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Pre/Post Reunification of Germany | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4847 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 25 of 39 07 September 2014 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's not restricted to English only. In German, "die SED-Diktatur" is a common expression when talking about the DDR. Of course, "dictatorship" is somewhat imprecise, because you expect there to be a dictator, but I think its meaning has been broadened to describe anti-democratic or autoritarian regimes in general. Well, that's the case in common language. Probably, political scientists would be more precise in their terminology.
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| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4237 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 26 of 39 07 September 2014 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have never studied politics, but to me both late USSR and DDR look like authoritarianism exactly because there were no dictators (but that wouldn't be the only reason). Well, sources like Wiki don't agree with my POV, so I won't push it too far.
The problem, however, is linked to languages, because the word "dictatorship" used for both Third Reich and DDR like if these are close things. I know that people don't have to be as precise as political scientists, but this causes blurring and makes people think that there actually were no difference. Fortunately, this doesn't work in all the languages and situations. I think here even a bad student won't claim that Brezhnev was just as scary as Stalin (although according to books USSR was always a dictatorship). Students here are taught that there are authoritarianism and totalitarianism, and then they learn that USSR had authoritarianism all the time except 1930s-1953, which was Stalin's totalitarianism. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7159 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 27 of 39 07 September 2014 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||
From a pedagogical viewpoint and if such material were being used in classes it could be there to facilitate discussions and indirectly improve one's grasp of vocabulary and phrases used in such contexts. It reminds me vaguely of my old social science books and handouts that dealt with controversial topics such as colonialism, slavery , although these were all done in English. When I learned German though all of my textbooks focused on rather mundane, inoffensive and neutral topics such as shopping, visiting friends, work, sports and travel. East Germany was acknowledged in my language classes, but one can teach grammar and the like without resorting to making points about ideologies. The only worthwhile bits that I got about it were when I studied German literature and read a few works by East German authors. The only time when I did encounter material that could easily set off a political discussion was when I studied Czech using a textbook from the communist era. My reaction was limited to amusement since I was studying on my own rather than in a class. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4847 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 28 of 39 07 September 2014 at 10:53pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, I totally forgot about totalitarianism. I think this distinction would also work for the DDR and the Third Reich. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5012 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 29 of 39 08 September 2014 at 12:45am | IP Logged | ||
Well, we've got (usually, some kinds of school are a bit different) a year for 19+20th century, which is actually a huge chunk of history, usually taught together as it covers all the modern history of the Czech nation and the only interesting parts about it since the husits (but husits are a great chapter, there are good ones before them, such as the era of Charles IV but very little after). And too much time is usually spent on the era of the revival of the nation and language. It is usually pretty obvious that the topics at the beginning of the year are taught in more detail as the teachers like to be thorough but they need to catch up with the schedule as the year progresses :-) Yes, this approach is one of the troubles even of today's Russia. Now it gets a little bit too hot ground so I'm moving further from politics. You know, young russians may get such wrong ideas from their schools. But young czechs don't get quite any ideas concerning such matters from the schools, they only reinforce there things learnt at home or many don't have opinion on politics and history. It is often a good thing not to bend opinions much at school, as I believe schools shouldn't brainwash people into patriotism, but it leads to lack of interest in politics and society. And when large % of the population, especially the young people, just doesn't vote, every dangerous minority (whose members vote every time) becomes much more important. It is nearly a proverb: "Who doesn't vote, votes for the communists." Young Germans of both descends have it easier. They've got a strong country that got over the problematic past and it is easy to just be proud of it and plan the future there. Chung, I had such a textbook as well. It was a French textbook in 3rd grade and a few pages were covered with different and new dialogues. The old ones could be seen against a lightsource and they were about friendship between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5594 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 30 of 39 10 October 2014 at 3:37am | IP Logged | ||
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This reminds me of the word hiraeth.
Hiraeth: (n.) "A homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning,the grief for the lost places of your past." 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 31 of 39 10 October 2014 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||
I am not German, but I have been married and living in Germany for some years, particularly in the East. Firstly, it simply wasn't true that East Germany was hell before reunification. I was surprised some years ago that the two East Germans I worked with (one a student in her late 20s and the secretary of the Graduate School in her 50s) both told me that they would not be celebrating Reunification Day because it had been such a disaster for their way of life/country. I tried to suggest that things were in fact better: better freedoms, infrastructure etc. but they would have none of this. A few months later I was in Budapest and ended up at dinner with an older academic, and asked him if he knew anyone who missed the old USSR. He looked at me strangely, thought for a while, then started asking other people at the table, and ended up saying no one there could think of anyone would say such a thing. The basic difference as far as I understand it is that East European countries felt they were in charge of their own destinies. East Germans felt that West Germans came in and took over and completely revamped everything, because everything was worse. A random example: At the main university in Berlin (Humboldt U.) all the professors were fired post-Wende and had to reapply for their positions - nothing like this obviously happened in West Germany. A common complaint I have heard was that kindergartens and schools were better pre-reunification, and that there was no need to change the system, of course the West Germans thought they knew better about everything and so everything had be changed their way. (The other side of this is that West Germany had to pump literally billions upon billions into East German infrastructure.) In addition, a lot of people were displaced by reunification, much more in the East than the West. When I lived in Magdeburg (the capital of the poorest state in Germany) there were really huge factories that were completely abandoned after the reunification. The city's population had dropped by 25%, as younger people moved elsewhere. In the building I lived in more than half the apartments were abandoned and hadn't been lived in for years. I was in East German city on the Baltic last summer, and while they get tourists, they have never really recovered from Reunification, and the big shipworks there are finally closing down. Other cities rebounded (Leipzig would be the star here) and are now desirable so it's not all black-and-white, but even a city like Berlin is essentially bankrupt and survives from money redistributed from other German regions. Also its perhaps a bit harder to understand if you come from America and the like, but Germany has a very regional framework. Some people move around, but many don't; and those that do move around tend to stick to their own regions (East vs West; North vs South). It's easy if you have a strong sense of place, and your own region is economically depressed, and if you imagine the rest of West Germany is rich (which is not true), to feel a certain resentment to reunification. Edited by patrickwilken on 10 October 2014 at 12:52pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4237 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 32 of 39 10 October 2014 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
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patrickwilken, great post!
_________ As a citizen of a town which is currently economically depressed, I can surely say that some people just get education and leave for European part of Russia. You would expect that part to be crazy rich and so on, but in fact it's just overcrowded and has higher cost of life. The distinction between parts was weaker back in the USSR because economics worked everywhere the same, plans were productive everywhere and so on. Now it's different, in my industrial city a lot of things went down in 90's, plus the administration got weak. therefore now we have bad infrastructure and a lot of abandoned plants. And just like with Germany, there are, however, cities which have greatly improved their positions or at least haven't lost from changes, I consider Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg being the greatest examples (Sochi is quite a different story). Of course, our East and West were never separated, but, like I have said, things were pretty similar for everyone (ok, I don't speak about villages, little towns or regions like Yakutia). Now everything's changing. By the way, by that distinction between Moscow (and, maybe, St. Petersburg) and the rest of Russia I can say that you can't really claim you know Russia if you've only been there. You've just seen the "finest", whereas the country itself is different. Radicals even have a topic to argue about: "Is Moscow not Russia, or is Russia just Moscow?". This might sound funny to you, but they do have a point. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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