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The Depiction of the GDR in Prominent British Texts
Published between Official Recognition of the ‘Other’
German State in 1973 and the Fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989
JAMIE LEE SEARLE
(QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, UK)
English Abstract
References to the GDR made in Britain in the Cold War era of the 1950s and 60s were
often associated with the stereotypically harsh images of authoritarian police states.
Decades later, events such as the opening of the Stasi files and the recent 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in 1989 have repeatedly brought the more oppressive
elements of the regime to the forefront of public consciousness. But this was not always the case. In the 1970s and 80s a number of prominent titles on GDR politics, society and culture by British writers illustrated the trend for either including only a
brief comment on the Stasi and the SED’s anti-humanitarian policies, or neglecting
mention of them altogether. By exploring the way in which these writers chose to
present the GDR in that period, this essay examines the reasons why so many of
them failed to engage with the darker side of the East German state. The motivations
which emerge include the desire to maintain the political status quo between Britain
and the GDR — and within Europe in general — and sympathies with the Socialist
ideal. A number of authors were seemingly motivated by the positive values and
achievements which they saw in the GDR to present an image which would overcome lingering Cold War stereotypes. As a result, this essay argues that these authors ultimately contributed to the illusion that the more negative features were no
longer cause for concern.
German Abstract
Das Bild der DDR, das in Zeiten des Kalten Krieges während der 1950er und 60er Jahre in
Großbritannien vorherrschte, war weitgehend durch das Stereotyp eines unterdrückenden
Polizeistaats geprägt. Auch Jahrzehnte später haben Ereignisse wie die Offenlegung der Stasi-Akten oder kürzlich der 20. Jahrestag des Mauerfalls die repressiven Methoden des Regimes ins öffentliche Bewusstsein zurückgeholt. Diese Vorstellung war jedoch nicht immer
verbreitet. Etliche einschlägige Studien britischer Forscher der 1970er und 80er Jahre, die
sich mit der Politik, Gesellschaft und Kultur der DDR auseinandersetzen, verdeutlichen eine
andere Tendenz, indem sie nur beiläufig die antihumanitären Methoden der Stasi und der
SED erwähnen oder sie sogar völlig verschweigen. Diese Studie untersucht die Darstellung
der DDR durch ausgewählte Autoren dieser Zeit und versucht Rückschlüsse zu ziehen, aus
welchen Gründen so viele von ihnen daran scheiterten, sich auch mit den negativen Aspekten
des ostdeutschen Staates auseinanderzusetzen. Mögliche Gründe sind zum einen der Versuch, den Status quo zwischen Großbritannien und der DDR – sowie allgemein in Europa –
aufrechtzuerhalten, zum anderen die eigene Befürwortung des sozialistischen Ideals. Eine
Reihe von Autoren wurde wohl durch die positiven Werte und Errungenschaften, die sie im
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System der DDR sah, dazu angespornt, ein Bild zu entwerfen, welches bestehende Stereotype
des Kalten Krieges überwinden sollte. Aus diesen Gründen argumentiert der vorliegende Artikel, dass jene Autoren letztendlich zu der Vorstellung beitrugen, die eher negativen Eigenschaften würden nicht länger einen Grund zur Sorge darstellen.
I. Introduction
British texts on the German Democratic Republic (GDR) throughout the 1950s and
60s were largely influenced by post-war resentment and stereotypes, and focused
predominantly upon its role within the Cold War and the ongoing and so-called
‘German question’ which endured throughout the country’s division. The stereotypical image of its totalitarian system was further enforced in Britain by popular espionage literature such as John Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1964). Yet
just a decade later, by the 1970s, the approach had arguably shifted considerably. In
an essay inspired by the Oscar-winning German-language film The Lives of Others in
2007, the historian Timothy Garton Ash noted that although the word Stasi has now
become a “default global synonym for the secret police terrors of communism,” to
have highlighted the authoritarian, oppressive features of the GDR’s Socialist Unity
Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) leadership in the 1970s and 80s
would have been sternly frowned upon in the West in as “outmoded, reactionary
cold war hysteria, harmful to the spirit of detente”.1 Similarly, in the introduction to
the 2005 English translation of the West German author Peter Schneider’s novel The
Wall Jumper (1982), the British author Ian McEwan recalls his time spent researching
his own novel The Innocent in Berlin in 1987, when “merely to describe the Wall was
to attack it, and thus appear to be a stooge of the CIA”.2 He also comments that
Schneider’s novel “records a time when the Wall had passed from being an outrage,
an affront to freedom-loving peoples, to a boring fact of life, and in the West at least,
a bureaucratic obstacle”.3 Although the level of oppression endured by GDR citizens
was arguably in a state of flux throughout the 1970s and 80s due to the government’s
1
Timothy Garton Ash, “The Stasi on Our Minds,” in Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name (London: Atlantic Books, 2009), 328-342, here: 329.
2
Ian McEwan, “Preface,” in The Wall Jumper, by Peter Scheider, trans. by Leigh Hafrey (London:
Penguin, 2005), xi.
3
Ibid.
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gradually loosening grip on its people,4 it cannot be denied that the Wall itself — the
very symbol of their oppression — continued to exist until 1989. This suggests that
the shift in voiced opinion cited by McEwan and Garton Ash was most likely subject
to other influences, and that the way in which the GDR was presented in Britain, and
the West in general, in the 1970s and 80s was shaped more by the agenda and outlook of the writer and readership at the time.
In 1973 Britain had finally established diplomatic relations with the GDR following the Federal Republic of Germany’s (FRG) abandonment of the Hallstein Doctrine.
