people behind the wall

Gary Fraser looks at the history of the German Democratic Republic from a sociological perspective and argues that the traditional analyses of both right and left of the rise and fall of East Germany are misleading, and need to be challenged if valuable lessons from the fall of the Berlin wall are to be drawn. Gary is a member of Solidarity and a regular contributor to DGS magazine.

In this article I want to develop a sociological history of East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic as it was officially known. Much of the information in this article is indebted to the book ‘The People’s State’ by Mary Fulbrook, which offers a detailed and comprehensive study of social life in the GDR. I want to focus on a number of specific areas, including the economy and social policy, whilst dealing the experiences of ordinary East Germans within the structures of the Marxist-Leninist state.

The German Democratic Republic emerged from the debris of the Second World War. Following the Nazi defeat, Germany was divided into various zones controlled by either the Allied forces or the Soviets. One aspect of the Second World War was an inter-imperialist war and the geo-political environment of 1945 was one in which the victorious powers carved up the spoils of war between them. Despite the massive casualties inflicted on Russia, Stalin’s prize was Eastern Europe. In regards to East Germany, the Communist Party in Moscow ordered a merger between the German Social Democrats and Communists, out of which came the Socialist Unity Party (SED).

With the backing of Moscow, the SED became the supreme rulers of East Germany. Their task of establishing Marxist-Leninism in a territory of seventeen million people was not an easy one. East Germany was considerably poorer than its Western counterpart. Moreover, its economy was in ruins, and in a largely agrarian country heavy industry was minimal. Having suffered six long years of war the people were poor and malnourishment was common. The German citizenry were opposed to the East/West split and in the East there was hostility to the new Communist rulers. In fact, significant numbers of East Germans had at one time or another been active members of the Nazis; according to Fulbrook, in one East German region, 90% of the school teachers were former Nazi Party members.

According to the Marxist-Leninist narrative, the GDR was a ‘workers state’ in which the ‘proletariat’ were in the process of becoming the new ‘ruling classes’. The founding members of the SED were committed anti-fascists and many had suffered incredibly at the hands of the Nazis, often surviving the concentration camps. These men, and they were predominantly men, were tough, and having endured the realities of war and the camps, they were hardened psychologically. They believed passionately that socialism could be established in the GDR. Their new ‘workers state’ was founded on an anti-fascist narrative which would proved, understandably, to be both powerful and enduring. When in 1961, with permission from Moscow, the SED decided to construct the Berlin Wall it was officially referred to as an Anti-Fascist Protection Wall.

The Communists introduced a series of sweeping economic reforms which began the process of transforming East Germany into a socialist state. In the 1950s economic policy was designed to ensure that private ownership in industry and finance was abolished. 94% of East Germans worked in either nationalised industries or collectivised farms. By 1961 the collectivisation of agriculture was completed, a process which was often met with great resistance. In the 1950s, the GDR’s centrally planned economy underwent a period of growth which provided the regime with a newly found confidence. As committed Marxist/Leninists the SED were economic determinists and what mattered to them more than anything else was that centrally planned economies out-performed the capitalist economies in the West. In fact, so confident was SED leader Ulbricht in socialist planning that he predicted that by the 1970s East Germany would be wealthier than the West (a prediction he got wrong).

Qualitative sociological change occurred in the GDR. Landowners were disposed of and the old middle class was transformed into a socialist intelligentsia. Power and political commitment replaced property ownership as the main determinant of position in the new socialist hierarchy. According to the Marxist-Leninist leadership of the SED, East Germany was in the midst of a ‘transitional process’ whereby socialism would become communism, just as Marx and Lenin had predicted. What is interesting from the historical documents that have survived the period is the extent to which party bureaucrats believed in their ‘historic mission’. Fulbrook notes that terms such as ‘not yet’ and ‘still’ appear regularly in policy documents. Linguistic patterns reveal that the authors had internalised the Marxist-Leninist conception of progressive historical development. Despite economic growth, around three million people fled to the West in the 1950s. They tended to be well educated, middle class, and the type of citizens required by the SED if the fragile economy was to survive. Fulbrook argues that this ‘brain drain’ was the primary reason for the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Without the Wall, it is highly unlikely that East Germany would not have survived as an economically viable state.

The 1960s marked a period of social stability and routinisation in the GDR constructed on the edifice of economic growth. As a consequence, a range of progressive social policies were introduced.

