As the streams of Trabant and Wartburg cars bumped across the newly opened borders from East to West Germany in the winter of 1989–90, it was quite clear that there was a considerable disparity between the quality of life of Germans in the two states. East Germans stared amazed at the wealth of consumer goods available in West German shops – known about from television, but appearing all the richer in reality – and rapidly stocked up on bananas, oranges and other delights which had been rarities for so long. Conversely, visitors from West to East experienced with less pleasure the bumpy, pot-holed roads, often still cobbled, the crumbling plaster on the unpainted houses, the pall of pollution, belching yellow-grey factory fumes hanging over the sky, and the ubiquitous, dusty smell of brown coal. It was clear that East Germany had suffered from numerous disadvantages in terms of economic development, and that her modest successes in comparison with other East European economies in themselves constituted something of an economic miracle, though never on the same scale as that of West Germany. But to what extent had the two Germanies developed into different societies in the period before 1989?
Let us start with an attempt to compare the two Germanies in a number of different empirical respects. There was an obvious difference in the question of ownership of the means of production: in West Germany, capital remained predominantly in private ownership, while in East Germany between 1945 and 1989 private ownership of the means of production was to a major extent abolished. According to the GDR’s official statistics, in 1983 out of 8,445,300 economically active persons, only 397,100 were engaged in privately owned concerns.1 This effect was achieved in stages over the years; while, as we have seen, there were radical changes in socioeconomic structure in the occupation period, in 1952 over 45 per cent of the economy was still in private hands.2 In this fundamental respect, then, capitalist West and communist East were – by definition – quite different. In other respects, however, the similarities and differences were more muted. Both Germanies participated, to varying degrees, in the general shift of industrial societies away from manual towards white-collar occupations, giving rise to similar proportions of blue- to white-collar workers.3 The developments in the West were, however, more ‘advanced’ (in terms of theories of development of industrial societies) than in the East. According to the 1983 West German publication, Zahlenspiegel, while in the FRG only 5.9 per cent were employed in agriculture and forestry, the GDR still had nearly twice as many in this sector. (Zahlenspiegel gives a figure of 10.1 per cent; the official East German statistical yearbook gives 10.7 per cent, as compared with 27.9 per cent in 1950). More were employed in trade in the West (12.6 per cent) than in the East (9.6 per cent); and significantly more were employed in the service sector in the West (16.4 per cent) than in the East (6.9 per cent). There were other interesting differences too: 17.6 per cent of the East German working population were employed in a category covering state, education and health, in contrast to a slightly but significantly lower 14.8 per cent in the West.4
West Germany in the 1980s was a more urbanized society than East Germany. While in 1950 in both East and West 29 per cent of the population lived in communities of less than two thousand inhabitants, by 1980 only 6 per cent of West Germans lived in such small communities, in contrast to a surprising 24 per cent of East Germans. Of West Germans, 74 per cent lived in communities of over ten thousand in 1980, compared to 57 per cent of East Germans. The figure for both East and West in 1950 was 48 per cent, indicating the extent to which urbanization in West Germany outpaced that in East Germany. The main growth in West Germany was of communities of between ten and a hundred thousand inhabitants, whose representation doubled from 21 per cent to 40 per cent of the population between 1950 and 1980; in East Germany the comparable figures rose only from 27 per cent to 31 per cent. It is easy to see why pre-1989 East Germany had such an archaic, old-fashioned feel to it: the profile of community sizes was not so dissimilar to the immediate post- and even prewar period, whereas the urban/rural configuration of West Germany had changed quite dramatically. There was an interesting change, too, in the overall population numbers in the two Germanies. In 1939 the area which subsequently became East Germany had 16.7 million inhabitants; in 1980 it had the identical number, 16.7 million (after a brief rise in 1950 to 18.4 million, declining to 17.2 million in 1960 and 17.1 million in 1970). By contrast, in 1939 the area which was to become West Germany had 43 million inhabitants; in 1980 – despite fears in the 1970s about the declining birth-rate, and claims that the ‘Germans were dying out’ – the population had risen to 61.7 million. These figures, and the corresponding statistics concerning numbers of inhabitants per square kilometre, again give detail to the immediate impressions of relative emptiness and sparser population of East Germany in comparison to the West.
