Risk factors for early adolescents' (700 between the ages of 10 to 13) delinquency were compared between groups of children high and low in childhood adversities. The samples represented young people from the two former Germanies (200 from former East and 500 from West Germany) who were interviewed in person. Additional information was gathered from parents who responded to questionnaires. The high adversity group had experienced two or more adversities such as parental divorce or family relocations, before the age of 9; the low adversity group had experiences fewer than two. In addition to age, gender, location of residence, and pubertal level, more proximal risk factors were assessed, namely, difficult temperament, low self-efficacy beliefs, lack of parental monitoring, and low acceptance by parents. Results showed that for males, more advanced pubertal maturation, low self-efficacy and few opportunities for monitoring corresponded to higher levels of delinquency. In comparing the adversity groups, this pattern was more pronounced and applied to both genders in the high adversity group. Furthermore, among the high adversity group, adolescents' chronological age, not maturational level, predicted delinquency. The differences between the adversity groups were interpreted in reference to the developmental taxonomy of delinquency as suggested by Moffitt (1993). (Author/HTH)