This paved the way for the development of political, trade and cultural relations. No
official Cultural Treaty was ever signed between the GDR and Britain, but in 1980 a
Cultural Agreement was initiated, designed to provide for “a variety of cultural and
educational exchanges and links”.5 This enabled the establishment of official links
between institutions of higher education to promote short staff-exchanges and oneyear placements of British students in GDR universities.6 As the GDR and Britain began to form tentative diplomatic and cultural links, there emerged the need for up to
date information on life in the Socialist German state, from politics and economy to
society and culture. From the early 1970s therefore, studies and volumes began to be
published which, for the first time, explored the GDR as a state in its own right with
respective social and political systems, rather than as a mere extension of the Soviet
model. As Mike Dennis explores in his article “GDR Studies in the UK”, the academic community engaged in this research was very small — estimated at around
fifty scholars in the mid 1980s — and focused mainly upon the years following the
commencement of Erich Honecker’s leadership in 1971, which saw the GDR become
4
Consider for example the temporary lifting of restrictions on writers’ artistic freedoms in the early
1970s but which were retracted in 1976 following the Wolf Biermann affair.
5
Marianne Howarth, “The Berlin Triangle: Britain and the Two German States in the 1980s,” in Britain and the GDR: Relations and Perceptions in a Divided World, ed. Arnd Bauerkämper (Berlin: Philo,
2002), 173-197, here: 178.
6
Cf. Ian Wallace, “The GDR’s Cultural Activities in Britain,” in German Life and Letters, 53 (2000), 394408, here: 405.
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increasingly recognised on the international stage, especially following its accession
to the United Nations in 1973.7
There were of course many difficulties involved in getting access to reliable
sources of information. In an attempt to maintain an element of control, the Stasi
closely monitored any visitors who they felt could have a ‘harmful’ effect on GDR
society in presenting a positive and appealing image of the West to its citizens. Correspondingly, there were also very strict restrictions on the movements of foreign
journalists in the GDR. Any hopes that the Basic Treaty between the GDR and the
FRG would open up the opportunity for the foreign media to have increased access
to the GDR were quickly dashed. According to a decree introduced in February 1973,
just four months after the agreement allowing Western journalists to open offices in
East Berlin, foreign correspondents could only become accredited if they took up
residence in the GDR, and were “obliged to report correctly and truthfully about life
in the GDR and not to allow a malicious perversion of the facts”. They were also forbidden to “defame the GDR, its institutions and leading figures”.8 In April 1979 restrictions were tightened yet again when freedom of movement for accredited journalists was lifted, with the result that they were obliged to inform the authorities
twenty-four hours in advance if they intended to travel outside East Berlin. They
were also required to obtain permission to interview private citizens, an attempt by
the authorities to “prevent television interviews with critics of the regime”.9 Any
publications or broadcasts which were seen by the GDR authorities as interference
with the aims of the Socialist state were taken very seriously and often punished with
expulsion from the GDR, a measure which they likely hoped would prove a deterrent to those who wished to have continued access.
7
Mike Dennis, “GDR Studies in the UK: From the Berlin Wall to the Wende of 1989,” in The Other
Germany: Perceptions and Influences in British-East German Relations, 1945-1990, eds. Stefan Berger and
Norman LaPorte (Augsburg: Wißner, 2005), 269-290, here: 270.
8
André Gerrits and Joanka Prakken, “Helsinki, Madrid and the Working Conditions for Western
Journalists in Eastern Europe,” in Essays on Human Rights in the Helsinki Process, eds. Arie Bloed and
Pieter Dijk (Dordrecht/Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985), 127-163, here: 149.
9
Gerrits and Prakken, “Helsinki, Madrid and the Working Conditions for Western Journalists in
Eastern Europe” (cf. note 8), 150.
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These restrictions all contributed to the lack of reliable material published on the
GDR for a British readership. The absence of diplomatic recognition for the first
twenty years of the GDR’s existence, combined with Cold War stereotypes of a satellite Soviet state, had for the most part created a British public who were uninterested
in challenging their views. It should be highlighted that the public perception of the
GDR as projected in the popular media — which was at best stereotyped, and at
worst indifferent — is not the focus of this study. Ian Wallace stated in the introduction to his 1987 bibliography of texts on the GDR that the predominant image of the
GDR in the British mass media continued to be “that of a particularly inhuman
prison”. Yet he adds that there was by then “far less of a tendency among serious
commentators simply to condemn the GDR as an oppressive Soviet satellite”.10 The
images of the GDR constructed by these commentators are the focus of this essay.
There were of course always individuals who were keen to find out more, whether
motivated by academic and social scientific research or personal interest.
This essay will look predominantly at the following texts on the GDR written by
British authors from the mid 1970s to late 1980s which were aimed at fulfilling these
demands, and explore in detail the image they constructed of the GDR of that same
period: Jonathan Steele’s Socialism with a German Face: The State that Came in from the
Cold (1977), David Childs’ The GDR: Moscow’s German Ally (1983) and Honecker’s
Germany (1985), Roger Woods’ Opposition in the GDR under Honecker (1971–1985)
(1986), Mike Dennis’s German Democratic Republic: Politics, Economics and Society
(1988), Martin McCauley’s The German Democratic Republic since 1945 (1986) and
Timothy Garton Ash’s The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe (1989).
These texts have been selected according to the following criteria; they were written
by British authors prior to the fall of the Wall in November 1989 and concentrate on
the GDR of the 1970s and 80s; they were published in Britain, and furthermore they
resonated amongst British readers and academics to the extent that they were reviewed in the media or referred to by other writers in subsequent texts about the
10
Ian Wallace (Ed.), East Germany: the German Democratic Republic. World Bibliographical Series, Volume 77 (Oxford/Santa Barbara: Clio Press, 1987), xv.
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GDR. Given that the hypothesis of this study is that the cultural and political needs
of the target audience greatly influence the image constructed of the GDR by a particular author, English-language texts on the GDR published in the United States are
not included for analysis here due to their differing cultural context. As part of the
selection process, Ian Wallace’s 1987 bibliographical study of texts on the GDR11 was
consulted alongside other archives and records of texts available on the period in
question.
