Class Relations, Consumption and Social Policies in the Cold War Germanies

Abstract

Christoph Kleßmann's imposing synthesis on workers in the East German ‘worker state’ is nothing less than a political and social history of the Ulbricht era. In 800 tight pages, the author stages a remarkably solid and clear story in which rulers and workers move between two reference poles: the expectations of the official ideology and the achievements of the West German rival. He skilfully relates the history of all central institutions involved in labour processes and legislation, describes the forms taken by social tensions and compromises, and alternately looks at broader tendencies, regional specificities and enterprise cases. His unifying thread remains the tumultuous changes in class relations under the impact of a Soviet-like version of socialism and the existence of the Federal Republic, yet he manages to make sense of most political, economic and social developments in the GDR until 1971. Other authors such as Jeffrey Kopstein had previously attempted a similar exercise, but their works were not able to benefit from the number of pages allowed by the series on the History of Workers and of Labour Movements in Germany, which publishes this book. Kleßmann makes use of this literature but also distinguishes himself from other authorities such as Peter Hübner on labour relations, or André Steiner on the economy, whose work inspires key passages in his book, by means of the preponderance attributed to what he calls the ‘West German magnetic field’. Rarely does an author provide such a meticulous look at West Germany while writing on East Germany. Although the argument that East German rulers and workers used the Federal Republic as a ‘reference society’ and ‘gauge’ for developments at home (p. 27) is not new, Kleßmann's use of the ‘magnetic field’ metaphor allows him to ascribe social and political developments in the GDR to the influence of the Federal Republic in a much more extensive manner than has usually been done. This claim to a coherent and grand idea is very ambitious and stimulating, but it turns out to be rather frustrating when the author uses the magnet concept as a catch-all metaphor. With it he also explains developments that were merely common to the two German states, such as the emergence of a vast social policy, or born out of specific political constraints, such as worker claims for free elections. As enlightening as it may be to provide a role for the Federal Republic in a monograph on the GDR, it does not need to be the final word on the subject.