The Professionalization of a Parliament in Transition: The 10th People*s Chamber of the German Democratic Republic (October 1989-October 1990).

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Wirsching
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2011 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 188958620

The People*s Chamber of the GDR (Volkskammer) has been researched to date mainly by political scientists in order to analyse its role within the political system of the GDR. This project however has a different namely a complex cultural historical approach: It tries to examine the political transition of the East German parliament in the years 1989/90 out of the perspective of parliamentarians themselves. By examining their self-perception, behaviour and working style during the decisive months between October 1989 and October 1990 we aim to gain an insight into the self-image and political culture of the last parliament of the GDR. The self-parliamentarization and afterwards the dissolution of the People*s Chamber was the task of MPs that had almost no parliamentary experience. We suspect that these MPs developed a specific political practice that resulted from a combination of two different role models: an ideal parliament and the reality of a western-style parliament like the German Bundestag. Besides archival material and a number of interviews with selected former Volkskammer MPs the main source for the study is the comprehensive live coverage of the parliamentary sittings on television. We hope that all these sources give information about how the MPs acted under the condition of heavy time pressure and interventions of West German advisers and how the transformational process from a controlled socialist representative body to a democratically elected parliament was dealt with mentally and practically. The results will be compared with those of a Czech research group that examines the transitional process of the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia 1989-1992.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Institution: Institute of Contemporary History (USD)