Education in present-day Germany: some considerations as mirrored in comparative education (July 1991) [1992]

On 3 October 1990, Germany was legally reunified. The ‘transitional’ phase started by Erich Honecker's overthrow one year before had come to a formal end, insofar as the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist. Two months later, on 2 December 1990, the first all-German Bundestag was elected by the whole population (entitled to vote) of Germany. During the ‘transitional’ phase, represented by the ‘farewell socialist’ government under Hans Modrow and the first democratically elected government under Lothar de Maizière, East Germany resembled a boat on a river which had left its long-year harbour in rotten repair, as a consequence of the desolate condition the harbour itself had been in. However, the harbour at which the boat has arrived after being exposed to the power of rapids, looks more like a shelter or scaffolding than a solid house, all the more so as it is still loaded with heaps of scrap which has been taken over from the ‘old’ harbour.