The Construction and Transformation of Socialist Space in the Planned Cities of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros

THE CONSTRUCTION AND TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIALIST SPACE IN THE PLANNED CITIES OF STALINSTADT AND SZTÁLINVÁROS

Mark Laszlo-Herbert

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Toronto

Mark Laszlo-Herbert

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of History University of Toronto

2016

Abstract

This dissertation explores and compares the social history of two towns named for Joseph

Stalin during the 1950s in Eastern Europe. Stalinstadt in the German Democratic Republic and

Sztálinváros in Hungary were new towns built along similar principles in the vicinity of large iron combines. As representational spaces of state socialism and “Stalinism” these towns presented, beside many similarities, a number of distinct features which are the result of different understandings and implementations of socialism throughout the region. Histories of the Soviet

Union and Eastern Europe have acknowledged such distinctions and dismissed the idea of a uniform Soviet bloc as early as the 1970s. However, a comparative social history of these two

“socialist cities” named for Joseph Stalin has not yet been written.

The study consists of two parts. While the first chapter delves into the official, public and private memory of these two towns, the subsequent four chapters discuss the social history of

Stalinstadt (1953 to 1961) and Sztálinváros (1951 to 1961) and explore four major spheres of everyday life under state socialism: the public sphere, the sphere of work, the sphere of leisure

ii and the private sphere. These spheres have acquired new meanings under state socialism: hybrid spheres like public or secret privacy or private(ized) publicity render the public-private dichotomy used to describe Western societies problematic; a heavily politicized sphere of work and an equally ideology-laden sphere of leisure render a reconsideration of the meaning of work and free time under state socialism necessary. This comparative social history of

Eisenhüttenstadt and Dunaújváros, as the two towns are named today, is thus also intended to contribute to the further developing of methodological tools used in the analysis of Eastern

European socialist societies during the second half of the 20th century.

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Preface

Growing up in the Socialist Republic of Romania I once heard a joke that was to shape my views on history. In it, two men discuss a radio broadcast on the bright present and on the even brighter future of their communist country when one of them, visibly troubled, remarks:

“There’s one thing that bugs me. We now know everything about the present and about the future of this country; but why is our past constantly changing?”

Throughout my research on the Stalin Towns of Eastern Europe I experienced, day by day, how my views on the past have changed. In 2003, I wrote in an article that every attempt was being made to “cover up” the history of Oraşul Stalin (Stalin Town) in Romania; seven years later a documentary exhibition on “Braşov-Oraşul Stalin” was organized by the Braşov

County Museum of History, in the very heart of town. It was a relatively small exhibition, it was on for two weeks only, it had few visitors but it was a signal nonetheless: Oraşul Stalin was haunting Braşov again. If, in 2007, I wrote that the Hungarian Sztálinváros-project was a success because more than half a century after its founding the town was booming, by 2012 I had to revise this conclusion: within five years, the former Danubian Iron Works were on the brink of collapse and the population of the town was in sharp decline. In 2016 the trend seems to continue, which will no doubt impact the future of the town, along with the pasts that will be used to explain it. My appreciation of Stalinstadt has changed little during recent years, however.

A time capsule at the periphery of German society, Stalinstadt remains to this day what its post- unification designers intended: a socialist-realist architectural theme park and a place of pilgrimage well detached from the now unified German urban landscape. But that may change

iv soon as entire generations grown up in the GDR are disappearing. One day, the town might become again part of the German present; but then, it will no longer be the former Stalinstadt.

This comparative history of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros is but one of the many stories that can be written about these two towns. It is an exercise which, by the time the reader will have finished reading it, will be “corrected” by other, newer histories. History writing is a cumulative process; it is an accumulation of truths in continuous move, in a continuous search for authority. This dissertation is, to my knowledge, the first comparative history written about

Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros. If it inspires others to rewrite this history, it will have made its contribution to the historiography of the Stalin Towns of Eastern Europe.

There exists, among doctoral students, an understanding that authoring a doctoral dissertation is a lonely journey. I must refute this commonplace. Throughout my doctoral studies, including the writing process, I have had the luck to draw on the knowledge, friendship and support of more people than I can name here. They all have contributed to this dissertation, while the responsibility for the views expressed in it rests, of course, with me alone. The trust, guidance and friendship of my thesis advisor, Professor Thomas Lahusen, made this dissertation possible. From early on he was an enthusiastic supporter of my ideas on the Stalin Towns of

Eastern Europe. It is thanks to his mentoring and engagement that I completed this journey. My thoughts about social space were greatly influenced by Professor Susan Ruddick of the

Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto, whom I hereby thank for accepting me into her graduate seminar on “Space, Power and Geography.” Professor Robert

Johnson’s graduate seminar on Soviet history laid the foundation on which my views on sotsgorods rest to this day. I thank both him and the participants to his seminar for sharing their ideas on socialist towns with me.

I owe my interest in the Stalin Towns of Eastern Europe to my former teacher and mentor at Central European University, Professor István Rév, who along with Professor Jacek

Kochanowicz supervised my MA-thesis on Oraşul Stalin. Professors Robert Austin, Lynne

Viola, Susan Ruddick and Piotr Wróbel of the University of Toronto, as well as my external reader, Professor Serhy Yekelchyk of the University of Victoria, made invaluable comments on the manuscript, which will be of great help when transforming my dissertation into a book.

Andrea and Martin Hildebrandt in Erkner, Germany, as well as Paul Baiersdorf and Maria

Thomaschke in Berlin, were wonderful hosts during my research on the East German Stalin city.

Without the help of Sylvia Kracht of the Eisenhüttenstadt Arbeiterwohlfahrt-Jugendwohnheim

“Geschwister Scholl,” and her partner Fred, I would not have met the many persons who told me their stories about Stalinstadt. The staff of the Eisenhüttenstadt Stadtarchiv made hundreds of photocopies to ship them to me to Toronto; it is thanks to them that I could rely to such a great extent on the local press of Stalinstadt. In Dunaújváros, Hungary, I encountered many people whose names I did not record: pensioners chatting on a bench in front of their homes, residents of a local retirement home, a gate keeper of the Dunaferr Works, youths playing football by the river bank, and many more. They all have added to my understanding of Sztálinváros and its meaning today. The librarians at József Attila Library provided me with a separate study room for the duration of my foraging for sources in their local history collection. The friendly archivists at the Open Society Archives at Central European University in Budapest turned my search among the records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, as well as among the materials of a 2004 exhibition on “Six Stalin Cities,” into an exciting time-travel to the early Cold War era.

Several institutions have generously funded my doctoral studies through awards, fellowships and travel grants. At the time of my admission to the PhD program, the School of

Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto offered me a five-year “University of Toronto

Fellowship.” Two “Dissertation Completion Grants” followed. Winning the Chancellor Jackman

Graduate Award in the Humanities (University of Toronto) with my proposal to study the

“Stalingrads of Eastern Europe” was a great motivation throughout my research and writing. In two consecutive academic years the Provincial Government of Ontario awarded me an Ontario

Graduate Scholarship, which was matched by private donors Thomas and Beverley Simpson and

Arthur Child, respectively, through the History Department. At the beginning of my first research trip to Europe I won a generous research and travel grant from the Joint Initiative in

German and European Studies at the Munk Centre for International Studies (University of

Toronto). A travel grant from the History Department made my attendance at the Summer

Institute on Conducting Archival Research (SICAR) at George Washington University possible.

Finally, my advisor, Professor Thomas Lahusen secured additional financial support for me when I needed it most.

Writing a doctoral dissertation requires more than money and research assistance, however. Numerous friends and family members made the process bearable, some through their mere presence in my life, others by lending me their shoulder when I thought that the writing would never end. I am most indebted to my partner Emma Vidovszky, without whose love, patience, emotional and mental support this dissertation would not have been born. I am also grateful to our daughters Veronka and Maja; it was especially Maja’s arrival in the autumn of

2013 that pushed me to finish this thesis for once and for all. My parents, Ilse L. Herbert and

Ferenc László, as well as my siblings Eva and Peter, contributed to this dissertation through their patience and through the many encouraging words I received from them. Without the help of my dear friends Edith Klein and George Brody, finishing this dissertation would have taken much,

vii much longer. Among those whose contribution to my dissertation was indirect but equally important or inspiring I shall name Rachel Applebaum, Auri and Olya Berg, Blago Blagoev,

Gülru Çakmak, Heidi Diepstra, Bénédicte Fontaine-Bisson, Chiara Frigeni, Joseph Gyverson,

Geoff and Liz Hamm, Erin Hochmann, Magdolna and Orsolya Mohácsek, Enikő Negele, Sara

Osenton, Jennifer Polk, David Stiles, Zsolt Szakács, Ágota Szentannai, András and Gabriella

Szőke, Ádám Takáts and Christina Wehrle. I thank them all.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Preface ...... iv

Table of Contents ...... ix

Abbreviations ...... x

Tables and Illustrations ...... xii

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1: The Memory of Stalin Town in Germany and in Hungary ...... 21

Chapter 2: The Construction and Transformation of Public Space in the Socialist Town ...... 56

Chapter 3: The Cultivation of Mass-Consciousness at the Workplace ...... 104

Chapter 4: Leisure and Free Time in the Stalin Town ...... 150

Chapter 5: Privacy in the Stalin Town: the Home ...... 239

Conclusion ...... 276

Bibliography ...... 287

Abbreviations

BARCH Bundesarchiv

BSTU Der/Die Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik

CEU Central European University

CIAM Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne

COMINFORM Informatsionnoe Biuro Kommunisticheskikh i Rabochikh Partiei

DH Dunapentelei Hírlap

DVÉ Dunai Vasmű Építője

EKO Eisenhüttenkombinat-Ost

EKS Eisenhüttenkombinat Stalin

FDGB Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund

FIDESZ Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége

GDR German Democratic Republic

GIPROMEZ Gosudarstvennyi Soiuznyi Institut Pro Proektirovaniiu Metallurgicheskikh Zavodov

HO Handelsorganisation

IM Informeller Mitarbeiter

KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands

MDP Magyar Dolgozók Pártja

MfS Ministerium für Staatssicherheit

MOZ Märkische Online Zeitung

MTI Magyar Távirati Iroda

NT Neuer Tag - Heimatzeitung für das Eisenhüttenkombinat-Ost (until 7.05.1953)/ Heimatzeitung für Stalinstadt (after 8.05.1953)

OSA Open Society Archives

RFE/RL Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

SAPMO Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenroganisationen der ehemaligen DDR (Bundesarchiv)

SED Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands

SICAR Summer Institute on Conducting Archival Research

SOAG Staatliche Oderschiffahrts-AG

Stasi Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (see also MfS)

StA-Ehst. Stadtarchiv Eisenhüttenstadt

SZN Szabad Nép

SZVÉ Sztálin Vasmű Építője

SZV Sztálinváros (newspaper)

SZH Sztálinvárosi Hírlap

TASS Telegrafnoe agentstvo Sovetskogo Soiuza

VEB Volkseigener Betrieb

Tables and Illustrations

Tables

Table 1. Towns named for Joseph Stalin in Eastern Europe during the 1950s...... 2

Illustrations

Illustration 1. The old, so-called “Gothic” and the new German script in an advertisement ...... 60

Illustration 2. The old and the new script is also used to hint at different eras and politics in East and West Germany...... 61

Illustration 3: The central square on a 1952 sketch by Kurt W. Leucht...... 70

Illustration 4. The Magistrale in a sketch published in Neuer Tag on February 5, 1955...... 73

Illustration 5. “My dark blue coat was stolen on Saturday in the House of Trade Unions. Please return this men’s coat to the Neuer Tag offices in return for a reward.” Advertisement in Neuer Tag ...... 80

Illustration 6. Street names in Stalinstadt before and after March 1954...... 83

Illustration 7. Model of the main square extended towards the Danube, with a Stalin statue at its Eastern end (1953)...... 90

Illustration 8. Sztálinváros cigarillos were popular with both locals and visitors...... 93

Illustration 9. A construction brigade at work in Sztálinváros (date unknown)...... 139

Illustration 10. The “Evangeliumswagen” in the New Town (Neustadt), probably in 1953...... 157

Illustration 11. The Lutheran church barracks in Stalinstadt (1954)...... 160

Illustration 12. The Friedrich-Wolf Theater (built 1954-1955) and its surroundings in early 1959...... 178

Illustration 13. “One gets more from her life if dressed well! We will gladly advise you in fashion-matters.” Advertisement in Kulturspiegel, 1956...... 179

Illustration 14. The HO-Großgaststätte Aktivist in Stalinstadt (postcards, dates unknown)...... 184

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Illustration 15. “Uns fehlt eine Oma” – text of a song on the missing grandmothers in Eisenhüttenstadt...... 189

Illustration 16. The wind orchestra playing at the construction site of the future Sztálinváros (date unknown)...... 192

Illustration 17. The Dózsa György film theatre (built 1951), and its lobby (dates unknown).....194

Illustration 18. Workers’ ensembles and choirs rehearsing in Sztálinváros (early 1950s)...... 197

Illustration 19. A workers’ chamber ensemble rehearsing in Sztálinváros (date unknown)...... 199

Illustration 20. Drinking facilities for all seasons and for all classes during the 1950s in Sztálinváros: pubs in the outdoors (upper left and right), the Béke Restaurant (left above) and the restaurant of the Arany Csillag Hotel (right above)...... 201

Illustration 21. Clothing (ruházat) and fashion products (divatáru) were sold from the beginning in the Sztálinváros department store...... 205

Illustration 22. The Metallurgist (Martinász), by József Somogyi...... 210

Illustration 23. A game of basketball at the construction site of Sztálinváros (probably 1951). .214

Illustration 24. Soccer (football) was the most popular sports in Sztálinváros with both players and spectators (probably 1950 or 1951)...... 215

Illustration 25. Advertisements for contraceptives in the Stalinstadt Heimatzeitung...... 250

Illustration 26. Sleeping quarters of construction workers in Sztálinváros (date unknown)...... 261

Illustration 27. Women’s and men’s showers in Sztálinváros...... 268

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Introduction

My first encounter with the Romanian Stalin Town dates back to the year 2001. I was a master’s student at Central European University in Budapest writing my thesis on the

Transylvanian town of Braşov, named Oraşul Stalin (Stalin Town) between 1950 and 1960. My thesis advisor, Professor István Rév, asked me to consider this topic for a good reason: the 50th anniversary of Stalin’s death was coming up and the Open Society Archives (OSA), of which

Professor Rév was Director, had planned a documentary exhibition on the occasion. As I foraged among the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty materials held at OSA I became aware of the many places outside the Soviet Union which were named for Stalin during or after the Second World

War: streets and squares, factories, neighbourhoods, mountain peaks, territorial-administrative units and several towns bore, at some point during the twentieth century, the name of Stalin. That the phenomenon was not limited to the Soviet Bloc was a revelation to me: from Albania to

Great Britain to Canada, where a Geographic Township and a mountain peak was named for

Stalin until as late as 1986 and 1987, respectively, the Soviet leader was thus honoured all around the world.1

Six Eastern European2 socialist leaderships had named towns for the Soviet generalissimo during the 1950s in Albania, Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic,

1 The name of Stalin Township in Northern Ontario was changed in 1986 to Hansen Township (for Canadian paraplegic athlete Rick Hansen), following an initiative of Yuri Shymko, then president of the Ukrainian World Congress and member of the Provincial Parliament of Ontario. Mount Peck in British Columbia, Canada, bore Joseph Stalin’s name until 1987 (Mount Stalin). 2 Throughout this dissertation I am using the geographic term “Eastern Europe” to denote the political region of Europe that has emerged at the end of World War Two under Soviet influence and that was to exist until 1989-1991.

Hungary, Poland and Romania.3 The timing and the way in which these Stalin Towns were built or named differ from case to case, just as the towns themselves were, and are still, very different.

Some of them were new settlements built to be “socialist towns”; others were older towns transformed temporarily, in their name at least, into Stalin Towns.

Country Name of town prior Name of town as Stalin Town period Name today to Stalin Town a Stalin Town

Albania Kuçovë Qyteti Stalin 1950-1991 Kuçovë Bulgaria Varna Stalin 1949-1956 Varna German Democratic ----- Stalinstadt 1953-1961 Eisenhüttenstadt Republic Hungary ----- Sztálinváros 1951-1956, 1957-19614 Dunaújváros Poland Katowice Stalinogród 1953-1956 Katowice Romania Braşov Oraşul Stalin 1950-1960 Braşov

Table 1: Towns named for Joseph Stalin in Eastern Europe during the 1950s.

Whether new or old, large or small, these towns and settlements had, beside their name, one thing in common: they were former, existing or intended centres of heavy industry. Well before the war, Kuçovë in Albania was the main extraction and production site of an incipient

Albanian petrol industry; the Black Sea port town of Varna was an ideal site for the development

3 The absence of Yugoslavia from this list is explained by the Soviet-Yugoslav split of 1948, when Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform and contacts between the two states were reduced to a minimum. It was only in 1955, after Stalin’s death, that relations were restored. By then, however, it was unthinkable that a town be named for the Soviet leader anywhere, not only in Yugoslavia. The absence of a new, industrial Stalin Town in Czechoslovakia is explained by the relatively high level of industrialization of Czechoslovakia at the end of World War Two. See Kimberly Elman Zarecor. “Alternatives to the Tabula Rasa: Postwar Expansion in Czechoslovakia’s Already Existing Cities,” (paper presented at the conference on Cities of a New Type. Industrial Cities in People’s Democracies after 1945, Dunaújváros, May 21-22, 2015). There were, however, industrial sites with worker settlements (“sídliště”, derived from the German “Siedlung”) built around them in Czechoslovakia. At least three such “Sídliště Stalingrads” are known to me, which were, during the 1960s, incorporated into the towns of Ostrava, Karviná and Žďár nad Sázavou. 4 During and shortly after the 1956 revolution, Sztálinváros was, for a few months, named Dunapentele, after the village in the vicinity of which the new town was built.

of Bulgarian heavy industry; Stalinstadt was to be home to the main metallurgical Kombinat

(combine) of East Germany; Sztálinváros was, too, planned to become the main Hungarian centre of iron (and later, steel) production; Katowice in Poland looked back on a long tradition in coal mining and in the making of iron and steel; finally, at the beginning of the 1950s, Braşov was one of the main centres of Romanian heavy industry, with plants producing railway rolling stock, ball bearings and a variety of industrial tools and equipment.

Much of the focus on heavy industry during the 1950s was due to necessity, not ideology.

Unlike in the Soviet Union, where rapid industrialization under Stalin was employed to modernize a largely peasant society, in most Eastern European countries an existing, though only moderately advanced heavy industrial infrastructure was to be restored after the war. The

Albanian oil-site at Kuçovë was developed by Italian companies as early as the 1920s; Varna,

Katowice and Braşov were industrial towns decades before the arrival of the Soviet Red Army.

Only Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros were entirely new, planned industrial sites, built in countries with very little heavy industry at the end of the war. This was due to the war itself; with the division of Germany, all the major iron foundries and steel mills were left in the Western military sectors, while those which remained in East Germany were swiftly disassembled and shipped to the Soviet Union as reparations. In Hungary, plans to build a large iron works along the Danube existed since the dismantling of Greater Hungary at the end of World War One, but as it was hoped that those parts of the country, in which much of the iron ore and coal resources as well as several metallurgical plants of Greater Hungary were located, would eventually be returned to Hungary, the execution of the plan was put off indefinitely.

It is common to invoke Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili’s adopted name—Stalin, derived from the Russian “Stal” (сталь), meaning steel—as the reason behind the naming of

heavy industrial sites for the Soviet leader. But considerations like these did not always play a role in the naming of places for the generalissimo. Several former Stalin Towns in the Soviet

Union were rural and agricultural or commercial in character. Dushanbe, the former Stalinabad, today the capital of Tajikistan, remains known for its cotton and silk5; hamlets like Imeni Stalina in Armenia were former sovkhozes (state farms) turned into small settlements or integrated into nearby towns. Staliniri in Georgia was a lumbering town6; Stalinisi, also in Georgia, remained a small town with no heavy industrial character whatsoever.7 On the other hand, a number of

Stalin Cities in Russia proper or in Ukraine were, indeed, devoted to heavy industry. Stalingrad

(1925-1961), the former Tsaritsyn named Volgograd today, was developed into a heavy industrial town well before the Second World War; during the first Five-Year Plan (1928-1932), the city received a number of shipyards, a tractor factory and a steel mill. After the war, an aluminium smelting plant and a chemical combine were added. The Volga-Don Canal, completed in 1952, along with the city’s extensive rail links turned Stalingrad into one of the most important transportation hubs of the country. While the Canal was the main westward transportation route for industrial products from Stalingrad, it also opened the way for shipments of goods, including coal, from a region that was home to another place named for Stalin: Stalino

(1924-1961) or Donetsk, which remains to this day the centre of Ukraine’s main coal mining region in the Donets Basin, also known as the Donbass.8

5 Dushanbe was named for Stalin (Stalinabad) between 1929 and 1961. Today, Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan. 6 The Georgian town of Tskhinvali (in Georgian: ცხინვალი) was named for Stalin between 1934 and 1961. Today it is the capital of what is commonly referred to as South Ossetia. 7 Khashuri (in Georgian: ხაშური) was named for Stalin between 1928 and 1934. 8 The status of the Donetsk region is under dispute since the proclamation of the independence of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” in April 2014.

The history of Donetsk is truly fascinating and worth a brief excursion. In 1869, upon the call of Tsar Alexander II, a Welsh ironmaster by the name of John Hughes arrived to the bank of the river Kalmius to build a major steel mill for the region. Within a year, Hughes started the production of steel and by 1873 the combine disposed of all the units needed for a full cycle of steel production. The settlement started by Hughes became known as Hughesovka (also Yuzovka or Yuzivka); its population grew rapidly to reach 50,000 inhabitants by 1905, 70,000 by 1917 and close to 500,000 at the outbreak of World War II. When, in 1924, Hughesovka was turned into Stalino, the town was not named for the “wonderful Georgian,” as Lenin liked to call his most eager disciple; the city was renamed because the Bolsheviks considered it “unthinkable that the proletarian centre of the Donbass should bear the name of the exploiter Hughes.” As the

Welsh journalist Colin Thomas, author of a book on Yuzivka recalls, the name Stalino was picked to honour the steel that was produced there, not Joseph Vissarionovich.9 And yet, as it happened elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc, the name was found unacceptable after the 22nd

Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).10 What new name could be given to a place that has never had a “proper” name? Reverting to Tsaritsyn in the case of Stalingrad was, too, out of the question. The party turned to the politically neutral, nearby rivers for help:

Stalingrad was named Town-upon-the-Volga (Volgograd), while Stalino underwent a similar renaming: as a tourist guidebook tells the story to the unaware British traveler, “the name of the

9 Colin Thomas, Dreaming a City: From Wales to Ukraine.The story of Hughesovka/Stalino/Donetsk (Ceredigion: Y Lolfa, 2009), 43. 10 While it was at the 20th Congress of the CPSU (February 1956) that Stalin’s leadership and the Stalin cult were condemned for the first time, the decision to rename the Stalin Towns of the Soviet Union was made more than five years later at the 22nd Congress (October 1961).

nearby River Don[ets] seemed a safe bet after the legacy of one foreign businessman and a mentally disturbed dictator, so the city has since been called Donetsk [Donets-Town].”11

Closer to the heart of Europe, similar considerations gave birth to New-Town-upon-the-

Danube (Dunaújváros) in Hungary and to Iron-Foundry-Town (Eisenhüttenstadt) in East

Germany (GDR). If in the post-war years few streets, public places, factories or state farms escaped renaming, after 1956, and especially after 1961, a scramble for politically neutral names started in order to cover up the odious practice of marking political territory by naming it for communist leaders, living or dead. The now obsolete Soviet-inspired toponyms were exchanged for Orchard Streets, Republic Squares, Friendship Housing Estates, or more simply, State Farms

No. 6 or 13. As destalinization was coupled with stronger national politics, a return to pre-war names of historical events or figures, national writers or artists was, although carefully, also permitted.

The post-war wave of naming, and thus, claiming spaces for socialism presented several common features throughout Eastern Europe. I shall attempt to explain but a few by using as example the naming of the two Stalin Towns which form the object of this dissertation:

Quasi-religious offering By the second half of the 1940s—and, following a victorious Great Patriotic War12—the Stalin cult reached its apogee. The newly sovietised countries of Eastern Europe provided fresh grounds for the expansion of the cult, while Stalin’s 70th birthday was the perfect occasion. Eager to “work towards their leader,”13 communist leaderships competed for

11 Andrew Evans, Ukraine: The Bradt Travel Guide (Chalfont St. Peter: Bradt, 2007), 383. 12 The Second World War in Soviet and Russian historical discourse. 13 I am paraphrasing Ian Kershaw here, who uses the expression (“working towards the Führer”) in his reflections on the Hitler dictatorship. Kershaw argues that Nazi Germany functioned thanks to Hitler’s “charismatic authority”

Stalin’s favours by “offering” places named for him. Streets, squares, factories and mountain peaks were thus presented to the Soviet dictator. Budapest named its first ever trolleybus line for Stalin (line No. 70);14 on that same day, the Bulgarian leadership picked an entire town to bear his name.15 In the following months, more settlements followed with the East German Stalinstadt closing the list a few months after Stalin’s death in March 1953. Stalin Towns were symbolic, quasi-religious offerings to the “father of the working people,” the naming ceremonies followed a ritual complete with its own iconography, “magic,” the mass-cult of the worshipped idol and so forth.

Seemingly spontaneous name choice In spite of the effort to evidence widespread support and long-term preparations for the naming event, Stalin Towns were born almost overnight in places where one would expect them least. In East Germany and in Hungary, worker colonies were named Stalin Towns (!) when only a handful of buildings were finished, few or no streets were paved and the places were hopelessly chaotic construction sites, rather than settlements with any visible urban features. Nothing foretold the success of these city-projects and the risk of failure was therefore high. Moreover, in the case of Stalinstadt, archival evidence indicates that Stalin’s name was not even considered for the new worker settlement until the actual death of Stalin on March 5th, 1953. The site of the Eisenhüttenkombinat-Ost was to be named for Karl Marx on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the death of the

which prompted the state apparatus to “work towards” the leader, thus counterbalancing Hitler’s chaotic leadership style and a generally disorganized, dysfunctional governmental setup. Kershaw argues that such “working towards the leader” was not present in Stalin’s Soviet Union, where government was based on vertically organized bureaucratic decision making, with its set rules and procedures. Nonetheless, I suggest that “working towards Stalin” had its place in Eastern Europe during the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the socialist state apparatus was in its infancy and much of the decision making was driven by the aspiration to please the Soviet leader (and reap the benefits and privileges deriving from doing so), and not by the duty to follow existing rules or protocols. See Ian Kershaw, “‘Working towards the Führer’: reflections on the nature of the Hitler dictatorship,” in Stalinism and Nazism. Dictatorships in Comparison, eds. Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 88-106. 14 The trolleybus line was inaugurated on December 21st, 1949. 15 Varna was the first town named for Stalin in Eastern Europe (1949).

“greatest son of the German nation,” on March 14, 1953. But Stalin died a week before the planned naming and thus the plant and the colony around it was named after Stalin. Archival records also indicate that, initially, another town of East Germany, Magdeburg was to be named Stalinstadt.16 Contingencies of this kind are found in the background of other Eastern European Stalin Towns as well.

Troubled legitimacy The naming was no doubt decided at central, government level. And yet, in both cases discussed here—Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros—evidence was construed to suggest that the change was inspired from below, “by the working people.” The lie was obvious to all and so was thus the questionable legitimacy of the undertaking.

Nomen est omen? The two new Stalin Towns, Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros, hardly assumed urban (social) features until at least a decade or two after their founding. Instead, it was assumed or hoped that the new names would help create the (socialist) urban spaces envisioned by the party. But Stalin’s name has hardly added new ideological meaning to these towns (steel did; Stalin’s name did not); both the GDR and Hungary had other heavy industrial combines and new towns under construction during the 1950s. Stalin Town was special because it was named for Stalin; in all other respects it was a more or less ordinary construction of the admittedly extraordinary 1950s in Eastern Europe.

Whose meaning? More interesting than intended meanings are those which have actually emerged among the users of these new spaces. In Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros, citizens—the settlers, that is—saw a rare and long-sought opportunity for a new beginning; starting a new life

16 At its meeting of March 12, 1953, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the SED still ruled that Magdeburg should be named Stalinstadt. However, the protocol of the meeting also notes that Magdeburg must first “deserve” the honour of being named for Stalin. “Protokoll Nr. 17/53 der Sitzung des Sekretariats des Zentralkomitees am 12. März 1953,” BARCH SAPMO, DY J IV 2-3 368.

in Stalin Town signified a caesura which guaranteed the end, for good and all, of all inconvenient pasts—and there were plenty of such pasts among both ordinary Germans and Hungarians. To most new settlers socialism played little or no role in their opting for Stalin Town. Opportunity and privileges did: former Nazis and members of the Hungarian Arrow Cross, petty criminals and prostitutes were as likely to settle there as were the handful committed visionaries or hard-line communists.

Strict enforcing of the new name The leadership was aware of this state of affairs. The use of the name Stalin Town was strictly enforced and any use of other toponyms (i.e. Dunapentele in the case of Sztálinváros) was severely punished. Seen from this perspective it was the name itself, rather than the iron (and later, steel), which lent legitimacy to Stalin Town. There are, however, also numerous recorded instances which evidence just how unseriously Stalin Town was taken by some, including members of the nomenklatura. In Sztálinváros, reversals to the “old” name of the town (Dunapentele) are increasingly frequent after 1957: courageous or just absent minded speakers expressed their true feelings towards Stalin Town by referring to it by its “old” name.17

Ordinary citizens were well aware of the tension between the real and the intended meanings of Stalin Town. As a result, over time, they learnt to understand and to use doublespeak. They moved skillfully back and forth between Sztálinváros and Dunapentele,

Stalinstadt and Fürstenberg.18 They acquired the skill to assess potentially dangerous situations and tell them apart from the safety in which they could speak their minds freely. They learnt to

17 For a few months after the 1956 revolution, Sztálinváros was officially named Dunapentele. When, in early 1957, the name was changed back to Stalin Town, some people simply refused to use the new-old name of the town again and stuck to Dunapentele. The East German Stalin Town remained Stalinstadt throughout the 1950s, however; the June 1953 revolt did not affect the name of the settlement, as has the October 1956 revolution in the case of Sztálinváros. 18 While Fürstenberg was never perceived as a precursor to Stalinstadt (as was the case of Pentele when, after the uprsising of 1956, the name of the town was “reverted” to Dunapentele, and then again to Sztálinváros), we will see that Fürstenberg remained throughout the 1950s an “anti-Stalinstadt”, just like Sztálinváros was an “anti-Pentele”.

cooperate and to collaborate with the new regime just as well as to oppose it, depending on what was or was not possible to them at any given moment. The inhabitants of Stalin Town learnt to use, and to live in, a variety of spaces—of cooperation, accommodation or outright opposition— all at once.

But what did resistance, cooperation or collaboration mean in the Eastern European socialist context? The borderline between resistance and cooperation was thin, and so was the line between cooperation and collaboration. On the former, Václav Havel has written a wonderful essay in the late 1970s; true, his context was socialism in what he called a “post- totalitarian” system, but the essence remains the same: the difference between just going along and opposing a political system was minimal or gestural, while the implications were crucial. In

“The Power of the Powerless,” Havel uses a greengrocer’s daily ritual to explain the difference.

Each morning, a greengrocer places a sign with the slogan “Workers of the World, Unite!” in his shop window. He does so because this is what is expected of him. He does not seem to know what such a unification of workers should be like. Naturally, he does not actually mean what the slogan is saying. He may not even know what is written onto that piece of cardboard. But he places the sign visibly among his onions and carrots in order to be beyond reproach by those who expect this of him. “He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life ‘in harmony with society’, as they say.”19

Havel’s explanation of the greengrocer’s gesture is revealing:

19 Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless,” in The Power of the Powerless. Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, ed. Václav Havel et al. (Armonk, New York: M.E.Sharpe, 1985), 27-28.

The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: ‘I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.’20

Subliminal but very definite messages like these expressed countless times by millions of citizens sustained the socialist state from the beginning through the end. In the 1950s, policing was the way to force such obedience; by the late 1970s, when Havel was writing his essay, methods became softer as policing gave way to self-policing, and self-censorship rendered censorship almost obsolete. In the 1950s, however, the state has trained, through almost all- encompassing surveillance and coercion, a mass of “docile bodies” to behave in the manner expected of them, that is, to cooperate.21

Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth. The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children’s access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him.22

To be sure, disobedient greengrocers in the Stalin Towns of the 1950s faced different punishment: they were likely immediately transferred to the interrogation rooms of the (secret) police, rather than to the company warehouse. And yet, many citizens opted to live in the truth.

20 Italics in the original text. Ibid, p. 28. 21 In “Discipline and Punish”, Michel Foucault defines docile bodies as follows: “a body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved. And that this docile body can only be achieved through strict regiment of disciplinary acts.” Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979), 136. 22 Italics in the original text. Havel, The Power of the Powerless, 39.

Tuning in to foreign radio broadcasts, reading forbidden literature, attending “illegal” church services, organizing illegal circles and meetings or committing outright acts of sabotage—these were all expressions of refusal to live within the lie. Rather than putting up opposition, other citizens turned to alcohol or stole from their workplace, that is, they adopted non-conformist yet still acceptable forms of behavior that were, officially, condoned by the state and party. The vast majority, however, just moved along. And then there were yet others, those who chose to actively support and sustain the system. They were the activists, the “agitators,” the enthusiasts, the opportunists driven by the aspiration to enjoy the privileges of the state and party bureaucracy, and, not lastly, the spies and informers.23 All of them performed daily rituals which elude the histories of Eastern Europe “written from above”. It is on everyday acts of opposition, cooperation and collaboration like these that our investigation will focus.

I argue that the key to understanding what exactly elicited such forms of behaviour—of opposition, cooperation and collaboration—ultimately lies in the socialist abolition of private property and enterprise. This unilateral, general and forced act of the state had a profound impact on the spheres of everyday life—the private sphere, the sphere of leisure, the sphere of work and the public sphere—, which in many ways was more radical than the effects of the war itself. The perception of social justice and solidarity, trust in the institutions of the state, the willingness to partake in community affairs—these were all distorted and undermined by “nationalization.” The drastic reduction and transformation of the private realm caused disorientation as the life-goal of

23 To be sure, these categories overlapped most of the time: individual citizens could be at once collaborators and victims of persecution by the political police, party members could at once enjoy party privileges and at be members or even leaders of the “opposition.” For a brilliant account of such overlaps in Hungary see: Sándor Horváth,“Apa nem volt komcsi– a mindennapi kollaboráció és az ügynökkérdés határai,” in Az ügynök arcai. Mindennapi kollaboráció és ügynökkérdés, ed. Sándor Horváth (Budapest: Libri, 2014), 7-40.

millions, whether urban or rural, worker or peasant, capitalist or civil-servant, vanished. What common good could be built on the unlawful confiscation of personal, private aspirations? What kind of participation in public affairs was to be expected of citizens whose attitude towards their state and society (including the attitude of those who saw themselves as net winners of the new situation), is best described as utter distrust, withdrawal and hopelessness?

In this dissertation I propose to explore the relationship between the socialist state and its subjects through the investigation of two microcosms which were, presumably, among the closest representations of socialism in the Eastern European landscape, both real and conceptual.

As relatively small-scale social experiments meant to legitimize and help spread the new ideology across the region, the Stalin Towns of Eastern Europe provide us at once with a testing grounds for the methodological tools used in the analysis of Western societies. The public- private dichotomy is, for instance, of limited usefulness in the investigation of Eastern European social spaces during the 1950s.24 In societies in which over the course of months a more or less established social (dis)order gave way to a new civilization, as Stephen Kotkin would famously call Stalinism in the Soviet context of the 1930s, the public and the private, the social and the communal, the domestic and the intimate acquired new meanings.25 So did the content of work/labour and leisure, while the concepts of urban and rural call, too, for new conceptualization.

24 This is not my own idea, although the argument is more widely used in the context of the Soviet Union. In a collection of essays on “Socialist Spaces”, for instance, writing about the communal apartment in Leningrad, Katerina Gerasimova traces back the argument to Vladimir Shlapentokh. See: “Public Privacy in the Soviet Communal Apartment,” in Socialist Spaces. Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc, eds. David Crowley and Susan E. Reid (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 207-230. See also Vladimir Shlapentokh, The Public and Private Life of the Soviet People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 25 Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

Public space

The confiscation (“nationalization”) of private property, including the spaces in which such property, from ideas to things, was exchanged, and its transfer under the immediate control and ownership of the state, has led to a dramatic shrinking of the public realm. State monopoly over formerly free or relatively free spaces of exchange meant, in fact, a privatization of the public sphere to the benefit of an ever-growing, corporation-like party state. The new, socialist public sphere constructed to replace the old, bourgeois public sphere was anything but public: access to it was denied to disloyal citizens, while loyalty was judged arbitrarily or at random; social exchange was limited to ways ruled acceptable by the owner of this space; the common good towards which the bourgeois public sphere was used in the past was now formulated by the sole owner of rights pertaining to this space. In other words, the public sphere had to a large extent become the private realm of the state. It is, of course, misleading to imagine the Eastern

European, pre-war public sphere as an essentially free, democratic realm; as a region in permanently commanded yet uncontrolled transition towards a heavily idealized type of society that has, allegedly, grown “organically” in the West, Eastern Europe has rarely if ever benefited from homegrown liberal-democratic social innovation. The eternally transitional and therefore necessarily unstable social setup hindered the “organic” growth of democratic spaces and institutions in Eastern Europe. “Public” in the Eastern European sense never passed the Western

“publicity” test. And yet, “public” remains the best approximation we have at hand for the description of spheres of social exchange beyond the domestic and the intimate. A separate discussion, in this dissertation, of the spheres of work and leisure will strip the public domain of the two most important hybrid spheres between private and public, thus limiting it, the public sphere that is, to the (almost) exclusive, realm of the state.

Private space

If the public sphere was privatized by the party-state, the privacy of citizens was, too, subject to radical state intervention. In fact, the very core of the private realm—private property—was to be transformed to produce a new, “socialist consciousness”, and ultimately, socialist humankind. With strict limitations to privately owned housing and with the state-owned housing schemes introduced in the early 1950s, the party-state gained access to the most important sanctuary of the private realm: the home. Not only the size and shape of new housing units was determined by Power; the social fabric produced and contained within the walls of the new apartment blocks could henceforth be altered through state intervention ranging from the transformation of flats into communal apartments (or vice-versa) to the hiring of one or both spouses to spy on their neighbours, or, why not, on each other. Other types of state intervention were linked to educational and public health politics (for instance, the mandatory use of nursing facilities or the politics of birth control and abortion); to the politics of religion (the introduction of state-run rituals like name-giving ceremonies to replace church baptisms, or the secular versions of religious Confirmation, funeral services, etc.); to stricter housing regulations (through the creation of residents’ committees, which offered a new possibility for horizontal control at the citizen’s doorstep and beyond);26 to restrictions on the free movement of citizens (through the central assignment of jobs and living quarters, the introduction of personal identification papers

26 Katerina Gerasimova uses the term “horizontal control” in the context of the Soviet communal apartment, where residents controlled each other’s behaviour to the benefit of the party-state, which has thus “outsourced” a task too costly to carry out with its own means. In Gerasimova’s words, “[h]orizontal control seems… to have been a keystone of Soviet everyday routine.” I suggest that residents’ committees were just such a tool for horizontal control once communal apartments were gradually transformed, starting in the mid-1950s, into single-family apartments. See Katerina Gerasimova, Public Privacy, p. 214.

or address cards, the introduction of passports for domestic travel), and so on. Intrusions into the domestic life of the citizen were, naturally, more accentuated in the new settlements where workers lived, initially at least, in shared dormitories, took their meals in canteens, used shared bathroom and toilet facilities and thus lived a domestic and intimate life void of much of what we call privacy today. The intrusion of the state into the private realm of the Stalin Town citizen was almost all-encompassing. Emphasis should remain on almost, however; the privatization of the public sphere and the penetration of the now privatized public realm into the private sphere of the citizen produced many degrees or levels of privacy. Writing within the context of the new apartments built in Warsaw during the 1950s, David Crowley, co-editor of a volume on

“Socialist Spaces,” investigates the “public life of private spaces”;27 Katerina Gerasimova, who in the same volume explores everyday life in the pre-war Leningrad communal apartment, writes of a “public privacy” of the Soviet citizen; in her discussion of hybrid spaces like the informal economy, Gerasimova also introduces the term “private publicity” to denote “[a] configuration of public and private spheres that combined collectivity but were close to the State;”28 Stephen

Kotkin, author of “Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization,” writes of the

“communalization” of privacy and of “communalism” in the context of architectural designs meant to bring about a “maximum socialization of everyday life” in Magnitogorsk.29 While state socialism in Eastern Europe during the 1950s may not have produced private spheres as

“communalized” as they have been experienced in the Soviet Union of the 1930s, such hybrid

27 David Crowley, “Warsaw Interiors. The public life of private spaces, 1949-1965,” in Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc, eds. David Crowley and Susan E. Reid (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 181-206. 28 Katerina Gerasimova, Public Privacy, 210. 29 Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 114.

spheres around the domestic and the intimate sphere of the citizen render the use of the public- private dichotomy problematic.30

The sphere of work

The sphere of work encompasses all work-related spaces and places (i.e. the workplace), as well as the activities and transactions performed in them in return for pay. In the socialist

“worker and peasant state,”31 however, the sphere of work acquired a whole new set of meanings. Work was not regarded as an opportunity for individual self-fulfillment, as this conflicted with the very idea of communism. On the contrary, work was subordinated to a single common goal formulated by the party (rather than by, say, economists): the construction of communism. As a result, pay or bonuses have become almost irrelevant as motivating factors for the individual. The nationwide uniformization of payrolls excluded the possibility to distinguish between the productivity of two workers, or, simply put, between a good and a bad worker.

Stripped of one of its most important functions or characteristics—namely payment as an incentive to work more or to work more productively—work under state socialism was little more than a modern version of slave labour. The impression was only accentuated through a series of idiotic, economically unsound regulations like the constitutional obligation to work or the obligation to accept assignments in the remotest parts of the country or in fields irrelevant to a citizen’s expertise. The party-state practically owned the workforce and disposed of it by

30 I thank Thomas Lahusen for calling my attention to the diary of Galina Vladimirovna Shtange, which offers a fascinating example of the hybridity of public and private in the Soviet Union of the 1930s. When household chores prevent Galina Shtange from doing her almost obsessively loved community work (obshchestvennaia rabota), she complains about having to give up her “personal life.” Here, community work seems to be the most important facet of the private (“personal”) life of a Soviet citizen. See “Galina Vladimirovna Shtange,” in Intimacy and Terror. Soviet Diaries of the 1930s, ed. Thomas Lahusen (New York: The New Press, 1995), 167-217. 31 In German: “Arbeiter und Bauernstaat.”

decree. Workers could be “volunteered” to perform unremunerated work and the decision could be enforced through the party’s monopoly on executive power. Work has thus been voided of many of its economic attributes or functions while the sphere of work included non-productive activities like ideological training, Russian language instruction, volunteer work, participation in so-called socialist competitions, party reunions, rallies and so forth.

The sphere of leisure

Leisure acquired, too, a peculiar meaning under state socialism. Understood as the sphere of activities and transactions of one’s choice performed typically outside of work and most often beyond the domestic and intimate realm, leisure encompassed much of one’s “free” time beside sleeping or eating. In the socialist system, such choice was very limited; the time and space of leisure was to a significant degree under state control and therefore “un-free.” Certain forms of leisure were outright forced upon the citizen under threat of punishment, while others, like attending church services or studying books on Tibetan philosophy or psychology, were prohibited. Volunteer work (i.e. “community work” around one’s apartment block) is, once again, a good case in point, and so is moonlighting or engagement in the second economy.

Quasi-mandatory attendance at rallies, festivals, competitions or campaigns of all sorts was, too, a common feature of leisure under state socialism.

Urban and rural under state socialism

The socialist tendency towards egalitarianism was also reflected in the uniformization of national space. Urban villages and cities reduced to quasi-rural settlements became, as far as their social dimension was concerned, the new norm. New, hybrid forms of settlement emerged,

with villages acquiring urban features through the settling of industry or urban forms of housing, or with existing cities being stripped of their urban social fabric through the elimination of certain segments of the population or of institutions like the café, the promenade, the club, the cultural association, the auction house, the newspaper, the taxi, the restaurant, the park, and so forth, along with the settling of a rural population that brought with it elements of a rural lifestyle. The two new Stalin Towns in East Germany and in Hungary may have assumed “real”

(visible) urban features during the 1950s, but it was only decades later that the social fabric of the two towns resembled anything close to an urban society. During the 1950s, Stalinstadt and

Sztálinváros were at best comparable (although at an entirely different scale) to what David L.

Hoffmann termed a “peasant metropolis”—cities equipped with visible urban features and even traditions, but also with an ever-stronger rural present.32

In the course of this study, all these concepts—public and private, work, leisure, urban and rural—will be discussed as they acquire new meanings. They will not be given new, “final” definitions, however; just like history writing is a cumulative process in which “historical truths” are built upon one another, the conceptualizion of key terms like these will always have to remain open for revision. I see this study as a step forward in the understanding of the social aspects of the relatively under-researched socialist city outside the Soviet Union; if it raises more questions than it answers, it will have fulfilled one of its main purposes.

This dissertation is written in two parts. The first part is devoted to the present of

Eisenhüttenstadt and Dunaújváros; it delves into the pasts of these towns as they are remembered

32 David L. Hoffmann, Peasant metropolis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).

today in official institutions like the local museum or the town council, in public and in private.

It constitutes an exercise in the exploration of memory but it is also intended to smooth the unaware reader’s time travel to the Stalin Town-era of the 1950s. Interviews and exhibitions, urban legends and “archaeological” findings constitute the backbone of this section, which also includes a review of the earlier history of Dunapentele and Fürstenberg an der Oder.

The second part of this inquiry consists of the four subsequent chapters, each of which is devoted to a distinct dimension of social existence under state socialism. The public sphere, the sphere of work, the sphere of leisure and the private sphere are, however, only seemingly separate realms of everyday life. Their main characteristic is hybridity: privatized public spaces and personal spaces “inhabited” by Power were as important features of socialist space as was a sphere of work conquered by non-productive—at least in economic terms—activities like the attendance of trade union or party organisation meetings or the intervention of socialist ideology into free time activities like gardening, sports or the practice of religion. While emphasising the heterogeneity of socialist space, this part of the dissertation is intended to contribute to the further developing of methodological tools used in the analysis of Eastern European socialist societies in the second half of the 20th century.

Chapter One

The Memory of Stalin Town in Germany and in Hungary

In 2004, the Open Society Archives in Budapest hosted an exhibition entitled “Six Stalin

Cities.”33 In the catalogue of the exhibition, the curator explained that

[t]he exhibition is intended to give a comprehensive overview of the Eastern European cities which, mainly after 1949, were named after J.V. Stalin: Katowice, Eisenhüttenstadt, Dunaújváros, Braşov, Varna and Stalingrad, the latter named after the generalissimo as early as the 1920s.34 The Fifties saw major construction work in both the newly created and the renamed Stalin Cities. The photos, documents and plans presented in the exhibition show the most important buildings, indoor and outdoor settings of the cities (re)designed in that period. The organizers have included works by artists who were well-known at the time but are now largely forgotten, such as Aurél Bernáth, Sándor Ék and Endre Domanovszky. The excerpts from fiction and documentary films that also feature in the exhibition add further to the rather lopsided images of everyday life presented in contemporary propaganda.35

33 The Open Society Archives (OSA) at Central European University in Budapest holds, among others, Cold War- related documents on Central and Eastern Europe. One of its most important fonds is that of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute (RFE/RL), which constituted the core of the archives in the early 1990s, when OSA was founded. Since then, the archive has acquired numerous other materials, mainly on human rights- related issues (i.e. in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Rwanda, etc.), and is today one of the most important human rights-related document repositories in the world. 34 Miklós Tamási, a curator of the exhibition admitted during a personal conversation in June 2004, that the exhibition did not cover Qyteti Stalin in Albania and the Stalingrads in Czechoslovakia as they were “not large enough and hence not significant enough” to be studied. 35 Excerpt from the catalogue of the exhibition on Six Stalin Cities, OSA, Budapest, January 16-March 31, 2004.

The exhibition focused on the common traits of these cities: housing blocks, industrial facilities, and more generally, evidence of state planning, control and propaganda. What the exhibition obscured, however, rather than exhibiting, were the many differences among the

Stalin Towns of Eastern Europe. The focus of the exhibition rarely ventured beyond the presentation of the official record, the archival document, the published and thus officially sanctioned photograph or memoir. While a number of singular eye-witness reports and memoirs was used to add to the spectacle of the exhibition (mainly accounts of artists, writers and decision makers of the era), little attention was, and indeed, could be given within the constraints of this exhibition (and within the constraints of this genre, which focuses on the visual), to the accounts of the more ordinary eyewitnesses of those times: the simple inhabitant like the child, the teenager, the parent, the wife, the husband, the single woman, the single man or the pensioner. While the surface layers of the history of these cities showcase abundant similar traits, the subtler layers which are more difficult to access present us with sometimes very different histories of everyday life. Explored from this vantage point a comparison among these towns bears in itself important implications. If everyday life in these towns, which were meant to be model representations of the socialist/communist way of life, did indeed present significant differences, then what do the terms socialism or everyday life under socialism mean in the

Eastern European context? Is there a German socialist experience which is markedly different from Hungarian socialism? If so, to what extent are national socialisms or communisms inspired and shaped by Soviet-type socialism, or, by each other?

One possible way to explore the different pasts—and especially, those pasts which are not visible through the lens of the contemporary document, diary, newspaper clip or

photograph—is to explore the more visible differences in the present of these cities. Invisible factors shaping everyday life, such as social or ethnic origin, family history or personal life goals in general, need many years, often decades to unfold and produce perceivable changes to the environment. By taking a closer look at the present or at the current environment of these cities it is possible to find pathways to a past that often remains hidden from the historian who sets out to interpret contemporary documents. This chapter discusses the present of these cities and attempts to access their past by exploring the various kinds of memory that exist about their history today: official, public, and private.

An investigation into the memory of these cities provides us with much more than information about their past, or, about their present, however. The decades elapsed since the

1950s have molded the memory of the inhabitants of the former Stalin Town into a narrative that reveals trends or long-term changes that would otherwise not be possible to capture. It is the exploration of this longer durée in the history of the Stalin Town that can provide answers to one of the most pressing questions linked to any major project of social engineering: to what extent were the needs of the population met by the ideological, economic, social or architectural designs of the planners? When looked at from this perspective, the two Stalin Towns examined here present two different patterns, different paths into the post-Stalin(ist), and later, into the post- socialist era. In this chapter I seek to emphasize these differences and suggest that such dissimilarities are rooted in the different initial understandings, if not designs, of the socialist town in the early 1950s, including, of course, the effects of the uprisings of June 1953 in the

GDR and October 1956 in Hungary. The purpose of this chapter is thus to contrast two patterns of social engineering seen through the lens of two former Stalin Towns and to contribute to the

argument that the socialist bloc, however monolithic in appearance, showcased not one, but a variety of socialisms. While the argument does not constitute a novelty in the post-1989 historiography on Eastern Europe’s socialist régimes, a comparative analysis of these intended socialist microcosms, along with the exploration of the memory of these towns, will uncover thus far hidden layers of the history of early socialism in Eastern Europe.

From Sztálinváros to Dunaújváros

The need to construct a major metallurgical plant in Hungary emerged soon after the First

World War, when—through the peace settlement brokered at Versailles—important heavy industries were left outside the borders of the new Hungarian state.36 Several plans and locations were considered during the interwar decades but it was only after the Second World War that the decision was made to construct the Dunai Vasmű (Danubian Iron Works) near the village of

(Duna)Pentele37, about 70 kilometers south of Budapest.38

36 The Treaty was signed by Hungary on June 4th, 1920 in the Palace Grand Trianon of Versailles (hence the common reference to it as the Treaty of Trianon). Approximately two thirds of Hungary’s territory (including Transylvania), inhabited by 3.2 Million Hungarians, were adjudicated to neighboring or newly created countries. The effect of the Treaty on the Hungarian economy and society in general was catastrophic as most of the natural resources, much of the infrastructure (particularly railways) and millions of ethnic Hungarians were thus left outside the borders of Hungary. 37 The name of the village appears as both Pentele and Dunapentele in archival documents, but also in the press of the era. 38 Initial construction of a major metallurgical plant had begun in 1948 near the town of Mohács, just about ten kilometers north of the Yugoslav border. Due to the Soviet-Yugoslav split of 1948 and the increasing fear of a possible conflict with Yugoslavia, however, the already built foundations were abandoned and the plant was relocated to its current location near Dunapentele. For further details on the early history of the Danubian Iron Works, see Chapter 2.

Construction work on the site started in May 1950. Within a year, a barracks town, along with several permanent brick buildings, emerged near the old village. The colony was inhabited by approximately fifteen thousand (!) young workers when, on November 7th, 1951, as the first iron was being produced at the Danubian Iron Works, the settlement was named for Joseph

Stalin.39 Within a decade, the Dunai Vasmű became an industrial giant composed of a series of metallurgical plants, and the settlement which emerged in its vicinity developed into a fully functional town with wide avenues, modern housing quarters, a hospital, several schools and kindergartens, a theatre and an institution of higher education.

Today’s Dunaújváros (literally: New-Town-upon-the-Danube), as the settlement was renamed in 1961, is a dynamic industrial center, although the global economic crisis started in

2008 has taken its toll on the development of the town. The post-1989 restructuring and privatization of the Danubian Iron Works, combined with a steady increase of the price of iron and steel on the world market, ensured the survival of much of the Iron Works, along with the jobs which it had created for the local population. More importantly, the mono-industrial character of Dunaújváros was turned around successfully through the settlement of a diversity of industries as early as the mid-1950s. Post-1989 foreign direct investment was successfully absorbed by the town and thus a number of multinational companies chose to relocate their production sites to the town and its vicinity. In 2006, the Socialist-led government of Hungary inaugurated a new, 70 kilometers long motorway, linking Dunaújváros to Budapest.40 A new

39 “Sztálinváros,” SZN, March 11, 1951. 40 The motorway was built unusually fast, within a couple of years only, apparently at the request of a new investor to Dunaújváros (Hankook, South Korea). Production at the Dunaújváros Hankook unit started one year later, in 2007. Hankook is a widely known producer of car tires (one among the top seven worldwide). The motorway was later extended to reach the town of Pécs in the south of the country.

bridge across the Danube—the second bridge built south of Budapest in more than seventy years—has also been opened in the immediate vicinity of Dunaújváros. With these two significant improvements to its infrastructure, Dunaújváros has become by the end of the first decade of the 21st century a prime industrial site of Hungary. But it was not industry alone that grew in Dunaújváros after 1989; the technical college founded in 1953, once considered among the better ones in the country, contributed significantly to the attractiveness of the town for younger generations of professionals. The number of the college’s students increased more than fourfold between 1989 and 1999, and, as a result, a new building was added to the neoclassical,

“Stalinist” building erected in the 1950s. Over the years, Dunaújváros has become a great power in Hungarian sports, too; Dunaferr, as the Danubian Iron Works are named since privatization, has been sponsoring Hungarian league-leading clubs in ice hockey, basketball, handball and water polo. For these and for many other reasons, it seemed, until recently, that the town has successfully adapted to the conditions of capitalism and a market economy.

The recent global economic crisis has halted and even reversed some of these trends, however. The insensitivity of the Hungarian government towards the social effects of a declining economy, incompetence and corruption seem to affect Dunaújváros more than other industrial towns in the country. In December 2012, the now Ukrainian-owned Dunaferr Works announced massive layoffs and the closing down of a few production units, while Hankook, one of the top car-tire producers worldwide is, too, considering the relocation of its business to a more profitable location abroad. The number of students of the technical college plummeted, while the new additions to the college campus are kept shut waiting for better times. The Dunaferr sports clubs, not so long ago the pride of Dunaújváros, are gradually downsized due to lack of funding.

While there is still much hope for a revival, it is difficult to tell what the future has in store for

Dunaújváros once the effects of the Hungarian recession will be overcome.

From Stalinstadt to Eisenhüttenstadt

The construction of the Eisenhüttenkombinat-Ost (EKO) near Fürstenberg an der Oder started in 1950 following considerations similar to those of Hungarian planners who built their own “kombinát” near Dunapentele. After the Second World War, the new state of East Germany was left with virtually no iron and steel industry as major production sites were located in the

Western sectors of the country. The few specialists in metallurgy who returned from the war or from Western and Soviet prisoner-of-war camps were attracted by better wages and working conditions in the West and thus left the Soviet sector in high numbers. The blockades, counter- blockades and embargoes of the late 1940s and early 1950s put an end to German inter-zonal trade, including to the movement of industrial products, and most prominently, iron and steel. As a result, in 1950, the East German leadership decided to build a new iron and steel combine near the small town of Fürstenberg an der Oder, just a throw away from the new East German-Polish border.41

41 The location was chosen based on its (alleged) military-strategic advantages, rather than out of economic considerations. As one author on the history of Eisenhüttenstadt put it in the mid-1990s, “[t]he Soviet cargo ships carrying the iron ore would have had to pass the Bosphorus, the Straits of Gibraltar, the North Sea Canal and the Kattegat, that is, straits and maritime routes which were under the control of NATO-powers. The Soviets, as well as Minister Selbmann, were of the opinion that the vital deliveries which were needed to re-launch the East German economy could fall victim too easily to the confrontation between East and West. Therefore, they advocated the transport of the ore through a combination of maritime, fluvial and rail routes, [that is], over the Black Sea, the Danube and by rail from Bratislava via Kosel to the Oder. Fürstenberg was an ideal location for such a transportation route, and at the same time, [the town] was 250 kilometers far from the border with the Federal Republic. The location was [thus] chosen even though the transport [of the ore] would eventually cost twice as much

Construction moved on swiftly. Within a matter of months, a so-called Wohnstadt or residential town emerged from the initial barracks settlement. Ironically, the Stalin cult in the

GDR reached its apogee around Stalin’s death in 1953 and thus the EKO was named for Stalin

(“Eisenhüttenkombinat J.W. Stalin”, or, EKS) shortly after Stalin’s death. A few weeks later, in

May 1953, the Wohnstadt itself was named Stalinstadt.

