Diverging Societies

After the war’s destruction, both German states experienced a remarkable recovery. Economic improvements made Germans forget about their Nazi past and gave them hope for the future. Yet the division of Germany into four occupation zones quickly gave way to the creation of a Communist East and a Capitalist West Germany. Both sides represented fundamentally different social and political visions. To highlight these differences, this chapter provides a comparison of the place of women in both German societies. While East German society espoused the ideal of the working woman, West German society saw women as stay-at-home mothers who cared for husband and children. In higher education, both Germanies went separate paths that led to the social transformation of the student body in East Germany and the continued exclusion of students from working-class families in West Germany. Both Germanies attracted guest workers and exiles who sought asylum. And both Germanies faced growing opposition against their political system, the destruction of the environment, the use of nuclear energy, and the mining of lignite. But while the West German political system proved able to absorb this opposition, the East German system suppressed and exiled critics.