426 EMMANUEL DROIT AND WILFRIED RUDLOFF
system was in tatters and fell into damnatio memoriae in public discourse.
Despite the often painful restructuring of the educational system in the
new federal states, many East German teachers and instructors were able
to pick up the pieces and overcome this turning point in their lives thanks
to their professional ethos.
Three transformation processes took place in the two decades after
reunifi cation that had diff erent scopes as well as directional coordinates.
First, the East German educational system was radically restructured
along West German lines, but the federalist culture of education allowed
for the development of an independent concept of institutional order in
the new federal states. This process was followed a decade later by the
beginnings of a structural reorganization process in a number of West
German states in which the West looked to the East instead of the other
way around. The clearest indication of this reversal was the spread of the
two-pillar school model. Since the turn of the millennium, moreover, the
European and international frames of reference have become all the more
important for the German educational system. The Bologna process that
was initiated in 1999 with the active engagement of the German federal
government ultimately led to a far-reaching structural reorganization of
the higher education system. Judged on the basis of the PISA shock and
its consequences, international frames of reference have become all the
more important in Germany, and school policy reform agendas are now
highly informed by successful models from other countries around the
world.
Emmanuel Droit is professor of international history at the Institute of
Political Studies of the University of Strasbourg. His research focuses on
the sociopolitical history of the GDR, Eastern European political polices
during the Cold War, and the transnational history of the Eastern Bloc.
His publications include Vorwäts zum neuen Menschen ? Die sozialistische
Erziehung in der DDR 1949–1989 (2014).
Wilfried Rudloff is a research associate at the Academy of Science and
Literature Mainz. His main research interests include the history of the
welfare state and the history of education since 1945.
NOTES- Aleida Assmann, Arbeit am nationalen Gedächtnis: Eine kurze Geschichte der
deutschen Bildungsidee (Frankfurt a. M., 1993), 9.