The present of Eisenhüttenstadt or Iron-Foundry-Town, as the settlement was renamed in

1961, is comparable to that of Dunaújváros in Hungary. The loss of East European markets after

1989 and the restructuring and privatization of the EKO in the early 1990s have caused a dramatic drop in the number of EKO-employees. Due to the mono-industrial profile of the town, little could be done to prevent skyrocketing unemployment and general dissatisfaction among the population. Worse yet, due to the exodus of the young and middle-aged generations, the youngest town of (East) Germany has become one among the oldest ones in terms of average population age. Over the past two and a half decades, the population has shrunk by almost 50%, while the built surface of Eisenhüttenstadt is, too, continuously shrinking, as an entire neighbourhood unit built in the mid-1980s (Wohnkomplex No. VII42) was pulled down starting in 2003. Since then, several hundred more apartments have been demolished and further hundreds of units are to be erased by 2020. In a town in which early retirement is the norm rather

as [it would cost to transport it] to Uckermünde.” Jörg Rösler, “‘Eisen für den Frieden.’ Das Eisenhüttenkombinat- Ost in der Wirtschaft der DDR,” in Aufbau West - Aufbau Ost. Die Planstädte Wolfsburg und Eisenhüttenstadt in der Nachkriegszeit, Rosmarie Beier, ed. (Ostfildern-Ruit: G. Hatje, 1997), 152. Uckermünde was an alternative location for the planned Eisenhüttenkombinat-Ost. 42 The Wohnkomplex is an ensemble comprising several housing units and other facilities like schools, kindergartens and shops. It is roughly the equivalent of the Russian kvartal, or, quarter.

than the exception, where most urban forms of leisure and entertainment are simply missing, the population’s outlook is grim. A feeling of “Ostalgie”, a sense of longing for good old East

German times is spreading among the remaining twenty-six to twenty-seven thousand inhabitants of Iron-Foundry-Town, while to the occasional visitor it looks as if the town is being kept alive by its past alone. 43

“That was our first real home…”

I was born in Silesia, which is in Poland today. Until the end of the war I lived in Oppeln.44 You know, we were all raised in the National Socialist world. And we didn’t know, of course, we didn’t know what kind of a thing that was, how inhuman45 it was… And we didn’t know of the concentration camps either. I went to several places like the one in Poland. What was its name? Uhm…Buchenwald! So, I’ve been there, and I went to such places, but back then, I, we—we didn’t know. I was so young, of course I didn’t know, but there were people who knew, for instance my grandfather, who was Catholic and very religious […]. He knew, I think, and he didn’t like what was happening, but he didn’t dare to tell. Yes, he didn’t tell. It was very dangerous to have such conversations back then. Other members of my family avoided him. He didn’t believe in all that, he was very religious. In January 1945—I don’t recall the exact date, and, interestingly, nobody in my family remembers it—back then, in January 1945, the SS came and forced us to leave. I ended up in a village near Leipzig, other members of my extended family landed elsewhere in Germany. The first months after the war were terrible. I got Typhus and Diphtheria and I almost died. But then, miraculously—I must have had a guardian angel

43 This is the total number of inhabitants of Eisenhüttenstadt, that is, the number of inhabitants of the former Stalinstadt and the number of inhabitants of Fürstenberg and a few other incorporated villages combined. The number of inhabitants of the “new” part of town, that is, of the former Stalinstadt, is probably around half of that. 44 Opole, Poland. 45 In the original, German text of the interview: “Menschenverachtend.”

up there—I recovered. In December 1945, I got my first job; I was an elementary school teacher in a village near Leipzig. I was proud because I earned 132 Marks per month and I was the only one in my family who earned something. This is where I worked in the first years. And then—and then I came to Stalinstadt.46

Hanna Vogel arrived to Stalinstadt in December 1956, more than a decade after the end of the Second World War. The immediate postwar years are entirely missing from her life story and it seems as if the war itself had been the immediate precursor to, or indeed, the cause of, her life in Stalinstadt. The only biographical information she deems worth mentioning for this period is her wedding. Hanna Riedel got married to Kurt Vogel in 1954, at the age of 29. Her memory of the wedding is firmly tied to another event: Hanna got married to Kurt in the year in which her father, a Spätheimkehrer—a “late returner” from a prisoner-of-war camp or from deportation— was released from a Soviet prisoners’ camp. With that, in 1954, the war was finally over for

Hanna; the time was ripe for a new beginning.

Kurt and Hanna Vogel first visited Stalinstadt during the Easter holiday of 1956. From the railway station in Fürstenberg they went straight to the office that managed the hiring of new settlers in Stalinstadt. Both were offered jobs, and both were asked to stay and to take up their new positions the next day. As this was impossible—both Kurt and Hanna were employed, and thus, had obligations to attend to near Leipzig—they returned home. They had made an important decision, however: they decided to move to Stalinstadt. Kurt arranged his transfer a few months later and Hanna followed him in December of the same year.

46 Hanna Vogel, interview by author, October 27, 2005. The name of Hanna and Kurt Vogel have been changed upon the interviewees’ request.

On January 1st, 1957, Hanna Vogel began her work in Stalinstadt. Thanks to their jobs as teachers, Hanna and her husband were allotted a room in IB2, that is, in “Intelligenzbaracke 2”.

IB2 was, as its name suggests, reserved for the intelligentsia: doctors, teachers, administrators and engineers. Each of the ten parties living in a barracks had a room with two beds, a stove, a table and a cupboard that served also as a wardrobe. Each room in IB2 measured about 3x4 metres. There was a communal kitchen, used by all parties in turns, especially during the weekends. And there was also a bathroom—with showers and separate cabins for men and for women.

We moved into our first apartment in November [1957]. 47 years we lived there... 47 years! That was our first real home. That was so... so incredible! It had three rooms, that is, 65 to 70, yes, around 70 square meters. And parquet! And, of course, a bathtub, and a hot water boiler in the bathroom! That was really something! We lived there for 47 years. This was in Fritz-Heckert-Straße […]. There was a cellar. Each party—there were eight parties living in our block—well, each party had a storage room in the basement. The storage rooms were on one side, the washhouse47 was on the other side. Each party could use the washhouse for three days. And then came the next party’s turn. We put all this down on paper, and it worked. We would dry our laundry in the attic, where, again, there was a storage room for each party, and a common laundry room.48 We also organized our little festivities there, you know, like on May 1st… I would cook a ‘Gulaschpfanne’, our neighbour something else. That’s where we would meet. We’ve always celebrated together. We were not only neighbours, we lived together! The eight parties in our block organized regular residents’ meetings, like every quarter year or so, and that’s where we decided [on all these things], together.49

47 In the original, German text of the interview: “Waschhaus”. 48 In the original, German text of the interview: “Wäschekammer”. 49 Hanna Vogel, interview by author, October 27, 2005.

Mrs. Vogel’s early life story is not uncommon, and even less uncommon is her memory of it. Many of the young people who settled in Stalinstadt in the 1950s were teenagers during the war, who “didn’t know” about the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime, but found out about them later. Many of them embraced, with more or less enthusiasm, the new string of socialist ideology that arrived to Germany along with the Soviet Red Army. Some of the older inhabitants of Stalinstadt, interviewed in 2005 and 2006, link their settling down in the first new town of the

German Democratic Republic to their earlier sympathies with National Socialism. That is, they see (today) their settling there as some kind of penitence for, or, “Wiedergutmachung”50 of, the mistakes they or their parents had made before or during the war. Others—and they form the majority—flocked to Stalinstadt when they heard that this town was in many ways privileged, that there was affordable, readily available housing for most new settlers, an abundance of relatively well-paid jobs and better living conditions in general. All these—although not always true—were compelling reasons for the many German expellees and refugees who lived under temporary conditions since the end of the war. Finally, what is also common in these accounts is the lack of a detailed (or indeed, any), description of the immediate postwar years. It is, indeed, as if Stalinstadt were the immediate and obvious outcome of the war; as if Stalinstadt were the only logical consequence of World War II.

Stalinstadt was a place that stood in stark contrast to anything the new settlers had known before they got there. It was a new town, with no old buildings, no old institutions, no church and

50 The word Wiedergutmachung was used by several interviewees. It translates as: to fix, to repair, to make up for, to compensate for something (lost).

no old inhabitants who would claim some sort of primacy or privileged status over those who arrived there later. It was a place with no history, and yet, most settlers understood that they were called upon to write history there. The first chapters of the history of Stalinstadt were written half a decade before Kurt and Hanna Vogel got there, and well before the settlement was named after

Joseph Stalin on May 7, 1953. Indeed, the birth of what was to become the first socialist town of the GDR had little to do with Stalin’s name or with socialism. In an interview, a witness of the era who lived then in Fürstenberg, the small town in the vicinity of which the Wohnstadt was built starting in 1950, remembers with a touch of nostalgia:

I remember the day when the announcement was made on the radio that a new metallurgical plant was to be built near Fürstenberg, and I remember my conversation about this with my father. My classmates ran there immediately to witness the first symbolic axe blow on August 18, 1950.51

The felling of that first tree by Fritz Selbmann, then Minister of Heavy Industry, was followed by the felling of an entire forest.52 Hans Joachim Samol, who was a high school student in

Fürstenberg, recalls the first signs of socialist “Mißwirtschaft”53 with amusement: “We had to inflate those numbers on our norm-sheet in order to make some money. And the forester was rightly afraid and said: ‘Boy, there have never been as many trees standing here as you put down on this paper!’” But nobody seemed to worry about the numbers as long as the trees kept falling

51 Dagmar Semmelmann et al., eds., Eisenhüttenstädter Lesebuch, Vol. 1. (Berlin: Edition Bodoni, 2000), 15. 52 Much of the deforestation and initial construction work was done by women. At the end of August, the Bau Union had 572 employees, of which 563 were unskilled and of whom 447 were women. By December 1950, the total number of construction workers reched 1,600, of whom at least 486 were women. See: Herbert Nicolaus et al., Einblicke. 50 Jahre EKO Stahl (Eisenhüttenstadt: EKO Stahl GmbH, 2000), 57. 53 The term is composed of the German word for “economics” and the prefix “Miß-” (-un, or, bad), and translates as bad economics, un-economics, economics went wrong, put simply: mismanagement.

and the terrain was prepared for the largest metallurgical plant of the young Democratic

Republic. Then, when the trees were all cut and the digging around the rapidly growing iron works was underway, the place with no history revealed its gruesome past: “This must have happened in 1951,” Samol recalled,

[t]he news spread like wildfire across the construction site: “we’ve found mass graves there; Russians!” We all ran there and I saw—and I still see as if it had happened today— how they set up several large sieves there; they shoveled the sand into the sieve and whatever did not fall through [the sieve] were the remains [of the buried bodies]: pieces of uniforms and bones, which all lay now buried under Remembrance Square.54

The Square of German-Soviet Friendship,55 known as Remembrance Square today, was the first monument of the Wohnstadt. Built in the very heart of Wohnkomplex I, it was finished even before the first school and the first kindergarten were standing, and when the first Wohnkomplex was still a construction site rather than a finished residential neighborhood. The construction of the square—along with the Soviet military memorial that was erected there—so early in the history of the Wohnstadt was not accidental. With no church, no theatre, no parade ground, no town centre or any other (paved) public place to gather the few thousand inhabitants of the new settlement, this square was urgently needed for rituals meant to forge the new community of socialist workers envisioned by the ideologues of the SED.56 The square was also meant to give these workers a “usable” past they could relate to without remorse, shame, or feelings of nostalgia. The Square of German-Soviet Friendship was thus a memorial erected to the present, a

54 Semmelmann, Eisenhüttenstädter Lesebuch, p. 16. 55 In German: Platz der Deutsch-Sowjetischen Freundschaft. 56 Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany).

present that was all about the production of iron and steel. But the memorial also falsified history: the four thousand bodies found in the pits near Fürstenberg did not belong to Soviet soldiers fallen during the liberation of Germany, as was pretended by the inscription on the monument; they belonged to Soviet prisoners of war, most of whom died in the Nazi “Stalag III

B” prisoner of war and labour camp built near Fürstenberg. That they were made heroes of the liberation of Germany was not accidental; in Stalin’s view, prisoners of war were traitors, and the bodies of traitors could not lie at the heart of an emerging socialist town.57

And yet, ideological considerations seem to have played a secondary role in the construction of the town. Jochen Czerny, one of the first historians to write about the Wohnstadt remembered in an interview in 1995 that

[i]nitially, it was really all about iron, and not socialism. Socialism became a declared goal only in 1952. I mean, the SED wanted socialism from the very beginning, there is no doubt about that. But that goal remained until well into the fifties tied to the idea that lasting socialism can be built only in a unified Germany. […] It was only in 1952, in this new situation in European and world politics that this turn towards self-sufficiency occurred in the GDR. […]. And, there was, indeed, a great, acute need for iron and steel, due among others to the steel boycott. This was the goal of the construction effort. That is, it was not, initially at least not, connected to a strategic social vision, not at all. That was added only later. One could say that this vision was placed on top of [the original reasons to build the plant and the town]. […]. The socialism vision was added only in 1952, following the conclusion of the second Party Conference on the Building of the Foundations of Socialism, and in 1953, when the town was declared a “first socialist town.” This change did not have any retroactive effects on the planning; the plans were

57 Kriegsgefangene in Brandenburg. STALAG III B. Fürstenberg (Oder), exhibition, Städtisches Museum Eisenhüttenstadt, November 9, 2003 – March 14, 2004.

already drawn-up. Besides the fact that the construction of the iron works was, in the end, not finished, the initial plans were not altered. The construction of the town went on as it was planned in 1951/52.58

Well, not entirely. Herbert Härtel, Stadtarchitekt (town architect) of Stalinstadt in the late

1950s and 1960s, recalled in an interview that the June 17, 1953 revolts, which affected

Stalinstadt as well, prompted the government to shift its focus away from the country’s heavy industry (including the further development of Stalinstadt), and towards the raising of living standards; Wohnkomplex number four, which was still in its initial, planning phase then, was to be erased from the plan due to the lack of funds in the central budget. The young team of architects and planners in Stalinstadt, of which Herbert Härtel was a member, was furious about the decision made in Berlin. Without the fourth Wohnkomplex, they argued, the East German socialist town project looked unfinished, even unserious. Besides, the infrastructure (sewage, gas piping, roads, etc.) of Wohnkomplex number four was already in place. Eventually, they came up with an idea that was to save them enough money to be able to continue the construction: they decided to build the Wohnkomplex with three-storey houses, instead of the planned four-storey buildings.

Although the workers of the EKS abstained (for the most part) from participating in the

June 1953 revolt, the June events impacted the EKS as well: for the next decade, further development of the Kombinat was halted. But in the mid-1960s, with the completion of the cold

58 Ruth May, Planstadt Stalinstadt. Ein Grundriß der frühen DDR – aufgesucht in Eisenhüttenstadt (Dortmund: Institut für Raumplanung der Fakultät Raumplanung, Universität Dortmund, 1999), 370-371.

rolling mill, which added more sophisticated products to the portfolio of the EKO (until then, the

EKO produced mostly raw iron), a new boom started in Eisenhüttenstadt. The boom went hand in hand with the expansion of Eisenhüttenstadt, which lasted until the mid-1980s, when, finally, the EKO’s steel mill was inaugurated. By this time, housing units were built using industrial

(prefabricated panel) technology, which, besides reducing construction time also reduced the quality of apartment units. When, in 1989, the socialist system collapsed in East Germany, and especially, after the restructuring and privatization of the EKO, Eisenhüttenstadt was no longer the attractive town it was a few decades earlier. A mass exodus was the result.59 Frustrated by the prospect of governing a ghost town, local authorities hurried to act. As the town’s economy was centered on the EKO, and since the shrinking of the Kombinat shook the very foundations of

Eisenhüttenstadt, local decision makers decided to capitalize on the memory of Stalinstadt. In the new context of a reunified Germany, the uniqueness of Eisenhüttenstadt was given new emphasis. When hundreds of billions of German Marks were spent by West German tax payers on the “reconstruction” of East Germany, the municipality ensured its share by requesting that the 1984 monumental protection of the “old” parts of the former Stalinstadt, that is, of the core built in the 1950s, be reconfirmed by the new, all-German government. The request was granted and thus the most ambitious post-unification architectural restoration project was launched during which Wohnkomplexes I to IV were completely renovated, along with the infrastructure that belonged to this part of town (roads, sewage systems, gas piping, etc).60 Gradually, the

59 The number of inhabitants peaked in 1988 with 53,048 inhabitants. By 1995 the population decreased to 47,376, by the year 2000 to 41,493, and by March 2005 to 35,634. In 2014, Eisenhüttenstadt had about 27,000 inhabitants. 60 82.000 DM were spent on average on the first 519 apartments renovated in the first stage of the reconstruction project. See Marianne Baum, “Eisenhüttenstadt in neuem Glanz. Deutschlands Grösstes Flächendenkmal wird saniert. Erster Bauabschnitt bald fertig,” Berliner Morgenpost, January 6, 1997.

former Stalin Town was turned into a vast open air museum, showcasing socialist-realist architecture which was inhabited by the people who built the town in the 1950s. The attachment of the older generations to their town grew again as the old, grey, crumbling façades were covered in bright colors, benefits and pensions were generously calculated in West German

Marks and Euros, chancellors and federal ministers visited the place and ensured locals that their hard work under the old régime would not be forgotten. The young generations, however, born before or shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, fled the place in masses. What is left today is a town that resembles a “Stalinist” theme park in a capitalist setting, with “Stalinist” architecture but also with a German touch; which is perhaps the townscape Stalin would have envisioned for

“his” socialist cities, had he had the necessary hard currency.

The former Stalinstadt was gradually turned into an East German, socialist “Heimat”61 which would live on in the memory of its inhabitants. Interviewees like Hanna Vogel, Albertine

Koschwitz, Hertha Schuster or the former town architect, Herbert Härtel, developed such a strong attachment to Eisenhüttenstadt, that they would “never even consider leaving the town.”62

Günter Fromm, the local Stadtchronist (town chronicler), as he likes calling himself, who was the director of the local Städtisches Museum for many years “until they sent a Wessi63 to take over my job,” still drives around town in his Trabant, which is to him “the only affordable car that was ever built for the common people.”64 Their nostalgia is coupled with anger, however; to this day they resent the “takeover” of the GDR by the Federal Republic, just as they did in

61 Often translated as “home(land)”, the German word Heimat has no exact English correspondent. In addition to meaning “home”, Heimat also denotes a familiar place of comfort, a place one belongs to or originates from, a place well known, along with its attached (usually positive) sentiments, but also noises, smells or touches, etc. 62 Albertine Koschwitz, interview by author, October 29, 2005. 63 A formerly West German citizen. 64 Günter Fromm, interview by author, October 20, 2005.

October 1990. Their East German, socialist Heimat was destroyed by the reunification of

Germany.65 One has the feeling that they want it all back; if not forever, then at least for a bit.

During the last decades, a series of events, exhibitions, lecture series, public discussion forums were organized in Eisenhüttenstadt on the past of the town. The Dokumentationszentrum

Alltagskultur in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Documentation Centre of Everyday

Culture of the GDR), led for many years by a Berliner curator who spent a couple of days of the week in Eisenhüttenstadt, has become a pilgrimage destination for thousands of (n)ostalgics who visit the town with the scope of remembering the good old days of “unsere Republik” (our

Republic).66 During visits to the Documentation Centre I have met local visitors who said they would explore the regular exhibitions every now and then because they showcased so many familiar products from before the Wende (the turn of 1989). The Städtisches Museum, which is located in the Fürstenberg district of Eisenhüttenstadt, too, organizes regular exhibitions on the first socialist town of the GDR. Of these I shall mention but two, both organized in the mid-

2000s under the curatorship of Axel Drieschner, a young Berliner historian who is a frequent visitor of Eisenhüttenstadt. “Church and State in the First Socialist Town of the GDR” recalled the problematic relationship between the Catholic and Lutheran churches and the builders, broadly understood, of the first socialist town of the GDR;67 “Planned Town Stalinstadt–Town,

65 “Heimat” within the landscape of heavy industry is not an East German invention; the attachment to, and nostalgia for, blast furnaces and cooling towers dominating the landscape regularly surfaces in the West of Germany. De- industrialization in the Ruhr region has recently been discussed as a loss of German “Heimat”. See: “Was ist Heimat? Eine Spurensuche in Deutschland. ‘Mein Herz hüpft’”, Der Spiegel, April 7, 2012, 60-70. 66 The institution has been in financial difficulties for many years. In 2012, the Centre was transferred temporarily to the Municipality of Eisenhüttenstadt until a new carrier is found. With the departure of founding Director Andreas Ludwig at the end of 2012, scientific research at the Dokumentationszentrum is now suspended (the exhibition rooms are still open at the Centre, however). 67 “Kirche in der »Ersten sozialistischen Stadt Deutschlands« – Religion und Politik in Fürstenberg

Construction, Art,” focused on the early history of Eisenhüttenstadt and, on a more abstract level, on the concept of the socialist town between utopia and reality.68 Upon the initiative of Dagmar

Semmelmann, an oral historian from Berlin, a so-called Geschichtswerkstatt (local history workshop) was set up in the early 1990s with the aim to collect the memories of those who participated in the building of Eisenhüttenstadt. Thousands of pages of interview-transcripts were the result, which were, in part, published in a series entitled “Eisenhüttenstädter Lesebuch” by

Edition Bodoni.69 At least three doctoral dissertations (of which one in the United States) have been written about Stalinstadt and Eisenhüttenstadt, and several master’s theses (among them the theses of Günter Fromm and Jochen Czerny, the two local historians), have been written about the town many decades ago.70 The most comprehensive and one of the more recent works on

Stalinstadt is one such doctoral dissertation completed by Ruth May in 1998 and published as a book in 2003.71 Andreas Ludwig, founder and Director of the Dokumentationszentrum

Alltagskultur in der DDR between 1993 and 2012, has, too, published an excellent book on the

(Oder)/Stalinstadt/Eisenhüttenstadt, 1945-1990,” exhibition, Städtisches Museum, Eisenhüttenstadt, August 21, 2005 - October 30, 2005. 68 “Planstadt Stalinstadt – Stadt, Bau, Kunst,” exhibition, Städtisches Museum, Eisenhüttenstadt, September 30, 2006 – January 7, 2007. 69 Dagmar Semmelmann, Gudrun Prengel and Ursula Krüger, eds., Eisenhüttenstädter Lesebuch, vols. I and II (Berlin: Edition Bodoni, 2000 and 2004). 70 Jochen Czerny, “Der Aufbau des Eisenhüttenkombinats Ost 1950/51,” Dissertation, University of Jena, 1972. Timothy Dowling, “Stalinstadt/Eisenhuttenstadt: A model for (socialist) life in the German Democratic Republic, 1950—1968,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Tulane University, 1999. Günter Fromm, “Die Planung, der Aufbau und die Entwicklung Stalinstadts (Eisenhüttenstadts) in den Jahren 1950 bis 1955,” Diplomarbeit, Humboldt University, Berlin. Frank Howest, “Eisenhüttenstadt—Auf- und Umbau einer geplanten Stadt,” Dissertation, Ruhr- Universität, Bochum, 2006. 71 Ruth May, Planstadt Stalinstadt: Ein Grundriß der frühen DDR – aufgesucht in Eisenhüttenstadt (Dortmund: Institut für Raumplanung, Universität Dortmund, 1999).

transformation, over decades, of Eisenhüttenstadt.72 The preoccupation of (East) German writers not to allow the memory of Stalin Town fall into oblivion resulted in a series of works on life in

Stalinstadt like the trilogy of Thilo Köhler on “Die Stalin Werke,”73 “Die Stalinstadt,”74 and “Die

Stalinallee”75 (the latter touches upon Stalinstadt only marginally; it is devoted to the former

Stalinallee in Berlin). These works are proudly exhibited and sold in the local Tourism Office on

Lindenallee, or, on Leninallee, as some inhabitants still refer to Stalinstadt’s main artery, the

“Magistrale.”

“We met, we liked each other, and we got married”

(they divorced six years later)

Erzsébet Ágoston’s youth, as she remembers it, is closely linked to the history of

Sztálinváros: when the town was blooming, life was good; downturns in the life of the town were paralleled by downturns in her own life. Erzsébet arrived to Sztálinváros at the beginning of

1951 when she was twenty-two years old. She was one among those thousands of single women and men who went there in search of a better life. Ideology played no role in her decision; she was looking for employment and for immediately available accommodation as she was set to leave the parental home in Szentes.76 She went to Sztálinváros77 by herself, upon her own

72 Andreas Ludwig, Eisenhüttenstadt. Wandel einer industriellen Gründungsstadt (Potsdam: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2000). 73 Tilo Köhler, Lust am Schaffen - Freude am Leben: Die Stalinwerke (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1999). 74 Tilo Köhler, Kohle zu Eisen - Eisen zu Brot: Die Stalinstadt (Berlin: Transit Buchverlag, 1994). 75 Tilo Köhler, Unser die Straße - Unser der Sieg: Die Stalinallee (Berlin: Transit Buchverlag, 1993). 76 A town in Southeastern Hungary.

initiative; it was through informal channels, rather than through a recruitment bureau or campaign, that she had heard about the construction of a new town south of Budapest. Her aunt had already been living in the barracks town since the summer of 1950, and thus, Erzsébet had soon found a job with her aunt’s brigade of construction workers.

In the beginning, conditions were, to say the least, precarious. Except for a pair of rubber boots, which were distributed by the management of the site, workers had no gear to protect them against the cold or rain, while the sea of mud that covered the site during the better part of the year quickly wore down the few pieces of clothing which the new settlers had brought with them. The workers lived in barracks, and so did Erzsébet: twenty-four women were crowded in a room that barely accommodated twelve iron bunk beds. “Rationalization” was taken seriously: people lived, worked and slept in shifts.

Erzsébet lived in that worker’s dormitory until March 16th, 1952, when she got married to her co-worker, Lajos. On the very day of their wedding, the newly-weds “got” an apartment, which they shared with two other parties. As the apartment had two rooms and the other two couples were assigned a room each, Erzsébet and Lajos settled in the kitchen. One year later, in

March 1953, their housing arrangement was deemed worthy of yet another upgrade: when they moved to another communal apartment in Kossuth Lajos street, they were allowed to pick a

77 The worker settlement was named Sztálinváros a few months after her arrival, on November 7, 1951.

room, rather than being confined to living in the kitchen. Eventually, in 1954, they were allocated an apartment of their own.78

Getting a private apartment was the life-goal of most of those who came to

Sztálinváros.79 As chances of obtaining one were much improved if the applicant had family, marriages were quite frequent among workplace acquaintances. Erzsébet, too, had met her husband in Sztálinváros: “We met, we liked each other, and we got married,” she remembers, but then she hurries to add that “[o]ur marriage wasn’t going well, and, in 1958, we divorced.” Her case was all too common; if marriages were frequent in Sztálinváros in the early 1950s, so were divorces in the second half of the decade. By 1956, for instance, the local court reported the legal separation of 30 to 40 couples per month, which amounts to about 360 to 480 divorces per year.80 Only 255 marriages were concluded in that period.81 The following year, the divorce rate was even higher as numerous marriages were affected, in a way or another, by the October 1956 revolution. From a town with the highest marriage rate per capita in the early 1950s, Sztálinváros has quickly turned into a town of the divorced.82

A number of other, typically urban social phenomena plagued the new town as well. As

Rózsika, one of Erzsébet’s friends and co-residents in a local retirement home remembers,

78 Erzsébet Ágoston Lajosné, interview conducted by author, June 8, 2008. 79 Apartments were private in the sense that they were not shared with other parties. Ownership of the apartment remained in the vast majority of cases with the state, while tenants paid rent for them. Only later, and especially after 1989, did it become possible to buy and own these apartments. 80 Sándor Horváth, “Abortusz és válás a szocialista ‘mintavárosban’”, in A hatvanas évek, eds. Rainer M. János et al. (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2003), p. 197. 81 “Miért sok a válás?”, SZH, September 6, 1957. 82 Miklós Miskolczi, Város lesz, csakazértis… (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Kiadó, 1980), 253. Quoted in Horváth, “Abortusz és válás”,194.

[i]n the beginning, I didn’t dare to tell my mother where we moved to. You see, Sztálinváros had a very bad reputation. It was rumored that the place was filled with criminals, convicts released and settled here to build the town. More importantly, it was said that they closed down the brothels in Budapest and that all the prostitutes were brought here. The town had a terrible reputation. I didn’t dare to tell my mother. Then, when I eventually told her, she didn’t tell our neighbors and friends back at home. It was a shame for my parents.83

Rózsika arrived to Sztálinváros in 1956, that is, five years after Erzsébet set foot in the first socialist town of Hungary. Her recollection of the conditions she met upon her arrival suggests that little had changed since 1951: “We lived in great poverty. We had little money, people earned too little to survive on their legal income alone. Nobody was paid well, regardless of whether we speak of workers or engineers. Work was hard and we earned minimum wages.”

Rózsika’s first home was in a new housing block which, upon its completion, was transformed into a dormitory for workers. The apartments consisted of two to three rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. In each room, including the kitchen, a separate family was accommodated. When asked whether such crowding led to conflicts among the numerous tenants of their apartment,

Rózsika countered with enthusiasm:

Oh, no, quite the opposite was the case! We were a good community, we became friends very quickly. I would say that this closeness also helped us live through those very hard times when there was nothing in the stores. We helped each other whenever and

83 Rózsika (last name unknown), interview by the author, June 7, 2008.

wherever we could. We were all friends and we would invite over other friends and celebrate together, or we would go together to parades, like on May 1st.84

In 1958, Rózsika and her husband got a private apartment with two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, and with central heating coming directly from the ironworks. It is at this point in her life story that the hard times suddenly end. Ironically, the fulfillment of Rózsika’s dream of her own home occurred at a time when the growth of Sztálinváros was halted as a result of a policy shift away from heavy industrialization: the “heroic” founding era in the history of Sztálinváros had come to an end as early as in 1953-54, and with it ended also the élan of the founders. When the Iron Works began—under the guise of “rationalization”—to send a number of workers into early retirement, disillusionment came over those who had built the town. Rózsika managed to get an apartment for her family, but after that, the town was never the same as before.

János Holhos came to Sztálinváros in 1953 from Kokad, in northeastern Hungary.

Although he was married, he chose to come alone as his family lived comfortably back at home, in their own house with a garden. In the first three years he lived in a dormitory for single men.

He was a bricklayer, and as he seemed better educated than his peers, he was soon made his brigade’s diary keeper.85 When, in early 1956, he was promised an apartment, he brought his wife to Sztálinváros, and, within a few months, he was the first worker of his construction company to move into a new flat. “Back then, the trade union was flourishing, and so was the party,” he remembers with nostalgia. He collected all the possible honors and benefits with his

84 Ibid. 85 For a discussion of brigade diaries, see Chapter Three.

brigade, and his hard work was honored with privileges to which only the very best were entitled. “They sent me twice to Hajdúszoboszló,86 for two weeks each time. And it was all for free! Today I would barely be able to pay the travel expenses, one-way.”

János and his friends lived well in Sztálinváros. They were frequent customers at Kohász

(The Metallurgist), the best-known workers’ pub in town, but, as he hurries to emphasize, only after they did their job for the day. They did much voluntary work, and they did it voluntarily indeed, because they knew that they thus served their community. When, well after his retirement, his former brigade of bricklayers organized a reunion, they were all proud to celebrate the event in a rural cottage they themselves had built as voluntary work decades earlier for the workers of their construction company.

As a leader of the bricklayers of Sztálinváros, János was often invited to meetings with delegations of workers or politicians, from both Hungary and abroad. He had met János Kádár, who was First Secretary after November 1956, he missed Yuri Gagarin’s visit, but he met Nikita

Khrushchev:

They took [Khrushchev] to that fish restaurant for lunch. One of my friends from the foundry was there, too. He convinced the cook to add some extra hot pepper to Khrushchev’s bowl of fish soup. When he began to eat it, his head turned red and he started sweating heavily. He didn’t say a word! We were all amused.87

86 A spa town in Eastern Hungary. 87 János Holhos, interview by the author, June 9, 2008.

If János’s friends’ mischief went unnoticed by the organizers of the visit, others did not shy away from committing outright acts of sabotage whenever other channels of protest were barred. Such acts were, so it seems, condemned by the majority of workers, and that for a good reason. As

Erzsébet remembers,

[t]here were many dubious elements here in the beginning. For instance, that certain János Kovács, who came here to disrupt our work. He got a job with Kitchen No. 3, where the Fészek Club88 used to be. I know for sure that he was a member of the Gestapo before. So he came here to sabotage our work. One day there was a great poisoning. It took several weeks for us thousands of workers to get well again. Eventually, they came from the public prosecution department or from whatever their name was… yes, from the ÁVO,89 and they took him to Budapest. We never heard of him again. Of course, we all tried to find out, asked our friends, our colleagues, but we never heard a thing of him after that. There was another one as well, later. This one put poison into our noodle dish. There were no fatalities, but it was quite disruptive. Everybody struggled with diarrhea. Imagine all the workers on the construction site or in the foundries…90

88 “Nest Club”, a country-wide network of clubs dedicated to young party activists. 89 Államvédelmi Osztály (Department of State Security)—department of the Ministry of the Interior founded in 1946. In 1949, it was turned into an independent agency subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers under the name of Államvédelmi Hatóság or ÁVH (Authority of State Security). The recollection of the pre-1949 acronym was quite frequent among interviewees. 90 Erzsébet Ágoston Lajosné, interview by the author June 8, 2008. It is interesting that Mrs. Ágoston remembered, almost 60 years later, this story almost exactly as it was presented in the press of the time: the enemy, as the official investigation has shown, smuggled “poison and bacteria” into the pasta of workers, leaving, according to the official report, 100 workers sick. One week later, 220 workers got sick, again from pasta. The official investigation has allegedly shown that chief cook of Kitchen No. 1, Gyula Kovács, “a mean fascist and a known criminal”, was being wanted for a long time for his “criminal deeds ordered by Tito and by the Americans.” Another criminal named Balázs, who was long wanted by police for 33 break-ins, “was hiding under a cover name in the kitchen.” In its tireless effort to hurt the interest of workers, the enemy had, so went the argument, tried to spread the rumour that over 20 workers were left dead by the food posioning. But that was not true, added the official report; in fact, the action of the saboteurs “hit back as it determined workers to continue their socialist construction work with even more élan.” See: “A gyomormérgezéseket fasiszta kártevők idézték elő,” DVÉ, May 15, 1951. Was the intentional poisoning real? In an article published online in 2001, Hungarian journalist Gábor Murányi suggest that it was not: while it seems that the pasta was indeed contaminated with bacteria, the low quality of food was most likely due to the general lack of hygiene at the construction site. See Gábor Murányi, “Helyszíni zsemle”, November 8, 2001 (accessed November 20, 2014), http://regi.dunaujvaros.com/tallozo/erdekesseg/011108_helyszini.htm.

The few people living in today’s town of Dunaújváros since the 1950s remember their youth in a way that is very similar to the memory of Stalinstadt in Germany. Yes, it was hard, and yes, that ideology and that kind of organization of society were foreign and imposed upon the people. And yet, life was better then, people were happier and friendlier, friendships and communities were stronger. With support from their trade unions, workers could travel to all the corners of the country, there were generous benefits like free clothing or food and even cash, brigade members were like family to one another. The nostalgia of those times seems to eclipse the bad memories.

We planted flowers, we repaired fences, we did whatever was necessary. We built the amusement park, we planted trees. And, on May 1st, there was always money for beer and virsli.91 I am sad that the brigade movement was dissolved. We always helped each other, we made family excursions, we were like brothers and sisters. In those times, nobody was greedy. Everybody waited patiently for their promotion, it wasn’t like today… Back then, people didn’t litter the streets, our social work92 was organized, directed from above, the town looked in such way that people really enjoyed walking in the streets. Today this is no longer so. Also, people have changed, as most of us first settlers are already dead. There are eight to ten death announcements in the newspapers, every day. The old people are dying… You know when it was nice to live here? In the 1950s, from 1953 to, let’s say, 1968. It was clean, full of flowers, parks, roses. Today one sees only dirt everywhere.93

91 Virsli stands for (Wiener) sausage in Hungarian. 92 Volunteer work or community work. 93 Erzsébet Ágoston Lajosné, interview by the author, June 8, 2008.

Under the new conditions of capitalism, the first generations of settlers feel forgotten by the state to which they dedicated most of their life, by the state which they had served “as children would serve their parents.”94 And yet, the municipality of Dunaújváros is doing its best to honor its first inhabitants and to save the memory of the first socialist town for posterity. The local Workers’ House of Culture houses weekly gatherings or clubs for the elderly (cards, chess, social dance, etc.), who use these opportunities to evoke their memories of the golden age of

Sztálinváros. The local museum has a permanent exhibit which dedicates a relatively large section to the Hungarian Stalin Town and its achievements; the period is represented through numerous plans and photographs of housing units and factories and pictures of workers and their children walking the streets of the new town. As in the case of Eisenhüttenstadt, the core of the town built in the 1950s was placed under monumental protection, and thus, Hungary’s largest architectural complex built in the socialist realist style was saved from the rage of capitalist developers. The so-called Microregional Office for European Union and Tourism Affairs set up by the town and by the local Chamber of Trade and Commerce in order to promote Dunaújváros has produced a number of brochures on the socialist realist architectural landmarks of the town, including a map of a trail through the “old” core, featuring a detailed description of each building, its construction date and the name of its architect. The same information has been posted onto the walls of these buildings so unaware tourists, whom the project seeks to address in the first place, recognize their architectural value. The memory of Sztálinváros is kept alive also through the vast number of other publications that have been printed during the past few decades. The History Club (Történeti Klub) founded for this purpose in 1997 has compiled texts

94 Ibid.

and images from the era in a volume entitled “A town is born.”95 Since the year 2000 (the 50th anniversary of Sztálinváros), the municipality published a number of monographs on the cultural history of the town, including a volume dedicated to the history of the Béla Bartók Theatre built in 1953, and another one reviewing the rich musical life of Dunaújváros from the Fifties to this day.96 As a centre of socialist-realist (and not only) art, Sztálinváros, and later, Dunaújváros, attracted many summer schools and art workshops for both workers and artists, who left behind a rich collection of paintings and sculptures, which are displayed today in various local public areas.97

In today’s official discourse, Sztálinváros is not portrayed as a primarily political- ideological or economic planning project of the Stalin era, but rather as a “Gesamtkunstwerk,” in which the project’s politics are part of a much wider, cultural construction. The aesthetics of the art and architecture of Sztálinváros are raised above the politics of the time, which are, to the extent that this is possible, missing from official discourse. In an English language brochure of the Tourism Office dedicated to foreign visitors, Dunaújváros is described as a “rich, many-sided city,” not too different from other towns in the country:

[a]lthough its architectural character may not be compared to the historical towns, as a town being designed in the 1950s it represents values enriching Hungary. The oldest

95 Erzsébet Kozma, ed., “Város születik”. Korabeli írások és grafikák (Dunaújváros: Dunaújvárosi Történeti Klub, 2000). 96 Gergely Kurucz et al., “…hogy itt is legyen muzsika.” Fejezetek Dunaújváros zenei életéből (Dunaújváros: Dunaújvárosi Téka, 2002). András Bóda and Mária Knódel, eds., Színházi csodák (Dunaújváros: Dunaújvárosi Téka, 2003). Márta Matussné Lendvai et al., eds., Dunapentele. Sztálinváros. Dunaújváros Fényképekben (Dunaújváros: Meritum Text Kiadó, 2005). Márta Matussné Lendvai. Sztálinvárosi nők (Dunaújváros: Intercisa Múzeum, 2005). 97 The most prominent such public display of art is situated along the bank of the Danube where, since 1974, an ever growing number of giant steel sculptures can be seen. In 2007, a rich catalogue including a map indicating the location of these sculptures was published: Dunaújvárosi Nemzetközi Acélszobrász Alkotótelep, 1974-2000. (Dunaújváros, 2007).

quarters have been built in the “socialist realistic” [sic] style, which expresses the mood of the period in the same way as the former historical trends did.98

The “normalization” of Sztálinváros has been a preoccupation of local officials ever since the creation of Dunaújváros in 1961. The eleven years-long history of Sztálinváros was since absorbed into a history that goes back in time well beyond the 1950s, and indeed, much beyond the foundation of the village of Dunapentele, near which Sztálinváros was built. The discovery of the ruins of the Roman settlement of Intercisa in the immediate vicinity of Sztálinváros has lent to New-Town-upon-the-Danube a millennial history of which the Stalin Town era is but a very brief intermezzo. Since one of the neighborhoods of Dunaújváros has been named “Római városrész” (Roman quarter) in the 1970s, Intercisa is as prominent a feature of Dunaújváros as is the “Stalinist” core built in the 1950s. In the local history museum, which is called, unsurprisingly, Intercisa Múzeum, 34 of the 58 display cabinets of the permanent exhibition show artifacts of the Intercisa era. Twelve display cabinets are dedicated to the relatively short

Stalin Town period. The effort to connect the history of Intercisa with that of Dunapentele,

Sztálinváros and Dunaújváros, has received generous support from the Hungarian governments of the past five decades, too. Already in 1979, the catalogue of the permanent exhibit proudly announced that “through the archaeological findings of the past fifteen years, Intercisa is the best known Roman settlement in Pannonia.”99 The title of that catalogue reflects the preoccupation to

98 Dunaújváros in Brief, leaflet in English (Dunaújváros: Kistérségi Európai Uniós és Idegenforgalmi Kht., undated). 99 In the original text of the catalogue: “…durch die Fundesbergungen der letzten fünfzehn Jahre ist Intercisa die am besten bekannte römische Niederlassung in Pannonien.” “Die Geschichte von Dunaújváros von der Vorzeit an bis

transform the planned town of the 1950s into a “grown” city of the past two millennia.

Translated into English it reads: “The History of Dunaújváros from the Pre-Historic Age to This

Day.”100

Conclusion

The magnitude of change in the built environment during the 1950s had a direct impact on the memory of the Stalin Town in Germany and in Hungary. In both Eisenhüttenstadt and in

Dunaújváros, the politics of the era play a secondary role in the memory of Stalin Town;

Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros are remembered especially as sites of everyday life, as places in which people’s lives were tightly linked to the life of the new town.

In both Dunaújváros and Eisenhüttenstadt, the Stalin Town (that is, the founding era) is remembered with a touch of nostalgia, especially by the older generations. In both cases, the construction of a new town is widely regarded as part of the post-World War Two

(re)construction of the country and has therefore earned a positive connotation among today’s locals. The communities that were formed in that era under the pressure of hardship are remembered in the most positive light, obscuring the many conflicts that have no doubt been as characteristic as has harmony among inhabitants. Rituals like social work (volunteer work,

Heute,” in Dunaújváros története az őskortól napjainking. Vezető az Intercisa Múzeum állandó kiállításában (Dunaújváros: Intercisa Múzeum, 1979), 47. 100 Ibid.

community work) or the participation at parades are voided of their political significance and are remembered today as primarily community-building social events.

This is where the similarity between the memory of the Hungarian and the German Stalin

Town seems to end. The experiences of the more recent past have, too, left a strong imprint on how the 1950s are remembered. In Eisenhüttenstadt, the sudden régime change of 1989 and the subsequent reunification of Germany have led to the decline of the town: its population dropped dramatically as more and more inhabitants were forced to look for employment elsewhere. In their disappointment with the new political and economic setup of their country, those who remained, and particularly the older generations, feel frustrated and disenfranchised. Their geographic and social isolation, which is accentuated by the relatively poor infrastructure linking

Eisenhüttenstadt to the core of the country and to German society in general, only adds to their frustration.

The privatization, restructuring and modernization of the Eisenhüttenkombinat, which also included the demolition of parts of the EKO and its original blast furnaces, has left Iron-

Foundry-Town with a steel combine that is no longer dominating the economic landscape of the town.101 Through the demolition of an entire Wohnkomplex (plus a number of individual buildings in other Wohnkomplexes), today’s town of Eisenhüttenstadt is being reduced close to the size of the Stalin Town of the 1950s.102 The massive restoration work done in the core of the

101 Today, the EKO employs around 2500 persons (10 % of the population). Before the regime change in 1989 it had 16,000 employees (almost a third of the population). 102 If one does not consider the former Fürstenberg and the neighboring settlements of Schönfließ and Diehlo, which were incorporated into the administrative territory of Eisenhüttenstadt. These are, however, spatially detached from the core of Eisenhüttenstadt through the Oder-Spree Canal (Fürstenberg) and through the Diehloer Straße (Schönfließ, Diehlo).

town (that is, in the former Stalinstadt), turned Eisenhüttenstadt into a socialist/industrial theme park dedicated especially to visitors. The present of the town makes sense only in relation to its past; Iron-Foundry-Town is becoming an anachronism.

In Hungary, where the regime change was much longer and gradual, disillusionment and nostalgia is, too, prominent among the first settlers of Dunaújváros, but the general mood is somewhat different from the mood in Eisenhüttenstadt. While the youngest German town has, paradoxically, become one among the oldest in terms of average population age, Dunaújváros remained a relatively young town through the continuous arrival, during the 1990s, of people intent on studying or living in one of the most dynamic regional towns of Hungary. Rather than turning into a time capsule, Sztálinváros is today successfully integrated into Dunaújváros, of which the “first socialist town” of the 1950s is but a relatively small district. The founding era of the 1950s is, too, integrated into a much longer history dating back to the ancient Roman settlement of Intercisa. From a planned town in the 1950s, Dunaújváros has thus become an organically “grown” town (nőtt város). One can therefore argue that the ambitious Hungarian planning project of the 1950s was successful. That the town has not grown following the blueprints of the 1950s is unimportant; after all, the initial plans were abandoned soon after the founding of the town. The merit of Dunaújváros is to have developed further in spite of the abandonment of the policies that led to its founding in 1950.

The memory of the two former Stalin Towns discussed here presents many similarities and differences. To be sure, this memory—private, public and official—has undergone many changes over time as the ever-changing present and the prospects for the future made a reevaluation of the past necessary. The next chapters, which explore the social history of these

towns through the various records of the Stalin Town-era—the press, archival documents, photographs, etc.—will reveal that these differences are rooted in the initially different understanding, adaptation and, ultimately, construction of the Stalin Town in Eastern Germany and in Hungary.

Chapter Two

The Construction and Transformation of Public Space in the Socialist Town

The spatial organization of society is of key importance to political ideology. It is in space that social exchange occurs, and it is through space that social change can be effected. Put differently, the alteration of social relations is closely and necessarily linked to alterations made to the space in which those relations are played out. Social change thus means spatial change; social planning becomes at once spatial planning. The success of a political idea, the success of a strategy aimed at shaping social relations must therefore be measured by its ability to alter, destroy or to create spaces. The focus of political planners goes beyond “real,” visible space, however. Signs, gestures, habits or language, broadly understood, are among the most contested targets, and at once tools, of ideology. When one sets out to explore the social history of places marked by ideology as strongly as Eastern Europe during the 1950s, it is, first and foremost, the conceptual spaces created by it that must be analyzed.

I owe much of this line of thought to the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre (who in turn owes much of it to Karl Marx). In his seminal work on “The Production of Space,” Lefebvre argues that the shift from one “mode of production” to another must entail the production of a new space.103 A higher mode of production reorganizes social relations, which in turn produce new “representations of space” and “representational spaces,” to reflect and to serve the purposes

103 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 46.

of the ideology behind that mode of production. In a discussion of the modes of production that humanity has ever known, Lefebvre devotes ample focus to socialism “as it really existed” in the

Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe during the 20th century. To the question whether socialism has or has not produced a space of its own, Lefebvre answers with a categorical no: he calls state-socialism a “failed transition” and points out that the spatial construction of socialism has never really taken place because socialism has not produced any considerable architectural innovation.104 The means of construction of a socialist space were not different from those of capitalism; moreover, socialism was in permanent competition with capitalism and was therefore permanently tied to, and even legitimized and conditioned by, capitalism. Yet more than two decades after the demise of socialism in Eastern Europe one cannot but admit that there must have existed a distinct space of state socialism. As space becomes—according to Lefebvre— increasingly uniform and modeled after capitalism’s spaces, there remains something distinct about the spatial setup of the societies of Eastern Europe.

The distinction is best sensible today through absences. Most prominent among them is the absence of a certain measure of normalcy. Travelers to Eastern Europe will notice unusually high levels of consumption; a chaotic social setup in ad-hoc, rapid change; an ingrained reaction against all forms of organization resulting in chaotic politics and governmental policies.

Generalized corruption and growing piety, hi-tech and illiteracy, the manual plough and the IPad coexist here in conflict while unconditional acceptance of this situation as well as violent revolt against it are normal features of society. If Lefebvre was right when arguing that state socialism was a failed transition towards what he called a “higher mode of production,” namely

104 Ibid, 53-59.

communism, then it must be true that Eastern Europe is undergoing such a (failed) transition again. Indeed, throughout its modern history, Eastern Europe has continually been

“transitioning.” Therefore, the perhaps most important single distinction about Eastern Europe is perpetual social experimentation, or, as Lefebvre would probably put it, permanent (failed) transition.

It is in this context that the Eastern European social(ist) experiment of the 1950s should be considered. Continuing the tradition of permanent social transformation the engineers of socialism envisioned, once again, a reorganization of social space, but this time on a scale that has not been seen before in this part of Europe. The reversal of established social processes and norms was to be “total”: nothing less than turning around the social ladder, turning inside-out the existing social fabric with its traditions, habits, moral values or practices was on the agenda of those who saw themselves as modernizers in the vein of Marx and Lenin. The society they envisioned was essentially urban; its context, however, was not. Although socialist urban space was planned in its minutest detail, it was at once stripped of its urban content. The socialist town was to emerge from an all-encompassing spatial plan, not through social(ist) spatial practice.

Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros were declared towns when they consisted of a handful factories and a few housing units and when they had virtually no completed communal institutions like “houses of culture,” hospitals or even a proper town hall. Pubs, cinemas or theatres, parks and squares, shops and markets, all essential features of the urbs, were added mostly later; they, and their usage, became normality only after the demise of the Stalin Town.

Thus, ironically, Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros took on essential urban features only after the demise of the era and régime that constructed them. That they did so is mainly due to the

loosening of the grip on social space exercised by the state, and indirectly, to the gradual abandonment of the principles which stood at the core of the socialist town project.

The prime spatial characteristic of the socialist model town was its insularity, not its architecture. Just as the socialist revolution was to spread from the Soviet Union to the rest of the world, the socialist model town was to spread, on a different scale, to the rest of the country.

Visits to Stalinstadt or to Sztálinváros never went unnoticed; whether it was through the radio or through party meetings at the workplace, the news of visitors from outside crossing the threshold of the socialist town always made it into the awareness of the public. Conversely, whenever inhabitants of Stalinstadt or of Sztálinváros traveled to the country, press reports would emphasize the quasi-missionary character of their visit. Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros were at once insular micro-worlds and models to be copied. But inside and outside never had the chance to become one; their spatial separation was as important to socialist ideology as was their rhetorical unification in a distant future.

Spatial seclusion has thus helped the construction of a microcosm with distinct social features. Such separation also undermined the effort, however. To an Eastern European population trained to invent strategies to beat the system, the many visible and invisible barriers between inside and outside meant the opening of new, unconventional gateways. Borders were there to be crossed, not to separate. In times of economic hardship—and the 1950s were such times from the beginning through the end—inhabitants of Sztálinváros and Stalinstadt left their socialist town regularly to do their shopping elsewhere. They traveled to Budapest (70 km) and to Berlin (120 km) to buy shoes, clothing, furniture, and even food. The more “reactionary” returned to their villages, where agricultural produce was easier to get than in the local grocery

store. Helping family living on farms in the countryside was as common as traveling to the capital to watch a good movie or a theatre play. Such interaction between inside and outside played an important role in the shaping of social life while, over time, living inside and outside the socialist town (and system) took on a mental dimension as well: it was not long before inhabitants learnt to speak and to decipher doublespeak.

Official politics of space were frequently undermined in one way or another; sometimes they were even put to the use of old-type “bourgeois” thinking. In 1955, the Stalinstadt

Christmas fair was organized on the Square of German-Soviet Friendship, just in front of the memorial honoring soldiers who had allegedly given their lives for a world without religion. The news about the Christmas fair was carried in Kulturspiegel (Cultural Mirror), the cultural news and events publication for Stalinstadt, under a title written in the old, so-called Gothic script. In a socialist town where church and religion were taboo, this should be read as more than just a hint at the reactionary stance of certain officials or decision makers.

Christmas fair in Stalinstadt

In Stalinstadt, the Christmas fair is removed from the present (or brought back into it?), through the use of the old, “Gothic” script: an advertisement for the 1955 Christmas fair to be opened on the Square of German-Soviet Friendship in Stalinstadt.

Kulturspiegel, December 1955, p. 4.

Illustration 1. The old, so-called “Gothic” and the new German script in an advertisement.

Wetzlar – and Wetzlar

A Stalinstadt traveler’s report about the “slums” (Elendsquartiere) in what used to be an “old Kulturstadt”, found today in West Germany. Here, Wetzlar denotes a glorious past, while Wetzlar symbolizes the shameful present (of Western Germany).

NT, 06.02.1955.

Illustration 2. The old and the new script is also used to hint at different eras and politics in East and West Germany.

Outright sabotage of official politics of public space was common occurrence in Stalin

Town. The effort of planners to create clear, transparent public spaces through the introduction of town-wide public lighting was, for instance, systematically undermined by inhabitants who broke or stole light bulbs from lamp posts. Those living a “counter-life”—including drunkards, burglars, prostitutes, but also couples on a romantic evening stroll—simply refused the control made possible by intense artificial lighting. Light, especially in its bright, dazzling, fluorescent, versions was regarded a symbol of the new civilization; “darkness” (including low-intensity, warm light), was cozy and therefore reactionary. Light and darkness, purity and contamination

were dichotomies used to represent new and old in the process of modeling new spaces. The bright fake marble floors and walls cut in right angles—new canteens, restaurants and

“supermarkets” designed for workers were typically built of these—were to gradually replace the habitual dark-plastered brick walls or round arches of old, bourgeois constructions. But no matter how light and bright the colours of the new era were, they would soon converge in various shades of grey as carelessness and pollution transformed the most pompous of public places into ruins.105

The political and social transformation of the 1950s also caused an acoustic shift in the perception of public spaces. The scarcity of construction materials and textiles coupled with a generalized shortage—Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros were no exception in this regard—produced acoustic experiences that were new to most inhabitants. In canteens and in restaurants, the chattering of patrons was surpassed only by the echo of rattling aluminium-dishes and cutlery; fake marble floors, missing carpets and bare walls enhanced the experience. Deafening noise caused by gargantuan machines at the workplace, the murmur of heavy vehicles and people roaming the streets, the sound of factory sirens, radio-broadcasts flooding the air through giant funnel-shaped speakers mounted on telephone masts, and finally, columns of workers marching in and out of factory gates—all these gave a new, mechanical rhythm to public places. The smell

105 There exists a growing body of literature on the (industrial) ruins of socialism. While such works mostly deal with ruins that are the products of abandonment after the regime change of 1989, Thomas Lahusen looks at the ruins of socialism as immediate products of socialism for socialism. In an essay on the ruins of socialism, Lahusen argues that “the building of socialism, in its concrete and metaphorical sense, was in a state of constant decay—in ruins— from the very beginning” [my emphasis]. See. Thomas Lahusen, “Decay or Endurance? The Ruins of Socialism,” Slavic Review 65, no. 4 (Winter 2006). While the “production of ruins” under socialism seems to be still an underresearched topic, economists have dealt with the phenomenon several decades ago. See for instance the work of János Kornai on the “shortage economies” of Eastern Europe (or, on economic “ruins” produced by socialism for socialism): János Kornai, The Socialist System. The Political Economy of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

and touch of socialism was, too, new to the inhabitants of Stalin Town. The stench caused by inexistent or malfunctioning communal services, the smell of fresh mortar and paint went moldy, the heavy smell of grease and coal hanging in the air at the workplace, the putrid stink of vegetables on sale at the grocery store, the sweet odour of a neighbour’s (often imagined) copious dinner filling the stairwell, the smell of an orange snatched at a worker collective’s reunion or the familiar smells of ginger-bread, mulled wine or fried meat experienced in the new, socialist-town context—these were but a few of the olfactory pleasures and displeasures inhabitants of the Stalin Town had to put up with.

If a great deal of the archaeology of Stalin Town is well-preserved in the former

Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros, little is visible or sensible today of the “softer” content of the socialist town of the 1950s. The eyewitness accounts presented in the first chapter are testimonies on the present of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros; they do not bear witness to the past

“as it really happened”106 (which is, of course, just another approximation). Our investigation into the social spaces of the 1950s must therefore rest on an exploration of documentary sources from the Stalin Town era: official documents, newspapers, private correspondence, diaries and eyewitness accounts recorded in that era. Of these contemporary sources, the local press will be accorded a special, pivotal role: while archival documents like town council meeting minutes, trade union event summaries or exchanges between central and local party or state bodies may give us an insight into institutional histories—after all, such documents were created, organized and selected for archival preservation by institutions—, they do not usually allow us to draw the conclusions and generalizations necessary for a better understanding of everyday life. At any

106 Translation of Leopold von Ranke’s famous dictum, “wie es eigentlich gewesen.”

rate, the bias of institutional records may obscure, rather than reveal, experiences lived by the citizens of these two new, socialist towns. The local press, if analysed carefully, may provide us with just such everyday life stories and social histories; more importantly, a throrough review of the local press will help us understand the processes of identity-formation in an environment in which past experiences and identities were to be left behind by the new settlers. Writing on the usefulness of the local daily in the exploration of the social history of Stalin Town, Sándor

Horváth, author of a dissertation and numerous other publications on Sztálinváros argues:

Local identity is to a large degree influenced by what is being published by the local press about different urban spaces. In spite of its being thoroughly controlled, Sztálinvárosi Hírlap played a determining role in what the inhabitants of Sztálinváros thought of the place they lived in, of the neighbouring or more distant districts and their inhabitants, or what kinds of expectations they may have vis-à-vis their neighbours or foreigners. The mental maps [thus created] contributed to their seeing the town as a system, to their understanding of what to expect from a stranger encountered in a given space.107

A classified ad or a weekly cultural programme published in a local newspaper may tell us more about social life within these communities, than a number of reports of the secret police or of the local party department for culture; editorials or readers’ letters to the editor—regardless of whether they were “genuine” or invented by the local party bureau—will reveal more about the

107 Translation and emphasis by the author. Sándor Horváth, A Kapu és a határ: mindennapi Sztálinváros (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézete, 2004), 35. See also: Frank Seibel and Zorana Starović, “Und zwischen den Orten ein Vakuum. Zur Konstruktion von Raum in den regionalen Tageszeitungen,” in Region: Heimaten der individualisierten Gesellschaft, eds. Heinz Schilling and Beatrice Ploch (Frankfurt am Main: Institut für Kulturanthropologie und Europäische Ethnologie, 1995).

thematization of public discourse than many “plans” which were duly selected for preservation in the archives (forget about the fact that under state socialism, “plans” were, for the most part, almost instantly overwritten by ever newer “plans,” which were likely even more detached from reality, than previous ones). My reliance on the local press of the era thus constitutes a statement for the inclusion of admittedly problematic, though very useful, primary sources like the daily press in the exploration of everyday life under state socialism, and against the archive fetish that has been dominating the historical profession over the past two centuries.

