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East German Higher Education Policies and Student Resistance, 1945–1948

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

John Connelly
John Connelly
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

Those who opposed Communist rule in East Germany often did so because Communism in practice strongly reminded them of the fascism they had experienced in the Third Reich. The new East German regime was also one that attempted total control of people's lives; therefore it became natural to describe it as totalitär. Most sensitive to the similarities between the old and new regimes were university students. They displayed stronger direct opposition to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the years from 1946–1949 than any other social group. This is reflected in the political battles that were fought in universities during these years, leading to SED election failures in the elections of the postwar years: 1946/47 and late 1947. The latter were the last freely contested elections in East Germany until 1989. It is also reflected in the disproportionate number of students arrested by Soviet and East German authorities in the early postwar years.

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Articles
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Central European History , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 259 - 300
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1995

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References

1. According to the Amt für gesamtdeutsche Studentenfragen des Verbandes Deutscher Studentenschaften, 423 students were arrested in East Germany between 1945 and mid-1953. Their names are given in Marianne, and Müller, Egon Erwin, “…stürmt die Festung Wissenschaft!” Die Sowjetisierung der mitteldeutschen Universitäten seit 1945 (West Berlin, 1953), 364–79.Google Scholar

2. The first two administrators in charge of higher education in the GDR—Otto Halle and Gerhard Harig—had been inmates of Buchenwald. The first education ministers in Thuringia, Walter Wolf and Marie Torhorst, had likewise been Nazi concentration camp inmates. Their counterpart in the Thuringian SED apparatus, Heymann, Stefan, had been an inmate of Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz. Niethammer, Lutz, ed., Der “gesäuberte” Antifaschismus: Die SED und die roten Kapos von Buchenwald (Berlin, 1994), 502–4, 518–19.Google Scholar On Torhort, Marie, see her Pfarrerstochter Pädagogin Kommunistin: Aus dem Leben der Schwestern Adelheid und Marie Torhorst (East Berlin, 1986).Google Scholar In the fall of 1948 one in ten employees of the forerunner of the GDR Ministry of Education, the Deutsche Verwaltung für Volksbildung, was registered as “victim of fascism.” “Personalstatistik der Deutschen Verwaltung für Volksbildung nach dem Stande vom 30. September 1948,” Bundesarchiv, Abteilungen Potsdam (BAAP), R2/963/6. The figures in Land ministeries were lower, reaching 5.28 percent, 8.5 percent, and 5.5 percent (9 of 165) in Mecklenburg, Thuringia, and Saxony respectively in December 1948. BAAP, R2/963/18, 28, 33.

3. Welsh, Helga A., “‘Antifaschistisch-demokratische Umwälzung’ und politische Säuberung in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands,” in Politische Säuberung in Europa: Die Abrechnung mit Faschismus und Kollaboration nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Henke, Klaus-Dietmar and Woller, Hans, (Munich, 1991), 101–2.Google Scholar Welsh gives an overview of the relatively scant literature on East German denazification. See also Vollnhals, Clemens, ed., Entnazifizierung: politische Säuberung und Rehabilitierung in den vier Besatzungszonen 1945–1949 (Munich, 1991).Google Scholar

4. Der Tagesspiegel, 3 November 1945.

5. Der Tagesspiegel, 28 June 1946. The elections of 1946 indeed served as disenfranchising purpose. The decision of the Saxonian electorate to nationalize the property of war criminals was taken as evidence of the assent of all East Germans. The local elections of fall 1946 were the freest ever held in East Germany, but their results were used to freeze the relative parliamentary strengths of SED, LDP, and CDU until the end of the GDR. Of course it was the inclusion of so-called mass organizations in 1948 that gave the SED undisputed mastery over all purported organs of public representation.