This essay will explore the texts selected to ascertain what image their authors
constructed of the GDR, examine what themes and topics are given the most attention and whether any are neglected. It ultimately aims to discover whether a pattern
emerges suggesting a common motivation amongst British authors to present a predominantly positive picture of the GDR and underestimate the negative aspects.
Alongside the thematic examination of the texts, the use of language and structuring
of arguments and chapters will also be addressed, in order to explore the subtle — or
not so subtle — means by which the authors projected their views. The textual analysis will then be followed by an exploration of the factors which influenced the way in
which these writers presented the GDR to their readers.
II. Jonathan Steele’s Socialism with a German Face: The State that Came in from the
Cold (1977) and David Childs’ The GDR: Moscow’s German Ally (1983) and
Honecker’s Germany (1985) A book which has frequently been cited as the most comprehensive guide to the
GDR available at the time is Jonathan Steele’s Socialism with a German Face: The State
that Came in from the Cold (1977). Even after the fall of Communism this title still continued to be referenced in many secondary texts: in an article published in 2005, Mike
Dennis — whose academic work focuses on the history and legacy of the GDR —
claimed that it should be counted among the pioneers of those who “sought to
11
Wallace, East Germany (cf. note 10).
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counter crude stereotyping of the GDR by providing a better understanding of its society and politics”.12 In his introduction Steele sets out from the premise that it is “no
longer possible to argue that the system is both politically inacceptable and in any
way economically inefficient”.13 The picture he presents is of a state in which the
standard of living is considerably superior to its Eastern European neighbours, and
where traditional values continue to thrive. He highlights the GDR’s economic and
welfare strengths, and asserts that its people are hard-working and that they — for
the most part — have believed more strongly in the viability of their state since the
Wall was built in 1961.14 Steele frequently commends the SED government’s efforts,
stating for example that “in many ways, the GDR has succeeded in providing its
people with stability and security. Streets are clean and pedestrians wait for the
green light before crossing”.15 He is also particularly complementary of Ulbricht,
who has worked significantly towards the GDR’s “own economic miracle”.16
To a certain extent, Steele does pursue a critical exploration of some negative aspects in GDR society. He observes that there is an inherent submissiveness to authority, which he attributes to a combination of German traditions, the “goal-directed
philosophy” of a Communist state, and a defensive leadership which has become
distrustful of its own people through years of confrontation with the West.17 He
highlights the fact that that travel restrictions are stricter than those of Poland or
Hungary, that the GDR leadership’s refusal to share responsibility with West Germany for the Nazi past has resulted in a spiritual and psychological “no-man’sland”, and also touches upon the suspicion that the GDR’s undisclosed suicide rate is
thought to be one of the highest in the world.18 However, although this gives his
work the illusion of being a measured account, upon closer inspection it becomes
12
13
Dennis, “GDR Studies in the UK” (cf. note 7), 271.
Jonathan Steele, Socialism with a German Face: The State that Came in from the Cold (London: Jonathan
Cape, 1977), 7.
14
Ibid., 8.
15
Ibid., 11.
16
Ibid., 6.
17
Ibid., 14.
18
Ibid., 196.
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evident that he moves swiftly on from these issues without exploring their consequences for the GDR citizens themselves. He states that there is no empirical evidence to either prove or disprove that the system is “irredeemably democratic”19, yet
his decision to devote the content of a chapter entitled “How much ‘People’s Democracy’?” to an overview of industrial democracy and government-run trade unions
rather than exploring the lack of human rights in general suggests an unwillingness
to tackle the issue in more depth, the possible motivations for which will be explored
shortly.
Steele’s choice of vocabulary is also of interest; dissenting voices are described as
“grievances”, restriction of movement and freedom become “lack of opportunities
for travel”20, and the authoritarian measures taken by “Europe’s youngest state” to
control its people are put down to its “caution and defensiveness”.21 He also sees this
last weakness as a product of “special conditions” of collective memory, with the implication that the leadership should be forgiven on the grounds that many of them
suffered under the Nazi regime.22 This use of rather forgiving terminology contributes to the impression that the negative features of life in the GDR are mild and, perhaps, easily accepted by its citizens. His narrative structure also emphasises this
viewpoint, for most comments on weak points in GDR society are followed abruptly
by justifications which ensure the discussion ends on a positive note in the reader’s
mind:
The excesses of [the GDR’s] political way of life and the lack of travel possibilities for
its people are the product of special conditions, and the continuing confrontation
with West Germany. But its overall social and economic system is a presentable
model of the kind of authoritarian welfare state which East European nations have
now become.23
This demonstrates how he uses rather vague terminology in an attempt to construct a
predominantly positive image of GDR society.
19
Ibid., 128.
20
Ibid., 212.
21
Ibid., 18.
22
Ibid., 227.
23
Ibid.
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There is, noticeably, not one reference to the Stasi within the text. One could argue that Steele falls into the very trap which he cites as the cause of many of the
GDR’s problems: by constantly referring to economic results and consumer values as
the criterion for judging society’s success or failure, he fails to examine the humanitarian issues in their society, something which a balanced investigation demands.
Considering the lack of opportunities for personal contact with the GDR amongst the
majority of British citizens, and the high esteem in which the title was held Britain in
the late 1970s and even through the 1980s, it is likely that this text would have perpetuated a rose-tinted picture of the GDR amongst British readers.
In 1983 a new title came to the fore: The GDR: Moscow’s German Ally by the British
historian David Childs. The author begins with an overview of the GDR’s development from the post-war years through to the easing of Cold War tension and relative
‘normalisation’ of the late 1970s, then moves on to outline and examine in detail the
following aspects of 1980s society: the economy, education, intellectuals, the media,
the role of women, and foreign relations. It is a comprehensive study which also critiques negative factors within the leadership and society. He reflects for example on
the conflict within the middle-aged and older generations between the disillusionment and loyalty they feel towards their state. In his experience, these citizens are —
to varying degrees — proud of what the GDR has achieved in material terms whilst
being nonetheless disappointed by the disparity between it and the FRG; they have
praise for the warmth amongst GDR communities, yet are also embarrassed by the
state’s restrictions on freedom of speech and movement.24 These sentiments provide
an insight into the complex nature of life there, and, more importantly, illustrate to
British readers that there was much more to the GDR of the 1980s than previous
stereotypes had suggested.
