Talk:History of East Germany

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The text of this article was funded by the US army. So much for NPOV. Anyhow, I suppose it is biased on some level throughout, but some of it is incredibly biased and wrong. One example is its description of democratic centralism, which is very biased and POV. Ruy Lopez 19:07, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Here's a great paragraph - "The SED imposed conformity to Marxist-Leninist ideology on the educational system, the press, social organizations, and cultural institutions. In order to guarantee the party's dominance within the state, all members of the SED who were active in state organs were obliged to carry out party resolutions. The State Security Service (Staatssicherheitsdienst, better known as the Stasi) and the Ministry of State Security monitored public life with a broad network of agents and contributed to eliminating opposition and regimenting political and social affairs."

Talking about ideological conformity to ideology on the educational system, the press, social organizations, and cultural institutions, we're using a text here that was funded by the US army. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Then it describes the Stasi as some monumental unusual thing, as if the US didn't have it's own FBI and Secret Service running around bugging Martin Luther King's bedroom and sending him threatening letters because he wanted free elections in the United States. Ruy Lopez 19:23, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The key point about the pot calling the kettle black is that both are black... Rd232

And what's wrong with expecting the members of a party to carry out its resolutions? People who have fundamental disagreements with a party should leave it. Shorne 05:52, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You're kidding, right? GDR was for most purposes a one-party state, certainly in career terms - if you wanted to get ahead, you (held your nose if necessary and) joined. Anyway, the German versions of this and related entries naturally have more info and better balance, so I'll do some translations in due course and hopefully we can then lose the dispute tag. Rd232 11:38, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've just noticed that the article doesn't mention the building of the Berlin Wall (though it does mention its fall). Clearly still a work in progress then, despite my cleanup of the financial situation... Rd232 23:25, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Just noticed that the article History of the German Democratic Republic was moved under its title via cut&paste (talk page redirects to here). Not knowing the regulations about this on en:wp, I´d yet like to give my consent for a proper moving. --213.54.223.60 17:08, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No mention of "40 Jahre 1989"

<Mike_H> Hm, all East German history articles seem to leave out the 40th anniversary of the Republic. <Mike_H> They go from "Hungary opens its borders" to "the Wall fell," which makes it almost sound as if protests starting the night of the 40th anniversary had nought to do with it

I'm surprised that this article doesn't even mention the 40th (and final) birthday celebration of the GDR. From what I understand, this was when the larger pro-democracy protests started, especially in East Berlin itself. Mike H (Talking is hot) 16:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

The history is too "economic"

we have to write more about other topics and not only economic one. the death of wilhelm Pieck for example is not mentioned. 62.0.209.167 10:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Montagsdemonstration in Leipzig.jpg

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GDR was a wall, not a country

The article doesn't tell that GDR was a wall, not a country.When the Berlin wall fell, in 1989, GDR became doomed.Agre22 (talk) 22:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)agre22

-Technically it was a state. Not a country, an artifically created state that collapsed as soon as the people of the country (Germany) were asked whether or not they wanted one state for their one country. They did.

Population

It states that the population started at 19 million and decreased throughout the history of the state. So why does it also say that up to 20 million women were raped? There would never have been half as many women in the whole state at any one time; this estimate is therefore completely redundant. Either that or the population estimates are wrong. Can someone please find better figures? Or perhaps this occurred over decades; in which case could we figure out a percentage? It seems to me to be important that the scale of the atrocity is made clear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.151.223.140 (talk) 17:35, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

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Berlin Mauer

Bb 2A01:598:A126:141D:1:0:4F61:9E15 (talk) 16:15, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Paragraph within the 'Reunification' section lacks sources

“The cost of this, however, was that East Germany's nascent democracy died less than a year after it was born, with a set of laws and institutions imposed from outside replacing a set of laws and institutions imposed from above. Any debate, for example, about the value of the various social institutions (such as the childcare, education, and healthcare systems, which had implemented policy ideas discussed in West Germany for decades, and still today) was simply ruled out by this legal route.”

This whole paragraph lacks any kind of citation or source. In my personal opinion it should either be removed, or entirely reworked.

I’ll break down my issues with it point by point.

“East Germany's nascent democracy died less than a year after it was born, with a set of laws and institutions imposed from outside replacing a set of laws and institutions imposed from above.”

This is a very odd and biased framing of the situation. During its 173 days in office, the de Maizière cabinet that resulted from the 1990 elections spent essentially its entire period of existence negotiating the domestic and foreign policy conditions for the East's accession to the Federal Republic of Germany.

East Germany’s only democratically elected government, therefore, existed solely for the purpose of facilitating the process of unification with West Germany.

source: https://deutsche-einheit-1990.de/

While many West German institutions did replace those of the GDR, this was not something unilaterally ‘imposed from above’ but the result of a mutual agreement between two democratically elected governments reached after several months of in-depth negotiations.

Also of note is that following the dissolution of the GDR on October 3rd of 1990, Representatives of the East German Volkskammer were reappointed as members of the Bundestag, following a recalculating of the 1990 east german electoral results, using the new German lander as constituencies. Makeup of the regional parliaments of the new lander were also determined and transferred according to the results of the 1990 election.

source: https://www.wahlen-in-deutschland.de/bovkBundestag.htm

So, East German democracy did not ‘die,' unification was the logical and inevitable conclusion of the government that resulted from the 1990 elections, and the results of East Germany's elections were respected and transferred over into the FRG after unification.

“Any debate, for example, about the value of the various social institutions (such as the childcare, education, and healthcare systems, which had implemented policy ideas discussed in West Germany for decades, and still today) was simply ruled out by this legal route.”

The second part of the paragraph contains another bizarre framing. Both then and now, healthcare in the Federal Republic of Germany is handled by a decentralized system, where the federal government sets the overall regulations, but the regional state governments are responsible for and granted a large amount of leeway in determining their own hospital planning, public health services, and supervision of healthcare delivery within their jurisdictions.

source: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy-center/countries/germany

When it comes to education, schooling is also primarily handled by the regional lander:

“Unless the Basic Law (Grundgesetz – R1) awards legislative powers to [The Federal Government], the Länder have the right to legislate. Within the education system, this applies to the school sector, the higher education sector, adult education and continuing education. Administration of the education system in these areas is almost exclusively a matter for the Länder. Detailed regulations are laid down in the constitutions of the Länder”

quotation source: https://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/Dateien/pdf/Eurydice/Bildungswesen-engl-pdfs/organisation_and_governance.pdf

Therefore, unless direct evidence to the contrary can be provided, I would say that 'childcare, education, and healthcare' shouldn’t be presented as major, or even noteworthy areas of concern regarding the discussion surrounding German Unification. The newly incorporated East German Lander would has been able to (and have) implemented distinct regional policies regarding public health, childcare, and education.

source: https://www.bpb.de/lernen/angebote/wahl-o-mat-im-unterricht/188466/wer-regelt-was-bei-bund-und-land/?p=all Crazymachines (talk) 01:50, 13 November 2024 (UTC)