Leipzig's Communist Legacy, Party 4... the Stasi vs the Cure

Youth in the Stasi's Crosshairs: "Crypt-ies"

A Grufti (Goth)

I wrote my master's thesis on East German youth in the 70s, so I was really excited to visit this temporary exhibition in the Runde Ecke Museum. As you ascended the four stories to the top of a staircase, you could look at displays explaining all the different youth subcultures in the GDR. Each display included Stasi documents describing the attributes of each group, photographs of kids who they picked up for questioning, and transcripts of interrogations. The groups included "trampers" (hippies), punks, skinheads, "rockers" (metal-heads), and "grufties" (goths). Of course all of these subcultures were a threat to the East German state--they all rejected the values of "real, existing socialism". Some rejected materialism, others embraced anarchy or even fascism. Goths retreated into a kind of romantic-nihilistic fantasy world.

I'm including some of the documents below. The first two images are from a Stasi briefing document. It explains what goths are, what they do, and what they believe. Under "Characteristics" they are described as a "New Manifestation" since 1987. Distinguishing characteristics include teased hair, white pancake makeup, red lips, heavy black eyeliner, black clothing. In particular, agents should know about their "calm demeanor, vampire-thoughts (they would like to sleep in caskets)". They like listening to "De Guere". Seeing as there was no such goth band in 1987, I assume this is supposed to be "The Cure".

What else of note? 

1) They go to dance parties, "seldom laugh, display a depressed attitude". 

2) They believe in resurrection of the dead (a big deal in communist East Germany)

3) In extreme cases they use coffins as pieces of furniture to store clothing to sleep in. They cover the floors with a layer of dirt. 

Finally, I leave the transcript of an interrogation. The official wants to know whether the goths plan their meetings in graveyards and if they engage in acts of vandalism. The suspect explains that none of it is planned in advance. They just like to go to clubs and then meet afterwards to hang out. Nevertheless, it's clear from the document that the suspect has already provided the officer with a list of names.

East Germans talk about how they developed a Nischengesellschaft (niche/alcove-society). Because the state insisted on public support and carefully policed people's public speech, it was only possible to speak with total freedom when you met in private with small groups of like-minded friends and family. I can see how some GDR youth would turn to the goth subculture--more than any other, it felt like a retreat into an alcove.

I leave you with The Cure in all their glorious emo-cryptiness...

Nuremberg and the Nazi Party Rally Grounds

Zeppelinfeld with "dome of light"

If you've watched even a single documentary about Nazi Germany or the Second World War, you've been exposed to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Riefenstahl's record of the 1934 Nazi "Party Rally of Unity and Strength" in 1934 is almost two soul-deadening, sleep-inducing hours long. One long homage to mass politics and a love letter to Hitler and his fanatical base, the film shows us precisely how fascism replaces genuine participatory democracy with its superficially popular, granite-faced facade. The Leader stands stone-faced, watching as his paramilitary forces parade past the review stand. He greets the German Workers' Front. He meets with the Hitler Youth in a huge soccer stadium. He and his goon lieutenants give speech after speech. It goes on and on and on.

Leni shooting Triumph in 1935

I viewed Triumph in its entirety at some time during the 90s. It was probably for one of my graduate school classes. I had read about Riefenstahl's "genius" and the film's artistic merit; I thought that the film had been forbidden in postwar Germany; I knew that it possessed a dark mystique. Wasn't it possible that Riefenstahl's genius and Nazism's seductive message would pollute anyone who watched the film and make them more susceptible to fascism's power? I didn't think so, but I also had no interest in watching it--perhaps skinheads thought it was excellent. I don't know. In any case, I know I felt awkward renting it from the local Blockbuster. Almost nothing says "I'm creepy" quite like being the guy standing at the check-out counter with a VHS copy of Triumph of the Will.

In any event, I found it tedious and would never watch the whole thing again. The crowd scenes are certainly impressive and the staging is truly monumental, but there's not much to keep the viewer engaged. Marching and speeches fill the frame. Unless you're the kind of person who enjoys watching The State of the Union, you won't get much from Triumph of the Will.

Nonetheless, I finally visited Nuremberg and the Reichsparteitagsgelände (Reichs-Party-Day-Grounds). While I've always enjoyed visiting historical battlefields, I've never been much interested in touring the ruins of Nazi Party structures. So I thought it was really groovy touring the inside of one of Berlin's flak-towers and I loved standing in La Gleize with it's giant tank and looking out over the rolling hills of the Ardennes. But visiting the skeleton of former Gestapo detention cells in Berlin's Topography of Terror museum felt obligatory. I wanted to go. It was important to go. At the same time, the spaces simply recall how truly evil people can be to one another. I suppose it seems strange that I would differentiate between sites of battlefield violence and sites of terror. I don't pretend to have an explanation for that.