However, some of Childs’ assessments seem understated, as he stops short of exploring the deeper resentment and frustration present in GDR society, which was
later proven to exist by the revolutionary events of late 1989. References to the Stasi
are scarce, and mainly relate to events from the early years under stricter Soviet mili 24
Cf. David Childs, The GDR: Moscow’s German Ally, 1st ed. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983), 112.
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tary control, such as the violent suppression of the 17th June uprising in 1953. He
provides a detailed overview of the GDR’s leadership structure, from the Politbüro
and Zentral Kommittee down to the basic party units within the workplace,25 but only
explores the vast scale of the reach and infiltration of the Stasi and their Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter briefly within a later chapter on national service and military training. Whilst
he reports that there are many part-time informers in addition to full-time officers, he
depicts their reports as concerning petty issues such as “the grumbling among people waiting on the regular queue on Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse for auto spares”.26 This
gives the misleading impression that these informers did little more than make average neighbourhood gossip official; there is no discussion of the often severe consequences which befell those who had been reported on, which led to imprisonment in
some cases. Childs reminds the reader that according to Article 86 of the GDR’s 1974
Constitution, the existence of the Socialist state and the “political power of the working class” were seen as the “key determinants guaranteeing citizens’ rights, the legal
system being only of secondary importance’’.27 This could serve as a stimulus for examining the state’s fascinating creation of a system of self-control, by getting their
people to spy on each other, but this idea is not explored further by the author, who
instead focuses on the administrative structure of the official legal system.
The failure of the SED to observe basic human rights is highlighted only within
the chapter “The Intellectuals: Conformists, Outsiders and Others”, which provides
an overview of the varying stages of artistic ‘freedom’ or oppression over the years,
especially in its confrontation of the harassment and force which the SED used to
push writers such as Reiner Kunze into exile.28 However, to locate this debate within
a chapter on intellectuals suggests that it was only prominent, high-profile figures
who suffered from this kind of treatment. Although Childs raises many criticisms of
and challenges to the GDR, it is primarily the structure of the text which reduces
25
Ibid., 109.
26
Ibid., 289.
27
Ibid., 135.
28
Cf. ibid., 224.
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their impact. Similarly, he waits until the very end of the text to highlight the resentment amongst many GDR citizens, who “remain sullen, bitter, alienated and angry”
as they identify themselves as Germans, yet cannot comprehend why they are denied
the freedoms and privileges of their German brothers in the FRG.29 These comments
are not only covered in a surprisingly brief manner given the intensity of the sentiment he describes, but are also placed rather incongruously within the text as a
whole, within a chapter on foreign policy. This has the result that the critical comments are easily overlooked and become lost amongst the other information discussed at more length in that chapter.
Some of the issues not touched upon in Moscow’s German Ally are discussed
within Childs’ 1985 edited volume Honecker’s Germany, which draws together essays
by British and North American academics in the field. Roger Woods’ contribution
explores whether the views expressed by well-known East German dissidents can be
seen as representative of the populace, as was popularly assumed in the FRG, and
concludes somewhat unsatisfactorily — partly due of course to the lack of empirical
evidence — that the majority of public opinion does not conform to either the SED
line or that of prominent dissidents, but rather to “many intermediate positions”.30
Interestingly, he draws attention to the rift between the ‘intellectuals’ and the ordinary workers in the GDR, a conflict which may well have reduced the likelihood of
the views of dissidents such as Rudolf Bahro and Robert Havemann being regarded
as representative both in and outside of the GDR. However, he does not explicitly
suggest this or ask whether greater efforts by these prominent figures to give voice to
the more practical demands of the people in general may have encouraged more
people outside the GDR to take notice of the challenges faced by its citizens.31
The chapter “Youth — Not So Very Different” is one of Childs’ own contributions and suggests that the SED’s attempt to gain the loyalty and obedience of the
younger generation through controlling measures such as the education system and
29
30
31
Ibid., 317.
Roger Woods, “The Significance of East German Intellectuals in Opposition,” in Honecker’s Germany,
ed. David Childs (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), 83-97, here: 93.
Ibid., 85.
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the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) have been far from successful. His research shows detail of the pastimes of young East German citizens and depicts evidence of juvenile
delinquency which is far from the ‘Orwellian Utopia’ the leadership are keen to project.32 In attributing this to the lower parental supervision (due to a higher percentage
of working women and shift work) he suggests that the challenges faced by young
GDR citizens are no different to those experienced elsewhere, and confirms this by
concluding that “the youth of the GDR are as likely to be critical and questioning as
the youth of any other state in Europe or America”.33 This perpetuates the view that
the restrictions on human freedoms, of movement and speech amongst others, where
not included in the challenges which young — and indeed all — East Germans faced.
Overall, it seems that Childs has become accustomed to the status quo, and, in focusing on the finer details of how GDR society is structured, he neglects to engage at
length with contentious issues. This is echoed in the other contributions, where the
only reference to human rights issues in the GDR is confined to a brief discussion of
the contrasting concepts of this term between Western and Socialist countries. In the
former they exist a priori as granted by God, and in the latter “there is no continuity
between the bourgeois and socialist rights of man”.34
In Childs’ second edition of The GDR: Moscow’s German Ally, re-released in 1988
with a new concluding chapter, there is a stronger emphasis on the “acute limitations
on citizens’ rights in the GDR” with regard to the high numbers applying to emigrate
and — increasingly — seeking support with the churches.35 It is evident from his
tone that Childs’ own view has developed in the intervening years, for example
when he observes on a particular matter that “the GDR media were of course mobilised to make the traditional lame attempt to justify the actions of the SSD [Staatssicherheitsdienst].” Yet his concluding statement that “in so many respects life in 1988
32
33
34
35
Cf. David Childs, “Youth — Not So Very Different,” in Honecker’s Germany, ed. David Childs (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), 118-134, here: 133.