Discussions of ownership or non-ownership of the means of production, and of the distribution of population among agrarian, industrial and service sectors of employment, or levels of urbanization, do not tell us very much about social structure, however. Central questions about stratification and social inequality must be addressed also. The German Democratic Republic was grounded in a political theory committed to the eradication of class differences; yet East German theorists admitted that social inequalities persisted, and certain inequalities of status, privilege and income were variably condoned or encouraged in East Germany. Comparisons in this area are problematic. Nevertheless, it seems clear that there was greater disparity of incomes in the West than in the East; fewer people had high incomes in the East, and the difference between the top and the bottom of the hierarchy was greater in the West. Other features than income are also salient in considering social hierarchy and inequality in the East: privileges such as freedom to travel to the West, access to Western currency (and hence hard currency shops), preferential treatment for the purchase of new cars (particularly Western cars), and the all-important personal ‘connections’ in a society with a flourishing unofficial or ‘black’ economy, might be far more important than additional income in East German Marks. The degree of privilege enjoyed by members of the political elite – private hunting lodges with relatively luxurious facilities, personal fortunes in Western currency – were to shock the masses when they were revealed in the aftermath of the 1989 revolution.
Patterns of social mobility in the two societies showed differences which reflected their different sociopolitical systems. In the East political conformity was a prerequisite for career advancement and upward social mobility; or, put differently, political non-conformity would actively block chances of advancement, while political conformity was a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for promotion prospects. In addition, in East Germany levels of education and qualifications were increasingly important. Even in that sphere which is primarily political – politics itself – educational credentials became more and more important further up the political hierarchy. Political commitment was obviously central to a political career; for a career in other areas where technical expertise mattered, such as medicine, science, engineering, economics, it was sufficient to conform passively. Those who in any way stepped out of line, or had politically suspect backgrounds – such as the children of pastors, who might have refused the Jugendweihe or opted for alternative military service as Bausoldaten – might find it exceedingly difficult to gain entrance to the university course or training of their choice, however brilliant their performance at school might have been. There were, however, some changes in patterns of social mobility in the GDR. The politically determined preference given to the children of workers and peasants in the early years gave way, in the late 1960s, to the fostering of talent irrespective of social background; and this led in practice to a tendency towards the reproduction of status across generations by the 1980s.
Political conformity was not such an important factor in West German social mobility (although non-conformity might still be a hindrance, as evidenced in the Berufsverbot cases discussed further in Chapter 10, below). From the 1950s to the 1980s there was a considerable amount of structurally induced social mobility, related to the shift from heavy industry to light electronics and service industries, but there was at the same time a marked tendency for class status to be inherited across generations. Educational qualifications tended to serve as credentials legitimizing the inheritance of social status in a society based explicitly on the principle of individual achievement and aptitude rather than birth and wealth.
How salient were social inequalities and perceptions of social structure and mobility in the two Germanies, and how did Germans in East and West view their societies? Some commentators suggested in the 1970s that the Federal Republic was a ‘classless’ society: regional differences and accents did not have the same class connotations as they did in Britain, for example, and there was, supposedly, no entrenched ‘them and us’ two-class mentality in West Germany as in Britain. This interpretation is somewhat dubious on a number of counts. Leaving aside changes in perceptions of class in Britain, it is clear that to describe West Germany as a ‘classless’ society is misleading. Old aristocratic families continued to lead a distinctive lifestyle and to assert a certain social superiority. Considerable social inequalities continued to persist, despite the relatively high standard of living of at least those working-class Germans in employment. Ironically, however, the existence of the ethnically and culturally distinct Gastarbeiter as an underclass served to make West Germans appear rather homogeneously ‘middle class’.
East Germany was frequently held to be a ‘working-class and petty bourgeois’ society, with a predominantly working-class or lower-middle-class way of life and outlook. There was not the obvious survival of the aristocracy and elite business entrepreneurs in East Germany; merely the thin layer of the politically privileged. How far did the people in this self-proclaimed ‘workers’ and peasants’ state feel themselves to be ‘emancipated’? Marx’s theory of alienation, as outlined in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, had several aspects (alienation from the object of labour, from oneself, from fellow human beings, and from one’s ‘species-being’), each of which was directly rooted in the capitalist mode of production; by definition, these should have been overcome with the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production in East Germany. Subsequent non-Marxist sociological research has tended to depart from Marx’s strict definition of alienation and to interpret it rather in psychological terms. On this view, workers in East German factories appeared to feel as dissatisfied with, and powerless in relation to, their work as did workers in many Western capitalist factories. Moreover, social envy and grumbling about differential privileges were manifestly not overcome in the actually existing socialism of the GDR in the 1980s. However, the high social status accorded to workers in official ideology does appear to have made an impact on the willingness of East Germans to designate themselves as members of the ‘working class’, given the positive connotations this term acquired over time.5
It seems clear that, whatever their similarities in terms of technological, industrial development – measured in terms of ratios of white-collar to blue-collar workers, proportions employed in different sectors of the economy, and the like – the two Germanies had developed into rather different forms of society by the 1980s. How far then did they illustrate an arguable ‘convergence’ of advanced industrial societies, and how far were their divergences based in differences of economic and political structure? On the one hand, despite their different economic principles and patterns of ownership, they did seem to play remarkably comparable economic roles within their respective economic contexts: both were productive industrial economies highly dependent on the import and export of goods, and although East Germany lagged somewhat behind West Germany in these respects, their positions in relation to COMECON and EC countries respectively were similar. On the other hand, their differences in political organization and ideology did seem to have made considerable impact on differences in social structure, social mobility and perceptions of society.
