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Sovereignty, Legitimacy and Decolonization in the German Democratic Republic, 1960—1989

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Sovereignty, Legitimacy and Decolonization in the German Democratic Republic, 1960—1989 Global GDR? Sovereignty, Legitimacy and Decolonization in the German Democratic Republic, 1960—1989 George Bodie School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University College London, September 2019 I, George Bodie, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 1 Abstract In the two decades following its demise, the GDR—in both historical and popular representation—was largely depicted as an isolated, autarchic entity. A recent wave of research into the global Cold War has begun to challenge this assertion, highlighting the GDR’s links to the extra-European world. Such perspectives nevertheless retain some of the older tropes of the isolationist narrative, viewing the GDR’s engagement with these countries through the narrow lens of a search for legitimacy among its own population. This thesis seeks to expand the scope, viewing the GDR’s relations with what was viewed as a “proto-socialist” world in Africa, Asia and Latin America not a simplistic, historically-fixed policy directed toward a domestic audience, but rather as part of an active political project to reshape global relations. GDR elites viewed their state as fundamentally unviable without international integration: once the project for a united Germany was abandoned in the 1960s, the GDR’s global ambitions took on paramount importance. Rather than an attempt to build legitimacy, this turn was rather imagined through the lens of sovereignty; legitimacy was not a concept in GDR elite’s political arsenal, but they did worry about their nation’s sovereignty, and sought to buttress it through engagement with the proto-socialist world. This thesis examines such engagement from five different vantage-points: looking at how the ideological basis for the project was constructed by foreign policy elites; how the GDR sought to create foreign adherents to the project through educational exchange; how the proto-socialist world—specifically Cuba—became a site for socialist leisure; how citizens engaged with domestic solidarity campaigns which sought to turn them into active participants in the project; and how the proto-socialist world was depicted on television. In doing so, it will show how early hopes for a global socialist world in the 1960s metamorphized as the 2 Cold War progressed, fragmenting into an archipelagic network of increasingly isolated states by the 1980s. 3 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Table of Contents 4 Introduction 7 “Direct your eyes / toward what exists today / and imagine the opposite”: The GDR in Global History 15 The GDR in the new Cold War History and the “Legitimacy Paradox” 24 What was the Proto-Socialist World? 34 A Tethered Sovereignty: the GDR in Europe and in the World 40 A Transnational Union? The FDGB 45 Structure 50 Source Base 53 Chapter One - Understanding the GDR’s Global Context: Foreign Policy Elites and the Proto- Socialist World 59 Introduction 59 Foundations: Sovereignty, Ideology and Geopolitics in the GDR 64 The 1960s: The Proto-Socialist World and Existential Anxiety 71 “Honoured, Respected, Recognised”: the 1970s 80 In Times of Fading Light: the 1980s 91 Conclusion 103 Chapter Two - Where do Correct Ideas Come From? The FDGB Institute for Foreign Students and the Coming of the Sino-Soviet Split 105 Introduction 105 The FDGB, Decolonisation, and the Turn to the Proto-Socialist World 109 Creating a Proto-Socialist Cadre: the Founding of the Institute 115 Postcolonial Taxonomies: Teaching the Non-Capitalist Development Path 121 Provincializing Europe: The Third Cohort and the German Question 127 “A terrible blow to all national liberation movements”: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Sino-Soviet Split 134 Conclusion 139 Chapter Three - The Proto-Socialist World in the Workplace: The Solidarity Donation, Citizen, and State 142 Introduction 142 Solidarity Donations in the GDR: from intra-German Aid to the Proto-Socialist World 149 The FDGB as Fundraiser 158 Citizen’s responses to the Solidarity Donation 166 Beyond Fundraising: Raising Internationalist Bewusstsein 172 Policing the Discursive Boundaries of Solidarity 177 Conclusion 186 Chapter Four - Traversing the Socialist Archipelago: GDR Cruises to Cuba, 1961-1989 189 Introduction 189 Tourism in the Socialist World System 193 Cuba in the GDR Imaginary 200 5 Cruises to Cuba 206 Leaping to Freedom? Struggles over Meaning 214 Conclusion 223 Chapter Five - Depicting the Proto-Socialist World on Screen: Treffpunkt Flughafen 225 Introduction 225 The Proto-Socialist World as Entertainment in Treffpunkt Flughafen 227 Television and Ideology 235 Depicting the Proto-Socialist World on Screen: A Short History 240 Filming in the Socialist Archipelago: The Making of Treffpunkt Flughafen 248 Conclusion 251 Conclusion 254 Bibliography 266 Acknowledgements 304 Statement of impact 306 6 Introduction Introduction Yes, it is certain that tomorrow, today’s maps will be outdated. Because