In the Beginning There Were “The Principles”: The Theory and Practice of the

Construction of Public Space in Stalinstadt

Initially, the camp around the future EKO looked like any other pioneer-colony: makeshift barracks planted in seeming disorder, dusty roads which turned into rivers of mud after the lightest rain, tools, construction materials and garbage lying around everywhere; sparse lighting transformed an outing after nightfall into a dangerous adventure; at the end of their shifts, workers in dirty uniforms roamed the site in search of company, which they most often found around the shop-barracks where, in the absence of much else, the most popular merchandise was alcohol. Life was tough in the worker colony of the Eisenhüttenkombinat; only the occasional party banner pitched in strategic, well-visible locations reminded one of the noble enterprise that was being pursued there.108

108 “If someone visited, in September 1950, the place where the new ironworks were to be built, he would have imagined himself in one of Jack London’s gold digger camps”–wrote an author about the first months at the construction site. A worker who was among the first to arrive there remembered in 1995: “In the evenings, we

The East German Ministry of Heavy Industry started the building of a barracks settlement around the EKO in 1950. But Kurt W. Leucht, an ambitious architect who rose to become the leadership’s favourite reconstruction specialist, was to change this: seeing the potential for a new beginning in his profession—Leucht worked as an architect of the Luftwaffe before and during the war109—he proposed to Walter Ulbricht to stop the development of the colony and to have instead an entirely new town built for the EKO. Ulbricht agreed, and Leucht went on to plan a

Wohnstadt.110 In his work, Leucht was guided by the sixteen “Principles of Urban Planning” freshly adopted by the East German government as a guideline for the reconstruction of East

German cities.111 The first of these explains his decision for a town and against a rudimentary barracks settlement:

walked along the railway to Fürstenberg, where young people usually found amusement in the Titty Cellar (Tittenkeller), that is, in the (Golden) Lion (Restaurant). There was a bar in the basement, and when we went downstairs, there were always pretty ladies there...This is what we did during the evenings and in our free time.” The authors of the “official” history of the EKO add the following to this desolate picture: “Youths slept in tents or under the blue sky, while older construction workers were accomodated in hastily built, overcorwded barracks... Life was tough in the camps and the social and cultural conditions were precarious. Brawls, alcohol excesses and rowdyism were frequent.” All quoted in: Nicolaus, Einblicke, 57-58. Photographs published in this same history of the EKO also reflect the atmosphere reigning at the construction site, including the mud, the disorganization and the occasional banner aimed at lifting the morale of workers. See for instance pictures here: Ibid, 60-61. 109 “Aufbau West - Aufbau Ost. Die Planstädte Wolfsburg und Eisenhüttenstadt in der Nachkriegszeit,” exhibition, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, May 16 to August 12, 1997, accessed December 5, 2012, http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/aufbau_west_ost/katlg09.htm. 110 Before Leucht’s plan was accepted, a number of other architects including Franz Ehrlich, Kurt Junghanns, Otto Geiler and Richard Paulick submitted plans which were met with criticism due to their “modernist” (rather than “socialist realist”) design. See: “Zwischen Moderne und Nationaler Tradition. Architekten in Eisenhüttenstadt. Die 50-er und 60-er Jahre”, leaflet (Eisenhüttenstadt: Institut für Regionalentwicklung und Strukturplanung/ Stadtverwaltung Eisenhüttenstadt, 2000). 111 In the spring of 1950, a delegation of architects and planners made a ‘research trip’ to Moscow, from where they returned with a document entitled “The Principles of Urban Planning” (Grundsätze des Städtebaus). Kurt W. Leucht was among those who took part in this exchange. Shortly after their return, on July 27, 1950, the sixteen Principles were adopted by the government as a guideline for the reconstruction of East German cities. The Reconstruction Law (Aufbaugesetz) adopted in September 1950 made the Principles mandatory for any reconstruction work done in the GDR.

In view of the community life112 of people, the town is the most economic and most culturally rich form of settlement. […] In its structure and architecture, the town is an expression of the political life and of the national consciousness of the people.113

To convey an urban feel to his Wohnstadt as quickly as possible, Leucht, who was soon promoted to the rank of general planner, started the town with several four-storey residential buildings which were finished within only a few weeks. But the rush had its cost: these apartment blocks were of low quality, they had no proper flooring and heating, the walls were porous, the ceilings low and the roofs were leaking. With their poor design and flat roofing, the first blocks looked square and characterless. The plan was swiftly amended and the 3rd and 4th

Wohnkomplexes received tiled roofs with an inclination of 37 degrees—enough to sort out the leaks but little enough still to avoid the perception of these houses as being too traditional.114

The housing units thus planned and built in Wohnkomplexes I through IV rendered the life of their inhabitants town-like: people lived crowded on several floors with no access to an own garden or yard, with reduced access to a certain type of privacy but at the same time enjoying a higher degree of anonymity. Just like in the big cities; but here the analogy ends.

Without a competitive or at least a differentiated system of rents, without the price-regulating effects of a real estate-market and with all other regulations ignoring logic or following

112 In the original German text: Gemeinschaftsleben. 113 Kurt W. Leucht, Die erste neue Stadt in der DDR (Berlin: Verlag Technik, 1957), 84. 114 Ibid, 34. See also Herbert Härtel’s explanation (in Chapter One), according to which the steep roofing in Wohnkomlex IV was the outcome of a compromise due to the drastic cut in the budget earmarked for the construction of housing units.

ideological considerations alone, the place felt anything but urban.115 Carelessness about

“socialist property” and about the environment in general resulted in unfinished construction business and heaps of construction materials and garbage scattered around the site. The impression one got was of permanent transition, while any measure of “fine tuning” was missing.

It was not before the middle of the decade that the main roads were paved. But the construction site feel of Stalinstadt was to last much longer.

The first housing blocks were built in the vicinity of the entrance to the EKO. A rendering published in 1952 by Leucht shows an EKO-gate that was to be one of the largest buildings in town. Designed in a U-shape with its two ends pointing back towards the town, the gate essentially closed or contained the Wohnstadt; on the other side of the gate, in an open,

“endless” space, the iron works were imagined behind a green belt. The long central section of the U-shaped building, of which the core resembled the Brandenburg Gate with a small tower on its top, was designed as a monument, walking through which was to feel like a religious act or ritual.116 From the majestic entrance to the EKO, a straight boulevard led to the town centre. The

Magistrale, which was to form the main axis of the town, ended in front of another towered building indicating the civic centre. Elsewhere this would be a church tower; in the first socialist

115 On February 2, 1954, Neuer Tag reported that upon the many requests received from residents living in the units built in 1951, a differentiated system of rents will be introduced. This was justified by the low quality of these apartments, especially in blocks 1 to 10 (flat roofs, which meant no attick; no tiling in the kitchen and in the bathroom, smaller basements, lower ceilings, etc.). Thenceforth inhabitants of these “old” housing blocks were to pay 0,02 DM less rent per square metre, that is, instead of 0.60 DM/sqm, they were to pay 0.58 DM/sqm. See “Differenzierung der Mieten in Stalinstadt,” NT, February 2, 1954. 116 May, Planstadt Stalinstadt, 189-190.

town of the GDR it was the tower of Town Hall, the local representation of state power.117 A few steps from here, diagonally across the central square, a large, domed building is shown in

Leucht’s “Perspektive:” the Palace of Culture. The Kulturpalast seems to play the role of a sacral site (Sakralbau118), making up for the missing temples built for the gods of yesteryear. Church towers were not needed in Stalinstadt, Walter Ulbricht famously declared in 1953; socialist culture was the new religion.119

117 In 1957, Kurt W. Leucht wrote: “Church facilities were not planned initially, as according to the wishes [sic!] of the population there was enough church space available in neighbouring Fürstenberg.” Leucht, Die erste neue Stadt, 32. For a discussion of the “wishes of the population” in this matter see Chapter Four. 118 Ruth May calls it so. See: May, Planstadt Stalinstadt, 190. 119 On May 7, 1953, on the day when the Wohnstadt was named Stalinstadt, Walter Ulbricht was allegedly asked “whether the new town would receive some towers as well.” Ulbricht replied: “Yes, the Town Hall, the building representing the new power of the people will off course receive a nice tower. In the plans for the town there is a nice house of culture; it will have an even nicer tower.” Other towers were not needed, he reportedly said, at least no “towers of bourgeois-capitalist institutions of addling the brain of people” (in the original text: “bürgerlich- kapitalistische Verdummungseinrichtungen”). What was meant was, according to all accounts, the (Lutheran) Church. Heinz Bräuer, who was at the time Lutheran pastor in Fürstenberg, recalls having heard Ulbricht’s speech given on the occasion of the naming of Stalinstadt, but in his memoirs he admits that in his later searches he could not find any documentary evidence of Ulbricht having actually uttered the expression “individualistisch- kapitalistische Verdummungseinrichtungen”. See: Heinz Bräuer, Die ersten drei Jahrzehnte der Evangelischen Friedensgemeinde Eisenhüttenstadt. Erinnerungen, unpublished typescript, 53. See also: “Für Gott und Adenauer,” Der Spiegel 43 (1999), 104.

Illustration 3. The central square on a 1952 sketch by Kurt W. Leucht.120

One of the problems with Leucht’s sketch was that the central square was not part of the main axis of the town; it merely bordered the Magistrale on its eastern edge thus causing an imbalance of the centre. Although facing the Magistrale and thus the gate of the EKO, the Town

Hall was placed in the southeastern corner of the central square, while the temple of culture was entirely off the town’s axis. Other institutions like the party and police headquarters would not get a prominent enough setting either, while the entire layout discouraged the holding of mass- demonstrations in the centre. The square was not a continuation of the Magistrale; it was around the corner from it. The central square had to be remodeled.

120 “Zentraler Platz 1952,” accessed on December 15, 2012, http://www.flickr.com/photos/ehstiques/364577458/.

The Principles were explicit in their prescriptions for the centre:

The centre constitutes the dominant core of the town. The centre of the town is the political centre of the life of its inhabitants. In the centre of town are found the most important political, administrative and cultural institutions. The squares of the town centre are venues for political demonstrations, marches and celebrations held on holidays. The centre is to be built with the most monumental buildings [as] it dominates the architectural composition of the city plan and determines the architectural silhouette of the town.121

In Leucht’s revised plan the Magistrale no longer ended in a façade (that of Town Hall), but in a square at the opposite end of which stood a large, towered House of Culture. On the eastern side of the square stood the House of the Parties and Mass-Organisations,122 while on the western side a number of other important institutions were to have their headquarters: Town Hall (facing the square), and in its immediate vicinity, along the east-west axis of the town, the County Council, the National Bank and the Post Office. Across the street from these was the House of Crafts. At the northern end of the central square was—separated by the east-west axis—a hotel, and across the street from it, the local department store. All the important institutions were thus brought into the core of the town, with a notable exception, however: the movie theatre. As a home to entertainment, it was planted into the middle section of the Magistrale which, with its numerous shops, became a quasi shopping street of Stalinstadt. Surprisingly, Leucht’s revised 1953 plan

121 Leucht, Die erste neue Stadt, 85. 122 In German: Haus der Parteien und Massenorganisationen.

provided for the construction of a church as well. This was, however, well hidden in the outskirts of the town.

Within months of Ulbricht’s “we-need-no-more-towers-here”-speech of May 7, 1953, the church had vanished from the drawing board.123 By 1955, as a concession to the workers who demanded a better supply with produce, a peasant market with a market hall was to be built, right behind the cinema, close to the Magistrale and yet invisible from it. A monument earlier intended for the square at the EKS-entrance was removed from the plans, while a

“Stalinmonument,” about which it was never revealed whether it was to be a statue or a monument of another sort, was planted squarely into the heart of Central Square (Zentraler

Platz). Along with the 70 meters tall City Hall tower, the “Stalinmonument” was to contribute to the “artistic Gestaltung” of the town centre.124

Nowhere in the region were Stalin monuments erected as late as 1955. Decision makers must have realised this as the plan to build one in Stalinstadt was soon scrapped. In fact, with the exception of the House of Parties and Mass Organisations, the hotel and the department store, none of the grandiose buildings of the city centre were ever built. The central square was left empty and nameless as a gaping hole in the texture of an otherwise complete town—perhaps as a memento of the ever changing politics of space under state socialism (the square is called to this day Zentraler Platz).125 Sometime in the second half of the 1950s it was decided that the House of Parties and Mass Organisations, inaugurated in 1955, was large enough to house both the

123 See footnote 119. 124 “Stalinstadt—ein Bauplatz unserer Republik. So wird unsere Magistrale einmal aussehen,” NT, February 5, 1955. 125 Today, Zentraler Platz is split between a park and a parking lot.

parties (sic) and the town administration; the marriage of party and state under state socialism could not have been more practical.

Stalinstadt – a construction site of our republic This is how our Magistrale will look one day As a continuation of the construction of our Stalin Town, the buildings lining the Magistrale from the entrance to the EKO up to the central square are already in pre- planning phase, while construction will begin in the year 1956. After detailed discussion with the representatives of the concerned commercial organs [sic] there will be about 40 shop units built, as well as a hotel with a department store. West of the film theatre there will be a market centre within Wohnkomplex 4. The plans for this street envisage shop units comparable to those found on Stalinallee. The central square will be designed in such way that the town hall be visible from the Magistrale and the square in front of it be artistically shaped [gestaltet] by the Stalinmonument. Corresponding to the character of this building, the tower will be about 70 metres tall. Further construction plans for this square envisage the House of Banks, the County Police headquarters, the post office, as well as other institutions. At the corners of the Magistrale and Republic Street, the department store and the hotel will be built. In the department store, which will be built according to the latest trends in construction, our workers will be able to buy everything they need in terms of clothing. Attached to it will be tailor shops as well as a department for fur- products. The central hotel will have about 130 beds and it will be constructed following the latest trends. The sketch below depicts the buildings of this street, while the entrance to the EKO and its function within this ensemble cannot yet be considered as finalized. To have your observations and recommendations included in the planning and pre- project phase, we kindly ask for your participation and for your input and your wishes regarding the planning of this representative street ending in central square, to be submitted to the Building Department of the Town Council of Stalinstadt.

1. Hotel. 2. Hairdresser. 3. Music. 4. Radio. 5. Photo. 6. Eyewear. 7. Stationery. 8. Books. 9. Watches. 10. Arts and crafts. 11. Movie theatre. 12. Flowers. 13. Pet shop. 14. Pharmacy. 15. Sweets. 16. Fish. 17. Groceries. 18. Meat. 19. Repair shops. 20. Department store. 21. Cosmetics. 22. Automat [sic]. 23. Hardware store. 24. Glass-porcelain. 25. Table cloths and bed linen. 26. Newspapers. 27. Transit office. 28. Confectionery. 29. Telephone. 30. Stoves and iron products. 31. Furniture. 32. Carpets. 33. Lamps and electric appliances. 34. Bicycles and sewing machines. 35. Bandages. 36. Car and motorbike shop. 37. Fruits and vegetables. 38. Dairy. 39. Tobacco. 40. Alcohol. 41. House of Parties and Mass Organizations. 42. Town hall. 43. Market with market hall, to be planned later.

Illustration 4. The Magistrale in a sketch published in Neuer Tag on February 5, 1955.

The shift of emphasis from a centre with several large, representative buildings to the

Magistrale, a shopping and entertainment street complete with a movie theatre and a market hall, was hardly coincidental. By the middle of the 1950s, the grandiose centre with a domed Palace of Culture and a town hall tower twice as high as the blast furnaces of the EKS could no longer be justified in the face of an ever-more dissatisfied population. Following the June 1953 uprising, which shook Stalinstadt seriously enough to cause hiccups in the operation of the EKO, it became clear that the economy had to be reoriented towards the production of consumer goods.126 Not only the intent to avert further revolts dictated this; socialist East Germany was clearly losing the race with West German capitalism. An exodus of citizens—via Berlin, with its still open borders—was the result. The living standard of East Germans had to be raised if the leadership was to keep its people inside the GDR. The abandonment of the town centre was the response; the Magistrale with its many shops the outcome.

If the (planned) spatial organisation of Stalinstadt during the 1950s is accessible to us through the plans and photographs preserved in the various archives or publications, and especially through the visible, material traces of the town within today’s Eisenhüttenstadt, the exploration of the conceptual, social spaces of the era is more difficult. Social exchange rarely

126 On June 12, 1953, shortly after the announcement of a 10% increase of mandatory production quotas and only five days before the outbreak of the revolt, the SED leadership met with the trade union and management of the EKO and agreed on the non-application of the new quotas in the EKO. This largely explains why EKO workers abstained from participating in the revolt. See: “Aufbau West - Aufbau Ost. Die Planstädte Wolfsburg und Eisenhüttenstadt in der Nachkriegszeit,” exhibition, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, May 16 to August 12, 1997, accessed September 28, 2015, http://www.dhm.de/archiv/ausstellungen/aufbau_west_ost/katlg17.htm. In a 2009 publication, “Stadtchronist” Günter Fromm claims that, “according to documents” a small number of workers of the EKO, too, was on strike on June 17, 1953. See: “Der 17. Juni 1953 und der November 1989 in Eisenhüttenstadt,” in Orte der Freiheit und der Demokratie in Deutschland, eds. Bernhard Vogel et al. (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung: Sankt Augustin, 2009), 50.

produces radical and long-lasting changes to the visible environment (revolutions do, but they are relatively rare occurrences), and there are few mirrors capable of freezing moments of social interaction in a way that makes them researchable for posterity. Snapshots of the public sphere are, however, reflected in the printed press of the pioneer years, when newspapers reported on issues of genuine concern to citizens, when they effectively helped settlers orient themselves in their new environment, when they provided information and guidance on everyday life in the new, socialist town. In a place with no history, with no pre-existing social setup to adhere to, in an environment new to all including the director and the unskilled worker, the public sphere was closer to what we call public today, than, say, a decade later, when state monopoly over public life was solidly established. Debate was as important a part of the public sphere of the 1950s in

Stalinstadt as was cooperation in the achievement of the common goals of the population.

Numerous public and semi-public arenas for discussion—citizen’s forums, brigade reunions, factory party organisation meetings and the like—provided inhabitants of the Wohnstadt, and later, Stalinstadt, with a space for the voicing of their ideas, concerns or grievances.

The Heimatzeitung für das Eisenhüttenkombinat-Ost, named Heimatzeitung für

Stalinstadt after May 1953, a one-page supplement of the Frankfurt/Oder-based Neuer Tag daily, was, from the outset, receptive to readers’ letters. Almost every issue of the Heimatzeitung carried letters to the editor. Just how many of these letters were actually made up by the editors remains unknown but it seems that to the individual citizen the practice of writing letters to the editor and the publication of these letters and their signing with real names and addresses conveyed the impression that there was room for debate and criticism in socialist public space.

While state and party remained infallible, citizens and party members, including party leaders,

were not. Thus, the régime took on a human face to which the “proletariat” could relate easier than to the abstract ideology hammered into its minds during endless, mandatory classes of

Marxism-Leninism. Criticism in the press was often followed-up by the reassuring news that the matters in question were carefully dealt with by the competent authorities. A thorough review of the Heimatzeitung leaves today’s reader with the impression that responsibility and accountability were important, if not essential, features of social dialogue during the first years of state-socialism in the GDR. To be sure, today’s reader must approach such sources critically; it seems, however, that the local press, with its articles, readers’ letters and classified ads, reflects social processes of the era that are otherwise not accessible to us.

Aware of the perception of the Heimatzeitung as a relatively democratic space, the state used it for its own purposes. Ideological messages were carried in the Heimatzeitung in form of letters to the editor written by “concerned citizens,” followed in the next issue by the response of the state- or party department in charge. For example, on January 20, 1953, we learn that roads have been transformed into “coasting slides and skating rinks” in Fürstenberg, where “the situation [was] especially grave on Stalinallee.”127 The following day, the paper reported that such problems were swiftly and effectively dealt with in the Wohnstadt:

In a residents’ meeting […] held at the 10-Grade School, the matter [of plowing the roads]… was raised by several of our colleagues. [Such criticism] was effective as now, when walking outside, we see that our roads are strewn [with sand]. Even small heaps of sand have been placed in different locations, so residents can strew [the roads] themselves.”128

127 “Man kann sich kaum auf den Beinen halten,” NT, January 20, 1953. 128 “Auf Kritik reagiert – und nicht reagiert!” NT, January 21, 1953.

The message was clear: if in old Fürstenberg roads were not cleaned of snow and ice, then in the new Wohnstadt the matter was raised, discussed, decided and acted upon by the citizens themselves. In the new socialist town, citizens were their own masters.

Residents’ meetings were held regularly in the Wohnstadt, first in the larger barracks like the Kulturbaracke (Cultural Barracks) of the EKO, and later in the schools. The meetings were well-attended and the issues discussed were important. The agenda was most often dominated by topics like upcoming state or party anniversaries, protests against “Adenauer’s warmongering government” or expressions of solidarity with the Korean people, but the really thorny matters were these: housing, food rations, work conditions, road conditions in winter or in bad weather, garbage removal, vandalism, theft, alcoholism and so forth. The discussions were as open and as heated as they could get. Thus, in the initial years, when many inhabitants knew each other at least by face, some degree of participatory democracy in the Wohnstadt/Stalinstadt did exist. But the town grew rapidly and the problems it was facing became ever more complex; the various categories of settlers had or developed different needs. While some deplored the lack of postcards on Stalinstadt, others were disturbed by the exponential growth in the population of rats. As it became ever more difficult to handle the questions raised by the populace, and as the initial Wohnstadt was turned into a “proper” Stalinstadt, residents’ meetings were discontinued.

They were replaced by town council meetings which, although theoretically open still to the public, were attended by less and less people.

Soon after the establishment of Stalinstadt, concern was growing over the poor preservation of the past (!) of the town. As early as in the autumn of 1953, the population was

called to donate documents in their possession to the Council of Stalinstadt, which in turn would set up a proper local archive. The establishment of an independent “Arbeitsgemeinschaft” or working group concerned with the history of Stalinstadt was also encouraged.129 A month later, the local daily carried an article entitled: “Stalinstadt—a piece of German Heimat.”130 The town was thenceforth “upgraded” to an essentially German, traditional, historical place. “Wir bauen unsere Heimat!” (We build our Heimat!), wrote the Heimatzeitung in early 1954.131 In the autumn of that same year, a first revue of the history of Stalinstadt was published under the title:

“Bist Du aber Groß geworden!” (How you have grown up!). The history of Stalinstadt was thus placed into an “organic,” evolutionary context; Stalinstadt had “grown up” to become an

(almost) “adult” town.132 A few days later, the “now traditional” Iron Works Festival

(Hüttenfest) was celebrated.133 Finally, on November 26th we learn that a Stadtarchiv (town archive) was set up and that the Stadtchronik (town chronicle) was to become “the most valuable document of our town.”134

In spite of the effort of decision makers, numerous inhabitants of Stalinstadt failed to consider Stalinstadt their Heimat or to act like members of a true community. Instead of moving settlers in the direction of a close community, the forcing of the informal “Du” form of address,

129 “Ein Archiv über das Wachsen unserer Stadt. Jeder kann durch die Sammlung von Materialien dazu beitragen,” NT, October 24, 1953. 130 “Stalinstadt – ein Stück deutscher Heimat,” NT, November 28,1953. 131 “Heimat – ein herrliches Wort,” NT, January 26,1954. 132 “Bist Du aber Gross geworden. Einiges aus dem Leben unserer Stadt, was nun besonders zum Hüttenfest nachdenklich machen sollte,” NT, September 16, 1954. 133 “Bekanntmachung. Busverkehr zum Hüttenfest,” NT, September 17,1954. 134 “Alle Hilfe unserem neuen Stadtarchiv. Wer sammelt mit?” NT, November 26, 1954.

for instance, led to a general lowering of respect among inhabitants.135 “Men are rude in

Stalinstadt,” wrote an unhappy female worker to her newspaper; they always rush through doors first, whether they are in the shops, in the theatre, at the movies or at the bus stop.136 Some men made it their habit to steal bicycles to get home from the pub,137 while others relieved themselves right in front of their favourite tavern.138 Others yet got drunk to the point that glasses, chairs and other projectiles rendered the entry of patrons life-threatening.139 Men drank and smoked inside food stores, in spite of the signs prohibiting smoking and drinking.140 With such role models should one wonder that a 7 year-old was taken home by the Volkspolizei because he was too inebriated to walk home by himself?141

Petty crime, especially theft, was common in Stalinstadt. If theft of public property was somewhat reduced by the setting up of a local police station in December 1953, the stealing of private property remained a problem.142 Whether it was pickpocketing or larger robberies like the

“sweeping” of the storage rooms in the attic of Block 52, the appropriation of someone else’s property did not contribute to the sense of trust and solidarity that would forge a strong

135 “Du” (informal “you”, second person, singular), rather than Sie (formal “you”), often coupled with “Kollege”, was the common form of address even among persons in a subordinate relationship, including in public spaces like the press. Over time, even SED-leaders were addressed or mentioned with their first names alone: during conversations with former GDR-citizens I have often heard my interlocutors referring to Erich Honecker as ‘Erich’. 136 “Erlebte Höflichkeiten,” NT, August 17, 1955. 137 “Schlecht gefahren,” NT, January 23, 1955. 138 “Haltet unsere HO-Gaststätten sauber,” NT, January 14, 1954. That this was not a singular occurrence is suggested by a report according to which men regularly relieved themselves right in front of the local food store. See: Leser schreiben ihre Meinung. Die Toilette auf der Straße. NT, September, 22, 1953. 139 “Auch die Bedienung in der Gaststätte gehört dazu.” NT, February 17, 1954. See also Bierflaschen sind keine Wurfgeschosse. NT, April 24, 1953. 140 “Trinkgelage am Ladentisch.” NT, November 30, 1954. 141 “Soll der Junge Schuld haben? Ein Vorfall aus dem alle Eltern ernste Lehren ziehen müssen.” NT, January 28, 1954. 142 “Werktätige, schützt eure Aufbauarbeit! Ein VP-Revier in Stalinstadt - Die Mitarbeit der Bevölkerung ist erforderlich.” NT, December 13, 1953.

community.143 Bicycles, firewood, clothing, food and alcohol were among the most common loot, but considering the scarcity in the stores especially in the first half of the decade, anything and everything could fall prey to thieves.

Figure 8. “My dark blue coat was stolen on Saturday in the House of Trade Unions. Please return this men’s coat to the Neuer Tag offices in return for a reward.” Advertisement in Neuer Tag.144

Banners and flags were about the only colourful spots in an industrial environment dominated by grey mortar and black iron. Two types of banners were common, the ones with generic content like “Long Live The Party!”, which could be hung out at any time and for as long as they could withstand the elements; and the ones produced on specific occasions and which therefore would become obsolete after some time (like “In the Second Trimester of 1957

We Undertake to Produce More Iron!”). If banners were usually produced in haste, their maintenance and afterlife was of much lesser concern to those who made them. The

Heimatzeitung was always prompt in publishing its “criticism” (Kritik):

143 On daylight robberies see for example: “Schützt unsere Kinder in der Wohnstadt.” NT, January 25, 1953. On the robbing of Block 52, see: “Haltet den Dieb!” NT, December 16, 1953. 144 NT, December 21, 1955.

[C]riticisms were raised on January 8th about the bad, obsolete visual advertising145 at the entrance to the Eisenhüttenkombinat-Ost, as well as about the scaffolding built over six months ago at the Peace Gate.146 This has not yet been taken care of and the leadership of the [Kombinat] did not consider it necessary to comment on this criticism to this day. We call on them to catch up on this and to arrange the entrance of the first socialist enterprise with a circular flower bed so as to look orderly. If it is not possible to build something new then at least the flagpoles should be straightened and the old slogans removed.147

Slogan boards were usually reused and repainted when slogans became obsolete. But it occurred every now and then that the persons doing the job misspelled words or repainted old slogans only partly, perhaps in their eagerness to save expensive paint or board material. Nonsensical slogans resulted which were left on display until someone raised the issue and action was taken by the competent authorities.148 Slogans posted in public places were also employed in the construction of common enemies: imperialists, saboteurs, West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the potato bug and other vermin—they all had their banners on factory grounds, in the streets and, of course, in the press. When a West German newspaper wrote about Stalinstadt as a town

“reminding one of the labour camps of Siberia,” the Heimatzeitung ran daily articles and

“spontaneous,” angry reader’s letters to the editor to protest against the calumny, but also to further construct the image of the “enemies of the working class,” of the “Fascists of yesterday”—in other words, the evil image of western capitalism in general and West Germany

145 An euphemism for slogan banners. In the original German text: Sichtwerbung. 146 What is meant is the entrance to the EKO. 147 “Auf die Kritik reagiert – und nicht reagiert,” NT, January 21, 1953. 148 See for instance: “Sinnverwirrende Sichtwerbung,” NT, February 16, 1955.

in particular.149 That the alleged protestors were mostly women (typically “Hausfrauen,” that is, housewives), was no coincidence. After the war, the battle between good and evil has taken up a gender-dimension: since masculinity and male presence in public space has been seriously compromised during the war, it was now women’s power with its associated “goodness” that was employed to fight the evil forces of the reaction. Finally, the Heimatzeitung was increasingly often used to reassure SED-followers that West German allegations about difficulties in

Stalinstadt were nothing but propaganda: when the West Berlin Telegraph reported on an explosion that had occurred at the Kombinat during Vyacheslav Molotov’s visit in October 1954, the Heimatzeitung “unmasked” the report as a hoax (eine Ente) and urged citizens to “respond firmly” by voting in the upcoming election for the candidates of the National Front. While the real messages carried by such “attacks” or calls were well-understood by the population, the distance between official and unofficial speech could not have been greater. Public life in

Stalinstadt was at once a crash-course into Orwellian doublethink.150

One year after the town was named for Stalin, the streets, which thus far were known by letters from A to K, were given “honourable,” proper names. Street names and house numbers put an end to the chaos in Stalinstadt, “at last providing the orientation [citizens] longed for.”151

Naming had become an important issue in the first socialist town of the Republic; when the

149 “Böswillige Verwechslung? – Werktätige, sagt Eure Meinung!” NT, August 19, 1954. See also: “‘Ich muß meiner Empörung Luft Machen’ Frau Spinzig schreibt zu unserem gestrigen Artikel ‘Böswillige Verwechslung? – Werktätige, sagt Eure Meinung!’” NT, August 20, 1954; “‘Der Wülffen soll sich nicht hertrauen’ Die Hausfrau Frida Fuhrmann sprach mit der Pianistin Paula Rasch über unseren Artikel vom 19. August 1954 ‘Böswillige Verwechslung? – Werktätige, sagt Eure Meinung!’” NT, August 21, 1954, etc. 150 “Klägliche Töne aus einer Entenbrüterei,” NT, October 14, 1954. 151 “Ehrenvolle Namen für unsere Stadt,” NT, March 21, 1954.

elegant, new Handelsorganisation (HO152) restaurant and dance pub was opened in “A” Street

(soon to become Karl-Marx-Straße), patrons were “outraged” by the name they found written on the menus: “Gaststätte Stalinstädter Hof,” the argument went, was reminiscent of olden times, while Stalin’s name was not to be connected to a place of entertainment and drinking (that it resembled the name of a “Fürstenberger Hof” operating in the nearby village was probably an even stronger, though never voiced, argument).153 Even though the name was the result of a public poll, it was soon ruled unacceptable. The leadership learnt its lesson: thenceforth, no more public contests or name polls for new streets or buildings were held in Stalinstadt. “Stalinstädter

Hof” was renamed “Aktivist” and it was to bear this name until its shutting down in 1991.154

Old street names New street names

A Karl-Marx-Straße B Clement-Gottwald-Straße C Georgi-Dimitroff-Straße D Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße E1 Karl-Liebknecht-Straße E2 John-Scheer-Straße F Fritz-Heckert-Straße G Straße der Republik H Leninallee I Straße der Jugend K Friedrich-Engels-Straße

Illustration 6. Street names in Stalinstadt before and after March 1954.

152 The Handelsorganisation or HO was the main state-owned network of East German retail shops and restaurants founded in 1948. 153 “Der Name paßt nicht zu unserer Gaststätte,” NT, January 6, 1954. 154 The Aktivist was left empty and in decay for 20 years. After its recent privatization and restoration it now houses the offices of a housing company and a pub (Die Schwemme). The restored building has won several awards. See: Janet Neiser, “Eisenhüttenstädter ‘Aktivist’ erhält Baukulturpreis,” MOZ, October 19, 2011, accessed December 2, 2013, http://www.moz.de/artikel-ansicht/dg/0/1/981140. See also: Andreas Wendt, “Eisenhüttenstädter ‘Aktivist’ gewinnt Denkmalschutzpreis,” MOZ, November 14, 2011 accessed on December 12, 2013, http://www.moz.de/artikel-ansicht/dg/0/1/990879.

As the number of pubs and cafés was growing over the years, their names signaled a phenomenon many inhabitants were not aware of: Stalinstadt was on the road to a multiclass society. The “Speiserestaurant und Konzertcafé,” as the main restaurant of the Aktivist was pompously named to intimidate the lower classes of workers, clearly addressed a segment different from those frequenting the “Bierschwemme” and the other pubs (Kneipen), which sprang up, more or less temporarily, in various corners of town. But no matter how different their taste in alcohol and entertainment matters, Stalinstädters just loved the “Amerikaner,” a pastry that was sold throughout town and which was enjoyed by all “mit größtem Appetit” (with great appetite). That was to change, too; a vigilant people’s correspondent (Volkskorrespondent) of

Heimatzeitung was quick to point out that this was unacceptable in view of the heavy bombardments suffered by Germany at the hand of Americans. That the bombardments were meant to end Hitler’s war on the world was a connection the people’s correspondent did not wish to make.155

The state party-run thematization of public discourse was as common as was the total silence about embarrassing or potentially dangerous topics. The public sphere was shaped not only by what was there; missing topics were as important in the formation of public discourse as were present ones. Perhaps the “most taboo” yet by all means public matter during the 1950s was the June 17, 1953 revolt in Stalinstadt which, according to Günter Fromm, the “chronicler” of

Eisenhüttenstadt, saw about two thousand construction workers march on the Fürstenberg Party headquarters chanting “We support Berlin,” “Down with the government” and “We want free elections!” There was, as Fromm puts it, “deadly silence” about the events of June in

155 “‘Amerikaner’ – auch bei uns gefragt?” NT, March 16, 1955.

Stalinstadt.156 And yet, everyone knew and discussed (in private, of course) about the 95 arrests made among local construction workers or about the 26 prison sentences that were handed out in the ten court trials held later in nearby Frankfurt an der Oder. The vast majority of EKS-workers abstained from participating in the revolt, although there is evidence that a small number of

EKS-workers did participate in the strikes of those days. For their “loyalty” to the régime, the

“red steelworkers”157 of the EKS were rewarded by being propelled to the lead of the East

German socialist competition.158

The few facets of the public sphere reviewed here allow us to draw a number of conclusions which will be useful in the comparison of Stalinstadt with the Hungarian Stalin

Town. The failure to carry out the construction plans for Stalinstadt—their continuous modification until essential elements like the town centre, the monumental gate of the EKO or the Stalinmonument were dropped—indicates that state socialist planning had its limits in East

Germany even during the “Stalinist” period. This is all the more true of the social dimension of planning: with the exception of the pioneer years, when shared essential interests forged among

Stalinstadt settlers a “Schicksalsgemeinschaft”159 of some sort, the construction of a socialist community failed. Generalized distrust, disorientation, anomic phenomena like alcoholism, prostitution or theft were symptoms of local society which were beyond the control of authorities

156 In the original wording: “Das Kapitel 17. Juni wurde in der Öffentlichkeit praktisch totgeschwiegen.” 157 They were called “red steelworkers” (rote Hochöfner) by the construction workers who started the local uprising, but also by the steelworkers who joined the protests. There is evidence that Stalinstadt was the site of brawls between EKS-workers on strike and EKS-strikebreakers. See: “Der Aufstand im Bezirk Frankfurt/Oder.” BStU, undated document, accessed on 24.04.2015, http://www.bstu.bund.de/DE/Wissen/DDRGeschichte/17-juni- 1953/Aufstand-in-den-Bezirken/Frankfurt-Oder/_inhalt.html. 158 Fromm, “Der 17. Juni 1953,” 48-50. 159 The term has no exact English correspondent. The closest description of its meaning is “a group with a shared destiny.”

and thus caused unwanted effects in the public life of the town. Opportunism, rather than the socialist principles of equality and solidarity, shaped the social life of Stalinstadt. In a political and social system in which upward mobility was a matter of ad-hoc decision making rather than an organic outcome of some sort, the hunt for privileges and masked social discrimination led to the atomization of society. Many years after the foundation of the town, a gold rush atmosphere reigned still in Stalinstadt which, much to the chagrin of its planners, maintained the atmosphere of a colony, rather than becoming a real (socialist) town. Finally, Stalinstadt retained throughout the 1950s (and beyond) its monoindustrial character, along with all the implications this had on the further development of the population and the town. As we shall see in the next section, this fact alone played a crucial role in the diverging paths taken by the two towns, by Stalinstadt and by Sztálinváros, as early as the mid-1950s.

“It felt as if I had arrived to Babylon”: The Construction of Public Space in Sztálinváros160

Work on a Hungarian metallurgical combine was well underway near Mohács, about 170 km south of Budapest when, on December 28, 1949, the Council of Ministers decided to abandon the project and start anew 100 kilometres upriver, near the village of Dunapentele.

Intra-bloc tension dictated the change on the agenda: following the Tito-Stalin split, the site near

Mohács, only ten kilometres north of the Yugoslav border, was considered impossible to defend in the event, however unlikely, of a Yugoslav attack. When work was effectively stopped, the

160 An accountant upon her arrival to Sztálinváros. See: “Conditions in the Sztálinváros Branch of the Beton-Útépítő Vállalat,” OSA, HU OSA 300-40-4, Box 14, Item 03990/53, 4.

site comprised 10 apartment blocks, 4 kilometres of new roads, 3.5 kilometres of sewage piping and a few workshop buildings.161 The constructions were not used until several years later, when relations with Yugoslavia were normalized and a lumber company was established on the site.

The plans for the combine were drawn in Moscow, not in Hungary. In the spring of 1949, when the plant was still to be built near Mohács, János Sebestyén, General Director of the

National Corporation for Heavy Industrial Investments162 and Mihály Hámor, Director of the

Metallurgical Industrial Planning Office,163 travelled to Moscow to request technological support for the undertaking. Negotiations with Anastas Mikoyan, Vice-President of the Soviet Council of

Ministers, resulted in the securing of the promise that a Soviet team of experts would produce the necessary plans. For eight months, engineers of GIPROMEZ, the institute that had planned steel combines throughout the Soviet Union including the one in Magnitogorsk in the late 1920s, worked on the plans for a Danubian Iron Works.164 The result: 45 volumes of drawings, with details for the combine and guidelines for the construction of the new town.165

The on-site development of the town was entrusted to a chief architect familiar with the

Soviet socialist town concept: Tibor Weiner, émigré professor of architecture in Santiago de

Chile (and, after 1952, at Budapest Technical University), had worked with the Moscow Institute of Urban Planning from 1931 to 1936. But Weiner learnt his trade elsewhere: after earning his

161 Ferenc Erdős and Zsuzsánna Pongrácz, eds., Dunaújváros története (Dunaújváros: Dunaújváros Megyei Jogú Város Önkormányzata, 2000), 244-246. 162 In Hungarian: Nehézipari Beruházási Nemzeti Vállalat. 163 In Hungarian: Kohóipari Tervező Iroda. 164 Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 37 165 Erdős and Pongrácz, Dunaújváros története, 247.

degree in Budapest in 1929, he attended, upon the invitation of Walter Gropius,166 the 1929

CIAM167 convention in Frankfurt. Two semesters of studies followed at the Dessau Bauhaus school of architecture, where his diploma was signed by none other than Ludwig Mies van der

Rohe.168

Weiner was commissioned to oversee the construction of the town in January 1950.169

The housing units built in the first two years, the so-called “cube-buildings” (kocka épületek) were three-story apartment houses detached from each other, surrounded by gardens and built in the modernist style. They were built in the vicinity of what was to be a forest belt separating the town from the future iron works. The “method” applied was Soviet. As Weiner recalled in 1952,

[f]rom the outset we applied the main characteristics of Soviet socialist town [planning]. It was according to these learnings that we inserted a stripe of forest between the town and the factory grounds so as to protect the health and the peace of the workers living in the town. Following the model of Soviet towns we linked the centre of town with the entrance to the factory by a wide avenue. It is, once again, based on the Soviet model that apartment buildings line the [main] roads. The schools, kindergartens and crèches are found in interior park-like courts where our workers’ children can reach them without crossing major traffic arteries. Finally, we have planned the centre of the town following Soviet examples by concentrating in it the buildings serving the new socialist needs [of the population], cultural parks and rally grounds. This is where, in the vicinity of the already standing Party House, [we will erect] the large Palace of Culture, the

166 Walter Gropius (1883-1969), German architect, founder of the Bauhaus School of Architecture, pioneer of modern architecture. 167 Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne. 168 Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), German architect, one of the pioneers of modern architecture. 169 Weiner was apparently forced to accept the assignment: being on a tourist visit to Hungary after the war, he was not allowed to leave the country again. Árpád Végh, “Architecture of Dunaújváros,” paper presented at the conference on Cities of a New Type. Industrial Cities in People’s Democracies after 1945, May 21-22, 2015, Dunaújváros.

headquarters of the Social Organizations, the middle schools and the stadium holding many thousands of people. Thanks to the teachings of the Soviet Union there is thus no insecurity or hesitation in the [planning] of the town, which corresponds to the structures used in the socialist towns of the Soviet Union.170

Weiner had good reason to be defensive: by 1952, many shortcomings of the initial planning, especially related to the modernist constructions erected thus far, had caused intense criticism

(the style was promptly abandoned and replaced by “socialist realism”). Debate over the axis linking the centre to the factory gate caused embarrassing delays. The plans for the city centre were repeatedly modified and downsized due to an acute lack of funds, but also due to ideological considerations: the construction of monumental buildings in the immediate vicinity of the already standing two-storey party headquarters (1951) was regarded with suspicion by the party. Worse yet, migration to Sztálinváros got out of control. As the construction of housing could not keep up with the pace of settlement, part of the rapidly growing population lived in two overcrowded, rudimentary barracks towns (Déli and Radari barakktábor), with insufficient or no bathroom and kitchen facilities. If official figures have shown that 7,139 persons worked on the site at the end of 1950, twice as many lived there by the end of 1951.171 Faced with chaos and growing pressure from above, Weiner could not but speed up construction and, in the process, allow ever more room for improvisation. Essential elements like the town centre and the main axis received less and less focus. Following Stalin’s death in early 1953, the original plans for the buildings of the town centre were abandoned altogether, leaving Sztálinváros/Dunaújváros to

170 “Szovjet segítség Sztálinváros tervezésében,” SZVÉ, April 1, 1952. 171 “Sztálinváros,” SZN, November 3, 1951.

this day with no recognizable, obvious, civic centre. The similarity of the fate of the city centres of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros is striking: both were grandiosely planned with monumental buildings, and both fell victim to the whims of (political) history. If in Stalinstadt the

Stalinmonument was never built, the 9 to 18 metres tall Stalin-statue planned for the centre of

Sztálinváros was, too, abandoned.172 Instead, a much smaller statue of Lenin’s was erected on the square to signal the ideological return to “Leninism” after Stalin’s fall.

Illustration 7. Model of the main square extended towards the Danube, with a Stalin statue at its eastern end (1953).173

172 Three alternative plans for a Stalin statue were drafted, the first statue measuring 18 metres, the second 15, and the third 9 metres (none of them was ever built). Márta Matussné Lendvai, “Sztálin, a város – Lenin, a szobor,” Árgus 10 (2003), 33-34. 173 Source: Open Society Archives, Budapest.

Just like in Stalinstadt, the documentation of the history of Sztálinváros preoccupied local decision makers from the outset. Awareness of the past and the necessity of its preservation were sustained by the archaeological findings made around the construction grounds throughout town.

Already in May 1951, months before the settlement was named for Stalin, planners envisioned a local history museum to be built in the tower of a new, monumental town hall. The permanent exhibit was to begin at a lower level with the display of pre-historic artefacts, then move up towards the top of the tower, where the socialist city would be presented to the visitor. The linear progression of time would thus acquire a vertical dimension, symbolizing the step-by-step progress from primitive antiquity to modern socialism.174 During the spring and summer of 1951,

500 graves dating back to the Bronze Age were discovered on the construction site of the Vasmű

(Iron Works). More excavations followed.175 In late 1952, the Roman-era cemetery of Intercisa was unearthed on nearby Öreghegy (Old Mountain). These archaeological findings were soon hailed as “evidence of the historical past of our town.”176 Sztálinváros was thenceforth a construction project of both future and past.

Such a “usable past” would gain increased significance when, in 1953-54, following drastic cuts in funding earmarked for Sztálinváros, doubt and distrust towards state socialism overshadowed the construction effort. Although the museum tower of City Hall was never built, the museum project stepped into a new era. In 1954, the institution was moved from the “20-

174 “Az épülő tanácsház tornyában helyezik el a múzeumot,” DVÉ, May 29, 1951. 175 “Hogyan folyik a régészeti ásatás?” DVÉ, August 28, 1951. 176 “A szocialista város építésével párhuzamosan ismerhetjük meg városunk történeti múltját.” SZVÉ, October 21, 1952.

classroom-school” (húsz tantermes iskola), the first school of town where the museum first functioned, to the former Engineers’ Club in “cube [building] number 6” (hatos kocka), which was the first building erected in town. One and a half decades later, when the party moved its headquarters to a new town hall, the museum was to receive its final home in the former party headquarters, where a more grandiose permanent exhibition on the millennial (!) past of

Sztálinváros could be organized.177

Parallel to the concern for the preservation of the past ran a public debate over what was worth remembering about Sztálinváros. “Our traditions are different, and our customs are new,” wrote the editor of the local newspaper in 1959.178 Politeness, a strong sense of solidarity and

“heroic work” were said to be trademarks of Sztálinváros.179 Many more such trademarks were born when, to honour the tenth anniversary of the town, the population was called to participate in a literary contest of prose, poetry, novels and theatre plays featuring the town and its construction.180 In a somewhat capitalist vein, consumer products were, too, to carry the name of

Sztálinváros: “Sztálinváros” cigarillos, designed as a souvenir for visitors and sold during a brief period in 1960, had become so popular that their sale was resumed in October 1961—only a few weeks before the name of the town was changed to Dunaújváros.181

177 The first exhibition on the “History of Sztálinváros” (Sztálinváros története) was organized as early as August 1953, only three years after the founding of the town. 178 “Városunk hagyományairól,” SzVH, October 16, 1959. 179 “Van-e már amit ápolnunk?” SzVH, April 10, 1959. 180 “Pályázati felhívás Sztálinváros 10 éves évfordulójára,” SzVH, June 10, 1959. 181 “Ismét kapható a ‘Sztálinváros’ cigaretta.” SzVH, October 7, 1961.

Illustration 8. Sztálinváros cigarillos were popular with both locals and visitors.

If solidarity was said to characterize local society, the reality of the “heroic era” (roughly

1950 to 1953-54), showed a somewhat different picture. Social chaos, rather than order, anarchic conditions of a colony in the making shaped everyday life in Sztálinváros. Like in Stalinstadt, anything and everything was stolen and traded on the black market. In wintertime, wood was stolen from construction sites to heat dormitory barracks. In summer, heating material was stolen from the workplace to replenish winter stocks.182 Bicycles, blankets, clothing, money or food were all treasures worth owning, stealing or selling. The black marketing of embezzled food and other products enriched sales personnel and turned “connections” into a commodity. As early as

March 1951, the black market price of potatoes sold in the stores—when available—at 0.75

182 By the winter of 1953/1954, the quantity of wood stolen from construction sites amounted to 30 cubic metres per day. See “Akadályozzuk meg a falopást,” SzVÉ, January 15, 1954. In July of the same year, the local newspaper called for the construction of a fence around the kombinát in order to stop the theft of wood, coke and coal by the carload. “Többszöri figyelmeztetés...,” SzV, July 6, 1954.

Forints reached 3.50 Forints per kilogram.183 So great was the discrepancy between official and black market prices that in December 1951 the Council of Ministers ended the rationing of basic food products and liberalized (raised, that is), official prices to near black market levels.184

Black-marketeering remained a characteristic feature of the socialist town throughout the

“heroic” years and beyond; in this respect, Sztálinváros was anything but a model town.

High alcohol consumption and drunkenness in public added to the sense that something went wrong in the construction of Sztálinváros. Throughout the 1950s, the newspaper carried regular reports on excessive drinking and on its impact on local society. Surely only a fraction of the actual number of incidents made it into the headlines. Thus we learn that noisy drunk men and women roamed the streets by night and by day; that brawls in front of popular pubs like the

Kossuth185 in “cube [building] 6”—where the local museum functioned after 1954—, were daily occurrences; that drunken men and women would use public places and parks as toilets. But there were also murders linked to alcoholism: in 1957, a drunken man killed a sleeping fellow with a single axe blow, seemingly for no reason; in August 1961 alone, a drunken man shot his wife dead, another set his house on fire (killing his daughter, his son-in-law and his

183 “A Zsírjegy biztosítja a dolgozók zsírellátását,” DVÉ, March 6, 1951. 184 The black market of food products was a nationwide problem which called for a nationwide solution. The new prices were thus introduced throughout the country. A few sample prices: a kilogram of “semi-white” bread: 2.80 Forints (Ft); a kilo of wheat flower 4.60 Ft; sugar 11.20 Ft/kg; pork fat 35 Ft/kg; sunflower oil 24 Ft/l; beef 20.50 Ft/kg; pork 26.40 Ft/kg; butter 66-72 Ft/kg; fresh milk 3 Ft/l; pasteurized milk 3.60 Ft/l. “A Magyar Népköztársaság Minisztertanácsának… határozata a jegyrendszer megszüntetéséről, az ár- és bérrendezésről s a mezőgazdasági termékek forgalmának felszabadításáról,” SZVÉ, December 4, 1951. At this time, the hourly rate of a construction worker was 2 to 4 Ft. “Az építőipari dolgozók új órabérei,” SZVÉ, December 14, 1951. 185 Lajos Kossuth (1802-1894), Hungarian politician and revolutionary.

granddaughter), and a drunken robber killed, with an axe again, an elderly couple because they refused to hand over their valuables to him.186

The town had a bad reputation. This was mainly due to the social setup of Sztálinváros: too many and too different kinds of people lived crammed, many of them in insanitary living quarters, leading to a local society governed by conflict, rather than by solidarity, by chaos, rather than by some sort of social order. A decade into the existence of the town, an eyewitness explained what was so special about Sztálinváros:

Firstly, the town is largely heterogeneous; its population consists of a loose mix of the most varied elements […] without any tradition. The town has no citizenry, the layering of the population is of very recent origin and it developed according to laws other than in the case of towns originating in the feudal or capitalist eras. In Sztálinváros, like in some molecule, all the landscapes, typologies and social classes of the country are assembled. The heterogeneous character of the population has manifested itself from the outset through sharp contrasts. The most valuable creative elements and adventurers, excellent skilled workers and ‘lumpenproletars,’ peasant workers tied still to their land and former earls, socialist fighters and fascists, ambitious youths and declassed persons, nuns and prostitutes, serious members of centuries-old metallurgist families and gold diggers mingle in the town like pure pig-iron with rusty scrap iron in a Martin-furnace.187

Local decision makers were aware of the social effects of such a mixing of “elements” in

Sztálinváros. Simply denying the problem was not an option as the disorder and its effects on

186 “Újabb áldozatot követelt az alkohol,” SZH, August 23, 1957. “Ismét tragédiát okozott az alcohol,” SZH, August 25, 1961. 187 “S.A. feljegyzése. Áttekintés Sztálinváros társadalmi és osztályviszonyairól,” Történeti Hivatal, 0-13582 sz. Quoted in Erdős and Pongrácz, Dunaújváros története, 260-261.

everyday life was plainly visible. Instead, campaigns were launched for the freeing of

Sztálinváros of its “unwanted elements.” Whether they were “fascists” or petty thieves, drunkards or prostitutes—the rhetoric used was invariably aggressive: “cleansing the air,”

“eliminating” unwanted people had quickly become daily used slogans.188 When such cleansing campaigns proved unsuccessful—which they most often were—, all the possible dark forces were assumed behind the “saboteurs” of the socialist construction effort. Simple carelessness was taken as a manifestation of Western imperialist sympathies; failure to meet the ever higher production quotas was punished as sabotage.

In this microcosm shaped by centrifugal social forces much “agitation work” had to be done to forge a community. In the initial years, shock work (rohammunka) and seemingly senseless competitions among factory units were said to unify efforts towards a common goal

(i.e. ever higher production levels); later, when the development of the Vasmű was halted (1953-

1954), so-called community work (közösségi munka) was said to strengthen the solidarity among the population, while shock work and the ever growing production quotas disappeared from public discourse. Throughout the decade, the population was also bombarded with calls to attend meetings and rallies, “debates” and discussions on the most varied topics. These were often related to international politics. Thus, workers of a rural steel combine in Hungary ended up collecting donations for Korean children or harbouring Greek civil war refugees in their barracks; the workers of Sztálinváros were active participants to the international struggle of the proletariat.

188 “Tisztul a levegő,” DVÉ, August 7, 1951.See also: “Elítélték a városunkból eltávolított fasiszta csoport tagjait,” SzVÉ, December 4, 1951.

“Enemy activity” was intense in the first socialist town of Hungary. Tuning in to the

“slow poison” of Radio Free Europe had become an everyday routine during the weeks and months following the October 1956 uprising, but from the local newspaper we learn that there were people convicted for listening and discussing Voice of America broadcasts as early as

1951.189 At any rate, Radio Free Europe played an important role in the outbreak and spreading of the October 1956 insurgency to the country. Sztálinváros was the site of one of its bloodier episodes. If in the first two days after the outbreak of hostilities in the capital the town remained relatively quiet, on October 25th, 1956, an upset crowd of a few hundred workers stormed the air base found in the vicinity of Sztálinváros. Shots were fired and many civilians were killed and injured.190 Eventually, the commander surrendered the base and assumed leadership of the local

National (revolutionary) Committee. During the next few days, 70 to 80 percent (!) of the male population were drafted in Sztálinváros to support the insurgency.191 When—following the

Soviet counter-offensive of November 4th—Red Army tanks rolled towards Sztálinváros, the majority of the population found itself on the “guilty” side. Leaders of the Sztálinváros uprising were arrested one by one; silent and swift retribution against “counterrevolutionary elements” kept the population under alert. The “unmasking” of “enemies of the people” made daily headlines, as more and more citizens surrenderred weapons and ammunition which they had stashed at home. In May, 1957, the eight main leaders of the local revolt were brought to trial

189 “A lassan ölő méreg,” DH, December 5, 1956. See also: “Elítélték a városunkból eltávolított fasiszta csoport tagjait.” SzVÉ, December 4, 1951. 190 A total of 22 persons were killed in Sztálinváros during the October 1956 revolution. All but one were workers and all but one were youths in their teens, twenties and thirties. Miklós Miskolczi, Egy sortűz sorsa. Dokumentumtöredékek a huszadik százaból. A százados. Dráma két részben (Dunaújváros: Meritum Text Kiadó, 2006), 53. 191 Ibid, 66.

and sentenced to terms of five years to life in prison.192 With that, the restoration ended in

Sztálinváros.

In spite of the failed revolution, much has changed in Sztálinváros after October 1956, however. Debate over the taboos of the past was gradually allowed to enter public discourse.

“Does our country need the Danubian Iron Works?”—titled Dunapentelei Hírlap in early

1957.193 Should the construction of the Vasmű be continued now that the shift away from heavy industry rendered it, seemingly, obsolete? The answer was a hesitant “yes”: construction of the

Dunai Vasmű of Dunapentele, as the iron works and the town were named during a brief period after the revolution, must continue. Only when all the units of the Iron Works—further blast furnaces, cold and hot rolling mills, etc.—will be completed, would the Vasmű start making profit. In other words, it was—perhaps for the first time ever—publicly admitted that the combine was producing huge deficits and that it would take at least until 1961 that production output reach the level of input.194 In this context, another thus far carefully avoided topic made it into the press, and through it, into the awareness of the public: the mass layoffs, especially in the construction sector, that had caused ever greater social conflicts throughout Sztálinváros. In its editorials, the newspaper admitted that the students of the Technikum, the technical school of the

192 István Pados and Károly Nagyéri – life sentences, Gyula Izinger, Imre Küllős, Bálint Papp and Ferenc Tajti – 10 years, Pál Cihó 5 years. “Elítélték a sztálinvárosi ellenforradalmi csoportot,” SZH, May 24, 1957. 193 “Szüksége van-e az országnak a Dunai Vasműre?” DH, February 15, 1957. See also: “Szükség van-e a Dunai Vasműre?” DH, February 22, 1957. “Szükség volt-e a Dunai Vasműre?” SzH, May 17, 1957. 194 According to a newspaper report, in the mid-Fifties the state subsidized the Sztálin Vasmű/Dunai Vasmű with about 275 million Forints/year. 100 Forints worth of products cost 150 Forints to produce. In 1957 it was hoped that “stage 1” (including the hot and cold rolling mills, a fourth Martin-furnace, a second coking block and a second blast furnace) would be completed by 1961, and that by this time the combine would no longer “burden the population.” See: “Szükség volt-e a Dunai Vasműre?” SZH, May 17, 1957.