6. Der Tagesspiegel, 1 November 1946.

7. Ibid., 3 February 1946.

8. Gniffke, Erich, Jahre mit Ulbricht (Cologne, 1966), 139.Google Scholar

9. “Oberbürgermeister in Jena 1945/46. Aus den Erinnerungen von Dr. Heinz Troeger,” Viertelijahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 4 (1977): 922.Google Scholar

10. On the “economistic reductionism, which characterized statements of the SED on Nazism and imperialism,” see Meuschel, Sigrid, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft in der DDR: Zum Paradox von Stabilität und Revolution in der DDR (1945–1989) (Frankfurt am Main 1992), 76.Google Scholar For the failure of East German historians and schools to consider the “cultural contours of the Volksgemeinschaft” seeStaritz, Dietrich, “Die ‘Sieger der Geschichte’ oder die ‘Gnade der späten Geburt.’ Vom Umgang mit der gemeinsamen Erblast in Ost- und Westdeutschland,” in “Vergangenheitsbewältigung Ost und West,” ed. Woods, Roger, Modern German Studies 6, no. 1 (1989): 5, 7.Google Scholar

11. Emphasis added. Ministerbesprechung am 18. und 19. März 1947 in Berlin, BAAP, R2/53/24. For a discussion of the transformation of East Germany to a “People's Democracy,” see Staritz, Dietrich, Die Gründung der DDR: von der sowjetischen Besatzungsherrschaft zum sozialistischen Staat (Munich, 1987), 147ff.Google Scholar

12. Interview with Robert Rompe, 28 March 1991.

13. In 1932, 3.0 percent of Germany's students were of worker, 2.2 percent of peasant background. “Zehn-Jahresstatistik des Hochschulbesuchs 1943.” Zentralarchiv des FDGB, Bundesvorstand, 11/-/785, cited in Hans-Hendrik Kasper, “Der Kampf der SED um die Heranbildung einer Intelligenz aus der Arbeiterklasse und der werktätigen Bauernschaftüber die Vorstudienanstalten an den Universitäten und Hochschulen der sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands (1945/46 bis 1949),” (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Mining College Freiberg (S), 1979), 269.

14. Broszat, Martin and Weber, Hermann, SBZ-Handbuch (Munich, 1990), 97–99, 118–21, 142–44, 162–63, 183–85.Google Scholar

15. Protocols are found in BAAP, R2/51–59, 4008, 4009.

16. Serious attempts at standardized definitions of worker-peasant were not made until 1948/49. In 1948, to qualify as a peasant in Saxony, one could possess not more than 10 hectares of land, at “average soil quality.” A worker was understood to be “a factory or skilled laborer, not employed in the factory of relatives, AND whose parents were factory or skilled laborers before 1945.” Kasper, “Der Kampf der SED,” 163. In April 1949 the Small Secretariat of the SED Politbureau determined that “in order to arrive at a more precise description of the concept ‘worker’ the directives will indicate that all candidates count as ‘workers’ who have been professionally active as workers since 1945. All candidates whose parents have been professionally active as workers since 1942 will be counted as workers’ children.” Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen im Bundesarchiv, Zentrales Parteiarchiv (SAPMO-BA, ZPA), JIV 2/3/018. The 1942 cut-off date was chosen because after that date war mobilization had caused many people foreign to the working class to become workers, especially in war industries.

17. Soviet student admissions policies had zigzagged for decades, and did not present a clear model. See McClelland, James C., “Proletarianizing the Student Body: The Soviet Experience during the New Economic Policy,” Past and Present 80 (August 1978): 123–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In early 1947 the existence of the Berlin worker course was in jeopardy for some time because the SMAG refused to approve funding for it. President Wandel was forced to siphon money from his radio budget. See the Correspondence in BAAP, R2/1454/8ff. On the other hand, Gottfried Grünberg, Education Minister in Mecklenburg told a 2 December 1947 meeting of the East German education ministers that “our SMA insists that at least 80 percent of the students be workers and peasants.” BAAP, R2/4008/56. In the end East European Communist Parties were left to interpret for themselves the meaning of Soviet affirmative action policies. See Connelly, John, “Creating the Socialist Elite: Communist Higher Education Policies in the Czech Lands, East Germany, and Poland, 1945–1954,” (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1994).Google Scholar

