'Honecker's Children: Youth and Patriotism in East(Ern) Germany, 1979-2002'

H-German Plum on Saunders, 'Honecker's Children: Youth and Patriotism in East(ern) Germany, 1979-2002'

Review published on Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Anna Saunders. Honecker's Children: Youth and Patriotism in East(ern) Germany, 1979-2002. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. xii + 252 pp. $74.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7190-7411-0.

Reviewed by Catherine Plum (Department of History, Western New England College) Published on H-German (May, 2009) Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher

A Tale of Unpatriotic Youth and Continuity before and after the Wende

Anna Saunders's Honecker's Children is an excellent contribution to a developing literature on the East German communist youth organization,[1] the Free German Youth (FDJ), and an even larger collection of recent work on the economic insecurity and political disposition of eastern German youth following the collapse of communism.[2] By focusing on institutional efforts to promote patriotism among youth, Saunders tackles broader questions, such as the degree to which young people can be influenced from above and the correlation between lack of patriotism and the fall of the GDR. She argues convincingly that the period of revolution and reform before the decisive turn toward reunification was a brief moment of heightened youth patriotism and political activism. She maintains, however, that despite educational efforts to promote patriotism, young people in the 1990s developed a new distrust of politics and political institutions that suddenly appeared to have entered a state of economic and social turbulence--a response to events similar to the youth stance that had emerged in East Germany in the 1980s. Saunders challenged herself to research and compose a balanced comparison between youth experience of patriotic education in the late Erich Honecker era and the first decade after German reunification. The result is a successful, comprehensive comparison that helps to explain continuities and some differences across this temporal and social divide.

Saunders's originality lies in her timeline and methodology. She thoughtfully begins her study in 1979, a year that witnessed the thirtieth anniversary of the GDR and the full integration of formal military education in schools. After comparing youth experience and reception for approximately a decade before and after the revolution, Saunders concludes her narrative in 2002. By this point, her youngest research subjects, born in the early 1980s, had attained their own political coming of age, despite state efforts to mold them into citizens of the FRG and the European Union. While many works on recent German history contain a comparative element, Saunders's analysis of the narrow theme of patriotism is particularly comprehensive and thorough, while at the same time well integrated into larger discussions and criticisms of niche societies and nostalgia. Her primary-source base balances national sources with regional and local resources from the districts of Halle and Magdeburg. She makes excellent use of the studies of the GDR Zentralinstitut für Jugendforschung and letters young people wrote in 1989 and 1990 to the editors of the FDJ newspaper,Junge Welt. Furthermore, Saunders conducted over fifty oral history interviews, primarily with young adults born between 1970 and 1974 and teens born between 1980 and 1984. Her study of patriotism is thus

Based on her extensive archival research, in the first chapter, Saunders identifies five thematic areas that GDR institutions used to promote patriotic values: historical consciousness, militarism, the notion of a hostile enemy, proletarian internationalism, and pride in the GDR. Saunders's exploration of these themes provides a very good introduction to the patriotic ideology advanced in East German school classrooms, the FDJ, and preparation for the Jugendweihe coming-of-age rite in the 1980s. She argues that the focus and intensity of this education was a product of concerns about the arms race, competition with West Germany and East German churches, and finally the low birthrate, which would eventually limit the number of young men available to serve in the armed forces. Unfortunately, with respect to her coverage of proletarian internationalism and historical consciousness, including anti-fascism, Saunders does not really compare her work to the findings of Christiane Griese, Helga Marburger, and Alan Nothnagle.[3] Nevertheless, Saunders's treatment of military education is particularly useful as a theme that emerges strongly in GDR memories and memoirs, such as Jana Hensel's autobiography, but remains rather neglected in academic literature.[4]

Saunders's second chapter explores youth reception of GDR patriotism, highlighting the regime's failed attempts at instilling emotional ties to the state. She argues convincingly that state intensification of patriotic education was counterproductive. As she discusses youth reception of the five components of patriotic education, Saunders carefully distinguishes between different types and groups of young people from pacifist punks to right-wing skinheads, particularly with her detailed discussion of reactions to military education and required service. With respect to patriotic education more generally, Saunders claims that the majority of young people were apathetic conformists who believed in socialism to an extent, but did not exhibit patriotic enthusiasm for a socialist fatherland. She is careful to note, however, that young people (who did not want their country to be regarded as the poorer cousin of the FRG) still exhibited a certain degree of pride in the GDR when it was compared to other nations, including its socialist neighbors. Saunders maintains that the GDR's self- image of superiority to fellow socialist nations colored young people's attitudes towards foreigners, including the small minority of foreigners living in the GDR. Additionally, the degree of control exercised over foreign workers and students in East German towns and cities implied their inferiority, regardless of the more positive tenets of socialist internationalism. In this way, Saunders contextualizes the problem of xenophobia and right-wing extremism in addition to providing a summary of specific incidents before 1989. Unfortunately, she uses little evidence from her oral history interviews in this chapter, although her older set of interview subjects reached their teenage years and celebrated Jugendweihe before the Wende.

