East German Intellectuals and the Unification of Germany

East German Intellectuals and the Unification of Germany An Ethnographic View Dan Bednarz East German Intellectuals and the Unification of Germany Dan Bednarz East German Intellectuals and the Unification of Germany An Ethnographic View Dan Bednarz Bristol Community College Fall River, Massachusetts USA ISBN 978-3-319-42950-2 ISBN 978-3-319-42951-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42951-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958024 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover image Bruce Tanner / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For Leonard Lieberman, October 25, 1925–February 6, 2007 PREFACE When East Germany (the GDR, German Democratic Republic) ceased to exist after its October 3, 1990, unification with West Germany (the FRG, Federal Republic of Germany), almost all East German intelligentsia felt like the flotsam of history. In the West, most were typified as ill-, un-, or mis-educated apologists for the Socialist Unity Party (the Party) that had controlled the GDR during its four-and-a-half-decade history. According to this view, few were genuine intellectuals or artists because they were not devoted to the honest study, use, or expression of ideas and emotions. Instead, they were, in the West, presumed apparatchiks of the Socialist Party that ruled the GDR. That is, in West Germany, they were regarded, with few exceptions, as either feral children or propagandists, not scientists and scholars. Concomitantly, an unknown number of them were suspected of spying on their colleagues, friends, and even family members at the behest of the Stasi, the East German state security apparatus. Their status in East Germany had been complicated and tortuous. Workers tended to envy them as a privileged elite insulated from the harsh demands and economic conditions of East German life. Socialist Party officials typically treated them as compliant attendants to the nation’s “real” heroes: the abstractions of “The Workers” led admirably by nurtur- ing vanguard Party officials. I began to meet East German intelligentsia five weeks before unification, in the late summer of 1990, when they were absorbed in speculation and worry about what role and career opportunities, if any, they would have in vii viii PREFACE unified Germany. Various West German review bodies were then making decisions about the future employment chances for most of them. The Wissenschaftsrat (science advisory council), primarily composed of West German scientists, was evaluating all central institutes, and their subinstitutes, of the GDR Academy of Sciences. The Academy was modeled on the academy of sciences in the Soviet Union and also traced its roots back to Leibniz. Humboldt University, presumed by many in West Germany to be rancid with Socialist Party apparatchiks, was trying to reorganize from within, through the efforts of East German faculty and administrators at the university, and simulta- neously being prepared for an ideological and academic vetting of its faculty by the (West) Berlin Senat. Other East German universities would come under similar review. Berliner Rundfunk, state-supported radio in the GDR, and East German television were also being reviewed by West German officials considering whether to close them down or integrate them or some of their employees into FRG media. Newspapers, magazines, and journals published in the GDR, the content of all had been controlled by the state, were either struggling to survive with a revamped point of view or being purchased by Western companies. Here is a typical editorial statement offered by an East German publication, (GDR Review Editors 1990, p. 64): Dear Readers, we request you not to regard the viewpoints of our writers as “official.” They represent the manifold opinions which have already existed in our editorial office but which, up to now, have scarcely been discernable in the magazine. In addition to fretting about their careers in the fall of 1990, East German intelligentsia were grappling with the cognitive dissonance, guilt, and anger created by the contradictions and inconsistencies inherent in intellectual life in a police state. Many of them readily acknowledged—as if to expiate guilt—that they had been at times compromised and controlled. The Party/government might have at any time for any seemingly arbitrary reason interfered directly in their work. They confessed frequently that an unknown number of them were used, by virtue of threat, fear, patriotism, or personal gain, as internal spies. In related fashion, they were trying to make sense, in rational and spiritual terms, of who they were, given their GDR past and the tumultuous changes that had taken place in the nine-and-a-half months nach der Wende PREFACE ix (after the Turn), the metaphor for the November 1989 opening of the Berlin Wall that led to the “Turn” from socialism to capitalism and the end of the GDR as a sovereign state. This is the issue of national—or collective— identity that Germans historically at times have found perplexing. With rare exceptions, they saw unification with the FRG as a takeover they had tried in vain to prevent, or at least postpone for several years until the GDR could attain economic and political parity with the FRG. They thought of themselves and their country as the losers in the struggle against capitalism and the Wessis, West Germans. In the main, they deeply regretted both their inability to reform the GDR into a socialist democracy and their overall lack of participation in the protests in East Germany during the fall of 1989, which culminated in the opening of the Berlin Wall and the entire East German border. Add to this their belief that their West German kin were treating them with the condescension and haughtiness befitting colo- nialists who act victorious and inherently possessed of superior competence, moral rectitude, and ingenuity. A March 1990 East German referendum on unification with West Ger- many approved by the citizens of the GDR was, in all practical senses, a political capitulation of economically bankrupt East Germany to economically robust West Germany. Rapid changes in East German life had begun in the days after the Wall opened and gathered momentum in the succeeding weeks as consumer goods flooded into the GDR and various East German political parties and ad hoc groups participated in “roundtables” to decide— they erroneously believed—the future of the GDR. Unification introduced wholesale legal and institutional changes from closing down the GDR government and replacement of its legal system with the West German legal system to a currency conversion that was simulta- neously extravagantly beneficial to East German citizens and disastrous to East German industries trying to compete in capitalist markets. Further, large-scale change occurred in the requirement of East Germans to take on responsibilities previously seen to by the state, such as purchasing automo- bile insurance and finding employment. This is the sociopolitical and cultural context in which I began to meet East Germans in the late summer of 1990. My appreciation goes to those who, in various ways, assisted and befriended me while I conducted the original fieldwork for this book. For many historical insights, referrals to other interviewees, and revelations about life in the East Germany scientific community, my thanks go to the always-gracious Gunther Kohl. Likewise, I thank Lothar Sprung for his x PREFACE openness, good humor, and keen interest regarding my project. To those who provided invaluable help as translators, I thank Antje Rapmund, David Antal, Birgit Gast, Josefine Raasch, Martina Dannecker, Julia Nentwich, and Laura Papachristos. I offer thanks to my students, Gabriel Hazeldine and Shelley Whalen, for their first-rate assistance in various aspects of manuscript preparation. I thank Meinhof Dierkes, of the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), for the initial support he provided for this research. Thanks also to Werner Rammert for several thoughtful and enlightening conversations and his supportive stance toward this project. I offer special thanks to Erica Hoerning for her encouragement and for unreservedly sharing with me her wealth of knowledge, contacts, and insight. Gratitude goes to those more than 100 East Germans I formally interviewed and the dozens more with whom I had informal conversations. Overall, my sincerest thanks is extended toallthoseIcametoknowandspendtimewithinEastGermany.Iappreciate them for their patience in explaining their folkways, mores, and worldview to an American, and their stoicism and frank admissions of confusion, shame, guilt, resolve, and hope as their life chances, collective identity, and worldview were—in their view—“Abgewickelt.”1 Also, thanks to Lucy and Ian Rawson, and to David and Ariane Antal for their kindnesses and support along the way.

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