The Adaptation of the Industrialization Level of the Northern Regions of GDR/East Germany to that of the Southern Regions under the Conditions of the Division and the Reunification of Germany (1952-1997)

Vyrovnání úrovně průmyslového rozvoje v severních a jižních regionech NDR /východního Německa v letech 1952-1997 vzhledem k rozdělení a sjednocení Německa

Jörg Roesler

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, 2007, vol. 2007, issue 7, 312-330

Abstract: The territory which had been the German Democratic Republic between 1949 and 1989 since the industrial revolution in the 19th century was characterized by an industrialized high developed South (Saxony and Thuringia), a rural North (Mecklenburg) and a mixed developed region in between. The GDR governments proclaimed the industrialization of the North to level out the economic and social differences inside East Germany, seen as "capitalist heritage" which should be overcome. The article analyzes how the spatial tasks were integrated into the dominant branch orientated perspective plans which were aimed at creating a national GDR economy after the division of Germany. It also refers to the institutions which were developed for spatial planning since the end of the 1950s. Beginning with the 1970s the goal of industrializing the North became secondary compared with rationalisation investments in traditionally industrialized regions of the South. Nevertheless there had been reached a relative success in the adaptation of the North to the industrial level of the South during the 40 years of separate development of East Germany. But this development remained significantly behind the results of the comparable process between the Czech and Slovak provinces. After the reunification of Germany there existed neither an industrial policy nor effective instruments to influence the East Germany economy spatially. When the North did not fall much behind the South during the 1990s - as originally expected - this was due to unintended consequences of isolated political decisions during the privatisation process undertaken as an answer to local resistance against dismissals and threatening factory closures.

Keywords: arms industry; factory closures; industrialization; reunification of Germany; spatial development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.213

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