Interview with Robert Havemann

Abstract

Robert Havemann was born in Munich on March 11, 1910, and, after attending various secondary schools, began studying physics at the university in Berlin. In 1932 he joined the Communist Party of Germany, and he was dismissed from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics and Chemistry by the Nazis in 1933. During the fascist period he worked in the German resistance while continuing his studies of physics and chemistry. He participated first in the group Neu Beginnen and then in the organization Europiiische Union. In 1943 he was arrested by the Nazis and condemned to death. However, since he did valuable laboratory research work in the prison at Brandenburg, his sentence was continually suspended. While in prison he met Erich Honecker, who is presently the head of the SED and the government of the GDR. After the liberation in 1945 Havemann continued to work for the Communist Party which eventually became the SED in East Germany. At first he worked in West Berlin and assumed the directorship of the Scientific Institute of Berlin-Dahlem. However, he was dismissed from this post in 1950 for protesting against the H-bomb. That same year he was appointed professor for physics and chemistry at the Humboldt University in East Berlin where he also served as a deputy in the People's Chamber of Congress. Havemann was active in cultural affairs at this time and was one of the founders of the Kulturbund. By 1956 his outspoken positions on public policy had established him as a leading figure of opposition in the GDR. In the fall of 1963 he began a series of controversial lectures at the Humboldt University on the relationship between Marxism and science, which were later published in the West under the title Dialektik ohne Dogma (Dialectics without Dogma, Hamburg, 1964). The following year he was dismissed from the Academy of Sciences and the university and expelled from the Party, ostensibly for an interview given to a West German newspaper. Since then he has been prohibited from giving public lectures or talks. His writings, published only in the West, are also forbidden in the GDR, and he has been kept under constant surveillance. In November, 1976, Havemann protested the expatriation of Wolf Biermann and was placed under stringent house arrest. The following interview was conducted under great difficulties and in secret by his friend JeanPierre Hammer, a French professor of German, who resides in Paris. The interview took place in East Berlin during early December, 1977, and it appeared in an abbreviated version in Le Monde (January 21, 1978) and in 37