Division to unity 1949-1991: Society

Question 1

What was the effect of the Nazi legacy for younger people in Germany?

Answer 1

• By 1968 society had polarised between the older generation who saw the success of the FRG and didn’t want to forget the past and those who couldn’t remember/didn’t know life under the Nazis
• The younger generation referred to their parents as ‘conformist stick in the muds’ who were silent when questioned on the events of their youth
• Living in Germany where both the Chancellor (Kiesinger) and the Federal President were former Nazis made the youth question their parents’ values and rejected what their parents most prized
• Accused the FRG of covering up its crimes

Question 2

What did the 1968 student riots lead to?

Answer 2

More open discussion of the past

Question 3

What is the evidence for attitudes towards the Nazis becoming increasingly more negative?

Answer 3

1. Brandt knelt before the Warsaw Ghetto memorial in 1970 to show personal remorse for the Nazi crimes against Jewish people
2. In 1979 there was a TV series on the Holocaust which lasted for 4 days and was watched by 20 million people
3. Holocaust studies were introduced to the school curriculum to make young people aware of the past
4. In 1968, 471 school groups visited Dachau, by the end of the 1970’s over 5000 parties arrived each year

Question 4

How did the Nazi legacy continue?

Answer 4

1. Former Nazi reunions continued
2. In 1985 the state authorities intervened to forbid a former SS members reunion
3. Ex Nazis provided financial backing to Strauss from 1961-1988 and to Kohl

Question 5

What was seen as more worrying than the former Nazis?

Answer 5

• The activities of Neo Nazis in the 1970’s and 1980’s
• They conducted anti semitic attacks and expressed their racial hostility to the foreign workers
• They were mostly young, uneducated and unskilled who wore swastikas
• They were associated with a terrorist bomb that exploded in Munich which killed the attacker and 14 others and injured 215 people
• By 1989 there were 18,000 members in these extreme right wing groups

Question 6

What were living standards like within this time period?

Answer 6

1. Average income of a West German household increased 400% between 1950-1970
2. Most West Germans had jobs, comfortable homes, good food
3. They could enjoy the latest German technology products (fridges, cars, TV’s, computers)
4. Fewer blue collar workers were needed and more white collar jobs became available
5. The numbers of self employed decreased from 15% in 1950 to 8.8% in 1989

Question 7

What was life like for the elites and middle class?

Answer 7

1. Powerful families created businesses
2. Traditional aristocratic names were were found in major political fields
3. Education system reinforced the importance of social status
4. Benefitted the most from income

Question 8

What was life like for workers and peasants?

Answer 8

1. Benefitted from shorter working hours and the new system of trade unions working in cooperation with management
2. German workers benefitted from cheap labour and foreign workers who took the lowest paying/least skilled work positions
3. 1983- 16.4% of West Germans worked in the service sector and 5.9% worked in agriculture
4. Farmers benefitted from EEC subsidies

Question 9

What was society like by the late 1980’s?

Answer 9

1. Affluent, urban, well educated
2. More free society with censorship laws and laws against homosexuality relaxed in the 1970’s

Question 10

What was the position of women like within the workplace?

Answer 10

1. Many women continued working (some had no choice due to the aftermath of the war- since 1950 1/3 of West German households were headed by a widow or divorced female)
2. Often underpaid in employment
3. Been 1949-1989 the number of female employees grew from 1/6 of the workplace to over half
4. In 1950 1/4 of married women were in paid employment and by 1970 it was 50%

Question 11

What were the results of the war on the amount of women compared to men?

Answer 11

In 1960 females heavily outnumbered men by 126:100

Question 12

How did the expansion of education influence women?

Answer 12

• Gave women more opportunity to enter the traditionally male roles of business management and politics
• A wider range of professional and career opportunities became available

Question 13

What did the 1980 act do to help women in the workplace and was it successful?

Answer 13

• Prevented direct and indirected discrimination on the grounds of sex in the workplace
• Female pay still remained lower and males continued to dominate in jobs at management level

Question 14

Why was there a decline in birth rates since the 1960’s and what are the statistics for it?

Answer 14

• Partly the result of the increasing use of the contraceptive pill but also reflected the desire to maintain an affluent lifestyle through a smaller family
• In 1960 the average women had 2.4 children, by 1989 it was under 1.42 (1 of the lowest rates in Europe)

Question 15

What 2 things were liberalised in the 1970’s which helped women?

Answer 15

1. 1976- criminal code on abortion was liberalised
2. 1977- Divorce was made easier, resulting in divorce rates increasing by 32% between 1986-1990 (most cases were initiated by women)

Question 16

What changed for the youth in 1975?

Answer 16

They could vote at 18 years old

Question 17

What were relationships like between youth and their parents?

Answer 17

• Instead of youth being expected to obey adults, adults had to respond to the demands of the youth
• In 1955 16% of the younger generation claimed their parents were their role models, by 1984 it was 3%

Question 18

How was education changed for youth?

Answer 18

1. Children now began school at 6 and by the 1970’s the leaving age was raised from 15 to 16
2. In 1950 there were 108,000 university students in West Germany, by the end of the 1960s there was nearly 400,000
3. By 1989 Germany’s 49 universities were catering for over 1 million young people

Question 19

What measures did Brandt take on education for youth?

Answer 19

1. Huge increase in government spending on education (5x than previous)
2. The extension of tax free allowances for children to help poorer families and a fund to support disabled children
3. Grants to allow students from poorer families to continue their education under 1971 Educational Support Law
4. Expansion of universities with increased spending on research and education (increased by 300%)
5. Abolition of fees for higher education
6. Grants for students to cover university living costs

Question 20

How did some youth rebel?

Answer 20

• By embracing British/American youth culture by listening to pop and wearing their fashion
• Youth style was a way of breaking the traditionalism of the previous generation
• Fashion was also a political statement which masked some social divisions between sexes and classes

Question 21

What was unemployment like within this time period?

Answer 21

• Never exceeded 3% between 1958 and 1973
• Stayed below 1% between 1961 to 1966
• Sudden rise from 200,000 to 400,000 in 1967 to 1968, but this didn’t raise unemployment above 3%
• By 1991 the number of unemployed was just under 2 million

Question 22

How did modern culture begin to reappear?

Answer 22

1. ‘Degenerate’ paintings were bought back to galleries
2. Writers, artists, poets returned to Germany after fleeing from war
3. Initiatives encouraged the provision of concert halls, theatres, museums, art galleries

Question 23

How much of the state and local governments budget went on the arts?

Answer 23

• 1% (until the public spending cuts in the 1970’s)
• This was actually a lot and allowed more than 70 orchestras and 60 opera houses to operate

Question 24

What helped to re establish the creative arts?

Answer 24

• New commissions from the Lander to artists, architects and composers
• Allowed the Zero movement school of art to emerge