18. Kasper, “Der Kampf der SED,” 233.

19. “Richtlinien der Deutschen Zentralverwaltung für Volksbildung in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone für die Zulassung zum Studium an den im Wintersemester 1945/46 neuzu eröffnenden Universiäten,” 12 December 1945 in Dokumente zur Geschichte der Arbeiterund-Bauern-Fakultäten der Universitäten und Hochschulen der DDR, Part I: 1945–1949 ed. Lammel, Hans-Joachim, (East Berlin, 1987), 38–39.Google Scholar Numbers of former NSDAP members and officers admitted to university remained low in the immediate postwar years. In December 1947, 1.7 percent of all students were recorded as former NSDAP members, and 3.2 percent as former officers. “Die Studierenden der wissenschaftlichen Hochschulen der Sowjetzone im Wintersemester 1947/48,” BAAP, R2/1060/28.

20. “What member of the evaluatory commission would ever have seriously declared that a candidate for admission who belonged to the SED did not therewith provide a guarantee for antifascist/democratic attitude and development!” Kotowski, Georg, “Der Kampf um Berlins Universität,” in Veritas, Iustitia, Libertas; Festschrift zur 200-Jahrfeier der Columbia University New York überreicht von der Freien Universität Berlin und der Deutschen Hochschule für Politik (West Berlin, 1954), 19–20.Google Scholar

21. See for example the protocols of SED higher educational council conferences from 1947–48 in SAPMO-BA, ZPA IV 2/9.04/6.

22. Lönnendonker, Siegward, Freie Universität Berlin: Gründung einer politischen Universität (Berlin, 1988), 216–17.Google Scholar

23. Tent, James F., The Free University of Berlin: A Political History (Bloomington, 1988), 43–45, 51.Google Scholar

24. Protocol of university senate meeting, 31 July 1946, Universitätsarchiv Leipzig (UAL), Rektorat 1.

25. Protocol of university senate meeting, 16 August 1947, UAL, Rektorat 1. For a description of Litt's activities (among which was a public critique of Alfred Rosenberg's racial theory in December 1934) which led to his early retirement in 1937, see Muller, Jerry Z., The Other God that Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservativism (Princeton, 1987), 220–21, 280–82. Litt and Gadamer abandoned Leipzig in 1947 for positions in the Western Zones. Other senior colleagues would follow.Google Scholar

26. For SED and Soviet admissions practice in Berlin, see Tent, The Free University, 43–55. In Leipzig 1,200 candidates for medical studies were refused in 1945 and 1946, of whom half had started medical studies before 1945. 465 students were studying medicine in Leipzig in 1946/47. In 1947/48 the number had increased to 609. Letter to Landesregierung Sachsen, 4 February 1947, UAL Rektorat 307/32; BAAP, R2/1060/24,36. In Jena, Halle, Greifswald, and Berlin half of the students were freshmen in the first postwar semester. Müller, “…stürmt die Festung,” 77. The exact figures for the remainder were: Leipzig: 41 percent, Halle; 48.3 percent, Rostock: 62.1 percent. “Statistik des Besuches der wissenschaftlichen Hochschulen in der sowjetisch besetzten Zone,” 18 July 1946. BAAP, R2/865/23–30.

27. On Soviet visions of the student, see Richert, Ernst, “Sozialistische Universität”: Die Hochschulpolitik der SED (Berlin, 1967), 47.Google Scholar On the policy of favoring freshmen, see Tent, The Free University, 47. 45.3 percent of Berlin University students in March 1946 were 24 years old or older. The average age in Jena was 24; in Leipzig 25; in Halle 24; and in Rostock and Greifswald 23.5. BAAP R2/865/7, 31–35.

