German Communist Party Research Articles

On the Campaign Trail: State Planning and Eigen-Sinn in a Communist Campaign to Transform the East German Countryside

Throughout its history, the East German Communist Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, hereafter SED) organized campaigns to overcome the economic and political challenges facing it and to launch new program initiatives. Whether the aim was to increase factory safety, beautify a village, or raise standards of living, the party and the East German government used mass mobilizations to shape society, or at least certain social groups. Communist campaigns were directed attempts to improve diverse sectors of society by concentrating resources on arenas marked as economically deficient and socially resistant. By directing their efforts at revolutionizing narrowly defined critical areas, Communist leaders felt that they could enact overarching societal changes. Campaigns thus served as a means to initiate new policies and to correct problems that developed later. They were an essential part both of the state planning so prevalent in Communist systems, and of the often hectic short-term initiatives endemic in such economies. These mobilization efforts were so critical to the regime that one scholar has declared that the German Democratic Republic (GDR) possessed a campaign, rather than a command economy.

East Germany: The Stasi and De-Stasification

Shortly Mikhail Gorbachev was installed as secretary general of the Soviet Union's Communist Party in the spring of 1985, he began to pursue his liberalization policies of glasnost and perestroika. The impact was felt almost immediately within the ruling Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), the Communist Party of the East German Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR). Gorbachev's policies gave new hope for political, economic, and social renewal to those disenchanted with the gerontological Stalinist leadership of Erich Honecker and his sycophants. (1) A new wind was blowing from the East, generated by the great teacher--the Soviet Union. In line with the USSR's change of course, both Moscow's German-language propaganda magazine, Sputnik, and its weekly newspaper, Neue Zeit, reprinted Gorbachev's speeches and editorialized on the necessity for reforms of the socialist system. For East Germany's leaders, however, they became hostile publications and were banned despite protests emanating from Moscow. Nonetheless, they presaged a major change: For the first time since the founding of the DDR in 1949, the restlessness of Party members and much of the citizenry could not be blamed on the capitalist enemy of the proletariat. Until the mid-1980s, opposition to the regime was largely underground, although hundreds of thousands of burghers spent time in penitentiaries for publicly voicing their discontent. The repression began immediately after the end of World War II, carried out by Soviet security services and German Communist Party veterans (both those who had been in exile in the Soviet Union and those that had survived Nazi imprisonment). Thousands of people were arrested and shipped off to the infamous former Nazi concentration camps of Sachsenhansen and Buchenwald. Initially, the inhabitants of East Germany shrugged off the wave of arrests, believing the victims to be only former Nazi officials or war criminals. Then, in spring 1946, the Soviets ordered the fusion of two archenemies, the German Communist Party (the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, or KPD) and the German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD). Outwardly, the creation of the new party, the SED, appeared to proceed smoothly. In reality, however, thousands of rank-and-file socialists opposed to the union were thrown into prisons or concentration camps. They were joined by people who had been denounced for making anticommunist or anti-Soviet remarks, hundreds of them as young as fourteen. (2) On August 16, 1947, the Soviet Military Administration (SMA) ordered the creation of the first postwar German political police. Named Kommissariat 5 (K-5), it was formally attached to the criminal investigation department of the Volkspolizei (the People's Police, or VOPO). In reality, however, it operated independently under Soviet supervision; the subterfuge was necessary because the rules of the Allied Control Commission for Germany forbade the reestablishment of a German political police. Wilhelm Zaisser, a veteran German operative for Soviet military intelligence (GRU) and a former commander of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, was named as its head. Erich Mielke, another long-time Communist agent of the Soviet security services, became Zaisser's deputy. During its early years, the K-5 arrested citizens and turned them over to the Soviet security organs for trial by Soviet military tribunals. In most cases, the proceedings lasted no more than a few minutes, often resulting in sentences of twenty-five years in a Soviet labor camp or a high security penitentiary in East Germany. (3) Less than a year later, Erich Mielke was detailed to create another secret police bearing the innocuous name of Deutsche Wirtschaftskommission, the German Economic Commission. It was charged with guarding confiscated property against misuse and sabotage, as well as with the investigation of economic crimes. …

