Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1998. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 233-245).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1982. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 481-529).

Thesis (M.A.)--Eastern Illinois University. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-144).

This PhD examines the historical making and interpretation of West-German official labour statistics in the period 1950-1973: how did official statistics come to be inscribed in state and administrative attempts to intervene into the labour market with respect to (un-)employment? Rather than considering statistics as a resource for state action and scientific investigation, this thesis is concerned with statistics as a contested topic comprising different techniques and ideas, styles of reasoning, practices, technologies and institutional contexts. Drawing on archival material from the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the Federal Labour Office, the Federal Statistical Office, the Organisation for Economic Corporation and Development (OECD), and other sources, the thesis examines debates over the abolition of the federal labour office’s labour statistics 1950–1963, and the establishment of a new statistical infrastructure in the following decade. In bridging work in economic and social history, and the history and geography of official statistics and technology, this thesis shows how debate on the employment files – generated in 1935 and reestablished in 1950 – as the basis of quarterly official statistics was centred on the question of which statistics for which polity. This involved different ‘statistical gazes’ at different scales among labour administrators, bureaucratic officials, and statisticians. In studying the scientific-administrative issues of how and where statistics were produced and made credible, the analysis shows how authoritarian conceptions inscribed onto the files gave way, first, to more economical conceptions of data capturing (i.e. representative samples) and, from the late 1960s, to a statistical infrastructure based on electronic data processing. In examining the different rationalities – statistical-technical and political – the thesis shows how transformations in labour statistics were affected by dynamics between: federal state space and locality; technological dreams of labour administrators and statistical requirements; mathematisation and mechanisation of the statistical discourse; trust and credibility; public critique and legitimacy.

My dissertation reconstructs sociopolitical new-beginning discourses pertaining to Bonn, the provisional West German capital, during the Federal Republic’s founding years. Combining approaches from history, cultural studies, and literary studies, I look at Bonn as a projection screen through which to explore the new-beginning discourses that challenged the FRG during its founding years. I argue that there exists a common pattern of contradiction throughout these discourses, as West Germans attempted to straddle the sociopolitical divides and contradictions between the Nazi past, and a now West-oriented future. With individual chapters addressing different cultural domains, my dissertation offers a cultural cross-section of how Bonn was instrumental in implementing a complex strategy for a new beginning in a post-fascist, war-torn society. Chapter one contextualizes the history of the search for a provisional capital of 1948/9 in symbolisms about Bonn that were seldom explicitly expressed, but which help explain the choice of Bonn as provisional capital, paying particular attention to the fact that it was a provincial city removed from the flashpoints of recent German history. The second chapter investigates city-planning debates about the Bonn federal district to highlight the dynamic ways in which West Germans negotiated the status of their provisional capital in relation to larger geopolitical questions of the Cold War and the division of Germany. Chapter three traces the complex genesis of the Neues Bauen-infused, modernist architecture employed by architect Hans Schwippert in the Bundeshaus and Palais Schaumburg renovations. It goes on to illustrate how the FRG’s early, official architectural stance is one based on contradiction and negotiation between two opposing conceptions of political architecture: the traditionalism of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Schwippert’s moderate modernism. The final chapter examines the spatial configurations of two “Bonn-novels,” Wolfgang Koeppen’s Das Treibhaus (1953) and Günter Weisenborn’s Auf Sand gebaut (1956) to argue that both “Bonn novels” portray the city as a topographical contradiction, divided between the “old Bonn” and the “political Bonn,” with corresponding, largely incompatible social spheres. Both novels exploit this characteristic to express a critique of the democratic process in Bonn. / text

Four years after the end of the National Socialist dictatorship and a disastrous major war, basic rights and democratic government were enshrined in the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany in May 1949. Thus parliamentary democracy was formally and institutionally reintroduced to Western Germany at the Bund level. Successful implantation of democracy, however, requires not only constitutional arrangements but also, and perhaps more importantly, participation on the part of the people in the democratic process. Through analysis of the public involvement in the Basic Law's formulation and the impact of the public debate on the deliberations of the Parliamentary Council between September 1948 and May 1949, the degree of participation of Germans in the three Western zones of occupation, upon which the new West German state could subsequently build, is explored. Initial answers are suggested in chapter II and then developed in subsequent chapters as various contentious topics debated by the Parliamentary Council are examined. Anti-parliamentarianism, the search for a new symbol, newspaper perceptions as a reflection of the reality of interaction between occupier and occupied in the constitution's formulation, and the public debate about the nature and status of the second chamber, about the relationship between God and the Basic Law, and about full equality for women are analysed. The nature and extent of the public debate 1948-1949 make clear that the German population of the Western zones had already begun to think and function in a democratic fashion on the Bund level. This thesis suggests that the creation of an institutional framework, such as the Basic Law, should not be overemphasized at the expense of the developing democratic culture in post-war Western Germany. Without the gradual democratization of the population already well underway when the provisional constitution came into force on 23 May 1949, it is unlikely that the Federal Republic of Germany could have established itself so successfully so quickly.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Oldenburg, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-307) and index.

Inaugural-Dissertation--Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Münich, 1982. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-331) and index.

Diss.--Freie Universität Berlin. / Bibliography: p. 343-363.

Diss.--Freie Universität Berlin. / Another ed. (Meisenheim am Glan, A. Hain) issued in the same year, without thesis statement, under title: Franz Josef Strauss, die CSU und die Aussenpolitik. Bibliography: p. 315-346.