During the state socialist era in the GDR, the People's Republic of Poland and Czechoslovakia, care for the elderly and people in need of help was often provided at home. Volunteers from the national Red Cross societies, the East German organization People's Solidarity or neighborhood helpers from the residential area cared for needy people in the place that determined their reality of life – their own home. The way in which the home shaped social voluntary care for helpers and those in need before and after 1989 will be the subject of this paper. Keywords: care, elderly, home, volunteering, state socialism, German Democratic Republic, People's Republic of Poland, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
This study focuses on the door-to-door agitation based on the ideology of the communist system. As the everyday practice of propaganda and mass mobilization, the agitators were appearing in the homes of families in Budapest regularly between 1948 and 1953. The documents of agitation uncover how the Hungarian communist party intended to mobilize the society to support the party-state and what was the social perceptions of this attempt. Since the home was considered female territory, the work of the local party organizations also offers insights into the role of women in the agitation campaigns.
Comics feature many topics – Homes or their absence are among those. No famous comic focuses on home only, many bring stories or subplots revealing the artists' view. In this contribution, those views are being analysed and compared, focussing on master narratives within and interpretations of the works. A selection of comics from Belgium and France has been made limiting the research field to two of the most active/innovative markets for comics. Three of the most important comic series are being analysed, covering a time between 1929 and the 1990es: Chlorophylle, Tintin and Sibylline.
In the post-war years, the German Democratic Republic competed against the Federal Republic of Germany for providing a new beginning in Nazi-Germany. Thus, the ruling Socialist Unity Party started a broad campaign to acknowledge the new order as a prerequisite of Heimat. An emotional regime forms the backdrop to the theory of socialist Heimat, in which the people loves the state, the party and its neighbours. This paper examines the ideology of a socialist Heimat and the emotional regime, which used the political leaders of the country to direct the patriotic feelings of their inhabitants towards socialism. At the end, this essay additionally offers some remarks on the impact of this process and focuses on how Heimat became a special notion in the GDR with particular aspects.