28. For the 22 July 1947 guidelines see BAAP, R2/7432/77. Soviet advisor N. M. Voronov took part in the drafting of these guidelines.

29. Letter of 11 August 1947 from Dresden education ministry official Häntzsche (SED) to Rector Gadamer. UAL, Rektorat 307/54.

30. Anton Ackermann, the SED's leading voice in cultural matters, had recently insisted that greater care be devoted to selecting students who were in the SED. He told a group of SED higher education experts: “The Party will promote only those comrades of whose clear, socialist way of thinking and eagerness for action it is convinced.” Protokol der Hochschultagung vom 14.6.1947. SAPMO-BA, ZPA, IV 2/9.04/6 (unnumbered), 8.

31. Stenographische Niederschrift über die Hochschulkonferenz der SED am 13. und 14. September 1947 im Hause des Kulturbundes, 5–6. SAPMO-BA, ZPA, IV 2/9.04/6 (unnumbered). Ackermann warned that if the bourgeoisification succeeded “to a considerable degree, then the unavoidable consequence will be an intellectual isolation of these new students from their class, from the working people, then in three or four years we can experience how these young people who have gone to university from amongst us, who come from our ranks, have become not our helpers and comrades, but our enemies, whom we will then have to fight…”

32. Stenographische Niederschrift über die konferenz von Angehörigen der Hochschulen am Sonnabend, dem 22. November 1947, und Sonntag, dem 23. November 1947 im Hause des Kulturbundes, Berlin, 42. SAPMO-BA, ZPA, IV 2/9.04/6 (unnumbered).

33. This is a play on the official East German self-description: “Der erste Arbeiter-und Bauernstaat auf deutschem Boden.”

34. BAAP R2-865/7, 35–37; 1060/23–26, 32–34; Kasper, “Der Kampf der SED,” 273–75.

35. BAAP, R2/865/1,7,41–43; Kasper, “Der Kampf der SED,” 272.

36. BAAP, R2/1060/46; Kasper, “Der Kampf der SED,” 272.

37. For the difficulties of coordinating examinations throughout the zone in 1950, see the correspondence between the Ministry of Education of the GDR and the SED Central Committee in BAAP, R2/1490. On the shortage of teachers, see Müller, “…stürmt die Festung,” 239–40.

38. BAAP, R2/1060/21. On 3 February 1946 the DVV communicated the Soviet intention by telegram to universities: “Remove all Nazis immediately from teaching.” Universitätsarchiv Rostock, R/III/A/1/1/1a. Percentages from Jessen, Ralph, “Professoren im Sozialismus. Aspekte des Strukturwandels der Hochschullehrerschaft in der UlbrichtÄra,” in Sozialgeschichte der DDR, ed. Kaelble, Hartmut, Kocka, Jürgen, Zwahr, Hartmut, (Stuttgart, 1994), 226.Google Scholar

39. In December 1948, 92 (11.5 percent) of 797 university teachers (including the three technical colleges) in the Soviet Zone were former Nazis. Report to the personnel department of the DVV, 28 December 1948. BAAP R2/911/104. By 1954 the percentage of former NSDAP members in the East German professoriat had climbed to 28.43 percent. Jessen, “Professoren,” 226. In neither case do the statistics reveal how many of these former Nazis had previously belonged to the universities where they were hired in the postwar period. For lucid discussion of denazification of universities in the American Zone of occupation, see Tent, James F., Mission on the Rhine: Reeducation and Denazification in American-Occupied Germany (Chicago and London, 1982), 57–69, 74–109.Google Scholar