Vasmű, went on strike;195 that workers from Dunapentele/Sztálinváros were sent by the hundreds to work in coal mines throughout the country196; that living conditions in the Radar and Déli barracks towns were inhuman197; and finally, that all these and many more problems were due to the “[grave] economic situation of the country.”198

Around mid-1957, the town began to face this grim reality. The construction of a new textile factory was begun in order to accommodate about one thousand female workers who became unemployed in the construction sector. Several other light industrial workshops followed. Thousands of inhabitants of the two barracks towns were gradually settled in communal apartments, while those remaining in the barracks were provided improved facilities.

To pacify the population and in order to underscore the importance accorded still to Sztálinváros, the town was made a district (járás) seat.

The post-revolutionary normalization of Sztálinváros ran parallel to the normalization of the town’s past. One year after the outbreak of the revolt, the Sztálinváros Committee of the

Patriotic People’s Front organized a documentary exhibition on the “Hungarian counter- revolution” of 1956. Photographs, written documents, “cases of American air-photography cameras” were displayed to prove that the counter-revolution, as “the events” (az események) were now called, was instilled from abroad, by foreign agencies. To lend credibility to such claims, two widows of men killed during the hostilities were present at the opening to support the official line about the October uprising. Within a year, the revolt had become the work of

195 The student protest allegedly targeted a teacher who refused to side with them during the revolution. See: “Mi történt a Technikumban…?” DH, May 1, 1957. 196 “Elindult az első csapat bányamunkára,” DH, January 9, 1957. 197 “Beszéljünk őszintén a Radarról,” DH, March 1, 1957. 198 “Az állami építőipar,” SZH, May 21, 1957.

“killers, rowdies and hooligans,” who fought “until the last drop of rum”; with that, the local uprising that had mobilized thousands of workers was transformed into a partisan action of a handful of drunkards.

Against all the efforts to relegate alcohol abuse to the pre-(counter)revolutionary era, alcoholism remained a thorn in the eye of local authorities after 1956. When, in January 1958, the local party committee met to adopt a “draft political plan” for Sztálinváros, a participant to the meeting harshly condemned the “ever more widespread phenomenon of limitless drinking” that has been plaguing the town, and proposed the raising of the price of alcohol.199 When the price hike proved impossible to push through council and party, local decision makers set out to cleanse the downtown area of its unwanted “elements,” along with the pubs and restaurants where such elements used to hang out. Within a matter of months, most embarrassing locales were closed down or moved beyond the limits of New Town (Újváros).

But Sztálinváros would still not resemble the socialist town envisioned by Weiner. After more than eight years of existence, Sztálinváros still had no proper town centre. Following repeated criticism, including from Party Secretary János Kádár and CPSU Secretary General

Nikita Khrushchev, who visited Sztálinváros together in April 1958, in September the “final” plans for the centre were adopted. To underscore the significance of the event, construction minister Rezső Trautmann and deputy minister László Lux attended the meeting of the Town

Council at which Tibor Weiner presented his revised plans. Earlier sketches envisaging one large square that concentrated all the major buildings in one place were now dismissed as having

199 “A városi pártbizottság elfogadta a községi politikai tervjavaslatot,” SZH, January 17, 1958.

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“shortcomings” and as reflecting the “gigantomania” (gigantománia) of the era in which they were drawn. Such a plan, Weiner argued, “did not correspond to the needs dictated by life”; rather than building a “gigantic void” (gigantikus űr) in the town centre, Weiner proposed the construction of a “contiguous system of smaller spaces,” that is, three squares lined along Dózsa

György Street, to become the new town centre of Sztálinváros.200 With this, the main North-

South axis of the old plan (Sztálin út), which linked the centre to the iron works and thus symbolized the unity of the people and their work, was stripped of its earlier significance, while gradually ceding its place to a narrower East-West axis, which with its smaller, more human scale was to become the second main street of the town.

By the end of the decade, Sztálinváros had about 31,000 (registered) inhabitants and looked much different from how it was envisioned by its planners in the early 1950s. While heavy industry remained predominant, the textile, food and other light industries diversified the local economy, and with it, the population. The opening in 1956 of an institution of higher education (the Technikum) attracted, and “produced,” ever more members of the intelligentsia, while with the establishment of an “artist colony” in 1955 (see a discussion of the “művésztelep” in Chapter Four), numerous artists settled temporarily or permanently in Sztálinváros.

Sztálinváros was no longer a heavy industrial site surrounded by dormitories; the place began to resemble a town.

200 “Elfogadták a város központjának végleges tervét,” SZH, September 5, 1958.

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Conclusion

There are many similarities between public places and spaces in the East German and

Hungarian Stalin Towns. As both towns were born on the drawing board following similar principles, the two populations encountered similar opportunities and challenges in everyday public life. Both towns shared the optimism, but also the hardship, of colonies in the making. In both towns, huge efforts were made to construct a model town, and in both Stalinstadt and in

Sztálinváros these efforts were overshadowed by “failures” like the lack of funds, shortages of construction materials, mass layoffs, unfinished town centres, and so forth. In both new towns an effort was made to construct a “usable past” through the documentation of the present and the recent past and through their exhibition in museums of local history. There are also significant differences, however. Unlike Stalinstadt, the planned town of Sztálinváros was turned into a

“grown town” (nőtt város) through the successful integration of Stalin Town into a centuries old—and indeed, millennial—local history, as well as through the relatively successful adaptation of town planning to the needs of the population (i.e. through the settling of other industries to absorb the workforce laid off by the iron works; through the establishment of an institution of higher education to attract students and more members of the intelligentsia, etc.). In contrast to the setting of Stalinstadt at the periphery of East Germany and East German society, the location of Sztálinváros in the centre of the country and closer to the capital favoured the development of the town and its integration into the Hungarian urban landscape. More importantly, however, Sztálinváros was never the same after the October 1956 revolution; the fact that the bulk of the population of a more or less developed town sided with the revolution— as compared to the 2000 construction workers who, on June 17, 1953, having nowhere to march

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to in an incipient, much smaller Stalinstadt, stormed the Town Hall in neighboring

Fürstenberg201—, meant that post-revolutionary consolidation had to adapt to a significant degree to the realities created by the uprising. In Hungary, the October 1956 revolution led—following a period of post-revolutionary retribution peaking with the Imre Nagy trial of 1958—to the removal of the remnants of the “Stalinist” leadership of Mátyás Rákosi and slow but gradual liberalisation under János Kádár202; in East Germany, the June 17th, 1953 uprising was followed by no leadership change, swift retribution and—after a year and a half of a “New Course” adopted to pacify the population—the tightening of the party state’s grip on society through an ever larger police apparatus and, especially, through the Stasi.203 The two revolts, their different amplitude and aftermath explain to a large degree the different paths taken by Stalinstadt and

Sztálinváros as early as the mid-1950s.

201 In his memoirs, the Lutheran pastor of Stalinstadt, Heinz Bräuer, recalls that about 3000 persons took part in the June 17, 1953 events in Stalinstadt. Günter Fromm, the Stadtchronist of Eisenhüttenstadt, wrote of about 2000 workers participating at the march on the SED headquarters in Fürstenberg. See: Bräuer, Die ersten drei Jahrzehnte, 82. See also: Fromm, “Der 17. Juni,” 48-50. 202 Rákosi’s downfall started soon after Stalin’s death: in June 1953, he was summoned to Moscow and forced to resign from his post as Prime Minister. Three years later, in July 1956, once again upon the decision of the Moscow leadership, he had to resign also from his position of First Secretary of the Hungarian Workers’ party. This time, to make sure he would not engage in politics again, he was forced to move to the Soviet Union, where he lived until his death in 1971. 203 Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Ministry of State Security).

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Chapter Three

The Cultivation of Mass-Consciousness at the Workplace

The social space of work was a complex construction under state socialism. While the primary function of work remained production, the meaning of work was amended by ideological prescriptions which had little bearing on the production process. Tension between the leadership and those directly involved in production was the result and this was especially true of the heavy industrial sector where immediate, massive output was expected. In the early 1950s, obsessive focus on industrial output ran parallel to the neglect of aspects of production like pay, work conditions, workers’ welfare and the like. The belief that quantity rather than quality served socialism more (rather than better) resulted in high levels of scrap production, waste and environmental pollution. Training and competence were put into brackets as qualified foremen and managers trained under the old regime were removed from their posts for being ideologically unreliable. The effect on the appreciation of work was terrible, and immediate. The constitutional obligation to contribute to the construction of socialism, that is, to work, and the persecution of those without employment turned work into little more than a modern, poorly remunerated version of slave labour. Work was no longer a tool for self-fulfilment, let alone a means to earn a decent living or to partake in the benefits of social mobility; work was perceived as a duty, not towards oneself or towards one’s company, but towards the state and the party that ran it. As it was increasingly used for ideological (re)education, work was perceived by many as a punishment.

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Unsurprisingly, little productive work was done in the Eastern European “worker and peasant state.”204 This was so even though every citizen was proclaimed a worker: as the peasant was “upgraded” to be part of the “working peasantry,” doctors, engineers and teachers were made “intellectual workers” or members of the “working intelligentsia.” The key to this paradox was a dramatic decline in productivity. In the socialist economy, productivity was not calculated in economic terms (only); output was not a direct consequence of input. In fact, input was of secondary relevance in an economy in which capital, natural resources, labour, enterprises and assets were all owned, in a way or another, by the state. What mattered was the fulfilment of the production plan—output, that is—, which was ordered and enforced by decree. That production could not keep up with the continuous raising of production quotas (targets) was a reality incompatible with ideology; backlogs, bottlenecks in the production process or shortages in material or in qualified labour were simply ignored as they could not be dealt with within the

“real existing” socialist paradigm. The ever growing (planned) output figures thus put the economy, or what was left of it, under tremendous pressure. Such tension was necessary to the functioning of the political system, however: planned malfunctions in the economy justified the regular, often times major, interventions of the state when the political system called for more legitimization. The “shortage economy,” as János Kornai would famously call the phenomenon, was not the result of a system malfunction; it was an essential part of the system, just as the

204 In German: “Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat.”

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enduring ruins built under socialism were not sympthoms of decay but inherent features of state socialism.205

Interventions of the state into the sphere of work also hindered the growth of a “working class.” The preference of the system for industrial workers (as opposed to other workers,

“intellectual workers” or “worker peasants”) caused distrust among professional groups.

Contemporary sources reveal conflicts between members of the intelligentsia living in socialist towns like Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros on the one hand, and industrial workers on the other hand.206 But there was also a significant conflict of interest between construction workers and workers employed in the two iron combines. The difference in status between steelworkers and construction workers was best reflected in the monthly paycheque: iron works workers were better—and, at times, much better—paid than the builders of the socialist town. Criticism was, too, shared unevenly: if malfunctions in iron and steel production were usually said to be due to obscure conspiracies of Western spies and agencies, shortcomings in the quality of housing, dusty roads or unfinished construction business were invariably blamed on the sloppy work of construction workers. A competition for privileges, rather than the “socialist competition” envisioned by the party was the result. Party membership or activism further distorted the intended egalitarian space of work: the demonstration of enthusiasm at party or union meetings

205 While János Kornai used the term to explain the phenomenon that plagued the Eastern European region during the late 1970s, I argue that essential features of the “shortage economy” were present as early as the 1950s: shortages in all the sectors of the economy; no balance between supply and demand; overbureaucratization; irrational state-interventions in pricing; no manager accountability and “soft” budgets for companies (regular bailouts by the state). See Kornai, The Socialist System. For more recent elaborations on the subject see also: Eric Maskin, ed., Planning Shortage and Transformation. Essays in Honor of János Kornai (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000). 206 This conflict was mostly of cultural nature; it is discussed in detail in Chapter Four.

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was quietly rewarded with extra bonuses at month’s end, while the willingness to spy and report on others at the workplace was often honored with a separate paycheck.

Work in the Eastern European Stalin Town was as much about production as it was about the performance of rituals. Newspaper articles, newsreels or feature films made about Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros invariably emphasized the military discipline of work in the iron combine: march music and patriotic, war-like slogans accompanied the images taken of marching, mechanically moving workers; workers were said to fight, attack or conquer; they defended their country against saboteurs and enemies, both within and without; they struggled until their final victory. Factory sirens signaled the beginning and the end of working hours just as they had signaled air raids a decade earlier, during the war. Expressions like shock shift and shock work conveyed a sense of permanent Blitzkrieg, in which resting amounted to lack of vigilance and even sabotage, which would ultimately lead to defeat. Male workers were comrades in arms; women worked in the second front line (for instance as construction workers, but only rarely as steel workers), or on the home front. It was with ploys like these that work was transformed into something much greater than was graspable by the individual worker; work became a quasi- sacred matter, with unquestionable rules and with its own kind of determinism (“our work will lead us to the ultimate goal and salvation, namely communism”).207

Such a cloud of “certainties” rendered essential questions about work rather foggy.

Although production output was deemed the most important aspect of work, only a selected few

207 For military language used to describe the sphere of work in Sztálinváros see for instance this “War Report from the Foundry”: “Hadijelentés az öntődéről,” DVÉ, September 18, 1951. A more subtle allusion to war is provided, for instance, by the East German film Nach 900 Tagen (After 900 Days), a DEFA documentary on the construction of the EKO and the Stalin Town. The title seems to hint at the siege of Leningrad, which lasted nearly 900 days. See: Nach 900 Tagen, DEFA/GDR, 1953.

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people had access to exact production figures. What was public was output as a percentage of the production plan, but since the plan was constantly modified, one quickly lost his sense of reality in the matter.208 The confusion was only raised by the fact that the plan never provided for scrap production; output figures often included both products that have passed quality testing and materials which had to be scrapped due to quality shortcomings, while the exact value of production output was probably not known to anyone. Not only production output, but also the productivity of workers was decided upon by decree. Thousands of “innovations”209 or the so- called “innovator-movement”210 were employed to raise productivity; “voluntary” increases in the form of Stakhanovism, shock-work or “socialist self-obligations” put workers under tremendous pressure. But all these were not helpful at all when it came to accounting for missed targets; it was the irrational raising of mandatory production quotas for individual workers that, although not necessarily increasing production, ensured that there was always someone to take the blame when targets were not met.

Individual quotas were raised regularly, and sometimes considerably. One such instance directly caused the June 17, 1953 uprising in the GDR. Following the decision of the East

208 Paul Lendvai relates a fascinating incident from his early career as a journalist: as a junior employee of the Hungarian News Agency (MTI) in the early 1950s, Lendvai came across a piece of information on the decline in personal car production in the United States. He thought this was news worth publishing, after all the drop in car production by two or three million units over the previous year was yet another proof of the decline of the United States. Within hours of the publication of his piece, Lendvai got a phonecall from the chief editor, Madame Júlia Kenyeres (who was to become Deputy Director of MTI shortly after the incident). Kenyeres reprimanded him: “You committed a grave political mistake […]. The report published by you may be used [against us] by capitalist propaganda.” How was this possible? – Lendvai asked himself. “Since you provided exact figures, readers can now figure out, just how many cars are being produced [in the US]. It would have been enough to provide information on the percentual decline alone [my emphasis].” Later, Lendvai noticed that TASS and all other news agencies from socialist countries did the same: “They never provided exact figures, only percentages. Thus any problems [with the leadership] could be avoided.” See Paul Lendvai, Határátlépés (Budapest: Helikon, 2002), 89. 209 In German: “Neuerungen”; in Hungarian: “újítások”. Adapted from the Russian новатор or innovator. 210 In German: “Neuererbewegung”; in Hungarian: “újítómozgalom”.

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German Council of Ministers to raise production quotas by 10 percent (without, however, increasing the workers’ salaries), industrial workers revolted. The June 17, 1953 uprising taught the East German leadership a lesson: on the one hand, working and living conditions of workers had to be considerably improved if the repetition of such revolts was to be averted; on the other hand, the uprising led to the further tightening of control over the industrial worker. Both outcomes would have a tremendous impact on the sphere of work in East Germany (and beyond), during the 1950s.

Among the workers of Stalin Town, and especially, among the workers of Stalinstadt, a mass consciousness of surveillance, rather than a socialist mass consciousness developed after

1953. If, before 1953, the social space of work was characterized by a sense of closeness and solidarity among workers, the insecurities produced by Stalin’s death, ever tighter surveillance and the competition for privileges led to the atomization of worker society. Impotent slogans like

“Proletariat of the world, unite!” or the use of informal forms of address (i.e. the use of “Du” instead of “Sie”, or the use of “Kollege” or “kolléga”) among workers could not obscure the fact that individualism was gradually replacing solidarity as a main characteristic of the social space of work in the Stalin Towns.

Carelessness, idleness and even sabotage were as common features of the work carried out in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros as was the “disciplined” work of thousands of more or less enthusiastic workers. The faking of output figures and working hours were phenomena which plagued the two enterprises from the outset. Worse yet, absenteeism, especially during the summer months, caused heavy losses, while the replacement of those missing their shifts with incompetent co-workers only added to the chaos in the organization of work. Theft from the

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workplace, especially of wood, tools and other construction materials, slowed down work, while the lack of protective work gear and the ignorance of basic safety rules caused numerous accidents.

And yet, against all this background, the two towns of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros, along with the giant ironworks that kept growing in their vicintity, continued to be built throughout the

1950s (and indeed, beyond), with the involvement of unimaginable effort and at incredible financial and social cost to remain, to this day, among the most important testaments of real existing socialism in (East) Germany and in Hungary. It is to the heroic work delivered by the workers of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros, to the exploration of the sphere of work in the first socialist towns of East Germany and Hungary, that this chapter is devoted.

Socialist “Mißwirtschaft” in Stalinstadt

Austerity is the method of socialist economic management.211

From the outset, incompetence and chaos reigned at the Kombinat. The newborn East

German state lacked not only iron foundries and steel mills but also metallurgists able to rebuild and run the industry. Incompetence ran through the system from top to bottom; worse yet, while workers at the lower end could be trained—and they were, eventually, trained—, decision makers stayed on in their positions to continue their mismanagement in spite of the damages they

211 The original, German text reads: “Das Sparsamkeitsregime ist die Methode des sozialistischen Wirtschaftens.” See: “Mit Arbeitsanzügen sorgsam umgehen,” NT, March 16, 1955.

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had already caused. Minister of Industry Fritz Selbmann had been a construction- and mine worker between 1919 and 1933; that was about all the professional experience he had when, in

1946, he was appointed to run the iron and steel sector of the GDR. What mattered was his loyalty: a KPD-member and activist since 1922, Selbmann spent the years from 1933 to 1945 in prison and in concentration camps. His commitment was beyond question, but that did not save him from trouble. By the end of 1951, several explosions and daily disruptions at the newly inaugurated Hüttenwerk (Iron Works) led to an internal investigation that revealed incompetence and carelessness unimaginable even to the Soviet professionals who have witnessed the debacle in Magnitogorsk two decades earlier.

Two Soviet experts, Alexander A. Shulgin and Georgi F. Mikhalevich, were called to assist the Germans with fixing their troubled Kombinat. The facility was a ruin before it even started operation:

I was prepared before my departure from the Soviet Union that we would encounter a difficult situation at the EKO, but what we saw was beyond our imagination. We found, without exaggeration, a horrible situation, a plant, a new plant, which had already fallen apart. Stoppages and accidents succeeded each other. The most important mechanisms and machines have worked from the beginning of operation without greasing. During this chaotic period the furnaces were out of order more often than under operation. The situation was exceptionally difficult as there was not a single section that would be more or less well organized. We, too, in the Soviet Union, had difficult periods in the operation

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of our blast furnaces between 1928 and 1930, but I, personally, have never witnessed such a degree of degeneration, such a difficult situation.212

The foundation stone for blast furnace 1 was laid on January 1st, 1951, and the furnace was to be inaugurated before the start of the World Youth Festival on August 5th of the same year.213 It was, eventually, inaugurated two months after the Games but it is indicative of the haste in which the construction was completed that a West German company from the Ruhr region that had participated in the initial bidding for the construction of the Kombinat estimated a completion time of about two years for blast furnace 1 alone.214 The East Germans finished it in 10 months. Under normal conditions, the blowing of furnace 1 and its running up to full capacity should have taken 6 months; but under pressure from above (or, out of sheer socialist

élan), the builders of the Kombinat were given a few days.

At the close of 1951, furnace 2 was on its way with the construction errors already discovered in the design of furnace 1. It was revealed that the entire complex was built based on drawings which were in part not to scale, incompatible, inexact and thus unusable. There existed no comprehensive plan for the Kombinat. The different plants were built into the landscape without regard for the future enlargement to up to 8 blast furnaces, or for the infrastructure necessary for a complex of this magnitude. The narrow Oder-Spree Canal could not possibly

212 “Stenographische Niederschrift der Besprechung mit den Genossen Michalewitsch und Schulgin über das Eisenhüttenkombinat Ost und andere Stahlwerke in der DDR in Berlin, Haus der Einheit, am 28. April 1952, 10.00 Uhr,” 1; Barch SAPMO, DY30/3696. 213 The 3rd World Festival of Students and Youth took place in East Berlin between 5 and 19 August, 1951. 214 The Gute-Hoffnung-Hütte in Oberhausen offered to build blast furnace 1 in about two years. See: Letter from unknown (possibly Fritz Selbmann) to the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the SED (“Attn: Comrades Thunig and Ulbricht”), January 11, 1952, p. 2; Barch SAPMO, DY30/3696.

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accommodate the number of barges of coal and ore needed daily to feed all the planned furnaces

(as a result, the waterway was soon dropped and coal and iron ore were brought in by rail). The port and its equipment for unloading the barges and for transporting the ore and coal to the furnaces was inadequate. The railroads within the Kombinat grounds were of poor quality or they were simply missing. The furnaces themselves were not adapted to the low quality of the raw materials (especially coke) used in the metallurgical process and as a result they were quickly damaged. Worst of all, the existing two furnaces presented flaws that put the lives of hundreds of people in danger. Since the chamotte wall of the blast furnaces was barely a few centimeters thick and the water-cooling system of the furnaces presented frequent malfunctions, overheating, and thus, the explosion of the furnaces, were only a matter of time.

By early 1952, several gas explosions had taken place at both blast furnaces.215 In his report to the mixed East German-Soviet investigation commission, an exasperated chief of the

Soviet delegation, comrade Mikhalevich, lamented:

There was nobody to improve the quality of the work done there. At the furnace there was no locksmith on duty, no electrician, no greaser on duty, no one on duty in charge of cooling, no masons, no mechanic. […] The majority of the most important mechanisms, like the furnaces themselves, have remained without supervision after the beginning of operation. There were cases when both blast furnaces were stopped without the application of the most elementary safety measures. For example, they did not blow steam into the gas system during stoppages. This circumstance alone led to the two

215 In 1952 alone, 6 work-related fatal accidents were recorded at the EKO, while the total number of accidents was staggering: 527 incidents, of which 422 gas-related, occured in that year. In 1953, the number of fatalities grew to 10 and the total number of accidents jumped to 808. The number of accidents peaked in 1954 with 834 accidents after which we can observe a slow decline to 623 incidents in 1961. Between 1952 and 1961, at least 30 workers died at the EKS/EKO. See: Nicolaus, Einblicke, 106.

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explosions, which had occurred at the dust bags. When I told this to the furnace mechanics, they replied that they had no source of steam. This explains it all. I suggested to them to get a locomotive and connect the engine to the gas system. This has now finally been accepted as a viable solution.216

The investigation also revealed that the director of furnace 1, Hochofenchef (blast furnace chief)

Ziegner rarely showed up at the plant (“he is said to having been drunk at work all the time and he was rarely seen at the furnace”), and that he never supervised his subordinates.217 No wonder that the latter, including the workers directly involved in the operation of the blast furnaces, had taken a rather lax attitude towards their work. Mikhalevich’s view on work morale at the

Kombinat was crushing:

They had stopped the furnace for this or for that reason. They could finish [the repair] within half an hour, yet instead of beginning to work, the chief smelter sat down to have breakfast. One of the smelters pulled out a bottle of beer, the second smoked, [while] the third simply took a rest. After about an hour they began to work. But only those three or four men worked. All others—about 8 to 10 men, who work in other sections—would have to come to the furnace when operation is stopped. But they sat at their places and as long as the furnace was stopped they kept sitting there without giving a helping hand [to the others].”218

216 “Stenographische Niederschrift,” 4-5; Barch SAPMO, DY30/3696. 217 “Aktennotiz über die Unterredung mit dem Werkleiter des EKO Otto Ringel am 12.1.1952, 3”; Barch SAPMO, DY 30/3696. See also Comrade Mihalevich’s report in which he states: “During the first two days at the plant I realized that the director of the blast furnace, Comrade Ziegner and the technical personnel led by him did not control the work done in the most important sections [of the production process].” “Stenographische Niederschrift,” 6; Barch SAPMO, DY30/3696. 218 “Stenographische Niederschrift,” 5-6; Barch SAPMO, DY30/3696.

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Throughout the investigation that lasted from January until the end of April, 1952, Minister

Selbmann wrote a number of letters to “Dear Otto [Grotewohl219]” and to “Dear Walter

[Ulbricht]”, in which he did his utmost to play down his responsibility in the disastrous failure of the Kombinat. Selbmann blamed everyone, including those who had warned him from the outset about the problems around the plant. But the party leadership was soon fed up with the excuses and Selbmann could barely save himself and his position with a several-hour long session of self-criticism.220 The party could not at this point afford to lose a high-ranking communist like

Selbmann. Therefore, to ease somewhat the minister’s (and thus, the party’s) burden of guilt, in his speech given at the last meeting of the investigation committee, Walter Ulbricht turned the tide of accusations against the dark forces of imperialism, which have allegedly infiltrated the

GDR and almost caused the Hüttenwerk project to fail. He fulminated about enemies of the

Democratic Republic, about sabotage, about future trials that must set examples, and so forth.

The exercise proved so successful that in the months and years to follow the accusation of sabotage was generously applied to cover up malfunctions in the system for which no one in particular but the system itself was responsible.221

The Stasi files on the Eisenhüttenkombinat reveal numerous alleged instances of sabotage. In 1952, a 27 years old blast furnace technician was accused of deliberately causing a

21 ½ hours long stoppage of the iron foundry. Soon after his arrest by the MfS the man was found responsible of two further instances of sabotage which had occurred earlier. One of them,

219 Otto Grotewohl (1894-1964), Prime Minister of the GDR from 1949 to 1964. 220 That did not prevent him from falling into disgrace a couple of years later. By 1958, he had to resign from the positions he held in the party (member of the Central Committee of the SED) and state (Minister of Industry, and later, Minister of Metallurgy and Mining). Once ousted from politics, Selbmann had a moderately successful career as a writer until his death in 1975. 221 “Stenographische Niederschrift,” 21-23; Barch SAPMO, DY30/3696.

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which was particularly embarrassing, had taken place on April 30, 1952, during a visit of

Secretary General and Deputy Prime Minister Ulbricht to the Kombinat. Apparently, the MfS was warned: in an anonymous penciled note replete with spelling errors an informer wrote to the

Stasi via postal letter: “Attempt on Ulrich [sic] planned on 1st of May. Sabotage planned at blast furnace II. A Kumpel.”222 Was the mechanic framed? Was the note genuine? The Stasi-officer in charge of the investigation concluded in his report that “while there is no proof that the accused acted upon the direct orders of others, it is clear that he did his machinations with the blessing and in the interest of imperialist warmongers.” Intentional disruption or not, the worker was sentenced to 8 years (!) in prison for multiple acts of sabotage.223

Based on the available source material it is hard to distinguish between true acts of sabotage and disruptions caused by other reasons. Anything that went wrong was believed and said to serve the interests of the enemy. The high ranking employee of the Bau Aufsicht

(Building Authority) who took bribes in return for issuing building permits and allocating construction materials to his acquaintances was sentenced to 1 year and 8 months in prison not on charges of corruption, but for “hindering the socialist construction effort.”224 Admitting the corruption of high-ranking officials was out of the question; sabotage or deviations from the party line were usually invoked to explain the ills of the system. The system thus worked in spite

222 In English: a fellow. 223 The file of this mechanic reveals another aspect of the matter: after his arrest on May 12, 1952, his wife, a mother of two and expecting a third child, did not hear any news of him. Anxious to learn what had happened to her husband, she wrote a letter to the president of the republic and, when he declined his competence in the matter, to the general attorney. To her great disappointment, she was not given any information on her husband until after his condemnation on November 4, 1952. BStU, MfS/BV Frankfurt, File 18/52. 224 BStU, KD Fürstenwalde, File 694.

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of the efforts of the enemy; in fact, the system was in a constant need of enemies, which were generously delivered by an ever growing network of spies and informers.

Stasi-documents preserved in Berlin and elsewhere allow us to estimate the extent of the

East-German network of spies and informers. In 2010, Mary Fulbrook put the number of

“inoffizielle Mitarbeiter” or IMs active in the early 1950s within the GDR at 20,000 to 30,000; the author of a multi-volume book dedicated entirely to the IMs of the Stasi reports about 74

(1952) to 180 (1958) active IMs in Stalinstadt during the 1950s.225 There are, however, indications that such informal collaborators were not always reliable. A quick review of a few such cases is telling. Ms. Betti Wandel, cover-name “Normer,” was hired by the Stasi because she was “an employee in the personnel department of the Bau-Union and could, as such, hear many things.” Unfortunately for the MfS, Ms. Wandel, a mother of two, has left her job to become a housewife soon after being hired to spy on her colleagues.226 Code-name “Conrad,” a foreman in the new Wohnstadt, served the Stasi only from August to November 1951, when he was “suddenly fired because of drunkenness and theft, leaving for Berlin without informing us.”

“Conrad’s” desertion did not come as a surprise to commissar Wandel227 of the Stasi in

Fürstenberg; in a report of September 1952, he conceded that “from a moral point of view,

‘Conrad’ conducted a debaucherous lifestyle lately as far as women and alcohol are concerned.”228 The relationship with “Krüger,” whom the Stasi had apparently hired as early as

225 Mary Fulbrook, The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 240. See also: Helmut Müller-Enbergs. Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit. Teil 3, Statistiken (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag), p. 514. 226 “Personalakte eines Informators (Normer),” BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O), File 130/52. 227 It is unclear from the records available whether Stasi-Kommissar Wandel of the Fürstenberg/Oder Stasi-district was related to the informer code-named Normer (Ms Betti Wandel of Fürstenberg/Oder). 228 “Personalakte eines Informators (Conrad),” BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O), File 251/52.

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October 1950, was terminated in 1952 because “he could not be persuaded to collaborate in spite of our repeated urgings to do so.”229 Code-name “Wanderer,” also working with the Bau Union, was not only useless but he even harmed the Stasi by deconspiring himself as a spy in front of fellow workers.230 Code-name “Donnerhall,” characterized as “a quiet young man who acts with consideration, one of the finest in our fire department,” flatly refused to spy on others for the secret police.231 From all these and from many more examples of failed collaboration one cannot but draw the conclusion that the “Stalinist” or “totalitarian” state in the making had reached its limits early on in the Wohnstadt of the Eisenhüttenkombinat; it had far from total control over its own spies, let alone over its millions of subjects.

And yet, sniffling at the workplace was a common, general phenomenon. It was the most important way of getting at the people who were of interest to the state. Spies were typically planted in departments where people tended to share their thoughts or developed relationships of some kind or another with the personnel: sales persons of pubs or shops, bus drivers and conductors, teachers, nurses, janitors and canteen personnel—like the head of the canteen of the

Kombinat, who was assigned the somewhat unusual code name of “Herbstlich” (autumnal).232

The files reveal that the members of the intelligentsia were less ready to follow the call of the

“shield and sword of the party,” than were the workers who have settled in the first socialist town of the GDR.233 In the extensive file of code-name “Fürbringer,” for instance, a Stasi- administrator deplores that “Fürbringer is the only engineer who, out of the entire intelligentsia

229 “Personalakte eines Informators (Krueger),” BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O), File 97/52. 230 “Personalakte eines Informators (Wanderer),” BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O), File 226/52. 231 “Personalakte eines Informators (Donnerhall),” BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O), File 124/52. 232 “Personalakte eines Informators, (Herbstlich),” BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O), File 252/52. 233 The Stasi-Slogan “Schild und Schwert der Partei”, was adapted from the Soviet KGB’s slogan “Sword and shield of the party.”

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at the SOAG234 can be named progressive.” Then, the author of the note goes on: “[s]ince especially in these circles there are persons who are of interest to us, he can be of use to us.

Therefore, we request to have him confirmed as a V-person.”235 “Fürbringer,” who has most likely accepted the job (“he is willing to work with us and we therefore recommend him as informer”), was an important asset to his employer: in spite of his disability “amounting to

70%,” as is noted in his file, he had traveled the world over before the war and was well known among the German refugees who settled around Fürstenberg. Incidentally, “Fürbringer” himself was born in Stettin (today’s town of Szczecin in Poland) in 1911; there was no better way at getting close to refugee Germans from Poland than hiring one of their own.236

The number of German expellees from Poland was high around Stalinstadt. After the war, many Germans from across the Oder settled close to the new “Friedensgrenze” (Peace

Border) in the hope of returning, sooner or later, to their homes. During the few years spent in

East Germany, many of them did not take roots and were therefore easier to mobilize for the cause of the Kombinat and thus for the cause of the new “worker and peasant state.” According to a report, by 1958 about half of the population of Stalinstadt was composed of such refugees and expelles from the East.237 They were promised a job, an apartment and a decent living. But in spite of the incentives and promises made to workers both from the now Polish territories and from the German Democratic Republic, work morale was low. With no appropriate tools, no

234 Staatliche Oderschiffahrts-AG. 235 Vertrauensmann (V-Mann), or, Vertrauensperson (V-Person) are German designations for undercover agents of a secret service. 236 “Personalakte eines Informators (Fürbringer),” BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O), File 241/52. 237 “Aufbau West - Aufbau Ost. Die Planstädte Wolfsburg und Eisenhüttenstadt in der Nachkriegszeit”, exhibition, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, May 16 to August 12, 1997, accessed September 28, 2015, http://www.dhm.de/archiv/ausstellungen/aufbau/d_overview2.htm.

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proper work gear and forced to improvise solutions to the simplest of tasks—the SED Politbüro

(!) debated on whether to construct showers at the EKO as late as February 1952238—, construction workers did not feel the care of the party and state they had been called to serve.

Sloppy work, carelessness, the waste of scarce construction materials, low hygiene, high theft and alcoholism rates were only some of the symptoms of worker dissatisfaction.

The lack of proper work gear and the scarcity of tools including shovels or pickaxes was a problem from the outset. Once the clothing brought from home had become unusable, a pair of good boots or a warm coat, no matter how used, were much sought-after merchandise on the black market. Three years after the founding of the Wohnstadt an upset construction manager still deplored in the Heimatzeitung that “over a period of two months, the VEB Bau-Union with its several thousand workers was allocated [only] 18 pairs of brick mason’s trousers, 13 mason’s jackets, 124 blue overalls and 100 combined work suits.”239 Two years down the line, in the spring of 1955, a people’s correspondent with the newspaper proposed a stricter distribution, and even registration, of shoes and work gear at the Kombinat, as “there had been reports of such items being hoarded to sell on the black market.”240 Accidents caused by improper work gear, improvised tools or outright carelessness were common, as work safety provisions were hardly ever observed. When a worker of the Kombinat died electrocuted as he was handling an electric cable with his bare hands, the local newspaper conceded that 75 percent of all work-related

238 “Anlage Nr 1. zum Protokoll Nr. 91 vom 5. Februar 1952. [Protokoll Nr. 91. Der Sitzung des Zentralkommittees am 5. Februar 1952]. Massnahmen zur Verbesserung der Arbeit des Ministeriums für Hüttenwesen und Erzbergbau, der Industriegewerkschaft Metallurgie sowie der Industriegewerkschaft Bau-Holz beim Aufbau des Eisenhüttenkombinats Ost,” 7. BARCH, DY 30/IV 2/2/191. 239 “Für eine bessere Versorgung mit Arbeitskleidung,” NT, December 10, 1953. 240 “Mit Arbeitsanzügen sorgsam umgehen,” NT, March 16, 1955.

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accidents were linked to the non-adherence to work safety regulations including, of course, the lack of protective gear at work.241

Over time, with the onset of the New Course, smaller malfunctions in the system were publicly admitted.242 When, in 1955, several women busy painting the walls of the new Friedrich

Wolf Theatre243 fell from improvised ladders and landed in hospital with broken limbs, critique of work conditions in the press was already daily occurrence.244 Sloppy work remained, seemingly, an eternal problem. Why were shops “nicer” in Fürstenberg than in Stalinstadt? Why was sales personnel rude? Why were workers always late to work? Why were buses carrying them late? Who was responsible for the bus timetable chaos? Questions like these were asked ever more frequently in the press or at worker’s meetings.

The most irritated voices were heard when it came to the quality of work delivered by construction workers. Many of the apartment blocks finished in haste during the first years have become uninhabitable by the mid-Fifties. Wet walls, mold, dripping ceilings, broken heating ovens and malfunctioning toilets were among the most frequent objects of complaints in these blocks. The local administration could not but respond by “differentiating” (lowering, that is),

241 “Unsachgemäße Reparatur forderte ein Menschenleben,” NT, December 29, 1955. 242 The “New Course” was a tactical retreat from the course thus far followed by the SED involving, among others, the improvement of living conditions of the population, the loosening of the party-state’s grip on society, the slowing-down of the pace of socialization and industrialization, etc. The New Course was adopted a week before the June 17, 1953 uprising, but it was regarded as too little, too late, especially by construction workers, who protested the raising of their production quotas. The uprising that broke out on June 16, 1953 was the result. Two years later Walter Ulbricht was to famously deny that such a course had ever been the “intention” of his party. 243 The theatre was named for German doctor, antifascist writer and communist politician Friedrich Wolf (1888- 1953). 244 See for instance: “Helft Unfälle verhüten! Gute Erfolge im Unfallschutz dürfen in der Aufbau-Union nicht zur Leichtsinnigkeit führen.” NT, February 20, 1955.

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even though only minimally, the rent paid in these housing units.245 But new housing was not satisfactory either. In October 1954, a worker wrote to the editor of the Heimatzeitung that when he moved into his new apartment, the electric cabling was entirely useless: the lights went on and off at random, the switches did not work while some wall outlets had electricity in them only when the ceiling lights were on.246 Another unhappy worker reported a year later that even though his block was declared ready for move-in over 10 months earlier, it was never finished.

Whenever a brigade showed up at the building, they fixed things in a seemingly random order: first they nicely painted the interior and then they moved on to plaster the external brick wall.

That the wall had been soaked by rain and that the stairwell painting was soon peeling off as a result did not seem to matter to them.247

Theft from the workplace was characteristic of work morale in the Wohnstadt, and after

1953, in Stalinstadt. The logic behind it (“the people’s property is mine, too”), resonated with many workers during the 1950s. In times of rationed food and overall scarcity, anything could be used in the household or traded for something useful on the black market. Only few cases ended in court and they reveal that theft was punished severely only when it was coupled with other forms of antisocial or anti-socialist behavior. An electrician who stole 100 meters of cable from his workplace and sold it to buy alcohol (he also attempted to steal his colleague’s binoculars but was caught red-handed), was sentenced to 14 months in prison.248 A mason who had stolen tools from his workplace was sentenced to 1 year and 3 months in prison because “he brought to

245 “Differenzierung der Mieten in Stalinstadt,” NT, February 2, 1954. 246 “Strippenzieher am Werk,” NT, October 28, 1954. 247 “Nach mir die Sintflut,” NT, April 21, 1955. 248 “Aus dem Gerichtssaal: Vom Hehler zum Diebgesellen,” NT, August 20, 1955.

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expression with his attitude that he was unwilling to obey our democratic legality.” The fact that he simply “enjoyed owning tools in abundance” weighed in heavily in the appreciation of his crime. 249 Or, take the report on an official with the HO restaurant administration who was sentenced to 7 months in prison for embezzling 30 (!) Marks.250 The conclusion of the “Schöffe”

(lay judge), who signed the report:

Unfortunately, there are still citizens who are not aware of the meaning of the property of the people. We, workers, employ all our force to raise the productivity of our work and thus to raise the living standard of all. And then such vermin steals the fruits of our work. It is especially [the frequently stolen] small amounts which cause us considerable damage. Therefore, we, the workers, demand the severe punishment of any attack on the property of the people.

Moralizing and agitation of this kind was omnipresent at the workplace in the form of slogans, regular union or party organisation meetings, the Wandzeitung (wall newspaper), but also the

Betriebsfunk, the Kombinat’s own radio programme, which was brought by wire to the workplace, the canteen, the Kulturbaracke and the various “club rooms” of the barracks town.

The radio or the “speaker” (Lautsprecher) was the prime propaganda instrument at the workplace, especially in closed spaces like offices. So powerful was the Betriebsfunk that when its subliminal murmur went silent due to a technical malfunction or during longer breaks caused by a cut wire, workers promptly “demanded” to have the transmission restored as soon as possible. In view of the poor variety of programs—announcements on this or that competition

249 “Aus dem Gerichtssaal: Die Katze ließ das Mausen nicht,” NT, November 25, 1955. 250 “Aus dem Gerichtssaal: Am Volkseigentum die Finger verbrannt,” NT, November 26, 1955.

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among workers, brigades and shops of the Kombinat, music, amateur plays (Laienspiele) and

“recitations” (Rezitationen)—the broadcast was rather boring. But the “speaker” was also a most useful tool when it came to the spreading of practical information on the distribution of food rations, cultural programs, announcements of the party, the trade unions, the HO and the

Konsum, the hospital and so forth. It was especially important during the winter months, as one report noted in January 1953, when construction workers spent much of the day in their living quarters.251 Not all construction workers stayed idle at home when construction came to a halt due to bad weather, however; a group of about 25 employees of the Stalinstadt Bau Union, who were out of work during the winter months, convened daily at the canteen of the Kombinat to play Skat,252 for hours on end. So upset were the workers of the iron foundry that they promptly appealed to Bauleiter (Construction Chief) Bock of the Bau Union to have the noisy card gamers removed from their canteen. “They should work if they get paid anyway,” an upset worker wrote to the Heimatzeitung; his “appeal to the conscience of our colleagues at the Bau Union” was heard by the construction company, which, lacking the means to do much else, made sure that the card gaming would continue elsewhere, hidden from the eyes of frustrated Kombinat workers.253

In the absence of competitive salaries and other returns that would keep workers interested in doing their job properly, company directors invented a variety of “socialist competitions” among workers, brigades and factories. As the number of blast furnaces grew in

251 “Betriebsfunk Wohnlager ‘Insel’ aufwachen!” NT, January 9, 1953. 252 A popular card game in Eastern Germany. 253 According to this report, construction workers earned 60% of their usual income during the winter months. “150 Prozent beim Skatspielen. Eine Frage an den Kollegen Bauleiter Bock – Ein Appell an das Bewußtsein der Kollegen der Bau-Union,” NT, February 10, 1953.

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Stalinstadt, the competition among the blast furnaces of the EKS came to dominate the competition landscape of the town. Virtually every issue of Heimatzeitung carried articles accompanied by figures and tables on the current ranking of this or that blast furnace based on their alleged output. Socialist competitions were also held at regional or national (East German) level. Since different profiles rendered a comparison of two Kombinats impossible, production levels were measured not in thousands of tons of iron but in the percentage of production realized in excess of the production plan for the respective month or year. Thus, a brick factory’s output could be made comparable to the production of a bakery. Every company and every factory was involved, in some way or another, in a socialist competition. To increase solidarity among inhabitants, an all-Stalinstädter competition was also launched between Stalinstadt and the construction site around the new Stalinallee in Berlin. The number of bricks laid per week or the surfaces paved during a day were typical parameters used in this contest which was, too, among the most hotly debated ones in the local newspaper. It did not seem to matter what was being compared; what mattered were the rituals associated with these competitions, from the sessions of honouring contest winners (usually with medals or cups, but occasionally also with cash awards, promotions and holidaying rights by the seaside), to the posting of worker heroes’ photographs on the factory’s wall-newspaper.

During quieter weeks without state anniversaries or political campaigns, the wall- newspaper and the slogans posted around the workplace were, typically, devoted to socialist contests. But the walls of factory shops and ateliers were also used for “visual advertising”

(Sichtwerbung) of a more didactic kind: “Have you washed your hands during lunch break?” or

“Keep your workplace tidy!” or “Don’t waste the resources of our socialist economy!” were, too,

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typical slogans found at the workplace. The most likely occurrences, however, were banners honouring Joseph Stalin (before 1956), the Soviet Union and the SED; these were permanently on display and not removed unless major political events or policy changes dictated so (i.e. the

June 17 uprising, the 20th Congress of the CPSU, etc.).

Finally, entirely unrelated to the production process but equally important elements of the sphere of work were the various community work or “free time” (Freizeit) activities held under the auspices of the party or of the trade union at the workplace: classes on scientific socialism,

Russian language courses or a variety of celebrations known as Betriebsfeiern, of which the latter were particularly popular as they usually involved the consumption of large quantities of food and alcohol. The occasions were not always connected to the factory or to statutory holidays like Labour Day or Republic Day; they could be birthdays, weddings or the birth of a child to a brigade leader or to a worker. The attraction of Betriebsfeiern lay also in the fact that they were usually accompanied by live music and dancing. Since they were held under the auspices of a company (i.e. the EKS), the venues were cleaner (the “Aktivist” and the

“Berggaststätte Diehloer Höhe” were typical venues for such Betriebsfeiern), the public was more select, while the price of food and alcohol was heavily subsidized.

If, in the initial years, the sphere of work in Stalinstadt was shaped by the chaos of a colony in the making, towards the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s things settled a bit. The (temporary) stop of construction of the EKO following the June 17, 1953 revolt brought some relaxation in the sphere of work. Conditions at the workplace improved as mandatory production quotas had become, say, more realistic. Increasing competence characterized the work of both managers and workers, as “mistakes” of the past were corrected

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and the education and training of the workforce became a priority. Stakhanovism and shock work were long forgotten; the endless sessions dedicated to the study of Stalin’s life belonged to the past. The militaristic rituals and language associated with work have, too, become more moderate as “Stalinism” was denounced and gradually abolished. More importantly, however, the hardship endured in the initial period was gradually acknowledged as workers were paid better wages and the shops carried products which were entirely missing from Stalinstadt earlier.

More and more workers were rewarded by their employer with private apartments or holidaying rights by the seaside, while slow but steady further development of the Kombinat promised a bright future for those who settled to remain in the town.

When the time had come to rename Stalinstadt, decision makers picked a name that was most appropriate for the first new town of the GDR; with the Kombinat dominating the economic landscape of the town, Eisenhüttenstadt or Iron-Foundry-Town signaled a reality which could not be overcome ever since: the town was, and remained, the Wohnstadt of the

Eisenhüttenkombinat. In other words, the settlement has not managed to develop into a “proper” town with a diverse economy and a diverse population. As the EKO was modernized and, especially after 1989, downsized, the life of the workers of Eisenhüttenstadt, as well as the town itself, were badly affected. We shall see in the following section how similar problems and trends were, to a large degree, overcome in today’s town of Dunaújváros.

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“City of Fire”: The Sphere of Work in the “First Socialist Model Town” of Hungary254

“If we imported steel rolls nicely wrapped in tin foil they would still be cheaper than producing them in Hungary!”255 Zoltán Vas, president of the National Planning Office

The first Hungarian Five Year Plan (1950-1954) envisioned the turning of Hungary into

“a country of iron and steel, a country of machines, a developed industrial nation.” To this end, about half of the investment funds available under the plan were designated to the modernisation of the country’s heavy industry,256 while almost half of the funds allocated to the iron and steel sector were earmarked for the Danubian (after 1951: Stalin) Iron Works.257 Generous funding alone did not guarantee the success of the undertaking, however; just like in Stalinstadt, the human factor was to play a crucial role in its outcome.

From the beginning, chaos reigned at the construction site. Workers recruited from various regions of the country stood idle for days as there was no one to tell them where to pick up their work.258 The bureaucratic processing of each new arrival caused delays in the employment of persons who came to Dunapentele to make some quick money and then return home.259 The absence of tools and protective work gear rendered work inefficient and dangerous.260 While workers were paid relatively high wages, payment was often late, and when

254 The new town was frequently referred to as the “city of fire”, as a reference to the giant furnaces built at the Vasmű. See for instance: Unknown Author, Ötéves tervünk: Béketerv (Budapest: Népművelési Minisztérium, 1953), 15. 255 Quoted in Paul Lendvai, Határátlépés (Budapest: Helikon Kiadó, 2002), 109. 256 Secretary General Mátyás Rákosi on February 25, 1951, at the 2nd Congress of the MDP. Unknown Author, Ötéves tervünk, 10. 257 37.5 Billion out of a total of 85 Billion Forints, according to the revised plan of 1951. Unknown Author, Ötéves tervünk, 41-43. 258 “Bürokrácia, felületes munka, lógás a Munkaerőtartalékok Hivatalában,” DVÉ, March 28, 1951. 259 “Miért nem állítják napoking munkába az új, toborzott munkásokat?” DVÉ, March 6, 1951. 260 “Kinek jár csizma?” DVÉ, January 30, 1951.

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it was on time, workers had to queue up for hours to receive it.261 The food was terrible and the number of portions delivered to the construction site was insufficient. Therefore, workers quitted work ahead of time to secure their meal in the canteens.262 Work morale was low; tools and construction materiel were lying left around the construction site.263 There were reports of workers who slept through their nightshift or who did not show up for work at all.264 The work delivered at the construction site of the first socialist town of Hungary was poorly organized, of low quality, and, above all, it was slow.

By 1952, the protocol of hiring new workers was unified among the various units of

“Construction Trust No. 26,” the enterprise in charge of the Sztálinváros construction project. An information booklet was issued to help orientation at the giant construction site:

Upon hiring, each worker must report at the screening station in order to pass medical testing, in the course of which they will be subjected to a general investigation, and if necessary, disinfection.265[…] After the medical examination, workers will be assigned jobs according to their abilities. If workers arrive late in the afternoon or at night, when picking up their work is not possible, they will proceed from the screening station directly to the temporary quarters […]. After screening, workers will head to the central labour office where they will be told at which unit to report in order to start their work.

261 “Szüntessük meg a bérkifizetés körüli zavarokat,” DVÉ, February 20, 1951. 262 “Miért nem kaptam ebédet?” DVÉ, February 20,1951. See also: “Mi van a kovácsüzem konyháján?” SZVÉ, December 15, 1953. 263 “Az A/1-es épületen nem teljesítik a tervet, mert laza a munkafegyelem,” DVÉ, May 22, 1951. 264 “Fegyelembontók a gépészeti osztályon,” DVÉ, June 5, 1951. 265 It seems that not only workers but anyone visiting Sztálinváros was thus “disinfected”. From a report of a visitor we learn that “[i]t somewhat surprised us that they subjected us to a medical examination, took blood from us and sprayed us with powder against head lice from head to toe, but then it is also understandable that one should care for the health of workers.” No title, OSA, HU OSA 206-1-1:3 of 55, Item 05046/53, 1.

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[…] Accomodation is provided for free by the company, and so are heating and cleaning [in the dormitories].266

To the newly arrived, this read as straight forward procedure. In reality, however, things looked different as workers were subjected to abuses from the moment they set foot at the construction site. There were reports of foremen beating up unskilled workers for no reason;267

“subtler” abuses, like the ones reported by a worker in the spring of 1953, were daily occurrence:

[After the medical screening] I was assigned to work with Mill Construction Company No. 26/1.[…] Here they immediately handed me a paper with which I had to walk over to headquarters to buy peace bonds.268 I was shocked but I had no choice, so I subscribed bonds worth 100 Forints. I got off so lightly because I had already subscribed bonds worth 900 Forints at my previous job. […] For about one week, I commuted to work by train from Dunaföldvár and the weekly ticket for those 40 kilometres cost me 17 Forints. Of course I had to pay for it myself […]. During the trial week I made 300 Forints, but later I realized that […] they merely wanted to dazzle us with such [generous] payment.269

Indeed, workers rarely received the pay that was promised to them. They were paid twice every month but the deductions at month’s end for peace bonds, meals, trade union membership, cultural funds and the like reduced their second pay to almost nothing. Worse yet, foremen

266 Unknown Author, Sztálinváros tájékoztatója (Sztálinváros: 26. Sz. Tröszt, 1952), 3. 267 “Klemmer mozdonyvezető veri a hozzá beosztott segédmunkásokat,” DVÉ, January 16, 1951. 268 The “békekölcsön” (literally: peace loan) was introduced in 1949 as a “voluntary” (in fact, mandatory) contribution of the population to the costs of developing Hungarian industry, and especially, the military industry. It was expected that each worker subscribes about a monthly salary worth of peace bonds per year, which would then be deducted on a monthly basis from their income. Peace bonds were highly unpopular and they were abolished in 1956. While subscribers were promised repayment within five to ten years, most subscribers were never paid back their “investment”. 269 “Life and Work in the 26/I Gyárépítő Vállalat at Sztálinváros,” OSA, HU OSA 300-40-4, Box 14, Item No. 06852/53, 3.

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systematically embezzled the money collected from their subordinates for meals, which was then deducted once again from the workers’ salaries. Bonuses for extra hours or high risk work were, too, systematically withheld. Low discipline was met with draconian measures: those arriving at work a few minutes late (perhaps because their train or bus was late or because of delays at the cantines), were sanctioned with a full hour of unexcused absence; a missed day “cost” workers

10 percent of their monthly pay, while several days of absence without leave caused workers to be “tried” by a disciplinary commission which—as firing the already scarce workforce was no option—invariably punished absenteeism with hefty fines, cuts in paid leave and the cancelling of all sorts of benefits, from bonuses due at a child’s birth to financial aid paid in the event of a death in the family.270

Declassed citizens like “class enemies” and “kulaks” (or their descendands) were as likely to arrive to Sztálinváros as were employees of factories from the rest of the country who were sent to the new town to carry out specific construction tasks. More generally, however,

Sztálinváros attracted persons who would otherwise not find employment elsewhere. Among them was a 26 years old former student of agriculture who was exmatriculated from university for his alleged “kulak” origin in 1949 and who, since then, was fired from all the jobs he held whenever his origin came to light. Desperate to find employment again, he went to Sztálinváros in January 1953, where he was promptly hired and where, thankfully, no further questions were asked. Of his nine fellow brigade members in Sztálinváros, some were former collective farm members, “who at the dissolution of the kolkhozes got too little to survive on”;271 then, there

270 Ibid, 5-10. 271 Ibid, 5.

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were those who “left without permission”272 from their earlier jobs and could therefore not be hired elsewhere;273 and finally, there were those like himself, who were fired from their earlier jobs, just like “the other kulák boy” in his brigade. As far as their profession was concerned, the members of the brigade were mostly peasants and tractor-drivers, but there was also a former butcher, a policeman and an economist among them. Once gathered in Sztálinváros, these ten men were hired as unskilled workers to dig out a posthole for pillar C 11 of the future ore breaker at the Iron Works.

Due to the bad soil, the pillar had to be dug 22 metres (!) deep into the ground. Things went wrong from the start:

During its construction, the pillar banked several times and, as a result, work on it took over one and a half months to complete, instead of the prescribed two weeks. The banking was caused by ground water, which seeped into the hole in large quantities. Also, they led water from other holes into this hole as all other pumps malfunctioned and only our pump at pillar C 11 operated properly. As one machine could not cope with all that water, the walls and the bottom of the hole got soaked to the point that pillar C 11 banked about eight times in March and in April 1953 alone.274

The brigade used spits and shovels to excavate about 12 cubic metres of earth every day, but when there was water in the pit (whenever the electric pump broke down), they would barely manage 3 cubic metres. As the work was heavy and the pay was low, the brigade requested that

272 In the original, Hungarian wording: “önkényes kilépő”. 273 Employees could not be hired as long as their “Work Book” (in Hungarian: “Munkaköny”) listing their previous places and dates of employment was not released by the last employer. 274 “Life and Work in the 26/I Gyárépítő Vállalat at Sztálinváros,” OSA, HU OSA 300-40-4, Box 14, Item No. 06852/53, 6.

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the standard “norm” (quota, target) and payment be adjusted to their heavy work. Within days, the norm-expert in charge ruled that a special (lower) quota should, indeed, apply to the pitworkers, but in spite of his promises, no action was taken. The brigade turned to the party organization and to the trade union, but to no avail. Requests to have rubber boots allotted at least to those working in the muddy pits were met with the same indifference. In March 1953, the angered brigade called at the office of the Chief Construction Leader to show him their worn- out boots, but their demand was met with flat refusal. Desperate to have their grievances heard, the workers turned to the trade union secretary: they “entered his office and, one by one, removed their boots and squeezed out the water from their foot cloths275 onto the floor.” Visibly intimidated, the trade union official promised to help. But it soon turned out that he, too, misled them, so the workers repeated the performance in the local party office. Here, finally, they were listened to: four (!) pairs of used, patched rubber boots were handed over to the brigade on the condition that they must be returned to the office every day after working hours. The ensuing fight over which brigade members should wear the boots lasted for about two weeks.276

Emboldened by their “success,” the brigade began to push once more for the new quotas which were refused to them earlier, as well as for the allocation of more work gear and the payment of “high risk work” bonuses to which they were entitled according to their contracts.

When their requests were turned down, they spontaneously stopped working. Officials showed up on the spot and warned that the action amounted to sabotage. Unimpressed, the workers

275 In the absence of socks, foot cloths or footwraps were pieces of cloth wrapped tightly around the feet. Their Russian equivalents are the “portyanki” (портянки), used to this day in certain regions of the former Soviet Union. 276 “Life and Work in the 26/I Gyárépítő Vállalat at Sztálinváros,” OSA, HU OSA 300-40-4, Box 14, Item No. 06852/53, 8.