The incomplete Congress Hall was to ultimately house 50,000 party members

In many ways, this reminded me of my visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. I didn't "look forward" to the visit and approached it more as a duty. Nuremberg's Party-Grounds didn't evoke the swirl of feelings Birkenau did--I can't imagine another site that could evoke such powerful feelings of terror, pathos, and rage. However, while walking across the 60 meter-wide parking lot that used to be the "Great Street", the concrete reality of the regime's existence sank in. These massive structures--half-completed and crumbling, re-purposed, still--like the arid skeletal remains of Birkenau--have the capacity to shock us into recognition that the things we study from the safe distance of a library or inside a classroom are concrete, physical manifestations of the human capacity to embrace evil.

I walked the entire length of the grounds--from the incomplete Congress Hall (housing the documentation center) to the ruins of the Zeppelin Field and the Luitpold Arena.

Grand-standing...

My favorite memory is a brief conversation I had standing on Albert Speer's Zeppelin Field ramparts. A gaggle of German middle-schoolers were there for a student field trip. I watched them take turns at the grandstand (who can resist standing there and looking out over the field?). A gray-haired man addressed me while I watched. He grew up in Thuringia (East Germany) and it was his first trip to the Party Grounds as well. We chatted about my trip to the Runde Ecke in Leipzig and the "Youth in the Crosshairs of the Stasi" exhibition. That's when he shared with me that the Stasi had interrogated him in the 70s. In 1968, Rudi Dutschke, the most outspoken leader of the (West) German SDS (Socialist German Student Union), was shot in the head by a radical anti-communist; in 1979 he died due to complications from the wound. My new acquaintance had gathered with some of his friends to drink beers and "pour one out" in Dutschke's honor. Shortly afterwards, the Stasi picked him up, accusing him of leading the Thuringian branch of the SDS. You might think that the East Germans would welcome another socialist organization, but the New Left despised the Soviet-inspired socialism of the Warsaw Pact states.

I too stood on the grandstand. Then I returned to the Congress Hall and toured the museum. The permanent exhibition provides any visitor an excellent narrative overview of the entire rise and fall of German fascism. I strongly recommend it--it's very manageable and the audio tour is excellent. In the last room, there was a display on the Nuremberg Trials and punishment of the defendants. I admit to feeling a shameful, savage pleasure looking at images of the executed Nazis.

Then there's the famous footage of American G.I.s blowing the swastika off the top of the Zepplinfeld ramparts. Enjoy.



ALSO...
Steffen Suuck's film and online project, Controlled / Decay: Everyday Among Hitler's Ruins, provides an excellent overview of the grounds for those who can speak/read German. Even if you can't, the film shows how today's Germans interact with the remnants of the regime.

Leipzig's Communist Legacy, Part 3... Stasi Banality

The title of the permanent exhibition in the "Runde Ecke" Museum is "Stasi--Power and Banality". Hannah Arendt famously wrote about "the banality of evil" when covering the Eichmann trial in '63. She noted that Eichmann was no sociopath. Rather, he carried out his tasks with an eye to his own advancement in the way many of us do. Clearly, the curators of the "Macht und Banalität” exhibition want to impress on visitors how the police state in the GDR relied on an army of equally unremarkable civil servants who forged documents, manufactured disguises, and removed scent samples from interrogation rooms to save in glass jars. 

The Office

More than anything else, however, I came away exhausted by the sheer volume of documentary evidence on display. I thought the most interesting piece of the exhibition was the preserved office of a high-ranking official. It looks a little bit like Jonathan Pryce’s office in Brazil. In fact, the more I thought about it the more it seems that Terry Gilliam was really onto something deeply true in the way he imagined a future dystopia. The Stasi was a busy hive of busy bureaucrats who must have believed there was nothing particularly remarkable about what they did most days. 

Leipzig's Communist Legacy Part 2... Uprisng on June 17, 1953

On Friday, I returned to Leipzig by S-Bahn. Like Thursday, it was terrifically hot, and Germans aren’t known for cranking up the AC. My initial plan was to eat some currywurst and head directly to the “Runde Ecke” Museum. But I decided I would walk around for a bit to get oriented first, hugging whichever side of the street provided more shade.