40. The precise number is not known. See note 39.

41. A report of early 1946 on the teaching staff of Berlin University gives a notion of the dimensions of the problem. Of 102 full and associate professors who were permitted to teach after the severe denazification, only 8 were described as “dependable.” Of these none were Communists. Jessen, “Professoren,” 225. In early 1948 the SED leadership was told that 18 percent of the professors were “socialist,” but that one could not believe that “all are Marxists and socialists in the true sense of the word.” Cited in Staritz, Dietrich, “Partei, Intellektuelle, Parteiintellektuelle: Die Intellektuellen im Kalkül der frühen SED,” in Sozialismus und Kommunismus im Wandel, Hermann Weber zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Schönhoven, Klaus, Staritz, Dietrich, (Cologne, 1993), 390.Google Scholar

42. The six universities had been governed somewhat differently before the Nazi seizure of power, but in each case professors (assembled in Konzile) had elected the rector and faculties had granted the right to teach (venia legendi), and sought candidates for vacant positions. These acts required approval of the respective ministry of education. There was no provision for outside interference in the content of lectures, or student admissions, however. See for example Satzung der Universität Rostock (Rostock in Mecklenburg, 1932). Attempts by SED-controlled ministries to alter these provisions gave rise to resolute protests of university faculties in the early postwar years. This is reflected in the title of the Soviet Zone's first higher educational ordinance: “Vorläufige Arbeitsordnung der Universitäten und wissenschaftlichen Hochschulen der sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands” (VAO) of 23 May 1949. The VAO placed universities under direct “supervision” of the Deutsche Verwaltung für Volksbildung (DVV), and stripped them of their powers to determine student admissions. The rector was to be elected by a reconstituted academic senate. Müller, “…stürmt die Festung,” 141–45. Perhaps more important than changes in law was SED infiltration of the professoriat, which guaranteed support for Communist candidates and policies.

43. According to the Leipzig university catalogue the association there would “serve the self-administration and the self-structuring of student life. It sees its most urgent work in participating in the democratic education of students…” Müller, “…stürmt die Festung,” 94.

44. Lönnendonker, Freie Universität Berlin, 185.

45. On delimiting the category “victim of fascism,” see Groehler, Olaf, “Integration und Ausgrenzung von NS-Opfern. Zur Anerkennungs- und Entschädigungsdebatte in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands,” in Historische DDR-Forschung: Aufsätze und Studien, ed. Kocka, Jürgen (Berlin, 1993), 105–27.Google Scholar On the foundation of the organization “Union of Victims of the Nazi Regime” (VVN) in East Germany, see Foitzik, Jan, “Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes,” in Broszat and Weber, SBZ-Handbuch, 748–59.Google Scholar Tent, The Free University, 42.

46. Schulte, Volker, “Der Fall Natonek—ein Fall der SED,” Universität Leipzig 4 (June – July, 1992): 5. Natonek recalled the Scholls at a conference with former Soviet cultural officers in Berlin-Gosen, September 1992.Google Scholar

47. Schulte, “Der Fall Natonek,” 6.

48. Cited in Müller, “…stürmt die Festung,” 95–96. The first section reads in the original: “den Rektor bei der Bekämpfung militärischen und faschistischen Ungeistes und bei der Förderung fortschrittlichen, demokratischen Denkens und Handelns zu unterstützen.”

49. “Ergebnisse der Studentenwahlen in Berlin und der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone,” 17 March 1947 in possession of Prof. Roland Köhler (former official of the Staatsekretariat für Hochschulwesen der DDR), Berlin. The SPD was permitted to run only in Berlin.

50. BAAP, R2/1446/271–274.

51. She was dismissed from her positions in February 1947, and would later teach at the Free University in West Berlin. In the winter of 1947/48, 1.3 percent of all medical/dental students in the Soviet Zone were former NSDAP members. “Die Studierenden der Medizinischen Fakultäten der Universitäten in der Sowjetzone im Wintersemester 1947/48.” BAAP, R2/867/16.

52. Discussion of the “administrative jurisdiction of the university or concerning the legitimacy of the statutes… expressly exceed the authority of the student body.” Cited in Lönnendonker, Freie Universität Berlin, 202.

