PATHS TO DIGITAL MODERNITY 381
nological advancements, it still had a great political interest in keeping
tabs on the problems that the East faced with computerization. The West
believed that progress in modernization within the crisis-plagued GDR
economy might have a positive eff ect in bringing the two countries closer
together. There were indeed some entanglements in the narrower sense
of the word, especially the economic activities undertaken by the Kom-
merzielle Koordinierung (Commercial Coordination Offi ce) in the West,
which came to play a more important role in providing Western com-
puter technology to the GDR in the 1980s. Of course, there were also
the many illegal transfers of technology set up by the Stasi with the help
of West German companies that circumvented the embargo regulations,
but also unintentionally increased the GDR’s dependence on the West.
The advent of digital modernity in Germany was therefore very much a
geteilte Geschichte in both senses of the term, marked by entanglements
and disentanglements alike.
Jürgen Danyel is deputy director and head of the section “Contemporary
History in Media and Information Society” at the Center for Contemporary
History (ZZF) in Potsdam. His research focuses on the ways in which both
German states dealt with their respective pasts, the elites in the Soviet Oc-
cupation Zone/GDR, the social history of state socialism, and the Prague
Spring in 1968. He has published numerous studies on these topics.
Annette Schuhmann is a research associate and editor of the Internet
portal “Zeitgeschichte-online” at the Center for Contemporary History
(ZZF) in Potsdam. She studied history and political science at the Freie
Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on industrial history in the soci-
eties of state socialism.
NOTES- Cf. Ralf Ahrens, “Spezialisierungsinteresse und Integrationsaversion im Rat
für Gegenseitige Wirtschaftshilfe: Der DDR-Werkzeugmaschinenbau in den
1970er Jahren,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 49, no. 2 (2008): 73–92.
See also Olaf Klenke, Ist die DDR an der Globalisierung gescheitert? Autarke
Wirtschaftspolitik versus internationale Weltwirtschaft—Das Beispiel Mikro-
elektronik (Frankfurt a. M., 2001). - Ahrens, “Spezialisierungsinteresse”; Peter Hübner, Arbeit, Arbeiter und Tech-
nik in der DDR, 1971 bis 1989 (Bonn, 2014), 45ff .; Simon Donig, “Vorbild
und Klassenfeind. Die USA und die DDR-Informatik in den 1960er Jahren,”
Osteuropa 59, no. 10 (2009): 89–100.