Germanys Social Work in totalitarian regimes: a comparison between 'Third Reich' and the German Democratic Republic (GDR): A comparison between 'Third Reich' and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) ; El trabajo social alemán en tiempos de regímenes totalitarios: una comparación entre el "Tercer Rei...
By way of introduction, the article describes the historical lines of the development of social work in Germany. It then focuses on two historical phases in which a dictatorship ruled. The de-professionalisation and political subservience of Social Work in the period of the National Socialists `Third Reich' (1933-1945) and the development in the eastern part, the German Democratic Republic, GDR (1949-1990) were traced. The National Socialists were a right-wing extremist movement that came to power in Germany under Adolf Hitler, destroying the democracy that had only existed since 1918 and establishing a fascist regime. After the assertion and development of power, a radical dynamic from discrimination to exclusion and finally to the extermination of allegedly inferior people set in. The discipline and profession of social work were involved in the implementation of the eugenic policy and the enforcement of the associated new ideals of the unequal worth of human beings in many forms. In view of the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the other crimes of the Nazis, one cannot really make a comparison with one of the successive governments in Germany. The Nazi period was incomparable in its human rights violations to those of the GDR. But part of the ideology of this time was not only carried on in the West Zone of Germany, but also and again differently in the Russian-occupied East Zone. The GDR suffered from the ideologic continuity especially in the treatment of the so-called 'asocial' clients of social work. Finally, an attempt is made to understand the common ground of the regimes with the modernisation theory of Zygmunt Bauman. ; A modo de introducción, el artículo describe las líneas históricas del desarrollo del trabajo social en Alemania. A continuación, se centra en dos fases históricas en las que gobernó una dictadura. Se traza la desprofesionalización y el servilismo político del Trabajo Social en el periodo del "Tercer Reich" nacionalsocialista (1933-1945) y el desarrollo en la parte oriental, la República ...