Joanne Sayner

Verehrter Gen. Ulbricht: Negotiations of Self and Socialist Identity in Greta Kuckhoff’s Letters

In 1955 Greta Kuckhoff, a survivor of the anti-Nazi resistance group ‘Die Rote Kapelle’, wrote to Walter Ulbricht about the representation of antifascism in his recently published Zur Geschichte der neuesten Zeit. This chapter investigates the ways in which she challenged Ulbricht with her alternative narrative. It examines the significance of the letter as a form of autobiography, literature, and memory. It sug- gests that the dialogical nature of the genre allowed Kuckhoff to reiterate her socialist identity while at the same time confronting the head of state.

Sehr geehrter Gen. Ulbricht – aus politischer Disziplin habe ich 10 Jahre lang – nach einem ersten gescheitertem [sic] Versuch – nichts dazu getan, die Besonderheit unserer Widerstandsarbeit (Dr. Harnack, Schulze-Boysen) aufgrund meiner Kenntnisse darzulegen und auf die damit verbundenen Probleme hinzuweisen. Ich war überzeugt, dass die Partei eines Tages nach dem Studium der sicherlich vorhandenen Unterlagen und auch nach einer gründlichen Aussprache mit mir, eine Einschätzung vornehmen und die Haupterkenntnisse aus dem 9 Jahre lang geführten Kampf im richtigen Augenblick für den jetzigen Kampf einsetzen werde. Nachdem nunmehr Dein Buch über die deutsche Arbeiterklasse während des Faschismus erschienen ist, habe ich die dort gegebene Darstellung anhand meiner Erfahrungen geprüft und gefunden, dass ich dazu Stellung nehmen muss.1

Greta Kuckhoff wrote these words to Walter Ulbricht in 1955 in her capacity as one of the few surviving members of the anti-Nazi resis- tance group ‘Die Rote Kapelle’. She was responding to his portrayal of antifascism in the recently published Zur Geschichte der neuesten Zeit.2 Her archived papers contain both a handwritten draft of the let- ter (see Figure 1) and an amended typescript, from which the passage above is quoted, and which slightly reframes her experiences.3 This chapter highlights the rhetorical strategies of Kuckhoff's portrayal of her resistance group. It examines the significance of the letter-writing genre both in relation to these memories of the Nazi past and the con- struction of socialist personalities. First, however, it considers the let- ter within the broader context of sources about Kuckhoff’s life. Born in 1902 to a working class family, Greta Lorke trained as an economist, spending time in North America as a student. During the 34 Joanne Sayner

Nazi regime she worked as a translator, co-translating Hitler’s Mein Kampf and other Nazi propaganda into English.4 From 1933 she was involved in resistance activities within a group that the Nazis were later to label ‘Die Rote Kapelle’. The group disseminated anti-Nazi leaflets, organised meetings, and provided financial support for those persecuted by the regime. Some members of the group were involved in transmitting military details to the Soviet Union. This large, politi- cally and socially diverse group were arrested in 1942.5 Fifty execu- tions followed, including that of Adam Kuckhoff, whom Greta had married in 1937. Initially condemned to death, Greta’s sentence was commuted to ten years’ imprisonment and she was liberated by the Red Army in 1945. After the war Kuckhoff joined the Communist Party and the SED and held a series of institutionally important posi- tions in the Soviet Zone. In 1950 she became head of the GDR state bank. She held this position until 1958 when she retired ‘due to health reasons’. She then performed various roles in the GDR Peace Council and German-British Society. She wrote prolifically throughout her life and her papers contain thousands of texts which can be classified as ‘life writing’.6 The volume of her correspondence is extensive, and it is character- ised both by historicity and heterogeneity.7 The archived letters in- clude those dating from the Weimar Republic and from her time in North America, from her imprisonment during fascism, and from the immediate postwar period until her death in 1981. They include letters to and/or from over twelve hundred different addressees, including well-known names from the political sphere (in addition to Walter Ulbricht, Otto Grotewohl, Erich Honecker, Wilhelm Pieck, Franz Dahlem), literary and cultural figures from East and West (including Anna Seghers, Elfriede Paul, Elfriede Brüning, Stefan Heym, Wolf Biermann, Ingeborg Drewitz, Günter Weisenborn) and academics and historians, particularly those in East and West engaged in writing on the ‘Rote Kapelle’ group (Georg Lukács, Jürgen Kuczynski, Heinrich Scheel, Gerald Wiemers, Heinz Höhne, Gerhard Ritter, Wilhelm Flicke), as well as many of the surviving members and relatives of the resistance to Nazism (Falk Harnack, Hans Coppi, Harald Poelchau, Martha Dodd Stern).8 As Kuckhoff often kept carbon copies of her side of the correspondence, a significant number of exchanges can be reconstructed, albeit with the ‘inevitable displacement in time’ of their responses.9 Many of these letters are, in addition, annotated with later