How did people actually experience life in these two societies? Quite obviously the degree of consumer satisfaction was much higher for most people in the affluent West. Increasingly high average earnings, a decreasing working week, generous holiday provision, a very low inflation rate by the standards of other countries, a stable currency and a safety net of a welfare system which survived even the more stringent conservative governments of the 1980s combined to make the Federal Republic of the late 1980s a very comfortable place to live. West Germans became renowned as hard workers who were also able to enjoy relaxing – whether tanning themselves on Mediterranean beaches, or escaping to the mountain air of the Alps for skiing in winter or walking in summer. Obviously, given the range of social inequalities in West Germany, such an image does not describe everyone; nevertheless, life for large numbers of West Germans certainly was materially preferable to conditions for East Germans.
Assessing the situation in East Germany cannot simply be reduced to a comparison of average incomes. Whatever the clear superiority of West German standards of living, a number of factors must be added in connection with the GDR. For one thing, while East German workers had no right to strike, they also did not need to fear unemployment. Everyone was guaranteed a job – whether or not it was commensurate with abilities, training and aspirations. Given the high proportion of employed women, there was a high proportion of two-income families. The problem for many was not so much lack of money, as lack of goods to spend it on. Nevertheless, despite a time lag, particularly in the Honecker era East German households began to catch up with their West German counterparts in the possession of at least some consumer durables. A comparison between average four-person middle-income households in West and East Germany reveals that by 1988, 99 per cent of East German households had a washing machine and a fridge, 96 per cent had a television (although only 52 per cent in colour) and 52 per cent possessed a car. West Germans were relatively saturated too, with 99 per cent having washing machines, 98 per cent televisions (94 per cent in colour) and 97 per cent having cars. In 1970 the corresponding figures for East Germany had been 54 per cent owning washing machines, 69 per cent televisions (no colour) and 16 per cent with a car. The major numerical differences remained in possession of telephones: by 1988, while 98 per cent of West German middle-income households had a telephone, only 9 per cent of East Germans did.6 It might also be apposite to add that numbers do not reveal everything: even the most committed East German Communists would admit the superiority, in qualitative terms, of a Mercedes or BMW over a Wartburg or Trabant.
Basic foodstuffs were extremely cheap, being subsidized, in the GDR: there need be no actual hunger. On the other hand, nor was there much choice. By the mid-1980s East Germans were consuming on average more calories than their West German counterparts, with higher levels of meat, eggs and dairy produce but lower levels of fresh fruit and vegetables.7 Food queues were not a daily event of normal life in the GDR as in Poland, but rather reflected the sudden appearance of some much-desired item, such as the arrival of a consignment of bananas.
The East German economy was complicated by lack of widespread availability of certain goods and produce, accessible only to the privileged, and the existence of waiting lists for certain desired goods, such as new cars. It was also a two-tier consumer society, divided between those with access to Western currency and those without. The former could shop in the Intershops, selling Western goods (such as instant coffee) at high prices in Western currency, which were first opened for Westerners in 1962 and then made available to East Germans in 1974. So-called Delikat and Exquisit shops also sold more luxurious or desirable items at relatively high prices in East German currency.
Apologists for the GDR liked to point to the notion of ‘collective consumption’ as further complicating the comparison. Relatively high state expenditure on health and social welfare was held to offset lower incomes, since private money was not necessary to fund these services. As we shall see, the GDR certainly provided very generous maternity benefits and comprehensive child-care provision. Pensions too were adequate, given the low cost of living. The GDR was also held to have a good health service, although hospitals were not as well equipped as in the West, and the best facilities were to be found in church-run hospitals which were supported by funds from the West German churches, with Western machinery and maintenance. Housing was subsidized, with very low rents, although the quality was not always very high. Housing the population became a priority under Honecker, when the policy of rapid building of prefabricated high-rise dwellings was complemented by renovation of old city-centre housing which had been becoming increasingly dilapidated. As with jobs, although people might not like their accommodation, at least they could be sure of actually having a home.