53. At a meeting of medical students in Berlin of 31 January 1947 which discussed how a former NSDAP member could become a candidate for the student council, the student Kieser had openly defied the injunction against criticizing the DVV, saying: “I ask who admitted these people to university? who checked them over? I know that I am risking being expelled.” Bericht über die Verfassung einer Gegenresolution im Hörsaal der Anatomie am 31. Januar 1947 um 17 Uhr, in the possession of Prof. Roland Köhler, Berlin.

54. Informer's report, with pencilled notation: Wahlversmmlung Juristen. BAAP, R2/1446/248. This candidate did indeed withdraw his candidacy, because he had “a critically ill mother, and did not want to be picked up anymore by the political police.”

55. Wahlversammlung der Kliniker der Berliner Universität am 29. Januar 1947, BAAP, R2/1446/268.

56. Ibid., BAAP, R2/1446/269.

57. Bericht über die Vorklinikerversammlung vom 31. Januar 1947, BAAP, R2/1446/265.

58. In early 1954 almost one in ten SED members had belonged to the NSDAP; fully 27 percent had been members of the NSDAP or one of its affiliated organizations (Gliederungen). Foitzik, Jan, “Die stalinistischen ‘Säuberungen’ in den ostmitteleuropäischen kommunistischen Parteien. Ein vergleichender Überblick,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 8 (1992), 745.Google Scholar

59. This issue had not been studied systematically. Wolfgang Leonhard reports that as early as 1946 many SED functionaries praised former Nazis who attended their meetings: “There are some really fabulous people among the Nazis. They would be good in our party—they're active, constructive, don't complain much.” Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder. vol. 2, (Leipzig 1990), 508.Google Scholar DVV and SED internal correspondence frequently list political sins in individuals' pasts which are to be redeemed by good behavior. See the report of the university admissions committees in Thuringia of 30 November 1949, a time after which limitations on “nominal” Nazi Party members had been lifted. The reporter noted that “NSDAP membership was not looked at, in light of the expected, and now ratified, amnesty which gives equal rights to nominal Nazis in the German Democratic Republic. But of course in these cases democratic activity was looked at especially carefully.” Staatsarchiv Weimar, Ministerium für Volksbildung Land Thüringen, 3184/39.

60. Bericht über die Vorklinikerversammlung vom 31. Januar 1947, BAAP, R2/1446/264.

61. Bericht über eine Diskussion mit dem Kandidaten Brost, 22 February 1947. BAAP, R2/1446/242. Soviet occupation authorities likewise noted that many of their opponents among students were “victims of fascism” and of “non-Aryan background.” See Naimark, Norman M., The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA), 1995, 444.Google Scholar

62. Letters of Rector Stroux to student Cwick, 5 February 1947 and DVV Vice President Brugsch to Stroux, 3 February 1947. BAAP, R2/1446/244, 257.

63. An anonymous denunciation of 7 February 1947. Bericht. “Wir wollen über einen Vorfall in der heutigen Vorlesung der Anatomie berichten.” BAAP, R2/1446/259.

64. Letter of DVV Vice President Brugsch to Rector Stroux, 3 February 1947. BAAP, R2/1446/257.

65. He is reported to have admitted this in a speech introducing his candidacy. BAAP, R2/1446/243.

66. Letter of Franz Wohlgemuth to Landesregierung Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Ministerium für Volksbildung, Abt. Hochschulverwaltung, 6 February 1947. Staatsarchiv Schwerin, Ministerium für Volksbildung Mecklenburg 2577/198.

67. Bericht über die letzen Vorfälle in der Angelegenheit Studentenrat, 8 May 1947. Staatsarchiv Schwerin, Ministerium für Volksbildung Mecklenburg 2577/ 174–175.

