Berlin, a focal point for Cold War tensions among the occupation powers, left to history an exceedingly rare and little-known instance of Allied cooperation in curriculum reform. In the midst of frequent ideological clashes, education officials on the Allied Kommandatura Education Com mittee (AKEC) concluded an agreement in the summer of 1948 on the formation of the postwar history curriculum for a new generation of German youth. The divided city thus remained the only area within the entire occupation zone where Soviet and American education officers established a dialogue over a specific dimension of school knowledge. The proceedings of the AKEC in Berlin and the subsequent accord on the teaching plans for German history offer a unique perspective on the clash between Soviet and American ideological interpretations of modern German history. The theme of this study is the nature of this dialogue, comprising both conflict and a surprising accommodation by both sides. The related issue of school structure, although important for the ex amination of postwar educational reform in Berlin, is beyond the scope of the investigation.' Cregory P. Wegner is an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse. He gratefully acknowledges the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bonn for scholarship funding; the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin for a travel grant; curator Jurgen Wetzel and his able assistants, Vera Rietz and Christa Baumgard, from Berlin's Landesarchiv; and the International School Textbook Institute in Braunschweig. Valuable insights were offered by Manfred Heinemann of the University of Hanover as well as Karl-Hans Fiissl of Berlin's Paul Lobe Institute, and Werner Vathke of the Free University of Berlin in the early phases of research. Many thanks are also extended to Willie Bunk of the Union of German History Teachers; the administration of Albrecht Diirer Oberschulc in Berlin-Neukolln; W. Rose; and Harald Kricger. Herr Krieger, a teacher of world political studies at Ernst Moritz Arndt Gymnasium in Berlin-Dahlem, gave access to the school archives.
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