What were the implications of this rather depressed, but essentially adequate, lifestyle? Given that the majority of East Germans tuned in to Western television every night, they were well aware in theory of the much better living standards in the West – although knowledge was not quite the same thing as direct personal experience of Western consumer choice, as many found when they first visited the West in 1989–90. On the other hand, there seemed little that could be done about this situation beyond private grumbling. A more salient comparison might be with the relatively far worse living standards of their Eastern neighbours, in Poland. On this front, despite growing internationalisation in the 1970s and visible modernization in some quarters in Poland, the East Germans could indulge in a little national pride. As far as political implications were concerned, the provision of a modest minimum meant that there was no revolutionary groundswell to support the dissent of intellectuals when there appeared no prospect of a successful revolution. While many East Germans would leave for the West if they had a chance – and many did so in droves after the opening of the borders – they were not, before 1989, for the most part prepared to rise in a clearly hopeless revolt just because the choice in their fruit and vegetable shops was between cabbages and more cabbages, while the West Germans ate peaches, oranges and grapes.
One of the major tasks to be faced in both East and West Germany was that of the reconstruction of the educational system. The Nazis, as we have seen, attempted to subvert the German education system: they sought to produce physically fit, politically indoctrinated exemplars of the ‘Aryan’ master race. In both East and West Germany the Nazi system was rejected; but the introduction of new systems, new teachers, new textbooks, new aims and ethos, proved problematic. The two Germanies developed rather different solutions.
In West Germany, Allied attempts to reform the school system were initially resisted by the Länder. There was a return to pre-Nazi educational traditions. At primary school level there was the Volksschule. At secondary level, the Gymnasium, or traditional grammar school, which had been such a prestigious vehicle for elite education in the nineteenth century, was retained, along with vocational schools and general schools (Realschulen and Hauptschulen) for the majority of children. While different Länder retained control over their own school systems, there were certain moves towards rationalization in the 1950s. Hamburg, Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein were pressurized to come into line with the four-year primary education current in other Länder instead of the postponement of selection until six years after starting school which they had initially preferred. In the 1955 Düsseldorf Agreement of the Kultus-Minister-Konferenz, there was generally traditionalist agreement not to experiment with education. The theory that the distribution of intellectual ability broadly conformed with the existing social structure, and that in any case the working classes ‘did not want culture’, underpinned the tripartite selective system.8 The failure to achieve early reforms of the education system, and the generally conservative reaction against the democratizing aims of Allied education policies, has since been subjected to considerable criticism in the Federal Republic.9 Nevertheless, certain inherited inequalities were slowly dismantled. By 1958–9 school fees had been abolished or were being phased out in almost all Länder. The Rahmenplan was introduced, aiming at reforms particularly of the Gymnasium curriculum.
In East Germany, by contrast, early measures were designed to overthrow such social selectivity. The 1946 Education Act (the Law Relating to the Democratization of German Schools) abolished the tripartite system and replaced it with co-educational Grundschulen for all six to fourteen-year-olds, with a subsequent transfer to Oberschulen for more gifted pupils. Private schools and confessional schools were abolished. There were attempts to reduce urban–rural inequalities by setting up Zentralschulen in rural areas.10 The notion of common schooling for all children survived a subsequent sequence of changes in the structure of the system. The Zehnklassenschule (ten-class school) was introduced in 1950. Although Oberschulen continued to exist, it was still possible to gain eventual access to higher education via the alternative routes of Berufsschulen and Fachschulen (vocational and technical schools). From 1953 there was discussion of ‘polytechnical education’, with a day a week spent in industry. This was introduced gradually from 1956, with a concerted effort to introduce such a system of combining practical experience of work with theoretical learning in school universally in 1958–9. The 1959 Law Relating to the Socialist Development of Education replaced the Grundschule with a Zehnklassige allgemeine polytechnische Oberschule (ten-year general polytechnical schools, POS), followed by two years at an Erweiterte Oberschule (extended upper school, EOS) for the academically gifted.11
There were considerable differences of opinion on education in the GDR in the 1950s: the SED was somewhat at odds with the Ministry of Education, first under Education Minister Else Zaisser (wife of Wilhelm Zaisser, of the anti-Ulbricht Herrnstadt–Zaisser faction) and then under Fritz Lange (dismissed in May 1956 for ‘revisionist opinions’ associated with the Schirdewan, Wollweber and Ziller group). From 1958, however, Margot Honecker, wife of Erich Honecker, became involved in this crucial ministry, first as Deputy and from 1963 as Minister for Education.
There were initial difficulties with finding adequate replacement teachers, and with reconciling SED (and Soviet) views of education with the reform-pedagogical ideas of many genuinely left-wing educationalists in the GDR who wanted to latch onto some of the progressive ideas of the Weimar period. Yet one of the basic aims of East German political ideology was to a considerable extent achieved: the promotion of equality of educational opportunity. By the mid-1950s, 53 per cent of university students in the GDR were from the working class (which constituted 69 per cent of the population), in contrast to only 4 per cent in West Germany in 1950 (when 57 per cent of the population were deemed to be working class) rising to a mere 7.5 per cent in West Germany by 1970.12
In both Germanies there was considerable rethinking concerning the aims and structure of the respective education systems in the 1960s. In the East it was realized that promotion of equal opportunities had to be compatible with the production of skilled workers required for an efficient economy (particularly after the introduction of the New Economic System in 1963). In the West the glaring social inequalities of the educational system became a matter of public concern, and it was realized that they might be disguising a wastage of talent. To some extent the two systems then converged in the decade which was characterized by an emphasis on technological advance in a number of industrial societies (including British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s emphasis on the ‘white-hot heat of technological revolution’ and the explosion of higher education in Britain after the Robbins Report).
