Volunteering and care in old age: voices from People's Solidarity in East Germany

ABSTRACT

Volunteering and care are concepts that have rarely been considered together in contemporary historical research. This article now combines both concepts in an examination of voluntary care practices in People’s Solidarity (PS, Volkssolidarität), an East German organization that has specialized in elder care since the post-war period. The study explores the motivations and perceptions of people who have volunteered in this organization from late socialism to the post-1989 transformation period. Having experienced both state-socialist and post-socialist East Germany, their particular notions of society, care, gender, ageing, and belonging have hardly been recorded so far. Their voices introduce alternative narratives of solidarity and agency, and thus contribute to a more nuanced understanding of East German transformation experiences. Revisiting informal care for the elderly is a subject that remains acutely relevant up to today. “Who cares for the elderly?” is a question these people have answered with determination and initiative over the past thirty years. The article explores the extent to which their practices of volunteering and caring intertwined with their diverse responses to the post-socialist transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Multiple transformations
• elder care
• volunteering
• solidarity
• post-socialist East Germany

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This publication was created in the framework of the research project “Multiple Transformations. Social Experiences and Cultural Change in East Germany and East Central Europe before and after 1989” (2020-2022), supported by the Saxon State Ministry for Higher Education, Research, Culture and Tourism (SMWK). The endeavour was financed through tax resources in accordance with the budget adopted by the parliament of Saxony.

Notes on contributors

Maren Hachmeister

Maren Hachmeister is a research fellow at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at the TU Dresden. Her research interests include the social history of East Central Europe and East Germany, care, volunteering, organizational sociology, and aging. Her most recent publication in English is “Care at home: voluntary care in the lives of those who provide and need help in three (post)socialist states,” in Studia historica Brunensia, 69, no. 1 (2022).