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Economy of East Germany

The economy of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany; GDR, DDR) was a command economy following the model of the Soviet Union based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism. Sharing many characteristics with fellow COMECON member states — the East German economy stood in stark contrast to the market and mixed economies of Western Europe, including West Germany. The state established production targets, set prices, and also allocated resources, codifying these decisions in comprehensive plans. The means of production were almost entirely state-owned. The GDR had an above-average standard of living compared to other Eastern Bloc countries or the Soviet Union, and enjoyed favorable duty and tariff terms with the West German market; in 1989, it was estimated that 50 to 60% of its trade was with Western countries. However by the mid-1980s its economy had reached a state of stagnation, contributing to the process of German reunification.

Soviet occupation period
Each occupation power assumed authority in their respective zones by June 1945. The Allied powers originally pursued a common German policy, focused on denazification and demilitarization in preparation for the restoration of a democratic German nation-state.

Over time, the western and Soviet zones drifted apart economically. In 1946, the Soviet zone had a slight total factor productivity lead; wartime industrialization had contributed more to the eastern economy, and the destruction caused by the war was lighter than in the west. However, by 1948 the western zones had become more prosperous.

There were several reasons behind the backward economic situation in East Germany. While large sums had been poured into West Germany, especially by the United States, the Soviet Union not only put nothing into the economy of its zone but actually took out large amounts in reparations and occupation costs. Direct and indirect reparations paid by East Germany between 1946 and 1953 amounted to $14 billion in 1938 prices.

Military industries and those owned by the state, by Nazi Party members, and by war criminals were confiscated. These industries amounted to approximately 60% of total industrial production in the Soviet zone. Most heavy industry (constituting 20% of total production) was claimed by the Soviet Union as World War II reparations, and Soviet joint stock companies (German: Sowjetische Aktiengesellschaften - SAG) were formed. The remaining confiscated industrial property was nationalized, leaving 40% of total industrial production to private enterprise. The reparations seriously hindered the ability of East Germany to compete with West Germany economically.

While the dismantling of industrial capacity had a significant effect, the most important factor in explaining the initial divergence in economic performance was the separation of the eastern zone from its traditional West German market. The East German economy was dominated by consumer-goods manufacturers, and depended on raw materials and intermediate goods found exclusively in the West. East Germany had virtually no hard coal deposits, and only half of the fuel demand could be met domestically. In 1943 the East accounted for 0.5% of total output in coke, 1.6% in raw iron, and 6.9% in raw steel produced in post-war German territory. After the war, trade between East and West fell by a factor of 35.

Retail trade in the east was slowly being absorbed by two state-controlled organizations (Konsum and Handelsorganisation) which were given special preferences. On 2 January 1949, a two-year plan of economic reconstruction was launched, aiming at 81% of the 1936 production level, and, by cutting 30 per cent off production costs, hoping to raise the general wage level 12% to 15%. The plan also called for an increase in the daily food ration from 1,500 to 2,000 calories.

It was estimated that by 1949, 100 per cent of the automotive, between 90% and 100% of the chemical, and 93% of the fuel industries were in Soviet hands. By the end of 1950 East Germany had paid $3.7 bn of Russia's $10 bn reparations demand. After the death of Joseph Stalin and the June 1953 uprising, the Soviet Union began to return the East German factories it had taken as reparations.

In May 1949, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky claimed that production in the Soviet occupation zone in March 1949 had reached 96.6 per cent of its 1936 level and that the government budget of the Soviet zone showed a surplus of 1 billion East German Marks, despite a 30% cut in taxes.

The following case is typical of the economic relationship between the two eastern bloc countries. According to documents supplied by a shipbuilding official who escaped from the East, ships ordered by the Soviet Union for 1954 cost $148 million to build, but the Soviets paid only $46 million for them; the difference of $102 million was absorbed by the GDR.

1950s
The agrarian reform (Bodenreform) expropriated all land belonging to former Nazis and war criminals and generally limited ownership to 1 km2. Some 500 Junker estates were converted into agricultural production cooperatives (German: Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft - LPG), and more than 30,000 km2 were distributed among 500,000 peasant farmers, agricultural laborers, and refugees. Compensation was paid only to active anti-Nazis. In September 1947 the Soviet military administration announced the completion of agrarian reform through the Soviet zone. This report listed 12,355 estates, totaling 6000000 acre, which had been seized and redistributed to 119,000 families of landless farmers, 83,000 refugee families, and some 300,000 in other categories. State farms were also established, called Volkseigenes Gut ("People's Owned Property").

The Third Party Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands—SED) convened in July 1950 and emphasized industrial progress. The industrial sector, employing 40% of the working population, was subjected to further nationalization, which resulted in the formation of the "People's Enterprises" (German: Volkseigene Betriebe—VEB). These enterprises incorporated 75% of the industrial sector. The First Five Year Plan (1951–55) introduced centralized state planning; it stressed high production quotas for heavy industry and increased labor productivity. The pressures of the plan caused an exodus of GDR citizens to West Germany. The second SED Party Conference (less important than a party congress) convened from 9–12 July 1952. 1565 delegates, 494 guest-delegates, and over 2500 guests from the GDR and from many countries in the world participated in it. In the conference a new economic policy was adopted, "Planned Construction of Socialism". The plan called to strengthen the state-owned sector of the economy. Further goals were to implement the principles of uniform socialist planning and to use the economic laws of socialism systematically.

By 1953, one out of every seven industrial companies had relocated to the West. Joseph Stalin died in March 1953. In June 1953, the SED, hoping to give workers an improved standard of living, announced the New Course which replaced the "Planned Construction of Socialism." The New Course in the GDR was based on the economic policy initiated by Georgi Malenkov in the Soviet Union. Malenkov's policy, which aimed at improvement in the standard of living, stressed a shift in investment toward light industry and trade and a greater availability of consumer goods. The SED, in addition to shifting emphasis from heavy industry to consumer goods, initiated a program for alleviating economic hardships. This led to a reduction of delivery quotas and taxes, the availability of state loans to private business, and an increase in the allocation of production material.

While the New Course increased the availability of consumer goods, there were still high production quotas. When work quotas were raised in 1953, it led to the uprising of June 1953. Strikes and demonstrations happened in major industrial centers, and workers demanded economic reforms. The Volkspolizei and the Soviet Army suppressed the uprising, in which approximately 100 participants were killed.

When the 1953 budget was introduced in the Volkskammer on 4 February, economic exploitation in the Soviet interest was still the dominant trend. The budget envisaged expenditures of 34.688 bn East marks, an increase of about 10% over the 31.730 bn of the 1952 budget. Its main object was to provide investments for strengthening the economy and for national defense.

In 1956, at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev repudiated Stalinism, in his so-called ‘Secret Speech’ to selected members of the Congress.

Around this time, an academic intelligentsia within the SED leadership demanded reform. To this end, Wolfgang Harich issued a platform advocating radical changes in the GDR. In late 1956, he and his associates were quickly purged from the SED ranks and imprisoned.

An SED party plenum in July 1956 confirmed Walter Ulbricht's leadership and presented the Second Five-Year Plan (1956–60). The plan employed the slogan "modernization, mechanization, and automation" to emphasize the new focus on technological progress. At the plenum, the regime announced its intention to develop nuclear energy, and the first nuclear reactor in the GDR was activated in 1957. Decision was also made to build the first nuclear power reactor, the Rheinsberg Nuclear Power Plant, which started commercial production in 1966. The government increased industrial production quotas by 55% and renewed emphasis on heavy industry.