where there is no socialism today, there will be socialism tomorrow. Der Sozialismus—deine Welt, book given to GDR citizens after the Jugendweihe, a coming-of-age 1 ceremony. Three images serve to introduce the argument and content of this thesis. In the first, Lothar Zitzmann’s painting, Weltjugendlied, a mass of figures appears to be literally interconnected: some hold hands or other’s heads, and their limbs are intertwined. In the centre, the figures form a column, and appear to be striving in the same direction across the canvas, from left to right. Presented in Berlin’s Palace of the Republic in 1976, the painting was part of a permanent exhibition entitled Dürfen Kommunisten träumen, or “are communists allowed to dream?” In the often blunt, explicitly propagandistic world of GDR art, the phrase stands out by virtue of its self-reflexive tone: the original proposed title, “The Fight and Victory of Socialism” was a piece of more conventional rhetoric, but was rejected by some of the artists involved.2 Zitzmann’s painting was an expression of a grand ideal. In contrast, the second image expresses an everyday reality. A 1977 photograph from a grocery shop in East Berlin shows two portraits nestled among everyday food items. In between jars of Bockwurst 1 Eberhard Heinrich, “Die Karte zeigt, wohin sich die Erde bewegt,” in Der Sozialismus, deine Welt (Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben, 1975), 30. 2 Monika Flocke, Auftrag: Kunst 1949-1990. Bildende Künstler in der DDR zwischen Ästhetik und Politik. Katalog zur Ausstellung des Deutschen Historischen Museums 1995. (Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1995), 245. 7 Introduction and mustard stand portraits of Erich Honecker, General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, and Joachim Yhombi-Opango, the head of state of the Marxist- Leninist People’s Republic of the Congo. Yhombi-Opango’s rule would not last long after the photo was taken: he was deposed in 1979.3 But when he travelled to East Berlin two years earlier, Honecker assured him that he was a household name. “In our country,” he told the Congolese leader, “it is very well known how much the People's Republic of the Congo is doing for the final liberation of the African Continent from colonialism and racism.”4 3 John Frank Clark and Samuel Decalo, Historical Dictionary of Republic of the Congo (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2012), 349. 4 Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der ehemaligen DDR in Bundesarchiv, (Hereafter SAPMO-BArch), DY 30/2459, “Toast des Generalsekretärs des ZK der SED und Vorsitzenden des Staatsrates der DDR, Erich Honecker ,” 31. 8 Introduction Figure 1: Detail from Lothar Zitzmann’s Weltjugendlied 1975. Author’s image. These two pictures embody the two key contentions of this thesis. In both academic literature and popular culture, the GDR has been presented an inward-looking, nationally-bounded project. This depiction grew from the very real restrictions—on humans, ideas, and objects—that the state placed or attempted to place on cross-border exchange. Understanding the extent to which the GDR existed as a restrictive, border- enforcing entity is an important task, one that has been taken up with enthusiasm by historians. But as a singular focus without other perspectives, this thesis will argue that it cannot fully capture the GDR as a historical project, nor everyday life within the state in its fullest dimensions. The GDR was often an isolated state, in many respects one for which the adjective “closed” was apposite. But at the same time, it was also a state that was understood by its elites as a fundamentally global project. As such, these elites sought to bind the GDR to trans- and international structures, forging deep relationships 9 Introduction with other states, most notably those which emerged from the collapse of the European empires in the latter half of the twentieth century. Trapped between a hostile Western Europe and a dysfunctional socialist bloc, GDR elites articulated a notion of sovereignty that privileged the necessity of global socialist cooperation, and eventually, convergence. As a part of this global project, these elites imagined the extra-European world as a “proto-socialist” world, in which socialism would develop and lead to international Figure 2 : Erich Honecker and Joachim Yhombi-Opango, East Berlin, 1977. Archiv Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung, Fotobestand Harald Schmitt. convergence within a global socialist world-system. To the communists who ruled the GDR and set its political and cultural agenda this was an existential issue, not a sideshow for the more important aim of domestic legitimacy. The importance of these connections and the agit-propagandist nature of GDR cultural production meant that the proto-socialist world entered everyday life in a myriad of ways. The political project of Marxism-Leninism involved shaping a new, socialist humanity; in the GDR this new socialist human was imagined in her new global context as a conscious exponent of this new political project, both politically and culturally.
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