'Schlaf ruhig. Die Erde ist dein': Eva Priester, a Political Poet in Exile

'Schlaf ruhig. Die Erde istdein5: Eva Priester, a Political Poet inExile CHARMIAN BRINSON* ImperialCollegeLondon At first glance, Eva Priester's inclusion in a volume dedicated to Austrian lyric poetry might well seem strange, since she was neither originally Austrian nor primarily a poet. The first she became cby adoption' ? a Wahl?steneicher?n ? from the mid-1930s (although she did not finally acquire Austrian citizenship until 1948); her career as a poet appears to have been kindled by and to have flourished within the exile experience, first in Czechoslovakia and then inGreat Britain,1 but then, so far as is known, not to have survived her post-war return toAustria. Eva Priester, n?eFeinstein, was born in St Petersburg in 1910 into a com fortably off, well-educated, assimilated Jewish family who spoke Russian, French and some German within the home.2 In 1921, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, the family moved to Germany where Priester com pleted her education and became a journalist, learning her trade on the celebrated liberal Berliner Tagebhtt. In Berlin she became involved first in Socialist and then, from 1933, in Communist politics, joining the KPD [German Communist Party] after the Reichstag fire. Imprisoned for a time in Germany on account of her political activities, Priester fled to Czechoslovakia and thence, in 1936, toAustria. In Vienna she continued to earn a living as a journalist, joined theKP? [Austrian Communist Party], and met and worked with Austrian Communists of note such as the poet and dramatist Jura Soyfer, who later lost his life in Buchenwald, and the * I should like to express my thanks to the following for access to archive materials and for their kind assistance and interest: the Alfred Klahr Gesellschaft, Vienna, and Dr Willi Weinert; the Deutsches Exilarchiv, Deutsche Bibliothek, Frankfurt a. M.; Hilde N?rnberger-Mareiner; Alfred Schiemer; and Erna Woodgate. 1 On the proliferation of poetry under exile conditions, see, for example, J. M. Ritchie, 'London-Gedichte von Exillyrikern inGro?britannien', inDeutschsprachige Exillyrik von igjj bis zur Nachkriegszeit, ed. by J?rg Thunecke (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA, 1998), pp. 217-34. 2 For Priester's early life,see theautobiographical fragmentfrom 1940held inEva Priester papers, Alfred Klahr Gesellschaft [AKG], Vienna, 155. See also Heide Maria Holzknecht, 'Eva Priester: Journalistin, Schriftstellerin, Historikerin' (Unpublished thesis, University of Innsbruck, 1986);and Glaudia Trost, 'Eva Priester:Ein biografischer Abri?', inDie Alfred KlahrGesellschaft und ihrArchiv. Beitr?ge zur ?sterreichischen Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Hans Hautmann (Vienna, 2000), pp. 347-70. GHARM IAN BRINSON Ii; journalist Jen? Kostmann, with whom she would continue to be profession ally associated in British exile. Itwas at this period of her life that her close identification with Austria appears to have originated.3 When, however, the Germans marched into Austria inMarch 1938, Eva Priester was by chance in Prague, where she had no option but to remain. Interestingly, it was not the Anschluss but rather the ceding of the Sudetenland toHider later that year and the occupation of Prague in 1939, which she experienced at first hand, that provided the impetus for her first, or at any rate her first published poems, inwhich she expressed rage and bitterness at these occurrences. One of the earliest, entided 5.M?rz' [15th March], takes as its central device a personification of hostile natural elements ? a common feature in her laterwork, too ? which are portrayed as in keeping with the political events while also being assigned the role of witness to the defeat of the nation: Wirbelsturm Wintersturm feg durch die Stadt, rei?e vom Baum Knospe und Blatt! Wei?er Sturm kalter Schnee fege auch du, eisiges Tuch deck alles zu! Lichter am Br?ckenturm geht schweigend aus, Finsternis h?lle Stra?e und Haus! Sturm und Schnee Finsternis saget es allen: Durch die Stadt zieht der Feind. Prag istgefallen!4 3 On this,see the latertributetoPriesterfromher old friend Walter Hollitscher, inwhich he refers to her as 'in die KP? "eingeheiratet"5 ['married into' the Austrian Communist party] (see Hollitscher, 'Kollegin, Freundin, Genossin Eva', ?steneichische Volfastimme, 13October 1979, p. 3). By the mid-1930s, Priester was already divorced from her first husband, Hans Priester, and had reportedly entered into a...