68. The very meeting at which Callam challenged Wohlgemuth had been scheduled to discuss the case of Londe's successor to student council chair, the theology student Helmut Narasus (LDP). After Narasus's election to student leader evidence suddenly emerged that he too had been admitted to university “conditionally.” The condition was that he disprove a charge from a German army court that he had mistreated subordinates. He subsequently resigned. Ibid.

69. Wohlgemuth concluded that: “After succeeding in giving the student council a somewhat clear face, we do not think it would be good to take the chair and have left it to the CDU. Having fought long and hard for a clear situation, we above all else do not wish to make the students think that party politics are at stake, and for that reason, it seems necessary not to demand the student council chair.” Bericht über die endgültige Zusammensetzung des Studentenrates an der Universität Greifswald, 19 May 1947, Staatsarchiv Schwerin, Ministerium für Volksbildung Mecklenburg 2577/173.

70. Members of the Nationalkomitee were considered absolutely trustworthy. This meant that the DVV official in charge of cleansing schools of former NSDAP members (Hadermann) could himself be a former NSDAP member and the DVV official charged with making sure restrictions would apply in university admissions of former Wehrmacht officers (Böhm) could himself be a former Wehrmacht officer. Broszat and Weber, SBZ-Handbuch, 873, 919, 1059. Dietrich Staritz describes the Nationalkomitee as a first step in the process of creating antifascists. “Die ‘Sieger der Geschichte,’” 5.

71. BAAP, R2/1446/296. The remarks were added in pencil by a DVV official to a letter dated 24 February 1947 which Wandel received from the chair of the Berlin Student Council listing the new student council leadership. Other notations included party membership and record of military service. The official, who might have been Wandel himself, was apparently noting any factor that could be used to compromise the new representatives, or which might stiffen their resolve against the SED. Besides a callousness toward Jews, these notations reveal the hypocrisy of the DVV's claim that student council elections were not “party elections.” Such internal correspondence shows that they were exclusively party elections for the DVV.

72. Vierte Tagung des zentralen Hochschulausschusses der SED am 7. und 8. Februar 1948, SAPMO-BA, ZPA, IV 2/904/6 (unnumbered), 241. Original: “die rassisch verfolgt waren, oder aus irgendwelchen anderen Gründen, die vielfach mit politischen Ursachen zusammenhängen, aber die gar nicht mit der Sache zusammenhingen. Infolgedessen sind im Laufe der letzten zwei Jahre… eine Reihe von Leuten zur Universität gekommen, die tatsächlich nicht zu uns gehören, wenn sie auch nicht gerade Gegner von uns sind.”

73. Stenographische Niederschrift über die Hochschulkonferenz der SED am 13. und 14. September 1947 im Hause des Kulturbundes, 5, SAPMO-BA, ZPA, IV 2/9.04/6 (unnumbered). Original: “damals vor einem Jahr konnte man ins besondere bei politisch und rassisch Verfolgten in Bezug auf die rein politische Seite nicht so scharf sein. Das wird allmählich besser werden. Wir haben jetzt etwa 50 percent der Anmeldungen abgelehnt.”

74. These quotes were taken from a protocol of this meeting, and are reproduced in Müller, “…stürmt die Festung,” 99.

75. For example over 700 students from Berlin were studying in Bavaria in early 1948. Lönnendonker, Freie Universität Berlin, 216.

76. This allegation was printed in the East German student magazine Forum, 2 (1949): 19. Cited in Müller, “…stürmt die Festung,” 99–100.

77. See the senate's minutes from 1 August 1947 in UAL, Rektorat 1. Professor Gadamer and de Boor argued the political necessity for removing this student. Plätzsch had said that if one needed to take a percentage of workers into university that was equal to their representation in the population, then one should also take a number of imbeciles (Schwachsinnige) equal to their representation in the population. No doubt Gadamer's and others' decisions to leave East Germany were partially motivated by the desire to avoid participation in such “rationally necessary” decisions in the future.

78. Wahlbericht Nr. 1 Studentenrat, wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät, 1 December 1947. BAAP, R2/1446/203.