The Second Five-Year Plan committed the GDR to accelerated efforts toward agricultural collectivization and nationalization and completion of the nationalization of the industrial sector. By 1958 the agricultural sector still consisted primarily of the 750,000 privately owned farms that comprised 70% of all arable land; only 6,000 LPGs had been formed. In 1958–59 the SED placed quotas on private farmers and sent teams to villages in an effort to encourage voluntary collectivization. In November and December 1959 some law-breaking farmers were arrested by the Stasi.

An extensive economic management reform by the SED in February 1958 included the transfer of a large number of industrial ministries to the State Planning Commission. In order to accelerate the nationalization of industry, the SED offered entrepreneurs 50% partnership incentives for transforming their firms into VEBs.

1960s
By mid-1960, nearly 85% of all arable land was incorporated in more than 19,000 Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft; state farms comprised another 6%. By 1961 the socialist sector produced 90% of the GDR's agricultural products. As more farmers fled to the West, a crop failure occurred in 1961, which was made worse by unfavorable weather.

At the close of 1960, private enterprise controlled only 9% of total industrial production. Production cooperatives (Produktionsgenossenschaften—PGs) incorporated one-third of the artisan sector during 1960–61, a rise from 6% in 1958. The opening of the new port of Rostock in 1960 reduced the country's dependency on the West German port of Hamburg.

The Second Five-Year Plan encountered difficulties, and the government replaced it with the Seven-Year Plan (1959–65). The new plan aimed at achieving West Germany's per capita production by the end of 1961, set higher production quotas, and called for an 85% increase in labor productivity. Emigration again increased, totaling 143,000 in 1959 and 199,000 in 1960. The majority of the emigrants were white collar workers, and 50% were under 25 years of age. The labor drain exceeded a total of 2.5 million citizens between 1949 and 1961.

The annual industrial growth rate declined steadily after 1959. The Soviet Union therefore recommended that East Germany implement the reforms of Soviet economist Evsei Liberman, an advocate of the principle of profitability and other market principles for communist economies.

In 1963 Ulbricht adapted Liberman's theories and introduced the New Economic System (NES), an economic reform program providing for some decentralization in decision-making and the consideration of market and performance criteria. The NES aimed at creating an efficient economic system and transforming the GDR into a leading industrial nation.

Under the NES, the task of establishing future economic development was assigned to central planning. Decentralization involved the partial transfer of decision-making authority from the central State Planning Commission and National Economic Council to the Associations of People's Enterprises (Vereinigungen Volkseigener Betriebe—VVB), parent organizations intended to promote specialization within the same areas of production. The central planning authorities set overall production goals, but each VVB determined its own internal financing, utilization of technology, and allocation of manpower and resources. As intermediary bodies, the VVBs also functioned to synthesize information and recommendations from the VEBs. The NES stipulated that production decisions be made on the basis of profitability, that salaries reflect performance, and that prices respond to supply and demand.

The NES brought forth a new elite in politics as well as in management of the economy, and in 1963 Ulbricht announced a new policy regarding admission to the leading ranks of the SED. Ulbricht opened the Politbüro and the Central Committee to younger members who had more education than their predecessors and who had acquired managerial and technical skills. As a consequence of the new policy, the SED elite became divided into political and economic factions, the latter composed of members of the new technocratic elite. Because of the emphasis on professionalization in the SED cadre policy after 1963, the composition of the mass membership changed: in 1967 about 250,000 members (14%) of the total 1.8 million SED membership had completed a course of study at a university, technical college, or trade school.

The SED emphasis on managerial and technical competence also enabled members of the technocratic elite to enter the top echelons of the state bureaucracy, formerly reserved for political dogmatists. Managers of the VVBs were chosen on the basis of professional training rather than ideological conformity. Within the individual enterprises, the number of professional positions and jobs for the technically skilled increased. The SED stressed education in managerial and technical sciences as the route to social advancement and material rewards. In addition, it promised to raise the standard of living for all citizens. From 1964 until 1967, real wages increased, and the supply of consumer goods, including luxury items, improved much.

The results of the reform, however, fell short of initial expectations, as growth was mostly the result of increased investment, rather than the new system of control. As a result, the reform plan was altered in 1967–1968, with the implementation of the "Economic System of Socialism". The ESS was implemented through so-called structure-determining areas, strategic sectors which enjoyed preferential access to funds and resources. Those initially included chemicals, engineering and electronics, but as enterprises lobbied the government for inclusion in the list of strategically important projects, the list grew ever longer.

Industrial combines partnerships were formed to integrate vertically industries involved in the manufacture of vital final products. Price subsidies were restored to accelerate growth in favored sectors. The annual plan for 1968 set production quotas in the structure-determining areas 2.6% higher than in the remaining sectors to achieve industrial growth in these areas. The state set the 1969–70 goals for high-technology sectors even higher. Failure to meet ESS goals resulted in the conclusive termination of the reform effort in 1970.

The Altmark gas field was discovered in the late 1960s, providing an important source of foreign currency for the country.

1970s-1990
In the early 1970s, long-term, comprehensive planning began. It too provided general guidance, but over a longer period, fifteen or twenty years, long enough to link the five-year plans in a coherent manner.

The Main Task, introduced by First Secretary Erich Honecker in 1971, formulated domestic policy for the 1970s. The program re-emphasized Marxism-Leninism and the international class struggle. During this period, the SED launched a massive propaganda campaign to win citizens to its Soviet-style socialism and to restore the "worker" to prominence. The Main Task restated the economic goal of industrial progress, but this goal was to be achieved within the context of centralized state planning. Consumer socialism—the new program featured in the Main Task—was an effort to magnify the appeal of socialism by offering special consideration for the material needs of the working class. The state extensively revamped wage policy and gave more attention to increasing the availability of consumer goods.

The regime accelerated the construction of new housing and the renovation of existing apartments; 60% of new and renovated housing was allotted to working-class families. Rents, which were subsidized, remained extremely low. Because women constituted nearly 50% of the labor force, child-care facilities, including nurseries and kindergartens, were provided for the children of working mothers. Women in the labor force received salaried maternity leave which ranged from six months to one year. Retirement annuities were increased.

The last small and middle-sized private companies, which had hitherto operated semi-independently, were nationalized in 1972. Honecker proudly informed Leonid Brezhnev of this fact in 1973. In some cases, the owner of the company would continue as its director with a salary provided by the state, which bore no automatic resemblance to the operating efficiency of the enterprise. This was an unnecessary step and caused shortages of certain goods. The very enterprises which allowed some degree of initiative and response to the market and which contributed so largely to the economy as a whole, even earning desperately needed hard currency, became subject to central planning and controls and as stagnant as the rest of the economy. One such example was the toy manufacturer C.M. Breitung in Sonneberg in Thuringia which was independent till 1972 when it was taken over and renamed Plüti.