The Prospect of War? Lev Trotskii, the Soviet Army, and the German Revolution in 1923

Languishing his revolutionary career with the Trinidadian Marxist writer and critic C. L. R. James. James had just completed World Revolution, 1917-1936) his anti-Stalinist history of Communism, and the two men discussed the failures of revolution since 1917, and in particular Trotskii's supposed 'degeneration' at the height of the revolutionary crisis in Germany in 1923. James was referring to an interview Trotskii had given at the end of September 1923 in his capacity as head of the Soviet military the Workers'-Peasants' Red Army to a group of visiting American congressmen. With Germany on the verge of civil war, and Heinrich Brandler, the head of the German Communist Party (KPD), in Moscow for consultations on how best to launch an armed uprising, Trotskii's statements had been remarkably cautious, restrained, and pacifist. Senator William King, a Democrat from Utah, asked first about the prospects for war in view of the disintegration of German society: 'Is it possible that the USSR may intervene in the event of revolution in Germany?' Trotskii did not rule out war, but only a defensive war, for 'we shall not despatch a single Red Army soldier across the frontiers of Soviet Russia unless we are forcibly compelled to do so.' He disavowed any intention of interfering in an internal German affair, pointing out that 'we could intervene only by making war on Poland.' Revolutions can only succeed or fail on their own merits, Trotskii asserted, not through external aid. While the Soviet Union would welcome a German revolution, it would not go to war to bring that about; intervention in Germany would mean war with Poland, and 'war between us and Poland would mean an all-European conflagration, which would wipe the remnants of European civilization from the face of the earth. After such a war, Americans would visit Europe in order to study here the graveyard of an old culture.'1

Soviet military doctrine as strategic deception: An offensive military strategy for defense of the socialist fatherland

Soviet military doctrine from 1962 to 1987/88 was a deliberate strategic deception of both adversaries and allies. Soviet doctrine used the risk of nuclear and conventional war with NATO as a camouflage to threaten armed actions in both Germanys in support of the East German Communist Party. Soviet doctrine also threatened military intervention against political opponents of the other communist regimes of Eastern Europe. The strategy also sought to pre‐empt further defections from the Warsaw Pact, such as those of Albania and Romania. Until 1987–88, Soviet doctrine required victory on NATO territory as the only option compatible with the maskirovka (strategic deception) necessary for offensive action within the Soviet alliance system.

Shifting Sands: Changing Interpretations of the History of German Communism

This article examines the historiography of the German Communist Party in the Weimar years. The subject is of general interest because of Communism's importance to German and world history. The article focusses on two central problems: KPD relations with the Communist International and with the Social Democrats. Debates on these topics began before 1933, but intensified during the Cold War. Until 1989, the historiography was marked by dichotomy between Western and Eastern accounts. Western historians increasingly emphasized the Comintern's strategic importance to KPD direction and its Stalinization. Eastern historians were directed by the state, leading to distortion and falsification. East German writing also occasionally indicated useful avenues for research. By the 1990s, the foundations had been laid for local studies. Although these have been used to assert Stalinization's Germanic roots, this argument is dubious.

A fotomontagem como função política

O movimento dadá em Berlim distingue-se por um projeto de intervenção política, em sintonia com a orientação ideológica de vários de seus integrantes. Entre estes pode ser destacado John Heartfield, interessado, desde 1915, em desenvolver uma linguagem ao mesmo tempo moderna e acessível a um público de massa. Para tanto, lança mão da fotografia nas capas executadas para a editora Malik e é responsável pelo desenvolvimento da fotomontagem política, que divulga sobretudo numa revista do Partido Comunista Alemão, o Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung.

‘Stalinization’ and its Limits in the Saxon KPD, 1925–28

Using newly available documentation, this article re-examines the debate on the political development of the German Communist Party (KPD) during the mid-1920s. Initially, the history of the KPD was written as the history of the party’s subordination to Moscow. However, with the rise of social history, historians shifted the focus of their research to the ‘view from below’. Moscow’s omnipresence in the history of German communism was replaced by the KPD’s ability to formulate policy in response to specifically German socio-economic and political developments. Taking a position between the poles of this polarized debate, Saxony is used as a case study to demonstrate that although the party per se was ‘Stalinized’ it proved impossible to uproot the local membership from their immediate local environment. Factionalism represented the organized response of local activists against the intrusions of a remote leadership, whose promotion of Moscow’s ‘line’ clashed with their own everyday experience.

