE MATERIALS OF THE ARCHIVE-INVESTIGATION CASE OF GUSTAV YAKOBOVSKY

The article deals period of Gustav Gustavovich Yakobovsky’s life – an ethnic German, a Soviet citizen who initially built his career in the field of education, but during the years of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine he took the path of collaboration. The main attention is paid to collaboration of Gustav Yakobovsky with the invaders as a translator of the SD in Dnepropetrovsk. During his work in the SD G.G.Yakobovsky was involved in Nazi war crimes, that is why a study of the collaborator’s biography helps to understand the period of occupation in Dnepropetrovsk region in 1941–1943 and the history of the local Resistance movement.In particular, the archival materials of the case compiled as a result of the investigation of Yakobovsky in 1948 provide the following information. Gustav Yakobovsky was born on 19.05.1912 in the village of Karlovka in Katerinoslav province in a family of ethnic Germans – descendants of colonists. After leaving Shevchenko Nikopol Labour School in 1928, he graduated from Nikolaipolsky technical school (1933) and the biological faculty of Dnepropetrovsk State University (1938). After receiving a university diploma, he worked as an assistant in the Department of Biochemistry and at the same time he was the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Biology. Being a university student he married to a former classmate in the technical school О.A. Herzenok. They raised daughter Adele. The unremarkable life of the Soviet intellectual changed in 1941 with the outbreak of the German-Soviet military conflict. At the beginning of German occupation of Dnepropetrovsk he got a job in a death squadron (Einsatzgruppe) as a translator with SD investigator Erich Bing, where he worked from October 9, 1941 to March 1942. Later, from the beginning of 1942 he worked as a personal translator of SD head in Dnepropetrovsk (Hauptsturmführer Plata, and after a change of leadership from January 1942, Sturmbanführer Mulde). From March to September 1942, he worked in department ІІІ of the SD, and from September (?) 1942 to August 1943 in department IV of the SD in Dnipropetrovsk.During the period of service he translated interrogations of arrested Soviet citizens, worked with agents, processed information for the SD, went to arrests, and took part in destroying local underground organizations. In Juny 1943, participating in the rout of a clandestine group (Sinelnikovskaya operation), he was seriously wounded and afterwards was taken to Germany for treatment, where he remained until the Nazi regime surrendered. During his service in the Third Reich, he was awarded Iron Cross 2nd class for military contributions and the Wound Badge 3rd class. To study the future fate of the collaborator is a promising direction of the scientific research. His work for the Wehrmacht in Germany, attempts to legalize after the war and ways to avoid punishment for collaboration, the circumstances of his arrest in the Soviet zone of Germany, the investigation and the court in the Ukrainian SSR – all these are the subjects of research in the following scientific publications.

A new beginning? German medical and political traditions in the aftermath of the second world war

After 1945, the German medical community underwent a period of self-examination. The profession’s experience during the Nazi period raised profound questions concerning its ethical integrity and political allegiances. This paper considers the advent of medical nationalism, and shows how, in Berlin and in the Soviet zone of Germany, narratives were constructed to show a new and positive picture of German medicine.

Refugees and expellees in the soviet zone of Germany: Political and social problems of their integration, 1945–50

Between 1945 and 1950 the integration of refugees into the Eastern part of post‐war Germany involved structural changes in the population, response to the enormous social needs of millions of impoverished people and reduced chances for a comprehensive social policy. It is often forgotten and became a taboo subject in the GDR itself that the communist state tried to pursue a special social‐integrative policy for ‘resettlers’, the ideological term for refugees and expellees. The policy was restricted and quickly abandoned during the 1950s but left behind an important residue in East German society.

