Broken Lives

by Konrad H Jarausch

  In spite of its leveling efforts, the GDR also retained some bourgeois remnants who presented a quandary for the SED. The “workers’ and farmers’ state” could not completely do away with the services of some groups that managed to maintain a degree of independence. One profession was the doctors, such as Klaus Hübschmann, for even Communists got sick and wanted the best treatment, irrespective of ideology. Engineers such as Karl Härtel also had some latitude, since in designing a bridge, safety considerations were more important than partisanship. Similarly, clergymen such as Werner Braune represented an alternative set of Christian values, while the Church claimed a public role irrespective of party directives. Though more easily influenced, writers, artists, and musicians such as Christa Wolf also had their own standards of creative excellence. Finally scholars such as Fritz Klein, who were dedicated to finding the truth, tended to conflict with assertions of the party line.53 So, despite its public claims, SED control was never complete.

  POPULAR DISENCHANTMENT

  Just when the GDR seemed to be there to stay, the autobiographies report a widespread disillusionment that would eventually topple the SED from within. In his annual conversations with Leonid Brezhnev, Honecker proudly pointed to East Germany’s international recognition as a separate state, to its athletic success, and to its economic progress. Even among senior members of the Communist Party, discontent began to grow when true believers such as Werner Feigel were put out to pasture for not following the latest shift in the SED line. Moreover, efforts to discipline intellectuals such as Gerhard Joachim for their sexual affairs or cultural experiments left deep scars. Sympathetic scholars such as Fritz Klein also began to long for “freer, less dogmatic thinking” that would allow greater scope in their research. Economic specialists such as Paul Frenzel who just wanted to do their jobs resented “being continually subjected to ideological conformity.” Tired of future promises, the population at large simply wanted to gain a Western standard of living immediately.54

  One social policy of which the SED was particularly proud was the greater equality of women in the GDR than in the Federal Republic. Seeking to realize this traditional aim of the labor movement, the GDR supported female education and employment to compensate for the labor shortage due to the mass exodus. A whole series of measures—state-run nurseries, after-school care, maternal leave, a monthly household day—tried to make it easier for women such as Dorle Klein to work outside of the home while at the same time having children. In spite of natalist concerns to keep up the birthrate and the objection of the churches, GDR women gained the right to abortion in the early 1970s. Moreover, divorce according to the no-fault principle made it easier to leave unsatisfactory relationships. While the SED opened traditionally male workplaces to women, patriarchal prejudices remained strong enough to retain a double burden and a socialist glass ceiling.55

  All accounts agree that the Achilles’ heel of the GDR proved to be the economy: the SED could not keep Marxist promises to outperform the decadent capitalist West. No doubt its starting conditions were more difficult due to Soviet exploitation and lack of raw materials. But the failure also had much to do with the dominance of an “oppressive party and state bureaucracy which considered itself the final authority.” Ulbricht’s effort to ignite greater growth through the introduction of some market elements was abandoned in 1971, as “allowing temporary disproportions” violated ideological purity. Horst Johannsen was appalled that no serious attempts were made “to counter the economic collapse that became ever more evident.” Instead, “the rulers continued to brag about the successes of the first socialist state of workers and farmers on German soil.”56 Most people cared little for the theoretical debates about managing a planned economy. They were only interested in changing the result—a continual shortage of consumer goods.

  The Soviet reduction of oil deliveries in the early 1980s as a result of OPEC’s drastic price increase proved to be a fatal blow to the planned economy. The cut of two million tons annually was devastating for the GDR, which in the past had sold the surplus refined derivatives to the West so as to earn hard currency. As an alternate energy source, the SED shifted to lignite, which contained more sulfate and was obtained by strip-mining, thereby ruining the environment. The economic tsar Günter Mittag therefore decided to merge the 3,500 or so industrial enterprises of East Germany into 250 giant companies, called Kombinate, according to the Soviet model. “The consequences were disastrous.” Horst Johannsen recalled, “Productive small and mid-size companies were absorbed and one-sided production monopolies formed” without price competition. As a result, “Honecker sought help from the class enemy,” asking for credits from West German banks. To pay the interest, the Stasi economics tsar Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski surreptitiously started to sell anything movable to the West.57

