Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T12:41:57.513Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Gendered Classroom: Girls' and Boys' Experiences in Postwar Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Benita Blessing*
Affiliation:
Ohio University in Athens, Ohio

Extract

At the end of World War II, German educational administrators in the Soviet occupied zone of their nation decided to implement coeducation; that is, the schooling of girls and boys in the same classroom. This policy represented a radical break with German educational traditions, as well as with the western German zones' continued practice of gender-segregated schools. The reason for this move was as simple as it was ambitious: educational reformers of the Soviet zone were committed to a new kind of school, one that would offer all children the same education in order to permit active and equal participation of all citizens, male and female, in the “new Germany.” Educators estimated that over 90 percent of school-aged children attended school in the postwar years, approximately 15 percent of the entire population. Major change in young people's education could thus potentially bring about major social reform. Yet coeducation did not resolve the so-called “woman's question” of structural inequality, a theory elaborated by the nineteenth-century socialist August Bebel and of grave concern to the “antifascist democratic, educators of the postwar years. The implementation of the coeducational classroom, although an important move towards erasing gross disparities in educational opportunities for girls, still allowed for and even perpetuated gender-specific educational lessons and experiences.

Type
Symposium: German Education after 1945
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by the History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Certainly, rural communities in the nineteenth century had taught both sexes together out of convenience. But demographic shifts and the attendant increase of school buildings throughout Germany fostered the steady establishment of single-sex schools, often even in the countryside. Although educational thinkers and parents often favored coeducational classrooms for the early primary grades, single-sex classrooms, particularly by the secondary school level, dominated the educational landscape in the first half of the twentieth century. Marianne Horstkemper, “Die Koedukationsdebatte,” in Geschichte der Mädchen- und Frauenbildung, eds. Kleinau, Elke and Opitz, Claudia (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag, 1996), vol. 2 204205.Google Scholar

2 Schulabteilung der Deutschen Verwaltung für Volksbildung in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone (ed.), “Die deutsche demokratische Schule im Aufbau,” (Berlin: n.p., circa 1947), statistical appendix, 77. The percentage of school-aged young people remained around 15 percent of the population throughout the GDR. The category fourteen to twenty-six years of age made up about. 18 percent of the population. Edeltraud Schulze et al., DDR-Jugend: ein statistisches Handbuch, (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), 17–24.Google Scholar

3 Bebel, August Die Frau und der Sozialismus [1895] (Hannover: Fakelträger, 1975).Google Scholar

4 From Magistrat der Stadt Berlin, Abteilung Volksbildung, Hauptschulamt, Wildangel, 11 March 1946, Landesarchiv Berlin/Stadtarchiv [hereafter LAB/STA] 120/3292.Google Scholar

5 DVV, ed., Die Deutsche Demokratische Schule im Auflau, stastistical appendix, 42.Google Scholar

6 Wandel, PaulMinisterbesprechung,1819. March 1947, Berlin, Bundesarchiv [hereafter BArch], DR-2/53, no. 75.Google Scholar

7 Bericht über die Tagung der Schulaufsichtsbeamten des Bundeslandes Sachsen,” 19–20 October 1945, BArch DR2/488, no. 30.Google Scholar

8 Protokoll über die Sitzung des erweiterten Ausschusses für Frauenfragen,” 10 June 1947, Berlin, BArch DR-2/576, no. 29–32.Google Scholar

9 Ibid. no. 32.Google Scholar

10 Landler, EvaKäte Agerth—1888 bis 1974: Im Herzen immer jung geblieben,“ in Wegbereiter der neuen Schule, eds. Hohendorf, Gerd König, Helmut and Meumann, Eberhard (Berlin [East]: Volk und Wissen, 1989), 1319. Gert Geißler noted however that Agerth and others of similar political backgroun, in contrast to their early roles in the communist resistance during the war, did not achieve any real positions of political influence in the GDR. Gert Geißler, “Schulämter und Schulreformer in Berlin nach Kriegsende 1945,” in Reformpädagogik in Berlin—Tradition und Wiederentdeckung, ed. Keim, Wolfgang (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1998), 137–168.Google Scholar

11 “Sitzungen der Abteilungsleiter des Hauptschulamtes,” 20 December 1948, LAB/STA 120/201, no. 213.Google Scholar

12 BArch.Google Scholar

13 Director of the Abteilung für Volksbildung der Sowjetischen Militärverwaltung in Deutschland, P. Zolotuchin, to Paul Wandel, DVV, Berlin, 8 January 1946, no. 129; and “Protokoll über die Gesamtkonferenz der Hauptschulräte,” Berlin, 29 June 1947, no. 80–81. See also the School Law of 23 April 1947, “Richtlinien der Deutschen Verwaltung für Volksbildung in der SBZ Deutschlands für das Schulwesen,” Monitmenta Pädagogka Bd. VI, Teil 1, 237–241.Google Scholar

14 Bonis, Hildegard thirteen years old, 14. Volksschule, Klasse 8b- Mädchen, “Unsere Gedanken zur Schule,” Deutsches Institut für Pädagogische Forschung [hereafter DIPF/BBF/Archiv], NL Löffler, fo. 10, no. 2.Google Scholar

15 Tagung der Bezirksschulräte,” Meißen, 24–25 April 1946, BArch DR2/488, no. 265.Google Scholar

16 Konferenz der Minister für Volksbildung der Länder,” Berlin, January 1948, BArch DR-2/73,no. 43.Google Scholar

17 Report by Herr Naumann of FDJ Dresden, “FDJ und Schule, Kreisschulratskonferenz,” Dresden-Wachwitz, 3–5 November 1948, BArch DR 2/489, no. 351.Google Scholar

18 “Zur Ministerkonferenz in Januar 1947, DW, Berlin, Betr: Arbeitstagung. Stellungnahme zu den Aufgaben der Mädchenerziehung in der Gegenwart,” BArch, DR 2/53, no. 248.Google Scholar

19 Prov. Ausschuss antifaschistischer Lehrer [PAAL], “Niederschrift über die Sitzung am 1.6.45, nach. 15 Uhr bei Kollegen Fritz, Dresden-Leuben, Dürrst. 18,” DIPF/BBF/Archiv, Sammlungsgut, Döbelner Konferenz, no. 6.Google Scholar

20 See Gibas, MonikaVater Staat und seine Töchter: Offizielle propagierte Frauenleitbilder der DDR und ihre Sozialisationswirkungen,“ in Parteiauftrag: Ein neues Deutschland: Bilder, Rituale und Symbole der frühen DDR, ed. Vorsteher, Dieter (Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 1996), 311312.Google Scholar

21 Correspondence from Deiters to Bund demokratischer Lehrer und Erzieher Österreichs, Vienna, 6 August 6 1948, DIPF/BBF/Archiv, NL Heinrich Deiters, no. 2.Google Scholar