Eric Angermann 4Agency and Its Limits: African Unionists as Africa’s “Vanguard” at the FDGB CollegeinBernau¹ On January 30,1961, Werner Raase’sterm of office endedabruptly.Raasehad served as the first director of the Institut fürAusländerstudium (Institute for For- eign Students), the most recent institution added to the East German trade union college, the Hochschule der Deutschen Gewerkschaften “FritzHeckert” in Bernau near Berlin.Onlyone dayearlier,the responsible federal executive of the central trade union federation which ranthe college, the Freie Deutsche Gewerkschafts- bund (FDGB), had decided to dismiss four persons: Raaseand his deputy,a teacher and an interpreter.² The FDGBexecutive criticized not onlythe theoretical and didactic short- comings in the teachingofstate-socialist Marxism-Leninism,for which Raase was held responsible. The decision to dismiss him was also basedonaninter- vention by 17 African students, whose requestfor atalk led high-ranked mem- bers of the Abteilung Internationale Verbindungen (International Relations Department) of the federal executive to travel to Bernau.³ The accusations sub- sequentlycollected wereserious.Inaddition to the criticism of insufficient “po- litical leadership” of the institute’sdirectorate,⁴ the second major point of cri- tique were racist statements made by Raaseand other teachers.For example, This essayisbased on my MA thesis published in 2018, in which the third Afro-Asian course at the FDGB collegefrom1961to1963isanalyzedinapraxeological and microhistorical investiga- tion. With regardtoAfricanstudents,the analysis focuses not onlyontheir agency, but also on their social background and motivations for studyinginthe GDR as well as their actions.Pas- sagesofthe work arealso contained in this essay; see Eric Angermann, “‘Ihr gehört auch zur Avantgarde’:African trade unionists at the FDGB’sacademyFritz Heckert (1961–1963)” (Master’s thesis,Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 2018). Ithank Tenzin Sekhon very much for his sup- port in the translation of my contribution into English and ImmanuelR.Harisch for his helpful remarks. “Sekretariatsvorlage:Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung der Arbeit am Ausländerinstitut der Hochschule der DeutschenGewerkschaften”,January 19,1961, 1, StiftungArchivder Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, Berlin (henceforth: SAPMO-BArch), DY 79/406. Ibid., 3. “Abschlußanalyse des 2. Lehrgangsfür afro-asiatische Studenten an der Hochschule der DeutschenGewerkschaften ‘Fritz Heckert’”,September 1960 – Mai 1961, June 2, 1961, 5, SAPMO-BArch, DY 79/406. OpenAccess. ©2021Eric Angermann, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623543-004 116 Eric Angermann whilst drunk, he had supposedlyclaimed that in order to receive asuit in the GDR,one had to come from Africa. Similarly, the teacher who was also dismissed had allegedlysaid: “Youcome with emptysuitcases and leave with full suitcas- es”.⁵ These hostile remarks pointed to the fact thatthe incomingstudentsofthe FDGB’strade union collegewereprovided with clothing such as suits – apolicy which aggravated social envy and xenophobia. The “existenceofnationalist arrogance”,asthe FDGBexecutive called the racist remarks, was one of the decisive reasons for their dismissal.⁶ Even though the responsible FDGB officeshad alreadycriticized Raase beforehand, it wasap- parentlythe intervention of African students thatwas the immediate cause for his sacking.Some students had explicitlythreatened to abandon their studies.⁷ It was preciselythis threat by the studentsfrom Ghana and Mali, whose re- spective homecountries werepromotingsocialist policiesatthe time, that would probablyhavemeant aforeign policysetback for the GDR.Intimes of the West German Hallstein Doctrine—and several years before the GDR succeeded in es- tablishingplaces of socialist encounters in the Global South⁸—was the provision of studyplaces at the FDGBcollegefor foreign trade unionists, mainlyfrom Af- rican countries,who came to the GDR at the beginning of the 1960s, asignificant project in East Germany’sinternational solidarity work, in which the FDGB as- sumed a “leadership role”.