  Increasing East–West travel during the 1980s reinforced the GDR image of material inferiority through personal inspection. It was no longer just the colorful world of TV series such as Dallas, the Christmas packages with Western coffee and cigarettes, or the FRG visitors with their obligatory presents. Now retired East Germans could travel and people like Horst Johannsen who claimed “pressing family matters” such as the death of a father might get to see the at once fascinating and repulsive West with their own eyes. Visitors were awed by the variety and quality of goods, yet nervous about Western speed and competitiveness. Some “carefully selected, reliable travel cadres, schooled in agitation of western partners,” such as Paul Frenzel, were permitted to visit the West for professional reasons such as attending a conference. While not all encounters were positive due to Cold War anti-Communism, these personal experiences created an image of Western superiority for most visitors.58 It took true ideological commitment to socialism or deep attachment to family and home town for travelers such as philosopher Alfred Kosing to return to the GDR.

  Among those who could no longer bear the SED dictatorship, “the wishes, desires and requests to leave the GDR became everyday matters in the mid-1980s.” Pastor Braune recalled some of the manifold reasons: “The methods of the state, party, government, and Stasi prepared the ground so that many did not want to remain any longer.” With no right to travel, the arbitrariness of decisions about whether one was allowed to go created a feeling of being penned up, that increased the impulse to get out. “The GDR provided a special treatment for [such] ‘applicants,’” whom it considered misled citizens who needed to be won back by agitation or threatened with loss of jobs, long waiting periods, or imprisonment, if they spoke up in public. “The GDR made a good profit from letting people leave”: the Federal Republic paid about eight billion DM as ransom to the GDR via the Protestant Church for the release of about thirty-four thousand prisoners and 250,000 refugees. Even a one-time discharge of thirty thousand people in the early 1980s could not stop the flow, for it encouraged more to apply.59

  Some of the children of the Weimar cohort who were “searching for justice and new moral values” grew especially critical of the GDR when they noticed “the growing contradiction between theory and practice in everyday life.” Exposed to an informal American lifestyle of rock music, jeans, and chewing gum that contrasted with the boring orderliness of the FDJ, some nonconformists established a “regime critical scene” in East Berlin and other cities. Gerhard Joachim’s son Waiko, who worked in a gas power plant, joined his countercultural friends in “illegally occupying an empty apartment in the Prenzlauer Berg area.” Caught while trying to escape, he was imprisoned and sentenced to one year and three months for “attempting to cross the border without authorization.” After eight months he was released to the West through the mediation of lawyer Wolfgang Vogel. Although his brothers were also harassed by the GDR police, Waiko apparently shot himself out of loneliness after his arrival in the West. His father was devastated. “Never in my whole life was I as shaken as by this news.”60

  The systematic militarization of East German society also inspired the formation of an indepen
dent peace movement that took the SED at its word. Recollections stress that one bone of contention was the introduction of “military education” in the schools, and another the obligation of military service as prerequisite for a future career. Critics assembled behind the banner of “swords into plowshares” under the protection of some Protestant pastors who were willing to organize prayers and vigils for peace that also condemned the nuclear arms race. One youthful dissident was Horst Johannsen’s son Berndt, who wanted to be a painter, but was rejected by the Association of Visual Artists for his avant-garde techniques. When he refused to “defend the GDR ideology with a weapon in his hand,” this “attitude netted him a prison sentence of six months.” Though he had to do hard labor in a steel factory in Thale, he stubbornly clung to his beliefs. A frustrated Stasi denounced the emergence of this civic peace movement as “a collection of hostile negative forces.”61