The global rise in commodity prices in the 1970s also affected East Germany, though later than elsewhere due to Comecon price controls. Due to the strong German tradition of drinking coffee, imports of this commodity were important for consumers. A massive rise in coffee prices in 1976–77 led to a quadrupling of the amount of hard currency needed to import coffee, an event known as the East German coffee crisis. This caused severe financial problems for the GDR, which perennially lacked sufficient hard currency to address imports from the West. As a result, in the summer of 1977 the Politbüro withdrew most cheaper brands of coffee from sale, limited the use of coffee in restaurants, and effectively withdrew its provision in public offices and state enterprises. In addition, an infamous new type of coffee was introduced, Mischkaffee (mixed coffee), which was 51% coffee and 49% a range of filler including chicory, rye, and sugar beet. Unsurprisingly, the new coffee was generally detested for its comparatively poor flavour, and the whole episode came to be informally known as the "Coffee Crisis." The crisis passed after 1978 as world coffee prices began to fall again, as well as increased supply through an agreement between the GDR and Vietnam.

The GDR's growing hard currency debts were a cause of domestic instability. After the People's Republic of Poland became bankrupt, the West imposed a credit boycott on Eastern Bloc countries, including East Germany. The sale of Soviet crude oil, previously an important source of hard currency, became less profitable due to changes in the world economy. A long period of underinvestment in research and capital goods made East German products uncompetitive on Western markets, leaving the country more reliant on the Soviet Union.

The debt-to-GDP ratio reached 20% in 1989, a manageable level, but large in relation to the GDR's capacity to export sufficient goods to the West to provide the hard currency to service these debts. In October 1989, a paper prepared for the Politbüro (the Schürer-Papier, after its principal author) projected a need to increase export surplus from around 2 billion DM in 1990 to over 11 billion DM by 1995 to stabilize debt levels. It is doubtful whether such a Herculean effort could have succeeded without political turmoil, or indeed at all.

Much of the debt originated from attempts by the GDR to export its way out of its international debt problems, which required imports of components, technologies and raw materials; as well as attempts to maintain living standards through imports of consumer goods. The GDR was internationally competitive in some sectors such as mechanical engineering and printing technology.

A significant factor was also the elimination of a ready source of hard currency through re-export of Soviet oil, which until 1981 was provided below world market prices; the resulting loss of hard currency income produced a noticeable dip in the otherwise steady improvement of living standards. (It was precisely this continuous improvement which was at risk due to the impending debt crisis; the Schürer-Papier's remedial plans spoke of a 25–30% reduction.)

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 further worsened the economic situation by draining the workforce and making it harder for state enterprises to obtain supplies. The collapse of the central planning authority caused a fall in production, bringing about shortages which in turn led to increasing levels of emigration.

On 1 July 1990 the country entered a monetary and economic union with West Germany, followed by the political dissolution of East Germany on 3 October 1990.

Post-unification
The immediate aftermath of unification saw a period of economic collapse as industrial production plummeted and a rapid increase in the unemployment rate. In the early 1990s the kombinats were handed over to the Treuhandanstalt (Public Trustee), a German federal agency responsible for reprivatizing former government-owned industrial assets. Interest in East German businesses proved underwhelming, as West German firms had no need for the excess production capacity to supply the new federal states. One-third of the firms were ultimately liquidated, which, combined with layoffs in the surviving firms, resulted in a 60% cut in employment in the new states.

Agriculture
The agricultural sector of the economy had a somewhat different place in the system, although it too was thoroughly integrated. It was almost entirely collectivized except for private plots. The collective farms were formally self-governing. They were, however, subordinate to the Council of Ministers through the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Foodstuffs. A complex set of relationships also connected them with other cooperatives and related industries, such as food processing. By 1 July 1954, there were 4,974 collective farms with 147,000 members which cultivated 15.7 per cent of the arable land of the territory.

Industry
On 1 January 1954, the Soviet government turned over to the GDR thirty-three industrial concerns including the Leuna and Buna chemical works, and the GDR became the owner of all the enterprises in its territory.

Directly below the ministries were the centrally directed trusts, or Kombinate. Intended to be replacements for the Associations of Publicly Owned Enterprises—the largely administrative organizations that previously served as a link between the ministries and the individual enterprises—the Kombinate resulted from the merging of various industrial enterprises into large-scale entities in the late-1970s, based on interrelationships between their production activities.

The Kombinate included research enterprises, which the state incorporated into their structures to provide better focus for research efforts and speedier application of research results to production. A single, united management directed the entire production process in each Kombinat, from research to production and sales. The reform also attempted to foster closer ties between the activities of the Kombinate and the foreign trade enterprises by subordinating the latter to both the Ministry of Foreign Trade and the Kombinate. The goal of the Kombinat reform measure was to achieve greater efficiency and rationality by concentrating authority in the hands of midlevel leadership. The Kombinat management also provided significant input for the central planning process.

By the early 1980s, establishment of Kombinate for both centrally managed and district-managed enterprises was essentially complete. Particularly from 1982 to 1984, the government established various regulations and laws to define more precisely the parameters of these entities. These provisions tended to reinforce the primacy of central planning and to limit the autonomy of the Kombinate, apparently to a greater extent than originally planned. As of early 1986, there were 132 centrally managed Kombinate, with an average of 25,000 employees per Kombinat. District-managed Kombinate numbered 93, with an average of about 2,000 employees each.

At the base of the entire economic structure were the producing units. Although these varied in size and responsibility, the government gradually reduced their number and increased their size. The number of industrial enterprises in 1985 was only slightly more than a fifth that of 1960. Their independence decreased significantly as the Kombinate became fully functional.

Socialist Unity Party of Germany
The ultimate directing force in the economy, as in every aspect of the society, was the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), particularly its top leadership. The party exercised its leadership role formally during the party congress, when it accepted the report of the general secretary, and when it adopted the draft plan for the upcoming five-year period.

More important was the supervision of the SED's Politbüro, which monitored and directed ongoing economic processes. That key group, however, could concern itself with no more than the general, fundamental, or extremely serious economic questions, because it also had to deal with many other matters.

Government bureaucracy
At the head of the state apparatus responsible for formally adopting and carrying out policies elaborated by the party congress and Politbüro was the Council of Ministers, which had more than forty members and was in turn headed by a Presidium of sixteen. The Council of Ministers supervised and coordinated the activities of all other central bodies responsible for the economy, and it played a direct and specific role in important cases.

The State Planning Commission, sometimes called the "Economic General Staff of the Council of Ministers," advised the Council of Ministers on possible alternative economic strategies and their implications, translated the general targets set by the council into planning directives and more specific plan targets for each of the ministries beneath it, coordinated short-, medium-, and long-range planning, and mediated interministerial disagreements.

The individual ministries had major responsibility for the detailed direction of the different sectors of the economy. The ministries were responsible within their separate spheres for detailed planning, resource allocation, development, implementation of innovations, and generally for the efficient achievement of their individual plans.

In addition to the basic structure of the industrial sector, a supplementary hierarchy of government organs reached down from the Council of Ministers and the State Planning Commission to territorial rather than functional subunits. Regional and local planning commissions and economic councils, subordinate to the State Planning Commission and the Council of Ministers, respectively, extended down to the local level. They considered such matters as the proper or optimal placement of industry, environmental protection, and housing.

Central planning
The fact that the GDR had a planned economy did not mean that a single, comprehensive plan was the basis of all economic activity. An interlocking web of plans having varying degrees of specificity, comprehensiveness, and duration was in operation at all times; any or all of these may have been modified during the continuous process of performance monitoring or as a result of new and unforeseen circumstances. The resultant system of plans was extremely complex, and maintaining internal consistency between the various plans was a considerable task.

