Völkerfreundschaft nach Bedarf : Ausländische Arbeitskräfte in der Wahrnehmung von Staat und Bevölkerung der DDR

• The claim to successfully have eliminated racism and xenophobia in socialist Germany was crucial for the GDR’s demarcation against the Federal Republic and for GDR’s political self-conception. According to the state party SED, both the GDR’s government and its people met with all members of the working class, regardless their ethnicity or culture, in the spirit of Völkerfreundschaft – the peoples’ friendship. In the early 1960s, suffering from a lack of work power, the GDR began to recruit foreign workers, and continued to do so up until German reunification. When workers arrived from Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, the propositions of antiracism and peoples’ friendship were tested in practice.Following a discourse-analytical approach this study analyzes how the ideal of Völkerfreundschaft was dealt with and how it was exploited and altered both by citizens communicating with the state and within party-loyal circles. It examines when, why and by whom ethnicity was downplayed in favor of common class affiliation, and under which circumstances it regained importance.While latest research on foreigners in the GDR has focused on diagnosing the discrepancy between ideological claims and reality this study goes beyond such an approach and analyzes how this discrepancy was dealt with – both by state authorities, the state-owned factories and ordinary people – in everyday life.  This study is a contribution to migration research, as well as to everyday-life-history and history of mentality in the GDR.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

GDR

foreign workers

guest workers

labor immigrants

SED

socialism

xenophobia

racism

the peoples' friendship

discourse theory

discourse analysis

public transcript

petitions

state-owned factories

Neues Deutschland

migration

cold war

Stasi

state security

DDR

ausländische Arbeitskräfte

Werktätige

Gastarbeiter

DDR-Bevölkerung

SED

Sozialismus

Fremdenfeindlichkeit

Rassismus

Völkerfreundschaft

Diskurstheorie

Diskursgeschichte

public transcript

Eingaben

VEB

Neues Deutschland

Migration

Kalter Krieg

Stasi

Staatsicherheit

Historical Studies

Historiska studier

Östersjö- och Östeuropaforskning

Baltic and East European studies

historia

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

dok (ämneskategori)