⁹ Thecourse in Bernautargeted asocial group in which the FDGB invested political hopes. Thiswas based on the ideologyof Marxism-Leninism – accordingtoGeorge Bodie,afundamental factor of the “pedagogical model of the GDR”¹⁰ – which, in its historical determinism, as- signed acentral, progressive role in the struggle for world socialism to the trade unions prominentlyinvolvedindecolonization struggles in the Global “Sekretariatsvorlage:Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung der Arbeit am Ausländerinstitut der Hochschule der DeutschenGewerkschaften”,January 19,1961, 4, SAPMO-BArch, DY 79/406. Ibid. Ibid., 3. See JörgDepta and Anne-Kristin Hartmetz, this volume. Gregory Witkowski, “Between Fighters and Beggars:Socialist Philantrophyand the Imagery of Solidarity”,inComrades of Color:East Germany in the Cold WarWorld,ed. Quinn Slobodian (New York: Berghahn Books,2015), 75.For the roleofthe FDGB as an instrument in the foreign policyrecognition efforts of the GDR see Ilona Schleicher, “Elementeentwicklungspolitischer Zusammenarbeit in der Tätigkeit vonFDGB und FDJ”,inEntwicklungspolitische Zusammenarbeit in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der DDR, ed. Hans-JörgBücking(Berlin: Duncker&Hum- blot,1998), 112–113. George Bodie, “Where Do Correct IdeasCome From?The FDGB Institutefor Foreign Students and the Comingofthe Sino-Soviet Split” (paperpresented at the conference SocialistEducation- al Cooperation with the Global South,Gießen, Germany, May11–12,2018), 6. 4Agency and Its Limits 117 South. The assessment was based on the marginal spreadofcommunist parties, especiallyinsub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, the orthodoxnotion of historical materialism necessitated an expectation that the workingclassshould be united primarilyintrade unions as the “class organization[s] of the proletariat”.¹¹ Thus, in this case it was not onlyamatter of the diplomatic recognition of the GDR as asovereign state,but alsoofthe projection of avanguard onto the African trade unionists, who in this sense playedanimportant role in the state-socialist ideas of asocio-political transformation.¹² In the so-called afro- asiatische Lehrgänge (Afro-Asian courses) of the Bernauinstitute, then, “class- conscious, modest,sacrificial trade union functionaries” weretobeinstructed on how to organize and educatethe “workingclass of Africa as the vanguard of the African peoples […]for the improvement of workingand living condi- tions”.¹³ Furthermore, these “solidarity measures” werelinked to the goal of “ef- fective support for the anti-imperialist,anti-colonial, national liberation strug- gles”.¹⁴ This contribution focuses preciselyonthis alleged vanguard of Africa, which in the early1960s went to studyatthe FDGB collegeasone of the most important East Germanplaces of transnationalsocialist encounter.Incontrast to aspectsof their social mobility, discussed by ImmanuelR.Harisch,¹⁵ the analysis focuses on the agency of the African trade unionists vis-à-vis the institute’sdirectorate and the FDGBofficials on the ground. Iargue that, on the one hand, the (almost exclusivelymale) African course participants¹⁶ knew how to use the vanguard- concept they were studying,aswell as the unstable foreign policy situation of Friedrich Engels, “Brief an Bebel”,inMEW vol. 19 (Berlin: Dietz, 1973), 6. ImmanuelR.Harisch, “‘Mit gewerkschaftlichem Gruß!’ Afrikanische GewerkschafterInnen an der FDGB-Gewerkschaftshochschule Fritz Heckert in der DDR”, Stichproben. Vienna Journal of African Studies 34 (2018): 82–83; Schleicher, “Elementeentwicklungspolitischer Zusammenar- beit”,111–112. “Sekretariatsinformation: Analyseder Arbeit im 3. afro-asiatischenLehrgangander Hoch- schule der DeutschenGewerkschaften ‘Fritz Heckert’”,May 6, 1963, 2, SAPMO-BArch, DY 79/ 2500. “Präsidiumsvorlage zur Arbeit des FDGB und seiner Gewerkschaften nach Afrika”,Janu- ary 11, 1960,3–4, SAPMO-BArch, DY 79/406. Harisch, ‘Mit gewerkschaftlichemGruß!’,97–100. Most of the course participants (hardlysurprisingly) came fromthe workingclass.Most of them were originallyoffice workers (in public service,asteachers or in the health sector)or dock and port workers, “trade workers” or railroadworkersinthe transport industry.However, in retrospect it is not possible to reconstruct which trade unionists alreadyworked as function- aries at the beginningofthe course. But after their studies in Bernau, several participants took over highpositions in their trade unions.For moredetails on their social background see Anger- mann, ‘Ihr gehört auch zur Avantgarde’,53–61. 118 Eric Angermann the GDR,toimprovethe teachingand living conditions at the FDGBcollegeto their benefit.Asthe introductory example shows, the trade unionists of the Glob- al South werealsoable to intervene against racist incidents with some success. On the other hand, the African trade unionists, who, in theirrole as students in Bernau, appropriated such projections (stubbornlyoreigen-sinnig¹⁷)asself- images, alsohad to face the limits of their agency.Although they wereable to protest openlyagainst the responsible functionaries without the risk of having to suffer repressive measures – in contrasttothe East German population, which as arule had only “silent forms of defiance”¹⁸ at its disposal – the scope of action of the African course participants and that of the autochthonous inhabitants of