Short-term planning
Operationally, short-term planning was the most important for production and resource allocation. It covered one calendar year and encompassed the entire economy. The key targets set at the central level were overall rate of growth of the economy, volume and structure of the domestic product and its uses, use of raw materials and labor and their distribution by sector and region, and volume and structure of exports and imports. Beginning with the 1981 plan, the state added assessment of the ration of raw material use against value and quantity of output to promote more efficient use of scarce resources.

Five-year plans
Low-range (five-year) planning used the same indicators, although with less specificity. Although the five-year plan was duly enacted into law, it is more properly seen as a series of guidelines rather than as a set of direct orders. It was typically published several months after the start of the five-year period it covered, after the first one-year plan had been enacted into law. More general than a one-year plan, the five-year plan was nevertheless specific enough to integrate the yearly plans into a longer time frame. Thus it provided continuity and direction.

Planning mechanisms
In the first phase of planning, the centrally determined objectives were divided and assigned to appropriate subordinate units. After internal consideration and discussion had occurred at each level and suppliers and buyers had completed negotiations, the separate parts were reaggregated into draft plans. In the final stage, which follows the acceptance of the total package by the State Planning Commission and the Council of Ministers, the finished plan was redivided among the ministries, and the relevant responsibilities were distributed once more to the producing units.

The production plan was supplemented by other mechanisms that control supplies and establish monetary accountability. One such mechanism was the System of Material Balances, which allocated materials, equipment, and consumer goods. It acted as a rationing system, ensuring each element of the economy access to the basic goods it needed to fulfill its obligations. Since most of the goods produced by the economy were covered by this control mechanism, producing units had difficulty obtaining needed items over and above their allocated levels.

Another control mechanism was the assignment of prices for all goods and services. These prices served as a basis for calculating expenses and receipts. Enterprises had every incentive to use these prices as guidelines in decision-making. Doing so made plan fulfillment possible and earned bonus funds of various sorts for the enterprise. These bonuses were not allocated indiscriminately for gross output but were awarded for such accomplishments as the introduction of innovations or reduction of labor costs.

The system functioned smoothly only when its component parts were staffed with individuals whose values coincided with those of the regime or at least complemented regime values. Such a sharing took place in part through the integrative force of the party organs whose members occupied leading positions in the economic structure. Efforts were also made to promote a common sense of purpose through mass participation of almost all workers and farmers in organized discussion of economic planning, tasks, and performance. An East German journal reported, for example, that during preliminary discussion concerning the 1986 annual plan, 2.2 million employees in various enterprises and work brigades of the country at large contributed 735,377 suggestions and comments. Ultimate decision-making, however, came from above.

Private sector
The private sector of the economy was small but not entirely insignificant. In 1985 about 2.8% of the net national product came from private enterprises. The private sector included private farmers and gardeners; independent craftsmen, wholesalers, and retailers; and individuals employed in so-called freelance activities (artists, writers, and others). Although self-employed, such individuals were strictly regulated. In 1985, for the first time in many years, the number of individuals working in the private sector increased slightly. According to East German statistics, in 1985 there were about 176,800 private entrepreneurs, an increase of about 500 over 1984. Certain private sector activities were quite important to the system. The SED leadership, for example, encouraged private initiative as part of an effort to upgrade consumer services.

In addition to those East Germans who were self-employed full-time, there were others who engaged in private economic activity on the side. The best known and most important examples were families on collective farms who also cultivated private plots (which could be as large as 53,820 ft2). Their contribution was significant; according to official sources, in 1985 the farmers privately owned about 8.2% of pigs, 14.7% of sheep, 32.8% of horses, and 30% of laying hens in the country. Professionals such as commercial artists and doctors also worked privately in their free time, subject to separate taxes and other regulations. Their impact on the economic system, however, was negligible.

Informal economy
More difficult to assess, because of its covert and informal nature, was the significance of that part of the private sector called the "second economy." As used here, the term includes all economic arrangements or activities that, owing to their informality or their illegality, took place beyond state control or surveillance. The subject has received considerable attention from Western economists, most of whom are convinced that it is important in CPEs. In the mid-1980s, however, evidence was difficult to obtain and tended to be anecdotal in nature.

These irregularities did not appear to constitute a major economic problem. However, the East German press occasionally reported prosecutions of egregious cases of illegal "second economy" activity, involving what are called "crimes against socialist property" and other activities that are in "conflict and contradiction with the interests and demands of society", as one report described the situation.

Barter economy
One kind of informal economic activity included private arrangements to provide goods or services in return for payment. An elderly woman might have hired a neighbour boy to haul coal up to her apartment, or an employed woman might have paid a neighbour to do her washing. Closely related would be instances of hiring an acquaintance to repair a clock, tune up an automobile, or repair a toilet. Such arrangements take place in any society, and given the deficiencies in the East German service sector, they may have been more necessary than in the West. They were doubtlessly common, and because they were considered harmless, they were not the subject of any significant governmental concern. Scarce goods from Westpakete were also highly desired for barter.

Corruption
Another common activity that was troublesome if not disruptive was the practice of offering a sum of money beyond the selling price to individuals selling desirable goods, or giving something special as partial payment for products in short supply, the so-called Bückware (duck goods; sold from "below the counter"). Such ventures may have been no more than offering someone Trinkgeld (a tip), but they may have also involved Schmiergeld (bribes; lit. money used to "grease" a transaction) or Beziehungen (special relationships).

Opinions in East Germany varied as to how significant these practices were. But given the abundance of money in circulation and frequent shortages in luxury items and durable consumer goods, most people were perhaps occasionally tempted to provide a "sweetener", particularly for such things as automobile parts or furniture.

title: Economy of East Germany


text:
Arthur Greiser

Arthur Karl Greiser (22 January 1897 – 21 July 1946) was a Nazi German politician, SS-Obergruppenführer, Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of the German-occupied territory of Wartheland. He was one of the persons primarily responsible for organizing the Holocaust in occupied Poland and numerous other crimes against humanity. He was arrested by the Americans in 1945, and was tried, convicted and executed by hanging in Poland in 1946 for his crimes, most notably genocide.

Early life and career
Greiser was born in Schroda (Środa Wielkopolska), Province of Posen, Imperial Germany, the son of a minor local bailiff (Gerichtsvollzieher). He learned to speak Polish fluently during his childhood. In 1903, he enrolled in elementary school, which was followed by two years of intermediate school and finally the Königlich-Humanistisches Gymnasium (Royal Humanities Secondary School) in Hohensalza. He left the Gymnasium in 1914 without receiving a diploma, as in August that year he volunteered to join the Imperial German Navy. He served in the Kiel harbour naval forts at Korugen, Falckenstein, and in the fortress tower of Laboe from August 1914 to July 1915. He was then assigned as an artillery observer in Flanders as well as participating in minesweeping operations in Friedrichsort. In April 1917, Greiser volunteered for service in the Naval Flying Corps, where he initially served as an observer with SEE I and II and then with Küstenfliegerstaffel I and II. From August 1917 to August 1918, he was assigned as a naval aviator to Marine Schutzstaffel I. During this time, he was transferred to Seeflugstation Flandern II (Ostend) and he later flew with the Seefrontstaffel and MFJ IV. From December 1917 to January 1918, he was attached to the KE-Schule Langfuhr (near Danzig, now Gdańsk). Whilst posted to combat duty, he flew missions over the North Sea between the southern English and Belgian coasts. He was later shot down and wounded by gunfire. On 30 September 1919, he was classified as 50% war-disabled and discharged from naval service.

