The FRG - Women, Minorities, Culture and Education

Question 1

How was education structured in the FRG?

Answer 1

• Lander had control of education and cultural policy, led to fewer secular schools in south compared to the north
• Lander control made it harder for federal government controlling education
• Free education up until end of secondary school
• Was a failure to meet demands on resources after the war
• Initially different zones struggled to teach uniform education with each favouring their home system
• The Dusseldorf Agreement 1955 regulated term dates, exam standards and subjects across nation

Question 2

What happened to the number of students at gymnasiums?

Answer 2

• Went from 853,400 in 1960 to 2,019,000 in 1980
• Also more went to uni from 239,000 to 749,000 - partially due to the Federal Education Promotion Act 1971 that promoted working-class students going into higher education due to proving a combination of state funding/loans to students

Question 3

What happened to the role of teachers in the FRG?

Answer 3

• Nazis were weeded out of unis but by 1947, 95% of teachers in Bravaria were ones who had previously been purged out of roles under the Year Zero policy
• Had to work a lot harder, average of 1 teacher to 85 students

Question 4

Describe students and the curriculum in the FRG

Answer 4

• Educational crisis after the war meant facilities were poor, lectures overcrowded
• Curriculum varied between lander
• History was an issue due to Year Zero, people wanted to remove the history of the Nazis and their propaganda - led to it being dry and factual with a focus on Europe over Germany
• After Alexander and Magarete Mitcherlich’s “The Inability to Mourn’ was published in 1971 some lander began to teach Nazi history
• Nazi textbooks removed
• Tried to teach idea of democracy (buy only 1/3 believed in it in 1961)

Question 5

What did students do outside of school in the FRG?

Answer 5

Students were particularly prominent in groups protesting the government in the FRG

Question 6

What were the aims of education policy in the FRG

Answer 6

• Comprehensive education
• De-Nazification of the system
• No religious education
• Teach democracy to a new generation

Question 7

What happened in terms of literature/press/media under the FRG?

Answer 7

• Establishment of a free press

* This was done easily

Question 8

Why did the different zones influence culture?

Answer 8

The nation in charge of each zone implemented culture from its country eg Shakespeare became prominent in the British zone, Hollywood and American culture became popular in the US zone

Question 9

What happened to traditional German culture?

Answer 9

Hard to retain due to Nazi love of it and association and the year zero policy

Question 10

What social movements united the majority of people in the FRG

Answer 10

• Anti-nuclear weapon movement
• Ecological/alternate lifestyle movements
• Anti American attitudes
• Anti consumerism

Question 11

What issue divided generations in the FRG

Answer 11

Year Zero - youth felt they were denied their history and demanded the truth. Older generations saw Nazism as a disease that had no long-term effect with it now irradicated

Question 12

Overall, how would you describe the life of women in the FRG?

Answer 12

• Still centred around domesticity, Kinder Kuche Kirche still remained
• Some legal freedoms but discrimination still occurred

Question 13

What evidence is there that women’s employment improved in the FRG?

Answer 13

• After WW2 due to loss of millions of men, women helped to rebuild Germany through clearing rubble and building & office work
• Adenauer spoke about the importance of making more jobs available to women/ work conditions more equal
• 1977 saw the Marriage and Family Law revised which overturned the Civil Code Law that prohibited married women from working if it interfered with role as mother and wife

Question 14

What evidence is there that women’s employment did not improve?

Answer 14

• Basic law discriminated against eg celibacy clause for female public officials
• Pay was still a third lower than men
• Despite Adenauer’s rhetoric, there wasn’t any push by the government to improve work opportunities/conditions for women
• The government mainly turned to migrants to satisfy work requirements so women remained at home
• In 1989 were still mainly defined by family life, only 50% of women with a child of 15 at home worked and half of these were part-time

Question 15

How did the politics and the law in the FRG benefit women’s lives?

Answer 15

• Article 3 of the Basic Law guaranteed unqualified ‘equality under the law’ for all citizens
• 1953 saw establishment of Ministry for Family Affairs which provided wives and mothers with financial benefits
• The revision of the 1900 Civil Code allowed more women to work

Question 16

How did politics and the law in the FRG hinder the lives of women?

