Ostdeutsche Dritte-Welt-Gruppen vor und nach 1989/90

Dr. Maria Magdalena Verburg studierte Geschichte und Anglistik sowie Japanische Sprache und Kultur in Dresden. Sie ist Stipendiatin der »Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur«.

"I'm fed up of people starving" ("Ich habe es satt, dass andere hungern") was the motto of the East German third-world groups. Their aim was to improve the living conditions of people in the economically weak states in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The author traces the development of these developmental initiatives, which mostly emerged in the early 1980s and later, through all the historic changes: in the last decade of the GDR, during the dramatic upheavals in 1989/90 and in the Federal Republic in the 1990s. Against the background of these utterly different political contexts she analyses the concepts, practical work and development of the East German third-world groups. The main focus of the study are the relations of the East German third-world initiatives to their political and social milieu: the Church, the public, other alternative political initiatives, the West German third-world movement and above all the respective state actors.