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Vetragsarbeiter (Contract workers) were foreign workers and trainees who worked in East Germany. They were living in the country long-term, without the intention of being integrated as guest workers. [1] However, this did not include employees of foreign companies, foreign students, members of the Soviet armed forces and their families, refugees or foreign trainees. Most of the workers were from Mozambique and Vietnam. [2] Contract workers also worked in economically more advanced Comecon countries such as Czechoslovakia and the People's Republic of Hungary.[ citation needed ]
Contract workers were brought in to reinforce understaffed areas of work, such as light industry or the consumer goods industry. The respective conditions, length of stay, rights and number of contract workers were negotiated individually with the respective government (by a so-called state contract). The duration of the residence permit varied between two and six years depending on the origin. A permanent stay, however, was not provided for by contract or by law. [3]
The moving of family members was excluded. At the end of the contractual period, contract workers usually had to leave and return to their home country. In East Germany, contract workers lived in separate dormitories during their stay, mostly set up by East German businesses and clearly separated from the local population. [2] [4]
In addition, contact between guest workers and East German citizens was extremely limited; Gastarbeiter were usually restricted to their dormitory or an area of the city which Germans were not allowed to enter — furthermore sexual relations with a German led to deportation. [5] [6] [7] Female Vertragsarbeiter were not allowed to become pregnant during their stay. If they did, they were forced to have an abortion [8] [9] or faced deportation.
Die Tageszeitung, stylized as die tageszeitung and commonly referred to as taz, is a German daily newspaper. It is run as a cooperative – it is administered by its employees and a co-operative of shareholders who invest in a free independent press, rather than to depend on advertising and paywalls.
Abortion in Germany is illegal except to save the life of the mother but is nonpunishable during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy upon condition of mandatory counseling. The same goes later in pregnancy in cases that the pregnancy poses an important danger to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman. In the case that the abortion is because of a rape, counseling is not mandatory. The woman needs to receive counseling, called Schwangerschaftskonfliktberatung, at least three days prior to the abortion and must take place at a state-approved centre, which afterwards gives the applicant a Beratungsschein.
Gastarbeiter are foreign or migrant workers, particularly those who had moved to West Germany between 1955 and 1973, seeking work as part of a formal guest worker program. As a result, guestworkers are generally considered temporary migrants because their residency in the country of immigration is not yet determined to be permanent. Other countries had similar programs: in the Netherlands and Belgium it was called the gastarbeider program; in Sweden, Denmark and Norway it was called arbetskraftsinvandring (workforce-immigration); and in East Germany such workers were called Vertragsarbeiter. The term that was used during the Nazi era was Fremdarbeiter. However, the latter term had negative connotations, and was no longer used after World War II.
Immigration to Germany, both in the country's modern borders and the many political entities that preceded it, has occurred throughout the country's history. Today, Germany is one of the most popular destinations for immigrants in the world, with well over 1 million people moving there each year since 2013. As of 2019, around 13.7 million people living in Germany, or about 17% of the population, are first-generation immigrants.
Berliner Fussball Club Dynamo e. V., commonly abbreviated to BFC Dynamo or BFC, alternatively sometimes called Dynamo Berlin, is a German football club based in the locality of Alt-Hohenschönhausen of the borough of Lichtenberg of Berlin. The team competes in the Regionalliga Nordost, the fourth tier of German football
Martha Desrumaux was a militant communist and a member of the French Resistance.
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Vietnamese people in Germany form one of the country's groups of resident foreigners from Asia.
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Germany–Vietnam relations are the bilateral relations between Germany and Vietnam.
Christa Luft is a German economist and politician of the SED/PDS. Luft joined the SED in 1958. From 18 November 1989 to 18 March 1990, she was the Minister of Economics in the Modrow government. From 1994 to 2002 she was member of the Bundestag for the PDS.
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The (Allgemeine) Schulpflicht is a statutory regulation in Germany that obliges children and adolescents up to a certain age to attend a school. The Schulpflicht includes not only regular and punctual school attendance, but also participation in lessons and other school events, as well as doing homework.
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The Foreign policy of East Germany was characterized by the close ties of East Germany to the Eastern Bloc. During its existence, the most important partner was the Soviet Union (USSR), which acted as a protecting power and most important trade and economic partner, which is why the GDR was often called a satellite state. The GDR remained closely linked to the other socialist states through organizations such as the Warsaw Pact and Comecon. While the GDR was relatively isolated outside the communist world in the first two decades of its existence due to the Hallstein Doctrine of West Germany, a change took place in the 1970s with the rapprochement with West Germany under Chancellor Willy Brandt's new Ostpolitik. As a result, the GDR was able to gain international status and establish diplomatic relations with almost 130 countries. While the Marxist-Leninist state ideology played a major role in the foreign policy of the East German government, it was however also influenced by their own economic and political interests. From the 1970s onwards, the GDR increasingly emancipated itself from the Soviet Union and pursued an independent policy towards West Germany, as loans from the West had become vital for the GDR's survival. In the 1980s, Erich Honecker refused to implement liberalizing reforms, which alienated the GDR from the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev. After the revolutions of 1989, the Eastern Bloc collapsed and Germany was reunified, ending the period of an independent East German foreign policy.
Amadeu Antonio Kiowa was an Angolan man who resided in Germany as a foreign worker. He became one of the first known victims of far-right racist violence in reunified Germany. The verdicts reached during the course of the trial of the murderers were widely criticised as being too lax, as the court had sentenced them to four years in prison for bodily injury that resulted in death. Much of public opinion and the media had called for homicide charges to be filed. The Amadeu Antonio Foundation was founded in his memory in 1998.
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