Building the East German Myth: Historical Mythology and Youth Propaganda in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-1989

Ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the political and economic structures of the former German Democratic Republic are largely understood, yet many questions remain. What actually motivated the East Germans themselves? What common goals and values kept GDR society going and, until its unexpected collapse in 1989, seemed to make it into a relative success story?Building the East German Myth examines the East German communist party's propagandistic treatment of German high culture, antifascism, German-Soviet friendship, and the German nationalist tradition. In this pathbreaking study, Alan Nothnagle argues that the party's mass events and indoctrination campaigns were not mere propaganda, but rather an ingenious program of mythbuilding by which young people were instilled with a dynamic and nearly inescapable mythology. Using a wealth of previously unexplored sources, Nothnagle shows this mythology was as essential to the GDR's existence as the Wall of the Soviet occupation and, as its leaders discovered in 1989, the GDR could not survive without it.Alongside the economic and human costs this book demonstrates, the loss of honesty, subtlety, and a sense of proportion may represent the most devastating legacy of the East German experience.Written to appeal to both specialists and non-specialists, Building the East German Myth will prove essential reading for those interested in German and European history, communism, political propaganda, and Cold War culture.Alan L. Nothnagle is Assistant Professor of History, Europa-Universitat Viadrina in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany.

German Women Paleobotanists From the 1920S to the 1970S—Or Why Did This Story Start So Late?

This study documents women paleobotanists and their achievements from the late 1920s to the early 1970s in Germany. More than forty women were involved in paleobotanical research and related fields during this period. After they had finished their degrees, about two thirds of them left the field for private, political, and/or economic reasons. Several of them, however, had a successful career or were even leaders in their field. Compared with other disciplines and neighbouring countries, the unusually late entry of women students into this discipline from the 1930s on is explained by the close affiliation of the discipline with Paleozoic geology and mining in Germany before 1945. It is significant that of the thirteen women who finished a degree in the field before 1945, about two thirds studied Quaternary pollen analysis and vegetation history. Only a minority was involved in pre-Quaternary paleobotany. After World War II, the number of women scientists increased noticeably only when Tertiary palynology/paleobotany became more important sub-disciplines of paleobotany, a pattern which was similar in both parts of the newly divided country. During the period between 1945 and 1955, the number of women students in West Germany was significantly higher than in the East. This is partly explained by the policies of the East German communist party, which put restrictions on women students from a middle-class background. Between 1955 and 1973 the number of women students in East Germany exceeded those in the West. This was due to the East German party policy of activating the female working force, especially in fields which had been traditionally occupied by men, such as geology, mining, and engineering.

Approach/avoidance: Communists and women in East Germany, 1945-9

This article explores the shifting strategies of the German Communist party (KPD, later SED) towards the woman question in the Soviet zone of occupation. In the fluid post-war situation, the KPD/SED had to resort to heterodox experiments as it attempted, initially, to mobilize electoral support among women and, later, to organize women on the shopfloor. Women Communists played a prominent role in these efforts which included the creation of a women's league. In consequence, they enjoyed more influence in the young SED than ever before (or after) in the German Communist movement. As they proceeded, activists stumbled, however, not only against the hostility of women towards the Communist message but also against the resistance of male comrades and trade union leaders to apolitical, proto-feminist appeals. To break internal impasses, women relied on the support of the top leadership and, especially, Soviet command. If the centralization of power initially helped their cause, the tightening of the Stalinist vice in 1948-9 knocked out its foundations. Electoral politics counted for little, while women's integration in the workforce slid down the ladder of priorities. Its separatist tendencies quashed, the women's league continued only as a transmission belt of the party line to housewives.

Kontinuitat und Bruch. Georg Schrimpf zwischen Raterepublik und NS-Herrschaft

A profile of the German painter Georg Schrimpf. Schrimpf was an anarchist and member of the German Communist Party who later became a professor in Berlin and sold works to Nazi leaders. He opposed the Nazis, but they admired his rather conventional depictions of rural Bavaria. The Nazi ideologists saw them as ideal images of rural Germany, which they regarded as the real Germany.