  Another public irritant was the terrible degradation of the environment, which the SED seemed unable to remedy. On the one hand, strip-mining erased whole villages from the map; on the other, burning lignite poisoned the air, making it hard to breathe in the so-called chemical triangle of Halle, Merseburg, and Bitterfeld. Pastor Braune noted that “the high smokestacks of the Lauta power plant belched much dirt into the sky. Keeping our kids clean was a continual struggle.” Horst Johannsen recalled that in the winter, the “fumes and exhaust gases crystallized and covered the region with so-called Leuna snow.” This inspired him to write a critical poem about the pollution in “the cauldron of chemistry”: “The air—/ one can almost see and feel it. / One’s breath wants to stand still. / Air exhales unnoticed / from inside without being seen.” When the noxious atmosphere, foul drinking water, toxic fields, and wild garbage dumps were not addressed, local activists tried to stop the abuse and finally began to oppose the SED system as such.62

  Numerous stories show how the regime’s heavy-handed repression of public criticism turned objection to specific policies into a more fundamental campaign for human rights. One woman’s attempt to join her husband who had failed to return from a trip to the West landed her in prison without naming “an official reason.” She had to sell half of her possessions to get permission to leave. A sixteen-year-old pupil was arrested for “distributing flyers for freedom of expression.” Though free speech was a constitutional right, he was condemned to over three years of imprisonment before he was finally released. In 1985 the arbitrary nature of the system inspired the foundation of an opposition group called “Initiative for Peace and Human Rights.” When Freya Klier and Stephan Krawczyk unfurled a banner quoting Rosa Luxemburg that “freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently,” Pastor Braune had to drive the dissidents to the West during their expulsion from the GDR. After the terrible prison conditions, “the discovery of freedom could begin.”63

  The resolute efforts of the Stasi to curb the emergence of a domestic opposition failed because it found no effective way to deal with the dissidents. One strategy was to increase the number of MfS officials to ninety-one thousand and informal informants to about 190,000. Another was the assiduous collection of data, archived in endless paper records on individuals, designated as “operative case files.” Yet another was to switch from physical intimidation to softer methods of disinformation and incentives such as rewards for loyalty. The key problem was the simplistic definition of class enemies as subversives from the outside rather than as inside critics who believed in socialist ideals but hated the repressive practices of the GDR. As a result, the state’s final option was expulsion to the West. Regime opponents such as Günter Krause were either allowed to leave when they finally reached their pension age or were expelled, as Paul Frenzel was after years of surveillance for publishing a critical manuscript in the West.64

  Even more important than youth disaffection and intellectual criticism was the growing disenchantment of the working class with the SED regime. The party’s proclamation of the impending victory of socialism in weekly indoctrination sessions was losing conviction due to actual comparisons with the West. The endless socialist competitions between brigades for prizes were no longer effective enough to motivate workers to increase their productivity, when they had to contend with antiquated machinery and lack of raw materials. The military exercises of factory militias and the mandatory attendance of SED demonstrations felt like onerous duties that kept laborers from enjoying their leisure time. The disappointed socialist idealist Gerhard Joachim wrote a bitter poem after the death of his son that accused the ruling elite: “They did not just build a Wall in Berlin / but an even thicker cordon around themselves / And the greater their fear of the workers grew / the more these reactionaries dug their own grave.”65

  Many writers reported that a pervasive sense of stagnation engulfed the GDR during the 1980s, when the economy stalled while the West moved ahead. Some of the problems resulted from the Stalinist priority of coal and steel production over consumer goods. Others had to do with the meddling of party bureaucrats; to Horst Johannsen, “it was never completely clear who had the final say.” Yet other stumbling blocks derived from the socialization of the remaining private businesses and artisan shops, which decreased innovation. Karl Härtel was appalled that in his power plant, machines “were ruthlessly run down and only minimal investments made in the renewal and maintenance of equipment.” Campaigns such as the building of a Megabit computer chip devoured huge resources but failed to produce a competitive product. The Politburo lived in a fantasy world; the state even prettied up houses on their daily route to work. While the senescent leadership celebrated the GDR as the tenth-largest industrial nation, the actual economy was falling apart. Contrary to incessant self-praise, “the facts were depressing.”66

