Скачать или смотреть Jörg Neuheiser– Work between National Socialism & the Economic Miracle

Jörg Neuheiser’s (Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California, San Diego) current research focuses on post-war Germany and the history of work in 20th century Europe. He is working on a book on the West German work ethic after 1945 in which he analyzes the legacy of Weimar and Nazi work experiences after 1945, the migration of so-called “guest workers” from the 1960s onwards and the German experience of economic, technological and cultural change in the 1970s and 1980s.

In this lecture, Joerg Neuheiser focuses on West Germany in the late 1940s and 1950s, a period commonly associated with "Trümmerfrauen" (rubble women) who cleared up war-devastated cities, and hard-working Germans creating the economic miracle. However, while some observers criticized the post-war "work mania" as an attempt to repress guilt and traumatic memories of the Nazi past, others were concerned with "Americanization" and the negative influence of modern technology on traditional "German work". His paper will show that the meaning of work was highly contested among contemporaries, and that debates on work, unemployment and the future of production were closely related to fundamental questions about German identity, Germany's past and the country's position in the world.