Liberal Democrats in The Soviet Zone of Germany, 1945-47

The Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD) was founded in Berlin on 5 July 1945 and thus became the first liberal party to be established in post-war Germany.1 Its immediate area of activity was the Soviet Zone of Germany (SBZ) but it harboured ambitions to penetrate every corner of the former Reich. Despite the splitting of the country into four occupation zones an all-German liberal party, the Democratic Party of Germany, eventually came into existence in March 1947 at a meeting in Rothenburg.2 It was however short lived. After two meetings of its executive committee it fell victim to the Cold War and ceased to function in November 1947. The LDPD had

Review of Education in the Soviet Zone of Germany.

Review of Education in the Soviet Zone of Germany.

The means short of war

TWO compelling factors have given decisive impetus to international affairs since the end of World War II : the idea of self-determination and the explosive development of technology. Even the elementary opposition of East and West had to accommodate itself to the world-changing forces set free by the end of colonialism and by the work of the natural scientists. Under other circumstances the antagonism between East and West easily might have led to a wide-open conflagration. Instead, whenever a fire did flare up, it was smothered. The custom became not to solve problems, but rather to put them on ice and not run an unmanageable risk. Korea, Indochina, the 1953 uprising in the Soviet zone of Germany, the Suez crisis and Hungary have been stations on this often bitterly distressing but probably unavoid able road of self-preservation. In the light of this situation, nations now are seeking new rules for the game of international power politics. Yet experience has shown how foolish it is to expect salvation by changing the tech niques of negotiation. Disputes over methods?about secret diplomacy, summit conferences or executive t?te-?-t?te visits? really should be secondary considerations. More than tools are required to shore up the world's damaged power equilibrium. There are bound to be setbacks in the process of finding rules that will do justice to the new state of affairs. East and West have to learn that even a conference blown up so unceremoniously as the one to have been held in Paris does not stop the world, a few months later, from talking about another climb up to the very same summit. Since war is not to be, what follows miscarried negotiations are new negotiations. The world thus will have to accustom itself to continue seeking a balance of forces under conditions that mean neither peace nor war in the traditional sense of the terms. This assumes protecting what each side possesses at the moment. The effort to develop new rules of the game is based very largely on a policy of seeking to maintain the military status quo. At the same time, we know that the dynamic forces making for constant change cannot be suspended by freezing military posi tions as they now stand. The next 20 years will probably change

The Means Short of War

TWO compelling factors have given decisive impetus to international affairs since the end of World War II : the idea of self-determination and the explosive development of technology. Even the elementary opposition of East and West had to accommodate itself to the world-changing forces set free by the end of colonialism and by the work of the natural scientists. Under other circumstances the antagonism between East and West easily might have led to a wide-open conflagration. Instead, whenever a fire did flare up, it was smothered. The custom became not to solve problems, but rather to put them on ice and not run an unmanageable risk. Korea, Indochina, the 1953 uprising in the Soviet zone of Germany, the Suez crisis and Hungary have been stations on this often bitterly distressing but probably unavoid able road of self-preservation. In the light of this situation, nations now are seeking new rules for the game of international power politics. Yet experience has shown how foolish it is to expect salvation by changing the tech niques of negotiation. Disputes over methods?about secret diplomacy, summit conferences or executive t?te-?-t?te visits? really should be secondary considerations. More than tools are required to shore up the world's damaged power equilibrium. There are bound to be setbacks in the process of finding rules that will do justice to the new state of affairs. East and West have to learn that even a conference blown up so unceremoniously as the one to have been held in Paris does not stop the world, a few months later, from talking about another climb up to the very same summit. Since war is not to be, what follows miscarried negotiations are new negotiations. The world thus will have to accustom itself to continue seeking a balance of forces under conditions that mean neither peace nor war in the traditional sense of the terms. This assumes protecting what each side possesses at the moment. The effort to develop new rules of the game is based very largely on a policy of seeking to maintain the military status quo. At the same time, we know that the dynamic forces making for constant change cannot be suspended by freezing military posi tions as they now stand. The next 20 years will probably change

The Labor Force of the Soviet Zone of Germany and the Soviet Sector of Berlin

The Labor Force of the Soviet Zone of Germany and the Soviet Sector of Berlin

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

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.