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countered that all they wanted was that the company respects the stipulations of their collective agreement. As both parties were interested in a swift settlement, the company provided three (!) of the workers with work coats, while the rest were promised to get their coats and other dues under the collective agreement soon. The promise was never honoured.277

This excursion into the everyday life of a worker brigade reveals just how difficult conditions were in Sztálinváros during the first years of the “town’s” existence. In the absence of heavy machinery, construction workers moved thousands of cubic metres of earth by hand to make room for the foundations of workshops, roads and apartment buildings. The most elementary safety regulations were disregarded as simple items like rubber boots were missing; shortages of all kinds led to idiotic solutions that caused significant delays, and ultimately, losses; various deductions reduced the income of workers to the point that they could not afford to travel home, let alone send money to their families. On the other hand, desperate to save money, the government invented all the possible ways to tax its workers. In Sztálinváros, which back then was, typically, a town of the unmarried, single workers over 20 years of age were levied a 4% “single tax”.278

The net monthly salary of an unskilled construction worker both in the town and at the

Iron Works was around 500-560 Forints, which caused some construction workers to get a second job or work a second, night shift.279 Blue collar workers and administrative personnel earned considerably more: a secretary with the head office of Construction Company 26/2 earned

277 Ibid, 8. 278 “A Laborer’s Experiences of Life at Sztálinváros,” OSA, HU OSA 300-40-4, Box 14, Item 04381/53, 16. 279 Ibid, 18. See also: “Life and Work in the 26/I Gyárépítő Vállalat at Sztálinváros,” HU OSA 300-40-4, Box 14, Item No. 06852/53, 12.

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840 Forints plus a 10 percent “emergency bonus,” from which the monthly subscription for

Szabad Nép,280 trade union contributions, peace bonds and other dues were deducted.281 A female accountant with Betonútépítő Vállalat (literally: Concrete Road Construction Company), another important company working on the site, was paid 880 Forints per month. This accountant had, beside the annoyances caused by all those deductions, an extra reason to be disappointed upon her arrival to Sztálinváros: when she was hired by the company Head Office in Budapest, she was promised a separate room at the construction site. But not only did she not get a room of her own; three other persons, among them a 70 years old man with asthma, were accomodated in the only room of the house which was temporarily assigned to her. To make things worse, the kitchen was, too, busy with occupants: it was shared by the 28 years old party secretary of her company and his fiancee.282

The report of this accountant, who worked with Betonútépítő Vállalat from May to

August 1952 (when, fed up with Sztálinváros and state socialism, she escaped to Austria), reveals the corruption of the project from the perspective of a finance professional. In July 1952, upon the request of the Budapest company headquarters to submit the latest semestrial balance, the accountant took a closer look at the finances of her company. She found that 22,000 litres of gasoline could not be accounted for during the first six months of 1952 alone. When she made inquiries with her superiors, she got the explanation that, sometime in the past, the company

“borrowed” gasoline from other companies and that this amount was now returned to them—

280 Daily of the Hungarian Workers’ Party from 1942 to 1956. 281 No title, OSA, HU OSA 206-1-1:3 of 55, Item No. 05046/53, p. 1. 282 Initially, the headquarters of Betonútépítő Vállalat was in Pentele. It was only in July 1952 that company offices moved to the new town. See: “Conditions in the Sztálinváros Branch of the Beton-Útépítő Vállalat,” OSA, HU OSA 300-40-4, Box 14, Item 03990/53, 6.

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hence the missing 22,000 litres. Further inquiries revealed, however, that “the communist Péter

Csicsiny” was responsible for the gap, but as he had good connections at headquarters, the matter was never properly investigated. Csicsiny and his aids made a fortune with the embezzled gasoline: in 1952, the black market price of gasoline was 5 Forints per litre, almost twice the official price of 2.88 Forints. The accountant also discovered that the company headquarters in

Budapest had transferred to Sztálinváros 2-3000 Forints every month to cover extra hours worked by company personnel. Yet workers and administrative staff were never paid for extra hours; the money was simply embezzled by the management. Following the intervention of this vigilant accountant, extra hours were soon paid again at Betonútépítő Vállalat.283

A number of measures were introduced by decision makers to better motivate workers.

Initially, workers in Sztálinváros worked 53.5 hours per week, Saturdays included. As most of them returned to their homes on Sundays, skipping work on Saturdays and/or on Mondays was common practice. This was, of course, an embarrassment to decision makers. To ensure that workers would not skip work hours, the Council of Ministers “approved the request of the working people of Sztálinváros” to have every other Saturday work-free so that they could visit their families during the weekend and “return to their jobs rested.”284 In the initial years, travel expenses to Sztálinváros were entirely covered for those who moved to the new town, while free roundtrip tickets encouraged workers to commute to Sztálinváros from surrounding towns and villages. Also from January 1951 until sometime in 1953, free weekly laundry services were

283 Ibid, 7-8. 284 “Változtassák meg a szombati napok munkabeosztását.,” SZVÉ, November 13, 1951. “Levelezőink a szombati munkaidő rendezéséről,” SZVÉ, November 20, 1951. “Dolgozóink kérése a pártbizottsághoz: Rendezzék a szombati munkaidőt a népgazdaság és a mi érdekeinknek megfelelően,” SZVÉ, November 27, 1951. “Hétfőn két pihenőnap után friss erővel, percnyi pontossággal térünk vissza,” SZVÉ, January 11, 1952.

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offered to those who spent the weekend at the construction site, but as the laundry was often returned in damaged condition, workers preferred to hire private laundresses.285 Improving the quality of food was another concern of decision makers as thousands of workers took their meals in the various canteens of town and the repetition of the food poisonings of 1951 was to be avoided at all cost. 286 The introduction, later in the decade, of premiums or “profit shares” paid directly to employees (nyereségrészesedés), was, too, meant to motivate workers (the ever more popular trips and holidays one could “earn” at the workplace are discussed in Chapter Four).287

Like in Stalinstadt, work was initially characterized by “competitions”, stakhanovism and shock work. Worker brigades competed with other brigades in the fulfilling of ever higher— most often unrealistic—production quotas. Detached from reality were also the circumstances surrounding such competitions: in 1951, a competition between “the women of Pentele [in

Hungary] and Nowa Huta in Poland” was said to improve production.288 In celebration of

Stalin’s birthday, workers of the Vasmű proposed to fulfil their yearly plan ahead of time with a

“Stalin shift” (Sztálin műszak);289 a couple of months later, Mátyás Rákosi’s 60th birthday was, once again, reason to celebrate with a “labour competition” (munkaverseny).290 In 1952, a so-

285 “Minőségi munkát végez a “Patyolat”-mosoda,” SZVÉ, January 29, 1952. Bed sheets in the barracks were exchanged every two weeks, free of charge. From a report we know that in November, 1952, the Sztálinváros Laundry Service (Sztálinvárosi Mosoda) charged 15 Forints for the washing and ironing of 3 shirts. Private washwomen charged 5 Forints per shirt and 3 Forint for a pair of underpants. See: “A Laborer’s Experiences of Life at Sztálinváros, OSA, HU OSA 300-40-4, Box 14, Item 04381/53, 18. 286 On the food poisonings of 1951, see Chapter One. 287 In 1960, premiums reached 11.5 million Forints, of which the workers of the Iron Works alone were allocated 6,5 million Forints. Employees of the construction company were paid 4 million, workers of the Red October Men’s Clothing Factory 350,000; the Retail Company 250,000; Underwear Factory 100,000; Spinning Mill 85,000, etc. “Mire költötték a nyereségrészesedést a sztálinvárosi dolgozók?” SZH, April 15, 1960. 288 “Verseny a nowahutai és pentelei nők között,” DVÉ, June 26, 1951. 289 “December 21-én Sztálin műszak,” SZVÉ, December 18, 1951. 290 “Amit vállaltunk, becsülettel teljesítjük,” SZVÉ, February 8, 1952. See also: “Dolgozóink legjobbjai jelzik Rákosi elvtársnak: Vállalásunkat teljesítettük,” SZVÉ, February 29, 1952.

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called Socialist Brigade Movement was set up which, with its stricter rules, but also with the rewards and privileges deriving from membership, had a tremendous impact on the life of workers, and more generally, on the sphere of work. The tasks of a Socialist Brigade, which was, typically, formed of about 10 workers, went well beyond the fulfilment of the production plan.

They included the disciplining of workers (through the recording in the brigade diary if a member was sick, late, skipped work or was on holiday); the further education of brigade members (through the organization or attendance of professional and ideological training); the organization of the brigade’s voluntary work (and the recording of worked hours, rewards, bonuses, etc. in the diary); and finally, the brigade was also responsible for the “cultural development” of brigade members, which covered pretty much everything from attendance of cinema or theatre shows through the suggestion and discussion of readings to the organisation of excursions. Brigades met regularly to set new production targets and to discuss the current status of their work, but also to review the “personal and social activities” of their members. The diary kept by the brigade leader was reviewed every month by a committee formed of the management of the factory, the representatives of the party, the Young Communists,291 the trade union, and, not lastly, the chiefs of all the other brigades. Thus, the institutions of power had more or less direct access to the work- and non-work-related lives and activities of workers. Art historian

Annamária Nagy, who has recently studied the brigade diaries found in the archives of the

Danubian Iron Works, calls brigade diaries “the most important channels of control [of the lives of workers]”; in return for a pin and occasional premiums, workers joined such “socialist

291 DISZ (Dolgozó Ifjuság Szövetsége) until 1957, KISZ (Magyar Kommunista Ifjusági Szövetség) thereafter.

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brigades” voluntarily, if not enthusiastically, thus allowing the state and the party to peek into much of what was left of their personal, private lives.292

Illustration 9. A construction brigade at work in Sztálinváros (date unknown).293

By 1953, shortly before the pace of industrialization was curbed under pressure coming directly from Moscow, Hungary had—officially—become an industrialized country.294 But reality looked different. To avoid trouble, brigade leaders, foremen and directors massively falsified output figures. Soon the discrepancy between recorded production and real production

292 I hereby thank Annamária Nagy for the fascinating conversation we had about worker brigades and other aspects of life in Sztálinváros on the occasion of a conference held in Dunaújváros in May 2015. See also: Annamária Nagy, “Brigade Diaries from Dunaferr (Dunaújváros),” paper presented at the conference on Cities of a New Type. Industrial Cities in People’s Democracies after 1945, Dunaújváros, May 21-22, 2015. 293 Source: Open Society Archives. 294 “Mindannyiunk fokozott éberségére van szükség,” SZVÉ, February 6, 1953.

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could no longer be hidden and dozens of brigade leaders and foremen were tried for “sabotaging the socialist efforts of the working people.” Absences from work were, too, considered acts of sabotage. Workers typically skipped work for days or even weeks to visit their homes in the countryside. From the records of the time we learn, for instance, that a male worker missed 22 days of work in November 1952 alone. Or, a female worker skipped work between December

21st and January 4th, that is, over the Christmas and New Year holidays, while yet another worker missed 36 work days in a period of six months, that is, a week per month, on average.295 To discourage the habit, absence from work without leave was made a crime punished by the law.

But skipping work days was not the only cause for concern to decision makers. Some of the workers who did show up for work, often left early—according to one account as early as 9.30 in the morning—to get drunk in a nearby pub. In 1954, Nándor Knechtl, a member of the

Zhandarova stakhanovist brigade “left the factory during work hours and was brought back hours later in a wheelbarrow.”296 Other workers spent their time at the factory with playing cards or other games. On a Tuesday morning in January 1952, dozens of workers engaged in a snowball fight on the factory grounds; the event caused such uproar that it was dedicated severeal news items in the local newspaper.297

A contemporary report found in the archives of the Research Unit of Radio Free Europe, the American radio station that broadcast into Eastern Europe starting in 1949, provides us with a rare glimpse into a sabotage trial held in Sztálinváros:

295 “Bíróságunk öt munkakerülőt ítélt el,” SZVÉ, January 11, 1952. 296 “Súlyos fegyelemlazítókat közösített ki a Sz. V. Gépgyár mechanikai üzeme,” SZVÉ, August 17, 1954. 297 “Munkaidő alatt hógolyócsata,” SZVÉ, January 29, 1952.

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It happened frequently that workers from Sztálinváros were tried by “people’s courts” for “sabotage.” On one such occasion, in the autumn of 1952, a public hearing was announced in Vasmű, the Sztálinváros workers’ newspaper. Additionally, speakers mounted in the streets announced the time of the [hearing]. The hearing was scheduled to take place in the local cinema hall, in the evening, after working hours. As I was curious to see what this was about, I decided to go. Upon my arrival, the hall was already crowded with spectators and I could barely find a place in one of the boxes on the balcony. The hearing started shortly. The “people’s court” formed of about 6 persons in civilian clothes appeared on the stage and sat down along a long table facing the audience. A few minutes later, two policemen brought in the defendants, two young workers and a worker woman, who sat down on the bench of the accused, also on the stage. They had no lawyers. The two policemen stood at either end of the stage until the end of the hearing. Then, the judge called for silence and before the hearing would begin, [the audience] rose to sing the International. The charge [brought against them] was absence from the job without leave. The [defendants] explained in vain that they were sick in bed due to the exhaustion caused by their heavy workload. Their pleadings were not heard.

The judge called the accused one by one, in alphabetical order. Under duress, they all admitted the charges. They were instructed ahead on what to say at the hearing. One of the accused was a weak, sickly man. The judge said to him: “Of course he has heart pain, because he longs for the West! We will take care of such people who are the enemies of peace.” As he said these words he turned towards the audience and his face looked like that of a bandit.298 Pointing in the direction of the worker he addressed the crowd: “Here stands in front of us the errant of life, in striped socks and tube-trousers. Take example of him as people like these turn into enemies of the people.” He called the third accused a “kulak-offspring.” Then, he lined up the accused facing the audience and gave a speech in which he pointed out, among others, that “these are the enemies of

298 In the original, Hungarian text: “haramia.”

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people’s democracy, who are being followed by the wrath of the people. They are scoundrels turned into people’s enemies intent on hindering our peaceful, productive work.” Then, the party secretary gave a speech in which he said that the accused should be regarded as deterring examples. The sickly man and the girl got sentenced to 6 months of “educational work,” the kulak boy to 8 months as well as to a 25% reduction of his pay. The judge warned them that should they do something again, he will have them interned.

The hearing lasted about two hours and was transmitted live via speakers in the streets of town. The hearing ended with the singing of the International. On my way out I could hear people saying that it was unjust to sentence people for such trifles.299

Stalin’s death in spring 1953 marked a turning point in the life of the workers of

Sztálinváros. Party leader Mátyás Rákosi was summoned to Moscow where he was reprimanded for his obsessive focus on the country’s heavy industry, his disregard of the plummeting living standard of the population, as well as for turning Hungary into a police state. Within a matter of weeks, Rákosi was forced to resign as Prime Minister, which opened the way to the appointment of reformist Imre Nagy (Rákosi remained, however, Secretary General until July 1956). Nagy promptly stopped the further development of the Iron Works and of the town built next to it. The measure was paralleled by the introduction of Nagy’s own version of a New Course (Új

Szakasz), which in Sztálinváros brought immediate, visible improvement to the lives of workers, particularly in terms of the availability of foodstuff and consumer goods in the shops. But the loosening grip of the state on the everyday life of the population also caused a further loosening

299 “A Laborer’s Experiences of Life at Sztálinváros,” OSA, HU OSA 300-40-4, Box 14, Item 04381/53, 10-12.

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of (work) morals. Theft remained a major concern for the managers of the various companies in

Sztálinváros. In wintertime, anything made of wood fell prey to workers, who would use the wood to feed their improvised heating stoves at home. As there was still no fence around the

Vasmű, tools were smuggled out without the need to cross any checkpoints at the factory gate.

Some workers were bold enough to use the main gate to bring out their loot; such was the case of a worker who, on a winter Saturday noon in 1954, walked out the main gate pulling eight sledges behind him. It turned out that they had been manufactured in a workshop, obviously for sale. An investigation brought to light that the “prototype” was commissioned by an engineer for his family; the worker who filled the order obviously saw a good business opportunity in the matter.300

While real—intentional—sabotage was rare, inexperienced workers caused frequent interruptions of work. Electrocutions were almost daily occurrences, and so were accidents that occurred during the movement of materiel throughout the construction site. In 1957, 306 accidents were reported (or, publicly admitted), during the first 11 months of the year;301 by

1959, 70 accidents, of which one deadly, were reported for the month of October alone.302 In spite of the “normalisation” of working conditions in Sztálinváros, work in the ironworks remained a dangerous business.

All the groups of workers were badly affected by the waves of “rationalisation” that followed the 1953-54 halt of investment into the town and the ironworks, but worst hit were the

300 “Szánkógyártás – illegálisan,” SZVÉ, January 15, 1954. 301 “306 üzemi baleset 11 hónapban,” SZH, December 13, 1957. 302 “Emelkedik a Vasműben a balesetek száma,” SZH, November 3, 1959.

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thousands of female workers who were employed in the construction sector. Within a matter of months, Sztálinváros, the former “symbol of the rebirth of our socialist nation, of [our] eternal loyalty to Stalin, the symbol of gratitude and love, the symbol of the […] help of our great friend, the Soviet Union,” became a pariah among the cities of Hungary as it cost much more to sustain than the country could afford.303 The arrival of further workers was prohibited as all efforts were now concentrated on the improvement of the lot of those who already lived in the town. While some improvements were made—existing constructions were hastily finished, the town was “beautified” and the shops carried more consumer goods than before—, the most pressing problem of employment for the growing number of unemployed was tackled only after the 1956 revolt. Hundreds of construction workers from Sztálinváros were thenceforth sent to work at various construction sites throughout the country;304 other hundreds of workers were

“leased” to work in the coal mines of Komló.305 In the summer of 1957, the main port building was transformed into a men’s clothing factory to employ one thousand women.306 An underwear factory with a further 500 jobs for female employees was started shortly thereafter. Following a visit of Nikita Khrushchev and János Kádár to Sztálinváros in April 1958, more light industrial units were opened, among them a spinning mill employing a further 150 women (1958), a cellulose mill (1958) and a shoe factory (1959).307 Thus, by the beginning of the 1960s—and by the end of the Stalin Town era—the town’s initially monoindustrial economy was diversified to

303 Unknown Author, Ötéves tervünk, 22. 304 “Sztálinvárosi építők kiváló teljesítménye a mohácsi vízmű építésénél,” SZH, July 26, 1957. 305 “Elindult az első csapat bányamunkára,” DH, January 9, 1957. 306 “Könnyűipari üzem létesítésének terve városunkban,” SZH, May 31, 1957. 307 “Kádár János és Nikita Hruscsov látogatása Sztálinvárosban,” SZH, April 8, 1958; “Milyen lesz a sztálinvárosi fésüsfonóüzem?” SZH, March 14, 1958; “Városunk könnyűipara,” SZH, April 4, 1958; “Felavatták a fésüsfonót,” SZH, August 22, 1958; “Újabb üzem létesül városunkban,” SZH, August 28, 1958; “Elkészült az első háromezer pár gyermekszandál az új cipőüzemben,” SZH, February 2, 1960.

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accommodate the several thousands of workers who were “rationalised” in the second half of the

1950s.

More jobs did not bring an improvement to work discipline in Sztálinváros, however.

Soon after the opening of the men’s clothing factory, many employees quitted their jobs. In

January 1958, 11 percent of the workers of the underwear factory left because they were dissatisfied with their work. In April 1958 alone, as the agricultural season started in the neighboring villages, 250 women, or, a quarter (!) of the women employed at the men’s clothing factory, resigned to return to their former homes in the countryside. The problem, so it seems, was that most women who applied to be hired in these factories did not seek long-term employment; they merely sought to earn some money during the winter months, when they could not work back at home in the fields, or, as a newspaper report put it, “they worked to quickly make enough money to buy a wardrobe, a television set or a furniture set, not more.”308 Put differently, work in the textile factories of Sztálinváros was regarded as some sort of seasonal work and therefore the migration of workers was very high.309 In some workshops migration was alarming: of the 150 employees of the spinning mill, 105 left during 1959, which meant that ever new workers needed to be trained at costs that put the profitability of the whole enterprise in question. Worse yet, absences without leave continued to plague the local economy. At the said spinning mill, over the course of 1959, 161 workers (more than the number of workers employed there at any given time during that year), skipped a total of 3106 work days—mostly Saturdays

308 “Az üzem nem átjáróház,” SZH, July 1, 1960. 309 “A női munkaerő hullámzásának okairól,” SZH, June 17, 1958.

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or Mondays—, which amounted to an astounding average of 19 days per worker per year.310

With such fluctuations in employment it is no wonder that, around 1959-1961, the labour situation in the light industry of Sztálinváros was characterized at once by both shortage and oversupply.311

And yet, by the end of the Stalin Town era, the town has more or less successfully managed, if not overcome, the “childhood diseases” that plagued the sphere of work during the early 1950s. The industrial infrastructure was improved and diversified; work conditions in all the sectors, from the ironworks through construction to the various light industries, became considerably better. Not least importantly, the wages of workers were raised and thus the living standard of workers matched, and soon exceeded, national averages. The introduction of more rational planning replaced the irrational “planning” of the founding years, which resulted in a better appreciation of work throughout town. The training of workers became a priority: in 1959 and in 1960, 227 employees of the ironworks, most of them workers, were sent abroad for training, not only to Zaporozhe or to Nowa Huta as before, but also to Austria, Belgium,

Bulgaria, Egypt, the GDR and even to the Federal Republic of Germany.312 Voluntary work, though still quasi-mandatory, was rewarded with privileges which were now worth the effort: the stamps collected in the workers’ “Social Work Booklet” and the pins received and proudly worn by social work enthusiasts opened the way to premiums including heavily subsidized travels and

310 “Az üzem nem átjáróház,” SZH, July 1, 1960. 311 “Bonyodalmak a női munkaerő elhelyezése körül,” SZH, March 10, 1961. 312 “Két év alatt a Vasmű 227 dolgozója járt külföldi tanulmányúton,” SZH, February 10, 1961.

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family holidays by lake Balaton and even abroad.313 Such “bonus” travels as well as other free time activities “earned” at the workplace constitute the object of the next chapter.

Conclusion

Contrary to the propaganda of the era, working in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros was anything but uplifting. The chaos and improvisation coupled with shortages of all kinds caused much desperation among both workers and decision makers. The haste dictated by ever more unrealistic plans, lax work morale, the incompetence of workers, foremen, directors and even ministers in charge of industry make one wonder how these two towns managed to survive the first years of their existence to become, over the years, “proper” industrial towns.

Both the Eisenhüttenkombinat and the Danubian (later: Stalin) Iron Works were poorly designed combines using mostly outdated know-how imported from the Soviet Union. Not only the technology was Soviet; the “method” was Soviet, too. In the initial years, town planning and construction was subordinated to the goal of quickly developing strong national iron and steel industries, of which the main production sites were to be these two towns; shock work,

Stakhanovism and “socialist competitions” were employed to achieve the fulfilment of ever more

313 In 1961, a new system of social work was introduced in Sztálinváros. Six sites—the politechnical workshop, the peasant market, the surroundings of the L-buildings and of the Halászcsárda restaurant, the Friendship-meadow and the Amusement Park—were designated as locations of townwide importance, where social work was rewarded with red stamps; the work at all other locations was honoured with blue stamps. These stamps were glued into the new Social Work Booklet of each volunteer worker. Once the social work season was over, booklets were collected and evaluated. Finally, different categories of pins were distributed to the workers, depending on the amount and type of stamps collected. These pins, just like the pins of the members of socialist bigades, where proudly worn by workers and ensured access to a number of privileges. See: “Amit a társadalmi munka bélyegekről tudni kell,” SZH, July 18, 1961. “Megkezdődött a társadalmi munkakönyvek összegyűjtése,” SZH, October 24, 1961.

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ambitious “plans” which were, to say the least, not always grounded in reality. Soviet trends in politics made themselves strongly felt after Stalin’s death, too: the temporary relaxation of the rhythm of industrialization led to the consolidation of the achievements of the “heroic years”

(1950 to 1953-54), along with improvements to the everyday lives and working conditions of workers. Since Sztálinváros had a bigger permanent population when investment into the ironworks was halted, it was stronger affected by the drastic cuts in the budget earmarked for the development of the town. This, however, coupled with the lessons drawn from the 1956 revolt, prompted the leadership to diversify the town’s economy to accommodate the thousands of workers—especially female construction workers—who, through their unemployment, became a burden, both financially and politically, to the socialist leadership. In Stalinstadt, which in 1953-

54 was considerably smaller than Sztálinváros, the slowdown in the construction of the EKO did not produce such a “surplus” in construction workers to prompt decision makers to hastily develop other local industries; this will later explain the vulnerability of the local economy and society to the further development, and after 1989, eventual downsizing, of the

Eisenhüttenkombinat.

Work conditions were comparable in the two towns throughout the 1950s. As the labour force in both towns was divided along similar lines—there were two main categories of workers:

(mostly unskilled) construction workers and (mostly skilled) iron foundry workers—, we observe the same kinds of conflicts and competition for privileges among the worker population. As ironworks workers had a higher status within local society—they were, at any rate, better paid—, they tended to be better rooted in Stalin Town (certainly in comparison with seasonal construction workers), and, more generally, they were more loyal to the state and to the party

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(this is, for instance, evidenced by the overall abstention of EKO workers from participating in the June 17, 1953 uprising). Conversely, construction workers had a lower status; they worked under generally worse conditions, they were subject to more “criticism,” they were disposed of more easily when they were no longer needed, but they were also more prone to revolt (on June

17th, 1953, but also in October 1956). It would take many years until some equality among workers—especially in the privileges of obtaining an apartment or a state-sponsored holiday— would be established in the two towns.

The sphere of work was strongly politicized in both Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros. After all, in both countries power was allegedly held by the “proletariat,” that is, by workers.

“Sabotage” and spying, anticapitalist propaganda and ideological training at the workplace were normal features or corollaries of industrial production. It is difficult to tell just how different, if at all, this was from work in other parts of the GDR or Hungary, however. Working in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros was special because these were “first socialist towns” in which other aspects of life—especially housing, but also “cultural life,” pay, access to goods in the stores, etc.— constituted a real difference; when it comes to strictly working in the Stalin Town, it seems that

Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros were not much different from other industrial towns of East

Germany and Hungary, respectively.

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Chapter Four

Leisure and Free Time in the Stalin Town

The idea of leisure was born at the beginning of the industrial age when workers began to devote a growing amount of time to activities that were not life-sustaining (sleeping or eating) or related to work (the production of food and other goods). By the middle of the twentieth century, the amount of free time reached several hours per day in addition to one or two full days per week and a number of further holidays per year. With the rise of leisure, entire industries from tourism to gaming to modeling were born. In the capitalist world, leisure became a commodity.

Under state socialism, rather than concerning private enterprise, this time was of prime interest to the state. Free time could be used by citizens to perform potentially subversive activities, but it could also be channelled or employed to further the state’s interests or to tighten the party-state’s grip on society. A considerable effort was therefore made to organize and to control the free time of citizens.

Proponents of a totalitarianism-school will argue that the idea of free time stands in contradiction with the essence, whatever that be, of “Stalinism”; every aspect of life, including free time, must be subordinated to the ideology of the party-state. Such a view is, of course, in itself totalitarian; it reifies the state and it strips power of its most important element (human agency), while ignoring the adaptive capacity of people living under adversity. While some citizens may spontaneously choose to go along with an idea, others will develop strategies to escape it, while yet others will choose to openly oppose a frame of thought perceived as being

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imposed on them. More often than not, however, people will find it useful to combine these strategies. Put simply, people will choose strategies depending on the costs and returns involved for them. The choice, or, some choice at least, remains theirs; even under “totalitarianism.”

The Eastern European socialist state of the 1950s, too, had to evaluate the costs and benefits of its actions. The means to police citizens outside their socialized home or workplace were limited and so were the means of the state when it was to organize the free time of its subjects. Some citizens seemed immune to the calls of the party; during the last war they acquired survival skills which helped them evade adverse realities. The absence of ideologically reliable professionals in the fields of art and culture rendered the task even more difficult.

Therefore, the state and the party could not but carefully weigh their ambitious goals against the limited means that were at their disposal.

Leisure pastimes encouraged by the socialist party-state were thus activities which involved the greatest number of citizens at the smallest possible expense: mass-movements of all sorts, team-sports events, cultural and artistic activities performed in groups (amateur choirs, theatre groups, orchestras, etc.), parades, fairs, shows, large-scale exhibitions and the like. Cost- effectiveness was key. But ideology distorted the equation; during the 1950s, the push for the rapid development of heavy industry in regions with little or no tradition in the manufacturing of iron and steel cost the state far more than it could afford. Winning over the new privileged classes of mine- and steelworkers, and at the same time suppressing the new social outcasts, was an expensive business. Since bonuses paid to buy the loyalty of workers were proportionate to the role played in the achievement of the goals of the party, employees in the heavy industries soon claimed their share in state- and party-sponsored vacations by the seaside, holidays in

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mountain resorts or visits to remote cities or other sights impossible to reach individually.

Ironically, much of the fortune spent on honoring these demands had to be raised in places like

Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros, which produced, as we have seen earlier, losses throughout the decade, and which were characterized during much of that period by chaos and incompetence.

Both Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros were new settlements where the production and preservation of archival records, the construction of a history of the place through written documents, was of prime importance. Every new beginning—whether it was an industrial plant, a school, a club, a food store or a lamp post planted into the centre of town to mark the beginning of street lighting—was duly recorded by officials, by the press, and even by private persons. The importance of creating news and records of social or cultural events was high as it was hoped that such events, including the news of these events, would convey urban features to these otherwise rudimentary “towns.” In other words, the push, early on in the history of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros, for the construction of a relatively rich social and cultural life was essential to the distinction of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros as urban spaces. Newspapers and archival records of the era abound in reports on how leisure time was spent by the inhabitants of Stalin Town.

These sources should be read with care, however. Interviews with eye-witnesses will reveal that the more attractive state-sponsored pastimes like travels or sojourns by the seaside were reserved for a selected few rather than being accessible to the masses, as was usually presented in the press; while newspapers and archival records suggest that cultural life was rich and well- organized, personal accounts will tell us that during the 1950s, and especially in the first half of the decade, most locally available activities were organized in a spontaneous, often chaotic manner, in makeshift locations like ad-hoc rehearsal rooms, improvised sports fields and so on.

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Some activities like religious worship were entirely banned from the public sphere and thus also from the newspapers. Here, other types of sources will be more revealing: records of the secret police will tell us more about how the state sought to control the churches and their followers, while a number of informant reports recorded in the era will, too, add to the otherwise very limited “public” information available on religious life.

The chapter is organized in four sections dealing with four more or less distinct types of activities performed during free time: religious worship; the construction, consumption and

“practice” of socialist arts and culture; sports; and finally, outdoor activities like “small gardening,” hiking or traveling. The separate and detailed discussion of religion is justified by the rich information that has surfaced in the past few decades about religious life in the Stalin

Town. Contrary to what one would expect (or what was originally planned), church and religion were much present in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros, mainly due to the high number of peasants who moved to these towns, but also thanks to the efforts of a few committed clergymen who, with the blessing and even encouragement of their bishops, went to Stalin Town to provide religious care and services to the new settlers. The inclusion of religious worship into a chapter on free time—rather than, say, into the last chapter on private space and privacy—is not accidental. In spite of the private, even secret, almost conspiratorial attending of religious service in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros during the 1950s, religious worship was a semi-public, at any rate, community event; services were attended by groups of people with shared interests during their free time. Moreover, time spent with such groups went well beyond attending service; as we shall see in this first section, community-based activities like the construction of a church barracks were, too, part of the time devoted to church life.

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Art and culture in the Stalin Town of the 1950s covers pretty much everything from schooling and art education (music, theatre, fine arts, etc.), through the attending of music, theatre or cinema shows, to the time spent in pubs, dance halls or restaurants. Both towns had a relatively rich “socialist” cultural life from the beginning: orchestras and choirs were founded weeks or months after the opening of the two construction sites, while cinemas and music schools were among the first institutions established in the Stalin Town. Sports events were, too, present from the moment construction started near Dunapentele and Fürstenberg; within months, sports clubs were established and competitions were organized on makeshift sports fields. The ideological significance of sports in the making of the “new man” envisioned by the party-state cannot be overstated; it is not by coincidence, for example, that soon after their founding Stalin

Town sports clubs became members, and sometimes even leaders, of their respective national sports leagues. Finally, free time in the first socialist towns of the GDR and Hungary was also about time spent in the green like hiking or gardening and, increasingly, travels to other towns, holiday resorts and even abroad. These all will be adressed in the last section of this chapter.

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Opium of the People: Religious Worship in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros

“Every citizen enjoys full freedom of belief and conscience. The unhindered practice of religion stands under the protection of the Republic.”314

The first postwar years boded trouble for religious life in Fürstenberg, and later, in

Stalinstadt. At the end of the war, the Lutheran Evangelic congregation of Fürstenberg, which made up about 90 percent of the population, was faced with a destroyed church (the

Nikolaikirche had become unusable following a 1945 bombing) and the anti-religious politics and propaganda of the emerging socialist power. In the first few years after the war, Lutheran pastor Reinhard Gnettner held services in makeshift prayer rooms in and around Fürstenberg. To reach out to the first builders of the Eisenhüttenkombinat he gathered his flock of a handful people in the church of the neighboring village of Schönfließ, just a throw away from the construction site.315 Gnettner, who took up his job in Fürstenberg in 1946, did not live to see the growth of the first socialist town of the GDR, however: a member of the East-German CDU and an outspoken opponent of the new regime, he was arrested by the NKVD on August 6, 1950, and sentenced to death on charges of anti-Soviet espionage. He was shot on June 27, 1951, in the famous Butyrka prison of Moscow.316

314 The Constitution of the German Democratic Republic of 1949. Art. 41 (1). 315 Schönfließ became part of Eisenhüttenstadt in 1963. 316 “Kirche in der “Ersten sozialistischen Stadt Deutschlands” – Religion und Politik in Fürstenberg (Oder)/Stalinstadt/Eisenhüttenstadt, 1945-1990,” documentary film, 2006. Reinhard Gnettner’s successor, Heinz Bräuer recalled in an interview in 2005 that Gnettner’s sentence was commuted to lifelong imprisonment and that he went missing after being deported to the Soviet Union. Documents of the NKVD declassified in the mid-1990s confirm, however, that Gnettner’s sentence was never commuted and that he was shot shortly after his deportation to Moscow. The German Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk’s Hans-Werner Stichling has published a good summary of these events, which is accessible online. See: Hans-Werner Stichling, “Die "Schubert-Gruppe" II: Der Prozess, das Urteil

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When construction of the Wohnstadt began in earnest, Heinz Bräuer, the new Lutheran pastor of Fürstenberg, stepped up his predecessor’s work to bring the word of God to the settlers.

He walked from door to door, from barracks to barracks, convincing hesitant followers to found a new congregation. Over the first weeks and months, their number grew slowly but steadily and thus, in 1952, Bräuer inaugurated his “Evangeliumswagen”—a carriage with 26 seats which henceforth served as a home to religious services, Sunday school classes and bible circle meetings for the adult. The emerging institution was soon considered a threat, particularly when widespread popular protest was expected. Thus, during the tense days preceding the June 1953 uprising, the cart was confiscated overnight and church services were banned again to

Schönfließ. But Bräuer did not let it be just like that; he went straight to Otto Nuschke, the

Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic and head of church matters in the government, protested the move, and the cart was returned to the congregation.317

und die Rehabilitation,” last modified June 1, 2005, accessed June 5th, 2012, http://www.mdr.de/damals/artikel7368.html. 317 The cart was returned to its original location on June 24th, 1953, after the revolt was crushed. Bräuer, Die ersten drei Jahrzehnte, 72.

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Illustration 10. The “Evangeliumswagen” in the New Town (Neustadt), probably in 1953.318

Emboldened by the success, but also by the June uprising, Lutheran bishop Otto Dibelius visited Stalinstadt over Christmas 1953. During the sermons preached in two local pubs (both pubs were in Schönfließ; an authorization to celebrate Christmas in Stalinstadt was consistently refused by the authorities), he called for opposition to the anti-religious agitation of the party and encouraged the congregation to push for the right to build a proper church in Stalinstadt. As the

New Course was in full swing at this time, the East German leadership eventually agreed to the construction of a Lutheran church barracks (Kirchenbaracke) in the Wohnstadt, now renamed

Stalinstadt. The pre- and post-June 1953 negotiations between the congregation and the government are evoked in Heinz Bräuer’s memoirs on “The First Three Decades of the

Friedensgemeinde [Peace Congregation] of Eisenhüttenstadt” as follows:

318 Ibid, 37-38.

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At the beginning of this new era there were two meetings with Otto Nuschke, one on May 20th and another on July 11th, 1953. The meetings took place in an especially open- minded, understanding and friendly atmosphere. In our first conversation, Otto Nuschke let the representatives of the church understand that he, too, saw no possibility of erecting a proper house of God in Stalinstadt. He reminded [us] that Rome was not built in one day either and he held the opinion that much Oder-water would flow past Fürstenberg until the Church would reach its goal. One could sense the goodwill of this man but the limits of his possibilities became evident, too. […] During our second conversation, Otto Nuschke did not only open the way for new hope, but he did effectively help. The second meeting took place after June 17th. This should certainly not be overlooked. […] On June 25th, the Building Department of the Church sent a telegram to the Congregational Council [in Fürstenberg] saying that the Ministry of Light Industry had issued a procurement authorization for the acquisition of a barracks. […] On July 10th, 1953, the Ostsee-Holzwerke319 in Schwerin sent a contract of sale to the Building Department, which promptly forwarded it to Fürstenberg. […] “One barracks, 42,5x12,5 metres in size, wooden finish, 29,044.90 DM.” The contract was signed on July 13, 1953, by Pastor Wilhelm Müller and by the church elders Karl Wilke and Karl Fuhrmann. As the question of location was still not clarified, the congregation had the barracks sent to the DSU320 in Fürstenberg […]. This is where [the barracks] was put in storage after its arrival on July 25, 1953.321

In spite of all the promises made by the government, the erection of the Lutheran church barracks was still not possible. The most pressing problem was location: neither the government nor the town council felt entitled to assign a location for a church barracks. Moreover, in a note

319 Ostsee Lumber Works. 320 Deutsche Schiffahrts- und Umschlags-Betriebszentrale (German Shipping and Exchange Control Centre). 321 Heinz Bräuer, Die ersten drei Jahrzehnte, 54-55.

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sent by Nuschke to the congregation it was made clear that the barracks could be erected only on land owned by the church. In the absence of such property in the new Stalinstadt, the congregation had to buy land. Neither the state, nor the town was willing to sell land to the church, however. The solution to build on a small plot donated for the purpose by a local resident was, too, found unacceptable by the government.322

In the meantime, the Lutheran Church officially appointed Heinz Bräuer to head the congregation in the new town. From his small apartment in Fürstenberg he stepped up his efforts for a church barracks, but also for a barracks-home for himself, in Stalinstadt. On May 28th,

1954, a plot of land was eventually assigned for the purpose and on August 2nd the land was transferred into church property. The following day, a building permit was issued and three months later, on October 3rd, 1954, the Lutheran church barracks of Stalinstadt was finally inaugurated.323

322 Ibid, 55. 323 Ibid, 72-73.

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Illustration 11. The Lutheran church barracks in Stalinstadt (1954).324

The growing Catholic congregation has, too, under the leadership of Priest Dr. Paul

Schimke, successfully lobbied for an own church barracks. In fact, it was Bräuer’s and

Schimke’s cooperation that has prompted the Lutheran and Catholic bishops to step up their pressure on Otto Grotewohl to authorize the erection of the already paid-for and delivered wooden church shelters. But before the Catholic barracks would be authorized, an unexpected episode occurred. Rather than storing it in the port of Fürstenberg as the Lutherans did, the

Catholic congregation stored its barracks on a small plot within the limits of Stalinstadt. In the first months of 1954, Schimke and his followers set out to quietly assemble their barracks. First a foundation was built and then, within a couple of days, the barracks was built on top of it. During the night of March 18th to 19th, 1954, the barracks was demolished by unknown persons.

Schimke promptly informed Deputy Prime Minister Nuschke, who descended to the site on

324 Ibid, 122.

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March 24. “Shocked” by the sight he returned to Berlin with the promise to raise the issue in the

Council of Ministers’ meeting of that same day. Fearing the spread, beyond the borders of the

GDR, of the news of this instance of anti-church vandalism (the action was no doubt carried out with the blessing of the local authorities), the authorization to rebuild the barracks was promptly issued. On June 7th, 1954, the Catholic church barracks was finally inaugurated.325

Once the two church-barracks were standing—even if they were mere temporary shelters—the state had no choice but to resort to other means to stop its citizens from worshipping God. The problem was not the religious ritual; God had to be abolished or at least substituted. New, socialist rituals were therefore invented and, wherever possible, forced upon the population: the socialist name-giving ceremony (sozialistische Namensgebung), introduced in 1958 to replace the christening of newborn children; the initiation of the young or the

“Jugendweihe”326 (introduced in 1954) to replace Confirmation; or the strictly secular wedding

(1958) and funeral ceremonies, both held without a priest present. Sunday school classes for the young were replaced by a 16 to 24-hour course (Jugendstunden) culminating in the oath ceremony (Gelöbnis) of the Jugendweihe. Worship rituals were thus brought out of the private darkness of the church and into the bright, “public” realm of socialism. In the short run, the move was only partially successful in Stalinstadt, however; while less and less couples chose to be wedded by a priest and the number of youths attending the state-run ceremony of the

325 Ibid, 84-92. 326 The socialist Jugendweihe is a re-invention of an older tradition born at the end of the 19th century. The ceremony became popular especially during the interwar years and among circles not affiliated with the Catholic or Lutheran churches (i.e. among members of so-called Freikirchen, or, Free Churches). The socialist Jugendweihe was introduced GDR-wide in 1955. See: Lisa Behn, “Alle erhalten die Jugendweihe,” Kulturspiegel, 2/1960.

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Jugendweihe grew rapidly to allegedly reach 100 percent by 1959, the ritual of socialist name- giving has only occasionally replaced traditional baptisms or christenings.327

As church life and religious rituals were voided of much of their substance, increasing pressure was made on citizens not to participate at church functions. Within a few decades, most churchgoers turned their backs on the two churches; if, in the 1960s, about 90 percent of the population of Eisenhüttenstadt declared to belong to one or the other church, then, by 1989, this figure was to drop to a mere 8 percent.328 In 1961, the party leadership ruled that “stone”

(definitive) churches may be built in the new block neighborhoods of the republic or wherever they were missing or previously banned, but it was only in 1978 that the foundation stone was laid for a Lutheran Evangelic church in Eisenhüttenstadt, mainly thanks to a 1.8 Million DM donation of the Lutheran Church of the Federal Republic of Germany. This first, proper church of Eisenhüttenstadt, which was at once the first new church built in the GDR after 1949, was inaugurated in 1981 at the edge of the original Stalin Town of the 1950s, in the vicinity of the hospital. A “final” Catholic church was completed as late as 1994 in the former village of

Schönfließ (that is, not exactly in the New Town but, seen from Fürstenberg, across the Oder-

Spree Canal), while the reconstruction of the bombed Nikolaikirche of Fürstenberg, now a district within Eisenhüttenstadt, was not finished until 1999, almost a decade after the reunification of Germany.329

327 Bräuer, Die ersten drei Jahrzehnte, 223. 328 “Kirche in der Ersten sozialistischen Stadt Deutschlands – Religion und Politik in Fürstenberg (Oder)/Stalinstadt/Eisenhüttenstadt, 1945-1990,” exhibition, Städtisches Museum Eisenhüttenstadt, August 21 to October 30, 2005. 329 Ibid.

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If members of the church and even the occasional church(barracks)goers were under constant pressure to leave the church, priests were subjected to regular attacks and persecution.

Heinz Bräuer, who served the Lutheran “Peace Congregation” of Stalinstadt and

Eisenhüttenstadt from 1953 until his retirement in 1983, was placed under surveillance from the moment he set foot in Stalinstadt. In an Information Report (Auskunftsbericht) dated as late as

August 20th, 1968, the Head of the County Bureau of the Stasi wrote:

In [Bräuer’s] case we are dealing with a pastor who is opposed to our development, who is strongly allied with the reactionary West German church leadership and who represents the politics of the latter. […] [He] works as a pastor in Eisenhüttenstadt since 1953. He was in Fürstenwalde before, where he distinguished himself through his work with the youth. Therefore, the church leadership found him competent to represent the interests [of the youth] in the rapidly growing industrial town. […] [Bräuer] did not vote in any election thus far. At the 1968 referendum330 he voted ‘no.’ [Bräuer] is a consistent opponent of socialist festivities. He is against the successive organization of baptisms and [socialist] naming ceremonies, regardless of their order. Through his one-to-one work with persons belonging to the intelligentsia in so-called “home-circles,” he gains influence especially on this layer of the population. In the spirit of the West German reactionary church leadership’s so-called bridge-building, [he] is actively involved in partnering with the West German community of Troisdorf with the aim of building reliable, individual contacts. [Bräuer] made veiled remarks against the security measures of August 13th, 1961,331 by expressing his opposition to the measures on the [free] movement of travelers.”332

330 What is meant is the referendum of April 6th, 1968, on the new Constitution of the GDR. At the referendum, 94,54% of citizens with voting rights voted for the new Constitution. 331 What is meant is the building of the Berlin Wall. 332 “Auskunftsbericht,” BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O), KD Eisenhuttenstadt, file 223, 58.

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The “one-to-one work” mentioned in this report constituted the biggest thorn in the eye of the Stasi: Bräuer and his aides, as well as Catholic Priest Schimke and his staff, paid regular visits to the members of their congregations. Bräuer remembers:

Many communities would report to our parish office that XY, a good, faithful and regular churchgoer has moved to the Wohnstadt of the EKO. In the new environment [such people] would be very passive however. The Catholic priests [too,] thought: “if we don’t establish contact with our believers within the first three months of their moving here, they will be lost to us.”333

And thus, pastors and priests walked from door to door and conversed at least once with every newly arrived settler. Their reception was generally positive, at least in the beginning. But as state-sponsored anti-religious pressure and propaganda was stepped up around the middle of the

1950s, more and more inhabitants refused to talk to them:

As the SED became more active we could observe how a paralyzing fear spread at a rapid speed among the Christians of the town. We could clearly sense this during our house calls. Until now we were welcome guests. Now people have become more cautious and reserved vis-à-vis the church. If, until now, people did not mind being seen in the stairwell in the company of their priest, now he was quickly pulled into the apartment so nobody saw him and the door was quickly locked. Women, and especially, older citizens, often did not even allow the priest to enter their apartment. He was to return when the

333 Bräuer. Die ersten drei Jahrzehnte, 71.

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husband or the younger [family members] were back at home. We could visit [people], but nobody was to see us.”334

“Visible” religious life in Stalinstadt was thus effectively reduced to the minimum. On the one hand, through the initial ban on the construction of churches in Stalinstadt, it was made clear to citizens that the institution of the church was not welcome in the first socialist town of the GDR; on the other hand, pressure on the believers was so great that within a few months or years after their arrival the inhabitants of Stalinstadt readily embraced the new rituals of the socialist state, which thenceforth replaced the old, traditional, religious ones. But if the effort of the party-state can be considered more or less successful for the 1950s, the concessions made over time to a handful of committed believers led to the firm establishment of both the Lutheran and the

Catholic churches in Stalinstadt. This should be seen only as a partial victory of the church, however; today, less than 10 percent of the population of Eisenhüttenstadt belongs to either of these two congregations, while the number of those who actually attend church services is much, much smaller.

The situation of the churches of Sztálinváros was similar to that of the two congregations of Stalinstadt. However, as the village of Dunapentele was, unlike Fürstenberg, made part of the Stalin Town from early on, a review of the prewar history of the churches of

Pentele will explain the background against which church life emerged in Sztálinváros.

Until the middle of the eighteenth century, Pentele was a predominantly Serbian

Orthodox village, but over the next two centuries, the religious and ethnic composition of the

334 Ibid.

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village changed dramatically.335 The Serbian Orthodox population almost disappeared; the

Hungarian Catholic community grew to make up over 90 percent of the population; the

Calvinists or the “Reformed,” as they are called in Hungary, accounted for about 3 percent before World War Two; and then there was the Jewish congregation, which from the early 1800s on grew steadily to reach 2-3 percent before the war, only to be wiped out by the Holocaust.

The oldest church standing today in the Old Town (Óváros) was built by the Orthodox

Serbs in 1786. As the Serbian population was in sharp decline, by 1894 the parish was dissolved and it was decided that “substituting” or visiting clerics would thenceforth serve the Serbian community. The move marked the beginning of the end of Orthodox faith in the village: by

1950, the Serbian congregation had practically vanished from the religious landscape of

Pentele.336 The other group to disappear from Pentele was the Israelite congregation. Barely counting 20 families at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Jewish community built a synagogue in 1835 and a Jewish school in 1855. In 1880, the number of inhabitants “of Israelite faith” reached 223 persons, but by 1941, following the anti-Semitic policies of the interwar governments, the figure dropped to 68. Of the 56 Israelites from Pentele who eventually boarded the cattle-waggons headed for the Nazi extermination camps on May 29th, 1944, only one survived the Holocaust; the closing of the Jewish cemetery in 1967 formally marked the end of the history of Jews in Pentele.337

335 The Serbs called the village Pantelija. 336 Zsófia Csupity Mohainé, “A dunaújvárosi szerb ortodox templom,” in Pentele ezer éve, ed. Tamás Szabó (Dunaújváros: Penteléért Alapítvány 2008), 97-99. 337 Irén Dr. Oroszné Babanics, “Együtt éltek velünk,” in Pentele ezer éve, ed. Tamás Szabó (Dunaújváros: Penteléért Alapítvány 2008), 102-105.

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The Calvinist congregation of Pentele was founded in 1907. In the same year, a Calvinist teacher was appointed to the local (public) school to teach religion. Having no means to build a church for themselves, the Calvinists held their services in a classroom of the school. But in

1950, the Ministry of Education banned religion from schools and the Calvinists had to move their services and religion classes elsewhere. As the congregation owned a small house in the village, this was swiftly transformed into a prayer house (imaház), soon to be shared with the

Lutherans (evangélikusok), who constituted a new congregation in the village of Pentele.338

Paradoxically, the growth of the socialist town built near Pentele led to the strengthening of the two Protestant congregations (Calvinists and Lutherans): as workers from all around the country moved to the new town, more and more Lutherans and Calvinists visited the tiny prayer house in

Pentele.339 As the construction of a church in New Town was out of the question, it was in the surrounding villages that Protestant churches were hastily built: in 1950, a joint Calvinist-

Lutheran (“Reformed”-“Evangelic”) church was inaugurated in Rácalmás (about 3 km from

Pentele); one year later, a workshop building was bought and transformed into a church in nearby Kulcs (5 km).340 Over the next three decades, these were the churches, along with the prayer house in Pentele, where the Calvinists and Lutherans of Sztálinváros attended religious services.

Calvinist Pastor Sándor Kassai, who arrived to Sztálinváros as a fresh graduate in 1952, remembers how he got there:

The Bishop of those times, Albert Bereczki, summoned the three of us to his office and

338 Sándor Kassai, A Dunaújvárosi Református Egyház. (Dunaújváros: Dunaújvárosi Református Egyház, 2002), 3. 339 János Ábrahám and Éva Ábrahámné Liber, “Reformátusok Pentelén,” in Pentele ezer éve, ed. Tamás Szabó (Dunaújváros: Penteléért Alapítvány, 2008), 87. 340 Kassai. A Dunaújvárosi Református Egyház, 4-5.

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asked us the following question: “Which one of you would like to become pastor of Sztálinváros?” Needless to say, neither of us was enthusiastic. Then, I raised my hand: “I do.” “All right, Sándor, starting December 1st you are the pastor of Sztálinváros.”341

At this time about 1000 Calvinists lived in Sztálinváros. Just like Lutheran Pastor Bräuer and

Catholic Priest Schimke in Stalinstadt, Kassai “visited and beckoned [the new settlers of

Sztálinváros] with great perseverence.” Kassai’s family, too, devoted their lives to the Calvinists of Stalin Town: his wife, Irén Czövek, was the cantor of the community; three decades later, their daughter Hajnalka became her successor.342 It was thanks to the engagement and perseverance of the Kassais that thirty years after the founding of Sztálinváros the construction of a Calvinist church became possible in Dunaújváros (however, still in the Old Town—in

Pentele—, and not in the “socialist town”). The Danubian Iron Works, which only a few decades earlier lay at the heart of the god- and churchless Stalin Town, was, too, made part of the

Calvinist church project as the combine made its own, original contribution to the new church:

“during the structural planning of the church building [the architects and engineers] took into consideration the significance of Dunaújváros, that is, in the [plans for the] new building they gave expression to the characteristics of this important steel production centre.” The church was, in essence, a partly glass-covered steel structure. To emphasize the “significance of

Dunaújváros” as a place of iron and steel, the Dunai Vasmű donated “a very valuable gift” to the church: the main lustre, which can to this day be seen in the centre of the building. Like in

Stalinstadt, the construction of the church would not have been possible without essential foreign help, however: beside the many donations collected in Hungary, it was the generous support of

341 Ábrahám and Ábrahámné Liber, Reformátusok Pentelén, p. 87. 342 Ibid.

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the Calvinist congregations of Papendrecht and Oudewater in the Netherlands that made the construction of the church possible.343

The Roman Catholic congregation of Pentele was founded as early as the 1740s and its church standing in the Old Town today was erected in 1862-1864.344 The church was badly damaged during the Second World War, following which it was restored only temporarily. In

1964, on the occasion of its 100th anniversary, the church was renovated and this gave a new impetus to Catholic religious life in Dunaújváros.345 By 1977, Dunaújváros had 60,000 inhabitants of whom about 12 percent “practiced their Catholic religion regularly.”346 This means that (assuming that the figures are correct), considerably more people than just the inhabitants of the earlier village of Pentele attended mass in Dunaújváros. Although there was no Catholic church in New Town throughout the socialist period (except for a few months after the 1956 revolt—see below), the congregation pushed through the construction of a new parohial church

(Főtemplom) in the new parts of town as soon as that became possible. In 1991, negotiations started with the local administration in view of the cession of a property for the purpose of constructing a Catholic church in New Town; in early 1992, a plot measuring about four soccer fields (!) was transferred to the Catholic Church. Construction started in late September 1993, but it was to take another fifteen years until the church was finally completed and officially inaugurated in 2008.347

343 Kassai, A Dunaújvárosi Református Egyház, 13-14. 344 There was an older Catholic church built in 1747-48 on the spot where the church is now standing. This church was demolished, however, to make room for the current church built 1862-1864. 345 Gabriella Megulesz and Imre Horváth, eds., A Dunaújvárosi Római Katolikus Egyházközösség múltja és jelene (Budapest: Macdesign Graf. Szolg. Kft., 2008), 48. 346 Ibid, 49. 347 Ibid, 61-69.

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The churchless church life of New Town was to be strongly affected by the revolt of

October 1956. Although the revolt was crushed within two weeks, for a few months the town, the newspaper, factories and streets were renamed, while existing institutions were abolished and old ones were revived. The Catholic Church used the opportunity to push the local leadership to allow the celebration of mass in the New Town. The Workers’ Council348 of New Town “was enthusiastic” about the idea and voted overwhelmingly for the appointment of János

Langhammer as Catholic priest of New Town. In addition, the workers requested the appointment of three teachers of religion to the two schools of the town. But the new-old local authorities were hesitant:

On the surface, local Council Chair Jenő Tapolczai was very polite during his negotiations with János Langhammer, but behind his back, [Tapolczai] moved the Russian Town Commander and the President of the County Council to ensure that the priest would not obtain permission to celebrate mass in the schools or cultural rooms349 chosen by him for this purpose. Upon the firm intervention of the Workers’ Council, [however,] the Minister of Culture himself intervened and pushed the State Office of Church Affairs350 [...] to allow the celebration of mass [in New Town]. The first official mass was held in New Pentele [sic!] on December 30th [1956].351

Mass could thus finally be celebrated in the aula of Pál Vasvári 352 Elementary School

(the former “20-Classroom-School”).353 But two and a half months later, as local decisionmakers

348 During the October 1956 uprising, the workers of factories and other institutions siding with the uprising founded so-called Workers’ Councils (“Munkástanács”) to replace the now abolished factory party organizations. They were, unlike MDP party caucuses, bottom-up organizations with democratically elected representatives or leaders who in turn would form the Workers’ Council at town level. 349 In the original Hungarian text: “kultúrterem”. 350 In Hungarian: Állami Egyházügyi Hivatal. 351 Megulesz and Horváth, eds., A Dunaújvárosi Római Katolikus Egyház, 47. 352 Pál Vasvári (1826-1849), Hungarian politician, widely celebrated martyr of the 1848-49 revolution. 353 “Első mise az újvárosban.” DH, January 5, 1957.

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became emboldened by the countrywide political restoration to pre-October conditions, the congregation in New Town had to move a step back:

On March 13th [1957], the police banished János Langhammer from Sztálinváros.354 One week later, [Town] Council Chair Jenő Tapolczai gave notice to leave the barracks rented for the purpose of holding mass because the barracks camp—which the Council Chair called a leper camp—urgently needed to be pulled down. The barracks building used as a chapel was indeed demolished as soon as it was vacated (it was demolished by workers brought in from elsewhere as the locals refused [to do the job]), but the leper camp, the other barracks which were indeed dirty, remained—to the glory of the socialist spirit of Sztálinváros. The [Bishop] appointed János Lisinszky as chaplain to Old Village to provide [from there] spiritual care to [the workers] of New Town.355

A similarly brief return to pre-1950 times occurred with regard to the teaching of religion in schools. Although in September 1951, soon after the official inauguration of Pál Vasvári

Elementary, Director József Farkas announced that there would be no religion classes taught in his school as “it would be strange if a representative of the clerical reaction would be present in the socialist town,” religion was reintroduced to the schools after October 1956.356 Within weeks of the uprising, Roman Catholic Bishop Lajos Shvoy appointed József Garda, János Lisinszky and László Salamon to teach religion in New Town. But as soon as the party-state recovered from the shock of October, religion was removed once again from the curriculum. The measure

354 At this time, the entire town (New Town and Old Town) was named Dunapentele. The return to “Sztálinváros” occured a month later, in mid-April, 1957. 355 Both men were later punished for bringing religious service to the socialist town by having their authorizations withdrawn. See: Megulesz and Horváth, eds., A Dunaújvárosi Római Katolikus Egyház, 47. 356 Márta Matussné Lendvai, Fejezetek Dunapentele iskolatörténetéből (Dunaújváros: Intercisa Múzeum, 1996), 67.

