Inquiry Commission of the German Parliament: its work on the history of East Germany and politicization of its activities
2011
Abstract
After the fall of the German Democratic Republic and German reunification in 1990, the parliament, assumed responsibility for researching history of East Germany through the newly established inquiry commissions (Enquete-Kommission). Between 1992 and 1998 two consecutive commissions were set up by the German Bundestag to conduct research on communist dictatorship.
This paper seeks to determine to what extent the commissions were conducting truly independent research and to what they merely served political parties to mobilize voters.