In the early 1960s special schools and special classes were introduced in the GDR for specially gifted children. Ironically, old elite schools with strong nineteenth-century traditions were still being used as elite schools in the communist East Germany of the 1980s, but now for children in theory selected according to ability and talents rather than social background. (One such school was Schulpforta, earlier attended by such notable pupils as the Chancellor of Imperial Germany, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg.) Special schools only accounted for about 2–3 per cent of the education system, but were very important in training certain elites – such as the future sports champions of the GDR. The 1965 Law Relating to the Unified System of Socialist Education stressed the importance of achievement, and the goal of promoting equality of opportunity gave way to that of fostering talent, from whatever social background it might come. Quotas for children of peasants and workers at universities were dropped, and the ‘Workers’ and Peasants’ Faculties’ abolished. While in 1958 there was a peak of 52.7 per cent of university students of working class origin, by 1962 this had dropped to 48.7 per cent, dropping further to 39.1 per cent in 1966 and 38.2 per cent in 1967.13 At the same time, there was considerable expansion in the higher education system, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. The proportion of those with higher education among the employed more than doubled (from 2.18 per cent to 4.86 per cent) in the decade from 1961 to 1971.14
In West Germany a comparable concern for the production of qualified manpower for the economy was combined with a newer concern over social inequalities. It was revealed that there were gross differences in educational opportunity and achievement according to region, religion, class and gender in West Germany. The industrial working class, Catholics, girls and children in rural areas were all at a disadvantage; and despite attempts by the Kultus-Minister-Konferenz to co-ordinate the educational policies of different Länder, it was revealed that in 1962, for example, only 19 per cent of sixteen-year-olds in the Saar were in full-time education as compared with 39 per cent in Schleswig-Holstein, and only 4 per cent obtained the intermediate leaving certificate in the Saar compared with 24 per cent in Schleswig-Holstein. It was also revealed that the GDR had been devoting a higher proportion of its national income to education than had the Federal Republic (a GDR average of 6 per cent per year from 1954 to 1962, as compared with 3.5–3.7 per cent in the FRG, according to the UNESCO statistical yearbook of 1964).15 The fear of being overtaken by the GDR in educational planning for the needs of the economy helped to provoke changes in the system.
In 1965 the Bildungsrat was created (partly in response to publication of Georg Picht’s Die deutsche Bildungskatastrophe in 1964); in 1970 the Bund-Länder-Kommission für Bildungsplanung was set up for consultation and co-operation among Länder; and in 1973 the Bildungsgesamtplan was introduced. In 1969 the Berufsbildungsgesetz increased state control of vocational education (which had been largely under the control of Chambers of Industry and Commerce and industrial firms). The 1970 Strukturplan für das Bildungswesen attempted to reform secondary education, with certain core compulsory and other optional courses. In the tripartite system, Gymnasien and Realschulen were expanded at the expense of Hauptschulen. The relative proportions of 13-year-olds at each type of school changed in the period from 1955 to 1980 from 12 per cent to 27 per cent, 6 per cent to 25 per cent, and 79 per cent to 39 per cent, respectively.16 Attempts were made to make a Gymnasium education more relevant to current economic concerns, and to introduce different types of Gymnasium (with emphases on science, or modern languages, rather than classics, for example).
Neither Germany had solved the problems of its educational system by the 1970s. In East Germany there had to be a reduction in university places because of over-production of qualified graduates who were forced to take employment in jobs below the level of their qualifications.17 There were constraints on freedom of choice of study, because of restricted numbers of places. Reproduction of inherited status began to reappear and increase, as the goal of positive discrimination in favour of working-class and peasant students had been dropped. Meanwhile, in West Germany, attempts at introducing comprehensive schools in certain areas (such as Hesse) were greeted with mixed reactions and considerable suspicion. The fact that two to three times as many working-class children managed to obtain the Abitur (the German equivalent of British ‘A’ levels) in comprehensive schools (Gesamtschulen) as in the selective system, and that only 10 per cent of working-class children attended a Gymnasium in 1979, was generally disregarded.18
On the whole the West German system continued to operate in a relatively conservative fashion to perpetuate the transmission of class status from one generation to the next. Differences in opportunity and equality were also evident in the sphere of higher education. In West German universities an attempt to solve the problem of overcrowding by introducing a so-called numerus clausus (restricted numbers of places for study in particular faculties) was eventually dropped for all but medicine. The limited nature of student grants, however, and the introduction of a system of student loans in 1982, made university study in any case the prerogative of young people from financially secure backgrounds. This discrimination was compounded by the extended nature of university study in West Germany, by movement from one university to another, and by the flexibility of studies. Despite the drop in the number of places available in East Germany’s higher education system (which included well over fifty institutions of higher education, including the universities of Berlin, Halle-Wittenberg, Leipzig, Dresden, Rostock, Greifswald and Jena, as well as the Technical University of Dresden), there was at least relative financial equality of opportunity, with grants according to parental income. There was also good provision for further education and a number of possible routes to university other than the orthodox academic route via the EOS. Pupils going on to vocational and technical training could also through one route or another ultimately enter university, as could mature students in later life.