The Production of “Official Memory” in East Germany: Old Communists and the Dilemmas of Memoir-Writing

InEast Germany, official memory was reputedly embodied in Old Communists, those men and women who had joined the German Communist Party (KPD) before Hitler's rise to power in 1933. After 1945, the Socialist Unity Party (SED), East Germany's ruling party, exploited the tragic experiences of Old Communists during the Third Reich—exile, resistance, and concentration–camp incarceration—to foster a triumphant official memory of heroic, Communist-led antifascist struggle. Intended to legitimate the SED regime, this official memory was rehearsed in countless “lieux de mémoire,” including films, novels, school textbooks, museum exhibitions, and commemorative rituals. Concurrently, party authorities encouraged Old Communists to share their past lives with younger East Germans; in particular, they urged Old Communists to write memoirs of their participation in the antifascist struggle against Hitler.

“Pioneers of a New Germany”: Returning POWs from the Soviet Union and the Making of East German Citizens, 1945–1950

Inearly December 1945, the Communist Party functionary Karl Lewke sent an alarming report to the leadership of the German Communist Party (KPD). It was entitled “One million anti-Bolshevists are approaching. The democratic reconstruction of Germany is threatened by greatest dangers!” The report referred to the thousands of returning German POWs from the Soviet Union who daily entered the Soviet zone of occupation through Frankfurt an der Oder. Lewke's description of the mentality and the attitudes of these returning POWs was not very comforting for his party superiors in Berlin.

Theology Not Ecology

New Perspectives QuarterlyVolume 16, Issue 2 p. 52-54 Theology Not Ecology RUDOLF BAHRO, RUDOLF BAHRO Released from prison in 1979 as a result of public-opinion pressure n the West, Bahro emigrated to West Germany where he became a founding theorist of the Green Party. His most recent book is entitled The Logic of Salvation.Search for more papers by this author RUDOLF BAHRO, RUDOLF BAHRO Released from prison in 1979 as a result of public-opinion pressure n the West, Bahro emigrated to West Germany where he became a founding theorist of the Green Party. His most recent book is entitled The Logic of Salvation.Search for more papers by this author First published: 28 June 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/0893-7850.00226 RUDOLF BAHRO Once a loyal supporter of the East German Communist Party, Rudolf Bahro was arrested in 1977 after the publication of his book, The Alternative in Eastern Europe, in which he called for a Gorbachev-style perestroika a decade too early. NPQ Editor Nathan Gardels spoke with Bahro in the Eifel Mountain hamlet of Niederstadtfeldt where he made his home until he died in 1997. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume16, Issue2Spring 1999Pages 52-54 RelatedInformation

Deploying soldiers, deploying words

An underlying assumption of this issue's theme is that not only can language be manipulated to serve political interests, but using language differently opens spaces for political action which can reinforce or go beyond existing parameters of thinking. Often, linguistic strategies enable political action, for good or ill, which previously would have been proscribed. In postwar Germany, the use of the military abroad was a taboo written in the blood of the Second World War. Yet in 1995 German combat troops were sent with overwhelming support as part of a peacekeeping mission to the former Yugoslavia, a location that nary a year earlier the German Foreign Minister had sworn German troops would never again encounter. How was it possible that in the course of one year the German government garnered parliamentary support and undertook a historic first with relatively little public debate? The usual answers, which lie in the pragmatics of politics—the exigencies of the NATO alliance, for example, or the sheer urgency of the situation in Bosnia—are seldom adequate to explain how such a decision came to be. For this we need to look at the workings of language and politics in the development of policy. The post‐Cold‐War/post‐unification era in Germany unsettled myriad concepts and terms, from German national identity to the meaning of war and peace. New situations have arisen with no clear guide to political action, and existing policy and identity discourses stemming from the Cold War found themselves struggling to establish themselves anew. A discourse establishes itself by controlling meaning—by setting the boundaries of interpretation. A discourse is said to prevail when it succeeds in establishing linguistic dominance over the meaning of key terms in a given context. Controlling meaning is a linguistic strategy that sets the parameters of the possible, both for understanding the past and for constructing the future. Becoming aware of this process aids both political and historical analysis, and the search for ways to transcend some of the more confrontative strategies and consciously move the interplay of discourses to a more hermeneutic level. Let us observe this process at work in the case of the first postwar deployment of German combat troops, exactly 50 years after 1945. I refer to the supporters of deployment as the “prevailing discourse"—these consist primarily of the governing conservative—liberal coalition and a majority of the opposition Social Democrats. Those opposed to the use of the German military abroad I refer to as the counter discourse. They are almost exclusively composed of the remaining Social Democrats, Greens, and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS; the successor to the defunct East German Communist Party).