79. Letter in UAL, Rektorat 119.

80. On the press campaign against Natonek see “Kampf um die Universität wie lange noch” in colloquium (January 1948): 13ff.

81. Müller, “……stürmt die Festung,” 106–7, explains in detail how a Soviet officer attempted to intimidate the LDP leader in Jena, Reichenbach, and indeed achieved a victory, since his SED opponent was elected first chairman.

82. BAAP, R2-1060/25–27.

83. These results were read aloud at the meeting of the SED higher education conference on 8 February 1948. SAPMO-BA, ZPA, IV 2/9.04/6 (unnumbered).

84. Letter from Ministry of Education, Thuringia to DVV, 12 January 1948. BAAP, R2/1446/161. Not a single faculty in Leipzig produced as many SED votes as it had members. This was true even of the pedagogy faculty. Vierte Tagung des Zentralen Hochschulausschusses der SED, 7. und 8. Februar 1948, 2 Verhandlungstag, 203. SAPMO-BA ZPA, IV 2/9.04/6 (unnumbered).

85. See n. 31.

86. Letter from Ministry of Education, Thuringia to DVV, 12 January 1948, BAAP, R2/1446/161.

87. Vierte Tagung des Zentralen Hochschulausschusses der SED, 7. und 8. Februar 1948, 2. Verhandlungstag, 204. SAPMO-BA ZPA, IV 2/9.04/6 (unnumbered).

88. For figures on the immediate postwar years, see the statistics in BAAP, R2/865/24–35, 43; 1060/24–36, 46–47. The figures for 1949/50 do not include Jena: Teilnehmer am Wintersemester 1949/50 in der DDR, 11 July 1950. SAPMO-BA ZPA, Nachlass 182 (Ulbricht), 933/210.

89. Women comprised about 10 percent of law students in the immediate postwar years, but over 40 percent of medical students. In Jena not a single woman sat in student council after the late 1947 elections. Letter of Minister of Education Thuringia to DVV, 13 January 1948, BAAP, R2/1446/160. The same elections produced 12 women of 68 faculty council representatives in Berlin. Report of Berlin University Election Council, 18 December 1947, BAAP, R2-1446/23–24. During the winter semester 1946/47, women constituted 32.6 percent of all students in Jena, but only 20 percent of SED members, and 41.3 percent of students who belonged to no party. DVV Statistics of 12 October 1946. BAAP, R2/644/22.

90. For details, see Naimark, The Russians in Germany.

91. Staritz, “Partei, Intellektuelle, Parteiintellektuelle,” 381.

92. Torhorst, Pfarrerstochter, Torhorst was a teacher (Studienrätin) in the Karl-Marx-Schule in Berlin-Neukölln from 1929 until 1933, when she was fired for membership in the SPD. In 1943 she was incarcerated in the labor camp Hallendorf for having given accommodations to a Jewish Communist. After the war she joined the KPD.

93. Marie Torhorst, “Volksstudent und Universität,” 22 March 1948, Staatsarchiv Weimar, Ministerium für Volksbildung Thüringen, 3123/33. Paul Wandel, who might have shown greater delicacy given his exalted position, also did not spare students sharp words of criticism. They should give up the idea that they were “special citizens” (Sonderbürger) and universities should cease living their “separate life” (Eigenleben). He addressed a letter to the five Land Education ministries in early 1948 which infuriated the professoriats: “If we compare… the honest and self-sacrificing work of the workers and peasants, with what is taking place now at higher schools for the formation of a new democratic intelligentsia, then we can't in the least rest content with the results of the last two years work… The universities have first of all to fulfill the task of training highly qualified people who support the current constitution for our new democratic school, for the new health system, for the new justice system, and for the people's own [i.e. nationalized - JC] enterprises.” Staatsarchiv Weimar, Ministerium für Volksbildung Thüringen, 3115/71.

94. