ABSTRACT
In West Germany, science-oriented institutions and technical institutes have made up the higher educational system. The state and law have played an important role in the context of the Federal Republic. Education is mainly a function of the states, and from the beginning of the Federal Republic of Germany, state Ministers of Education knew that they needed to coordinate aspects of education among themselves. In the unification of East and West Germany, the most important agreement made by the Standing Conference of Ministers was the Hamburg Treaty of 1964. It became the school law imposed on the new East German states as they sorted out their educational options and wrote their individual school laws. Nursery school education has been the one sphere of schooling lying beyond firm state regulation. Of course, the old subjects of religion, German, history, social studies, geography, music, drawing, and physical education continue, though less time is given to them.
