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In 1955 West Germany joined NATO, while East Germany joined the Warsaw Pact. The GDR was not recognized by Britain, as it followed the FRG's Hallstein doctrine, according to which the FRG was the only legitimate German state. The Labour Party officially had no relations with the GDR, but after 1955 an increasing number of Labour MPs, including some senior figures, travelled to the GDR and openly voiced their opinion that the GDR should be recognized. Such visits produced tensions between the SPD and the Labour Party. The article analyses why the Labour Party risked those tensions. It asks where it differed in its assessment and its priorities from the SPD. And it explores how it sought to overcome the Cold War division of the continent by propagating a new Ostpolitik which preceded the better-known Ostpolitik pursued by Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr in the FRG after 1963

This contribution presents an overview on essential contents and organsiational forms of marxist Sport Sociology in the GDR in its prozess of development. Without separating the various stages or periods, these presentations provide insights into the variety of teaching and research work achieved during the past years up to the present time standpoints on the development of sience as a theoretical and methodological reqierement are offered as well as the close relations and their dependence on sport science and general sociology. The unity of science and practice as a principle of its effeciency is explained by the social requirements of the sozialist development in the GDR. Particular stress is placed upon the contributive capacity and responsibility to scientifically analyse complex social prozesses and phenomena to efficiently improve planning and management by the sport authorities of this country.

Among the questions being asked about the future of industry in the former East Germany are: what economic reorganization will cost; how much unemployment will be encountered; & how social initiatives for cooperative worker retraining & establishment of new enterprises should be constructed. Many barriers exist for positive resolution of these problems, & if they cannot be overcome quickly, development will cease, & then reverse. It is argued that this downward spiral is being driven by two primary phenomena: (1) the labor force is being coerced, without consultation or negotiation, to accept the current disciplinary strategy in industry; & (2) the hard reorganization measures now being implemented conflict with long-standing informal working life & social structures. Successful transition to a free market industrial economy will require the cooperation of the workers, which can be obtained only by enlisting their support. If this is not accomplished, outmigration will leave the former East Germany desolate. J. W. Stanton

Civics courses in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) were intended to educate students to become socialist personalities. The didactical and ideological structure of the course, however, created internal contradictions that turned civics into an "impossible" course. This case study offers a model for conducting educational research into a single course curriculum using a multi-perspective analysis.

Discusses from an industrial sociological perspective, the question of how the barriers to adaptive reform came to exist and how in recent months this has resulted in a downward spiral. Analyzes the production structures at the macrolevel of the economy as a whole, and the microrelations of production and manpower management. (SJK)

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 ...

THE ARTICLE OUTLINES THE EVENTS THAT LED UP TO THE POLITICAL CHANGES IN EAST GERMANY AND THE MOVEMENT TOWARDS GERMAN UNIFICATION. SIGNIFICANT EVENTS INCLUDE: A GROWING NUMBER OF EAST GERMANS FLEEING THEIR COUNTRY, FIRST THROUGH HUNGARY AND LATER DIRECTLY ACROSS THE BORDER BETWEEN THE TWO GERMANYS; THE REPLACEMENT OF COMMUNIST PARTY LEADER ERICH HONNECKER; THE GROWING MASS DEMONSTRATIONS IN SEVERAL EAST GERMAN CITIES; POLITICAL CHANGES BOTH WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE COMMUNIST PARTY; NEGOTIATIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF GERMAN UNIFICATION; AND FREE ELECTIONS.