Ibid.
Inge Christopher, “The Written Constitution: The Basic Law of a Socialist State,” in Honecker’s Germany, ed. David Childs (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), 15-32, here: 23.
David Childs, The GDR: Moscow’s German Ally, 2nd ed. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1988), 341.
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was not up to the expectations of most citizens of the GDR”, seems rather tame in
comparison with the preceding paragraphs.36 Given that his comments demonstrate
his own growing awareness of the discontentment in GDR society, it is somewhat
problematic that he decided a text released five years previously only needed an additional chapter to bring it up to date. This suggests that he chose not to engage at
length with the developments and frustration which contributed to the SED government’s gradually loosening grip on its people and attempts to maintain this.
III. Roger Woods’ Opposition in the GDR under Honecker, 1971–1985 (1986), Mike
Dennis’ German Democratic Republic: Politics, Economics and Society (1988) and
Martin McCauley’s The German Democratic Republic since 1945 (1986)
In 1986 a short volume dedicated to the discontent visible in GDR society was published: Roger Woods’ Opposition in the GDR under Honecker, 1971–1985. In his preface,
Woods claims that the Western perception of opposition in the GDR is polarised between regarding it as “an activity restricted to a small, isolated and therefore insignificant group, or as the expression of the true opinions of the silent majority of East
German citizens”.37 This suggests that there was a great deal of uncertainty on the
subject. In this volume Woods problematises the concept of opposition in a state
where opposition is not legally recognised and the resulting difficulty in obtaining
trustworthy information, and attempts to establish whether there is indeed evidence
of strong political resistance — albeit unofficial — in the GDR. As in his contributing
essay to Honecker’s Germany, he focuses initially on the well-known intellectual dissidents, primarily Havemann, Bahro and Stefan Heym, and their criticisms that the
GDR has not lived up to the hopes they had for Socialism. Focusing on intellectuals
such as these presents an incomplete picture, since their frustrations as pre-war
36
Ibid., 344.
37
Roger Woods, Opposition in the GDR under Honecker, 1971-1985 (Macmillan, London 1986), ix.
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Communists who suffered considerably under Nazism would differ considerably
from the frustrations of the majority of the younger GDR population of the 1980s.
In his assessment of the significance and value of opposition groups, he applies
the criteria that true dissidents, or individuals in opposition to the system, are those
who act in a co-ordinated way towards “altering the political system”.38 In doing so,
he discounts people who have applied to leave the GDR (despite the high numbers)
on the grounds that they are not technically opposition figures or dissidents as “their
energies are not primarily directed towards reforming major features of East Germany’s social and political system”.39 Whilst a valid point, I would argue that people
who sought to leave their own country in this context should still be counted as being in opposition to the system. Admittedly, they were not a resistance force, or
would-be reformers, but nonetheless, they were often choosing to leave their home,
work and family behind due to the fact that they were no longer able to tolerate the
system they were living under. This decision — never easily made — was a lifechanging one, and clearly demonstrates that their expectations of how their life
should have been were in opposition to the ideas of the state.
However, regarding the extent to which dissidents’ views are representative of
the population as a whole Wood concludes, more decisively than in his essay in
Honecker’s Germany, that the majority rejected the existing regime, and that the absence of larger-scale protest in the GDR was not a sign of social harmony but of political resignation.40 This was both highly perceptive and — taking into account the
1989 revolution which followed — accurate. The absence of any widespread, palpable opposition to the SED leadership in the GDR was seen by many from Britain —
and other Western countries — as a sign that GDR society was relatively content
with its lot, as the study of the next text, by Mike Dennis, will show. It is vital to remember that the power of the GDR authorities in the 1970s and 80s was gleaned
from wearing people down consistently over time rather than through the violence
38
Ibid., 42.
39
Ibid.
40
Cf. ibid., 43.
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more typical of the post-war Stalinist years. By the mid 1980s many of the younger
generation had spent their whole lives in the shadow of the Wall — whether physically or metaphorically — and would never have known another way of life. Woods’
investigation, in suggesting that the lack of visible opposition does not equate to contentment, invites the reader to question the image of GDR society which was perpetuated by some authors.
In his introduction to German Democratic Republic: Politics, Economics and Society
(1988), Dennis asserts that “while the human cost of the Berlin Wall cannot and
should not be denied, the simple dichotomy of totalitarian communism and free democracies glosses over the complexities of political life in both West and East. The
GDR cannot be reduced to one simplistic ideological construct. It is the compound of
a complex present and an even more problematic past.”41 He describes his aim as to
provide a survey of the history of the GDR followed by a picture of the contemporary system. It should be highlighted that this text was part of a series on Marxist Regimes, and that his analysis was therefore largely defined by this contextual approach. As such, the text is structured precisely around common themes such as social structure and the political and economic systems, and is filled with comparative
statistical information and analyses of GDR state terminology and more general Socialist definitions. The emphasis is on statistical analysis, presenting for example an
East-West comparison of respective ‘shopping baskets’42 rather than a critical assessment of whether citizens of the GDR were content with the system. In the chapter
“The Political System”, he comments that a “social contract” of sorts had emerged
under Honecker: “a tacit and somewhat uneasy compromise between regime and
populace: a relatively widespread acknowledgment of the SED’s political primacy is
complemented by the regime’s greater sensitivity to many of the needs and wishes of
the population, including a tolerable standard of living”.43 He adds that there were
limits to the regime’s relaxation of political and ideological controls, in that its critics
41
Mike Dennis, German Democratic Republic. Politics, Economics and Society (London: Pinter, 1988), xiii.