The death of the KPD: communism and anti-communism in West Germany, 1945-1956

Why was the West German Communist Party banned in 1956, only 11 years after it had emerged from Nazi persecution? Although politically weak, the postwar party was in fact larger than its Weimar predecessor and initially dominated works councils at the Ruhr pits and Hamburg docks, as well as the steel giant, Krupp. Under the control of East Berlin, however, the KPD was sent off on a series of overambitious and flawed campaigns to promote national unification and prevent West German rearmament. At the same time, the party was steadily criminalized by the Anglo-American occupiers, and ostracized by a heavily anti-communist society. Patrick Major has used material available only since the end of the Cold War, from both Communist archives in the former GDR as well as western intelligence, to trace the final decline and fall of the once-powerful KPD.

The Meanings and Function of Anti-System Ideology in the Weimar Republic

The Meanings and Function of Anti-System Ideology in the Weimar Republic Ben Lieberman There are few, if any, ideological terms in the extensive historiography of the Weimar Republic so omnipresent and yet at the same time so obscure as the word “system.” Historical accounts of the Weimar Republic are strewn with references to the “system.” In recent works on the Weimar Republic Hagen Schulze points to the opposition of bourgeois (bürgerliche) parties to the “Weimar ‘system,’ “ Detlev Peukert notes “hatred of ‘the system,’ the political and social order of the Republic”; Knut Borchardt observes the loss of faith in the capacity of “the system” to satisfy expectations; and Hans Mommsen refers to the “political system,” the “party system” and the “parliamentary system.” 1 Historians, whatever their other differences, agree that mounting opposition to the System weakened the Weimar Republic, but the usefulness of this observation requires analysis of the meaning or meanings of the System. What, then, was the Weimar System? Surprisingly, many accounts of the Weimar Republic do not even attempt to provide a definition of the System, and the term receives only cursory treatment in several specialized works on ideology of the Weimar era. 2 Anti-System politics does receive attention, but Thomas [End Page 355] Childers’s insightful and pioneering essay on “anti-system politics” concentrates on mobilization against the System rather than on the problem of defining it. 3 The best existing analysis of the System in Kurt Sontheimer’s valuable study of anti-democratic thought in the Weimar Republic suggests that historians cannot take the meaning of the term as a given. Sontheimer establishes that the System formed part of the array of anti-democratic thought of the Weimar Republic, but he also notes that the term’s meaning cannot easily be pinned down. The System conveyed a variety of political and economic meanings and ultimately formed a “nationalist counter myth.” 4 During the Weimar Republic, attacks against the System emanated from a wide range of sources, most notably from a variety of nationalists as well as from Communists. Nationalists of many leanings detested the System. The DNVP (German National People’s Party), the largest political party of the right for most of the Weimar Republic, hated the System. So, too, did conservative revolutionaries and völkisch (ethnic or racist nationalist) groups including nationalist associations and the National Socialists. At the other end of the political spectrum, attacks against the System also surfaced in the pronouncements of the KPD (German Communist Party). 5 No single ideological line of attack doomed the Weimar Republic, but use by an extraordinarily broad range of political groups lent tremendous force to anti-System discourse. Adopted by foes who sometimes agreed on little else, the System was the targets of repeated attacks spread across the German political spectrum and called into question Weimar legitimacy. Analyzing this broad pattern of use raises several tasks. As a prelude to investigating anti-System terminology, it is necessary to map out the patterns of use of the System during the Weimar Republic. The very ability of rival groups to adopt anti-System suggests that the System incorporated varied meanings. Beyond investigating the meaning or meanings of the System, an analysis of anti-System terminology should also explore the appeal and influence of anti-System terminology. Why did such a broad range of groups adopt anti-System discourse, and how did acceptance of anti-System terminology help to discredit the Weimar Republic and designate alternatives for Germany’s future? [End Page 356] Describing Weimar’s perceived failings, anti-System terminology simultaneously provided a partial guide to a presumably-better Germany without the System. The System came to envelop many institutions of German public life, but attention should also be paid to spaces left unoccupied by the System. What, if any, institutions or structures of public life were left untainted by the broad wave of attacks against the System? If the hated System could be swept away, what would be left in its place? It is noteworthy that the many enemies of the System generally desired a strong state. Exploring the effects of broad attacks against the System, analysis of the System should also...