Universal health care was established and every citizen had the right to health care free at the point of need.

For a time the GDR model proved to be an effective system. Health care was based locally at community and workplace level and it was not uncommon for doctors and dentists to be situated in factories. In the 1970s, the GDR system of health care performed at rates comparable to health systems in the West. However, despite the gains in health care there were significant problems, particularly in the treatment of those with mental health issues. Psychiatric problems were seldom discussed or acknowledged in the GDR. Subjects like alcoholism and suicide were politically sensitive issues because they hinted that all was not well in the ‘workers state’. Academics who attempted to publish research into controversial issues such as suicide often faced imprisonment or persecution by the Stasi. The lack of care for people with mental health problems was systematic, and young adults would often be placed in care homes for the elderly.

Social researchers are often surprised to find a sense of nostalgia amongst former citizens of the GDR. This nostalgia tends to be associated with the elderly and is based around the theme of community. In regards to housing the majority of East Germans lived in accommodation rented from the state, and whilst private housing did exist it was extremely rare. In the 1950s and 1960s the Communists embarked upon a programme of constructing ‘Socialist New Towns’. According to the regime, these were towns in which the new ‘socialist lifestyle’ could be realised. Former citizens have referred to this period as ‘golden era’ and anecdotal evidence reveals a picture of ordinary people working hard to build decent communities to live in. Some recall the strong sense of ‘community spirit’ in the Socialist New Towns, and for many ex residents the positives outweighed the negatives. People reminisce about full employment and recall a time when there was respect for law and order. But we need to insert a word of caution. In any society there is always a tendency to romanticise the past. The historian or researcher whose ‘data’ is memories and reminiscences needs to tread carefully, because memory is deceptive and selective. Housing was one of the chief causes of popular dissatisfaction and complaints against the regime. The ‘socialist new towns’ had a tendency to stifle individuality and people often felt dependent on the state. For the majority of people who lived in state housing they experienced a lack of control over the quality of the house or the state of repair and they had little or no chance of ever moving to something better.

Women were granted equal rights to work alongside financial support, and abortion was widely available from the late 1960s onwards. Moreover, a universal system of childcare proved to be exemplary (following German unification in 1990 this system was abolished and women suffered disproportionately from the effects of unemployment). In 1957, the regime announced that men engaging in same sex activity would no be prosecuted and in 1968 same sex relationships achieved equal status under the law. Despite changes in the law homophobic attitudes continued to exist, with parallels similar to that of the West. Public opinion on sexuality was uneven, and a liberal attitude towards public nudity was common. In West Germany it was not uncommon for populist politicians and Christian families to refer to their counterparts in the East as sexually immoral.

According to the Communists large scale social engineering was geared towards the construction of a ‘socialist personality’, which they defined as:

Someone who has an all round well developed personality, who has a comprehensive command of political, specialist and general knowledge, and possesses a firm class outlook rooted in the Marxist-Leninist world view.

Achieving a ‘socialist personality’, particularly amongst young people, proved to be somewhat problematic. In a report commissioned in 1976, party functionaries noted in typical Marxist-Leninist terminology, that young people lacked an understanding of Western ‘imperialism’, and highlighted that East German youth were ‘de-politicised’ and ‘de-ideologised’. Youth sub-cultures were always a concern for the regime and party apparatchiks were prone to obsessing over all aspects of young people’s behaviour. Levis jeans, for example, were regarded as a sign of disobedience and were seen by hard-line Leninists as symbols of American imperialism. Leninists regarded rock music as ‘hedonistic’ and accused Western pop acts such as the Beatles of promoting a culture of ‘bourgeois individualism’.

To a certain extent the expression of individuality through consumerism, music, fashion, etc is a political act. However in a formal sense, youth subcultures in the GDR tended to be apolitical and were a means of escaping the drudgery of Communism, not challenging it. But we also have to remember that sub-cultures considered by the Communists as subversive were small and that the vast majority of young people did not engage in behaviour which was confrontational or even critical of the regime. There was a high rate of participation in youth clubs, particularly in the 1970s, and every age group of young people was represented. Furthermore, young people were encouraged to get involved in the management of their clubs. By the late 1970s, 70,000 young people were involved in youth participation.

