A well-rounded socialist personality?
BMBF supports TUD research on residential childcare in special homes in the GDR
Konrad Kästner
The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is strengthening its support for academic research on the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the injustices of its ruling political party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (German: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED). They recently selected 14 research networks to receive funding. Among the projects awarded funding is the research network exploring the topic ”Torgau. Residential childcare in special homes of the GDR – a pedagogical reconstructive study on the educational system in the GDR and coping mechanisms.” In collaboration with the action group Geschlossener Jugendwerkhof Torgau (the association of the eponymous memorial site), Professors Karin Bock and Cornelia Wustmann from the Institute of Social Pedagogy, Social Work and Welfare Studies want to examine the underlying rationale of these special homes – disciplinary institutions for “re-educating” children and youth with behavioral issues, which practiced forced labor and other human rights violations. Their research will focus on GDR educational institutions and the long-term effect these had on those who lived in special homes – right up to the youngest generation who lived there until the Peaceful Revolution in 1989. BMBF is supporting this project over the next four years with almost 470,000 euros in funding.
The close link between education and politics was majorly significant in GDR public education. To this end, a dense web of state educational institutions was set up with the explicit goal of producing a “well-rounded socialist personality” that had to integrate and subordinate itself to the “collective.” In the context of these educational ideals, the GDR residential education system was established and expanded, consisting of “normal, transit and special homes” (German: Normalheime, Durchgangsheime and Spezialheime) which also included the Jugendwerkhöfe, detention centers for children. In this system, the Jugendwerkhöfe were a particular mode of repressive education whose stated goal was the “elimination of individualistic directionality” in children and adolescents.
The only Geschlossene Jugendwerkhof (closed detention center) was established in Torgau. From May 1964 to November 1989, 4,046 young people were committed there for several months to be drastically and quickly “re-educated.”
“Using file analyses, biographical interviews and thematic interviews with those who were institutionalized in these homes as children and the adults who worked in these homes, we want to explore the experiences of those affected – both during their time in the homes and afterwards. We also want to investigate how they processed and coped with these experiences in their later lives,” explains Professor Cornelia Wustmann. Furthermore, the project aims to uncover the pattern of commitment to special homes, educational ideas and the underlying rationale of these institutions, which contributed significantly to the logic of the GDR education system as a whole.
The research work will be accompanied by regular reports, workshops, conferences, a book series and the development of a biographical database.
This article was published in issue 01/2019 of the Universitätsjournal on January 15, 2019. You can download the original German article as a PDF file for free here. The Universitätsjournal can be ordered as a printed newspaper or PDF file from doreen.liesch@tu-dresden.de . More details here: universitaetsjournal.de.