Greiser earned the Iron Cross (First and Second Class), the Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918 and a Wound Badge in Black in 1914. From 1919 to May 1921, he served in the Freikorps Grenzschutz Ost and fought in the Baltic states.

Joining the Nazi Party
According to Richard Evans, Greiser was fanatically anti-Christian, and an early member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP number 166,635). After many years with the nationalist Deutschsoziale Partei (DtSP) founded by Richard Kunze and membership in Der Stahlhelm in the mid-1920s, he joined the NSDAP and SA on 1 December 1929, and the SS on 29 September 1931.

He was the Deputy President of the Free City of Danzig from 1933 to 1934 in the Rauschning Senate, and was made Senate President (Senatspräsident) in 1935–1939. As Senate President of Danzig, he was a rival to his nominal superior Albert Forster, Gauleiter of the city since 1930. Greiser was part of the SS empire whilst Forster was closely aligned with the Nazi Party Mandarins Rudolf Hess and later Martin Bormann. On 23 August 1939 Forster replaced Greiser as Danzig's head of state. At that time, the media saw Forster as a radical and Greiser as a moderate.

Greiser was accused by Poland as being directly responsible for escalating tensions between the Free City and the Republic of Poland in 1939. When the Polish Foreign Affairs Minister Józef Beck announced economic reprisals following the harassment of Polish frontier guards and customs officers, Greiser issued an announcement on 29 July 1939 declaring that the Danzig police no longer recognised their authority or power, and demanded their immediate withdrawal. The notice was so rudely worded that the Polish diplomatic representative to Danzig, Marian Chodacki, refused to forward it to Beck and instead sent a court summary.

World War II
Immediately following the German invasion of Poland, Greiser was transferred from Danzig and on 8 September was appointed Chef der Zivilverwaltung im Militärbezirk Posen or Chief of Civil Administration in the military district of Posen, which was annexed to the German Reich on 8 October 1939. The military administration ended and he was then appointed Gauleiter of the newly created Reichsgau Posen on 21 October. At the same time he was named Reich Defense Commissioner of the newly established Wehrkreis XXI, consisting of the new Reichsgau. Additionally, he was appointed to the Prussian State Council. On 2 November, he was also named Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of the new territory, thereby uniting under his control the highest party and governmental offices in his jurisdiction. On 29 January 1940, the region was renamed Reichsgau Wartheland. A member of several Nazi paramilitary organizations, Greiser was made a NSFK-Gruppenführer as well as a NSKK-Obergruppenführer in April 1940. Finally, on 30 January 1942, he was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer.

The territory over which Greiser ruled was potentially very rich – the Prussian Imperial province of Posen had been the breadbasket of Wilhelmine Germany before 1914, possessed an excellent rail and road network, and a comparatively healthy and well educated workforce; Litzmanstadt (Łódź) had developed a fairly sophisticated industrial base during the 19th century. Although every Gauleiter was expected to fully Germanize his assigned area by any means, Greiser emphasized brutality to achieve this goal. He was an ardent racist who enthusiastically pursued an 'ethnic cleansing' program to rid the Warthegau of Poles and to resettle the 'cleansed' areas with ethnic Germans. This was along the lines of the racial theories espoused by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Mass expulsions of Poles from the Warthegau to the General Government and summary executions were the norm. A Polish servant in Greiser's house described him as "a powerfully built figure. He was a tall man, you could see his arrogance, his conceit. He was so vain, so full of himself—as if there was nothing above him, a god, almost. Everybody tried to get out of his way, people had to bow to him, salute him. And the Poles, he treated them with great contempt. For him the Poles were slaves, good for nothing but work". Greiser himself stated his beliefs: "If, in past times, other peoples enjoyed their century-long history by living well, and doing so by getting foreign peoples to work for them without compensating them accordingly and without meting out justice to them, then we too, as Germans want to learn from this history. No longer must we stand in the wings; on the contrary, we must altogether become a master race!".

In addition to mass deportation, Greiser's district was also at the forefront of "internal" racial cleansing according to Nazi ideals. His subordinate Wilhelm Koppe provided the 'Special Detachment (Sonderkommando) Lange' to the nearby Gau of East Prussia during May and June 1940. This SS squad gassed 1558 patients from mental asylums at the Soldau concentration camp and then returned to his region to continue this process.

Greiser was involved in the resettlement of German refugees from lands annexed to the Soviet Union in 1939 and 1940. Between October and December 1939, nearly 60,000 Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) arrived in Germany from the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia. Evidently Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt (later employed as translator for General Andrey Vlasov) was in this group, as he "resettled" in Posen. Neighbouring Gauleiter and rival Albert Forster refused them entry, and they were largely settled in properties seized from Poles in Poznań and across the Wartheland. However even Greiser was wary, noting that many were elderly and urbanized aristocrats with a strong class consciousness, not the virile peasant warrior types idolized by the SS. Closer to his heart were the over 100,000 ethnic Germans who were evacuated from Volhynia and eastern Galicia. These were mostly farmers and rural people, and, learning from the Baltic experience, Łódź in eastern Wartheland was designated the main Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi) reception centre. In May 1940 a further 30,000 Volksdeutsche were relocated from the Nazi General Government of Poland to Greiser's domain. After 1941 a further 300,000 ethnic Germans were evacuated from Russia and Ukraine to Wartheland during the German invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union. Greiser's Poznań was considered the Germanised city par excellence, and on 3 August 1943 he hosted a national gathering of Gauleiter and senior Nazis, including Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler.

Anti-Church campaign
Richard J. Evans wrote that the Catholic Church was the institution that, "more than any other had sustained Polish national identity over the centuries". The Nazi plan for Poland entailed the destruction of the Polish nation. This necessarily required attacking the Polish Church, particularly in those areas annexed to Germany. Greiser, with the encouragement of Reinhard Heydrich and Martin Bormann, launched a severe attack on the Catholic Church. He cut off support to the Church from the state and from outside influences such as the Vatican and Germany. In July 1940 he instituted Bormann's anti-church "thirteen point" measures in the territory. The anti-church measures, which had Hitler's approval, suggest how the Nazis aimed to «'de-church' German society».

Catholic Church properties and funds were confiscated, and lay organisations shut down. Evans wrote that "Numerous clergy, monks, diocesan administrators and officials of the Church were arrested, deported to the General Government, taken off to a concentration camp in the Reich, or simply shot. Altogether some 1700 Polish priests ended up at Dachau: half of them did not survive their imprisonment." Greiser's administrative chief August Jäger had earlier led the effort at Nazification of the Evangelical Church in Prussia. In Poland, he earned the nickname "Kirchenjäger" (Church Hunter) for the vehemence of his hostility to the Church. "By the end of 1941", wrote Evans, "the Polish Catholic Church had been effectively outlawed in the Wartheland. It was more or less Germanized in the other occupied territories, despite an encyclical issued by Pope Pius XII as early as 27 October 1939 protesting against this persecution."

