Ostalgie/’Eastalgia’: re-issuing of GDR brands (see the Spreewald gherkin episode in Goodbye Lenin); fight to preserve minor symbols of difference (traffic light man)
Danger of ‘commodifying’ the GDR past & relativising idealistic motivations
The Achievements of Socialism
Walter Ulbricht, SED leader 1946-71
Reliable but uncharismatic functionary
Weimar KPD leader in Berlin in 1930s
Nazi exile spent mainly in Moscow, avoiding purges of later 30s; viewed as Stalinist even after Stalin’s death
Favoured ‘hard line’ of constructing socialism in half a country rather than pursuing reunification; in 1953 under heavy fire from Politburo colleagues, but ‘saved’ by 17 June uprising
Activist role in pushing Khrushchev into aggressive stance over Berlin Crisis; WU devoted most of later time to foreign pol.
1960s attempted to play the moderniser, with focus on technology
1971 ousted by ‘palace coup’ by Honecker, with Soviet backing of Brezhnev; died in 1973
From late 1950s responsible for internal affairs in GDR
1971 acquired Moscow’s backing to remove Ulbricht
EH formed an unwritten ‘social pact’ (the Unity of Economic and Social policy) which subsidised popular standard of living (at height in mid-70s); increasingly paid for by loans from West, turning GDR into loan junkie by 1980s
Gorbachev’s arrival as a Soviet reform communist leader in 1985 caused SED a succession crisis as ‘gerontocracy’ hung on to power; EH was hospitalised at crucial points of the 1989 crisis
Famous in GDR for panama hat & natty pale suits; died 1994 in exile in Chile
Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED)
June 1945 Soviets relegalise political parties
Autumn Communists decide on merger with Social Democrats; local resistance from some SPD, but pressure from SMAD
United workers’ party of SED founded April 1946 (debates: was this the spontaneous will of workers, learning lessons of divided labour movement in 1933, or creature of Soviets?)
1948-51: SED Stalinised into ‘New-Type Party’; purge of former Social Democrats & loss of parity principle
1946 free elections: SED polls 48%
SED functions as hub of Antifascist Bloc including Christian Democrats and Liberal Democrats, and later National Democrats and Farmers; elections also fought as single Bloc list (aka National Front)
SED membership: rose from 1.3 (1946) to 2.3 million (1986), including many careerist members; women’s shared only reached 35.5%; functionaries (i.e. officials) liked to list themselves as ‘workers’ but had they functionally become middle-class?
‘Politbureaucracy’ lived sheltered existence in Wandlitz compound, including all mod cons
‘Foot soldiers’ often true believers, working hard & living frugally (see Landolf Scherzer, Der Erste/Number One, 1988, shadowing hardworked local party secretary)
The Stasi (MfS): Shield and Sword of the Party
Founded as clone of KGB under Soviet occupation
Early on used mainly for counter-intelligence (to keep out or kidnap western spies)
Markus Wolf’s Foreign Section scored notable successes in planting moles with West German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1970s
1952 Stasi given control of border; later policed the border troops
Poor early warning for 1953 uprising & temporarily demoted from ministerial status
Central Evaluation & Information Group (ZAIG) monitored popular mood
Self-image as pro-active ‘social workers’ or agents of the ‘invisible frontier’; ‘operative missions’ included infiltration & decomposition from within of suspected dissident groups
1960s MfS adopts more sophisticated techniques & ‘total surveillance’
Informelle Mitarbeiter (IMs) (‘informal collaborators’ or informants: growing reliance for ‘total surveillance’ on coopted members of public
‘Destasification’: prominent cases show difficulty of proving if suspect was indirectly reported or IM (Manfred Stolpe, minister-president of Brandenburg)
May: new Moscow leadership order more liberal ‘New Course’; Ulbricht criticised
But workers excluded from some reforms (ration cards, work quotas increased)
16 June: building workers on Berlin’s Stalinallee strike for economistic reasons
17 June am: spontaneous strikes in cities; Berlin strikers march on ministerial district
17 June pm: more political demands (free elections, national unity); late afternoon Soviet tanks impose martial law
East German explanation: CIA-organised putsch (‘Tag X’) using teenager thugs
West German explanation: people’s revolt against Soviet tyranny
The Open Border
The Berlin Wall, 13 August 1961
Failure of 1958 economic drive to overtake West German consumer production
1960 economic problems & growing E. European subsidies
1961 Warsaw Pact states agree to seal off W. Berlin; initially fences were erected (see right) to test the West’s response; since the barrier was within E. Berlin territorial limits it was treated as internal affair
1964 old age pensioners allowed to visit West
1971 Berlin Agreement permits ‘grade-1 relatives’ to visit West; in the 1980s West German loans were tied to the human rights liberalisation
Shoot to kill: all told approx. 1,000 persons died at the inner-German border; it was also mined until 1984; after fall of the Wall border guards who shot received suspended sentences fro manslaughter; those higher up in the Army or Politburo received prison sentences
Antifascism: a legitimatory ideology
Marxist-Leninist doctrine always interpreted fascism as an outgrowth of capitalism; therefore antifascism linked to anti-capitalism (big business as Hitler’s stringpullers)
Fascism also interpreted as a political class war (mainly v. KPD), rather than racial war (v. Jews); GDR paid no reparations to Israel & antisemitic attacks on graveyards persisted
West German Federal Republic viewed as haven of former Nazis, protected by Anglo-Americans (especially in 1950s/60s); antifascism thus had contemporaneous function of anti-westernism (e.g. Berlin Wall officially labelled ‘Antifascist Defence Rampart’)
SED leadership (mainly Soviet exiles) had ambivalent attitude to ‘real’ antifascist veterans (marginalised ‘inland’ resisters, dissolved veterans’ organisations)
Antifascism an affective moral argument for wartime generation; but younger generations increasingly indifferent to abstract antifascism; with unification to FRG’s public culture of atonement many East Germans had difficulties accepting ‘collective guilt’
Socialist nationalism?
