It covered the area of the present-day German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin (excluding West Berlin), Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, and Thüringen.This area was occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of World War … In the fall of 1950 several prominent members of the SED were expelled and arrested as "saboteurs" or "for lacking trust in the Soviet Union." A significant factor was also the elimination of a ready source of hard currency through re-export of Soviet oil, which until 1981 was provided below world market prices; the resulting loss of hard currency income produced a noticeable dip in the otherwise steady improvement of living standards. The Main Task, introduced by Honecker in 1971, formulated domestic policy for the 1970s. Additionally, people continued to flee to West Germany in increasing numbers, first through Hungary and later through Czechoslovakia. The global rise in commodity prices in the 1970s also affected East Germany, though later than elsewhere due to Comecon price controls. In the event, massive West German financial support (around half East Germany's budget in 1990) following the March 1990 elections prevented a financial collapse in the months leading up to reunification. ethnic German migrants who fled or were expelled as part of a wider trend of population transfer among the countries and regions of Eastern Europe following World War II. The workers demanded economic reforms. The second Party Conference (less important than Party Congress) convened on July 9–12, 1952. Moscow subsequently pressured East Germany to begin bilateral talks with West Germany. Within the individual enterprises, the number of professional positions and jobs for the technically skilled increased. [5] (In contrast the Germans estimate a total loss of German property, due to the border changes promoted by the USSR and the population expulsions, of 355.3 billion Deutschmarks). This caused severe financial problems for the GDR, which perennially lacked hard currency. One of the largest occurred in Leipzig. [6], The results of the reform, however, fell short of initial expectations, as growth was mostly the result of increased investment, rather than the new system of control. At one point, several schools had to close because there were not enough students or teachers to have classes.[9]. In the following days increasing numbers of East Germans took advantage of this to visit West Germany or West Berlin (where they were met by West German government gifts of DM100 each, called "greeting money"). The SED, in addition to shifting emphasis from heavy industry to consumer goods, initiated a program for alleviating economic hardships. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin favored the maintenance of German unity, but supported its division among the Allies, a view that he reiterated at Potsdam. That same night, the first of many large demonstrations occurred in East Berlin, the first mass demonstration in the capital itself. The German Democratic Republic (GDR), German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), often known in English as East Germany, existed from 1949 to 1990. Thousands of East Germans also tried to reach the West by staging sit-ins at West German diplomatic facilities in other East European capitals, especially in Prague, Czechoslovakia. [4], There were several reasons behind the backward economic situation in East Germany. The state extensively revamped wage policy and gave more attention to increasing the availability of consumer goods. On 14 May 1955, East Germany became a member of the Warsaw Pact and in 1956 the National People's Army (Nationale Volksarmee—NVA) was created. The key targets set at the central level were overall rate of growth of the economy, volume and structure of the domestic product and its uses, use of raw materials and labor and their distribution by sector and region, and volume and structure of exports and imports. However, the episode vividly illustrated the structural economic and financial problems of the GDR. Unsurprisingly, the new coffee was generally detested for its comparatively poor flavour, and the whole episode came to be informally known as the "Coffee Crisis." In addition, it promised to raise the standard of living for all citizens. Communists won this election, thereby holding a majority of seats in the People's Congress. Managers of the VVBs were chosen on the basis of professional training rather than ideological conformity. Ulbricht opened the Politbüro and the Central Committee to younger members who had more education than their predecessors and who had acquired managerial and technical skills. The SED controlled the Council of Ministers and reduced the legislative function of the Volkskammer to that of acclamation. The labor drain exceeded a total of 2.5 million citizens between 1949 and 1961. The annual plan for 1968 set production quotas in the structure-determining areas 2.6% higher than in the remaining sectors in order to achieve industrial growth in these areas. The subject has received considerable attention from Western economists, most of whom are convinced that it is important in CPEs. Malenkov's policy, which aimed at improvement in the standard of living, stressed a shift in investment toward light industry and trade and a greater availability of consumer goods. The cost of this, however, was that East Germany's nascent democracy died less than a year after it was born, with a set of laws and institutions imposed from outside replacing a set of laws and institutions imposed from above. The government increased industrial production quotas by 55% and renewed emphasis on heavy industry. The SED modeled itself as a Soviet-style "party of the new type". The East German stance differed from that taken by the Yugoslav, Romanian, and Italian communists, who criticized the Soviet action. A massive rise in coffee prices in 1976–77 led to a quadrupling of the annual costs of importing coffee compared to 1972–75. Under the pressure of an increasing financial crisis (driven partly by mass emigration to West Germany in early 1990 and partly by the Federal Republic's refusal to grant the loans that would have been needed to underpin a longer transition period), the Article 23 route rapidly became the frontrunner. Stalin died in March 1953. Domestically the East German regime replaced the NES with the Economic System of Socialism (ESS), which focused on high technology sectors in order to make self-sufficient growth possible. Retail trade in the east was slowly being absorbed by two state-controlled organizations (Konsum and Handelsorganisation) which were given special preferences. [6], The Second Five-Year Plan committed the GDR to accelerated efforts toward agricultural collectivization and nationalization and completion of the nationalization of the industrial sector. [6], Under the NES, the task of establishing future economic development was assigned to central planning. Military industries and those owned by the state, by Nazi party members, and by war criminals were confiscated. As a result, in mid-1977 the Politburo withdrew most cheaper brands of coffee from sale, limited use in restaurants, and effectively withdrew its provision in public offices and state enterprises. Hans Modrow, who had been appointed prime minister only two weeks earlier, now became the de facto leader of a country in a state of utter collapse. GDP data is from 1990 and population data is from 1989. More general than a one-year plan, the five-year plan was nevertheless specific enough to integrate the yearly plans into a longer time frame. Political denazification in the Soviet zone was thus handled rather more transparently than in the Western zones, where the issue soon came second to considerations of practicality or even just privacy.
Catull Carmen 5, Stuttgart Gladbach Video, Telekom Annual Report 2020, Luca Hänni Youtube, Traton Dividende 2021, Rb Leipzig Vs Sport Club,