The Meanings and Function of Anti-System Ideology in the Weimar Republic

The Meanings and Function of Anti-System Ideology in the Weimar Republic Ben Lieberman There are few, if any, ideological terms in the extensive historiography of the Weimar Republic so omnipresent and yet at the same time so obscure as the word “system.” Historical accounts of the Weimar Republic are strewn with references to the “system.” In recent works on the Weimar Republic Hagen Schulze points to the opposition of bourgeois (bürgerliche) parties to the “Weimar ‘system,’ “ Detlev Peukert notes “hatred of ‘the system,’ the political and social order of the Republic”; Knut Borchardt observes the loss of faith in the capacity of “the system” to satisfy expectations; and Hans Mommsen refers to the “political system,” the “party system” and the “parliamentary system.” 1 Historians, whatever their other differences, agree that mounting opposition to the System weakened the Weimar Republic, but the usefulness of this observation requires analysis of the meaning or meanings of the System. What, then, was the Weimar System? Surprisingly, many accounts of the Weimar Republic do not even attempt to provide a definition of the System, and the term receives only cursory treatment in several specialized works on ideology of the Weimar era. 2 Anti-System politics does receive attention, but Thomas [End Page 355] Childers’s insightful and pioneering essay on “anti-system politics” concentrates on mobilization against the System rather than on the problem of defining it. 3 The best existing analysis of the System in Kurt Sontheimer’s valuable study of anti-democratic thought in the Weimar Republic suggests that historians cannot take the meaning of the term as a given. Sontheimer establishes that the System formed part of the array of anti-democratic thought of the Weimar Republic, but he also notes that the term’s meaning cannot easily be pinned down. The System conveyed a variety of political and economic meanings and ultimately formed a “nationalist counter myth.” 4 During the Weimar Republic, attacks against the System emanated from a wide range of sources, most notably from a variety of nationalists as well as from Communists. Nationalists of many leanings detested the System. The DNVP (German National People’s Party), the largest political party of the right for most of the Weimar Republic, hated the System. So, too, did conservative revolutionaries and völkisch (ethnic or racist nationalist) groups including nationalist associations and the National Socialists. At the other end of the political spectrum, attacks against the System also surfaced in the pronouncements of the KPD (German Communist Party). 5 No single ideological line of attack doomed the Weimar Republic, but use by an extraordinarily broad range of political groups lent tremendous force to anti-System discourse. Adopted by foes who sometimes agreed on little else, the System was the targets of repeated attacks spread across the German political spectrum and called into question Weimar legitimacy. Analyzing this broad pattern of use raises several tasks. As a prelude to investigating anti-System terminology, it is necessary to map out the patterns of use of the System during the Weimar Republic. The very ability of rival groups to adopt anti-System suggests that the System incorporated varied meanings. Beyond investigating the meaning or meanings of the System, an analysis of anti-System terminology should also explore the appeal and influence of anti-System terminology. Why did such a broad range of groups adopt anti-System discourse, and how did acceptance of anti-System terminology help to discredit the Weimar Republic and designate alternatives for Germany’s future? [End Page 356] Describing Weimar’s perceived failings, anti-System terminology simultaneously provided a partial guide to a presumably-better Germany without the System. The System came to envelop many institutions of German public life, but attention should also be paid to spaces left unoccupied by the System. What, if any, institutions or structures of public life were left untainted by the broad wave of attacks against the System? If the hated System could be swept away, what would be left in its place? It is noteworthy that the many enemies of the System generally desired a strong state. Exploring the effects of broad attacks against the System, analysis of the System should also...

The politics of economic decline in East Germany, 1945-1989

This work offers a comprehensive study of East German economic policy over the course of the state's 40-year history. Analyzing both the making of economic policy at the national level and the implementation of specific policies on the shop floor, it provides a background to the revolution of 1989. In particular, the author shows how decisions made at critical junctures in East Germany's history led to a pattern of economic decline and worker dissatisfaction that contributed to eventual political collapse. East Germany was generally considered to have the most successful in the Eastern Bloc, but the author explores what prevented the country's leaders from responding effectively to pressing economic problems. He depicts a regime caught between the demands of a disaffected working class whose support was crucial to continued political stability, an intractable bureaucracy, an intolerant but surprisingly weak Soviet patron state, and a harsh international economic climate. Rather than pushing for genuine economic change, the East German Communist Party retreated into what the author calls a campaign economy in which an endless series of production campaigns was used to squeeze greater output from an inherently inefficient economic system.