Eingaben
- Created by: MillieLynch
- Created on: 13-03-16 15:05
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- Popular participation: Eingaben
- How did the government respond to them?
- the productive, politically committed, need, or combination, took priority over those who presumes needs and contributions to socialist society
- Authorities would make enquiries about individual, to see what level of "deserving customer" they were dealing with.
- Any decision made at the appropriate level was considered to be final
- No possibility of independent legal appeal, or complaint against decision.
- Noteable how often authorities agreed with complaints
- Complaints and petitions from certain areas of industrial production were often seen as a means of improving relations between workers and managers, and ensuring a more effective channel of communication
- Despite progress, often promises were given lightly and citizens dealt with in a heartless and bureaucratic manner.
- How did their content change over time?
- 50s/60s
- More modest and deferential, and respectful
- Letter writers would state their pre-1949 communist activity and military service, social position, SED loyalty etc to weight their claim
- 60s/70s
- letters directly to Honecker
- Asked for new apartments
- by 60s people threatening to go public with their problems
- By 70s threats to file for emigration of their demands were not met.
- 70s/80s
- more and more frustrated
- sarcasm, impatience and rudeness
- Could be seen as change in idea of citizenship: ;people addressed the state less as supplicants than as equal and deserving citizens.
- More demanding of socialist rights
- Mostly about unavaliable goods and services
- 80s: collective petitions
- Little belief problems could be solved
- 50s/60s
- What do Fulbrook and Betts think about Eingaben?
- Prompted some scholars to argue that the GDR was fundamentally new-absolutist in tone and outlook, and that its citizen complaint system drew on 'pre-democratic legal traditions' in constructing a 'private dialogue between individuals and the ruling elite'
- Provided SED with a rich source of information about popular opinion, and the SED could then filter out critical signals and pleas for help from the population.
- What did they contain?
- Complaints
- No state in history ever recorded as many citizen complaints as East Germany did.
- Estimated at least every household had submitted one complaint letter over the course of the regimes forty year reign
- Off-limit themes
- State repression
- Wall
- west
- travel restrictions
- Consumer issues
- Sanitary conditions
- Inadequate housing
- Wage levels
- Working hours
- Holiday entitlement
- Public transportation
- Health facilities
- Air pollution
- Noise
- childcare facilities
- Food Queues
- Complaints
- How did the system work?
- Citizens turned to the state or representing bodies with Eingaben
- "Work together, Plan together, Govern together"
- Available to public, organisations and communities
- speedy processing of all citizens complaiints
- How did the government respond to them?
- How did the system work?
- Citizens turned to the state or representing bodies with Eingaben
- "Work together, Plan together, Govern together"
- Available to public, organisations and communities
- speedy processing of all citizens complaiints
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