FRIEDA WUNDERLICH. Farmer and Farm Labor in the Soviet Zone of Germany. (Bookman Monograph Series for His torical and Political Science Studies.) Pp. 162. New York: Twayne Publish ers, 1958. $4.00

FRIEDA WUNDERLICH. Farmer and Farm Labor in the Soviet Zone of Germany. (Bookman Monograph Series for His torical and Political Science Studies.) Pp. 162. New York: Twayne Publish ers, 1958. $4.00

Farmer and Farm Labor in the Soviet Zone of Germany.

Farmer and Farm Labor in the Soviet Zone of Germany.

Recidivism (Soviet Zone of Germany) Case.

States — Continuity of — Factual Division of Former German Reich into Separate Entities — Trial of Criminal in German Federal Republic — Previous Conviction in Soviet Zone of Germany — Whether Such Conviction Constitutes a Conviction Obtained “in Germany” — Liability to Punishment as Recidivist — The Law of Germany.

Trade Marks (Expropriation) Case

Recognition of Foreign Legislation — Limits of — Confiscation — Effect of Confiscation without Compensation — Loss of Business and Trade-Mark — Loss of Trade-Mark in Soviet Zone of Germany — Whether Effective in Western Zones of Germany — Continued User of Trade-Mark in Western Zones

Expropriation (Soviet Zone of Germany) Case

Recognition of Legislation of Foreign States — Limits of — Case Nationalization — Territorial Limitation of Nationalization Decree — Expropriation without Compensation — Right of Dispossessed Owner to Assets Situate in Territory Outside Nationalizing State

The Soviet Zone of Germany

The Soviet Zone of Germany

The Reparations Problem Again

The mishandled problem of reparations and inter-Allied war debts looms large in customary analyses of the wreckage of the European peace settlement after World War I. The seminal source of trouble then was the insatiable appetite of the Versailles victors for “spoils,” joined by the Shylock American insistence on repayment of war debts.After World War II the war debt problem was gently erased, but reparations proved even more troublesome. Although those powers which a generation before had moulded the Versailles Treaty were, under American leadership, comparatively tame in their reparations demands, the Soviets were not. This is readily understandable, since the German armies spent their destructive fury on Eastern and not on Western lands. The Soviet loss of life and resources in repelling German armies from the heart of Russia was truly colossal. The war wiped out hard-won advances (factories, inventories, power plants, residences, tractors) achieved since 1917 under lash and by dint of incredible austerity.1 The Soviet economy was planned and, with its insistent commodity needs, could absorb immense quantities of manufactured goods. Despite bomb-smashed German city centres and residences, German manpower remained, as well as powerful industrial facilities which operated up to the closing months of the war. Any trained observer would expect the Soviets to demand maximum one-time drainage and continuing arrangements whereby some German industrial facilities would be worked by some German labour to produce goods and services for Eastern benefit. This was precisely the policy later carried out within the Soviet Zone of Germany which, if it was not “milked dry,” was converted into a massive pumping station for current product reparations.2 A less self-regarding Soviet policy toward the leading “ex-enemy” country would have been astonishing in view of the substantive drainage from “liberated” satellite areas.

Relief and Reconstruction Organizations

During March, 1947, meetings of the Movements Conference (ECIMOT) and the monthly Bid-Acceptance Meeting (BIDAC) were organized by the European Central Inland Transport Organization, and attended by representatives from a number of European countries and the four occupation zones of Germany and Austria. Major issues presented for discussion included detailed planning of international traffic for the month of April, and contemplated measures to meet certain difficulties, particularly with regard to the shortage of locomotives, wagons and fuel. Plans were facilitated by agreement of the USSR to allow transit through the Soviet Zone of Germany of 90 trains of ore and general freight destined for Czechoslovakia.