Saunders's third chapter focuses on the rise and fall of patriotism and GDR identity during the pivotal period between October 1989 and German reunification one year later. According to Saunders, young people reached a peak in their sense of a unique GDR identity in the fall of 1989, with the buildup of popular protest and discussions of reform. However, the fall of the Berlin Wall, comparisons and

Citation: H-Net Reviews. Plum on Saunders, 'Honecker's Children: Youth and Patriotism in East(ern) Germany, 1979-2002'. H-German. 09-30-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/35008/reviews/45798/plum-saunders-honeckers-children-youth-and-patriotism-eastern-germany Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-German travel to the West, and the worsening economic situation in 1990 allowed German identity to trump a more positive GDR identity that was emerging immediately prior to the collapse of the state. In contrast to their grandparents, who could remember an undivided Germany, and their parents, who had a stronger sense of the history of division, young people had an easier time adjusting to change, but still lacked orientation and identity given the rapid nature of change. In the vacuum of stable identities and cognizant of economic and social insecurities, Saunders contends, German nationalism in extremist forms became popular among some eastern German youth who longed for a continued sense of national pride. Thus, Saunders provides the necessary context behind a seemingly contradictory phenomenon: the emergence of right-wing (xenophobic) extremism among youth who grew up under a regime that preached international solidarity.

In her final thematic chapter and conclusion, Saunders discusses civic loyalties in the wake of unification and comparisons before and after 1989. By the time she interviewed her research subjects in 2001 and 2002, many were ashamed of Germany's nationalistic past and role in World War II, taking on, as Saunders should point out, a perspective common among their western peers. While lacking a sense of patriotism about the GDR, her interview subjects still possess a GDR identity and an identity as eastern Germans. Hence, Saunders believes that patriotic tools that only reference the history and traditions of the West will fail among these populations. In terms of attitudes to military service, she finds that East German young men are marginally more likely to accept military service as a rite of passage, but less likely to favor an active foreign policy. With respect to international relations, Saunders claims that contemporary youth criticize the United States in a manner similar to their criticism of overt Soviet influence before the fall of the Berlin Wall. This particular point of comparison may contain an underlying truth, but it requires a more systematic discussion, especially given the difference in state propaganda before and after 1989. Perhaps a stronger comparison can be found between the weakness of a sense of international brotherhood between socialist nations in the Soviet bloc and contemporary problems with promotion of a European identity. Ultimately, Saunders argues that the state cannot effectively impose patriotism upon youth or other citizens; rather, patriotism must emerge from and be practiced voluntarily within personal as well as public spheres.

Saunders' discussion is sufficiently clear, thoughtful, and nuanced to attract the interest of both upper-division undergraduates and seasoned scholars. One can only hope that scholars will continue to investigate some of the sub-themes that Saunders raises, such as youth involvement in the peace movement throughout the 1980s. Additionally, a similarly detailed study of Helmut Kohl's "children" or, more accurately, Kohl's teens, would be most welcome. West German youth demonstrated a profound ignorance of East German geography in the late 1980s, but to what extent were militarism and a hostile German socialist "twin" components of West German patriotic education in the 1980s?

Notes

[1]. In addition to the innovative research of Dorle Zilch, Helga Gotschlich, Ulrich Mählert, and Gerd- Rüdiger Stephan in the 1990s, recent works on the FDJ include Alan Nothnagle,Building the East German Myth: Historical Mythology and Youth Propaganda in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-1989 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1999); and Alan McDougal,Youth Politics in East Germany: The Free German Youth Movement, 1946-1968 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

[2]. See for example, Liane von Billerbeck,Generation Ost: Aufmüpfig, angepasst, ehrgeizig? Jugendliche nach der Wende (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1999); Alexander Bolz and Hartmut Griese, eds., Deutsch-deutsche Jugendforschung: Theoretische und empirische Studien zur Lage der Jugend aus ostdeutscher Sicht (Munich: Juventa, 1995); Peter Förster, Walter Friedrich, Harry Müller, and Wilifried Schubarth, Jugend Ost: Zwischen Hoffnung und Gewalt (Opladen: Leske und Budrick, 1993); and Ute Schlegel and Peter Förster, eds.,Ostdeutsche Jugendliche: Vom DDR Bürger zum Bundesbürger (Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 1997), among others.

[3]. Christiane Griese and Helga Marburger,Zwischen Internationalismus und Patriotismus: Konzepte des Umgangs mit Fremden und Fremdheit in den Schulen der DDR (Frankfurt: Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1995); and Nothnagle, Building the East German Myth.

[4]. Although Saunders categorizes Hensel's work as nostalgic, Hensel's discussion actually provides additional evidence for some of the points that Saunders makes in her study--such as youth concern about Cold War militarism and the desire not to be seen as the poor cousin of West Germany, among other themes. See Jana Hensel, After the Wall: Confessions from an East German Childhood and the Life that Came Next (New York: Public Affairs, 2004).

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Citation: Catherine Plum. Review of Saunders, Anna, Honecker's Children: Youth and Patriotism in East(ern) Germany, 1979-2002. H-German, H-Net Reviews. May, 2009.URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24114

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.