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Previous cross-sectional studies highlight persistent East–West differences in gender ideologies after German reunification. This study examines the extent to which gender ideologies in the East and West have converged and whether differences are still relevant for younger cohorts who experienced childhood around the time of reunification, or after 1989. Using data from the German Family Panel pairfam (2008–2019) and differences in regime-specific socialization for three cohorts born before and after reunification, results reveal that different dimensions of gender ideologies have only partly converged 30 years after reunification. Attitudes towards housework and female employment converged particularly, yet, in all cohorts, views on maternal employment remain substantially different between East and West. Observed convergence occurred only partly due to contrasting trends of modernization in West Germany and re-traditionalization in East Germany. Moreover, the results highlight smaller attitude changes with increasing age, particularly for the younger cohorts, contributing to further variations in East–West differences. Overall, the findings confirm the existence of long-lasting ideology differences due to regime-specific socialization, and a persistently altered composition of society in East and West Germany. At the same time, they point towards slow convergence among younger cohorts due to a more similar institutional and socialization context following reunification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the previously published article entitled "1989 at Thirty: A Recast Legacy," by Paul Betts, which appeared in the no. 244 August 2019 issue of "Past and Present." Topics explored include the fall of communism in the Communist Bloc countries, the opening of the Berlin Wall between East and West Germany, and the rise of populist nationalism in Eastern Europe.

George H. W. Bush backed German reunification with a puzzling degree of enthusiasm. His strategic reasoning was clear and not in dispute, as he desired to keep a unified Germany enmeshed within NATO. Less obvious, however, is his general forgiveness of Germany's past, for which he was pilloried. Yet history was much on Bush's mind in reaching these decisions. Germans had learned from the past, he argued. Europeans had not. They could not keep the peace no matter their ongoing political consolidation, his administration concluded by reading European history, without Americans in their midst. Bush backed unification, therefore, to ensure NATO's survival and thus an ongoing American presence on the continent. By studying Bush's sense of history, and a policymaker's historical sensibility more broadly, historians can thus gain greater insight into this decision and how strategic decisions are more generally formed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focuses on the stand of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) concerning a national unity in Germany. Views of GDR leaders on the unification; Role of GDR as a German Piedmont; Inevitability of the formation of a two state nation.

The article focuses on the issues concerning the general election in Germany in 1990. According to the author, the result of the 1990 German general election surprised no one. It traces the events occurred from the quiet revolution in Eastern Europe in which the Berlin Wall was breached and the succession by the collapse of the Communist regime in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Furthermore, it discusses the first free election of the People's Chamber in the GDR and the reunification of Germany.

Cites West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's letter to Rabbi Marvin Hier of Los Angeles, California, addressing Jewish concerns about the future of a united Germany. Hier's inquiry about how a united Germany would preserve the memory of the Holocaust.