German Politics and Society

In 2008 the first state-level CDU-Green coalition was formed in Hamburg. Drawing on the literature on party goals (vote-, office-, policy, internal cohesion- and democracy-seeking), this article examines the GAL's decisions to join and to end the coalition. It examines the trade-offs between party goals as they evolved in different phases of “schwarz-grün,” with particular reference to the Greens' education reform agenda. While policy- and vote-seeking complemented each other during the election campaign, vote-, office- and party unity-seeking conflicted with each other in the Greens' decision to enter a coalition with the CDU. Later, policy- and democracy-seeking conflicted with each other when a referendum organized by a citizens' initiative defeated the Greens' education reform, a defeat that contributed significantly to the premature end of the CDU-Green coalition. New elections led to defeats for vote-, office-, and policy-seeking when the SPD achieved an absolute majority.

Are the highest politicians better qualified than their peers? In this article, we analyze differences between chancellors, vice chancellors, and ministers of the inner or residual cabinets of the German federal governments between 1949 and 2009 with respect to their social backgrounds and educational, economic, as well as political human capital. Different statistical methods reveal no clear primacy of chancellors or vice chancellors over other members of government. Interestingly, inner cabinets have higher qualifications than residual cabinets, as well as partly chancellors and vice chancellors.

Federal and state curricula not only determine much of what is taught in school, they also reveal what is important to political and cultural leaders and ultimately help shape a country's narrative. This article examines how the GDR currently is addressed in history and literature curricula for the Oberstufe. While state history curricula consistently require coverage of the GDR, literature curricula vary widely, with a few states clearly including GDR literature and many states completely omitting it. If GDR literature is ignored in state curricula, it risks being ignored in the classroom, limiting student understanding of the GDR to historical facts and depriving them of an opportunity to better understand both past and current German society.

The decline and dissolution of eastern Germany’s agricultural production

cooperatives (APCs) has been anticipated by formal economic theory since

reunification on the grounds of inefficiency.1 Yet, more recent scholarship

on the varieties of capitalism tells us that efficiency does not lead to simple

convergence of market forms, but rather that different institutional solutions

and social systems of production can achieve desired ends—including

efficiency—with varied designs.2 Today, the cooperative farm sector, underpinned

by conservative, democratic governance, persists without naiveté

and little nostalgia on the cusp of a new postcommunist generation and still

accounts for the largest share of agricultural production in eastern Germany.

Even if the cooperative farming sector follows a slow decline, the

firms will convert or persist depending less on their ability to achieve

efficiency as on their ability to maintain productive land holdings, and to

promote a new generation of management and enthusiastic members committed

not to nostalgia but toward the future of their own lives, their firms,

and their local communities. Some of the cooperatives are likely to persist

for a long time. In this article, in an effort to understand the environment

in which cooperatives face the future, I provide an eyewitness account of

the internal politics between workers and bosses, highlight survival strategies,

consider the institutional constraints and supports facing cooperatives,

and sketch portraits of the farmers who face the task of carrying the cooperative

tradition forward.

Rebecca Pates and Maximilian Schochow, ed., Der “Ossi:” Mikropolitische Studien über einen symbolischen Ausländer (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2013)

Reviewed by René Wolfsteller

Lisa Pine, Education in Nazi Germany (Oxford; New York: Berg, 2010)

Reviewed by Gregory Baldi

Stephen J. Silvia, Holding the Shop Together: German Industrial Relations in the Postwar Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013)

Reviewed by Volker Berghahn

Egbert Klautke, The Mind of the Nation: Völkerpsychologie in Germany, 1851-1955 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013)

Reviewed by David Freis

Damani J. Partridge, Hypersexuality and Headscarves: Race, Sex and Citizenship in the New Germany (Bloomington: Indiana Universtiy Press, 2012)

Reviewed by Myra Marx Ferree

Moshe Zimmermann, Deutsche gegen Deutsche: Das Schicksal der Juden, 1938-1945 (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2008; Hebrew trans., Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2013)

Reviewed by Noga Wolff

Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1933-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

Reviewed by Volker Prott

Stefan Berger and Norman La Porte, Friendly Enemies: Britain and the GDR, 1949-1990 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010)

Reviewed by Meredith Heiser-Duron