| My dissertation examines the complex relationships among German schoolteachers, their professional organizations, and the National Socialist and East German states in the period 1933–1953. Based on research carried out in German and Russian archives, as well as on oral histories gathered from former teachers, my work investigates the efforts of both regimes to create in one medium-sized city a socially unified, politically reliable, and ideologically conformist teaching staff charged with helping to establish a new polity and society by instructing the next generation of German youth. My dissertation challenges previous assumptions about the scope and thoroughness of the Nazi and Communist purges of these civil servants as well as the role and efficacy of party organizations in mobilizing and indoctrinating the pedagogues. Important structural constraints such as the shortage of trained pedagogues and the enduring tradition of an apolitical Berufsbeamtentum are identified and their impact on efforts to instrumentalize the teachers is evaluated. By uniquely focusing on the implementation of state and party repression and indoctrination on the local level, my dissertation establishes and assesses the high degree of continuity of personnel among the city's teaching staff in this period.;Analyzing the history of Brandenburg an der Havel's pedagogues under the Nazis and Communists also sheds light on some of the ways in which fascist dictatorship and war influenced the establishment of the German Democratic Republic. By illuminating significant transformations like the wartime deprofessionalization of the teaching staff, I identify important differences in Nazi and Communist treatment of pedagogues and evaluate their role in shaping teachers' postwar behavior and attitudes. Twelve years of Nazism did not predispose Brandenburg's teachers towards a “democratic” postwar society and polity as defined by the Communists. Conversely, the legacy of the National Socialist Teachers' League did contribute to the widespread support for the Union of Teachers and Educators, the postwar teachers' union that established itself as an advocate and defender of the teachers' material, social, and professional interests. |
