From Nazism to Communism : : German Schoolteachers under Two Dictatorships / / Charles B. Lansing.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter HUP eBook Package Archive 1893-1999
• VerfasserIn: Lansing, Charles B.,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2010]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Harvard Historical Studies ; 170
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (320 p.)

Tracing teachers' experiences in the Third Reich and East Germany, Charles Lansing analyzes developments in education of crucial importance to both dictatorships. Lansing uses the town of Brandenburg an der Havel as a case study to examine ideological reeducation projects requiring the full mobilization of the schools and the active participation of a transformed teaching staff. Although lesson plans were easily changed, skilled teachers were neither quickly made nor easily substituted. The men and women charged in the postwar era with educating a new “antifascist” generation were, to a surprising degree, the same individuals who had worked to “Nazify” pupils in the Third Reich. But significant discontinuities existed as well, especially regarding the teachers' professional self-understanding and attitudes toward the state-sanctioned teachers' union. The mixture of continuities and discontinuities helped to stabilize the early GDR as it faced its first major crisis in the uprising of June 17, 1953. This uniquely comparative work sheds new light on an essential story as it reconceptualizes the traditional periodization of postwar German and European history.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1 National Socialism’s Assault on German Teachers -- 2 The Incomplete Revolution of the National Socialist Teachers’ League -- 3 Keeeping the Schools Running during the War -- 4 Transforming the Teaching Staff under Soviet Occupation -- 5 The Creation of a Genuine Teachers’ Union -- 6 The Sovietization of Teachers and Their Union -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Bibliography -- Index