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was announced in the local newspaper on February 19, 1957, along with a justification typical of those times:

[The government has decided to] restore the situation of last September. […] Since back in September, at the beginning of the [school] year, no one registered for religion classes in the two elementary schools of New Town, these [classes] will now be completely [sic] discontinued. This discontinuation does not, by the way, affect many students as after the counterrevolutionary events only a small fraction of Dunapentele’s elementary school students could be drawn in to religion classes.357

In other words, rather than spelling out the banning of religion from the schools on ideological grounds, the leadership justified the abolition of religion classes with a “return to pre- counterrevolutionary conditions,” adding that at the beginning of the school year no pupils requested to study religion. That such a request was absurd and impossible since the initial ban of 1950 was, of course, not mentioned in the statement.

Like in Stalinstadt, religious rituals were to be gradually replaced by new, socialist ones.

However, these do not seem to have been embraced or performed by too many people. While there were indeed occasional secular name giving ceremonies in Sztálinváros, baptisms and religious weddings were typically celebrated back at home, in the churches of the towns and villages from which the settlers originated, or in the Pentele (Old Town) district of the town. As funerals were always held in Pentele—the New Town has no cemetery to this day—it did not really matter whether or not there was a priest present.

357 “Hétfőn a kormányhatározatnak megfelelően megszűnt az újvárosi iskolákban a hitoktatás.” DH, February 19, 1957.

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Even though the construction of churches was consistently obstructed and prohibited and religious groups were continuously persecuted or threatened to discontinue their activity within the limits of the East German and Hungarian “first socialist towns,” there existed a space for religious life in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros. This space was not public and yet, through the many interventions of state and church officials, and more importantly, through the ever growing involvement of a segment of the population, it was tolerated by the state. The revolts of June 17,

1953 in Germany and of October 1956 in Hungary caused radical changes in the state’s policy towards the church: in Stalinstadt, the Catholic and the Lutheran congregations were finally allowed to build church barracks within, or close to, the new town; in Sztálinváros, a Catholic congregation was founded under the lead of an officially appointed priest, while religion had become, once again, a subject taught at school (1956-1957). In the long run, the strongest churches (the Lutheran Church in Eisenhüttenstadt and the Catholic Church in Dunaújváros) succeeded to build parochial churches within the boundaries of the “socialist town.” At the same time, in both new towns the number of those attending church regularly plummeted. If, over the past decades, the churches have won the battle for their recognition in the new, socialist town setting, by today they have lost most of their followers.

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Arts and Culture

Where a new town is being built, a new society is born and this new society will, sooner or later, create its own cultural image.358

If, one day, someone will write a history of Sztálinváros, the most interesting chapter of their work will without doubt be the description of the town’s cultural life.359

The beginnings of artistic and cultural life in Stalinstadt date back to the first days of the history of the Eisenhüttenkombinat. As early as autumn 1950, members of a youth brigade of the

Bau Union founded a choir and a folk dance group. The “Kulturensemble” thus created was to represent the Land of Brandenburg at the 1951 World Youth Festival in Berlin. Home to film projections, choir rehearsals, lectures and debates on Marxism-Leninism and “Varieté-shows,” the cultural barracks and clubrooms—and especially, a Culture Hall (Kulturhalle) with 700 seats inaugurated in December 1951—were among the first communal facilities built around the

EKO.360 In the initial months and years, “homegrown” cultural shows were rare; most events featured visiting speakers, artists or companies. Over time, however, the local organization of cultural life received more emphasis. In August 1952, EKO-workers founded a “music ensemble,” which had its first stage performance two months later (“Little, but with enthusiasm”—titled the local newspaper on the event).361 In October 1952, a Circle of the

358 In the original Hungarian text: “Ahol új város épül, ott új társadalom is születik, s ez az új társadalom előbb- utóbb megteremti a maga önálló kulturális arculatát.” See: “Megalakult Sztálinváros Művészeti klubja,” SZVÉ, March 11, 1952. 359 In the original Hungarian text: “Ha valaki megírja majd Sztálinváros történetét, munkájának egyik legérdekesebb fejezete minden bizonnyal a város kulturális életének megrajzolása lesz.” See: “Sztálinváros kulturális élete,” SZVÉ, February 6, 1954. 360 Nicolaus, Einblicke, 109. 361 In the orginal, German text: “Wenig, aber herzlich.” Reference to this article is made in: “Endlich einen Raum für Kulturarbeit!” NT, January 20, 1953.

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Friends of Nature (Zirkel der Naturfreunde) was initiated. Many more circles, from chess to reading to the study of Russian language, were founded and thus, in January 1953, due to the increasingly busy schedule of the cultural barracks, most culture groups (Kulturgruppen) of the

EKO moved their meetings and rehearsals to the new school of the Wohnstadt.362

The best printed source on the cultural and artistic life of Stalinstadt is the local Cultural

Mirror (Kulturspiegel). Started in March 1955 as a tiny booklet with only a few pages featuring the opening hours of the library, the programme of the new Friedrich-Wolf-Kulturhaus, the local bus schedule, an events list of the Kulturbund and the German-Soviet Friendship Association,

Kulturspiegel grew over the next half decade into a cultural magazine of fifty-odd pages with several pages-long articles on cultural events, film reviews, travel reports and even commercial advertisements. Among the more common articles in Kulturspiegel were those devoted to the development of culture in the new town. Such development was invariably measured in numbers. Thus we learn, for instance, that the Town Library (Stadtbibliothek) held 3,358 books in 1954, which were read by 735 readers. By 1959 these numbers have grown to 10,547 volumes and 2,309 readers. Considering the 52,149 borrowings which occurred during that year, every registered reader, that is, about every tenth inhabitant of Stalinstadt, must have read—on average—an impressive number of 22 books in 1959.363

One of the preferred pastimes in the barracks town near Fürstenberg was the viewing of foreign and GDR-made feature films. In the beginning, films were shown in cultural barracks like the one around the EKO or the one within the Wohnlager Insel I (Residential Camp Insel I).

362 “Endlich einen Raum für die Kulturarbeit!” NT, January 20, 1953. 363 “Sechs Jahre Stadtbibliothek,” Kulturspiegel 8 (1960).

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Conditions were Spartan; the barracks were usually crammed with people whose disruptive behavior—often caused by alcohol—made regular headlines in the local newspaper. We learn from the local page of Neuer Tag that in early 1953 a packed cultural barracks at the EKO revolted when the technician interrupted the show demanding that the corridors of the hall be evacuated for safety reasons. The standoff lasted 45 minutes after which, upon the insistence of the camp leader (Lagerleiterin), the technician went on with the screening, only to be reprimanded later for “preventing workers from relaxing a little before entering their night shift.”364 Within a short time, relaxing and watching moving pictures became synonymous; a bigger screening hall was needed in the Wohnstadt.

In May 1952, the EKO founded a Filmaktiv, a group of workers and “members of our intelligentsia,” whose task was to review and discuss with the workers the films shown in the cultural barracks. By the end of the year interest faded, however, and the Filmaktiv was practically dissolved; the discussion of the “progressive” films shown at the EKO had stopped.

What a shame, wrote Wolfgang Röder of Block number 6 to the editor of the Heimatzeitung, urging the Filmaktiv to “pick up their important task immediately.”365 The message was heard and cinema has soon become so popular that, by the end of 1953, construction workers and

EKO-employees could choose among half a dozen screening halls in and around the Wohnstadt, many of them offering several shows every day. Due to the interest of the growing number of

364 “Krach im Kino,” NT, January 16,1953. 365 Wolfgang Röder: “Filmaktiv EKO nicht mehr aktiv?” NT, January 31, 1953.

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children living in the Wohnstadt, the movie program was soon extended to include films for children, like The Last of the Mohicans (1936) or Gulliver’s Travels (1939). 366

A proper screening hall for several hundred people was now urgently needed. As the plans for the Palace of Culture in the centre of town were dropped, the solution came with the construction of the Friedrich Wolf House of Culture, which was inaugurated on March 6th, 1955, on Leninallee (the Magistrale). By November 1956, 546 Films were shown here to an impressive

175.196 viewers.367 With at least two new films shown every week and an average of two screenings each day, the Friedrich Wolf House of Culture gave Stalinstadt the aura of a town when many roads were still unpaved, sidewalks and street lights were largely missing and street life, so important for the urban feel of the new settlement, was still in its infancy. In fact, the

House of Culture was the first building that was finished on the Magistrale; for several years to come it marked the civic centre of Stalinstadt.

366 These were at the House of Trade Unions (“Haus der Gewerkschaften”), inaugurated as the first cultural venue of the Wohnstadt on December 21st, 1951; the Film Barracks of the EKO J.V. Stalin (“Filmbaracke des EKO J.W. Stalin”); the Culture Hall of the Residential Camp Insel (“Kulturhalle des Wohnlagers Insel”); the Cultural Barracks at the Residential Camp Helmut Just (“Kulturbaracke des Wohnlagers Helmut Just”); the Matke Inn (“Gasthaus Mattke”) in Fürstenberg; the House of Oder Shipping (“Haus der Oderschiffahrt”) in Fürstenberg; and finally, the “Oderland-Theatre”, also found in Fürstenberg. 367 “Aus dem Kulturleben,” Kulturspiegel 11 (1956).

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Illustration 12. The Friedrich-Wolf Theater (built 1954-1955) and its surroundings in early 1959.368

The development of the town’s smaller social-cultural institutions took off in 1953, when the construction of the EKS was temporarily halted following the June 17th uprising, and emphasis was shifted away from heavy industry to the satisfaction of the more pressing needs of the population. The Ministry of Construction transferred all responsibility for further investment to the Town Council, which promptly set out to finish the construction business interrupted earlier due to the lack of funds. By the end of the year, 25 HO- and Konsum-stores were opened and much of the construction of the future Aktivist restaurant complex was completed.369 While there was still little being offered for sale in these stores, shopping as a leisure activity was

368 Source: BARCH-B. 369 Bräuer, Die ersten drei Jahrzehnte, 72.

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picked up by more and more inhabitants. Fashion, long regarded a phenomenon typical of the

West, became an issue important enough to be devoted regular columns, and even advertisements, yet another feature of capitalist commerce, in the local press.

Illustration 13. “One gets more from her life if dressed well! We will gladly advise you in fashion-matters.” Advertisement in Kulturspiegel, 1956.

As years went by, inhabitants of the German Stalin Town awoke to a reality that was both welcome and somewhat disturbing: Stalinstadt had a history. With the pioneer years over, life in

Stalinstadt began to be more settled, less extraordinary, more normal and less exciting to its citizens. If the first theatre shows staged in one of the barracks in the early 1950s featured amateur actors in plays of questionable artistic value and the audience wore boots and uniforms to overcome the sea of mud surrounding the Wohnstadt, then, by the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, the audience of the shiny Friedrich Wolf Theatre would dress up like audiences elsewhere in the republic and see plays staged by professional companies from

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Frankfurt (Oder), Berlin, Dresden or Leipzig. “Home-grown” culture was, too, ever more present in the town. But the political leadership was not content. The 7-year plan proposal for the cultural development of Stalinstadt (1960) noted that while the “cultural revolution” had led to

“improvements” in every field of culture, “in the field of arts and literature there remains a serious lag behind the demands and the needs of the population, particularly the working class.”

The reason for this was “the insufficient understanding of the laws of the socialist cultural revolution.” The proposal went on to detail, field by field, the new tasks: clubs (Klubhäuser) must become “centres of political, professional and cultural education”; libraries must increase their readership by 257 percent (not more, and not less); the number of subscriptions to Lenin- volumes (Leninbände) in Stalinstadt must be raised from 20 to 50, those for Marx- and Engels- volumes from 10 to 30. In the presentation of films, which were considered “among the most important cultural-political instruments in the creation of a socialist consciousness,” preference must be given to those which portrayed socialist construction [Aufbau], those which furthered the development of a high socialist morality, as well as films from other socialist countries.”

Two (!) film festivals must be held every year in Stalinstadt; by 1965, the number of season- tickets for the Kleist Theatre (the theatre company from Frankfurt/Oder, which had its second home in Stalinstadt) must be doubled; to further the socialist musical education (sozialistische

Musikerziehung) of the workers, a music festival was to be held every spring starting in 1960.

Cultural politics must be present in commerce, too: “through its offer, socialist commerce [had] the duty to create and to shape the taste of the population.”370

370 “Entwurf für den Perspektivplan der kultur-politischen Entwicklung Stalinstadts,” Kulturspiegel 1 (1960).

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A crucial role in the cultural life of Stalinstadt was assigned throughout these years to the

Kulturbund. Founded in 1945 as a country-wide organization to support and oversee the creation of a “socialist culture,” by the mid-1950s the Kulturbund had become a mass-organization. From the running of technical “circles” (Zirkel) from engineering through photography to astronomy, from the organisation of lectures and events to the regular campaigns aimed at “unmasking the dangers of the militarism of West Germany,” the Kulturbund was in charge of the “socialist education […] of the intelligentsia and of all the culturally interested [people] of the German

Democratic Republic, in close alliance with the class of workers and the working peasantry.” In

Stalinstadt, the results attained by the Kulturbund in this endeavour were mixed. While the offer, as well as the membership, of the Kulturbund was impressive, attendance at Kulturbund events was dwindling. During a period of 16 months at the end of the decade (about January 1958 to

July 1959), only the circles for photography and philately were more or less active; the 128 events organized by the Kulturbund in this period were attended by an average of 20 persons.

Worse yet, of these 128 events about a dozen were attended by two hundred or more persons

(like the meeting with the popular sports commentator Heinz-Florian Örtel), reducing the average attendance of the remaining ca. 110 events to well under 10 (!) persons per event.371 The intelligentsia was clearly not interested in membership and participating at Kulturbund events, which prompted the leadership to establish, still under the auspices of the Kulturbund but outside of Kulturbund-membership, the Klub der Intelligenz (Club of the Intelligentsia). With that, the segregation of culture and cultural life in the first socialist town of East Germany was officially recognized. But the bulk of the local intelligentsia, numbering about 600 persons (1960) across

371 “Alle sind gerufen!” Kulturspiegel, 8 (1959).

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all the various professions, was still not interested in participating in the work of a club run by the Kulturbund; three years after its official founding, the Stalinstadt Klub der Intelligenz numbered a mere 100 members, much to the disappointment of the local SED leadership.372

The phenomenon of differentiation between the various social layers of the population spread across a variety of aspects of cultural life. Well before the establishment of restaurants and pubs, a special dining room for the intelligentsia (Intelligenzspeiseraum) was established in the cantine of the EKO to which workers’ access was barred as patrons with a higher status refused to share the table with the “dirty pigs” (Drecksschweine), who used their plates as ashtrays.373 Others avoided the cantine altogether because the plates were unacceptably greasy after being handled by workers and cantine dishwashers could not get the dirt off the plates.374

Unskilled workers, most of who were still living in temporary barracks or shelters, would spend much of their free time hanging out and drinking in or around HO-stores in the Wohnstadt; inhabitants with a higher status and typically living in the new blocks would choose activities which were more in line with the party line. Already in April 1953, the Heimatzeitung published the letter of a reader who noted with disappointment, that

[a]fter work, and especially, during weekends, many [of us] feel the need for entertainment. Many [of us] would like to enjoy a few hours of dancing and a glass of wine. But where? The cinema is alright, there at least some of our needs are met. But dancing? In Fürstenberg there is only the Goldener Löwe [Golden Lion] and the HO- buffet Aufbau. These two dance halls are always packed with people, and there are often

372 “Zur Wahl des neuen Klubrats: Klub der Intelligenz – Treffpunkt der Intelligenz mit unseren Kumpeln.” Kulturspiegel 3 (1960). 373 Ursula Krüger, ed., Eisenhüttenstaedter Lesebuch vol. I (Berlin: Edition Bodoni, 2000), 34-35. 374 Ibid, 35.

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brawls there, too. Why doesn’t the HO take over some more former restaurants with bigger halls which are to this day closed in Fürstenberg?375

The suggestion reveals much about the social and spatial setup of leisure in Stalinstadt, at least when seen from the point of view of the permanent settler living in one of the permanent blocks of flats (as opposed to the not yet settled, most often unskilled construction worker, typically living in a barrack): dancing, a more bourgeois form of leisure, at least when compared to heavy drinking or playing Skat, was to be done in the neighboring old town of Fürstenberg and in one of the old establishments built for this purpose, rather than in the muddy Wohnstadt, where inebriated people roamed the streets after nightfall. Telling is also the suggestion that the reader should have liked to drink a glass of wine on such an evening of dancing. Wine consumption was expensive and rare in the Wohnstadt, and later, in Stalinstadt, as most workers, women included, had a clear preference for beer and for cheaper liquors like Koks (coke), a drink mix made of brandy, a sugar cube and coffee beans.376 The preference for wine (and one glass only!) can thus be read as a veiled distancing from the “lower” culture of heavy drinking of cheap alcohol that was so characteristic of the Wohnstadt. But even beer-fans complained in their Heimatzeitung:

“[O]ne has to go to Fürstenberg to comfortably (gemütlich) drink a glass of beer. We would rather prefer to do that in Stalinstadt, but there is no restaurant (Gaststätte) here yet […]. If one wants to drink a glass of beer, one must either buy a crate-full at the HO or at the Konsum, or go to Fürstenberg, Schönfließ or to the Friedensstahl [pub].”377 The suggested contrast between

375 Anneliese Riedel, “Das Vergnügen soll zu seinem Recht kommen, aber wie und wo?” NT, April 9, 1953. 376 “Einiges zur Mitropa-Gaststätte in Fürstenberg (Oder),” NT, January 30, 1954. 377 “Kurz notiert,” NT, May 27, 1953.

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moderate, comfortable drinking and “a crate-full” couldn’t be clearer; such letters to the editor

(both from spring 1953) heralded the establishment of a “higher” culture of drinking to gradually replace the ad-hoc, massive alcoholism that was the norm in the pioneer years of the Wohnstadt.

The Kameltränke (literally: Camel Trough), a pub at the corner of the Street of the Youth

(Straße der Jugend) and John-Scheer-Straße, was one of the establishments opened in the 1950s to provide a more cultured pub life in Stalinstadt. Operating to this day, the Kameltränke is a favorite hangout place of “ostalgic” locals while it is the main football pub of Eisenhüttenstadt with three flat TV screens and many stories about the heroic past of Stalinstadt. Envisioned as a snack bar (Imbiss) with 50 seats, it has become, back in the 1950s, known for the quantities of alcohol consumed there, but also for the many brawls that caused people living in Wohnkomplex

No. 2 to have regular sleepless nights. Just down the street from here, the HO-Gaststätte or HO-

Grossgaststätte (after October 1954: Aktivist), a large restaurant complex inaugurated on

December 21, 1953—on Joseph Stalin’s birthday—, provided entertainment to the higher echelons of Stalinstadt society.

Illustration 16. The HO-Großgaststätte Aktivist in Stalinstadt (postcards, dates unknown).

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The Aktivist was the entertainment venue of Stalinstadt. Pompously named Restaurant und Tanzcafé (Restaurant and Dance-Café), the Aktivist delivered much of what it promised.

With its 600 seats, the Aktivist was one of the largest restaurant- and café establishments of the republic. The wooden finish of the walls, the stucco-covered ceilings from which large chandeliers were hung, the comfortable cushioned chairs and finally, the ironed tablecloths provided a “classy” atmosphere that gave the Aktivist, built by the “worker and peasant state” for its proletarian citizens, an aura of bourgeois coziness and comfort. The columns and the high ceilings conveyed the place a majestic appearance, which was no doubt meant to impress the visitor, but also to express the power of the new, socialist culture.

Music played an important role in Stalinstadt (and, as we shall see, also in Sztálinváros).

The first orchestra of the town, the Werkorchester (Workshop Orchestra) of the Bau Union, was founded as early as March 1952. Within a year of its founding, by March 1953, the orchestra numbering 28 members held an impressive “117 rehearsals and performances” (we don’t know, however, how many of these were actual stage performances).378 From a report of January 1954 we learn that the Eisenhüttenkombinat, too, had a Werkorchester (as well as a string quartett), which, in the absence of a better suited venue (the Friedrich Wolf Theatre was inaugurated only a year later), performed regularly in the HO-Grossgaststätte (the Aktivist).379 In June, 1954, a

Konzert-Café was opened in the complex (in addition to the Bierstube or beer-pub catering for the “lower” segment of workers), where, having gotten a permanent assignment, the Thuringian

378 “Ein Jahr Werkorchester,” NT, March 19, 1953. 379 “Konzertabend in der HO-Gaststätte,” NT, January 17, 1954.

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musician Maxim Scholz and his band entertained their audience starting in July 1954.380 Another highly popular restaurant was opened near Stalinstadt just about this time: the HO-Gaststätte in the Diehloer Berge (also: Diehloer Höhe), where many of the popular Betriebsfeiern (company parties) were held in the accompaniment of mostly loud music.

All these pubs and restaurants were home to just one facet of music life in Stalinstadt, however. Already in 1954, Stalinstadt had a music school (Volksmusikschule), where students studied “serious music” (ernste Musik) on a variety of instruments.381 “Serious music” was at home in Stalinstadt: from the newspaper we learn that as early as February 1953, a foreign string quartet gave a concert in the Wohnstadt (the Smetana Quartet from Czechoslovakia).382 That same year, a monthly event called Stunde der Musik (Music Hour) was started at the Kulturhalle des Eisenhüttenkombinats, at which visiting artists performed for the more critical audiences of the town (starting September 1954, the event was moved to the Aktivist). The artists and their repertoires were invariably high class: Bach, Brahms, Mozart or Schubert, but also modern composers like Max Reger or Maurice Ravel featured on the program of well-known performers hailing from Berlin, Dresden and other parts of the republic.383 The stage of the Kulturhaus der

Gewerkschaft des Eisenhüttenkombinats (The House of Culture of the Trade Union of the

Eisenhüttenkombinat) was, too, frequently visited by “serious music” ensembles and choirs.384

380 “Ab 2. Juli 1954 spielt in der HO-Großgaststätte Karl-Marx-Str. die Konzert- und Stimmungskapelle Maxim Scholz aus Oberhof (Thüringen).” NT, July 1, 1954. 381 “Die Musikschule stellte sich vor,” NT, October 12, 1954. 382 “Festveranstaltung zur Eröffnung des Karl-Marx-Jahres,” NT, February 21, 1953. 383 See for instance: “Einige Worte zur ‘Stunde der Musik.’” NT, October 11, 1953. See also: “Deutsche Konzert- und Gastsspieldirektion,” NT, September 24,1954; “Deutsche Konzert- und Gastspieldirektion,” NT, October 16, 1954. 384 See for instance: “Der weltberühmte Dresdner Mozartchor,” NT, November 3, 1954.

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There was no such a tendency towards more serious genres in the case of theatrical performances. Both before and after the opening of the Friedrich Wolf Theatre, homegrown and visiting companies showed a preference for lighter genres like comedy, satire, “Varieté” and the like. As an indication of the direction in which theatre shows were meant to point in the future, at the opening of the theatre on March 8, 1955, the Berlin Deutsches Theater performed William

Shakespeare’s “Much ado about nothing”—much to the enjoyment of Oberbürgermeister

(General Mayor) Wettengel and his numerous guests at the event, including some guests from

West Germany.385 But performances held in the shiny new theatre also caused headaches to the organizers, as the worker audience’s behaviour left much to be desired. People arrived late to shows; after the breaks they returned late to their seats; they coughed and sneezed “as loudly as they could,” while many spectators left early, well before the end of the show. After shows, the house was filled with garbage, and when spectators were asked “to behave,” they got upset.386

Many years would pass before the Stalinstadt general audience was ready to embrace the new socialist (high) culture that was brought to them by the Party.

One of the reasons for this was no doubt the demographic structure of the population.

Stalinstadt was a young town; in 1955, the average age of the population barely reached 25.387

The imposition of a higher culture—no matter whether bourgeois or “socialist”—on a young worker population with entirely different cultural needs or interests caused many difficulties to cultural planners and agitators. The missing generations of the middle-aged and the old, who

385 “Eröffnung des Filmtheaters – ein großes Erlebnis,” NT, March 8, 1955. 386 “Das Theater gehört doch schließlich uns,” NT, March 10, 1955. 387 Ruth May, “Stalinstadt 1955. Der »Neue Mensch«, vom Westen aus betrachtet. Ein Quick-Report,” Utopie Kreativ No. 118 (August 2000), accessed June 16, 2015, http://www.rosalux.de/publication/14071/stalinstadt-1955- der-neue-mensch-vom-westen-aus-betrachtet-ein-quick-report.html.

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would otherwise ensure the trans-generational passing on of cultural values and traditions, was a handicap of Stalinstadt, and later, Eisenhüttenstadt. The problem of missing generations was no doubt recognized early on, but it was acknowledged only later, when the first generations of settlers, many of whom arrived to Stalinstadt as singles in their teens or twenties, were married with children and in charge of running (rather than building), the town. The revolutionary élan of the early 1950s gave way to a more settled, slower rhythm of life; the Stalin-marches of the

1950s were replaced by slower hits like the Hüttenfest-Walzer,388 written in the classic three-four time of the Viennese waltz. The gradual “normalization” of Eisenhüttenstadt constituted a slow but gradual (re)turn to the mores and institutions of the bourgeois past; the family was now hailed as a pillar of democratic society, while single men and women, like those who built

Stalinstadt, were relegated to the periphery of local society. A song text written to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Kombinat pointed at the most visible of the shortcomings of the new town: the absence of the elderly.

388 In the original: Iron Works Celebration-Waltz.

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Uns fehlt eine Oma! We’re in need of a granny!

Unsre Stadt hat helle Häuser Our town has bright-coloured houses, rings mit jungem Grün gehißt. surrounded by young greenery. Doch die Menschen sind noch jünger, But its people are even younger, was auch manchmal schwierig ist. which is sometimes a difficulty.

Uns fehlt eine Oma, We’re in need of a granny, die Oma ist weit, but granny is far away, sie wohnt in einer andren Stadt, she lives in another town, die sowieso schon Omas hat, with more grannies, yay, uns fehlt eine Oma! we’re in need of a granny! Es wird höchste Zeit. It’s high time.

Mutti läßt die Wäsche holen For a long while now our Mommies Lange schon vom DLK. Have the DLK do the laundry. Doch wenn sie die Laken liefern, But when the clean sheets are returned, ist zu Hause keiner da. There’s nobody home to let them in.

Uns fehlt eine Oma... We’re in need of a granny…

Meine kleine Schwester Jana My little sister Jana Hat den Kindergarten lieb. Just loves her kindergarten. Aber wenn sie schnupft und hustet But when she has a cold and coughs, Fehlt die Mutti im Betrieb. Mommy’s missing from her job.

Uns fehlt eine Oma... We’re in need of a granny…

Unsre Stadt hat junge Leute Our town is filled with youths, nirgends gibt es heute mehr. No other place has more today. Trotzdem: über ein paar Omas And yet: we’d be all so grateful, freuten wir uns alle sehr. If we had some grannies, too.

Uns fehlt eine Oma... We’re in need of a granny…

Illustration 15. “Uns fehlt eine Oma” – text of a song on the missing grandmothers in Eisenhüttenstadt.389

Nostalgia for grandmothers socialized in the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich has no doubt raised some eyebrows among the leadership. But what could they do? Grandmothers

389 Lyrics: Günter Knippel. Melody: Hanns Häntsch. Translation by the author. Text and scores published in: Unknown Author, Nimm Blumen mit. Lieder für Eisenhüttenstadt, Vol. 1. (Ziltendorf: Kulturverein e.V. Ziltendorf, 2000), 72.

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were missing from Eisenhüttenstadt, which was becoming an ever more ordinary town of the

GDR. (To be sure, grandfathers were missing, too, but the rehabilitation of the men who fought the Second World War on the wrong side was a matter the songwriter obviously did not want to touch upon). The realisation of the abnormality of missing generations came at a time when the slowdown of the development of the EKO and of the town around it brought Eisenhüttenstadt more in line with the rest of East Germany and when the cultural life of the town was gradually normalized following the “abnormal” Stalinstadt era. The town’s biggest yearly cultural event, the Hüttenfest, which back in 1954 was a local celebration of the heroic production of iron in the new Kombinat, had become, over the years, a genuine Hüttenstadtfest—a regional festival of folk art (Volkskunst), music, games and food, devoted to both locals and visitors hailing from as far as Berlin and even West Germany. Every effort was made to integrate Eisenhüttenstadt into the cultural landscape of the GDR. But in many ways, Eisenhüttenstadt remained a white spot on the map of East Germany. For instance, from the beginning of television broadcasting until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Eisenhüttenstadt was the only town of the GDR which had a permanent jamming transmitter directed at broadcasts coming from West Germany, and especially, from West Berlin; which does, perhaps, explain at least some of the later difficulties of cultural reunification of Eisenhüttenstadt with the rest of the country.

The EKO and the Wohnstadt existed on paper only when the first cultural events were held at the construction site near Dunapentele, 60 kilometres south of Budapest, in Hungary. As early as in the summer of 1950, young conservatory graduate István Kovács found enough singing enthusiasts to hold choir rehearsals twice a week by the riverside when the weather was good, and in various barracks, basements and sheds when it was not. Attending the evening

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rehearsals was risky, as “robberies and rowdyism were very frequent, and even murders occurred from time to time.” 390 A spontaneous gathering of wind instrument players, which would be the nucleus around which the future Fire Brigade Orchestra was organized later, gave their first performance for the workers of the construction site on August 20, 1950; under the name of

Építők Zenekara (Constructors’ Orchestra), they would give their first official concert a couple of months later, on November 7.391 By the end of the year, the construction site had two cultural barracks with busy schedules including daily film screenings, dance nights and folk dance shows.392 In January 1951, there already existed a library at the construction site, where “the right books […] on the life of the Soviet people” could be read or borrowed by workers.393 Also in January 1951, two “theatre groups” were founded, one of which gave their first public show only three weeks later.394 The rapid development of cultural life did not stop at the borders of the future socialist town, however; four months later, in May 1951, the “Petőfi dance group of our construction [site]” competed in the finals of the National Culture Contest (Országos

Kultúrverseny) for the title of the best dance group of Hungary.395

390 Kurucz et al., “…hogy itt is legyen muzsika…”, 7. 391 Ibid, 46. 392 “Kultúrprogram december 21-től 31-ig,” DVÉ, December 21, 1950. 393 “Olvassuk az igazi könyveket!” DVÉ, January 9, 1951. 394 “Két színjátszó csoport munka közben,” DVÉ, February 13, 1951. 395 “Építkezésünk ‘Petőfi’ tánccsportja bekerült a kultúrverseny országos döntőjébe,” DVÉ, May 22, 1951.

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Illustration 16. The wind orchestra playing at the construction site of the future Sztálinváros (date unknown).396

As the growth of the “town” required the construction of ever bigger events venues, an open air theatre for several thousand viewers was hastily built by the river. One of the first performances given there was the show of a further unspecified “Czechoslovak Folk Song and

Dance Group,” which was allegedly attended by 3000 workers and which indicates that by the summer of 1951, the future Stalin Town had already established its first international cultural contacts.397 The open air theatre was used for a variety of other events as well: a few days later, on the occasion of the celebrations honouring the new constitution, the first of a long series of lectures was given there on “The pillars of the future of entire humankind: Gigantic constructions

396 Source: Open Society Archives. 397 “A csehszlovák népi ének-és táncegyüttes Dunapentelén,” DVÉ, August 7, 1951.

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of socialism in the Soviet Union.”398 Some weeks later, an open-air cinema was inaugurated in the same venue with the screening of a Hungarian colour feature film on the “dark dealings of the clerical reaction” (the next screening on the program was the Soviet film-hit “Far from

Moscow” based on the novel written by Vasiliy Azhaev).399 But the most important institution of culture was yet to be born: inaugurated on December 21, 1951 (on Joseph Stalin’s birthday), the

“Cinema Palace” built along the future main artery of the town (Sztálin út), marked for many decades, like the Friedrich Wolf Theatre in Stalinstadt, the civic centre of Dunújváros.400 The grand opening of “the country’s most modern cinema palace” was an event important enough to warrant the presence of Deputy Minister of Culture Ernő Mihályfi in Sztálinváros; given the date of inauguration, and the fact that, through the countless “Stalin shifts” worked by hundreds of volunteer constructors, the construction of the cinema hall was dedicated to Joseph Stalin, the film screened on this festive occasion was Sergei Vasilyev’s “The Defense of Tsaritsyn.”401

398 “Ötnapos gazdag kultúr- és sportműsor alkotmányunk ünnepe tiszteletére,” DVÉ, August 14, 1951. 399 The film shown on the day of inauguration was based on Kálmán Mikszáth’s anticlerical novel “A Strange Marriage.” See: “Megnyílt a szabadtéri mozi,” DVÉ, September 23, 1951. 400 In a conversation, art historian Annamária Nagy, who grew up in Dunaújváros, told me that the small square in front of the movie theatre was regarded—especially by the youths living in the town—as the civic centre of Dunaújváros as late as the early 1990s. Annamária Nagy, interview by the author, May 21, 2015. 401 In this movie, Joseph Stalin is portrayed as one of the leaders of the defense of Tsaritsyn from the White Armies during the Russian civil war of 1918. “Felavatták Sztálinvárosban az ország legkorszerűbb filmszínházát,” SzN, December 21, 1951.

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Illustration 17. The Dózsa György film theatre (built 1951), and its lobby (dates unknown).402

By 1952, Sztálinváros had a school with 20 classrooms, several libraries, a “final”

(végleges) movie theatre, a proper restaurant, and even a department store (üzletház)—with separate departments for groceries, deli-products, textiles and footwear. Published in the early autumn of 1952, the information booklet produced for the newly arrived workers tells us the following about cultural life in Sztálinváros:

In Sztálinváros and at the Stalin Ironworks, the workers’ right to culture is guaranteed by the constitution.

The vocational training of workers is ensured through a variety of evening-school courses. But besides learning there exists also a wide range of opportunities for leisure.

402 Source: Open Society Archives.

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The first final movie theatre has [recently] been opened at the construction site. At the Dózsa György403 movie theatre, which is one of the most beautiful movie theatres of the country featuring the most state of the art equipment, films open at the same time as in Budapest. [Films shown here include] Soviet films, films from the people’s democracies, the best Hungarian films as well as other progressive films.

In summer there [is also] an open-air cinema and theatre, seating 8000 workers.

Two cultural homes404 operate under the leadership and guidance of the Territorial Committee of the Constructors’ Trade Union. In these, regular professional, political or scientific lectures are held. In addition to regularly hosting a wide variety of lectures, the cultural homes also provide the most varied opportunities for recreation. Actors, cultural groups of workshops and the most outstanding singers, dancers, folk dance companies and artists give guest-performances here.

Book-loving workers will find libraries at the different workplaces, cultural rooms and company headquarters throughout the construction site, as well as at the two cultural homes. The libraries of the trade unions hold over five thousand volumes. In addition to these, the library of the Town Council holds over five thousand technical books, as well as 3500 volumes on literature and ideology.

In the dormitory barracks there are 21 cultural rooms in which the workers will find the most varied ways of entertainment (ping pong, chess, domino, radio, record- players with records, as well as a variety of board games) [...].

For those workers who feel that they have talent and are interested in participating in artistic activities—regardless of whether they are beginners or at an advanced level—, there are theatre groups, cultural brigades, choirs, folk dance and music groups. There are also literature and creative art circles, where the broad masses of workers can develop

403 György Dózsa (1470-1514), leader of the 1514 peasant revolt in the Kingdom of Hungary. 404 In the original, Hungarian text: “kultúrotthon”.

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their cultural knowledge and join the struggle for the formation of a new socialist culture.405

Like in Stalinstadt, one of the most important genres of that socialist culture was music.

Music, particularly when performed in groups (by choirs and orchestras), was best suited to bring home ideological messages of the party. Called to support the construction effort, rhythmic marches accompanied the clanking of tools and heavy machinery. The workers’ choir led by

István Kovács (the singing enthusiasts rehearsing by the river) gave their first concert at the inauguration of the new school on November 7, 1951. Their performance was received with so much fervor that in the following spring the Town Council founded a semi-professional choir of

80 (!) members. The Stalin Iron Works Choir thus born in September 1952 was entrusted to

Endre Székely, a former conductor of the Budapest Radio Choir who, like many other professionals who ended up in the town, was exiled to Sztálinváros following a reprimand he received from the party. On the repertoire of the choir, co-founder Vilmos Rási remembers: “[In the beginning], we sang songs of the workers’ movement and Hungarian and Soviet [sic] folk songs. Our task was to enthuse the people.”406 That was the purpose of their singing: to entertain and to motivate the builders of the town, to sing at festive occasions and to demonstrate to the occasional visitor the high level of “cultural awareness” among the inhabitants of the youngest town of Hungary. Little did it matter that most of them were music-illiterate; within two years they had their first (of a long series) performance at the Budapest Conservatory. Over time, their

405 Unknown Author, Sztálinváros Tájékoztatója (Sztálinváros: 26. Sz. Tröszt, 1952), 9-11. 406 Kurucz et al., “…hogy itt is legyen muzsika…”, 8.

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performances improved much, however; by the end of 1956 their repertoire has changed dramatically to consist mainly of works of classical music. The era of marches was over.

Illustration 18. Workers’ ensembles and choirs rehearsing in Sztálinváros (early 1950s).407

A professional symphonic orchestra was not founded in Sztálinváros until 1960.408 Until then, the town had to make do with that spontaneous gathering of wind instrument players and the metamorphoses it underwent over the next few years. In addition to the wind orchestra, in 1953 a

“Symphonic Salon Orchestra of the Town Council” (A Tanács Szimfónikus Szalonzenekara) was founded, which in 1954 was succeeded by a “Central Symphonic Orchestra” of the Béla

Bartók House of Culture (A Bartók Béla Kultúrház Központi Szimfónikus Zenekara), and in

407 Source: Open Society Archives. 408 Kurucz et al., “…hogy itt is legyen muzsika…”, 49.

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1955 by a “Town Symphonic Orchestra” (Városi Szimfónikus Zenekar).409 The latter three were short-lived initiatives of a few months only, rehearsing lighter genres of “serious” music with rather moderate success. Over the years, however, the quality of the “serious” music played in

Sztálinváros improved, especially once the Constructors’ Orchestra (the wind instrument players…) got its first professional leadership in 1956: spontaneous, amateur music-making gave way to semi-professional or professional music; performances were taken beyond the city limits and the repertoires underwent a shift from march music to classics and contemporary composers.

It is on this foundation that the rich music life of Dunaújváros was built later, in the 1960s and

1970s (the symphonic orchestra founded in 1960 was dissolved in 1991). An essential role in this was also played by the musical training provided to future music players and audiences: a music school was founded as early as 1953, with departments in all the various string and wind instruments including, somewhat surprisingly, the accordion. The singing skills of the young were, too, accorded due attention, as several school choirs were set up in the local schools, starting also in 1953.

409 “Új zenekar,” SZVÉ, August 19, 1953; “A Bartók Béla kultúrház közleménye,” SZVÉ, February 12, 1954; “Méltó helyet a nép zenekaroknak. Novemberben bemutatkozik a Városi Szimfónikus Zenekar – A Művészeti Albizottság ülése,” SZV, July 10, 1955.

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Illustration 19. A workers’ chamber ensemble rehearsing in Sztálinváros (date unknown).410

Lighter genres of music, were, too, at home in Sztálinváros. One eyewitness, co-author of a festive volume dedicated to the musical life of the town remembers:

A bar piano player was the minimum; almost every café had its own—often unusually talented—musician who played everything from the standard jazz pieces through the shmoozes411 to the current hits requested by the customer. […] The best dance music players and singers came to town from Budapest, many of them every week. The Golden Star Hotel, for example, featured the entire elite—and let me not list them all here—of Hungarian dance musicians during those years (in the basement they played mostly gypsy music; the upstairs bar hosted the entertaining music nights). The famous singers were accompanied by extraordinary musicians, while the audience joyfully welcomed the stars

410 Source: Open Society Archives. 411 In Hungarian: “smúzok”. Slow love songs were typically called so in Hungarian (from the German “Schmus” or the Yiddish “shmues,” meaning chit-chatting, gossiping, but also charming, flattering).

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of the time; each night several hundred [people] danced and relaxed in the bar [of the hotel].412

They no doubt did so in the shiny Golden Star Hotel (Arany Csillag Szálló), inaugurated near the future centre of town in December 1954. But in most pubs of the time, the only music one heard was the out of tune chanting of drunk workers intent on ending their work day in the company of some strong and cheap liquor.

Sztálinváros had a rich pub-life. Most prominent among the pubs was the “Buffet”

(Büfé), hosted in a barracks on Peace Square, which has soon become an informal civic centre of

Sztálinváros.413 It was the best address for someone in search of work (its central location and the proximity of the bus station were key), seeking company or simply wishing to listen to or to share a good story. The Késdobálo (literally: the place where knives are thrown around), as it was known among the locals, was a noisy gathering point of both peaceful drunkards and notorious troublemakers. Patrons involved in a brawl here would often end up in hospital, and sometimes on the coroner’s table. An embarrassment to the local authorities, the Késdobálo was shut down in 1954, but other pubs like the Arany Csillag Népbüfé (Golden Star People’s Buffet), opened right in the vicinity of the shiny new hotel, took its place. Other new worker “pubs,” mostly shabby barracks with a couple of tables in front of them, sprang up as new neighborhoods were built further away from the centre of town. The tendency, starting in 1954, to clean the inner town of its disturbing, shabby pubs did not lead to the cleaning of the town of its unwanted

412 Kurucz et al., “…hogy itt is legyen muzsika…”, 92-93. 413 Horváth, A kapu és a határ, 161.

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human elements; they merely migrated beyond the limits of the inner city to the new neighborhoods, where their existence was better tolerated, and more importantly, were they were less visible to the eye of a high-ranking visitor from Budapest or Moscow. In a sense, notes

Sándor Horváth, their moving out of the centre to the periphery symbolized a move into the underground, and thus, into conflict with the state. Within less than half of a decade, a diversified drinking culture has thus reflected the cultural divisions that cut through the (intended) egalitarian workers’ space of Sztálinváros. As the elite—the intelligentsia and the skilled workers who have come from urban areas and were thus in possession of an urban culture—took control of the centre of town, the peasant workers landed at the outskirts.414

414 Ibid, 158-172.

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Like in Stalinstadt, the intelligentsia established a parallel network of cultural organisations in Sztálinváros. But unlike the Klub der Intelligenz in Stalinstadt, which was meant to win over the intelligentsia to participate in the “socialist education” of the workers, clubs like the “Orvos-Pedagógus Klub” (Club of Doctors and Pedagogues) of Sztálinváros founded in late

1954 had the purpose of providing a separate space for entertainment to the elite: doctors and pedagogues used the club facilities to play chess, dominoes, listen to music, and, most importantly, to dance.415

Such a separation of cultural club life along “class” fault lines was, at least in part, caused by financial reasons. As the Béla Bartók House of Culture was inaugurated to become the cultural venue of the town, other, already existing facilities declined rapidly. In early 1954, there were 22 clubs and “culture homes” operating in Sztálinváros, but as most of them were subordinated to industrial workshops (from the ironworks to the brick factory) or construction companies with sharply diminished budgets after 1953-54, they were underfunded to the point that they could not even ensure the heating of their venues. Even the new Béla Bartók House of

Culture was hard hit by the halt of investment into Sztálinváros. A month into its existence, a cultural planner decried its low budget as follows:

What the cultural homes get currently from the trade union or from the companies is practically nothing, [it is] barely enough for the mere survival [of these cultural homes]. This, however, causes a lowering of the quality of their work. […] What is the worth of a

415 “Megnyílt az orvos-pedagógus-klub,” SZVÉ, October 26, 1954. An Engineers’ Club was established as early as March 1952 “to become the technical-scientific focal point of Sztálinváros”; this club was likely frequented for similar reasons by the local intelligentsia. See: “Megnyílt a sztálinvárosi Mérnökklub” SZVÉ, March 28, 1952.

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house of culture if it consists of four bare walls only, rather than being a genuine home of culture? […] Not so long ago, the Béla Bartok House of Culture was completed. Expectations towards it were high as many said it would re-launch our cultural life. But what happened? The Directorate drafted a budget and asked for 500.000 Forints from the Ministry of Culture.416 A couple of days ago [the Ministry’s] reply reached [us]: the ministry approved 96.000 Forints. Which is about one fifth of the requested budget. 96.000 Forints in a situation in which the heating alone costs over 100.000 Forints. How will it fulfill its task under such conditions? Or do they think that a fancy outlook, empty representation is enough? Those in charge have probably misunderstood the prescription of the Government Programme to reduce expenditures. Because the Government Programme is in no way about the reduction of cultural investment. On the contrary! Let us hope that the final seal has not yet been affixed onto the decision of the Ministry.417

What reflects better the sense of reality of cultural planners than the announcement, on the very day on which this letter was published in the newspaper, that the Béla Bartók House of Culture was starting a ballet school and, as if nothing were more simple, that it was about to found a

“central symphonic orchestra?”418

Cultural fault lines running through Sztálinváros were more obvious when it came to the way people dressed in the streets or when they participated at social events. In the first years

(roughly until 1953-54), the “dress code” of workers and that of the few members of the intelligentsia present in the town, was not much different; after all, the construction site feel of

Sztálinváros made everyone save their better dresses and coats for the Sundays spent elsewhere,

416 In Hungarian: “Népművelési Minisztérium” (literally: Ministry of Popular Cultivation). 417 “Művészet és Tudomány: Sztálinváros kulturális élete.” SZVÉ, February 6 and February 9, 1954. 418 “A Bartók Béla kultúrház híre,” SZVÉ, February 9, 1954.

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most often at home, back in the countryside or in the different towns of origin. But as soon as the

Government Programme of June 1953 was adopted, the department store and the shops emerging on Stalin Road began to carry more and more fashionable clothing which, through the price reductions of September 6, 1953,419 were now within the reach of Sztálinváros inhabitants, and especially, the intelligentsia. Within a matter of months, the concept of fashion became ever more popular in a place that until then was characterized and shaped by austerity and necessity.

In November 1953, a seven-day “Clothing Exhibition” was organized in the aula of the Dózsa

György movie theatre. The exhibition, which started on a Saturday afternoon “to accommodate the wish of the many women and girls” who wanted to attend, was opened by Erzsébet Jakab,

Head of the Sales Directorate of the Ministry of Light Industry. The usual speeches were followed by a fashion show presenting over 100 dresses, coats, skirts, trousers etc. for women, men and children. About 500 (!) people, mostly women, were in attendance. The more appealing dresses were met with applause, while the dress that won the second prize at the Prague international fashion competition organized for “democratic countries” (the “people’s democracies” of Eastern Europe, that is), was honoured with enthusiastic cheering.420 In

December, the newspaper ran an article on “How will we dress in 1954?” from which fashion- geeks, and especially the better-situated citizens learnt that in 1954, 17 different kinds of leather bags and 20 different bag types made of synthetic leather will be available in the stores, in addition to a wide variety of clothing and footwear.421 Thenceforth, fashion matters were

419 The price reductions were part of the Government Programme announced by Imre Nagy in June 1953. Retail prices of consumer goods dropped by as many as 25%. 420 “Ruházati kiállítás nyílt Sztálinvárosban,” SZVÉ, November 24, 1953. 421 “Hogyan öltözködünk 1954-ben?” SZVÉ, December 29, 1954.

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everyday issues discussed in the press, at the workplace, at home, and especially, in the growing number of clothing stores of Sztálinváros.

Illustration 21. Clothing (ruházat) and fashion products (divatáru) were sold from the beginning in the Sztálinváros department store.422

If a sizable number of the settlers of Stalinstadt were German refugees and expellees from the East, Sztálinváros had a relatively homogeneous Hungarian population coming from within the borders of pre- and postwar Hungary. This did not, however, mean that Sztálinváros was an ethnically or culturally closed or uniform town. For over half of a decade, until December

1956, Greek (communist) Civil War refugees were a permanent presence at the construction site.

Nikos Karalis, the “party secretary of the Greek emigrants,” made it a point to involve his

422 Source: Open Society Archives.

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community numbering several hundred persons in the cultural life of the emerging town; the

Greeks gave regular “cultural evenings” (kulturális est) in the culture rooms and culture barracks of the construction site, which were also attended by the Greek families and children living in the nearby settlement of Beloiannisz.423 Most Greeks eventually left Sztálinváros and its environs around 1955-56; while some—especially the elderly—returned to Greece, in December 1956 over 400 “Greeks of Dunapentele” left by steamboat for Czechoslovakia, where they were to

“continue their productive work” in the construction of socialism. That their coexistence with the

Hungarian majority was not always smooth is suggested by a seemingly unimportant detail: in a news item published on December 8, 1956 under the title “The Greeks have moved away”,

Dunapentelei Hírlap triumphantly noted that “the Greek question [was] now solved.”424 There were also other foreigners among those who built Sztálinváros; as early as August 1951, we learn of Korean students of the universities of Moscow and Leningrad living at the construction site in a tent with a sign saying “Here lives the Kim Il-sung brigade.”425 Youths from other “people’s democracies”, too, worked temporarily at the construction site.

The presentation of Sztálinváros to foreign visitors as a main achievement of Hungarian socialism whenever such an opportunity arose added much to the cultural openness of the town.

423 Construction of the Greek settlement in the vicinity of Iváncsa, about halfway between Budapest and Sztálinváros, was started in May 1950. Two years later, in April 1952, the settlement consisting of 418 row house homes was named after Nikos Beloianis (1915-1952), the communist Greek revolutionary who was executed on March 30, 1952. Many Greeks of Beloiannisz (mostly men) lived in Sztálinváros, while their families lived in the new Greek settlement. 424 “Elköltöztek a görögök,” DH, December 8, 1956. The “Greek question” was likely caused by the absence of jobs for this group of people who, considering the obstacles caused by language, were mostly employed in the construction sector. In a conversation, Kimberly Elman Zarecor confirmed to me that there is, to this day, a relatively large community of Greeks living in and around Ostrava, many of whom may, indeed, be former construction workers of Sztálinváros (or their descendants). Kimberly Elman Zarecor. Interview with the author, May 22, 2015. 425 “Koreai fiatalok Dunapentelén,” DVÉ, August 28, 1951.

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Prominent cult(ural) figures like the Turkish writer Nazim Hikmet or Soviet austronaut Yuri

Gagarin, or, leaders of far away countries like the first Indonesian President Sukarno, were as regular visitors of Sztálinváros as were the leaders of other socialist countries of Eastern Europe or of the Soviet Union; the performances given by the “Artistic Group of the Moscow

Philarmonic”, the “Armenian Folk Song and Dance Ensemble” or of the “Central Ensemble of the Romanian Trade Unions” were as habitual encounters with foreign culture as were the countless visits of foreign delegations of workers, youths, pioneers or sportsmen, who would usually “present their countries” to the locals through lectures, songs and folk dance shows.

“Cultural delegations” from Sztálinváros did, too, travel abroad, mainly to neighboring, “friendly countries” (baráti országok).426 But contacts were not limited to “people’s democracies” only; in

June 1958, the municipality of the Paris suburb of Villejuif partnered with Sztálinváros to become “twin cities,” a relationship that is maintained to this day.427

Towards the end of the decade, the various companies and cultural institutions could no longer handle the growing number of visitors. In the first nine months of 1958 alone, over

100,000 domestic and 3500 (!) foreign visitors have—allegedly—arrived to Sztálinváros. To coordinate (and, of course, to keep under control) such movement of people, the Executive

Committee of the Town Council established a Tourism Office (Idegenforgalmi Hivatal) in the town.428 As a result, in 1960, the number of visitors jumped—if we are to believe official

426 See for instance: “A Vasmű Együttes Lengyelországban.” SZH, June 24, 1957. 427 The partnership agreement was not entirely coincidental: by 1958, the municipality of Villejuif was led by the French communists for over three decades. It is also noteworthy that the partnership was initiated less than two years after the crushed 1956 uprising (in May 1958) and that it was announced in the Sztálinváros press on 17.06.1958, one day after the execution of Imre Nagy, the prime minister of Hungary during the 1956 uprising. “Egy francia város testvérvárossá fogadta Sztálinvárost,” SZH, June 17, 1958. 428 “Idegenforgalmi hivatal Sztálinvárosban,” SZH, October 10, 1958.

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figures—to 180.000 domestic and 10.000 foreign visitors. In June 1961, a few months before

Sztálinváros was named Dunaújváros, over 300,000 visitors were expected to visit Sztálinváros before the end of the year.429

Like the inhabitants of Stalinstadt who would regularly travel to Berlin (including West

Berlin) or to other parts of East Germany to visit relatives or to do their shopping, Sztálinváros settlers were, too, relatively mobile. Trains and buses to and from Sztálinváros were invariably packed, especially on weekends. Special trains reserved for ironworks employees ran regularly to and from Budapest, but also—especially in the summer—to the resort towns along the southern shore of Lake Balaton. The arrival and departure of trains often caused a tumult at the railway station. That the infrastructure was ill-suited for the movement of such masses is evidenced by an episode that occurred in January 1959. When the workers’ commuter train from Paks arrived at the railway station, passengers stormed the only bus that was there to take them to the city and to the ironworks. As they were doing so, they nearly trampled a 17 years old industrial student

(ipari tanuló) to death. The boy was transported to the hospital in critical condition. This was the last straw for those who for many years complained about the bad local transport between the railway station, the town and the ironworks; people demanded a quick solution to the problem.

That a local culture of traveling could not develop over the years was caused by measures which instead of treating the causes focused on the sympthoms only: rather than supplementing the number of buses operating at peak hours, the Town Council decided to build a set of railings around the bus stop in order to tame the assault caused during the arrival of passenger trains.430

429 “Ez kinek jó?” SZH, June 22, 1961. 430 “Súlyos szerencsétlenség az Újállomáson,” SZH, January 6, 1959.

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In spite of such uncultured forms of behaviour (or maybe to overcome them), decision makers were determined to transform Sztálinváros into a centre of (socialist) art. In early 1952, a

Fine Arts Club was founded.431 A few months later, one of the first groups of fine artists to visit the town—26 young painters, graphic artists and sculptors—arrived to Sztálinváros in order to explore “the unparalleled possibilities for artistic representation that existed [there].”432 The cultural homes, and later, the Béla Bartók House of Culture, would have their own circles for fine arts (képzőművészeti szakkör).433 In November 1955, to attract artists to settle and work in

Sztálinváros, the town transformed the ateliers of the Fine Arts Fund situated in Lajos Kossuth street into an artists’ colony (művésztelep) where, in addition to having access to proper studios, artists would be provided free meals and accommodation.434 By 1957, Sztálinváros produced its own artists and art works, which were proudly exhibited throughout the country, including at the yearly National Exhibition of Metallurgic Art in Ózd.435 Numerous works of art, especially statues and sculptures, were planted into public places across town to give emphasis to the artistic “orientation” of state socialism. József Somogyi’s “Metalurgist,” a statue that was awarded a gold medal at the 1958 Brussels World Fair, would become for several decades the symbol and trademark of Sztálinváros, and later, Dunaújváros.436

431 “Megalakult Sztálinváros Művészeti klubja,” SZVÉ, March 11, 1952. 432 “Képzőművészek Sztálinvárosban,” SZH, August 1,1952. 433 “Hírek,” SZV, April 8, 1955. 434 “Művésztelep létesül Sztálinvárosban, SZV, November 4, 1955.. 435 “Sztálinvárosi képzőművészek művei az ózdi kiállításon,” SZH, October 18, 1957. 436 “Újabb képzőművészeti alkotásokkal gazdagodik városunk,” SZH, March 22, 1960. Today, Dunaújváros is home to the largest number of sculptures displayed in public places, making the town an important centre of contemporary art in Hungary.

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Illustration 22. The Metallurgist (Martinász), by József Somogyi.437

At the end of the decade, cultural planners would be put to the test by a device that changed the future of humankind: if in September 1958 there were only 28 television sets in

Sztálinváros, their number would increase to 90 by mid-1959; less than two years later, by

March 1960, the number of TV sets registered in Sztálinváros exceeded 1000 sets.438 TV programs brought into the living room of workers caused the dwindling of attendance at cultural events in the town. In October 1961 alone, two theatre shows were cancelled in the last minute because too few tickets (about 30 for each show) were sold by the ticket office of the Béla

437 Source: Open Society Archives. 438 “Motorok és televíziók térhódítása,” SZH, May 29, 1959; “Az ezredik sztálinvárosi TV-előfizető,” SZH, March 10, 1961.

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Bartók House of Culture. The work of cultural agitators in the two barracks towns was, too,

“disappointing”: one ticket alone was sold in all the dormitories of town for the shows of “János

Vitéz” and “The Barber of Seville,” which were to be staged by the Kecskemét theatre. The conclusion of a commentator: “it is our conviction that the progamme politics [műsorpolitika] of the Kecskemét theatre is wrong.” People had a different taste in Sztálinváros; they wanted to watch different plays. But then, this commentator also admitted, that

[t]he Barber of Seville faced great competition. The previous day, the TV broadcast an exceptionally good performance of the National Theatre of Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara.” This alone was watched by at least 6 to 8000 people. At least as many people watched the movie shown [on TV] on Sunday, not to speak of the [soccer] game. The radio broadcast a valuable [sic] Liszt-concert, which was rebroadcast by numerous stations worldwide. Close to 4000 people watched the new Hungarian film, “Military Music,” during [that weekend]. And then it is impossible to estimate the number of those who spent the evening in the company of books.439

How accurate these calculations were, we will never know. But based on the rapid growth of

TV-set ownership in Sztálinváros (coupled with the fact that by 1958 almost all Sztálinváros households owned a radio set, and those which did not, had a “box” (doboz) connected by wire to a broadcasting station440), it is safe to argue that by the end of the Sztálinváros era, culture

439 “Néhány gondolat két elmaradt színházi előadás kapcsán,” SZH, October 27, 1961. 440 “Kevés kivétellel minden sztálinvárosi lakásban van rádió,” SZH, September 18, 1958.

