Education and Cultural and Generational Tensions in the FRG

Question 1

What did the Allies do about schools immediately after winning the war, and why?

Answer 1

• They shut them down
• They needed to de-Nazify both the curriculum and the teachers

Question 2

What other problem did the Allies face with schools in Germany after the war?

Answer 2

• Many had been physically destroyed

Question 3

What were the Allies forced to do in the autumn of 1945, and why?

Answer 3

• Reopen schools
• Children needed education in reading, writing and numeracy

Question 4

What did the Allies place an emphasis on in education while they were running it?

Answer 4

• Liberal values such as democracy and tolerance

Question 5

Who was in charge of education in the FRG?

Answer 5

• The Länder

Question 6

What were 3 issues with the setting up and running of schools?

Answer 6

• The curriculum varied widely between the Länder
• There were very few secular schools in the south while there were many in the north
• There were issues on the topic of how history should be taught

Question 7

How did the government try to deal with the differences in schooling between the Länder? Give 4 details.

Answer 7

• The 1955 Düsseldorf Agreement regulated areas such as:
• the number of examination subjects
• the length of studies
• the length of the school holidays
• examination standards

Question 8

Describe one other attempt to change the school system.

Answer 8

• In 1971, Brandt’s government attempted to restructure schools

Question 9

List 3 aspects of Brandt’s reforms.

Answer 9

• Extra help for the disadvantaged
• Less streaming by ability
• A reform of the university structure

Question 10

How successful was Brandt’s attempt to restructure schools?

Answer 10

• It was severely limited due to the powers of the federal and state governments
• He only managed to redefine the roles of the federal and state governments in education

Question 11

In what way was secondary school more accessible in the FRG? What impact did this have?

Answer 11

• It was free
• There was an increase in the number of children attending Gymnasia- over 850,000 in 1960 to over 2 million in 1980

Question 12

What 2 concerns were there with university education in the 1960s?

Answer 12

• The system was failing to serve Germany’s needs, as there were rising numbers of students
• Universities only catered to the well-off- only 7% of young people in the FRG went to university

Question 13

How did the government encourage more working-class students to go to university?

Answer 13

• In 1971 they passed the Federal Education Promotion Act, which provided a mixture of state funding and state loans for working-class students to go to university

Question 14

How did the numbers of students going to university in the FRG change?

Answer 14

• 1960: 200,000
• 1992: 1.9 million

Question 15

What 2 issues were there with German culture after the war?

Answer 15

• Germans were unsure about how they should interact with aspects of culture from Nazi Germany
• There were fears that it was becoming more American

Question 16

Give 3 examples of disagreements between the different generations in the FRG.

Answer 16

• Older people supported the ‘year zero’ policy, while many young people believed the FRG should confront its past
• Older people wanted to return to traditional German culture
• Older people also supported consumerism after the hardships of the war, while young people didn’t

Question 17

What were 2 social movements that connected people of all ages?

Answer 17

• The anti-nuclear movement
• Alternative lifestyle movements

Question 18

Which 2 forms of culture tended to be the most political?

Answer 18

• Literature
• Film

Question 19

Give an example of a book that had social significance, when it was published, and what its message was.

Answer 19

• The Inability to Mourn, published 1967
• It suggested that most people who had lived through the Nazi era pretended like Nazism had been an infectious disease that they had caught, recovered from and were not responsible for, while people should have been confronting their past

Question 20

How influential was ‘The Inability to Mourn’?

Answer 20

• Some Länder reformed their history teaching in schools and universities to include Nazi Germany

Question 21

How was film affected by the cultural divide?

Answer 21

• The cultural divide led to the creation of Das neue Kino in 1962

Question 22

What was Das neue Kino, and what was its purpose?

Answer 22

• ‘New German Cinema’
• To move away from old ideas and confront social issues, such as Nazi Germany and the issues of the FRG

Question 23

Give an example of a genre of film that had dominated German cinema, and how long it had done this for.

Answer 23

• Until the 1960s, one of the most popular film genres was Heimatfilm, which consisted of an escapist, romantic plot in beautiful rural locations

Question 24

Give the name of 2 films created as part of the Das neue Kino movement, and describe what each talked about.

Answer 24

• ‘Yesterday Girl’: the problems of a female East German migrant worker in the FRG
• ‘Young Torless’: the German persecution of Jews

Question 25

What was a positive aspect of culture for the FRG, and why?

Answer 25

• Their success in football
• They won the World Cup in 1954 and 1974