Holocaust
SS-Obergruppenführer Greiser actively participated in the Holocaust. Early in 1940, Greiser is on record challenging Hermann Göring over efforts to delay the expulsion of Łódź Jews to Poland. On 18 September 1941, Reichsführer-SS Himmler informed Greiser that he intended to transfer 60,000 Czech and German Jews to the Łódź ghetto until spring 1942, when they would be "resettled". The first transport arrived a few weeks later, and Greiser sought and received permission from Himmler to kill 100,000 Jews in his area. He then instructed HSSPF Wilhelm Koppe to manage the overcrowding. Koppe and SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange proceeded to manage the problem by experimenting at a country estate at Chełmno nad Nerem with gas vans, establishing the first extermination unit which ultimately carried out the mass murder of approximately 150,000 Jews between late 1941 and April 1942. Furthermore, on 6 October 1943 Greiser hosted a national assembly of senior SS officers in Posen at which Himmler candidly spoke of the mass executions of civilians (the infamous Posen Speech). Greiser's mass murder operations were coordinated by SS-Oberführer Herbert Mehlhorn.

On 20 January 1945, Greiser ordered a general evacuation of Posen (having received a telegram from Bormann relaying Hitler's order to leave the city). Greiser left the city the same evening and reported to Himmler's personal train in Frankfurt an der Oder. There Greiser found that he had been tricked by Bormann. Hitler had announced that Posen must be held at all costs, and Greiser was now viewed as a deserter and coward, particularly by Goebbels, who in his diary on 2 March 1945 labeled Greiser "a real disgrace to the (Nazi) Party", but his recommendations for punishment after the capture of Poznań were ignored.

He surrendered to the Americans in Austria in 1945.

Trial and execution
After the war, the Polish government (the Supreme National Tribunal) tried Greiser for war crimes. His defence that he was only following orders did not hold up as it was shown that other Gauleiters had not followed a similar policy. For example, Albert Forster, Gauleiter of Danzig-West Prussia (the other German-annexed section of occupied Poland), simply declared all Poles in his area who were reasonably proficient in German to be Germans (although he was guilty of the elimination of the Jewish population under his jurisdiction either by murder or deportation). Greiser's advocates, Stanisław Hejmowski and Jan Kręglewski, tried to convince the Tribunal that Greiser, as a head of a formally independent state, the Free City of Danzig, could not be judged by another country, an argument rejected by the court. Greiser was convicted of the following:
 * genocide and the murder of civilians and POWs;
 * torture, persecution, and injuring civilians and POWs;
 * organized and systematic destruction of Polish culture, plunder of Polish cultural heritage, Germanisation of the country and the Polish people, illegal appropriation of public property;
 * organised and systematic looting of Polish property;
 * insulting and deriding the Polish nation by propagating the idea of its cultural inferiority and low social worth;
 * forcibly expelling individuals, families, neighbourhoods and whole districts to the General Government or forced labour camps in the German Reich;
 * persecution and murder of Polish Jews by killing them in their places of residence, grouping them in closed ghettos from which they were sent to the Chelmno extermination camp for extermination in gas chambers, deriding the Jewish people in actions and words, causing physical suffering, injury and humiliation of human dignity;
 * taking Polish children against the will of their parents or guardians, forcibly putting them in German families or public orphanages within the Reich while severing all contacts with their families and nation by giving them German names.

The Tribunal decided that Greiser was guilty of all charges and sentenced him to death by hanging, civil death, and confiscation of all his property. In the early morning of 21 July 1946 he was transported from prison to the slope of Fort Winiary where he was hanged before a large crowd, despite a plea from Pope Pius XII that his life be spared.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Arthur Greiser


text:
Talk:Timeline of LGBT history

Rationalise Timeline of LGBT history
The Timeline of LGBT history attempts to be a global worldwide history, but gets more and more US centric as the years go on. There is also a very extensive Timeline of LGBT history in the United Kingdom

The LGBT history page is much more global (and also ends up with a timeline approach)

There are 29 country specific timelines Category:LGBT history by country And 26 country specific categories

I propose that the Timeline of LGBT history and the subsequent century versions are rationalised Pjthompso (talk) 18:15, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

What do you propose to rationalise them to? Rillington (talk) 13:36, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Common Era - 1st Millenium - 1st Century - 37-41 AD
What does this bullet have to do with LGBT history? Greyspeir (talk) 18:14, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Timeline of LGBT history


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Edward Floyd (impeached barrister)

Edward Floyd, Floud or Lloyd (died 1648) was an Englishman impeached and sentenced by the Parliament of England in 1621 for speaking disparagingly of Frederick V, Elector Palatine (by Floyd's Case).

Early life
Floyd was a Roman Catholic barrister. He became steward in Shropshire to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk.

Floyd's case
In 1621, when he was in the Fleet Prison at the instance (doing) of the Privy Council, he was impeached by the House of Commons for having said:

"I have heard that Prague is taken; and Goodman Palsgrave and Goodwife Palsgrave have taken their heels; and as I have heard, Goodwife Palsgrave is taken prisoner."

These words, it was alleged, he spoke in a scornful manner, to insult the Prince Palatine and his wife Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was daughter to James I of England. The case led to an important constitutional decision on which forums can hold criminal trials with a political dimension and what permission is needed from the Crown and any second House. Shortly before the case, the Commons had looked for precedents supporting their judicial role. They found none save as to contempt for (being in contempt of) the House. During the proceedings they demurred on this lack of precedent. They had to concede the point.

Case in the Commons
The case came to the House of Commons on 30 April. By then it had been in session since February. It had done nothing on the situation in Bohemia, where the Elector Palatine and his English princess wife had been heavily defeated in a conflict that formed the first phase of the Thirty Years War. On that day the influential parliamentarian Sir Edwin Sandys encouraged the Commons to take punitive action. The feeling of the House was that in this matter they could make their mark in foreign policy, not otherwise in their remit.

The Commons agreed on 1 May that Floyd should pay a fine of £1,000, stand in the pillory at three stands for two hours at each, and be carried from place to place on a horse without a saddle, with his face towards the horse's tail, and holding the tail in his hand. The king, however, objected to the Commons taking up the matter. The next morning he sent (an agent) to inquire upon what precedents the Commons grounded their claim to act as a judicial body in regard to offences which did not concern their privileges. He also pointed out that they had failed to get his approval, and had not granted Floyd due process. Sandys by now had thought better of direct judgement; he argued that as the Speaker had signed nothing, the decision of the Commons was not yet effective. The momentum of the House was against him. Sir Edward Coke pressed for enforcibility, invoking his favoured view of the Commons as court of record. William Noy warned against passing judgement relating to overseas matters.

Two days later the Commons petitioned the king to be allowed their sentence. He argued that it was quite unclear what jurisdiction they were claiming; but agreed to consider the petition and to act in the matter of Floyd. But on 4 May he sent the matter to the House of Lords - poorly timed as (as Sandys had already argued) the upper house was preoccupied with efforts to undermine George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.

The House of Lords intervenes
On 5 May the Commons and Lords conferred on the case. Coke worked to salvage the concept of the Commons as court of record, by having the prior record annulled as the lesser of two evils, since the king and Lords appeared set to deny the claim.

A debate of several days then led to a conference of the two houses, when it was agreed that the accused should be arraigned before the Lords, and that a declaration should be entered on the journals that his trial before the commons should not prejudice the just rights of either house.