That’s when I stumbled onto this:

Tank tracks in Leipzig

At first I thought the bronze tank track imprints were some kind of access grates. Instead, they memorialize the 1953 Volksaufstand (or Arbeiteraufstand—both are equally valid names). When I saw the memorial, I assumed it made reference to the events in East Berlin along the Stalinallee. I didn’t realize that the uprising spread to multiple East German cities! Later, I purchased two books on the topic at the Runde Ecke Museum. 

The extent of the Uprising

There were multiple factors that contributed to the uprising: increased defense spending alongside reparations to the Soviet Union combined with higher taxes, scarcity of consumer goods, and the increasing suppression of political opposition. However, the event that appears to have triggered the protest was a threat to cut the pay of Berlin workers constructing the Stalinalle. By the following morning workers were striking throughout the GDR and demanding more than a reduction in production quotas--now many demanded that the government resign.  Walter Ulbricht turned to the Soviets for aid. Tanks flooded the cities and in many instances used live ammunition to disperse the crowds, killing up to 125 East Germans. 

In 1990, I was actually considering writing about the June 17 Uprising. Robert Koehl was my Senior Thesis advisor at UW-Madison, and he encouraged me to research and write about the SS instead. I’m glad he did. First of all, there was there not enough information in general circulation (the East German authorities insisted for years that the event was a provocation coordinated by fascists and the CIA). In addition, there’s no way I was prepared to read multiple German sources. 

A crowd of Leipzigers carries a protester’s body past a Soviet tank

Spoiled by the Gymnasium Am Breiten Teich

During the past few days I've been in Borna, learning about how German high-school teachers practice their craft and go about their days. Since 2011, Katja Rose and Constanze Hahn have worked with Henry Wend to develop an exchange program for our schools. Unfortunately, the Wildcats haven't returned to Central Europe since 2014! There are simply too many foreign trips for USM students to choose from, and since our World Language curriculum doesn't include German, students are more likely to go to China, France, or Spain.

Multiple murals celebrate the cavalry regiment.

Borna lies in Saxony, just south of Leipzig. The first thing I did once I got settled was to visit the city museum, where Gabi and Ferdinand were hugely friendly! Gabi personally guided me through the exhibits and Ferdinand and I had a long conversation about Borna, post-1989 Germany, and modern life in general. Borna can be summed-up with four words: cavalry, pianos, onions and Tagebau (surface-mining). Briefly, Borna served as a barracks town for the Royal Saxon Karabiner Regiment until 1919, when the unit dissolved; the locals built pianos and harmoniums (not anymore); the surrounding earth is excellent for onion-cultivation, and although the peasants sold onions, they couldn't themselves afford to eat them. Tagebau refers to surface-mining for coal that has been underway for years. In fact, these huge mines eventually fill with groundwater, which explains why the Borna-ers call this area New-Sea-Land (get it?).

Katja and Connie took great care of me. Katja arranged for me to join 11th and 7th grade English classes, where students asked me all kinds of questions. When I met with 11th graders, only those who had previously lived abroad were really active. Otherwise, most seemed hesitant to participate. In contrast, the 7th graders were eager to talk and learn what they could about me. Among the first questions in all sections were: "What do you think about Donald Trump?" and "What about guns in America?" So apparently America's headlines preceded me. What concerns did the students have? Some voiced concerns about the American president, his impulsiveness and pugnacity. Others were more concerned about their own futures. A group of outspoken students expressed their frustration at an education they believed left them unprepared for life after graduation. They wanted to learn how to change a car tire or do their own finances, not just how to prepare for college. Katja found it frustrating--"We live in a modern society with a division of labor!" she reassured them.

I wonder if student unease is a function of growing up in the former GDR? Under communism, families learned to make do with less. They had to make simple repairs on their own because East Germany had a lot of scarcity.

With Mephistopheles... 

A brief aside: I visited the Zeitgeschtliches Forum in Leipzig, which currently has a fun exhibition called "alles nach plan?" about industrial design in the GDR. I was initially skeptical, but I found it fascinating to see how the SED (Socialist Unity Party) shaped design choices. For example, one wold think that the new post-war socialist system would embrace modern styles with simple lines. Instead, they rejected Bauhaus-inspired design as "western-decadence" in favor of folk-art and classical styles of previous centuries. In the early 70s, in contrast, an Office for Industrial Design" worked with East German firms to create export-worthy products. The GDR reserved its best products for export; citizens at home faced a dearth of choices and there were always shortages.

Katja and Constanze took me into Leipzig as well, and Constanze prepared a walking tour. Connie took us to the Nikolaikirche, which is an important location in the history of the fall of East German communism. In September, 1989, the "Monday Demonstrations" began, with peaceful marches that began at the Nikolaikirche and then wound their way around the city. By the time the tour was over it was pretty clear to me what I would do over the course of the next days. I planned to go to the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum and the Runde Ecke (Stasi Museum). We also went to Auerbach's Keller, one of the locations in Goethe's Faust.

