GDR revival-GDR: Hallelujah, we still live

We write August 5, 1989: For the first time, the Kohl government in ARD and ZDF will take a position on the escape of thousands of Germans to the GDR messages in Prague, Warsaw and Budapest. The refugees are threatened. Nine days later, the Federal Chancellor announces: “Capitalism in his run does not stop or donkey.” Since the mass exodus does not tear off, Kohl in a guest commentary for the “FAZ” is pleased that the refugees do not have to cry out.

In Bottrop, Castrop-Rauxel and Bielefeld, there will be powerful demonstrations against the Kohl government in September ’89 and for social changes in the Federal Republic of Germany. An inner party opposition had already formed in the months before to put the Christian Democratic Chancellor away. From Nuremberg to Norderstedt, new parties form themselves that don’t want to have anything more to do with the old, established. Prominent Germans, artists, actors, rock musicians, songwriters and scientists start a call to build a new, friendly, humane, solidarity society.

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East Berlin: The comrades in the house on Werderschen Markt, seat of the ZK of the SED, look irritated and excited to Bonn. The anxious question: »What if everything collapses there? Where do we get the next billion dollar loan? ”You don’t have to worry for a long time, because a few days later, they are also swept away by a peaceful revolution of the people a few days later. The citizens of the GDR solidarize with their brothers and sisters in the west. Together they bring the wall in Berlin on November 9 ’89. On December 7th ’89, a central round table meets in Berlin, equally occupied by representatives of opposition groups from the Federal Republic and the GDR, to work out a new constitution for a united Germany. It is said to be an equal association of both German countries at eye level, the social and cultural achievements of the GDR are to be merged with the rule of law and economic power of the Federal Republic.

Stop. Dream or nightmare?

“No connection under this number!” The declarations of displeasure of custody of East German citizens against Bonn ambitions to connect the GDR territory by accession paragraph 23 GG of the Federal Republic and the West German social and economic model are ignored. On September 20, 1990, the Bundestag and People’s Chamber gave their blessings to the hasty, so -called unification contract within three months under the aegis of West German “experts”. In the People’s Chamber, a brave crowd of 80 MPs (PDS, Bündnis 90/Greens) voted on August 30, 1990 against this, in the Bundestag there are 47 (Greens and 13 parliamentarians of the Union Group).

Then everything goes in a blow. Before the East Germans are aware of what happens there, they are deprived of their jobs. From Rostock to Suhl – the same stitch: Serious men in needle strip suits came over them, looked around the state -owned companies (VEB), listened to the workforce and nodded compassionate; One or the other operator or banker from the west may also have a consoling stroke of an East German curly head. Then an institution strikes, in East German vernacular soon called un-faithful. Also what is rivet and nail-resistant is trapped, for alleged investors for a appel and an egg, the only ambition of which is to sweep competition from the market. Some VEB is still granted a maternity leave as an extended workbench of West German companies. Collective agreements? From then on a foreign word in East Germany. Solidarity on the part of the West German working class and their unions? None. This revenues a few years later when the buddies and assembly workers are on the collar west of the Elbe. Because of globalization, it is said.

With the East German companies, the company kindergartens, operating policies, company holiday camps, internal cultural and conflict commissions etc. disappeared in the 90s the state and municipal polycles and kindergartens. The latter, among other things, because a criminologist from West German province claimed that they had bred subjects instead of mature citizens.

The education system of the GDR was also dismantled, the “uniform school” was dismantled. And so on and so on. Everything that was taken for granted by GDR citizens was handled without meaning and mind. Social achievements that had taken up visions and projects of bourgeois reformers as well as from the labor movement, for example by Friedrich Fröbel: »Children are like flowers. You have to bend to them if you want to recognize them. ”He had founded the first kindergarten in the world in the Thuringian city of Blankenburg in 1840, and soon copied in Europe, was called” kindergarten “in England, in Russian” Detski Sad “.

Almost a decade after highly qualified kindergarten teachers in unemployment or ABM, job creation measures had been joined in East Germany, their invaluable value for society was suddenly recognized; Young parents even promised a legal right to a kindergarten place by the then black and red Groko, nationwide. Now new facilities had to be stamped out of the ground (the old goods were disclosed to decay). Educators are desperately sought; Quercomers are also desired. Young mothers and fathers no longer want to do without kindergartens or daycare centers. The return of a matter of course in the GDR? Educational scientists and educational politicians even indicate that the kindergartens/daycare centers not only be a storage facility, but rather, as one of them convey knowledge in the East German state in a suitable manner in the East German state, promote and prepare skills for school.

And the polyclinics also returned, now called medical houses. They bundle medical competence under one roof and are cheaper than independent resident medical practices. In the GDR, they ensured outpatient care across the board. In the country there is now a lack of bad. And some people are eagerly thinking back to “sister Agnes”, which drove on a “swallow overland to help where help was needed. The latest attempts by the Federal Government to recruit country doctors through special remuneration did little to success. The polycled medical houses owe East German specialists and specialists who could not be hunted in Bockshorn when everything was discredited in and at the GDR. Incidentally, the first polyclinic founded the doctor Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland in Jena in 1796.

The comprehensive school has also asserted itself in East Germany and is also increasingly regarded in West German federal states as an alternative to the traditional, three -part school system (secondary school, secondary school, high school). Hortcare, of course in the GDR, no longer want to miss young parents. In view of the educational misery in Germany, scientists and professional instructors remember the ten-class, general education polytechnic secondary school (POS), which taught and theoretical learning in human and scientific subjects. The idea of ​​a comprehensive school for all children, regardless of the wallet, and not at an early stage to enable all the same educational opportunities, goes back to reform educators from the Weimar Republic, including the Social Democrat Fritz Karsen (“The School of expectant society”). In 1923 he introduced the Kaiser-Friedrich-Gymnasium in Berlin-Neukölln, the later legendary Karl Marx School, first workers’ high school graduates. Karsen is also considered the founder of the “second educational path”.

It seems as if the GDR experience a resurrection. She ponders and crawls out of all cracks and joints of society. Verdi is almost a unit union, of course not to be compared to the rather state and party FDGB, the Free German Trade Union Confederation. Or the recycle introduced in the Federal Republic. Sero, the secondary raw material recording in the GDR, greetings. Certainly, this was primarily due to the resource shortage of the “first socialist state on German soil”, but was naturally taken to heart by young and old. Children are having a pioneer: “Do you still have waste paper, dear Grandma, dear grandpa?/ Klingelingeling a pioneer, bell ringing is here, a red./ Do not have waste paper, bottles, glasses or scrap?

The prefabricated construction is also no longer screamed and is practiced again. There is a lack of affordable living space everywhere. However, it is questionable whether Merz & Co. and Weiland Erich Honecker will announce a social housing program on the VIII party congress of the SED (1971). It is more likely that the new federal government will introduce military history in schools to strengthen the “man’sity”, as towards the end of the GDR Minister of Education Margot Honecker.

In short, there are many examples of an apparent return from the GDR. Of course, it is not open to the fact that in many social areas you can use practices in the “workers’ and peasant state”. There is God. The only dare the godless.

Supernate prevails. Of course not automatically, only on the pressure of civil society. Or thanks to resistance on the street. For fear of a turmoil of the “East Women”, which in early summer 1990 confirmed in good time, loudly and confidently on rallies about the woman’s right to self -determination about her body and her desire to have children, the western men speaking at the unification work approved a special regulation regarding pregnancy interruption (but not without the Fuchtel forced advice). Ultimately, the west women also benefited from this. However, the complete deletion of paragraph 218 from the Criminal Code (StGB) is still pending.

It is truly a mystery: the GDR experiences its resurrection in a clammy way. Halleluja.