On comparing the respective education systems in the two Germanies as they stood in the early 1980s, some curious similarities and differences emerge. Both Germanies, as advanced industrial societies, laid considerable emphasis on vocational and practical training. While the West German system was structurally the more conservative, and there appeared to be greater equality of opportunity in the East German system, the roles were reversed as far as the ethos of education in the two states was concerned. West German education was characterized by authoritarianism and hierarchical relations between teachers and those they taught for much of its first two decades, but there were signs of internal democratization particularly from the late 1960s onwards. In the GDR, however, despite the more egalitarian structure, the internal atmosphere was much more authoritarian: conformity was encouraged rather than intellectual curiosity and debate. Pupils were taught to repeat approved positions rather than develop independent points of view. In neither case should one over-generalize, and there were changes in both Germanies. (In the GDR, for example, in the later 1980s – even before the revolutionary upheavals of 1989 – it was becoming possible to discuss unorthodox thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci in the Marxist–Leninist weekend schools for medical students and doctors.)19 Nevertheless, the general effect seemed to be that West German youth learned to bedemocratic within a framework of social inequality (which might be accepted as ‘natural’ and legitimized by theories of ability and the gaining of educational credentials according to merit rather than social background), while East German youth learned to become at least outward conformists and gained little experience of genuine debate and the toleration of alternative points of view except in a rather formal sense. Curiously, while the West German educational structure was the more traditional, the East German educational ethos was the more conservative, operating to produce obedient subjects rather than participatory citizens. This was not entirely in line with the regime’s desire to produce active socialist personalities, and also ran somewhat at odds with other influences on the outlook of young people in the GDR, as we shall see.
We have seen that in some ways the GDR developed a more egalitarian society – although evaluations of that relatively greater equality (including equality in a lower standard of living and less freedom of choice) might be negative. A comparable picture emerges on examination of the position of women. While there remained structural differences in the role of women, as compared with men, in both Germanies by the 1980s, these differences were less in the East than in the West. Whether one interprets this as implying greater ‘emancipation’ for women in the East than in the West is another matter. The analysis of the position of women in the two Germanies reflects and illustrates wider problems of comparison of the two sociopolitical systems.20
More women were in paid employment outside the home in East Germany than in West Germany. In 1984, 50 per cent of the East German workforce was female, compared to 39 per cent in West Germany.21 In both Germanies women worked in predominantly lower-paid, lower-status jobs. Despite the fact that in 1955 in West Germany the ‘women’s wage groups’ (Frauenlohngruppen) were legally abolished, in fact the so-called light wage groups (Leichtlohngruppen) took their place, and in the 1980s the average woman’s wage was 30 per cent lower than the average man’s wage in the West. Many West German women worked part-time: in 1984, 32.2 per cent of female workers worked for less than a forty-hour week, and – significantly – 93 per cent of all part-time workers were women. Women in West Germany constituted in effect a ‘reserve army of labour’, entering the economy in times of expansion and being easily excluded in times of recession. While official figures give an unemployment rate for women of 10.6 per cent in autumn 1986 – a rate one-third higher than that for men – diverse pressures and psychological resignation leading to withdrawal from the labour market meant that the true figure for women who would in principle like to work but had no job was nearer to 16 per cent. In East Germany there was in theory no unemployment; but East German women shared with West Germans the problem of working in lower-status jobs, frequently failing to gain appropriate promotion and working below the level of their qualifications. For example, in 1978 East German women made up 65.8 per cent of teachers, but only 20 per cent of heads of schools.22
In both Germanies women were rare figures in the higher echelons of politics, with only an occasional female minister (usually for a ‘domestic’ area having to do with education, health and family affairs) and moderate rates of party membership. In the West the Greens had the highest proportion of women members, party activists and MPs, followed – at a distance – by the SPD; in the East there were relatively high numbers of women at the grassroots and lower levels of the SED, thinning out markedly higher up the hierarchy (with the notable exception of Margot Honecker, whose career as Education Minister collapsed with that of her husband, SED leader Erich Honecker, in 1989). Interestingly, women made up more than half the membership of the East German trade union organization, the FDGB.