On my last day in Borna, Constanze and her husband, Jens, took me on a whirlwind tour of their hometown and the surrounding area. Connie first took me to the site of a former work camp associated with Buchenwald. At Flöβberg, Jewish prisoners from Hungary and Poland manufactured German anti-tank rockets during the last few months of the war. Then we walked around Bad Lausick, a beautiful town built around Saint Kilians Church. Built in 1105, Saint Kilians is the oldest (still standing) Romanesque-style church in Saxony. 

The high-water mark is in red

After a delicious lunch that Connie prepared herself, we took a brief road-trip to check out the ruins of Katarina von Bora’s medieval cloister. Katarina von Bora eventually married Martin Luther, and so she’s tremendously important to the history of the Protestant Reformation. We also visited a nearby village one can still see the traces of the massive "Hundred-year" flood in 2002. There was a suspension bridge that was completely destroyed by the flood and the high-water mark is noted on multiple bridges.

Finally, we all attended a student concert in the Böhlen Kulturhaus. The theme was “Soundtrack Music”. Student from multiple grade, middle, and high schools played pieces from The Pink Panther, Amelie, Jurassic Park, and many other films. The finale included the entire Am Breiten Teich choir singing “Eye of the Tiger” and “Skyfall” with full orchestral accompaniment. It was charming and cool all at the same time.    

Leipzig's Communist Legacy Part 1

Der Jahrhundertschritt

A great place to begin is the cool statue outside of the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum: Der Jahrhundertschritt (which I'll translate as "the step-through-the-century"). Naturally one recognizes the fascist salute immediately. But you also see the raised fist of the communists and the jackboot of the militarist. As for the bare foot/leg? I'm not sure. Perhaps it represents the humanity seeking to stride forward and away from all we did to make ourselves miserable in the past century. Perhaps it represents naked victims of torture and imprisonment. The figure's head is tucked down into his jacket, trying to survive the dehumanizing terror. It's an ugly sculpture, but the more I think about it the more I like it's violent dynamism. I feel like I can empathize with the man ducking into his collar, waiting for the hurricane to pass. Sometimes you need to go full-on turtle.

I also liked Arno Rink's Terror II (1978). I visited the MdbK (Museum der bildenden Kunste). The Rink exhibition will be gone by September, but I was thrilled to see work from an artist who spent most of his career in the service of "Real, Existing Socialism". There were repeated themes in his work, all of which emphasized the human body. Some pieces were largely unpolitical: lovers embracing or models in his studio. Other works, like Terror II, clearly address the danger of dehumanizing fascism in the non-socialist world. He seems to have been very dedicated to the GDR. After die Wende (the fall of communism) he painted a series of self-portraits with his studio burning down around him. His final works are more expressionistic. It appears he made the leap from "socialist collectivism" to "bourgeois individualism" just fine.

Terror II

Rink could do socialist-realist paintings as well

Paramilitaries for Liberal Democracy--the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold and the Iron Front

Watch out! Defenders of liberal democracy on the loose!

We've seen some strange things in the past two years. One of the strangest (and more troubling) has been the series of violent encounters between far-right protesters and a black bloc of anarchists and autonomous anti-racists who, when they gather to face-off against their declared foes, call themselves "Antifa". Both sides seem eager to use violence. Antifa is determined to interrupt the far-right's attempts at public proselytizing, and (as is clear from recent reporting) the far-right wants to provoke violence and chaos.

How did it come to this? How is it that we're seeing the far-left and far-right engage in running street battles? What does it mean when heavily armed, "Patriot" militias (such as the Oath Keepers or the Three-Percenters) join in the mix? Fortunately, these confrontations happen only rarely.

It's instructive to look at a parallel time in German history when political violence from the far-left and far-right presented a serious threat to a liberal democratic system. After World War I, Germany entered a period of acute political and economic crisis. With the collapse of the Western Front, the Kaiser abdicated and the military turned over the responsibility of governing Germany to a coalition of opposition parties: the SPD (Social Democratic Party), Catholic Zentrum (Center), and DDP (German Democratic Party). Together, these politicians drafted a new republican constitution in Weimar in 1919. At the time it was one of the most progressive constitutions in the world.