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consumers of the first socialist town of Hungary relied on local cultural offers as much as they relied on the offer of the national radio and television broadcasting companies.441

Television and radio greatly enhanced the growth of a country-wide “socialist” culture in

Hungary and in East Germany. Both Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros were propelled into the consciousness of the population of the country as proper cities (rather than unfinished construction sites), while the inhabitants of the Stalin Town, too, gained access to the rest of their country through the ever more widespread radio and television sets. But whereas the

“normalisation” and integration of Sztálinváros into the Hungarian urban landscape was more or less successful, Stalinstadt remained at the edge of the cultural map of (East) Germany. The jamming of West German broadcasts, which could be watched and listened to everywhere else in the GDR, is but one of the causes; the geographic situation of Stalinstadt in the far east of the republic, the permanent competition with the Western sectors of the country, the high ratio of

Eastern refugees among the population of Stalinstadt or the heavy reliance on shipments of coal and iron ore from Poland and from the Soviet Union—these all seem to have caused a better embedding of the town into the internationalist-socialist cultural construction of the “people’s republics” or “people’s democracies,” rather than into a German, national cultural space; conversely, through its central situation in the country and especially, through the magnitude and local effects of the 1956 uprising (Sztálinváros workers took over the town and defended it until the collapse of the national revolt two weeks later), Sztálinváros was situated, at the end of the

1950s, much closer to the core of a national (and essentially anti-Soviet) culture. Size and timing

441 An official, local radio station was founded as early as November 1956. See: “Dunapentele Hangja,” DH, December 19, 1956. Sztálinváros/Dunapentele is also known, however, for having had a “revolutionary” radio station (Rákóczi Rádió) that was the last to be silenced after the crushing of the uprising in November 1956.

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played an important role in the development of culture in the two Stalin Towns, too. In the initial years, Stalinstadt planners focused on the development of the Kombinat while the settlement built in its vicinity, including its cultural facilities, was of secondary importance. In Sztálinváros, the “cultural life” of workers was taken seriously from the beginning: restaurants and numerous

“cultural homes,” a department store, and more importantly, a proper, “final” movie theatre already existed in Sztálinváros, when construction of the first housing units in the Wohnstadt had barely started. In 1953, when Stalin died and the development of the EKO was slowed down,

Stalinstadt had about 2400 inhabitants; at that same time, Sztálinváros was the home of at least

15.000 people. In February 1955, Stalinstadt had 14.000 inhabitants (of whom 11,000 still lived in barracks!); at this time, the Hungarian Stalin Town was inhabited by 30,000, that is, by more than twice as many people.442 In other words, Sztálinváros had more time to become a more or less urban settlement before its further development was halted; the development of Stalinstadt was curbed before it could even take off.

442 The exact number of the inhabitants of Sztálinváros was not publicly (or otherwise) known throughout the 1950s, as there was a high fluctuation of inhabitants (especially in the barracks settlements) caused by seasonal migration and, especially after 1953-54, by the policy-induced changes in the number of jobs available in the town. We know, however, that about 15.000 workers demanded—under signature—the naming of the new town after Stalin in November 1951; in August 1955, the town had, according to a news report, 30.000 inhabitants (the figure is likely exaggerated). See: “Egy elmaradt operaelőadás margójára,” SZV, August 12, 1955. The information on the 14.000 inhabitants of Stalinstadt in February 1955 is provided in: May, Stalinstadt 1955.

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Sports

The sportsman is the soldier of peace!443

Illustration 23. A game of basketball at the construction site of Sztálinváros (probably 1951).444

The sports life of Sztálinváros is as old as the town itself. Perceived as the least politics- laden leisure activity, sports were readily embraced by the worker-population of the “town,” both as players and as spectators. The first designated soccer field was “delivered to the workers” in the spring of 1951445; a bowling course and several volleyball courts followed.446 Less than a

443 “A sportoló – a béke katonája!” DVÉ, February 27, 1951. 444 Source: Open Society Archives. 445 Soccer was played on makeshift soccer fields around the construction site from the very first day. This was, however, the first soccer field that was designated as such. 446 “A sportélet kifejlődéséért,” DVÉ, February 27, 1951.

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year later, Sztálinváros had two sports clubs with a variety of teams, several of which were already members of the respective national leagues. By January 1952, the Vasas Sport Klub

(Metallurgist Sports Club) had soccer, handball, ping-pong, boxing, volleyball, chess and gymnastics teams. The Sztálin Vasmű Építők Sport Klub (the Stalin Ironworks Constructors’

Sports Club) listed fewer teams but the club was to grow further soon.447 As it was expected that a soccer team from the new socialist town play in the first national league, the Építők soccer team, which started out in the second league in January 1952, was, within a season, propelled into the first league. But the nationwide fame of the team did not last long: as the development of

Hungarian metallurgy was put on the back burner and the construction of the Iron Works was halted, in 1954 the soccer team of Sztálinváros fell out of the premier league.

Illustration 24. Soccer (football) was the most popular sports in Sztálinváros with both players and spectators (probably 1950 or 1951).448

447 “Vasas S.K. hírei,” SZVÉ, January 25, 1952. 448 Source: Open Society Archives.

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As the new town was worthy of more than just “traditional” sports, decision makers pushed for the establishment of sports clubs which would take local sports life to a—literally— higher level. On March 1st, 1952, a “Flying Association” (Repülő Szövetség) was set up, for which membership was recruited via the local newspaper.449 Five weeks later, on an April

Sunday, members of the association made their first parachute jump over a field found in the vicinity of the railway station. Parachuting, wrote the local newspaper, “a sport that in the past was reserved to the rich, has finally become available to the working class.”450 “Socialist” sports were thus portrayed as both means and outcomes of the egalitarian aspirations of people’s democracies. On May 1st, 1952, the handful practitioners of “flying” (piloting gliding aircraft, that is), which was presented as “the sport of the brave,” inaugurated their own airstrip near

Madocsa, about 20 kilometres south of the Iron Works; 30 enthusiastic youths were to attend and complete a two-months long piloting course before the end of the year.451

On a June Sunday of that same spring, the first motorbike- and motorboating-races were organized in the town.452 To the soccer field built a year earlier, a stand for 7000 spectators, a 40 metres long building with dressing rooms for six teams, central heating and hot showers was added.453 It all looked good for sports in Sztálinváros: trainers and professional sportsmen and sportswomen flocked to the town to help setting up further sports teams from swimming through wrestling to angling and bowling. But the drastic cuts in funding after June 1953 caused a quick

449 “Sporthírek,” SZVÉ, February 29, 1952. 450 “Sztálinvárosi fiatalok első ejtőernyőugrása,” SZVÉ, April 22, 1952. 451 “A madocsai réten…,” SZVÉ, May 6, 1952; “A fiatalok kedvelik a bátrak sportját,” SZVÉ, December 12, 1952. 452 “Vasárnapi sportműsor,” SZVÉ, June 17, 1952. 453 “Márciusban elkészül Sztálinváros ideiglenes sportklubja,” SZVÉ, November 18, 1952.

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reversal of the trend. Ironically, these were the months and years when Hungarian sports, and particularly, soccer, made it to the international stage with a shocking 6:3 win against England in

November 1953 and a second place in the FIFA World Cup (following a 3:2 defeat from West

Germany), the following year. The surprising German victory has since entered sports history as

The Miracle of Berne (Das Wunder von Bern).

A turn in the sports life of Sztálinváros occurred again after the crushing of the 1956 revolution, when an effort was made to better control the by now chaotic setup of sports in the town. In early February, 1957, all the sports clubs, circles and sections functioning in

Dunapentele—as Sztálinváros was named between November 1956 and April 1957—were merged to become the new Dunapentelei Sport Club (DSC).454 It is this sports club that, after a number of metamorphoses into Vasas (1957), then Kohász (1959), and finally, Dunaferr (1990), became the league-winning club of the 1990s in ice hockey, basketball, handball and water polo.

But back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the results of this club were rather modest; too many divisions and sections had to survive on too little money. Whenever there were more funds available for sports in the town, a variety of reasons, from soccer-centric funding to a quantitative, rather than qualitative, growth of other sports, caused the Club to lag behind in national competitions. The town decided to act: in 1961, a sports school was established to raise new generations of local professional sportsmen and sportswomen in athletics, handball, soccer and gymnastics. The decision was also made to thenceforth focus only on seven out of a total of sixteen sports genres practiced at the town’s sports club: ping-pong, wrestling, handball, soccer, boxing, volley ball and chess. The results were soon showing: the ping-pong and soccer teams

454 “Átszervezés előtt városunk sportélete,” DH, December 5, 1956. See also: “Megalakult a DSC,” DH, February 12, 1957.

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returned into the first league, while many other teams and individual sportsmen and sportswomen won occasional medals at national sports competitions. In 1976, gymnasts trained at the Dunaújváros sports school represented Hungary at the Montreal Summer Olympic Games.

It is on these foundations that the ever richer sports life of the 1970s and 1980s was built in

Dunaújváros. Sports like ice hockey (along with a modern, covered skating rink), kayak- canoeing, motorboating, diving and fencing were added to Dunaújváros’s sports portfolio during these years.

While the early history of sports life in Stalinstadt shows many similarities to the beginnings witnessed in Sztálinváros, a few years into the 1950s there is, already, a discrepancy: with the exception of bowling (Kegeln) and acrobatics (Akrobatik), Stalinstadt sports did not make the big leap to the national, premier league level during the decade.455 The first clubs founded in the Wohnstadt were set up, just like in Sztálinváros, by the (future) steelworkers

(BSG456 Stahl Fürstenberg Ost), and by the Bau Union’s construction workers (BSG Aufbau).

By far the most popular sports were throughout the decade, and indeed, beyond, soccer and handball. Gymnastics were, too, very popular, but towards the end of the decade we see a sharp decline of membership of the gymnastics club. Beside these, there were also teams in ping-pong, boxing, cycling, chess, basketball, bowling, and many more, as the number of sports facilities was constantly growing.457 In spring 1953, Neuer Tag announced that the following new facilities would be built “within weeks”: two tennis courts, one volleyball court, one basketball

455 Nicolaus, Einblicke,107. 456 “Betriebssportgemeinschaft” or Company Sports Association. 457 According to the Handbook of Statistics (Statistisches Taschenbuch) of Stalinstadt County, the following sports were present in Stalinstadt in 1960: soccer, bowling, light athletics, gymnastics, chess, ping-pong, canoe, volleyball, tourism [sic], tennis, rowing, cycling, judo, handball, ice hockey and boxing. Statistisches Taschenbuch. Kreis Stalinstadt (Photocopy). StA-Ehst.

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court and a boxing ring.458 A year later, after someone had the ingenious idea to flood the Square of German-Soviet Friendship to produce, to the great satisfaction of the workers, a skating rink

(Spritzeisbahn), the local leadership decided to do its utmost to avoid the repetition of the embarrassment and construct a “bigger, nicer, proper skating rink with music and with lighting and surrounded by a fence,” by the beginning of the next winter season.459 True to the promise, by the end of 1954, construction of an (open-air) “Eisstadion” was finished and, within weeks, new skating and ice hockey clubs were founded. For the fans of skiing, a ski slope in the nearby

Diehloer Berge, complete with a skilift, a jump and a toboggan run was built. The Stalinstadt

“wintersports centre” (Wintersportzentrum), as it was hailed in the press, herewith hosted the northernmost ski-slope of Germany.

Soccer remained thoughout the 1950s the favourite sports of Stalinstadt workers. More and more workers joined the soccer club, which by 1958 had 348 members. In 1961, membership had reached 400.460 During games played by Stahl Stalinstadt, the stands were full, while fans would accompany their team when they played elsewhere. Stahl Stalinstadt was well funded and attracted professional players from all around the country. In fact, it was upon Walter

Ulbricht’s personal request that Stahl hired ever more professional players from elsewhere in order to improve results and thus “demonstrate the new socialist character” of Stalinstadt sports.

But with the exception of two seasons (1954/55 and 1957), Stahl played in the third league throughout the decade.461 Unlike Vasas in Sztálinváros, it was to play only one season in the East

458 “Frohes Sportleben auf der Wohninsel,” NT, March 19, 1953. 459 “Leser erhalten Antwort: Die naechste Eisbahn mit Beleuchtung und Musik,” NT, March 3, 1954. See also: “Achtung, Wintersportler!” NT, November 26, 1954. 460 Statistisches Taschenbuch. Kreis Stalinstadt (Photocopy). StA-Ehst. 461 Nicolaus, Einblicke, 108.

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German Premier League (DDR Oberliga), and even that well after the Stalinstadt era, in 1969-

70. This eventual success of Stahl Eisenhüttenstadt seems to have disturbed someone high up in the leadership, however, as the team was promptly disqualified from the Oberliga on the charge that players were paid too high premiums and salaries, which was not in line with the principles of socialist sports and society. For the rest of the GDR era, the Stahl Stalinstadt soccer team was to play in the third and second league.

Back in the 1950s, sports—and, especially, soccer—played an important role in the establishment of ties between Stalinstadt and other East German towns, but also with places abroad. While the Stalinstadt team does not seem to have traveled abroad, foreign teams, especially from “people’s democracies,” did occasionally visit Stalinstadt. Western European teams came, too, to Stalinstadt: in June 1954, an unspecified “team of the French trade union” played “an international soccer game” against a team formed of “metallurgists from all over our

Republic” in Stalinstadt.462 In May 1955, just a few days after the signing of the Austrian State

Treaty, an Austrian team—the leader of the Styrian soccer league—played against Stahl

Stalinstadt, marking “the first ever visit of an Austrian soccer team to the GDR.”463 Two days later, Stahl Stalinstadt played an amateur team from Baden-Württemberg (West Germany), putting all that is known of the relations between the two Germanies at this time into an interesting perspective.464 But such “freedom” was soon forbidden in Stalinstadt: in 1957, “a member of the Fußballkollektiv” (soccer collective) of Stahl committed “Republikflucht”

(literally: flight [from the] republic), one of the most serious criminal offences under GDR law.

462 “Internationales Fußballspiel in Stalinstadt,” NT, June 13, 1954. 463 “Internationales Fussballspiel am Pfingstsonnabend,” NT, May 26, 1955. 464 “Sportprogramm am Wochenende,” NT, May 28, 1955.

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As a result, contacts with Western clubs were severed and an especially strong pressure was made on the sports clubs of Stalinstadt “to intensify the socialist education” of their athletes.465

Sports life was “politicized” in Stalinstadt from the very beginning. Rather than constituting an activity aimed at the training of the body and the mind, sports were regarded, in the tradition of the “Arbeitersportbewegung” (Workers’ Sports Movement) of the late 19th century, as a tool in the formation of a social and political community of workers. The concept of sports for the sake of health and well-being was decried by the political leadership as a reflex of the bourgeois reaction.466 Sports events were often coupled with state events and celebrations or statutory holidays. The vocabulary used to describe sports events and sports in general (including the names of sports teams and venues, mottoes or sporting products), was borrowed from the socialist discourses surrounding work, the state, the party, “internationalism”, but also the “class struggle” and even war. Elements of a national(ist) discourse were entirely missing. The same phenomenon could be witnessed in Sztálinváros, where certain sports genres were, as we have seen, “reserved for the rich” in the past (and were now no longer), or where, according to a news item from 1951, sportsmen were portrayed as “soldiers of peace.”467 But it seems that, overall, the “politization” of sports was more intense in Stalinstadt, than in Sztálinváros, likely because the premises for the intervention of politics were there long before the birth of the GDR. It was, after all, in Germany that the Arbeitersportbewegung of the Left was born in 1893 (it was dissolved by the National Socialists in 1933); soon after the National Socialists

465 “Aufbau West - Aufbau Ost. Die Planstädte Wolfsburg und Eisenhüttenstadt in der Nachkriegszeit,” exhibition, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, May 16 to August 12, 1997, accessed July 1, 2015, http://www.dhm.de/archiv/ausstellungen/aufbau_west_ost/asstlg10.htm,. 466 Ibid. 467 “Sztálinvárosi fiatalok első ejtőernyőugrása,” SZVÉ, April 22, 1952; “A sportoló – a béke katonája,” DVÉ, February 27, 1951.

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“synchronized”—I am using the term to mean Gleichschaltung—the sports life of Germany, the

Deutscher Reichsbund für Leibesübungen, the umbrella organisation of German sports clubs established in 1917, was transformed into a National-Socialist Reich Association for Sports

(Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen). Hans von Tschammer und Osten, the

Reichsportführer under Adolf Hitler, famously declared about these times: “Sports clubs are not meant to further the well-being of individual people; sports constitute an important part of the life of the people [Volksleben] and are a fundamental element of the national educational system.

The era of individualist sports is over.”468

If the Reichsbund was made a body directly subordinated to the NSDAP, sports in socialist East Germany in general, and in Stalinstadt in particular, were of prime concern to the political leadership. Sports were employed to foster peace and friendship among the

“progressive” countries and peoples of the world; just like in the Third Reich, sports were to foster comradery put in the service of political ideology. At the same time, sports were made part of the near-obsessive competition with West Germany, thus producing an even stronger political function of East German sports life. In comparisons with West Germany, East German sports were said to be more progressive (because they aimed to attain a common good, rather than individual achievement), more democratic (because they were accessible to all), meant for the masses (rather than for the few showing talent or exceptional performance), and so forth. The comparisons drawn between East and West Germany thus filled the East German sports movement with additional ideological content. In Sztálinváros, more down to earth factors seem

468 Dieter Steinhöfer, Hans von Tschammer und Osten. Reichssportführer im Dritten Reich (Berlin: Bartels & Wernitz, 1973), 23.

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to have played a role in the shaping of sports life. As we have seen earlier, the halt of further development of the ironworks after 1953-54 led to a sharp decline of sports in the Hungarian

Stalin Town. The “revival” late in the decade was, once again, due to financial, rather than ideological, causes. The initially strong support for motorized sports like motorboating, parachuting or piloting glider aircraft have no doubt carried a strong ideological message; socialist sports, which were organized under the umbrella of the Workers’ Party, were highly modern and progressive which, by implication, was to signal that the party itself was, too, modern and progressive. But the workers’s sports of Sztálinváros were gradually transformed into professional sports; the 1961 establishment of the sports school of Sztálinváros/Dunaújváros and the decision to focus on fewer sports in view of attaining better results clearly indicates a distancing from the workers’ sports tradition that was to live on in Stalinstadt, and later in

Eisenhüttenstadt.469

Just how many people, and especially, how many workers participated in the sports life of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros is hard to tell. Yet from the space accorded to sports events and news in the local press it seems that sports as a leisure activity figured high among the preferences of the population when it came to attending (as spectators) local sports events during

“free time.”470 At any rate, cheering for a local team did further the growth of some sort of local patriotism or a sense of community that could not be “produced” by cultural events like theatre

469 A relatively modest sports school was established in Eisenhüttenstadt, too: in 1965, biking was made its focus, while gymnastics and handball sections were added later. Numerous youths raised here would later represent the GDR in international competitions. See: Nicolaus, Einblicke, 107. 470 Attendance at Stahl soccer games played elsewhere peaked six years after the demise of Stalinstadt when, in 1967, over 3,000 Eisenhüttenstadt inhabitants traveled with 67 coaches to Magdeborg to attend a soccer game which would decide whether Stahl would join the premier league. To their greatest disappointent, Stahl lost 0:5. It was to take another two years until Stahl’s ephemeral access to the premier league. Idem, 108.

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or music performances, or cinema shows. As we shall see in the following section, this contrasted sharply with other, mostly individual(istic) outdoor forms of spending free time like

“small gardening”, individual hiking or traveling.

Escaping the Socialist City: “Small Gardening,” Hiking and Traveling

The design of the Stalin Town as an urban space and its settling with a population of largely rural origins caused conflict in the process of “inhabiting” free, non-built or non- appropriated spaces. In Stalinstadt, the tension manifested itself in the private appropriation of ever larger plots of land at the outskirts of town, partly for the purpose of small scale agricultural production, but also—and this was true especially of the settlers coming from urban areas—for hobby gardening or simply spending free time in the green in a “private” environment. That the tendency to thus privatize space intended for communal use stood in stark contrast with the ideological tenets on which the Stalin Town was built, was clear from the beginning. In an interview, Stadtarchitekt Herbert Härtel remembers:

As an architect, I often felt that what was asked of us made no sense. We were

supposed to build a city, with uniform buildings and living spaces, uniform schools and uniform kindergartens, just as they were being built at this time everywhere else in the republic. But what this led to was the emergence of the Kleingarten-movement. The greater the difference between the Kleingärten was, the better it was for the people, because they wanted to be different. When we noticed this—during our Sunday walks in the Diehloer Berge—, we realized that we must stop this. We did this for different reasons, however. The city administration saw this as a deviation from the initial plan and from Marxism; we, the planners, wanted to preserve the forests surrounding the city, and

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especially, the Diehloer Berge. It is a shame that today all of that area is built with homes and Kleingärten. They cut all the trees, they deforested the hills. It is, perhaps, to our credit that the top of the Diehloer Berge is not deforested yet, that it is still intact.471

The Kleingarten-movement was not a new phenomenon in Germany, and it was certainly not peculiar to the Eastern, socialist part of the country. Already at the end of the 19th century, the small garden plot was part of German (urban) life and culture.472 Moreover, after the Second

World War, small gardening in urban areas played an important role in the production of food for a population hit by famine and massive destruction. But whereas small gardens were tolerated elsewhere in the new German Democratic Republic (there was even a monthly journal dedicated to small-scale gardening under the telling title of “Der Kleingärtner”), the Wohnstadt emerging around the EKO, and later, the socialist town it was transformed into, was not designed to have small, “private” garden plots in or around it.

The gardens meant a place of escape from the dusty or muddy—depending on the season—, at any rate grey, Stalin Town. Stalinstadt was dusty. In 1953, two years after the start of construction, kindergartens organized bus trips just beyond the “city” limits to ensure that the children of the new town would spend at least a couple of hours per day in the fresh air.473 As the workers of the Wohnstadt did not enjoy such luxuries, they acted on their own. Initially, the act

471 Herbert Härtel, interview by the author, February 9, 2006. 472 Small gardens at the outskirts of urban areas became known under the name of “Schrebergarten”, after doctor and pedagogist Daniel Gottlob Schreber (1808-1861). Schreber did not “invent” the small garden, however; the first “Schrebergarten” was named in honour of (the already diseased) Schreber by a school principal from Leipzig in 1864. Ever since, Schrebergärten and Schrebervereine (Schreber associations) are important “features” of German urban life. 473 “Man versinkt im Staub!” NT, May 28, 1953. See also: “Hinaus ins Grüne mit den kleinen Bürgern unserer Stadt.” NT, August 28, 1953.

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of encircling small plots of land around the construction site was silently tolerated. But within a few years, the phenomenon grew out of proportion: dozens, if not hundreds of such small plots were detached from state-owned land, and what was even more disturbing, more and more sheds and small huts were built on these plots, often using construction material misappropriated from the workplace. Instead of participating at events organized for them in the town, workers spent the weekends, and perhaps even some of their work time, in their small garden. Garden “owners” developed contacts among each other which were outside the reach of the state, in places which eluded any kind of state control.

As a reaction to the spread of small gardens around the socialist town, in June 1954, Der

Kleingärtner published an article explaining why small garden plots were “not necessary,” and hence, following the logic of the time, prohibited in Stalinstadt. The new town was allegedly all green (!); light and fresh air ensured the health and the wellbeing of its inhabitants. Conversely, the Kleingarten was a product of capitalism; it was “a relief valve for the workers, the unemployed and the homeless living under insupportable hygienic, economic and social conditions.” Rather than tolerating the spread of the Kleingarten-phenomenon in the new socialist town, the architects of the Institute of Town Construction of the Bauakademie, who authored the article, recommended that the inhabitants of Stalinstadt satisfy their admittedly justified and even “traditional” gardening impulses within a modern “gardening combine”

(Gartenbaukombinat), which would provide the town with all the various kinds of produce, and

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in which workers could practice their gardening hobby “at a higher social level.” But Stalinstadt inhabitants were not interested and the idea was soon dropped.474

The spread of the small gardening plots could not be stopped. In December, 1955, Neuer

Tag published an announcement of the Town Council warning that it was illegal to fence off land, whether built or not, without the permission of the Council, and that it was illegal to build gazebos and barns (Ställe)—the latter used for the raising of small animals—in the Diehloer

Berge; such actions were punished with fines of up to 500 Marks. But there were also signs of impending defeat in that announcement: owners [sic!] of such gardens and buildings were ordered to report at the Town Council no later than January 15, 1956, in order to obtain a

(retroactive) permit for their gardens and for the constructions found in them.475 Unsurprisingly, the small gardening movement, which was rapidly developing throughout the republic, grew further in Stalinstadt. In 1958, the party-state officially conceded defeat; small garden plots were thenceforth “drawn into the socialist (re)construction work (sozialistischer Aufbau) of the party state;”476 Der Kleingärtner, a magazine that was under direct SED-control, and the various official “competitions” organized among small garden plots, were thenceforth used to provide

“guidance” and direction to the movement. Competitions were organized among small gardens for titles like “the most beautiful small garden,” while tips and advice by agriculture experts were given to gardening enthusiasts on the use of gardening tools and techniques or pesticides. Once regarded a reactionary phenomenon, the Kleingarten was now integrated into socialist life and

474 Der Kleingärtner, 6/1954, p. 14-17. Quoted in: Isolde Dietrich, Hammer, Zirkel, Gartenzaun: die Politik der SED gegenüber den Kleingärtnern (Berlin: E. Dietrich, 2003), 112-113. 475 “Oeffentliche Bekanntmachung,” NT, December 9, 1955. 476 Dietrich, Hammer, Zirkel, Gartenzaun, 131.

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ideology. Still committed to the preservation of the natural landscape around Stalinstadt, Herbert

Härtel remembers his efforts to do something about the matter with resignation:

We, planners and city administrators, began to raise our voices against the Kleingärten. I issued an order for the whole damage [done by the small gardeners] to be evaluated, and also to see what can be done to fix the damage. The rumor spread quickly. Of course, I also warned people personally and told them not to continue building their bungalows because it was illegal, and hence, they would be removed. Then, one day I was summoned to the county party secretary. The director of the EKO was there, too. And then they say: you are sabotaging the iron production of the EKO! What?! I couldn’t believe my ears. Well, workers complained, you know. I barely managed to escape a party punishment.477

Not only did the Council not remove bungalows and confiscate small gardens; it was soon to designate land for private gardening. In 1959, the Central Committee of the SED (!) established the “Zentralverband der Kleingärtner, Siedler und Kleintierzüchter” (Central Association of

Small Gardeners, Settlers and Breeders of Small Animals) for the over 850,000 GDR-citizens who by this time engaged in such activities as a hobby. The Association would have a local branch in Stalinstadt, and later in Eisenhüttenstadt, as well. With that, spending leisure time in the green on a “private” (rented from the state, that is) property, was finally possible legally for the inhabitants of the first socialist town of the GDR.478 But there were some strings attached, too: thenceforth, small gardening was put under the supervision of the Association and it was not

477 Härtel, interview, February 9, 2006. 478 Dietrich, Hammer, Zirkel, Gartenzaun, 140.

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long before the Stasi had its own Mitarbeiters (collaborators) rent such gardens and spy on fellow small gardeners in their neighbourhood.

Some spontaneous small gardening existed in Sztálinváros as well; it was especially the inhabitants of the barracks who appropriated small plots around their communal homes to grow potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, beans or peas.479 However, as there was no such tradition of urban small gardening, the phenomenon was less widespread. The fact that the village of Dunapentele was, from the beginning (1951), incorporated into Sztálinváros may have caused a lesser

“pressure” on inhabitants to appropriate land for themselves in the new parts of town; there was a peasant market in Old Town (in former Dunapentele, that is), and many inhabitants of New

Town visited the Old Town regularly, either to attend to some official business (in the initial years, many companies involved in the construction of the town had their offices in

Dunapentele), or to attend mass. Also, the proximity of Budapest and more generally, the central location of Sztálinváros on the map of the country (if compared to a peripheral Stalinstadt which was at a greater distance from Berlin and from other towns of the GDR), rendered travels to the families and farms back at home easier and shorter. At any rate, small gardening did exist in the barracks settlements of Sztálinváros and in the vicinity of the green belt separating the future town from the ironworks, but also widespread was the raising of small animals, especially chicken and pigs, around the workers’ living quarters.

By 1958, the Radar barracks settlement, which was inhabited mostly by construction workers and their families, was in very poor condition. Broken windows and missing doors,

479 István Hetényi, “Tibor bácsi szürke kabátja,” Árgus 5 (2001), accessed October 6, 2003, http://www.argus.hu/2001_05/m_hetenyi.html.

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which “went up in smoke” during the winter, rendered the barracks uninhabitable; construction materials and waste lay around everywhere. Weeds covered the sidewalks. Sándor Horváth describes the desolate sight as follows:

This unsual still life was highlighted by the many black and grey pigs, which made themselves at home. In packs or by themselves, they roamed the streets of the Radar [barracks town], where they had plenty to rummage for. On April 15, 1957480, the Council made an attempt to definitively put an end to the “pig-eldorado,” but with little success. Down by the Danube, pigsties lined the river, while some people owned entire pig herds. An article published about that time noted: “Beside the production of iron, our town should be famous for its pig farming. Visitors of our town would then note that Nagytétény is a drugstore in comparison with Sztálinváros.”481

That the barracks towns were more rural in character than the town’s planners envisioned did not surprise anyone; but many were shocked to witness how, during the winter, some inhabitants thought it was alright if they smoked ham in the bathrooms of their new apartments.482

Since Sztálinváros was not surrounded by hills and forests like Stalinstadt, efforts were made to channel the green “instincts” of Sztálinváros workers towards the planting of flowers and trees in and around the town. As early as 1951, thousands of saplings were allegedly planted in the framework of “social work” to form the planned green belt between the town and the ironworks. By February 1952, however, many saplings were stolen or simply trampled on by the

480 The year (1957) provided by Horváth is wrong. The decision of the Executive Committee was publised on April 22, 1958. The decison was thus most likely made on April 15, 1958, not 1957. 481 Horváth, A kapu és a határ, 46. Nagytétény was a village in the South of Budapest. It was incorporated into the Hungarian capital in 1949. 482 “Micsoda dolog ez?” SZH, April 22, 1958.

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workers who took shortcuts on their way to work.483 Perhaps to instil greater love for trees among workers, in March, 1952, the brand new movie theatre programmed several screenings of

“Michurin, the wizard of gardens,” a film on the Soviet biologist and pomologist whose controversial theories on natural selection entered botanical history as “Michurinism.”484

Whether the screening proved useful or not, we don’t know, but in the following years several large-scale campaigns for the planting of trees and flowers were organized in the town with the massive participation of the population.485 In April, 1954, the local newspaper reported—most likely exaggerating the figure—about the one millionth sapling being planted in and around

Sztálinváros.486 A few months later, the “arrival” of a shipment of flower-boxes was announced to the readership, which was called to thus beautify the balconies of their apartment blocks, many of which had still no plastering on their walls.487 Sztálinváros was to become “a city of flowers”; in the spring of 1960 alone, the planting of four hundred thousand (!) flowers was planned by the local administration.488 The participation at such social work campaigns was rewarded with social work stamps which, once they filled the “Social Work Book” of a worker, entitled their holders to small premiums like pins or other symbolic rewards. More importantly, however, the number of hours and days worked in the service of the community were taken into consideration when it was to “earn” or “obtain” a family holiday by lake Balaton paid for by the trade union.

483 “Ne rongáljuk a város és a gyár közötti erdősávot,” SZVÉ, February 1, 1952. 484 Original title of the film: Michurin (Мичурин, 1948). 485 “Nagyarányú parkosítási munkák Sztálinvárosban,” SZVÉ, November 20, 1953. “Becsüljük meg a virágos Sztálinvárost!” SZVÉ, April 6, 1954. “Minden sztálinvárosi lakos fogjon össze,” SZVÉ, April 13, 1954. 486 “Tervszerűen folyik Sztálinváros erdősítése,” SZVÉ, April 16, 1954. 487 “Hírek a város életéből,” SZVÉ, June 18, 1954. 488 “300 ezer virágpalánta és 100 ezer árvácska díszíti rövidesen városunk parkjait,” SZH, February 29, 1960.

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Unlike Stalinstadt, where there were weekly outings to nearby lakes, to Neuzelle or to the

Diehloer Berge, the immediate surroundings of Sztálinváros were not suited for shorter trips or excursions; Sztálinváros was built into flat land which was, for centuries, used for agricultural production. The few places with touristic potential nearby were the small islands and forests by the river, north of the town. Szalki Island (Szalki-sziget), which was closest to Sztálinváros, and which was also home to the industrial port of the new town, was transformed by the mid-1950s into an “Island of the Youth” that was the home of a pioneer camp for 500 children (the camp was later expanded).489 As early as May, 1952, also in the vicinity of New Town but south of it, an amusement park was opened which was to develop, until the end of the decade, into a “culture park” (kultúrpark) hosting yet another pioneer camp, an open air cinema with 1000 seats and a several kilometres long “Pioneer’s train” track, in addition to the numerous amusement park facilities inherited from the amusement park of the capital. For those who wanted to spend the weekend—initially, only Sundays were free!—out of town but closer to nature, the best bet were the boat services started in May 1951 to Mohács and back (ironworks employees got 50% off the regular return ticket price).490 If they could afford it, Sztálinváros inhabitants also had the choice to visit Dunaföldvár, Kecskemét, Székesfehérvár or Budapest (by train or by bus), or, if they wanted to take a quick dip in Lake Balaton, to Siófok, on the southern shore of the “Hungarian

Sea.” At the beginning of the 1960s, the Sztálinváros branch of the Red Meteor Association of

489 “500 pajtás boldog napja: Megnyílt a Szalki-szigeti úttörőtábor,” SZV, July 5, 1955. 490 “Külön hajójárat létesül a Dunai Vasmű és Mohács között,” DVÉ, May 8, 1951.

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the Friends of Nature organized monthly short trips to places as remote as the cave of Aggtelek, in the northeastern corner of the country.491

Lake Balaton was by far the most popular destination of those who left the town for a longer (summer) holiday. Since Construction Trust No. 26 owned a holiday home in

Balatonlelle, a sojourn by Lake Balaton became accessible for more and more construction workers.492 By the end of the 1950s, the Town Council built its own holiday home for 200 persons near Siófok, also on the south coast.493 During the summer months, the national tourism board (IBUSZ) chartered special trains for the workers of Sztálinváros traveling to the Balaton resorts found between Siófok and Balatonlelle.494 The spa-town of Hajdúszoboszló in the East of the country or the forests around Sopron by the Austrian border were, too, popular holiday destinations of Sztálinváros workers;495 hundreds of children of ironworks employees were sent by their parents to summer camps in Miskolcpuszta and Balassagyarmat, and, the luckier ones, to

Gyenesdiás and Balatonszéplak (by Lake Balaton).496 Such sojourns would usually cost a trifle: in 1955, a two week long holiday of an ironworks employee cost as little as 112 Forints; the remaining 490 forints (or, more than 80 percent of the total cost), were paid for by the state.497

Travels abroad were rare in the beginning, but not impossible: in 1953, two stakhanovist workers from Sztálinváros were awarded a two-weeks long holiday (by plane!) to the Bulgarian Black

Sea town of... Stalin, the former town of Varna. Later, traveling abroad, mostly to neighboring,

491 “A Vörös Meteor Természetbarát Egyesület sztálinvárosi osztályának novemberi és decemberi túraterve,” SZH, October 27, 1961. 492 “Balatonlellén üdültem,” SZVÉ, July 24, 1953. “Balatonlellén, a 26-os Tröszt üdülőjében,” SZVÉ, May 21, 1954. 493 “Hol nyaralnak a sztálinvárosi dolgozók?” SZH, June 27, 1958. 494 “IBUSZ különvonat,” SZVÉ, July 13, 1954. 495 “Hol nyaralnak a sztálinvárosi dolgozók?” SZH, June 27, 1958. 496 Ibid. See also: “A Vasmű ötszáz gyermeket üdültet idén,” SZH, June 3, 1960. 497 “Beszélő számok: Üdülés, egészségvédelem, kultúra a Sztálin Vasműben,” SZV, Sptember 16, 1955.

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“friendly” (baráti) countries, became a lot easier; by the early1960s, workers simply “signed up” for a two week long cycling tour of the GDR.498

The tourism choices available to the EKO-workers of Stalinstadt were comparable to the ones described above. Boat tours on the Oder-Spree Canal to the nearby Pohlitz lakes or as far as

Müllrose were organized as early as 1953. The participants to such trips were usually a merry gathering of workers who did not mind if their steamboat broke down and took hours to fix, as long as the “Musikkapelle” that accompanied them played the right songs and the girls were willing to dance. The more courageous men would take a dip in the Canal or in one of the nearby lakes, as they were waiting for the mechanic to sound the horn and hoist anchor.499 Workers intent on spending their free time more actively went on excursions to the Diehloer Berge, to

Neuzelle or as far the Schlaubetal. The worker groups of 50 or even 100 people thus wandering through the quiet forests sang workers’ songs and folk songs to the accompaniment of (at least) an accordion.500 Bus trips to Berlin were very popular as many Stalinstädters liked shopping in the capital, and especially, in West Berlin. In winter, especially chartered coaches ensured that visits to the Berlin Christmas Fair would be accessible also to the workers with lower incomes.501

Just as in Hungary, the most popular holiday destinations were those found by the water, and especially, by the Ostsee (Baltic Sea). From Usedom in the East through the Island of Rügen

498 “A Vörös Meteor Természetbarát Egyesület sztálinvárosi osztályának novemberi és decemberi túraterve,” SZH, October 27, 1961. 499 “Mit dem Dampfer in den Sonntag,” NT, July 10, 1953. 500 “Mit gesang in die Diehloer Berge,” NT, April 16, 1953. 501 In 1954, a return ticket to the Berlin Christmas fair cost 12 DM for adults and 6 DM for children. Buses would leave Stalinstadt at 8 AM and return from Alexanderplatz in Berlin at 7 PM. This time frame allowed, of course, for much more than a visit to the Christmas Fair. “Mit dem Bus zum Weihnachtsmarkt,” NT, December 1, 1954.

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in the North to Wismar in the West, the EKO, the Bau Union and the FDGB502 owned or rented each year hundreds, later thousands of beds in hotels, former villas transformed into

Ferienhäuser (summer houses) and bungalows, for their workers. As early as 1951, EKO- workers were sent to the holiday home of the Staatliche Oderschifffahrts AG at Wirchensee; one year later, the “Kurhaus Wirchensee” was taken over by the EKO as a “weekend home”

(Wochenendheim) for its intelligentsia. It would take another five years until the EKO would manage to get hold of a holiday home of its own for its workers: in 1957, following considerable refurbishing, “Haus Goor” in Lauterbach—the former “Badehaus” of the Earl of Putbus—was taken over by the EKO. Here, a 12-day sojourn cost merely 75 (!) Marks. In the early 1960s, the

EKO would acquire yet another holiday home in Müllrose, in the immediate vicinity of

Eisenhüttenstadt.503

To popularize mass-tourism, the Heimatzeitung published regular reports and “letters” written by content workers after their return from their “herrlich” (magnificent, exquisite) holidays.504 Children were, too, sent to summer camps; those children whose parents did not manage to secure a spot for them in the more popular camps like Bad Saarow, Finkenkrug-

Falkensee and Lauterbach on Rügen Island, could spend their holidays in the camp by Lake

Müllrose, or, if they were good students and committed pioneers, in the “Pionierrepublik”

(Pioneers’ Republic) by Lake Werbellin, about an hour’s drive north of Berlin.505

502 Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (Free Federation of German Trade Unions). 503 Nicolaus, Einblicke, 108. 504 “‘So ein Urlaub ist einfach herrlich,’Arbeiter aus Stalinstadt schreiben aus FDGB-Heimen.” NT, August 1, 1953. 505 Nicolaus, Einblicke, 108.

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While travels to Western countries were impossible, visits to socialist countries on organized tours were increasingly frequent. As Poland and the “Friedensgrenze” (Peace Border) were so close to Stalinstadt, trips, including for children, were organized to Poland. In the summer of 1953, six pioneers from Stalinstadt spent their holiday “in a magnificent palace that was owned by an earl before and which was given as a present to the pioneers by Comrade

Bierut506” (another lucky pioneer visited Hungary and, of all places, Sztálinváros, later that year507). Trips to Czechoslovakia were, just like to Poland, relatively easily “obtained” on account of the closeness of these countries. By the end of the decade, deserving Stalinstadt workers would also spend organized group holidays in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.

From the above, a number of conclusions can be drawn. Stalin Town inhabitants spent a considerable share of their “free time” outside the boundaries, real or conceptual, of their town, and that for good reasons. In the first years, there was little to do during “free time” on the construction site; families left behind in the country were a good reason to leave the place during weekends, while the scarcity of food prompted many to leave the town to stock up on foodstuff elsewhere. Rudimentary laundry services and few or missing showers at the construction site, too, forced workers to return to their old homes during the weekend. Over the years, as conditions improved, the Stalin Town became more livable and its inhabitants more settled. And yet, many chose to spend their free time out of town simply because they could increasingly afford to do so: the introduction of free Saturdays doubled the length of the weekend, thus

506 Bolesław Bierut (1892-1956), communist politician, Polish President (1947-1952) and Prime Minister (1952- 1954), as well as Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party (1948-1956). 507 “Fünf herrliche Wochen in der Volksrepublik Polen,” NT, October 4, 1953. See also: “Mein schönstes Erlebnis des vergangenen Jahres: Ich war in Ungarn,” NT, January 3, 1954.

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making a visit out of town worthwile; after the regionwide policy changes of 1953-54, workers had more income at their disposal as the price of consumer goods, but also that of transportation and accommodation in holiday “resorts,” was reduced by the government. More importantly, however, the implication of the party-state and especially the trade unions in the organization of free time spent out of town transformed the concept of holiday: if, in the beginning, the inhabitants of Stalin Town could rarely afford to venture, in their free time, beyond the surroundings of the construction site, within a decade it became the norm to “obtain” heavily subsidized holiday vouchers to Lake Balaton or to the Baltic Sea, and increasingly often, although relatively rarely still, to other socialist countries of the region. As tourism was becoming an industry of its own, the concept of free time began to resemble, even if only barely, capitalist “Freizeit”; holiday packages had become products from among which one could pick the one suiting their needs or their budget.

In East Germany, a “bourgeois” feature of urban life of the interwar period returned into the life of the workers and of the intelligentsia in the form of the small garden plot at the outskirts of town that was, under pressure from below, rehabilitated and soon adopted by the party-state as an achievement of socialism. At the same time, the Kleingarten re-established a

“private” space that was missing in urban East Germany since the Second World War. Although it did not constitute private property—plots were merely rented from the state—, the small garden was increasingly perceived as such by its user. By tolerating it, and later, by embracing it, the state conceded a defeat, however small, in its effort to construct and enforce a socialist sphere of leisure. The next chapter is devoted to other private spaces that existed or emerged in the

Stalin Town of the 1950s; while our focus will be the home, the chapter on privacy in the Stalin

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Town will in a number of ways constitute a continuation of the discussion of the sphere of leisure in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros.

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Chapter Five

Privacy in the Stalin Town: The Home

The ultimate private space an urban dweller could dream of in socialist Eastern Europe was the apartment. Living apart meant living in a space that eluded the sniffling of neighbours or the control of the party-state. The experience was only accentuated by the generalized overcrowding that shaped everyday life in the city after the Second World War. The phenomenon differed from town to town: Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros were new settlements where the number of inhabitants grew faster than the amount of available housing; in already existing cities, overcrowding was due to a mix of causes ranging from the destruction of war through the (forced) migration of ethnic, social or professional groups to changes in the economic profile of the settlement. Regardless of these variations, the lack of appropriate housing was a common problem throughout the region, which in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros was to last well into the post-Stalin Town-era.

The communal apartment or the “kommunalka”508 had been a functioning institution in the Soviet Union with its own rules, hierarchies and links to the state, the party and the secret police, when, along with the political and economic system of the Soviet Union, it was introduced to Eastern Europe.509 The sharing of living space was, first and foremost, a necessity; practical reasons behind it outweighed ideological considerations. In existing towns, apartments

508 From the Russian “kommunal’naja kvartira” (коммунальная квартира). 509 For a review of the private-public nexus in the context of the Soviet communal apartment see: Gerasimova, “Public Privacy,” 207-230.

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were swiftly transformed into communal apartments as many home-owners were already dispossessed or deported as an outcome of war and post-war retribution. These communal homes were typically shared by several parties using the same kitchen, bathroom and toilet facilities. In

Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros, however, the long transition of the 1950s towards single-family apartments began with the rapid erection of barracks consisting of units divided by sexes, profession and/or status. A variety of such barracks was built in the first half of the decade, ranging from the communal dormitory for 24 men or women to barracks with a number of double bedrooms, shared bathrooms and kitchens, and from the non-insulated wooden bungalows used by seasonal construction workers to the brick buildings which could be heated, though only barely, in winter. Over time, as more and more housing units were built, the communal living space of the barracks was transferred to the apartment block. Thus, while communal housing was no longer visible in the urban landscape, the phenomenon persisted behind the façades of the new apartment buildings. The situation was to last until well into the

1960s, when enough apartments were built and thus separate units could be assigned to individual families.

The impact of communal living on the lives and on the sense of privacy of inhabitants was varied. While the newly dispossessed, who had to give up some of their living space to accommodate others, reacted with hostility to the idea of a shared private space and thus to the sharing of their privacy, some of those who moved into such an apartment in the new towns may have regarded the situation as a transition towards a private, that is, an own apartment. For those settlers who arrived from the countryside, the shared apartment could, paradoxically, mean a step away from a community-driven rural life governed by strict rules and traditions towards a

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relatively anonymous and “free” urban lifestyle. “Stadtluft macht frei,”510 ran the slogan in medieval Germany; the dictum had, paradoxically, retained some of its validity in post-war

Eastern Europe, although state control was usually much tighter in urban areas than in the countryside.

The shared living space, including the shared sleeping quarters, was perceived as anything but a home. Nor was it meant to be one; homeliness and personal comfort were considered, especially during the years of postwar reconstruction, features of a bourgeois individualism which was opposed to socialist ideology. The only acceptable privacy was communal, and thus, in a sense, public. Shared use of otherwise personal spaces was an eternal source of tension; communal cooking was as likely a source of conflict as was cleanliness or the lack of it. Tension rather than harmony, conflict rather than comfort—at any rate: much negotiation characterized and shaped everyday life in the communal apartment, in the barracks and in the large worker dormitories. That the latter were named “homes”—“Heim” in German or

“otthon” in Hungarian—didn’t help much; home was where workers returned to at the end of a week of work, in the countryside or in other towns of the country. Privacy was thus a weekend privilege for most, and, above all, it was elsewhere.

Single-family homes and apartments, which became increasingly available in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros during the second half of the 1950s, were no zones of comfort either. In the two new Stalin Towns, apartments were built in a haste using low-quality construction materials

510 “City air makes you free [after a year and a day]” is a German saying; it points to the medieval principle that serfs who have escaped their owner to live in a city for more than a year were considered free. To this day the saying is used to contrast the rural world with its rigid communities and traditions with the liberalism reigning in the cities.

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that caused molding or crumbling, or the apartment blocks simply remained unfinished. Walls were thin, ceilings were low, bugs, mice and rats infested entire neighborhoods; carelessness was at least as common as was the care for these “achievements of socialism.” Once apartments were declared ready for move-in, the lack of furniture, deficient heating systems, dripping ceilings or missing bathroom fixtures, door handles and light bulbs caused the most private of spaces like the bedroom or the bathroom feel uncomfortable. The prescription of low-wattage light bulbs in homes or in stairwells was by no means experienced as adding to the residents’ sense of comfort or coziness; to the contrary, they added to a general sense of unease, and even fear, of citizens.

Nosy neighbors, and especially, the head of the committee of residents511 who was, typically, an informant of the police, transformed the home into a potential danger zone. Distrust among neighbours and the resulting few or no friendships at all were symptoms, as well as causes, of the atomization of society.

“Real” private spaces like the bedroom or the bathroom, the living room or a family’s kitchen formed just one aspect of the private sphere that was affected by the onset of socialism.

The practice of private life in conceptual space, including the care for one’s own health or the formulation of one’s identity, was, too, subject to party-state intervention. Care for the citizen was understood and applied by the state as a partial takeover of the private sphere; realms like identity were sometimes confiscated as new identities were cast upon citizens to satisfy the prescriptions of socialist ideology. A hybrid, public privacy was thus born, which was to persist, at varying degrees, until 1989.

511 “Hausversammlung” in German, “lakógyűlés” in Hungarian.

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Shortages of various kinds only accentuated the transition towards such a public privacy.

The absence of textiles to produce curtains, shortages in clothing or even underwear led to nearly uniform, “real” features of privacy. Missing personal health and hygiene items including condoms or contraceptive pills, but also soap, toilet paper and cosmetics, shaped the invisible private sphere, while at the same time creating semi-private, semi-public spheres like the black market. Declining income during the first half of the 1950s did not allow citizens, and especially the worst-paid layer of workers, to invest into their private sphere, or to even develop one.

Privacy and private spaces had to be fought for and their maintenance required considerable effort, if not else, then because of the need to keep certain private realms of life secret. This effort to keep part of the private sphere private or even secret was often considerable. The maintenance of intimate relations for inhabitants of communal apartments or barracks cost all those concerned, including the roommates who had to spend a few hours elsewhere, thorough logistical planning. Tuning in to foreign radio stations, the access to information that is, was rarely possible without other persons present. The threat of denunciation or prosecution for the slightest deviation from written and unwritten codes of conduct rendered the enjoyment of privacy difficult, if not impossible. Rather than being a zone of comfort, private space was a privilege, and all too often, a rather uncomfortable one; resignation and despair shaped private life as much as daily struggle. Some of the social effects, from the flight into the green to the silent (or, not so silent) descent into alcoholism, have been discussed in previous sections. This chapter is devoted to the more immediate causes and effects of this new, hybrid—public, private and secret—privacy on the inhabitants of Stalin Town.

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“One Is Watching the Other”: Public and Secret Privacy in Stalinstadt

I can’t write too much about these things in my letters. Recently it has happened that letters were published in the newspapers along with the names and addresses [of the senders]. One is watching the other.512

The communal apartment was a standard phenomenon in Stalinstadt. Especially in the first years, the Kombinat, the Bau Union and a handful other state companies which were assigned housing units in the new settlement accommodated their workers in shared apartments.

Apartments were usually shared by workers of the same gender but exceptions to the rule, along with their implications, complicated the picture. The story related in June 1953 by an unhappy

Lotte Tunger of Block 28 A is telling:

There is no doubt that Stalinstadt is becoming bigger and more beautiful, day by day. The authorities in charge of assigning apartments should not, however, turn a blind eye on the shortcomings within the apartments. Here is an example: in apartment block 28 A, stairwell III, four colleagues are accommodated in the tiniest of apartments. There are three beds in the room, and one bed is pitched in the kitchen. One of the colleagues is married. Her two children, too, sleep in the apartment. Her husband, who sleeps in the barracks town, does, of course, spend his free time with his family. Although the Zutz family has applied for an [own] apartment many months ago, the situation has not changed. Conditions in the apartment have become untenable for both the Zutz family and the other [female] colleagues; the [female] colleagues are now seriously considering resigning from their workplace if [the situation] is not to change soon.513

512 Report, BV-Frankfurt (Oder) Abteilung - M – An die Leitung der Bezirksverwaltung, Oberstleutnant Neiber, Betr. Stimmungen der Bevölkerung der DDR und WB u. WD zu den Massnahmen der Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik bezüglich der Westberlin-Frage, August 25, 1961, 384. BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O). 513 “Wie lange noch?” NT, June 5, 1953.

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The thousands of singles settling down in Stalinstadt raised a serious logistical problem.

Assigning apartments with two or more rooms to individual workers was a rather costly matter.

On the other hand, it was hoped that most workers will stay in Stalinstadt and bring over their families (those who had one), or, if they were unmarried, start a family with a partner from

Stalinstadt. But the transition from a mostly single population to a population of families was a problem. Where could visiting family, including children, meet with the husband while in

Stalinstadt? Where could visiting spouses spend a few hours with the spouse living there, undisturbed by roommates or neighbors? Where should single men and women be accommodated once their roommates started a family and thus someone, either the new family or the single roommate(s), had to move out of the shared apartment? Quick, cheap, viable solutions were urgently needed. In the spring of 1953, the first barracks with 20 bedrooms for married couples was inaugurated in the Helmut Just Lager (Helmut Just Camp514), and more such facilities were to follow. A small number of further bedrooms have also become available, where workers could, if they signed up in time, spend a night or even a few hours with their visiting spouses.515 Permanent homes for singles were planned, too, even though it took a while for them to materialize. At the end of 1954 it was announced that a dormitory for 200 unmarried men accommodated in single and shared bedrooms was to be built in 1955, in Wohnkomplex III.516 It is indicative of the priorities of the time that months after the planned inauguration, the

Heimatzeitung could not but report on yet another deferral of the plan, for the following year.

This time, to quell the possible protests about yet another delay, the news was spiced up with

514 Helmut Just (1933-1952), member of the Volkspolizei, shot dead by unknown persons in East Berlin on December 30, 1952. 515 “Hilfe für unsere Werktätigen Ehepaare,” NT, April 22, 1953. 516 “So wird’s im Ledigenheim sein,” NT, December 3, 1954.

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details which resonated with the public: the facility would be the “most beautiful” such dormitory of the GDR; rooms would have carpets, couches and even a radio. The 170 (instead of

200, as initially planned) single men and women would get free bed linen, the club rooms on each floor would be equipped with TV-sets and there would be books available from the dormitory’s own library. Central heating and a small “hobby room” in the basement were to further raise the standard of living in the facility.517

The building was eventually finished in 1956, but that did not solve the problem.

Overcrowding remained an issue in Stalinstadt as an increasing number of settlers working in other branches of the economy, from education and culture through health to commerce, moved to the town. Many of them were members of the intelligentsia and were thus assigned separate housing of usually better quality. In the barracks town, so-called “Intelligenzbaracken” were built, while for the more influential members of the intelligentsia, 30 detached, wooden, single- family homes were built in the Diehloer Höhe.518 There were also barracks reserved for persons falling into a category between industrial workers and the intelligentsia. Such was, for instance, the barracks for single, female HO sales personnel.

Privacy in these temporary housing units was limited. Regular evening controls, room and bed-searches hindered the barracks-population in enjoying some degree of privacy.519

Moreover, the permanent chattering and murmur that could be heard through the thin walls was surpassed only by the radio, which was on during the better part of the day, and sometimes even

517 “Schönstes Ledigenwohnheim der DDR,” NT, October 9, 1955. 518 Nicolaus, Einblicke, 86-87. 519 “So geht es nicht, Lagerleitung!” NT, August 15, 1954.

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at night.520 The “Betriebsfunk” and national (GDR) radio were not the only stations the inhabitants of Stalinstadt tuned in to, however; RIAS,521 the radio broadcast of the American sector in Berlin, was very popular as well, even though it was listened to strictly in private, that is, in secret, as privacy of this sort was strictly forbidden. The “Wohnlagerordnung” (rules of conduct) of the Insel and Helmut Just barracks towns was explicit: “in view of the communal nature of these accommodation facilities the listening to West German and other imperialist propaganda stations is, in accordance with the Law on the Protection of Freedom [sic!], prohibited.”522 The implication that tuning in to these radio stations in private (not shared, that is) apartments was allowed, is misleading: every attempt was made to render the reception of

Western radio stations impossible. Broadcasts were jammed, a mandatory registration of radio sets was introduced,523 while listeners of the RIAS or of other West German stations were denounced or “unmasked” in public as spies or traitors. Most listeners of the American broadcast were newly arrived settlers, which suggests that the prohibition was less strictly observed in other parts of the GDR.524 It is indicative of the dimension of the problem in Stalinstadt that half a decade after the founding of the town there were still citizens who had to be warned against the

“dangers” of listening to enemy radio stations:

520 There were speakers installed in the barracks towns as early as 1953. See: “…und hier die Antwort,” NT, August 23, 1953. Speakers seem to have been installed also in homes as early as 1953. See: “Ich werde jeden Tag am Lautsprecher sitzen,” NT, August 2, 1953. By 1954, private ownership of radio-sets was apparently widespread. According to Neuer Tag, “in our Stalin Town almost everyone owns a radio.” See: “Für’s Radio, für die Reiningung und für…” NT, January 22, 1954. 521 Abbreviated from “Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor.” 522 “Wir hören keine Hetzsender!” NT, June 11, 1953. 523 “Schwarzhörer,” NT, August 10, 1954. To be sure, the main purpose was not the collection of the newly introduced 2 DM tax per radio set, even though this amounted to a significant sum republic-wide. The goal was the identification of short-wave radios and thus the identification of those who owned radios capable of receiving foreign radio broadcasts. The use of unregistered radios, regardless of the station tuned in to, was thenceforth illegal. 524 “Wir hören keine Hetzsender!” NT, June 11, 1953.

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Although our press has been reporting on the dangerous role played by the RIAS as an [imperialist] agent headquarters, there are still people who are willing to lend their ears to this propaganda station. One of them is Kollege Hennig of the Aufbau-Union. When he was asked why he was listening to the RIAS, he said: “When I listen to the RIAS, I know what lies they tell us here, and when I listen to our radio stations I get a picture of what is being lied about over there.” We want to make clear a fundamental point to Kollege Hennig and to all other RIAS-listeners: our democratic broadcasting [stations], as well as our democratic [printed] press, do not lie. Their basic principle is truthfulness and partisanship; they openly side with the workers’ class. […] Many young, gullible people fell for the RIAS’s line and ended up in court or in prison, because the people [at RIAS] do not have in mind the cultural interests of the German population; they are vile warmongers. This is what we want to tell our Kollege Hennig and to all others: we want to warn them to draw a lesson from the agent-trial of the past few weeks. Every peace- loving person must fight to stop this station from spattering around its poison.525

To the frustration of the party and the state, acoustic poisoning of this sort reached Stalinstadt not only from without, but also from within. Complaints, like the one voiced by Frau Johanna

Brummer of Block 29, testify to the fact that old habits have not been unlearnt, not even in

Stalinstadt. Frau Brummer’s main concern was the volume of the gramophone played by a neighbor in Block 30A, but the fact that he was listening to songs of the Hitler-era including

“Erika,” the march-song of the SS, or worse yet, the irredentist “Schlesierland,” was of great concern to the authorities.526

525 “Kollege Hennig, RIAS abschalten!” NT, July 1, 1955. 526 “Musik wird störend oft empfunden,” NT, June 4, 1953.

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Not only contact over the airwaves to West Germany was banned from the public sphere and thus relegated to a strictly private, or secret, sphere of citizens; real life contacts with

Westerners, including visits through the still open border to West-Berlin, were a thorn in the eye of the Democratic Republic and therefore had to be done in secret. Travelers to West-Berlin were publicly condemned and often humiliated, regardless of whether they crossed the intra-German border for shopping, visiting relatives or for any other reason. Those returning from West-Berlin had their luggage searched at Fürstenberg railway station and the names of persons carrying food items or clothing bought in the West were published in the newspapers along with some harsh criticism and condemnation of their unpatriotic deed. Since the luggage-searches were obviously illegal, and since the much-hated Volkspolizei was already overwhelmed by its task to maintain order around the Kombinat, authorities could not but have “outraged civilians” do the searches.

When a handful of travelers complained to the police, an intensive campaign was started to justify the “spontaneous action of scandalized workers.” Carriers of “Amipakete” (packages containing western items) were humiliated as “beggars”527 as a new crime was introduced into public consciousness, but also into the criminal code: the spending of East German Marks in the shops of the enemy.528

527 “Pfui über die Bettler! Was ein parteiloser Kollege den Westberlinfahrern unter anderem zu sagen hat,” NT, August 7, 1953. See also: “Ich weiß, wohin ich gehöre,” NT, August 25, 1953. See also: “…und dann ehrlos zu einem Agenten werden? - Nein! Was anständige Menschen denen zu sagen haben, die nach amerikanischen Bettelpaketen greifen. NT, August 4, 1953. 528 The truth was that many workers were scandalized indeed, but not necessarily by their colleagues’ travels to West Berlin, but rather because they themselves did not have the means to get there. Stories about spies and enemies of the people who spent East German money in Western shops were therefore meant to turn the tide of anger away from the state and towards the “West-Berlin-goers” (“Westberlinfahrer”), who were thus made responsible for the shortages crippling the country.

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Too many personal care items were missing from the shops in Stalinstadt. In the first years, in the absence of specialized shops for cosmetics or medicine, the shortage in personal products was overcome on the blooming black market. Citizens relied on a wide network of private contacts extending into the remotest corners of the republic (and beyond) in order to have access to missing items like contraceptives, stockings, underwear or even toilet paper. While the managers of the few general stores in Stalinstadt did their utmost to meet their clients’ needs, stories like the one of a woman who has been to four shops in Stalinstadt only to find out that brassières were available in size 5 only (“perhaps the [Town] Council will one day think of us, slimmer women, too!”), suggest that these efforts were often useless.529 More successful was the purchase of clothing from West Berlin or via classified advertisements in the newspaper. Tiny— about 2x3 cm—, regularly published adverts for condoms and contraceptive pills indicate that the state was well aware of the shortcomings in the distribution of personal products in

Stalinstadt.530

Illustration 25. Advertisements for contraceptives in the Stalinstadt Heimatzeitung.531

529 “Der Trägerlose. Eine Kritik – nur von Frauen und verständnisvollen Männern zu lesen,” NT, August 8, 1953. 530 “Schutzmittel für kluge Frauen und vorsichtige Männer,” advertisement, NT, March 22, 1953. 531 Ibid.

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Condoms “for smart women and cautious men” discreetly delivered to the customer by mail from 1953 onwards were necessary indeed in Stalinstadt. In a new settlement with a high ratio of singles among the population, the spread of venereal disease was rampant. Although this is denied by all the persons I interviewed in Eisenhüttenstadt, it seems that there was quite a number of prostitutes working in both Fürstenberg and in Stalinstadt. Whether they worked with the blessing of the Volkspolizei is difficult to tell; we know, however, that they were locked up in hospital for a few months of “Zwangsausheilung” (forced healing), whenever the number of venereal infections exceeded levels tolerated by the authorities. Clients of prostitutes were rarely prosecuted; while prostitutes could be dispensed with easily, the replacement of male employees whose training may take weeks or months was not an option. When a female prostitute caused too much trouble, she was promptly sent to jail for a year or more, depending on the “social damage” caused by her. Such was the case of a 23 years old woman from Fürstenberg whose story, spiced up with all the details one did not need to know, was reported about in the

Heimatzeitung under the telling title of “The Poisonous Snake.”532

Prostitution or other crimes under the penal code provided the context in which abortion figured in public discourse. While under the 1950 Law on the Protection of the Mother and

Children and on the Rights of Woman533 abortions were ruled illegal unless justified on medical grounds, the rate of illegal abortions was probably above the national average in and around

Stalinstadt, especially considering the social setup—particularly age and marital status—of the

532 “Die Giftschlange,” NT, March 26, 1954. 533 In the original: “Gesetz über den Mutter- und Kinderschutz und die Rechte der Frau.”

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population. Nonetheless, unlike in Sztálinváros (see below), information on illegal abortions performed in Stalinstadt was entirely missing from public discourse. There are only singular indications of the existence of the phenomenon, like the case of a woman sentenced to six months and a half in prison by the Stalinstadt County Court for having had an illegal abortion.534

The woman, already a mother of two, deserved her harsh sentence by also committing another crime: she bought a pair of shoes worth 150 DM and toiletries valuing 50 DM in West Berlin.

One offense was thus not sufficient for a conviction; but the combination of several “antisocial” crimes ensured a relatively long sidelining of such unwanted social elements.535

As the pioneer years ended and stabilization set in in Stalinstadt, the private sphere gained new meanings. The new focus on raising the living standard of workers and the allocation of means to support this policy led to a change in the lives of citizens. More and more barracks were pulled down as a growing number of new apartments was allocated to single families. A new sense of privacy developed within the four walls of the home, a privacy which was now beyond the reach of the state. Therefore, new measures of control like the ever stricter censorship of correspondence were introduced to maintain some insight into the private lives of citizens.

Over time, the apparatus employed to gain access to the private sphere underwent important changes; techniques became subtler and the information gathered was analyzed in departments of the Stasi especially set up for this purpose at local, regional and central levels.

“Stimmungsberichte” or reports on the mood of the population based on information collected from informants, tapped telephone conversations, postal correspondence and the like, were

534 It is not known whether the abortion was performed in Stalinstadt or elsewhere. 535 “Wußte Frau E. nicht, was sie tat?” NT, April 28, 1955.

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drafted and sent to Berlin from all the corners of the republic, including, of course, the first socialist town of the country.

While the amount of private correspondence sieved through by the Stasi on ordinary days was relatively high, on special occasions like during the days and weeks of the construction of the Berlin Wall, the number of private letters opened and read by the secret police was staggering. On August 17, 1961, four days after construction of the wall began in Berlin, 679 letters were censored between 8 am and 8 pm by the Frankfurt (Oder) regional Stasi-offices. The result: “27 comments [on the Berlin situation] by the population of the GDR were identified, of which 0 were positive, and 27 were negative.”536 A certain “K”537 from Stalinstadt wrote to “R” living in Berlin-Wilmersdorf:

[…] unfortunately, I have to tell you that due to the closing down of West Berlin nothing will come of my visit. You yourselves will most likely be aware of this. […] It is sad that we are now separated by barbed wire [so that they can] quell the mass exodus from the GDR. Hilde had asked me a long time ago to bring back some oranges and bananas for the little ones; now this won’t be possible for a long while to come. Who knows what awaits us in the future. […] All important buildings are guarded by the VP538 and by the Kampfgruppen,539 there’s high alert everywhere, but you [in West Berlin] won’t hear or see any of this. […] I am so sad, oh what sad times with no future!540

536 The relatively low number of such comments—27 out of 679 letters, which amounts to less than 4%—may be an indication of significant self-censorship, especially considering the significance of the event (the closing down of West Berlin) and the outspoken views found in the letters which did contain such ‘negative’ statements. 537 Full names are blacked out in the copies I received from the BStU. 538 Abbreviated from “Volkspolizei.” 539 From the German “Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse” (KdA), or Combat Groups of the Working Class. A paramilitary organization founded shortly after the June 1953 uprising, put under direct control of the Central Committee of the SED. The Kampfgruppen played a major role in the construction of the Berlin Wall and in the maintaining of public order during those weeks. 540 Report, “BV-Frankfurt (Oder) Abteilung - M – An die Leitung der Bezirksverwaltung, Oberstleutnant Neiber, Betr. Stimmungen der Bevölkerung der DDR und WB u. WD zu den Massnahmen der Regierung der Deutschen

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Another citizen of Stalinstadt identified as “M” wrote to Gütersloh in Westphalia:

I don’t believe that the border will ever be opened again. Barbed wire and concrete walls through Berlin—this cannot be but a long-term thing. I was so alarmed when I saw the Kampfgruppen in Stalinstadt! On Saturday night I was still in Berlin and then, over night, they shut down everything, no one had an idea. Now everyone is talking about our currency. If we lose our money as well then it is all over for us. My husband has so much work and so many meetings these days that he barely spends time at home. We are as droopy as the weather. Having a peaceful family life is no longer possible here. […] Boys between 18 and 23 years old must enlist now. It is best for those who have no children.541

Yet another private letter from a certain R. Lorenz542 in Fürstenberg to a contact in Berlin-

Reinickendorf (West) reveals the desperation of GDR-citizens at the closing down of the border to West Berlin:

Warm greetings from here, from the first socialist town!? Today is the 21st and we have actually planned to sleep at your place tonight. Luckily, our supreme boss has saved us from those NATO-mercenaries, human traffickers and headhunters. Heil Ulbricht! It’s

Demokratischen Republik bezüglich der Westberlin-Frage,” August 20, 1961, 274, BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O). 541 Report, “BV-Frankfurt (Oder) Abteilung - M – An die Leitung der Bezirksverwaltung, Oberstleutnant Neiber, Betr. Stimmungen der Bevölkerung der DDR und WB u. WD zu den Massnahmen der Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik bezüglich der Westberlin-Frage,” August 25, 1961, 332, BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O). 542 The name and address was not blacked out in the photocopies received at BStU. The likely reason: the author of the letter admits that both signature and sender’s address indicated on the envelope are fake.

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been a week now since we try to figure out [what’s going on]; even among the first-class socialists [there is unease]. We are queuing up for vegetables, waiting for the potato call543 and are sick of our margarine. With sullenness though, but we must conform. Your [West] Berlin gave us peace, hope and above all a sense of security. But now? Ulbricht, we follow you! […] And yet, here is the worst: our dependence on a complete cretin and his equally [cretin] functionaries. For over a week now we are tuning in to [stations] from the SFB544 to the RIAS and back. […] One cannot eat as much as one would want to throw up! The line is not my own, it’s from Max Libermann. It should be painted on every wall. But nothing is happening. We have become KZ545-inmates, one could say. […] The open mendacity of these thugs makes Goebbels look like a choirboy. […] I will not sign my letter and I will also fake the sender. After all, you know who is sending his greetings to you. […] Your uncle.546

That people were aware of their correspondence being censored is plainly revealed in this last letter, which was sent from Stalinstadt to Bielefeld in West Germany:

We’ve given up hope of visiting you in the foreseeable future. It was difficult for me to accept this. I can’t write too much about these things in my letters. Recently it has happened that letters were published in the newspapers along with the names and addresses [of the senders]. One is watching the other. At public buildings they posted armed guards. People started to hoard things lately. They buy everything, jewelry, bed linen, flour, sugar, salt—anything that has value. I saw one old woman buy six silver

543 In the German original text: “Kartoffelaufruf.” I could not locate any reference to what this was. It likely meant the call to participate at a potato(-harvesting) campaign. 544 Sender Freies Berlin or Radio Free Berlin, the radio station broadcasting from West Berlin starting June 1st, 1954. After German reunification it was integrated into “Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg” (Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcast). 545 Abbreviated from “Konzentrationslager” (concentration camp). 546 Report, “BV-Frankfurt (Oder) Abteilung - M – An die Leitung der Bezirksverwaltung, Oberstleutnant Neiber, Betr. Stimmungen der Bevölkerung der DDR und WB u. WD zu den Massnahmen der Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik bezüglich der Westberlin-Frage,” august 25, 1961, BStU, Aussenstelle Frankfurt (O), 330-332.

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spoons. All those who have cash [buy things]. […] In the shops we must queue up for fruits and vegetables. Under half an hour you won’t get anything. When they sell bananas we must wait an hour [and] those who don’t queue up won’t get anything.547

From this sample of letters a number of conclusions can be drawn. By the end of the

Stalin Town-period—the town was to be turned into Eisenhüttenstadt only a few weeks after these letters were intercepted by the Stasi—, the first socialist town of the GDR was seemingly well connected to the rest of Germany, including the country’s Western sectors; at least some citizens of Stalinstadt were well-informed of events within Eastern Germany and beyond. Their privacy, although blatantly violated day by day, was defended with resolution in the face of an ever-growing apparatus sniffling about their lives. Listening to Western radio stations in secret or not signing postal letters have become as natural strategies of the quotidian as was waiting in a queue or marching along at a party rally. Moreover, it seems that by 1961, inhabitants of

Stalinstadt have come to terms with the fact that the GDR was there to stay; that a reunification of Germany or the unification of the Berlin sectors had become unthinkable; and finally, that finding a modus vivendi with the GDR was not only useful, but that without it life had become impossible. By the end of the 1950s, inhabitants of the first socialist town of the GDR mastered doublespeak as well as those who addressed them in that language; they understood the reality that surrounded them in spite of their strictly limited access to information.

The private sphere of the Stalinstadt inhabitant was split between a realm that was

“socialized” (the public privacy referred to earlier), and another that was kept secret at a

547 Ibid, 384.

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considerable cost and risk. Private home space as we know it today, did not exist in

Stalinstadt.548 Additionally, the degree of both the socialization and “secretization” of one’s private sphere largely depended on the social layer one belonged to: workers, both blue collar and white collar, and even the intelligentsia living in the barracks towns, had access to much less physical and conceptual private space than those living in a “private” apartment; they thus enjoyed much “less” privacy than others. Conversely, families living in an apartment of their own enjoyed additional intimacy and stronger private relationships, which were entirely missing in the barracks and in the lives of the singles and separately-living spouses, who made up the bulk of the population of Stalinstadt. As we shall see in the next section, differences in the available amount of home space caused similar effects in Sztálinváros; in spite of the egalitarianism proclaimed by socialist ideology, equal access to private space, both real and conceptual, was an illusion in the socialist town.

548 The party-state had a monopoly over the means to intervene into this space without the consent of the individual, for instance through the banning of private ownership over living space in Stalinstadt; through various other housing polices and housing decisions; the “duties” imposed on inhabitants of these spaces (i.e. regarding the accommodation of guests, registration, etc); the providing—as sole producer—of construction materials, furniture or textiles, which largely determined how the exterior and interior of homes looked like, and so forth.

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“Interwoven Individual and Public Life” in Sztálinváros

There is no other settlement in the country where individual and public life are as interwoven as they are in Sztálinváros549

Differentiated living conditions characterized the first socialist town of Hungary from the outset. Life in the new, permanent constructions contrasted sharply with conditions reigning in the temporary shelters built in districts further away from the core. While the new town accomodated various offices, the families of the intelligentsia and those of the foremen and skilled workers of the ironworks, the lower classes of workers, and especially, construction workers lived in the Radar and Déli barracks towns and in the transitional (in terms of conditions) Technikum neighborhood.550 Old Town, as the village of Dunapentele was named throughout the 1950s, did not change much during the decade; it maintained its rural character and thus contrasted sharply, at least in official discourse, with New Town.

In the beginning, New Town was centered along May 1st street. This was the first paved street of the “town” and this is also where, in the summer of 1951, the Béke (Peace) restaurant was opened. As the other end of the street was home to the Kossuth restaurant, conflicts between residents and restaurant patrons were daily occurences. According to one account, it was common that patrons would quarrel, sing or yell obscenities until as late as 3 a.m., disturbing the sleep of “respectable workers, tired after a hard days’ work.”551 But this was to change soon; by

549 In the original: “Nincs még egy települése az országnak, ahol az egyéni- és a közélet olyan szorosan összefonódnék, mint Sztálinvárosban.” See: “Sztálinváros és a ‘Sztálinváros,’” SZV, April 12, 1955. 550 The “Technikum” was to become later the “Ságvári” district of town. 551 “Éjjel a Május 1 utcában,” DVÉ, August 4, 1953. Quoted in Horváth, A kapu és a határ, 37.

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the middle of the decade, “elements” unworthy of living here were resettled elsewhere, while with the opening of other pubs and restaurants, the Béke and the Kossuth attracted less and less patrons from outside the “downtown” area (belváros). Over the years, the cleansed downtown became known as the “Switzerland” (Svájc552) of Sztálinváros; in this better part of town, apartments were fitted with tiled bathrooms, parquet flooring and district heating, while inhabitants were mostly white-collar employees of the Iron Works who lived an urban life with immediate access to shops, schools and cultural institutions, governmental offices and medical facilities. Living conditions were not only best in the downtown area; it was, as early as 1952,

“chic” (sikk) to live here.553

If the housing blocks of New Town were built following elaborate plans, the barracks districts grew in a rather uncontrolled manner. The Radar barracks town was the first such temporary colony in Sztálinváros.554 The walls of the Radar barracks were made of bricks, and so were their floors. Each building had several larger dormitories and rudimentary bathroom facilities. The rooms accommodated “six to eight, sometimes sixteen to eighteen” workers, who slept on bunks.555 A few chairs, a table and a number of closets completed the furnishing. As more and more workers arrived to Sztálinváros with their families, it was not long before the barracks town showed signs of overcrowding. By 1953, 3300 persons lived in the Radar barracks under the most difficult conditions, partly with no access to water and with no sewage system.556

Public safety was so bad that inhabitants did not dare opening the windows as burglaries were

552 Ibid., 35. 553 Ibid., 36. 554 It was named so because it was constructed on the grounds of a former military observation facility. Ibid., 44. 555 Miklós Miskolczi, Az első évtized. Dunapentelétől – Dunaújvárosig, (Dunaújváros: Dunaújvárosi Tanács, 1975), 70. Quoted in Horváth, A kapu és a határ, 44. 556 Ibid., 45.

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common occurence. The situation was considered so hopeless that rather than urging authorities to do something about the matter, workers requested the mounting of bars on at least one window of each room, so they could at least air their overcrowded dormitories. Workers also complained about boredom during the evenings; apart from hanging out in the only pub around, there was no way of “spending time” (időtöltés) in the barracks. Also, to the great disappointment of many, radio boxes (doboz) broke down regularly.557

In 1953, the situation was to change. Under the new Government Programme a massive overhaul of the insanitary barracks was started, only a couple of years after their construction, in the course of which the large barracks rooms were split up into smaller rooms to accommodate single families. Floors were covered with more friendly bitumen, windows and doors were fixed and missing window glass was replaced. But the improvement of the Radar barracks attracted even more workers and families and soon the colony became overcrowded again. By 1958, the buildings were run down again and, as we have seen earlier, pigs roaming the camp in search of something edible became a habitual part of the landscape. A year earlier, the sanitary situation was so bad that the medical officer of Sztálinváros threatened to evacuate the barracks town if no measures were taken.558 So measures were eventully taken, but by this time little could be done to restore order; the Radar barracks camp resembled a chaotic rural colony, rather than a district of a socialist settlement, with pigsties lining the alleys, inhabitants slaughtering small animals in front of their barracks and smoking ham in the barracks bathrooms. In November 1958, the

Executive Committee of the Town Council ruled that no more barracks should be built in the

557 “Egy-két szemelvény a radari szálláshelyekről,” SZVÉ, April 24, 1953. 558 “Egészségügyi riadó a Radarban,” SZH, June 14, 1957.

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Radar district, and that existing ones were to be gradually demolished. Families were to be resettled in proper apartments and new workers’ residences were to be built for single workers. It took several more years until the Radar barracks camp was liquidated.

Illustration 26. Sleeping quarters of construction workers in Sztálinváros (date unknown).559

The situation was not much different in the other barracks camp. The Déli barakktábor

(Southern Barracks Camp) was situated south of the Vasmű and accommodated, just like the

Radar camp, mainly construction workers. From the beginning, the sanitary situation was bad.

Mud, dirt, flies, dirty floors and windows characterized the barracks. Control raids were frequent,

559 Source: Intercisa Múzeum.

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reports of which were often published in the newspaper. The place was so crammed that some inhabitants had to make the common bathroom their bedroom.560 Six to eight workers shared one wash-bowl, there were no chairs or benches in the barracks, the roofs were leaking and there was garbage lying around everywhere. At night, “Egyptian darkness” reigned throughout the camp.561

By August 1953, 3500 persons lived here, including hundreds of families.562 Just like in the

Radar camp, the barracks were refurbished in 1953-54 and the large rooms were divided up to host single families or up to twelve workers.563 But within a few years, the barracks became unlivable again. The thin walls were wet and moldy and the roofs were leaking again.564 When, in late 1958, the decision was made to close down the camp, 4000 persons including 600 families and 800 children lived in this part of Sztálinváros.565

Even though the barracks were built as temporary shelters with a planned lifespan of five years, they were called “home” by thousands for over a decade. Life in the barracks naturally left its imprint on people. On the one hand, barracks inhabitants adopted a barracks-identity, which was only reinforced by the townspeople of Sztálinváros, who looked down upon barracks people

(barakklakók) and their peculiar, countrylike behaviour. On the other hand, barracks inhabitants left their own imprint on New Town by mostly slowing down the development of an urban citizenry; when the barracks towns were liquidated in the early 1960s, their inhabitants were

560 “Tegyék otthonossá a Betonútépítő Vállalat szálláshelyét,” SZVÉ, September 23,1952. 561 “Ezt láttuk…” SZVÉ, June 12, 1953. 562 “A fedetlen aknákról,” SZVÉ, July 31, 1953. Sándor Horváth writes of 3500 workers in early 1956. See: Horváth, A kapu és a határ, 49. 563 Ibid, 48. 564 “A barakktábor hangulata,” DH, December 15, 1956. 565 “A barakktábor helyzetéről tárgyalt a Tanács Végrehajtó Bizottsága,” SZH, November 4, 1958.

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resettled in new apartments and workers’ residences closer to the core of the town, where they continued living their habitual barracks-life in spite of the new setting.

Starting in 1954 the Town Council allowed, and even encouraged, the construction of private, single family homes.566 By September 1954, sixteen families were allotted plots of land for construction, and fifty more were waiting for approval.567 If these houses were to be built in the old parts of town (in the former village of Dunapentele, that is), towards the end of the decade we see a sharp rise in the number of single-family homes built in Újtelep (literally: New

Colony), a new district of Sztálinváros. In October 1958, 300 (!) plots of land were allotted to prospective homeowners, in addition to the already existing 150 plots, on which private houses were already being constructed.568 In its desperation to liquidate the embarrassing barracks towns, and faced with an ever longer list of applicants for a new apartment, the Council decided that only applicants earning low wages (especially unskilled and skilled workers), be allocated apartments in New Town; those with earnings of 1200 Forints and above were thenceforth removed from waiting lists and encouraged, if not forced, to build their own single-family home in Újtelep. This was a major retreat from the socialist town project; conceding defeat in its handling of a waiting list of 3,500 entries, the Council could not but proclaim in April 1959: “Let

566 Throughout the 1950s, the bulk of the construction of new, single-family houses was done privately in Hungary. In the “first socialist town” of the country, however, the number of single-family houses was to be limited. While the construction of single family houses was envisaged by the plans as early as 1952, their construction has not begun until the summer of 1954. According to the 1952 plan, a total of 375 families were to be allowed to live in such homes, 125 of which were to be built for “especially successful” workers. “Előterjesztés Sztálinváros városrendezési tervének jóváhagyása tárgyában,” quoted in Sándor Horváth, “Sztálinvárosi felhőkarcolók,” Archivnet 4, No. 2. (2002), Accessed on August 3, http://www.archivnet.hu/gazdasag/sztalinvarosi_felhokarcolok.html. 567 “Tizenhat családiház építésére adott engedélyt a tanács,” SZVÉ, September 7, 1954. 568 “300 újabb házhely a családi ház építőknek,” SZH, October 7, 1958. The move followed a nationwide trend in the construction of new housing: that same year, 72.1 percent of dwellings were built by private persons, not the state, mainly in the form of single-family houses. See: Virág Molnár, Building the State. Architecture, Politics and State Formation in Postwar Central Europe (New York: Routledge, 2013).

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our town be the ‘town of single family homes!’”569 So great was the demand for new private homes that typified floorplans were thenceforth sold at the post office at 40 Forints each. For those wanting to build custom planned houses, the authorities drew up a list of licensed architects prospective builders could freely choose from.570

For workers who could neither afford to build a private home, nor qualify for an apartment of their own, the Town Council re-instituted, starting in 1957, the “társbérlet,” that is, the communal apartment. The measure had to be taken, so went the argument, because many apartments were inhabited by single persons while there were hundreds of families on the waiting lists with no roof above their heads; apartments in the new town were allegedly allocated to, or forcefully occupied by, various persons during the 1956 revolution, people who now lived on their own or without children “in the best apartments of town.” Also, it was argued that many apartments and rooms were subletted, a practice that eluded the control of the state and which was, therefore, ruled illegal. It is more likely, however, that a number of apartments had indeed become empty or were not used at their capacity due to the high number of inhabitants leaving the town or the country during “the events” of October-November 1956. On March 7th, 1957, a decree was adopted ruling that “each family consisting of no more than two persons [was] entitled to one room. If the family consist[ed] of more than two persons, the odd-numbered person [was], too, entitled to a room. Those who work[ed] in an intellectual profession may, in justified cases, be allotted an extra room.” Later that year the Town Council set out to implement the decree. On October 15, 1957, the Council ruled that those who lived in “large” apartments

569 “Legyen a városunk a ‘családi házak városa!’” SZH, April 28, 1959. 570 “Kikkel tervezhetők családi házak?” SZH, April 1, 1959.

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without children could, starting October 20th, choose co-tenants for themselves. If they failed to do so by January 1st, 1958, the Council would pick the co-tenants to move into such “large” apartments. The Council was careful to put the responsibility on the new tenants: rather than establishing a general rule that was to apply to all, it ruled that those wishing to be settled in an apartment had to first search for, and find, such apartments inhabited “unjustly” by single tenants. Once such an apartment was identified, they were to notify the Council, which in turn

“reviewed” the situation, and if the request was “justified,” allocated living space in that tenement to the applicant. Naturally, the measure sowed suspicion and conflict among inhabitants.571

Distrust and conflict were corollaries of everyday life in Sztálinváros. Just like in

Stalinstadt, informants of the Hungarian State Protection Agency (Államvédelmi Hivatal, or

ÁVH) spied and reported on workers and on officials wherever they suspected potentally subversive activity. The agency had a network of informants comparable to the Stasi in East

Germany, with the distinction that the Hungarian network was considerably smaller and that it, unlike the Stasi, was much downsized after 1953 to be dissolved in 1956. This did not mean that the spying and reporting had stopped, however; the secret police was merely absorbed into the

Ministry of the Interior, where it continued to function as a unit of the Ministry until the end of state socialism in 1989.

Intervention into the homes and private lives of citizens occurred, from as early as 1952, by the help of “room trustees” (szobabizalmi)—persons in charge of “giving advice” to

571 “A lakáshiány enyhítésére társbérletet létesít a tanács,” SZH, October 15, 1957. See also: “Hová és mikor lehet társbérlőt beutalni?” SZH, November 1, 1957.

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roommates, but also of unmasking the enemy of the people among them.572 Their election was mandatory and those elected were obliged to accept the appointment. Room trustees were to be

“the best among us,” preferably literate and committed to the ideals of socialism. They represented the dormitory room towards the outside world, and it was through them that the message of the party was brought to the inhabitants of a barracks or communal dormitory. From a report published in May 1952, we learn just how important their service to their community was:

[During our visit to room trustee János Borbíró,] the radio is on in the room, it is covered with a small lace-cover, on top of which there is a fancy vase. The room is a shining example of cleanliness. On the walls we see slogans shaped of red letters, and portrays. Opposite to the entrance, a picture of comrade Rákosi is looking down towards the room’s inhabitants […]. Comrade Borbíró has found the way into our hearts [one worker says,] because he is helping us with everything, he almost guesses our thoughts and is our leader in everything […]. Twelve persons live in this beautiful home and out of this room no one has ever missed a minute of work. […] We circulate Azhaev’s “Far from Moscow” among us. We have taken comrade Batmanov’s words to heart: “The dormitory should be as clean as a hospital, in winter as warm as a bathroom, and as comfortable as a girl’s room.” […] Azhaev, Ehrenburg and Boris Polevoy—they have taught us to be for the community, not only for ourselves. […] This is what I am reading, Chinese novels. There is no greater joy than entertaining oneself with reading after work, in our pretty room. At around 10 p.m., the book falls out of my hands and I am falling asleep by the music of the radio.573

572 “Válasszuk a szoba legjobbját szobabizalminak,” SZVÉ, February 29, 1952. 573 “Szállásból – otthon. Látogatás a Mélyépítők 81-es barakkjában, Borbíró János szállásbizalminál,” SZVÉ, May 9, 1952.

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Just how many barracks inhabitants went to bed in “pretty rooms” after reading Far from

Moscow, we don’t know. What we know, however, is that few barracks had a radio set in 1952, and many workers skipped work or hung out at the pubs at night, rather than reading at home by the sound of the radio. Rather than describing a reality, such reports were meant to provide

“guidance” to room trustees and their comrades on how things ought to be in the communal living quarters.

One of the most pressing private problems in the communal dormitories was personal hygiene. Too many workers had only limited access to the few existing toilet and shower facilities. To improve matters, in 1952 a communal bath was opened. Use of the bath was free of charge, and yet, few people used it.574 Even as late as 1958 we learn from a report that children were invariably found dirty during “sanitary controls” made in the Déli barracks town, and that all the children living in the barracks camp were therefore sent to the baths by the authorities.

Thenceforth, weekly, obligatory baths were introduced for school-aged children “at the bath of

Construction Trust Number 26.”575 In order to awaken the adult population to the dangers of bad personal hygiene, the Town Council also organized public lectures on various illnesses including venereal diseases, which by the mid-1950s took a serious toll on the population.

574 “Használjuk a fürdőt,” SZVÉ, July 22, 1952. 575 “Egészségügyi szemle a Délivárosban,” SZH, June 3, 1958.

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Illustration 27. Women’s and men’s showers in Sztálinváros.576

In 1955, local police held records of 78 prostitutes, but the real number of women offering sex in return for money or other benefits (including food, clothing, shelter, etc.), was probably much higher. Almost half of these women lived in dormitories for single women

(which may mean that at least half of them lived, in some way or another, with men or with their families).577 The relatively significant phenomenon of prostitution ran parallel to an unusually high number of abortions: during the three years-long ban instituted in 1953 it is estimated that the ratio between births and illegal abortions was one to one (!). Once the total ban was lifted, the

Abortion Committee of Sztálinváros was flooded with requests for permission to end unwanted pregnancies. In 1957, every seventh woman in Sztálinváros was granted such permission.578 The

576 Source: Open Society Archives. 577 Horváth, A kapu es a határ, 202. 578 Sándor Horváth, “Abortusz és válás,” 180.

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matter also made it into the press: in January 1957, a doctor with the local hospital complained that “we cannot accommodate the really ill patients as our beds are taken up by women who want to have their pregnancies ended […] There are women who have come to us thirteen times to have such an operation.”579

In spite of the partial liberalisation of abortions (1956), women continued visiting illegal clinics run by persons with no medical training whatsoever. When, in December 1956, the death of a woman who underwent such an intervention caused uproar in the town, authorities decided to act. “Let us talk about ‘what we don’t talk about’”—titled the newspaper in January 1957, opening a series of articles discussing the dangers of illegal abortions performed by lay persons.

More importantly, the article series prepared the readership for the sentences brought in one of the most important court trials ever held in town. In the trial, Albertné Benedek580 was accused of performing an abortion on Jánosné Bense in her apartment in May 1st Street No. 3, in the course of which Mrs. Bense bled to death. As it turned out during the investigation, several women of Sztálinváros ran such clinics, where operations cost between 250 and 500 Forints

(roughly one half to two thirds of a montly salary). In less than five weeks, a verdict was reached. Albertné Benedek was sentenced to 1 year and 8 months in prison for 3 counts of performing illegal operations; co-defendant Jánosné Kovács to 2 years in prison for 24 (!) counts; Gyuláné Petróczi to 1 year and six months for 3 counts; and a further two women were given suspended sentences.581

579 “Beszéljünk arról, amiről nem beszélünk,” DH, January 25, 1957. 580 The maiden name and first name of Mrs. Benedek remains unknown. In Hungary, it was, and it is still, customary for married women to be named—including in their identification papers—after their husbands. Albertné Benedek is thus Mrs. Albert Benedek, that is, the wife of Mr. Albert Benedek. 581 “Január 28-án ítélet a halálos végű tiltott műtét ügyében,” DH, January 25, 1957.

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If in the early 1950s we saw a high ratio of marriages and child births in Sztálinváros

(often, if not mostly, motivated by the prospects of getting an apartment), then in the second half of the decade we see a rise in the number of divorces and a decline in the number of births. The reasons for this trend were, allegedly, “the new social conditions, the emancipation of women, the employment of women and thus their increased independence.”582 Parallel to the rise in the number of divorces ran also a decline in the number of marriages. Those who divorced in 1956-

57 were mostly persons who got married in 1951-54, when they were, so ran the argument, young, inexperienced and “irresponsible.” According to a newspaper report, in 1956 there were

73 divorces and 255 marriages in Sztálinváros, while in the first eight months of 1957 alone these numbers had reached 85 divorces and 178 marriages, or a ratio of about one to two.583 But in spite of the admission of a growing tendency, these divorce numbers are simply wrong; the newspaper account deliberately mixed the number of “certificates issued by the Town Council to state the last known common address of a couple seeking divorce” with the actual number of divorces that took place in the town. From another account we learn that the number of divorces in 1956 was as high as 360 to 480. In other words, the ratio between divorces and marriages was as high as two to one (!) in that year.584

The high number of abortions and the uncertain fate of children when their parents divorced, put the future of the town in danger. Already in 1954, the “Védőnői szolgálat” was instituted, a network of health visitors or nurses who would visit women in their homes at regular intervals during their pregnancy as well as after giving birth, for a period of a couple of years or

582 “Miért sok a válás?” SZH, September 6, 1957. 583 Ibid. 584 Horváth, “Abortusz és válás”, 197.

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more, depending on what was considered “necessary” by the authorities. In that year (1954), the town was split up into four districts, each covered by one health visitor, who had the authority to initiate legal procedures against mothers (and fathers), who did not care for their children as was expected of them. According to a report, the four nurses would make a total of 700 home visits per month, of which 500 (!) were visits to mothers with children younger than 1 year old. As the nurses would clearly be unable to cover their districts (175 home visits per nurse per month meant approximately 9 visits per nurse each day), the service was soon enlarged.585 The introduction of mandatory medical checkups for children and mandatory inoculations performed jointly by these nurses and doctors was, besides their obvious medical advantages, also used to get a regular glimpse into the lives of a family. Personal health was a matter of public health in

Sztálinváros.

If individual and public life were “interwoven” in Sztálinváros, this was especially due to the scope of the Hungarian Stalin Town project. Even in comparison with Stalinstadt, the scale of the Sztálinváros undertaking made state intervention into “individual life” necessary if the construction of the new town within a few years only was to succeed. Arbitrary policies like the forcing of marriage as a condition for obtaining an apartment; the elimination of potentially subversive “elements” through show trials meant to set (negative) examples; the intervention into, or, the restriction of the reproductive rights of women, but also the institution of the crèche as both a place for socialist socialization and a means to free women of the burdens of motherhood (only to enlist them in “productive work” on construction sites or in factories)— these were interventions into private life necessary to ensure that the social side of the socialist

585 “Védőnők – az egészséges gyermekekért,” SZVÉ, June 8, 1954.

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town project would keep up with the “real” constructions envisioned by architects and urban designers. The population of Sztálinváros did not look on passively as its privacy was gradually

“inhabited” by the state, however. Just like in Stalinstadt, certain realms of private life were moved, spontaneously or strategically, into the underground. The black market of consumer goods, the tuning in to Radio Free Europe or Voice of America broadcasts, or, as we have seen earlier, the using of illegal abortion “clinics” even when abortion had become legally possible, have created secret spaces, both real and conceptual, that were at once spaces of opposition. The necessities of life in the Hungarian socialist town have thus created both socialized (public) private spaces, and secret private spaces of reaction or opposition, which were used to circumvent, and at times, to undermine, the socialist construction effort. The private sphere was thus instrumental in the construction of a new civilization, as Stephen Kotkin would put it, as well as in escaping it.

Conclusion

Our exploration of privacy in Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros reveals that rather than abolishing private life, as Walter Benjamin famously wrote about Bolshevism in 1927, early state socialism in the GDR and in Hungary drastically reduced and transformed privacy, prompting the population to adapt its everyday life strategies and tactics, including the way privacy was formulated, lived, defended or hidden.586 The formerly “whole” realm of privacy

586 See: Walter Benjamin, “Moscow,” in One Way Street (London: Verso, 1979), 187-188. Quoted in: David Crowley and Susan E. Reid, “Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Socialist Bloc,” in Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Socialist Bloc, eds. David Crowley and Susan E. Reid (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 12.

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was split into several overlapping realms or levels. This chapter touched upon two such levels of privacy: a socialized or public private sphere, and a strictly private or secret private sphere.

While the former was inhabited by both the individual and her social surroundings (including

Power), the latter was produced by the individual through the exclusion of the social environment, most often at considerable cost and risk.

The socialized private sphere was a site of dialogue in Stalin Town. Its “motto” can be formulated using the words of Václav Havel’s greengrocer encountered in the Introduction: “I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.”587 But Power was obedient, too: throughout the 1950s we witness a gradual growth of the private sphere, a tendency which should be regarded, in part at least, as a response of Power to the demands of the population. As the main site of private life, the home underwent significant transformation from the initial communal apartment or barracks dormitory to the single-family home and, as we have seen in

Sztálinváros, to the single-family, privately owned, detached house. Not only did home space grow during the 1950s; the policy shift away from heavy industrialization to the satisfaction of the basic needs of the population (1953-54) led to the gradual transformation of the home into a place of individual comfort or, put differently, into an ever more private space. The increasing, though still very limited, availability of consumer goods like furniture, textiles or clothing made it possible to shape the home according to individual need and taste, which constituted a departure from the originally uniform characteristics of the home in the socialist town.

587 Havel, The Power of the Powerless, 28.

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Conceptual private space underwent significant changes as well. As vertical control of the party-state over the private sphere became ever more difficult to maintain, horizontal control of the population was expanded through the introduction of new institutions like residents’ committees in the new apartment blocks, home visits by visiting nurses justified by public health reasons or through the enlisting of an ever more widespread network of spies and informers.

Administrative measures like the mandatory registration of radio sets or the jamming of unwanted radio broadcasts, or, as we have seen in Stalinstadt, the remote control of private space through the establishment of special departments dedicated to the censoring of private correspondence, constituted ever subtler ways of controlling the privacy of citizens; as the physical distance between Power and the individual grew and the immediate private sphere expanded, the party state developed new means and strategies to police its citizens.

The growth of personal space allowed inhabitants of Stalin Town to keep more and more aspects of everyday life hidden, both from the state and from fellow citizens. As hiding in an ever more sophisticated police state involved considerable effort and even risk, this kind of privacy caused a permanent level of alertness which, over time, taught the population to adapt their secret private space to the necessities and possibilities available to them at any given moment. The black market of goods misappropriated from the workplace, the secret tuning in to foreign radio broadcasts, the sharing of unofficial or forbidden news and ideas, the using of illegal abortion clinics when abortion was outlawed but necessity was great—these all constituted secret facets of privacy in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros.

There are, however, a few differences between the privacy lived in these two towns, which should be emphasized. In East Germany, the temporary relaxation of the regime following

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the June 17, 1953 revolt was quickly reversed by Walter Ulbricht, as ever tighter policing through the MfS caused Stalinstadt to remain one of the most strictly controlled spaces of the country. Also, the growth of Stalinstadt was better kept under control, allowing for a tighter watch over the citizens and their private sphere. Conversely, the more chaotic growth of

Sztálinváros caused the state to lag behind in the adaptation of its policing; at any rate, after the resignation of Mátyás Rákosi as Prime Minister in July 1953 (Otto Grotewohl stayed on as Prime

Minister until as late as 1964 while Walter Ulbricht remained Secretary General until 1971!), the government led by Imre Nagy downsized the main spying agency of the state and had it absorbed into the Ministry of the Interior. After November 1956, under Prime Minister János Kádár, the much-hated ÁVH was dissolved (to be sure, only to be rebuilt, but this time without those who committed the most odious crimes under Rákosi and during the 1956 revolution), while the

“new” Hungarian Socialist Worker’s Party which succeeded the Hungarian Workers’ Party after

“the events” slowly but gradually relaxed—following a period of retribution culminating in the

Imre Nagy trial of 1958—the political regime. This trend, along with its implications for how privacy was lived by the individual inhabitant of Sztálinváros, and later, Dunaújváros, was to continue until the end of state socialism in Hungary in 1989.

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Conclusion

Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros were new towns built in the 1950s around iron combines designed as flagships of heavy industry in the former GDR and Hungary, respectively.

Construction on both sites started in 1950. On November 7th, 1951, the Hungarian settlement was named Sztálinváros (Stalin Town); the Wohnstadt des Eisenhüttenkombinats-Ost was considered worthy of its new name (Stalinstadt) two months after Joseph Stalin’s death in March 1953.

By this time, the “first socialist model town of Hungary” had, in addition to the several dozen completed apartment buildings and two barracks towns hosting thousands of construction workers, a finished party headquarters (1951), a cinema (1951), a walk-in-clinic (1952), a department store (1952), several schools and kindergartens as well as a House of Culture that would be completed later that year. The “first new town of the GDR” had, too, a number of completed housing units, but none of its major public buildings, except for a couple of schools, kindergartens and daycare centres, were finished until the mid-1950s.

The political turn in the Soviet Union following Stalin’s death quickly made itself felt in the GDR and in Hungary. The Hungarian Prime Minister was replaced, while the East German government stayed on to steer a “New Course” that departed from the earlier focus on rapid, heavy industrialization. The development of both metallurgical combines was halted as further construction of the towns built around them was slowed down. I argue that it is was at this turn of 1953-54 that the two towns took diverging paths into their future: if the June 17, 1953 revolt in the Soviet sector of Berlin prompted the leadership to tighten the grip of the regime on East

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German society, then, in Hungary, the slow but gradual relaxation of the regime under a reformist leadership led to decisions that forecast a different future for Sztálinváros. Immediately following the October 1956 revolution, which, unlike the June 1953 revolt in Stalinstadt, had massive support among the local population including the employees of the ironworks, the city’s economy was diversified: new light industries were settled in the town to accommodate the thousands of workers who remained unemployed after construction work was halted; the town received an institution of higher education that, over the years, attracted an increasing number of young people, many of whom settled down in town. Contrary to the principles on which the socialist town was planned and built in the early 1950s, the leadership now encouraged the construction of detached, single-family houses within the Stalin Town, thus diversifying living space in the town and with it, the population. During less than a decade, the planned city of the early 1950s had become a “grown city” through the integration into its history of both the history of the village of Dunapentele and the history of the Roman settlement of Intercisa unearthed in the vicinity of the ironworks. It was not long before local histories of Dunaújváros, as the town was named after 1961, talked of a “millennial history of the town.”

In the meantime, Stalinstadt remained a monoindustrial worker settlement which, once at the core of socialist construction (“sozialistischer Aufbau”), gravitated more and more towards the periphery of East German economy and society. By the time the town was merged with nearby Schönfließ and Fürstenberg an der Oder to be renamed Eisenhüttenstadt (1961), its period of glory had ended. For the next couple of decades, the town would continue to grow as additional units of the Kombinat were built to complete a full cycle of steel production. Also, in official discourse, the town would retain, through the end of socialism in 1989, an important

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position in the East German socialist landscape. But the regime change of 1989 and the subsequent reunification of Germany dealt a blow to the town; the population has since plummetted from around 53,000 inhabitants (1988) to about 25.000 in 2015, as post-unification attempts to diversify the local economy failed to keep the population from leaving the town.

Thanks to structural changes undertaken as early as the 1950s, the economy of

Dunaújváros has successfully survived the advent of capitalism in Hungary. The ironworks, although constantly reduced in size and in employee numbers, were successfully privatized; the

College of Dunaújváros was expanded to receive a brand new campus; the city of about 60.000 inhabitants of the late 1980s lost “only” about a quarter of its population, remaining, in terms of the number of its inhabitants almost twice the size of Eisenhüttenstadt today. New infrastructure built to link the town to Budapest and to the rest of the country furthered the settling down of new industries, and thus, the continuous development of the town during the 1990s and 2000s.

Such differences in the present of the two towns are well reflected in the memory— official, public and private—of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros (Chapter One). Stalinstadt is remembered today as an essentially positive place, where the socialist leadership offered the chance of a new beginning to thousands of displaced persons from formerly German territories in the East (in today’s Poland), as well as for many Germans who fought the Second World War on the wrong side. Harmony rather than conflict, solidarity rather than hardship, order and pride rather than chaos and oppression are emphasized in the stories I recorded in Eisenhüttenstadt during research trips made to the town. Such positive memories of the Stalinstadt era run parallel to feelings of anger, resignation and despair as the proud builders of Stalinstadt perceive themselves and their hard work delivered during the 1950s as being “forgotten” in today’s

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reunited, capitalist Germany. Publicly and officially, Eisenhüttenstadt is dealt with as an anachronism; rather than being a place of the present with a potential for the future, over the past two decades the town was turned into an open-air architectural theme park in which the inhabitants are, too, made part of the décor.

The memory of Sztálinváros, while similarly positive overall, is more complex: the place is also remembered as a site of chaos, conflict, poverty, heavy drinking, prostitution, “sabotage” and even crime. Here, the advent of capitalism in the early 1990s has not produced so negative social, economic or cultural effects which were, in the case of Eisenhüttenstadt, only doubled by the absorption of East Germany into West Germany. Dunaújváros remained a town, that is, an urban space after 1989; the town was granted the status of a town with county rights at the same time as Eisenhüttenstadt was stripped of that status to be integrated into a county with a seat in nearby Beeskow, a tiny town of 8000 inhabitants.

It is such differences in the present and in the remembered past of these two former Stalin

Towns that led me to closer investigate the past of these towns and to explore primary printed and other sources—especially photographs and films—that would explain the development of the two towns. I set out by studying the construction and transformation of the public sphere in

Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros only to realize that the meaning of “public,” as we understand it today, made little sense in the investigation of socialist cities in Eastern Europe (Chapter Two).

Public space in the Stalin Towns of East Germany and Hungary was a realm appropriated and owned by the party state; the rules of entering it or using it were established by Power. This is not to mean that the individual, or groups of individuals, had no power to alter this space, however; protests of all kinds, from outright opposition (the revolts of June 1953 or October

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1956 are good cases in point), through the sabotaging of socialist “public” space (i.e. through the maintaining of rural, traditional or “reactionary” forms of behaviour in public), to less visible antisocial(ist) manifestations like alcoholism, theft or “carelessness about socialist property” in general prove that while much of the public realm was indeed reserved to state life with its rules, rituals, exclusions, and so forth, there was room for intervention into this space for the individual.

I would argue that the single most important difference in the production of this space is rooted in the social and ethnic/geographic origin of the settlers: Stalinstadt had a mostly rural population, about one half of which was made up of uprooted refugees from the East; conversely, Sztálinváros had mostly urban settlers who could maintain, throughout the 1950s, contact to their old homes and were therefore less “anchored” in the socialist town and in socialism in general. Other factors or links, like recent history or culture, broadly understood, which may have caused the different setup of public space in Stalinstadt and in Sztálinváros (i.e.

“submission” as a legacy of Nazism, or the proverbial German proclivity for “order” versus the absence of such historical-cultural burdens in Hungary), have yet to be explored.

The sphere of work was, too, marked by the strong intervention of ideology in the two

Stalin Towns. Work was characterized by bad management, incompetence, a generalized shortage of materials and equipment, and theft (Chapter Three). Absenteeism of workers, particularly of non-permanent settlers living in the barracks towns, was high in Sztálinváros, while the phenomenon seems to having been limited in Stalinstadt (many Stalinstadt workers had no farms to return to during the summer). In both Stalin Towns remuneration of workers was above the national average, though worse than what was promised or expected upon settlement.

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At any rate, pay was not a major incentive to work or to work well; other perks made working in

Stalin Town really attractive: bonuses and privileges, holidays by the Baltic Sea or by Lake

Balaton, and ultimately, the private apartment, which was, throughout the decade, allocated to workers by their employer (i.e. the ironworks or the respective construction companies). Worth emphasizing are also the differences in status among workers, which were manifest from the very beginning: if (mostly skilled) ironworks employees were better paid than (mostly unskilled) construction workers, the privileges that came with the job, including access to an own apartment in the new housing blocks, made the real difference. The socialist space of work was not egalitarian, as proposed by socialist ideology; not even in these two socialist model towns of

Eastern Europe.

If the “public” sphere and the sphere of work were most affected by the introduction of socialism to East Germany and to Hungary, the sphere of leisure allowed for more intervention by the citizen (Chapter Four). While much effort was put into providing enough forms of socialist/socialized entertainment to keep the Stalin Town worker busy during free time, opting out was ever more popular as Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros developed into “proper” urban spaces.

From the outset, there existed a tendency towards a segrated cultural life in the two cities as the intelligentsia and the workers, but also separate categories of workers, developed different ways and spaces for their enjoyment of free time. Access to certain restaurants or dance clubs was barred, if not prohibited to workers; parallel cultural associations or “clubs” were established for the intelligentsia. As the towns developed from mere worker colonies into urban places, pubs in the downtown areas were cleansed of unwanted elements, who were relocated to the outskirts or to the barracks slums around town. “Free time” also created spaces of resistance or outright

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opposition, which remained to a large extent beyond the reach of the state: the church barracks that were built in Stalinstadt as a result of growing pressure from below (and especially, from the

Lutheran and Catholic Churches), the introduction of religion classes in the schools of

Sztálinváros following the 1956 revolution, the private raising of pigs in the “first socialist model town of Hungary” or the Kleingarten (small garden) around Stalinstadt, as a space illegally appropriated by hundreds of workers only to be adopted by the party-state and hailed as an achievement of socialism—these all show that state socialism reached its limits early on in the organization of the free time of its citizens.

Finally, the private sphere of Stalin Town residents was, too, to undergo significant change during the 1950s (Chapter Five). As the physical space allotted to one person grew

(single-family apartments and houses gradually replaced the communal barracks, shared rooms and dormitories), and as that space became ever more difficult to control, new tools were developed by Power to control the conceptual private space of citizens. Yet distance from Power also allowed citizens to keep an ever-growing part of their privacy hidden or secret; the emergence of several levels of privacy—socialized privacy and secret privacy, along with the many hybrid privacies in between, which were not touched upon in this dissertation—was the single most important outcome of the transformation of private space under state socialism.

Today, Dunaújváros has around 46.000 inhabitants and is fully integrated into the

Hungarian urban landscape; situated in the geographic centre of the country, the town can be reached within less than one hour from the capital. Eisenhüttenstadt, formerly found at the periphery of East Germany, was, after 1990, propelled into the eastern extremity of reunited

Germany. If state socialism bridged the gap (with more or less success) through strong industrial

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ties between Stalinstadt/Eisenhüttenstadt and the rest of East Germany, the end of the industrial era and the reduction of the town to the status of yet another iron and steel production site of reunited Germany condemned the town to gradual decline, and eventual death. The main aim of this dissertation was to demonstrate that the different paths taken by Eisenhüttenstadt and

Dunaújváros were rooted in the Stalin Town era; if political and economic history may add to our understanding of why this was so, this comparative social history of Stalinstadt and

Sztálinváros intended to explain how it all happened.

There remains much to be explored and said about Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros, however.

One of the most interesting spaces that remains hidden to this day is the space of dialogue between these towns. We know today that Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros were “in contact” from early on; reports of Stalinstadt in the Sztálinváros press or articles about the Hungarian Stalin

Town in the Stalinstadt Heimatzeitung suggest that the two towns maintained formal ties as early as the mid-1950s.588 The regionwide circulation of the socialist town concept, as well as that of

Stalin Town, produced spaces that have not been touched upon in this dissertation. Was there a competition between Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros? Were experiences shared? Add to these contacts all other traces of contact with Nowa Huta in Poland, Hunedoara in Romania, or other

588 The first mention of Stalinstadt in the Sztálinváros press dates from June 24, 1955, when Helmuth Müller, a “leader of the Stalinstadt youth,” visits the town and reveals the major differences between Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros: Stalinstadt has no coking plant (while Sztálinváros does have one), and Sztálinváros is “much larger than Stalinstadt, which has only 15 to 16,000 inhabitants.” See: “Sztálinvárosban – Stalinstadtról,” SZV, June 24, 1955. In the following months and years, Stalinstadt features regularly in the local newspaper. Thus we learn, for example, that in 1958, Klaus Güttel, secretary of the party organization of the EKO has visited Sztálinváros, along with Willi Wehlan, an editor of Neuer Tag, which published the Stalinstadt daily Heimatzeitung; two weeks later, Sztálinvárosi Hírlap called Stalinstadt a “twin city” (testvérváros); In December 1959, “Neuer Tag sent its New Year’s wishes” to the Sztálinváros newspaper. See: “A Neuer Tag ünnepe,” SZH, July 11, 1958; see also: “Német vendégeink látogatása,” SZH, December 24, 1958; see also: “A ‘Neuer Tag’ újévi üdvözlete,” SZH, December 31, 1959. The first mention of Sztálinváros in Heimatzeitung für Stalinstadt occured as early as January 1954, only 7 months after the naming of the East German socialist town for Stalin. See: “Stalinstadt-Sztalinváros. Mein schoenstes Erlebnis des vergangenen Jahres: Ich war in Ungarn,“ NT, January 3, 1954.

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new towns of the region throughout the 1950s. What do the different, yet seemingly similar histories of these new towns tell us about the representational spaces of state socialism across the region? There were four other Stalin Towns in Eastern Europe during the 1950s (Qyteti Stalin in

Albania, Varna in Bulgaria, Katowice in Poland and Braşov in Romania), three of which were centuries old towns and one of which had an intact, medieval core at the end of the Second

World War (Braşov). How do these Stalin Towns compare to the two planned Stalin Towns of

Hungary and East Germany? How are East European Stalin Towns different from the Stalin

Towns of the Soviet Union?

If the regime change two and a half decades ago led to the release of formerly unknown sources, other sources were purposefully destroyed. For instance, after weeks of thorough searches made upon my request by the archivists of the BStU in 2005, only a handful of folders of Stasi-documents connected in any way to Stalinstadt surfaced in the archives of the former

East German secret police. At the same time, archival material from the Stalin Town era is being discovered and processed to this day in Dunaújváros where, 25 years after the end of state socialism, time has come to organize and make available to researchers the archival fonds of

Dunaferr, the former Sztálin Ironworks. Sztálinváros seems to “haunt” Dunaújváros today: in

May 2015, the College of Dunaújváros hosted an international conference on “Cities of a New

Type: Industrial Cities in People’s Democracies after 1945.”589 Young scholars hailing from a dozen countries presented papers on new towns including Nowa Huta in Poland, Velenje and

Železnik in former Yugoslavia, Havířov in former Czechoslovakia, Slavutych in the former

589 “Cities of a New Type. Industrial Cities in People’s Democracies after 1945, conference,” Dunaújváros, May 21- 22, 2015.

284

Soviet Union, but also on obscure places like the “secret” uranium mining town of Dr. Petru

Groza in Romania. In his opening remarks, the Mayor of Dunaújváros expressed his “strong desire that Dunaújváros become the European centre of research on socialist cities.”590 Also present at the conference was Andreas Ludwig, former founder and Director of the

Eisenhüttenstadt “Dokumentationszentrum Alltagskultur in der DDR” (Documentation Centre of

Everyday Culture in the GDR). When asked about the state of scientific research done at the

Documentation Centre, Ludwig answered on a somewhat sad note that scientific work

(Wissenschaftsarbeit) had practically ceased at the Dokumentationszentrum after his departure in

2012; the institution, which during his tenure produced countless exhibitions and publications on the history of Stalinstadt and Eisenhüttenstadt, has become a hot potato which is being tossed from one supporting public authority to the next as nobody seems to be interested in its further existence (or at least in its financing).

If the memory of Stalinstadt is upheld today mainly by its restored and protected architecture, the Hungarian Stalin Town is returning to the present “en force” with

“Sztálinváros,” a comedy in two acts staged by the local theatre company poking fun at cultural politics during the founding era of the town (the play enacts the festive opening of the

Sztálinváros House of Culture in the very House of Culture of the former Stalin Town). The show had such a success that for the last performance given in May 2015, organizers thought of suprizing their audience by bringing into the present even the taste and smell of the socialist

590 Apart from its kind words of welcome, the address of the mayor was rather bizarre; addressing an English- speaking international audience in his Hungarian hometown, the mayor delivered his lengthy speech in Russian. Gábor Cserna, opening remarks given at the conference on “Cities of a New Type. Industrial Cities in People’s Democracies after 1945,” Dunaújváros, May 21-22, 2015.

285

town: during the break between the two acts, the audience was served free virsli (Wiener sausage) and beer on carton plates, complete with a blotch of mustard and a slice of bread—just like in the good old days of the 1950s. That Dunaújváros has found closure with its past is also evidenced by the massive overhaul of the town centre, that was carried out in 2013 and 2014; unlike in Eisenhüttenstadt, where the centre of town is left to decay under the pretext of preservation, the centre of Dunaújváros has recently been refurbished in an effort to complete an overdue, unfinished business of the past. Such differences in attitude towards the past and present of Sztálinváros and Stalinstadt will no doubt provide new grounds for comparative scholarship about these two cities; as the present of the two towns grows ever more apart, new histories will emerge to explain the phenomenon.

This dissertation has for the first time presented the parallel (and at times not so parallel), histories of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros, two new towns built along similar lines during the same decade and in a seemingly similar political context, but in culturally and historically different places. It focused on the lived experiences of the inhabitants of Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros, while also touching upon architectural, economic and political aspects of these two histories. My familiarity with the languages necessary for this undertaking—both German and Hungarian are my mother tongues—, as well as my familiarity with the subject matter after too many years of research and writing, seem to be good reason and at once a good foundation for taking this project to the next level; with many more stories to tell about Stalinstadt and Sztálinváros, I am looking forward to rewriting what needs to be rewritten and transform this comparative study into a book.

286

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