The Potsdam Grievance Statistics File. New data on quality of life and political participation for the German Democratic Republic 1970–1989

The newly collected “Potsdam Grievance Statistics File” (PGSF) holds data on the number and topics of grievances (“Eingaben”) that were addressed to local authorities of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the years 1970 to 1989. The PGSF allows quantitative analyses on topics such as participation, quality of life, and value change in the German Democratic Republic. This paper introduces the concepts of the data set and discusses the validity of its contents.     

The Gay Hussar: The Origins and Spread of Buserant in the Danube Region

This papers examines how the word Buserant ‘gay’ spread in the languages of the Danube region. Further, it hypothesises in what contact situations borrowing occurred. In this, it presents a case study illustrating lexical borrowing in the proposed Danubian Sprachbund. According to the study’s findings Italian road workers introduced Buserant in Viennese German from where it spread through army service and/or travellers in taverns of Austria Hungary. The borrowing appears to be restricted to the languages of Austria-Hungary and excludes Yiddish, which can be explained by the relative isolation of Yiddish-speaking communities by the mid-nineteenth century.