This project will ethnographically study the shifting social, cultural, and political relations between East and West Germany before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall through the lens of agricultural and medical gene technologies and the divergent and contradictory responses and meanings they generate in the formerly divided German states. The divergences consist in the higher acceptance of such technologies in East Germany than in West Germany, while the apparent contradiction lies in the fact that agricultural gene technologies are strongly rejected by the German public, while medical gene technologies are widely accepted. Using the methods of participant observation, interviewing, and archival research, the project will investigate the historical and cultural meanings that genes and genetic technologies have for East and West Germans.