Such statistics could be elaborated endlessly. More and more illustrations could be adduced to emphasize the obvious: that despite the fact that the constitutions of both Germanies proclaimed the formal equality of women and men, and despite the considerable quantity of legislation that was enacted to attempt to secure such equality in reality, women in the two Germanies did not occupy positions in society equal to those of men. A number of factors are relevant in attempting to explain the differences, and the failure to realize constitutional principles in practice. The debates centre on a number of issues: whether there are innate differences of interest, aptitude and ability between men and women; whether observable differences in aspirations and achievements are more the result of differential socialization than of biological differences; and what the implications are – or should be – of the one very obvious and undeniable gender-specific difference, namely the fact that women become pregnant and give birth to babies whereas men do not.
This is not the place to embark on detailed analysis of studies of child development and gender differentiation. It will be sufficient merely to mention that there are observable differences of development between male and female children at a very early age: for example, females – on average – develop communicative skills more rapidly, while males progress more in the area of spatial ability. However, it is not clear what interaction of biological differences and socialization patterns is responsible for these differences: some studies have shown, for example, that mothers tend to talk more to girl babies than to boy babies, thus encouraging early language development. Adults undoubtedly interact with babies of different sexes in different ways, even from the earliest days after birth. Whatever the balance between genes and environment – and any observable development is the result of a combination of influences – one fact is undoubtedly clear. Just as the weight and height distributions of males and females show a large area of overlap, so do other distributions. In other words, while there may be a difference in overall averages, there are many women who are taller and heavier than many men. In the sphere of intellectual abilities, putative average differences in aptitude or interest are in no way sufficient to explain the extraordinary disparities in social location, with the astonishing paucity of top women scientists, politicians, businessmen (note the word!) and the like. Attention must therefore be paid to cultural aspects of development, and the limits imposed by childbearing, to explain the differences.
Both Germanies made efforts to increase the equality of opportunity for girls in the education system. In East Germany there was by the 1980s approximate equality in numbers: about half the schoolchildren leaving with the Abitur (the equivalent of ‘A’ levels) were female, and half of all students in higher education were female. In the West the figures were not so impressive; while the average percentage of girls in Gymnasien rose from 43 per cent in 1970 to 50.5 per cent in 1984, the percentage of women students in higher education rose only from 30 per cent in 1968 to 37.9 per cent in 1985–6. Higher up in the academic world, proportions of women declined, until only 5.2 per cent of professors were female.23 Both Germanies attempted to change the attitudes conveyed about appropriate career aspirations for boys and girls, by looking critically at the sex-role stereotypes in school textbooks, and by ensuring full equality in lessons offered (rather than directing girls towards cookery and needlework while boys did woodwork, for example). Some advances were undoubtedly made, but surveys suggested the persistence among schoolchildren – and their parents! – of traditional attitudes about the appropriate sexual division of labour.
Undoubtedly a major factor explaining differences in the structural location of adult males and females is the fact that women bear children while men do not. This has attracted considerable attention in terms of social policies, ranging from questions concerning contraception and abortion to provisions for maternity leave and child-care facilities. Both Germanies suffered a declining birth-rate, with a long-term tendency for the indigenous population to fail to reproduce itself (offset in the West by the immigration and, initially at least, the differential fertility rate of Gastarbeiter). While East Germany in 1972 introduced abortion on demand for women in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy (the only vote in the East German Parliament prior to 1989, incidentally, not to be passed unanimously), it also adopted measures from 1978 onwards to encourage women to have two or preferably more children. By the late 1980s maternity leave provision in East Germany was among the most generous to be found in any country: from 1984 East German women were entitled to a full year off on full pay after having a baby, with eighteen months off after a third or subsequent baby. By contrast, the West German maternity leave of six weeks before the birth and eight weeks after (or twelve weeks for premature or multiple births) seemed quite stingy. Both Germanies paid varying amounts of maternity grant and child benefit; and both Germanies instituted arrangements for taking further time off work to look after very small children – time which might be taken by either the father or the mother, or, in East Germany, by some other nominated individual such as a grandmother or a neighbour. It must be said, however, that the money paid in West Germany was not such as to excite support for the scheme or voluntary participation by most well-paid West Germans (600DM per month – about £200 – in 1986).
