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Germany's Past Contested: The Soviet–American Conflict in Berlin over History Curriculum Reform, 1945–48

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Gregory P. Wegner
Gregory P. Wegner*
Affiliation:
College of Education at the University of Wisconsin–LaCrosse
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Berlin, a focal point for Cold War tensions among the occupation powers, left to history an exceedingly rare and little-known instance of Allied cooperation in curriculum reform. In the midst of frequent ideological clashes, education officials on the Allied Kommandatura Education Committee (AKEC) concluded an agreement in the summer of 1948 on the formation of the postwar history curriculum for a new generation of German youth. The divided city thus remained the only area within the entire occupation zone where Soviet and American education officers established a dialogue over a specific dimension of school knowledge. The proceedings of the AKEC in Berlin and the subsequent accord on the teaching plans for German history offer a unique perspective on the clash between Soviet and American ideological interpretations of modern German history. The theme of this study is the nature of this dialogue, comprising both conflict and a surprising accommodation by both sides. The related issue of school structure, although important for the examination of postwar educational reform in Berlin, is beyond the scope of the investigation.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by the History of Education Society 

References

Notes

1 Füssl, Karl-Hans and Kubina, Christian “Educational Reform between Politics and Pedagogics: The Development of Education in Berlin after World War II,“ History of Education Quarterly 25 (Spring/Summer 1985): 133–53; and Klewitz, Marion Berliner Einheitsschule, 1945–51: Enstehung, Durchfübrung, und Revision des Reformgesetzes von 1947/48 (Berlin, 1971), 82–123.Google Scholar

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