42
Cf. ibid., 74.
43
Ibid., 80.
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“may still be subjected to arbitrary treatment by the instruments of coercion”.44 No
further detail of this is given. A brief section focused on the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS) is dedicated mainly to explaining its structure and organisation under
Erich Mielke. Dennis details that coercion and blackmail were sometimes used to secure the cooperation of unofficial informers, and that no special effort was made to
keep the surveillance of mail and telephone conversations secret, which suggests the
culture of fear which the SED government used to control their citizens. However, he
reduces the impact of these statements by the language he employs, claiming that the
MfS performs “typical police work”, that their activities create “a climate of uncertainty”, and agrees with Karl Fricke’s analysis that “most citizens have come to regard the MfS as an unavoidable nuisance”.45 This mild language suggests that the
MfS were not overly feared in the GDR of the 1980s. On the topic of political dissent,
Dennis problematises the lack of agreement of the term ‘dissident’ in socialist societies, stating that it will be treated in his text as “strong disagreement or dissatisfaction with established ideas or values”.46 However, similarly to Woods, he also
chooses to use Bahro and Havemann as “exemplars of anti-systemic dissidence”,
whilst classifying other critical dissidence as part of an alternative political culture
related to “peace, ecological, gay and women’s groups”.47 Although he does state
that human rights issues run as a common thread through these groups, his subsequent comment that this “low-key dissent is widespread amongst ordinary citizens
desirous of improvements in the quality of the mass media and service sector and
annoyed at the ban on travel to the West”48 again seems to underestimate due to his
choice of vague language. In a discussion of the church’s role within the peace initiatives, he concludes that the regime is “probably confident that it can contain what is
still very much a minority movement”49 and that the “prospect of popular dissatis 44
Ibid.
45
Ibid., 104.
46
Ibid., 113.
47
Ibid., 114.
48
Ibid., 125.
49
Ibid., 117.
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faction spilling over into mass unrest is exceedingly remote”.50 This view is repeated
in his conclusion, where he states that “outright opposition is confined to small
groups of relatively isolated individuals” and that whilst “people might grumble in
private; they do not rebel”.51
Many of the authors studied here seem to have underestimated the discontent
within GDR society at the time. Martin McCauley’s 1986 text The German Democratic
Republic since 1945 only includes a fairly brief overview of the GDR of the 1970s and
80s, but also conforms to this pattern. He argues that the events in Poland of the early
1980s — such as the attempt to break the Soviet connection and the foundation of the
Solidarity free trade union — are “almost inconceivable in the GDR” due to the endurance of Prussian traditions such as respect for the state and law, adding that “in
no other socialist state does the citizen possess such an inbred concern for lawful behaviour”.52 Although he does not explicitly link the two comments himself, his subsequent statement that “today the GDR state is very powerful; the communist party
dominates the instruments of control and coercion and at its back is the Soviet
Army”53, suggests that the obedience he mentions is most likely more of a necessity
than a cultural legacy. In his conclusion, he claims that “economic success is the
foundation of stability in the GDR and the source of legitimacy of the party”, adding
that the “1980s will be a difficult decade” due to stagnating living standards.54 However, he does not seem to think this could be terminal, and indeed, states earlier that
worsening conditions could “produce discontent but not enough to threaten the stability of the state”.55
50
Ibid., 125.
51
Ibid., 197.
52
Martin McCauley, The German Democratic Republic since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1986), 2.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid., 194.
55
Ibid., 5.
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IV. Timothy Garton Ash’s The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central
Europe (1989)
It could be argued that the finer details of the Stasi and the SED’s more antihumanitarian policies have only come into the public domain since the collapse of
Communism. However, Timothy Garton Ash has written that whilst travelling
around the GDR he was “again and again confronted with the fear of the Stasi”, indicating that the reality of the GDR was indeed visible to those with their eyes open to
it.56 Garton Ash’s contribution to British writing on the GDR was inspired by his time
spent in West and East Berlin as a postgraduate. Researching the history of Berlin
under Hitler in the archives, he soon became distracted from this initial research aim
and captivated instead by the people and events surrounding him in the GDR. He
then began collecting material and speaking at length with GDR citizens.
Most of his articles and essays published in The Spectator and the New York Review
of Books throughout the 1980s were assembled for The Uses of Adversity, published in
May 1989, just months before the Wall fell. In these, he relates tales of economic and
material frustrations, and of the farcical nature of elections in the GDR. Much of his
work focuses on exposing the contrast between appearance and reality in how the
GDR presented itself — and was presented by others — to the rest of the world.
Whilst the SED claimed their voting system was legitimate and democratic, he highlights in the chapter “Carmen-Sylvia Strasse” (written in June 1981) that a vote for
the National Front was carried out via dropping a slip in a box, whereas a vote for
any other would necessitate a walk to the booth, where a Vopo (Volkspolizist) would
make a note of the voter’s name. Garton Ash points out that the consequences for a
vote against the SED “may include demotion at work or, for a student, expulsion
from the university”.57 Highlighting aspects such as these differentiates his approach
from many of the other authors studied here, as he explores the impact of SED rule
on the citizens themselves much more directly.
56
Garton Ash, “The Stasi on Our Minds” (cf. note 1), 329.
57
Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe (Cambridge: Granta, 1989), 8.