The late 1960s witnessed an increase in the amount of leisure time available to both adults and young people. In agriculture new methods of organisation meant that farm labourers could enjoy weekends. The increase in leisure time marked a period that the regime officially dubbed ‘consumer socialism’. Shopping activities expanded and more goods were available to consume. Private car and motorbike use increased, although poor roads (many were still cobbled even in 1989) and pot holes made journeys tiring and cumbersome. Holidays increased, although in the GDR a holiday was different from the West. Instead of vacations being private affairs most people holidayed via their workplaces to trade union owned destinations like the Baltic island of Rugen, or Hungary and Czechoslovakia, whilst young people went on vacation with their youth clubs. By the 1970s, most East Germans were able to access Western media and the vast majority of population listened to Western radio and by the end of the decade the Communists ‘officially tolerated’ western television programmes.

Empirical evidence challenges the one size fits all discourse of Communism informed by the theory of ‘totalitarianism’. Fulbrook has developed the concept of ‘participatory dictatorship’ to illuminate the interplay between social institutions and processes in the GDR. Despite the fact that the GDR was a political dictatorship, Fulbrook argues that large numbers East Germans were involved, albeit in ways that were limited and structurally defined, in the political structures of the state and its decision making processes. East German society was multi-faceted and its social institutions and processes were more problematic than is commonly understood. Fulbrook notes a tendency when studying the GDR to make sharp distinctions between ‘state’, ‘society’, ‘regime’ and ‘people’. Central to Fulbrook’s argument is the view that ordinary East Germans were involved in the ‘functioning of the regime’.

The Communists attempted to foster ‘public discussions’ which they hoped would contribute towards the smooth running of their socialist state. The image of cold blooded party bureaucrats does not always match the reality of what state functionaries were really like, particularly those at micro level who possessed more responsibility than they did power. Many of these functionaries had well intentioned motives and were attempting to meet the legitimate needs of the population in difficult circumstances. There was at times an overlap in aims and values between ‘regime’ and ‘people’. One example is what Germans called Eingaben, or Citizens Petitions. Issues highlighted by Eingaben included housing, health care, workplace concerns and day to day problems experienced in any community. Some of the issues raised were trivial whilst were others more serious. Some people were even serial petitioners and an annoyance to the local authorities. The biggest issue highlighted was the right to travel to the West and no matter how hard the regime tried the question of German reunification could not be ignored. The poor quality of housing in the GDR was the other main issue highlighted after freedom of movement. Approximately two thirds of East Germans participated in citizen petitions during the 1970s. Throughout the years Eingaben was viewed differently by the Communists. During the reign of Ulbricht, Eingaben was welcomed and seen as encouraging a culture of participation and even grassroots democracy. Honecker however, was more hostile regarding criticisms of the GDR and viewed Eingaben far more cautiously and with a degree of suspicion.

A public sphere did exist in East Germany, although certainly not in the way that is commonly understood in liberal democracies. In the 1980s a public sphere of sorts emerged under the umbrella of the Protestant Church. For obvious ideological reasons Marxist-Leninists tended to be hostile towards the Church. However, the church was permitted to play a role in civic society. In addition to this, the Church often complimented the welfare state and during times of economic hardship provided social programmes which were ‘officially tolerated’ by the Communists. Grassroots church members provided care for the elderly and sick in church hospitals, alongside ensuring homes for the elderly and disabled and running orphanages. Church activists were involved in social outreach work usually with some of the most vulnerable groups in society-groups labelled asocial such as alcoholics. The structure of the decentralised Protestant Church allowed for that a diverse range of groups and organisations to come into being that acted as a micro-civil society which was independent of the state. During the 1980s, a peace movement emerged alongside groups focusing on environmental and human rights. The network of organisations loosely formed around the Church played an important role in the events of 1989 which led to the downfall of the regime and eventually the GDR itself.

Of all the aspects of East German society documented post-1989 the role played by the State Security Service or Stasi is the most documented. The Stasi at one point employed an incredible 91,000 staff to monitor 10 million East Germans. Compare this figure to the Gestapo in Nazi Germany who watched over sixty million but employed only 7,000 people. In addition to paid staff the Stasi relied on over 170,000 unofficial informants, working out at a ratio of one informant to every sixty people. An estimated 17,500 people a year became Stasi informants. Many did it out of coercion whereby failure to inform on their fellow citizens would result in prison sentences. Other informants regarded themselves as committed and loyal citizens who were fighting ‘enemies of the state’ and this group saw being a Stasi informant as an extension of their active citizenship. According to Fulbrook, the majority of informants were attracted to the Stasi because it provided them with feelings of importance and gave them a sense of adventure in a life which under Communism was often existentially empty.