Second sentence and its execution
The Lords added to the severity of the first judgment. On 26 May, Floyd was condemned to be degraded from the estate (state) of a gentleman; his testimony not to be received; he was to be branded, whipped at the cart's tail, fined £5,000, and imprisoned in Newgate Prison for life. When he was branded in Cheapside he declared that he would have given £1,000 to be hanged in order that he might be a martyr in so good a cause.

Some days later, on the motion of Prince Charles, it was agreed by the lords that the whipping should not be inflicted, and an order was made that in future judgment should not be pronounced, when the sentence was more than imprisonment, on the same day on which it was voted. The remainder of the sentence on Floyd seems to have resulted save that he was liberated on 16 July, after the new Lord Chancellor John Williams had prevailed with George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham to recommend to James I an exercise of his prerogative of mercy in the case of political prisoners.

On the petition of Joane, his wife, the Lords on 6 December ordered his trunk and writings to be delivered up to her; the clerk first taking out Catholic books and religious objects.

Evaluation and archive
Henry Hallam criticised the proceedings. Joseph Robson Tanner in 1930 wrote in examining the constitution that the English House of Commons had clearly exceeded their jurisdiction. Charles Howard McIlwain commented that the claim the House made for jurisdiction under parliamentary privilege was "the most extensive and the least justifiable, perhaps, in all parliamentary history; and the far-fetched arguments brought forward in debates in support of the claim are of great interest", citing the record in Thomas Barrington's diary of the parliament.

A collection, made by Sir Harbottle Grimstone, of the proceedings is kept as Harleian MS. 6274, art. 2.

title: Edward Floyd (impeached barrister)


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Aim for the Ace!

Aim for the Ace!, known in Japan as Ace o Nerae! (エースをねらえ!), is a manga series written and illustrated by Sumika Yamamoto. The series tells the story of Hiromi Oka, a high school student who wants to become a professional tennis player as she struggles against mental weakness, anxiety and thwarted love. It was originally serialized in Shueisha's shōjo magazine Margaret from January 1973 to February 1980. Later, Shueisha collected the chapters and published them in 18 tankōbon volumes.

The manga was adapted into an anime television series in 1973 by Tokyo Movie which was originally broadcast on Mainichi Broadcasting System (MBS) between 1973 and 1974. Aim for the Ace! also spawned another anime television and an anime film between 1978 and 1979, two original video animations (OVA) between 1988 and 1990, a live-action Japanese television drama in 2004, and many types of Aim for the Ace!-related merchandise. The franchise is also known with its international title Aim for the Best!

The series is one of the best-selling shōjo manga series of all time, having sold approximately 15 million copies in Japan. It has been also popular among anime viewers, and become a hit in Japan, even among its non-target audience. It is considered a classic by anime and manga critics and has been influential in the anime industry.

Plot
The story is about, a high school girl who struggles to become good at tennis. While attending, Hiromi begins playing tennis after becoming fascinated by , an older girl who is the best player on the team and is nicknamed owing to her grace on the tennis court. The team gets a new coach,, who sees potential in Hiromi and trains her to become a great tennis player.

Hiromi struggles to overcome her mental weakness. Later, she falls in love with another tennis player,, but coach Munakata tells her not to get too involved and that she should forget him and work on her tennis skills. Hiromi often loses confidence in her playing abilities, but with the support of her coach and her friends she overcomes her anxiety. By training herself to become a better player, Hiromi grows into a mentally stronger person. Her enthusiasm, her love of tennis and the support from people around her helps her to become one of the best players in the world.

Publication
Aim for the Ace! was written and illustrated by Sumika Yamamoto; its first chapter was published by Shueisha in the Japanese magazine Margaret in January 1973. Its serialization finished in 1975, but because of demand from readers, partly brought about by the phenomenal success of the anime in reruns, its publication restarted from 1978 to February 1980. Its first tankōbon (collected volume) was released by Shueisha on September 20, 1973, and the eighteenth and the last one was released on June 30, 1980. Shueisha reprinted the series from December 31, 1978, to August 25, 1981.

A five-volume light novel was published by Shueisha under its Cobalt imprint from August 1983 and October 1984. The original manga was republished in bunkoban format twice; Chuokoron-Shinsha released it from October 18, 1994, to April 18, 1995, in fourteen volumes, and Shueisha released it between June 18, 2002, and October 18, 2002, in ten volumes. The series has been localized in Italy by Panini Comics and published under its Planet Manga line.

Television series
The first anime television series based on Aim for the Ace! was produced by Tokyo Movie. It was originally broadcast between October 5, 1973, and March 29, 1974, by Mainichi Broadcasting System (MBS). Osamu Dezaki served as the general director of all 26 episodes. It was dubbed into French, Spanish and Italian. Due to its initial poor ratings in Japan, the series was cancelled with half the original intended number of episodes. However, a few years later with high ratings in reruns of the series, a remake was announced. The second anime series was also produced by Tokyo Movie and was directed by Minoru Okazaki. Titled, it was broadcast by Nippon Television from October 14, 1978, to March 31, 1979.

The episodes of the first series were released in two DVD box set by Bandai Visual on May 25, 2001, and August 25, 2001. Bandai Visual re-released the series between January 28, 2005, and February 24, 2005, in six DVD compilations. On January 20, 2012, Avex published a four-disc DVD box set containing the entire series. In France, Manga Distribution released the complete series into a DVD box set in 2006. Two DVD box sets containing all 25 episodes of the second series were released by Bandai Visual on March 25, 2002, and June 25, 2002. Nippon Columbia published the entire series in a single DVD box set; first on May 23, 2007, and again on January 21, 2009.

Film
A 24-minute animated short film titled Ace o Nerae! Tenis Ōkoku no Cinderella (テニス王国のシンデレラ) that was derived from television series was distributed theatrically by Toho in Japan on December 20, 1973.

With the popularity of Shin Ace o Nerae!, the studio decided to produce an anime film adaptation. The film was directed by Osamu Dezaki, written by Keisuke Fujikawa, music by Kōji Makaino, and produced by Yutaka Fujioka. In addition to the original incidental music newly composed for the movie version, many insert songs and BGM are recycled from the second series, which was also scored by Makaino. It was produced at Tokyo Movie and was released by Toho in Japanese theaters on September 8, 1979. It was published on DVD format by Bandai Visual on November 25, 2001, and on March 27, 2005. In April 2008, Banda Visual announced they planned to release the film on Blu-ray format; it was released on September 26, 2008, and re-released on July 22, 2016.

Original video animations
To serve as sequels to the anime series and to conclude the manga story, two original video animations (OVA) were produced. The first OVA,, which consists of thirteen episodes, was produced by Tokyo Movie and directed by Noboru Furuse, with "Total Supervisor" credit given to Osamu Dezaki, who also storyboarded four episodes. It was released by Bandai Visual between July 25, 1988, and October 25, 1988, on six VHS videocassettes, and as a DVD compilation on May 23, 2005. It was also released in France by Manga Distribution in 2008. The first OVA was followed by, which consists of 12 episodes directed by Osamu Dezaki. It was originally released by Bandai Visual into six VHS videos from October 23, 1989, to April 24, 1990, and a DVD box set was released on September 26, 2003.

