earticle

영어

The following text documents the first part of a longer article of the author that deals with the policy of education in Germany after 1945 in general and political education in particular. The here presented first part is concentrating on the first twenty years after the end of World War II. The decision of the author to split the article in two parts instead of a rigorous abbreviation of the text was made in order to meet the terms and conditions of the journal as well as to keep the integrity of the whole text. To ensure economical progress as well as social peace among heterogeneous societies, the field of educational policy is a cornerstone in the daily business of a running state today. With respect to its history, the policy of education and especially political education received an accentuated function in Germany, since the end of World War II. Until the founding of the two German States in 1949, it have been the allies, who defined the goals of educational policy in the first years of post-war Germany. But with the upcoming cold war it became clear very quickly, that it would be difficult to act in concert. With the collapse of the allied control council in 1949 it obviously became impossible. Apart from that, the objectives of the educational policy among the west-allies and the soviets during that time have been quite the same, namely to eliminate the national socialist body of thoughts. As a matter of fact, the methods and the process of development in the then two German States, have been different. In the Federal Republic of Germany (FDR), under than chancellor Konrad Adenauer, it was common sense, to overcome the past and to reintegrate the political and economical system of the country in the western community as fast as possible. Therefore, the matters of educational policy primarily have been subordinated to the needs of the economy. For the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), it belongs to their political self-image, that the socialistic revolution would bea guarantor to clear the society from all aspects of former national socialism. Speaking provocantly: For the West-Germans, it was the so called Wirtschaftswunder that should prevent their citizens from a backslide to former megalomania, whereas in East Germany it was the ideology of socialism which officially guaranteed a peaceful and prosperous future. With respect to the complex object of investigation and the different trends in the two German States, the focus of the paper is the development in the Federal Republic of Germany. In the first part presented here, the author tries to give a general overview of the situation in post-war Germany after 1945 and the different theories of political education developed by the allies. He tries to outline, that the problems of the existing educational structures in Germany together with the upcoming confrontation between east and west let abandon the west-allies their ambitious plans very quickly in favour of a strong political and economical alliance with West-Germany against the Warsaw Pact. The first time, when the question of guidelines for educational policy came on a broad political agenda was in the beginning sixties, when a serial of anti-semitic smearings shocked the public. The paper will show, how the ruling parties tried to meet the problem by setting up several task forces and developing a multitude of strategic plans. But for the ongoing process of coming to terms with the past it have been the academic circles, especially the social and political sciences, that developed strategies of conflict resolution and worked on the implementation of standards for political education to deal with the past, as well as with the future.