The major problem for most women is not so much maternity leave and childbirth as what to do with their children by way of child-care when they do wish to return to work. Shortage of labour in East Germany led to a high priority being put on the extensive provision of child-care facilities. The majority of pre-school children who needed a place in a crèche (for the under-threes) or Kindergarten (for three- to six-year-olds) was therefore provided for. In East Germany there were, however, indications of disquiet over the quality and benefits of crèche provision for very small children, and extensive time off work instead of use of crèche provisions undoubtedly helped to improve the quality of personal care for the under-threes. Arguments about the quality of Kindergartens tended to focus more on the contents of the ‘education’ offered (with doubt about the military games and early political indoctrination) than on the effects on the child of spending a very long day away from home in the company of a large number of other small children.24 In West Germany the comparative lack of sufficient pre-school provision was the major problem for mothers wishing to work. In 1982 there were over 500,000 employed women with a child or children under the age of three in West Germany; yet there were only 26,245 crèche places.25 Most working women with small children had to resort to informal arrangements with a relative (such as a grandmother), neighbour or friend to look after the child. Child-minders and parental co-operative nurseries were gaining ground as possible child-care arrangements. Given the disparities in child-care provision, while East German women took it for granted that they would return to work, West German women found considerable obstacles and barriers to be surmounted before they could consider doing so. For East German mothers, working was the norm; for West German mothers, not working was the norm.
There are a number of other respects in which East German women’s participation in the labour force was facilitated: there were provisions for staying at home with a sick child, there was a statutory day off for housework, there was extensive after-school provision, and so on. (In West Germany in 1982 there were less than two after-school places for every 100 schoolchildren – and the school day ended at lunchtime, posing enormous problems for working parents.) But the fact remains that, for all the apparent ‘progress’ in East Germany, East German women returned home, exhausted after a long day’s work, to do most of the housework while their husbands relaxed. ‘Emancipation’ for East German women came to be reinterpreted as a ‘double burden’ (Doppelbelastung): doing both a man’s and a woman’s work. While East German feminists in the late 1960s and early 1970s were seeking to break into the men’s world of work, a change of emphasis was evident in the 1980s: many articulate women in the GDR were reverting to a notion of specifically ‘female’ activities and endeavours, and wanting emancipation from competing with males in a male world.26 When comparing ‘objective facts’, women in the GDR might have looked more emancipated than women in the Federal Republic – and studies have suggested that there was a genuine desire on the part of the regime to achieve greater equality for women for ideological reasons, and not simply to exploit them as part of the workforce because of a labour shortage.27 But many East German women might well have preferred to have had the choice of staying home and looking after their children, rather than working in low-paid, unfulfilling jobs all day and returning home to cope with household duties and fractious children at night.
We may conclude this section with a brief look at youth and the family in the two Germanies. Many relevant aspects have already been covered in other contexts, but a few additional points may be made here.
East Germany laid great emphasis on the socialization of youth and the development of a ‘socialist personality’. To this end, East German children were organized at an early age. For younger children there was the Young Pioneers organization (JP); for 15–25-year-olds there was the Free German Youth (FDJ). As indicated above, although membership of these was not compulsory, there was considerable pressure to participate and penalties in terms of future prospects for those who did not. These organizations offered a range of activities, including sports, holidays and trips to places of interest (ranging from Buchenwald concentration camp to the Wartburg Castle where Luther translated the New Testament). On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that these forms of socialization merely reinforced what young East Germans learned in all areas of experience: that they could lead a form of double life, separating outward conformity from private lives and personal spaces. West German children, by contrast, had a much freer upbringing; and despite the East German focus on childhood, it was notable that facilities for children such as playgrounds were infinitely superior in the West than the East.
Family life too showed certain differences. There was a higher divorce rate in East Germany than in the West; but there was also a higher rate of marriage. In 1985 there were 3.1 divorces per 1,000 population in the GDR, compared with a figure of 2.1 in the FRG; but there were 7.9 marriages per 1,000 population in the GDR compared with six in the FRG.28 It could be argued that, with the greater economic independence of women in the GDR, marriage was in a sense being taken more seriously: rather than being a convenient economic arrangement, it was stripped to its essence as anemotional union of equal partners; and if this personal union failed, it was more readily dissolved. Alternatively, the figures can be interpreted quite differently: the stresses of cramped housing, poor financial circumstances, and combining paid employment and housework led to strains in marriage which caused marital break-down. There is undoubtedly some truth in both views, but the second has considerable weight. There were also high rates of illegitimacy and single-parent families in the East as compared with the West.
The social history of the two Germanies is a field which has rapidly developed since unification. Historians have produced highly suggestive studies on a wide range of topics, including consumerism, materialism and the significance of generation.29 What is quite clear is that, after nearly half a century of division, Germans in East and West had developed very different lifestyles, expectations and patterns of behaviour. Bearing these rather different social conditions and profiles in mind, let us now return to the sphere of politics, and explore in more detail the nature of the two German states and the character of oppositional or dissenting forces in the two Germanies.