Audio
Both the opening theme song, "Ace o Nerae!", and the ending theme song,, from the original anime series were performed by Kumiko Ōsugi. VIP performs and, the opening and ending theme from Shin Ace o Nerae!. The film only used an opening theme, by Shōnen Tanteidan. Hiroko Moriguchi sang ''Ace o Nerae! 2s theme,, as well as "Never Say Goodbye", ''Final Stages theme. On January 9, 1993, King Records released a CD containing the soundtracks from both anime television series, the anime film, and the first OVA. The soundtrack of the first television series was released on March 6, 1996, by EMI Music Japan. Soundtrack Laboratory under its Soundtrack Pub label published an Ace o Nerae!: Original Soundtrack on March 7, 2013. Subsequently, it published the official soundtrack for Shin Ace o Nerae! on two CDs on July 31, 2013, and December 25, 2013.

Reception and legacy
The manga was a hit, having sold approximately 15 million copies, which makes it one of the best-selling shōjo manga series of all time. Although the television series initially received low ratings, reruns were more positively received by fans, as well as the second series. The anime is considered a hit on Japanese television and though aimed toward schoolgirls it was popular among people of both sexes, and was also popular in Europe. In 2001, the anime magazine Animage ranked the 1979 anime television as the twenty-second of the Top 100 anime productions of all time. In 2005, TV Asahi conducted a "Top 100" online web poll and nationwide survey asking viewers for the best anime television series; Aim for the Ace! was placed fourteenth in the online poll and thirty-fourth in the survey. Responsible for a tennis boom among high school students in the 1970s, the series was still popular as of 2015 appearing in several online web polls of most influential sports anime. On TV Asahi's Manga Sōsenkyo 2021 poll, in which 150.000 people voted for their top 100 manga series, Aim for the Ace! ranked 44th.

Considered a classic, the series has been influential in Japan both in fiction and in real life. In addition to being a landmark in the sports genre and an inspiration for other sports anime, it has set many of the conventions of yuri. Its story has been imitated by other anime to the point that it became a cliché; it established the tradition of "the klutzy wallflower with hidden potential, the rich bitch who wants all the attention, and a handsome Coach with a tragic fate" in the words of anime critic Jonathan Clements. Gainax's science fiction OVA Gunbuster incorporated the set-up and the style of Aim for the Ace!, acting as parody to the series. Anime series Oh! Super Milk-chan's opening theme also included parodies of the anime. Anime director Kenji Kamiyama, most known for the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series, cited the series among the 15 best anime of all time. Shuzo Matsuoka, considered "the first successful Japanese [tennis] player", was influenced to play because of the esteem he had on the series.

Justin Sevakis, writing for Anime News Network, and Erica Friedman, founder of Yuricon, consider the series a "true" shōjo. Friedman wrote, "As a representative of early shoujoai, Ace wo Nerae is a spectacular example, but expect a fair dollop of cheesy-ness, as the character designs, music, art, etc are all over 30 years old. The op art graphics and laughable opening theme are delightfully retro now. The most important thing is that the characters are genuinely likeable and their motivations fathomable." Sevakis praised the story as having "purity", as "There are no manufactured obstacles to overcome." He also declared, "Despite being Western-looking and ostensibly about universally accessible sport of tennis, it's a fascinating look at Japanese personal motivation, interaction and decorum," playing "like a catalog of Japan's most interesting cultural quirks." Art-wise it was compared to Dear Brother and The Rose of Versailles by Anime News Network's Lynzee Loveridge, who said it "reinforces a lot of the dangerous work ethic that permeates sports series, like battling through a serious injury or abandoning emotional 'dalliances' like romance."

Video game adaptations
Several games based on Aim for the Ace! have been released in Japan. Nippon Telenet adapted the series into a Super Famicom video game, which they published on December 22, 1993. Tristar published two video game adaptations for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X; the first was released on November 30, 2002, and the second on December 3, 2004. In 2009, Olympia distributed an Ace o Nerae!-themed pachinko machine under its Gold Olympia brand. Ace Denken released a different machine in 2011.

Television drama
In November 2003, the production of a Japanese television drama series was announced. It was broadcast by Japanese network TV Asahi in nine episodes between January 15, 2004, and March 11, 2004. It was directed by Hidetomo Matsuda, Shunji Muguruma and Yoshinori Kobayashi, produced by Motohiro Matsumoto and Shizuo Sekiguchi, and the screenwriters were Akiyo Takikawa, Naoya Takayama and Hiroko Kanasugi. Shuzo Matsuoka, a former Japanese professional tennis player, served the supervisor of the tennis scenes.

The music was composed by Norihito Sumitomo; the series homonymous opening theme song is sung by Hiromi and the closing theme was "Ai no Tame ni." by Aya Ueto—who also starred in the leading role. On July 23, 2004, Geneon Universal released the series on DVD; it was available as five individual volumes or as a DVD box set. Its soundtrack was published by Nippon Columbia on September 22, 2004. Serving as a sequel to the series, a special episode was aired on September 23, 2004, and then was released on DVD on December 22 by Geneon Universal.

Out of the nine episodes, three were featured on the top ten list of the most-watched dramas in the week. The second one appeared in the eighth place with a 15.3 percent television viewership rating, the eighth episode reached the tenth place with 14.8 percent, and the last occupied the ninth spot with 14.2 percent.

title: Aim for the Ace!


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Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences

The Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences was established in 1996. It is in a renovated three-story Edwardian-style building, at 2 Caine Lane at the Sheung Wan, Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong. It is also referred to as Old Pathological Institute.

The aim of the museum is to promote the collection and preservation of materials of historical interest relating to the development of the medical industry in Hong Kong. On occasion, exhibitions are held by the museum to present basic and advanced medical information and news. One of its major goals is to help raise public interest in the medical history of Hong Kong and teach them more about health and diseases.

History
The building that would later become Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences was built in 1906. It was designed as a Bacteriological Institute and renamed to Pathological Institute after World War II. The building was designed by Leigh & Orange.

Being the first laboratory of bacteriology in Hong Kong, it was constructed of red bricks and consisted of three blocks. The main block is a two-storey building with a basement. The second one was used as a dormitory and the third for keeping animals.

In 1972, the institute was relocated to Victoria Road and the building was then used as a storeroom for Pathology Service for the Health Department.

The building was declared a monument in 1990. In 1995, it was handed over to the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences Society and converted to a public museum where it was opened on 16 March the following year.

Features
It is a three-tier building occupying 10000 sqft and it consists of 11 exhibition galleries including a gallery for Tai Ping Shan View, a game room, a library and the Gordon King Lecture Theatre. There is an entry fee charged at the museum.

The galleries include:
 * Lui Hac Minh Gallery
 * Hong Kong Tuberculosis, Chest and Heart Diseases Association Gallery
 * Hong Kong College of Radiologists

Goal
The aim of the museum is to exhibit and educate the public about Hong Kong's medical history and to preserve historical medical materials relating to the local development of medicine.

Publications and leaflets are distributed to the public occasionally to help arouse the interest of the public in the medical history of Hong Kong and increase their knowledge and understanding of health and diseases.

Transportation
The museum is in walking distance southwest from Sheung Wan station of MTR.

Visitors can take Citybus or NWFB bus services 12, 12M, 13, 23, 23B, 40, 40M or 103 and alight at the bus stop named "Seymour Road" on Caine Road.

title: Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences