Fix it!
by Ælþemplær
In 1980, the DDR achieved a miracle. After a decade of effort, East Germany's birthrate reached 2.0 from a low of 1.2 - effectively hitting replacement birthrate - higher than the US at the time. But, how did they manage to do this? One woman stands out. Inge Lange.
Between 1965 through 1975, the DDR birthrate had gone from 2.5 to 1.5. It was crashing fast. As the head of the Women's Department of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party, Inge Lange could comb the data and see doom coming for the DDR.
Lange was in many ways the primary cause of the DDR's collapsing birthrate. She has been the primary advocate for abortion access and birth control throughout the 60s, and this had been done during a shortage of manpower - Germany had yet to recover from WW2 losses.
However, her friendship with Margot Honecker - wife of the leader of the DDR - meant she had the best means to influence fixes to this disaster she had caused. She had introduced a bug into the DDR's socialist code, and she was going to patch that bug.
Her political formulation became colloquially known as Mutterpolitik, or "Mommy Politics." It was a Dual-earner Model in which the DDR would encourage women to participate both in work and motherhood as socialist ideals. At its core was the belief that children should be burden-free and the state should expend capital to make sure they were burden-free. The DDR created a massive spiderweb of childcare and kindergartens, generous maternity time, and State-guaranteed job security.
Of course, it must be mentioned here there was a double reason for this childcare support: The DDR was competing with the Church. If they could gain the loyalty of children first, the church would be unable to grab them later.
One example of this can be found when a western Journalist, Colin McGlashan, visited the DDR and found that, past the socialist propaganda, the girls in school were being trained to become mothers, not atomized labour. This was an important shift in the socialist culture of the DDR.
The DDR even began copying some of the natalist policies from before the war that promoted families. Cash bonuses were given for each child born, and public housing request rosters put families at the top rather than single people or foreign labour.
Due to their closeness, West and East Germany could not properly censor each other's radio and television. As such, the DDR could actively play off western culture. The West's obsession with working mothers without any children became one such trope to play off.
For example, at the time, West Germany had a meme called the Rabenmutter - "Raven Mother." This was a woman who neglected her children for work. The DDR subverted this meme: the socialist paradise of East Germany had no Rabenmutters!
Some have even stated that since abortion was freely available alongside incentives to have children that this actually created a positive culture of deciding to have children - to this day, women in Saxony enjoy some of the highest fertility rates in Germany.
These efforts brought Lange considerable political clout and she was a close friend of the Politburo. However, this closeness resulted in her expulsion from politics after reunification, as she became a "symbol of DDR oppression" despite her efforts.
The DDR Demographic miracle of 1980 was not just a statistical anomaly but was the result of comprehensive pro-natalist policies hitherto unreplicated in the West. In fact, to this day, the DDR remains the ONLY European country since 1970 to achieve a significant growth in fertility rates.
Sadly, the birthrate did indeed sink again after 1980, as the DDR went broke, but it is perhaps worth noting that even the post-1980 slump is less than the total collapse following reunification. Once Western cultural values spread to the East, the DDR was cooked.
One wonders why the example of the DDR is not studied more comprehensively by demographic experts today. By replicating the policies of the DDR, we could quite quickly change the demographic trends in the west. What reason is there not to?
Between 1965 through 1975, the DDR birthrate had gone from 2.5 to 1.5. It was crashing fast. As the head of the Women's Department of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party, Inge Lange could comb the data and see doom coming for the DDR.
Lange was in many ways the primary cause of the DDR's collapsing birthrate. She has been the primary advocate for abortion access and birth control throughout the 60s, and this had been done during a shortage of manpower - Germany had yet to recover from WW2 losses.
However, her friendship with Margot Honecker - wife of the leader of the DDR - meant she had the best means to influence fixes to this disaster she had caused. She had introduced a bug into the DDR's socialist code, and she was going to patch that bug.
Hero of socialist refeminisation, Inge Lange
Her political formulation became colloquially known as Mutterpolitik, or "Mommy Politics." It was a Dual-earner Model in which the DDR would encourage women to participate both in work and motherhood as socialist ideals. At its core was the belief that children should be burden-free and the state should expend capital to make sure they were burden-free. The DDR created a massive spiderweb of childcare and kindergartens, generous maternity time, and State-guaranteed job security.
Of course, it must be mentioned here there was a double reason for this childcare support: The DDR was competing with the Church. If they could gain the loyalty of children first, the church would be unable to grab them later.
One example of this can be found when a western Journalist, Colin McGlashan, visited the DDR and found that, past the socialist propaganda, the girls in school were being trained to become mothers, not atomized labour. This was an important shift in the socialist culture of the DDR.
The DDR even began copying some of the natalist policies from before the war that promoted families. Cash bonuses were given for each child born, and public housing request rosters put families at the top rather than single people or foreign labour.
Due to their closeness, West and East Germany could not properly censor each other's radio and television. As such, the DDR could actively play off western culture. The West's obsession with working mothers without any children became one such trope to play off.
For example, at the time, West Germany had a meme called the Rabenmutter - "Raven Mother." This was a woman who neglected her children for work. The DDR subverted this meme: the socialist paradise of East Germany had no Rabenmutters!
Some have even stated that since abortion was freely available alongside incentives to have children that this actually created a positive culture of deciding to have children - to this day, women in Saxony enjoy some of the highest fertility rates in Germany.
These efforts brought Lange considerable political clout and she was a close friend of the Politburo. However, this closeness resulted in her expulsion from politics after reunification, as she became a "symbol of DDR oppression" despite her efforts.
The DDR Demographic miracle of 1980 was not just a statistical anomaly but was the result of comprehensive pro-natalist policies hitherto unreplicated in the West. In fact, to this day, the DDR remains the ONLY European country since 1970 to achieve a significant growth in fertility rates.
Sadly, the birthrate did indeed sink again after 1980, as the DDR went broke, but it is perhaps worth noting that even the post-1980 slump is less than the total collapse following reunification. Once Western cultural values spread to the East, the DDR was cooked.
One wonders why the example of the DDR is not studied more comprehensively by demographic experts today. By replicating the policies of the DDR, we could quite quickly change the demographic trends in the west. What reason is there not to?
Originally posted as a thread on X. Republished here with some minor edits.
You concluded your article with this, "One wonders why the example of the DDR is not studied more comprehensively by demographic experts today. By replicating the policies of the DDR, we could quite quickly change the demographic trends in the west. What reason is there not to?" I think the main reason not to is that the "WE" you speak of doesn't really exist as a body politic with any capacity or intention of taking action for the preservation of the Europid race. This is my recommendation. The great challenge of the Europid race, as it blindly careens into historic oblivion, is to develop a plan of action to preserve and improve what is preserved. Migration and admixture are two factors that have led the race to where it is today. Another important factor is the adverse effects of industrialization, which have created a hyper-individualist mindset which leads to delusional alienation from the Natural Order. No longer do Europids act upon a duty to maintain family, clan and tribal harmony within the structures of the Natural Order. In a heroic quest, those with acute foresight capacity and a resourceful pioneering spirit would conduct an exodus out of the ruins and into a territory sufficiently remote to survive the coming crash. Within the strenuously defended metaphysical and physical borders of that territory, they would begin a multigenerational eugenics directed program to evolve a network of extended family enclaves. Starting with individuals of similar Europid ancestry, a society displaying a specific ethnicity would evolve. A primary obstacle to such a program is the current inability of Europid preservation leadership to overcome their pernicious and compulsive addiction to the present system. A cursory survey of the so-called White Nationalist movement shows a static, fermenting quagmire of endless polemics, discussion forums, conferences, academic publications, alternative media commentary and financial grifting schemes. The most likely scenario is that the bulk of Europids and their would be preservation leaders will continue floundering "in the comfort of their mental quagmire". Meanwhile, the course of history continues to decimate and eventually reduce the Europid race to a demoralized and constipated minority incapable of again rising to its former glory.
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