Answer 16

• Very few women involved in politics, usually women from Weimer politics. Only 4 women helped create the Basic Law, Elizabeth Selbert didn’t achieve her aim of an explicit gender equality clause
• Revisions to laws took till after 1958 starting with revision of Civil Code
• 1974 saw law allowing for abortion in the first 12 weeks passed but public outcry saw the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional in 1975

Question 17

What did women’s groups advocate for in the FRG?

Answer 17

• Women’s liberation movements in the 1960/70s sought to overturn attitude of women as wife and mother
• January 1968 the Action Council for Women’s LIberation was set up and worked to set up day care centres for children to allow mothers to work
• More radical groups worked to improve reproductive rights, targetting section 218 of the German Penal Code from 1871. They published pamphlets and magazines

Question 18

What was unusual about women’s groups in the FRG compared to the global women’s groups?

Answer 18

There wasn’t an active push to try to achieve equality in the workplace or laws against sexual discrimination

Question 19

Who were the guest workers?

Answer 19

Migrant workers recruited on temporary contracts from other nations from 1955 onwards to help the FRG’s industrial sector

Question 20

Where were the guest workers recruited from?

Answer 20

The FRG made recruiting agreements with Italy (1955), Spain and Greece (1960), Turkey (1961), Morroco (1963) and Tunisia (1965). WOrkers also came from the GDR

Question 21

What were the main reasons the FRG recruited foreign workers from 1955?

Answer 21

• There was a need for a constantly expanding workforce during the economic miracle (after the war the return of 4 mil PoW, 4.7 mil refugees from former German territories and 1.3 mil from the GDR helped initially)
• The Berlin Wall in August 1961 worsened the labour shortage
• Viewed it as developmental aid - that the foreign workers would learn skills in Germany that they could use when they returned home

Question 22

What evidence is there that the FRG was tolerant towards the guest workers in the 1950s and 1960s?

Answer 22

• Non-German workers got the same wages as German workers
• 25% of guest workers in Germany in 1964 had lived there for at least three years
• 1964 saw a speech by Labour minister Theodor Blank to commemorate the arrival of the 1 millionth guest workers - said that they were the foundation of Germany’s success
• Unions helped workers adjust to work
• Also had support from Christian groups Catholic ‘Caritas’ and protestant Diakoniches Wek

Question 23

What evidence is there that the FRG was intolerant towards the guest workers in the 1950s and 1960s?

Answer 23

• 1950s - Unions disliked guest workers, concerned they undercut existing workers
• Government agreed to give German workers preference when hiring
• Employers gave basic accommodation that was near factories or outside town, cutting them off from local community
• Often given jobs German workers didn’t want - 3 mil switched to white collar jobs, 870,000 German miners left the profession with 1.1 mil guest workers replacing them
• The temporary recession of 1966 led to hostility - landlords refused to take guest workers as tenants, kept them isolated from other communities

Question 24

Give evidence of tolerance of the guest workers between 1970 and 1980

Answer 24

• 1975 - the government gave the guest workers’ children the same benefits as other children
• 1977 - ban on foreign workers lifted
• 1978 - the first Federal Commission for Foreign Affairs appointed by Helmut Schmidt for the rights of workers and promoting their integration
• Foreign children in schools rose from 165,000 to almost 200,000 between 1976 and 1983
• Government tried to persuade Lander to provide mixed culture learning groups with classes of Germans and guest workers’ children
• Ethnic associations set up to help teach language to incoming guest workers and understand cultural diffrences

Question 25

Give evidence of intolerance of the guest workers between 1970 and 1980

Answer 25

• 1970s Oil Crisis the guest workers were put under pressure to leave jobs and Germany
• November 1973 - government stopped hiring foreign workers and banned permits if workers already in the country
• 60% of foreign children in school in 1983 were Muslim - started age six with no preschool or language help due to preschools being run by Christian groups
• Many ethnic minorities due to lack of provisions in state schools, did not help with integration issues
• COntinued to be viewed as temporary workers so little incentive to try to welcome them/ merge cultures
• Ethnic associations proved controversial to some - saying they slowed of stopped integration