Early Stalinist/SED policy stressed national unity (Stalin 1945: ‘The Hitlers come and go; the German people remains’; Stalin Notes of March 1952 offering a neutral united Germany cf Austria)
GDR inferiority complex towards FRG (FRG’s ‘sole representation’ of German nation & refusal to recognise GDR in Hallstein Doctrine); all East German citizens reaching FRG automatically entitled to West German passport
‘Peaceful coexistence’: 1955 Khrushchev signals two German states in one nation; from 1980s policy of ‘demarcation’ (Abgrenzung) from FRG
Socialist humanism stressed heritage of classical greats (Goethe & Schiller at National Theatre at Weimar)
1980s GDR rediscovery of tradition (national poets Goethe & Schiller of Weimar; Luther anniversary; Bismarck biography; Frederick the Great statues in Berlin & Potsdam)
1987: East Berlin celebrates its 750th anniversary, including historical reconstruction of Nikolai quarter & its church, as well as 19th-century Sophienstrasse
‘The Friends’: Relations with the Soviets
Official propaganda stressed the liberation in 1945, GDR ‘brothers in arms’ within Warsaw Pact; slogan: ‘Learning from the Soviet Union means Learning to Win!’
Day-to-day relations tarnished by mass rapes of women lasting for years after 1945
Dismantling of factories: ca. 30% of East German plant was removed
Russian was compulsory in schools but not pursued by many to a high level
Membership of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship was automatic in the mass organisations
Gorbachev: belonged to new generation of reform communists
Renounced Brezhnev for ‘Sinatra’ Doctrine
‘If your neighbours re-wallpapered their flat would you feel obliged to redecorate yours?’ Kurt Hager
Economic decline
Honecker’s subsidies at cost of western loans; increasing pressure to liberalise in return for loans
Switch from Soviet oil to East German brown coal (environmental problems)
9 November 1989: SED Politburo collectively resigns over exposed debt crisis
Crisis deepened into spring 1990 with emigration to West of key workers, including doctors
Key voting issue in March 1990 fast union with D-mark zone in West (occurred 1 July 1990)
Since reunification GDR suffered approx. twice unemployment rate of other FRG
Treuhand (Trustee) agency set to privatise East German industry; beset by corruption (even Chancellor Kohl indicted)
Validation of Adenauer’s 1950s ‘magnet theory’ that West Germany would draw GDR into its orbit?
Civil society
SED state claimed monopoly of representation; even strikes illegal
Artists & writers as substitute ‘Öffentlichkeit’ (public sphere)?
Wolf Biermann case: singer-songwriter & left critic of SED (which he saw as travesty of socialism); 1976 effectively deported from GDR
Earliest civil disobedience over freedom of travel (1973 GDR joined UN – human rights issues); beginnings of illegal contacts & groupings; white as dissident colour
Churches as sanctuaries for alternative groups
Environmental issues: pollution
Political issues: vote-rigging exposed in May 1989 local elections
Sept. 1989: several citizens’ groups emerge, including New Forum, Democratic Awakening & Initiative Peace and Human Rights
9 October 1989: Leipzig
The Fall of the Wall
May 1989: Hungarians breach iron curtain
Mass exodus begins; frustrated leavers seek refuge in Prague & Warsaw embassies of FRG
Leipzig peace marches from Nikolaikirche swell from hundreds, to thousands to hundreds of thousands; 9 October Berlin decides not to use violence
18 October Honecker relieved for ‘health reasons’; successor Egon Krenz not trusted by most as genuine reformer
Planned staged opening of Wall mishandled & becomes stampede for border crossings; GDR border troops relinquish control
