EDUCATIONAL RIVALRIES 417
frames of reference and the infl uence of European cooperation at the
political level.^111
“Build a new school system, but don’t do everything like the West.”
(Kurt Biedenkopf)Reunifi cation in the 1990s marked the failure of the GDR as a political
project. Its achievements in the educational sector were therefore no lon-
ger seen as legitimate in either East or West Germany. The justifi ed criti-
cism of the ideological indoctrination and militarization of the education
system in the GDR had disqualifi ed it within the international context,
which meant that there was no room to make fi ner points about its merits
or pitfalls. Even within the Joint Education Commission FRG/GDR, which
had been set up in May 1990 as the advisory body tasked with coordinat-
ing the cooperation and merger of the two educational systems, the main
goal of the GDR negotiators soon became the “alignment of the school
system with the states of the Federal Republic.”^112 The GDR Einheitsschule,
apart from a few signifi cant fi ner points, was replaced by the tiered West
German school system, which meant that approximately 5,000 POS had
to be restructured. Likewise, countless preschools and daycare facilities,
which had been attended by almost 80 percent of the children in the GDR
between one and three years of age (compared to 1.6 percent in West
Germany),^113 were closed down.^114 The new federal states largely, but not
entirely, modeled their school systems after those in West Germany, and
in particular the system in their respective partner states, which assisted
the new states in the East in creating new administrative structures. At
the same time, the new states cautiously took advantage of some of the
freedom aff orded by the federalist nature of the educational system in the
Federal Republic to develop their own solutions and models for reform.
Between 1991 and 1993, new laws on education and schooling in the
East German federal states were passed. In Saxony, the Hauptschule and
the Realschule were put together into the “middle school” (Mittelschule),
in Saxony-Anhalt into the “secondary school” (Sekundarschule), and in
Thuringia into the “regular school” (Regelschule). The Abitur in twelfth
grade (instead of thirteenth grade as in West Germany) was reintroduced
in East Germany, and Saxony also introduced the subject of Wirtschaft-
Technik-Haushalt (economy-technology-household), which resembled
the GDR subject that was called “practical work.” All told, this process
resulted in the creation of “very diff erent school systems adapted to re-
gional circumstances that were only comparable in terms of their move
away from the Einheitsschule.”^115 State legislators established the legal
framework for the new systems, but the actual implementation of these