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Images - Men, Women and Labor: East Germany
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1.   Female Workers at the East German State Railway Improvement Works in Wittenberge (1955)
During the war, German women filled the labor shortage by doing many jobs that had previously been performed by men – they worked, for example, as streetcar drivers. But even after the war's end,....
Female Workers at the East German State Railway Improvement Works in Wittenberge (1955)
2.   Members of the Worin Agricultural Cooperative in Oderbruch Discuss their Work (1955)
In 1952, the Second Party Conference of the SED passed a resolution to “build up Socialism” and issued an accompanying appeal to establish agricultural cooperatives [Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaften....
Members of the Worin Agricultural Cooperative in Oderbruch Discuss their Work (1955)
3.   Members of a "Socialist Work Collective" Eat Lunch in the Barracks of a Potsdam Construction Site (1959)
Like their counterparts in the Federal Republic, women in the GDR often took subordinate or menial positions as unskilled or semi-skilled laborers. Lacking other opportunities, although gradually....
Members of a "Socialist Work Collective" Eat Lunch in the Barracks of a Potsdam Construction Site (1959)
4.   Housewives' Brigade (January 1960)
In the fall of 1958, in the face of a workers’ shortage in the GDR, the SED started a propaganda campaign to form “housewives’ brigades” throughout the GDR. The initiative, which existed until 1962-63,....
Housewives' Brigade (January 1960)
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