In 1989 the people of East Germany participated in a series of demonstrations and protests which would bring to an end the GDR and tear down the Berlin Wall itself.

Two opposing histories of the GDR have emerged in recent times heavily informed by ideology and a one sided view of life inside East Germany. The first is a history by apologists of Marxist-Leninism. They emphasise selective aspects of the regime, for example its progressive social policies or its commitment to full employment. Informed by economic determinism, they conceptually separate the political and social structure of Communism from its economic mode of production. With this separation established they conclude that Communism was progressive in terms of its economic development but ‘deformed’ at the political and social level. They argue that the GDR was not really Communist, and certainly not in the way envisaged by Marx and Lenin. In this view, Communism is seen as unfinished business.

This approach ignores the fact that Leninist style socialism has been historically incompatible with political liberalism and democracy. With a slight nod to Marx, Lenin theorised the ‘transitional phase’, whereby state power would eventually give way to genuine workers power and direct democracy. It was in the hands of Lenin and then Stalin that Marx’s transitional phase saw its bleakest realisation. No matter where this model of socialism has been tried it has been incapable of transcending dictatorial control. In the GDR this ‘transitional phase’ was used to justify what in reality was not a workers’ or peoples’ state, but a dictatorship of the Leninist vanguard party – even if it had ‘participatory’ elements.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the political spectrum the ideologues of free market capitalism offered another inaccurate and one-sided history of the GDR. In 1989, words like ‘freedom’, ‘liberation’ and ‘revolution’ were used interchangeably and often without any attempt to define what such epistemologically problematic terms actually mean. A hegemonic narrative was established, which has emphasised only the coercive aspects of the East German regime, most notably the Stasi.

As noted earlier in this article social researchers talking to Germans who remember life in the GDR are often surprised by their recollections of the former Communist state. A disjuncture appears to have opened up between analyses of the dictatorial political system and the experiences of those who lived through it. What emerges from these studies is a narrative which emphasises the experiences and perceptions of everyday people in history, people who somehow managed to live ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances. It is this experience that the social historian seeks to unravel and explain.

The task of the historian, Fulbrook notes, is to somehow understand how a set of social and political arrangements that appear not merely unacceptable but even bizarre and unintelligible to many outside observers as well as internal opponents, could appear perfectly normal to many who grew up within the parameters of the state. Human nature is neither left nor right, which might help to explain why ideological histories of East Germany are inaccurate. For no matter what social and political system one is studying, whether it is liberal democracy under capitalism, Leninist style socialism, or fascism in Nazi Germany, one is always struck by the fact that ordinary people who live through extraordinary times somehow manage to stay stubbornly ordinary. For the ‘silent majority’, or what Leninists call the ‘de-politicised’ or ‘de-ideologised’, they mange to adapt and survive and somehow ‘make the most of it’. This is precisely what happened in East Germany particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, the years of social stability and routinisation.

In regards to the GDR, the so called ‘workers state’ existed for forty years, enough time for a national consciousness to be established and communist norms and processes to be embedded. But by the 1980s people could see the obvious shortfalls in the East German state, chief among them the lack of democracy. The protests were uneven and did not follow a particular path. The events of 1989 are often symbolised by the fall of the Wall, but they were part of a larger process which involved countless demonstrations that represented all levels of society. The demonstrators did not chant for capitalism or privatisation of the economy. Instead they demanded political freedom and ‘democracy now’. In Leipzig the demonstrators chanted not for the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl but for Mikhail Gorbachev. ‘Gorby-Gorby’ they roared.

For many there was another path to take in between the extremes of unrestrained capitalism and Leninist style socialism. Gorbachev’s Perestroika had promised political liberalism and democracy, and was seen by many as a return to the democratic traditions of the European and liberal left, and a break once and for all with Leninism, which had been responsible for so much suffering.

Although democratic socialism, or what was called socialism with a human face, did not materialise in 1989, the end of Leninism as a political alternative to liberal democracy is to be welcomed. Lefts and progressives should now campaign and argue for a socialism that is informed by these lessons of history – one that carries through lasting progressive socialist reforms but also recaptures the territory of liberalism and democracy.