"Equal but not the Same": The Struggle for "Gleichberechtigung" and the Reform of Marriage and Family Law in East and West Germany, 1945-1968
Journal: Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Year: 2019

This dissertation explores the interplay of political, social, and economic factors that first prevented and later led, despite all resistance, to the reform of family law in East and West Germany in the 1950s and early 1960s. After 1945, Germans inherited a Civil Code that dated back to 1900 and had designated women as second-class citizens in marriage, parental rights, and marital property. In the postwar period, in the context of the founding of the East and West German states and the rising