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In “Inner Emigration”, rather than simply condemning the lack of revolutionary
spirit in the GDR, he explores its roots, tracing it back to the history and identity of
the German people. He highlights the dangers inherent in this retreat from public
life, citing Thomas Mann’s argument that the Innerlichkeit of the German people, and
their failure to “incorporate the imperative of political and social responsibility into
their central notion of what it is to be a civilised person”58 led to a society in which
Nazism was able to prosper. More positively however, in describing his friends in
the GDR as people who “nourish themselves on a host of German music, on European painting, poetry, and fiction”59 he paints a very human, sensitive picture which
encourages the reader to comprehend their lives on a more personal level. By humanising the East Germans and their society, he shows that it is inaccurate and
highly irrelevant to revert to the Cold War informed belief that they are all living in
miserable, totalitarian confinement, but at the same time he refuses to believe that
their society is an acceptable system, as perpetuated by Steele. In this context, he also
discusses the reactions of West German and European tourists to the GDR, who often
find the intensity of human relations there contrast favourably with the ‘atomization’
and ‘alienation’ of life in the capitalist West. This, he claims, is often taken for a positive product of the communist system, but the reality of living there confirms that the
“casual visitor enjoys the camaraderie without the hardship.”60 These statements
challenge the idea constructed by some of the authors mentioned here — such as
Dennis and Steele — that the majority of GDR citizens were relatively content, by
suggesting that their passivity was in fact a survival mechanism, and that true resentments were primarily kept behind closed doors.
58
Ibid., 11.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid., 70.
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V. Conclusion: Motivations for Overlooking the Negative Aspects of Live in the
GDR amongst British Writers
As the texts studied in this essay have shown, British writing on the GDR between
1973 and 1989 moved away from the Cold War stereotypes of the post-war years,
and towards a more positive portrayal which embraced its economic and welfare
achievements, along with its community spirit and traditional values. Struck by the
initial warmth of the people, and by achievements such as the government’s welfare
provisions, many of the authors set out to counter the Cold War stereotypes that had
been prominent amongst British perceptions in the 1950s and 60s. This shift can be
regarded in some ways as a positive development for its efforts to project a more
human picture of GDR society and to encourage readers to learn more about a state
which in many ways epitomised the divide between East and West. Yet in concentrating primarily — and often solely — on the positive aspects of life and society
which could be found, they went to another extreme, thus contributing to the illusion
that the SED was a much more permissive and tolerant leadership than it actually
was. Many of the texts studied above display a trend for focusing predominantly on
positive aspects of the society and state and neglecting to engage at length with more
negative issues such as the restrictions on human freedoms and the Stasi’s observation network including oppression and imprisonment of GDR citizens.
So what factors could have influenced the particular way in which the authors
chose to construct the image of GDR in their writing? Firstly, it should be highlighted
that these authors were writing from a British perspective and for a British readership and, as such, had a particular focus and aims. One motivation was often the
presence of sympathies with the Socialist ideal. There was a well-known contingent
of GDR supporters amongst the British political Left which endured to varying degrees from the foundation of the East German state in 1949 to its demise forty years
later. As Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte illustrate in their in-depth study of this
group, this was attributed — especially in the early years of the GDR — to shared
personal experience of antifascism in the 1930s and 1940s, of fighting alongside each
other during the Spanish Civil War, or even from alliances struck up with German
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Communists exiled in Great Britain. The GDR leadership seized the opportunities
linked with this with great enthusiasm and foresight:
By presenting their state as the antifascist and morally better Germany, GDR officials
hoped to win over specific target groups in the West to the GDR’s foreign policy
views, exploiting the considerable mistrust of all things German in Britain.61
The GDR’s public campaign to eradicate visible traces of the Nazi past from its soil
was consistently held up against the less thorough efforts of the FRG, and therefore
tapped into the post-war prejudice and resentment which still lingered in Britain
even decades later. The backgrounds of the GDR leadership — many of whom had
been imprisoned or exiled under Hitler’s rule — only served to tip the scales further
in favour of the GDR. Berger and LaPorte cite the dissemination of this idea as being
contributed to by the positive reception in the Western media of Jonathan Steele’s Socialism with a German Face, which “reinforced many commonly held perceptions of
the regime’s antifascist identity”.62 Admittedly, the power of this argument did diminish as time passed due to shifts towards the Right amongst the British Labour
Party, an increase in the West German attempt to come to terms with the Nazi past,
and the reduced numbers of those with personal experience of World War II.63 However, as the authors reflect, “a certain soft spot” for the GDR remained until the very
end amongst British left-wingers, who seemed willing to overlook its failings in the
hope that the search for the Socialist ideal would prevail. 64
There were also more powerful agendas at play; notably Britain’s political and
cultural relations with the GDR, with the FRG, and with the West in general. Commenting on Britain’s policy objectives in East Berlin after official recognition, Martin
McCauley cites the following as one of the most significant: to “promote stability in
the GDR by attempting to soften the rougher edges of GDR policy towards its citi-
61
Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte, “In Search of Antifascism: The British Left’s Response to the
German Democratic Republic during the Cold War,” in German History 26 (2008), 536-552, here: 536.
62
Ibid., 549.
63
Ibid., 547.
64
Ibid., 552.
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zens and the outside Western world”.65 He also comments that British Embassy staff
in East Berlin “shared the common Western perception that Party rule in the GDR
was unassailable. There were debates about its legitimacy, but this did not appear to
matter much.”66 These cynical revelations are indicative of the strong apprehension
of a reunified Germany which was echoed by many in Britain, not least by Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher. The fact that there was considerable evidence of British
concern on this matter indicates that it is very likely some writers neglected to draw
attention to the failings of the GDR for fear of destabilizing its rule and increasing the
likelihood of a stronger, reunified Germany. For many commentators then, although
there were clear doubts as to the GDR’s human rights record, looking the other way
enabled them to maintain the relative stability of the political relationship between
Britain and the GDR, and within Europe as a whole.