  Hope for a reform of socialism ultimately came from an unexpected quarter—the charismatic leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Unlike his conservative predecessors, he no longer prevented change, but rather demanded a thorough reform of the system. Because the Soviet economy was in disarray, Gorbachev proposed a policy of restructuring (perestroika) and of open discussion to correct mistakes (glasnost’). Fritz Klein recalled that “people like me, engaged socialists like myself, observed the process as if electrified.” The formerly frustrated Gerhard Joachim was overjoyed: “Like a phoenix from the ashes, he carried the hopes for a better, more humane socialism, for the renewal of all of its aspects.” The reform proposals of the new Soviet leader “had such an echo in the GDR” because they promised “a fundamental change of political and economic conditions.”67 Opponents could even hope to get rid of the repression altogether. While the leaders of Poland and Hungary responded positively, chief ideologist Kurt Hager warned that the SED was not about to redecorate because someone else changed the wallpaper.

  In the GDR, the Soviet reform impulse triggered a generational struggle over the future course of the SED. Feeling threatened, the “old and grey, sclerotic leadership” who had been born in the Empire refused to budge, claiming that things were going so well that they did not need any reforms. Socialists of the Weimar cohort who had been shunted aside, such as Gerhard Joachim and Fritz Klein, wanted to seize the opportunity for reform by citing Gorbachev: “Briefly said, we need a comprehensive democratization of all dimensions of society.” Their postwar children were especially attracted to the “new thinking,” because it offered a chance to overcome the stagnation of the GDR. Other skeptics wanted a yet more “radical change in the direction of privatization, market economy, and true democracy.” But the Politburo was unwilling to change its course, forbidding the distribution of the Soviet journal Sputnik because it disseminated reformist texts. The older members of the Weimar cohort could no longer spearhead this transformation themselves because they were already going into retirement.68

  While party members still debated, ordinary East Germans took advantage of détente and left the GDR in ever-increasing numbers for the “golden West.” From May 1989 on Hungary no longer sent fleeing refuge
es back to East Berlin and formally opened its border to Austria on September 11. This was “in the true sense of the word an earth shaking action” because it lifted the Iron Curtain. During the summer “more and more young GDR citizens tried to flee to the West via Hungary or by occupying embassies” in Prague and Warsaw. The hardliner Werner Feigel reasoned that “they let themselves be deceived by appearances” because “they saw the difference in the popular standard of living and did not hear any plausible explanation for the deficits in the supply of some goods.” When a surprised Gorbachev refrained from interfering, the SED leadership failed to find a way to stop the flow. Once “the dam was broken,” Western TV showed tens of thousands of happy East Germans tearfully enjoying the first days of “their new freedom” in the West.69

  An even bigger challenge to the regime was the spread of demonstrations demanding a fundamental reform of the GDR. In spite of Stasi subversion, human rights, peace, and ecology groups formed a dissident network that challenged the falsification of the May 1989 vote results. From September on, the Monday evening vigils at the Nikolai Church in Leipzig grew bolder, with attendees claiming, “we are the people.” Though initially the SED used force against the protests, in a crucial confrontation in Leipzig on October 9, the authorities restrained the police, Stasi, and militia, conceding control over public space. Week by week the protests became louder, demanding “fundamental reform and democratization of the GDR, the dismantling of party rule, freedom of travel, opinion and assembly, true elections and an end of the ubiquitous system of spying by the Stasi.” Finally losing their fear, protesters “drummed for true justice,” shouted slogans, held placards, and founded public opposition groups such as the New Forum, which denounced the SED.70 News shots documented the protesters’ claim that they, not the party, were the people (image 28).