The Fight against Infant Mortality in Cold War Germany: East/West Convergence on Liberal Governmentality

Harsch, Donna

doi:10.1086/713997

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…28 Donna Harsch discussed the transition from a statecentred system towards a more 'liberal' one in the 1970s, partially propelled by pressure from women. 29 Eva Schäffler and others noted the state's efforts to support the pregnancies of single and working women. 30 In Hungary, as shown by Andrea Pető for the abortion trials of 1952-53, an informal network of medical professionals conducting illegal abortions undermined pronatalist state efforts, concluding that 'female solidarity indeed triumphed over state coercion.'…”

Section: Historiography Of Reproductive Medicine In East-central Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Work, marriage and premature birth: the socio-medicalisation of pregnancy in state socialist East-Central Europe

Lišková,

Jarska,

Gagyiova

et al. 2023

Med. Hist.

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Reproductive health in state socialism is usually viewed as an area in which the broader contexts of women’s lives were disregarded. Focusing on expert efforts to reduce premature births, we show that the social aspects of women’s lives received the most attention. In contrast to typical descriptions emphasising technological medicalisation and pharmaceuticalisation, we show that expertise in early socialism was concerned with socio-medical causes of prematurity, particularly work and marriage. The interest in physical work in the 1950s evolved towards a focus on psychological factors in the 1960s and on broader socio-economic conditions in the 1970s. Experts highlighted marital happiness as conducive to healthy birth and considered unwed women more prone to prematurity. By the 1980s, social factors had faded from interest in favour of a bio-medicalised view. Our findings are based on a rigorous comparative analysis of medical journals from Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany.

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Section: Historiography Of Reproductive Medicine In East-central Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Work, marriage and premature birth: the socio-medicalisation of pregnancy in state socialist East-Central Europe

Lišková,

Jarska,

Gagyiova

et al. 2023

Med. Hist.

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“…März 1972, Büro des Ministerrates der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, ed (1972b) 31. For the history of the 'Wunschkindpille', see Leo and König 2015. For the history of abortion in the GDR, see also Harsch 1997;Schwartz 2008. 32.…”

Section: Notesunclassified

“…20. For the development of prenatal care from a socialist paternalistic form in the 1950s to a ‘liberal governance of pregnancy and childbirth’ in the 1970s, see Harsch 2021, quotation: 409. For the counselling of pregnant women, see also Major 2003.…”

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confidence: 99%

Healthy, happy, rational: reflections on genetic counselling in the GDR

Doetz

2023

Med Humanities

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The development of genetic counselling in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was closely connected to a well-established system of prenatal care and a process that placed reproductive decisions in the hands of women. It was embedded in the pronatalist reproductive policy of the GDR and a narrative of medical and (socialist) humanistic progress. As in other countries at that time, it promoted the goal of avoiding the birth of children with disabilities and was hence based on ableist premises. In this paper, I focus on communicative aspects of genetic counselling, as it was established in the 1970s and 1980s in university and district clinics. Thus, on the one hand I explore the communication of genetic counselling to the public; and on the other, I study the communication processes in genetic counselling centres themselves. In contrast to the USA, where the ‘genetic counsellor’ became established as a professional identity in the 1970s, there was no distinct profession of ‘genetic counsellor’ in the GDR. Instead, counselling was practised by physicians or biologists with a special interest in human genetics. This resulted in a strong emphasis in these clinical encounters on diagnosis and technical solutions, as well as an educational impetus. I propose that an important goal of genetic counselling in the GDR was to generate a sense of ‘rationality’ in prospective parents. To achieve this, those advocating and giving counselling explicitly sought to distance this practice from the eugenic ideas of the past, and to dispel superstitious ideas of heredity and religious ideas of fate. In addition, they attempted to alleviate emotions such as fear and guilt. It was in that context that counselling physicians and biologists provided interpretations of genetic findings, risk figures and disease values. I show how different interests and experiences shaped these and how risk evaluations structured counsellor-counsellee communication.

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“…In her exploration of infant health in West and East Germany, Harsch has found a gradual convergence, as both regimes came to care about infant mortality a great deal, and in surprisingly similar ways. 29 She is one of several scholars who is now revisiting the 'convergence' thesis, this time in a broader socio-economic scale. 30 As the Cold War recedes further into history, it is becoming increasingly apparent just how much the different regimes had in common.…”

Section: Concluding Commentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epilogue: Socialist ageing in a global context

Chappel¹,

Scarborough²

2023

Geriatrics and Ageing in the Soviet Union

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The ageing of our bodies occurs at the most intimate level of our cells, yet our senescence brings us into contact with much larger narratives. Ageing affects our selves and our families, but it also influences the course of national and international history. Global ageing is without a doubt one of the most important human phenomena of the modern era. While historians are constitutionally allergic to positing historical laws, it does appear that some version of the 'demographic transition' is happening, or has happened, everywhere across the world. The collapse of birth rates, combined with the sometimes dramatic expansion of lifespans, has led to unavoidable questions of financing, culture and care.These challenges are being met in very different ways. Scholars have paid a great deal of attention to the diversity of responses within the capitalist world. Gøsta Esping-Andersen's famous Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, for example, could be alternatively read as the Three Worlds of Caring for Older Citizens, given that, in most places, this is the largest component of welfare spending. 1 More recently, there has been an emphasis on the influence of ageing models exported from the west to developing nations, but largely within the context of contemporary global capitalism. Significantly less attention has been paid to the socialist world, or to comparisons between the capitalist and socialist worlds. One purpose of this volume has been to begin to address this lacuna.Since the essays in the volume are not, for the most part, directly comparative in nature, we would like to use this epilogue to situate the volume's findings in a broader, global context to discover what is unique, and what is not, about ageing in the Soviet sphere. We have organized our remarks into four sections, reflecting what seem to us to be four major themes in both the historical literature on

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The Fight against Infant Mortality in Cold War Germany: East/West Convergence on Liberal Governmentality

Cited by 4 publications

References 24 publications

Work, marriage and premature birth: the socio-medicalisation of pregnancy in state socialist East-Central Europe

Work, marriage and premature birth: the socio-medicalisation of pregnancy in state socialist East-Central Europe

Healthy, happy, rational: reflections on genetic counselling in the GDR

Epilogue: Socialist ageing in a global context

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