KPD Anti-Fascist Flag 1920s

Getting Germans to accept the new constitution was another story altogether. Many Germans found the provisions of the Versailles Treaty odious, and by 1923 Germany was experiencing hyperinflation and political crisis. In 1918, Germans had already seen radical communist Spartacists rise up in Berlin (where they fought for days against hard-core nationalist paramilitaries), a short-lived Bavarian communist republic, and Hitler's attempted coup. It was apparent that the new German Republic faced threats from left- and right-wing radical militants. On the right, former veterans formed paramilitary organizations such as Stahlhelm and Hitler's SA (Sturmabteilungen). On the left, the KPD (German Communist Party) recruited veterans for the Rot Frontkämpferbund.

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In 1924, defenders of German liberal democracy formed the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold. Built around a core of Great War veterans, it's mission was to shore-up the republic and defend the new constitution. Ultimately, the the Reichsbanner could boast of approximately three million members--far more than competing paramilitaries could muster.

Flag of the Iron Front

As the political crisis deepened at the end of 1931, cadre from the Reichsbanner went on to form a new alliance in defense of the republic: the Eiserne Front (Iron Front). The new SPD-led group included Unions as well as workers' athletic organizations. Their new banner included three arrows representing the political, economic, and physical power of the new alliance. They were dedicated to paramilitary training and public demonstration. However, their stated goals were to "strengthen the republic" and provide "violence-free protection" against left- and right-wing extremism.

The Reichsbanner and the Eiserne Front were ultimately unsuccessful in their bid to protect the republic. Shortly after Germany's final free election in 1933, Hitler turned against all his possible enemies. Within weeks the new regime outlawed the Reichsbanner and Eiserne Front throughout Germany. Some leaders fled abroad or died at the hands of the SA; the Nazis consigned many more to concentration camps throughout the country. In German cities, many members formed underground cells with the intention of resisting the regime.

Why did the Reichsbanner fail? Most likely its members' political values betrayed them. It's difficult when you try to fight against militant totalitarian fanaticism with the weapons of reasoned debate and respect for the law.

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What???!! The Reichsbanner still exists! It's website is HERE.

Badgers and Interbrigadisten in Berlin

Me and Isabelle at Kaffee Marlene

I decided that my stay in Berlin would be more fun if I didn't spend all my time in museums. I posted on Facebook to see if any USM alums were in the neighborhood. Turns out Isabelle ('16) is there for a couple of weeks between semesters at UW-Madison! Meeting her for coffee gave me an excuse to visit Prenzlauer Berg--I've neglected the neighborhood each time I've been to Berlin. It was great catching up with her--She's now studying Russian!

On the way to Kaffee Marlene I walked north from my hotel, crossed the Karl-Marx-Allee (formerly Stalinallee), and then took a detour into Volkspark Friedrichshain. Because it was going to take about an hour to reach my destination, I had to forgo climbing the Trummerbergen (Rubble-mountains). There were three giant anti-aircraft bunkers in Berlin during WWII, and two of them were completely demolished. One of these Flakturme was in the Volkspark.

It was there that I ran into this impressive Memorial to the German Interbrigadisten. These were Germans who volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic against the Spanish Nationalists and fascists. Many volunteers to the International Brigades were communists, but certainly not all of them. You only need to read Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls or Orwell's Homage to Catalonia to see that defending the Republic inspired all kinds of idealists and adventurers.

A German Anti-Fascist Freedom Fighter

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was a rehearsal for the Second World War--the liberal democracies proved indecisive and sclerotic in the face of fascist and communist revolutionary dynamism. France and Britain dithered while Mussolini and Hitler sent aid, air-power, and even front-line troops to smash republican Spain. Indecision only encouraged fascists and Hitler realized that his willingness to smash diplomatic norms worked to his strategic advantage. In September, 1938, the Munich Conference demonstrated that the liberal democratic order was unlikely to fight back unless directly under attack. This seemed true even after Hitler invaded Poland! The western democracies remained incapable of taking decisive action. Fascist regimes maintained the strategic initiative until 1943. Chaos and conflict always served fascist ends, since they never believed that old Europe or liberal democracy was worth conserving. Britain and France, terrified that a war could radicalize politics and undermine imperial control, always waited for the fascists to make the first move. Naturally, Hitler struck first: the natural outcome of democratic indecision was Dunkirk and the Fall of France in June, 1940.

In 1936, years before French, British, and American politicians recognized that war was inevitable and necessary, approximately 45,000 men and women assumed individual responsibility for slowing the spread of fascism. They took great risks to cross the Pyrenees and fight for the Republic. More than half were killed in action.

We have our own memorial to the Wisconsin volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. You can find it in Madison in the southeast corner of James Madison Park. ¡Viva la Brigada Lincoln! ¡Viva Badgers!