As the texts studied show, the reluctance amongst British writers to engage fully
with negative aspects of the GDR also extended to the Stasi, in that many commented
only briefly on its existence. This can perhaps be linked to the same tendency towards denying the extent of the infiltration of their foreign intelligence division,
Markus Wolf’s HVA (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung), in Britain itself. In his essay “The
Stasi and UK-GDR Relations”, Anthony Glees claims that Stasi operations in the UK
were “largely undetected by the British Security Service, the MI5, at the time they
were being conducted”, and that only three Stasi members were caught in forty years
of East German spying.67 As he discusses in more detail in his subsequent book, their
infiltration of Britain — and specifically of London — was extensive, not merely confined to operations based in the East German Embassy at 34 Belgrave Square, but
also including a vast number of undercover spies.68 Glees’ research provides an in 65
66
Martin McCauley, “British-GDR Relations: A See-Saw Relationship’’, in Britain and the GDR: Relations and Perceptions in a Divided World, ed. Arnd Bauerkämper (Berlin: Philo, 2002), 51.
Ibid., 54.
67
Anthony Glees‚”The Stasi and UK-GDR Relations,” in The Other Germany: Perceptions and Influences
in British-East German Relations, 1945-1990, eds. Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte (Augsburg:
Wißner, 2005), 75-91, here: 76.
68
Anthony Glees, The Stasi Files: East Germany’s Secret Operations against Britain (London: Simon and
Schuster, 2003), 3.
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sight into the methods employed by the Stasi in gathering intelligence about Britain
and effectively challenges the view projected by many British commentators that
Stasi activity in Britain was minimal. Perhaps engaging more directly with the Stasi’s
hold over the GDR would have forced writers to confront the unpleasant idea that
their activities extended to Britain. Furthermore, Glees strongly suggests that the refusal to engage with these issues was a conscious decision rather than accidental
omission, stating for example that “anyone who visited East Germany and kept their
eyes and ears open could tell it was a police state”.69
The tendency to omit mention of the more negative aspects of GDR society was
greatly instrumental in provoking the more critical stance visible in Timothy Garton
Ash’s work. He claims to have been struck by the disinterest towards what was happening in the East amongst the majority of the people he met in West Berlin, who —
like many Westerners — chose to look away despite the fact that the GDR was “all
around them”.70 Amongst those who did pay attention he recognised a trend which
worried him still further, in that many of the ’68 generation bent over backwards to
see the ‘good and progressive’ elements in the GDR. His deep frustration at those
Western accounts of the GDR, combined with his unique role as a young doctoral researcher residing in Berlin — most likely trusted more by the GDR locals than journalists or established authors from the West — contributed to his refusal to compromise on what he recognised to be infringement of human rights and personal freedom of expression and movement.
It is evident that some of the writers in this study, most notably Childs and
Woods, set out to provide — and on certain matters did provide — an objective and
balanced view, but ultimately became consumed in an attempt to explain the intricacies of the GDR. In the 2005 volume The Other Germany: Perceptions and Influences in
British-East German Relations, 1945–1990, edited by Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte, they state that “justice was not always done to the repressive aspects of the
Honecker regime”, due to
69
Ibid., 42.
70
Timothy Garton Ash, The File: A Personal History (London: Flamingo, 1997), 43.
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a tendency to dwell on the positive aspects of, in Steele’s phrase, ‘socialism with a
German face’ and sometimes to underplay the peculiar hybrid of paternalistic social
provision and repressive elements such as the Stasi, the Wall and the police.71
It was understandably very difficult to reconcile the image of a ‘welfare’ state, which
provided many social benefits and relative economic contentment (in comparison
with other Eastern European countries at least), with a state which was allegedly defying the Helsinki Act by routinely oppressing its people and fostering a culture of
fear. As Jürgen Kocka suggests in his socio-cultural approach to the legacy of the
GDR, there was no existing model of analysis with which to confront a state of this
kind.72 In focusing on statistics of social, political and economic structures and attempting to document the ‘social experiment’ they neglected to question the more
pressing humanitarian issues of whether the self-projected image of the welfare state
was compatible with the stories of oppression. As a result they projected an often
misleading image of the GDR which arguably had a lasting impact on its image in
Britain. Although the government and state ceased to exist after the fall of Communism in 1989, its people of course did not, and an understanding of their background
is an essential component of understanding contemporary Germany. As this study
has shown, Timothy Garton Ash made a considerable contribution to writing about
the GDR which engaged directly with the reality of life under the SED leadership.
His first full-length work, Und Willst Du Nicht Mein Bruder Sein: Die DDR Heute, although not included here as it was published in German for a West German audience in 1981, included detailed explorations of what life was like in the GDR based
on his conversations with its citizens from various levels of society. Although sections of this text were drawn upon for his English language articles and essays featured in The Spectator and the New York Review of Books, along with Uses of Adversity, it
was never published in English in its entirety. Although there allegedly were plans
— referred to in his author profile in the New York Review of Books — to publish the
71
Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte, The Other Germany: Perceptions and Influences in British-East
German Relations, 1945-1990 (Augsburg: Wißner, 2005), 288.
72
Cf. Juergen Kocka, “The GDR: A Special Kind of Modern Dictatorship,” in Dictatorship as Experience:
Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch (Oxford: Berghahn, 1999), 17-27,
here: 17.
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whole text, Garton Ash himself later wrote in May 1989 that it would need to be rewritten for an English audience.73 This clearly illustrates the impact of the audience
upon the text and further supports the hypothesis that the texts written by British authors were strongly influenced by their own agenda and the needs of their intended
readership.
Contact Address:
Jamie Lee Searle, [email protected]
Keywords:
English: British perspective on GDR politics 1973-1989; Stasi; Jonathan Steele; David
Childs; Roger Woods; Mike Dennis; Martin McCauley; Timothy Garton Ash.
German: DDR-Politik aus britischer Perspektive 1973-1989; Stasi; Jonathan Steele;
David Childs; Roger Woods; Mike Dennis; Martin McCauley; Timothy Garton Ash.
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http://eTransfers.uni-giessen.de
http://www.sllf.qmul.ac.uk/research/anglogerman/etransfers/ 73
Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity (cf. note 57), 6.
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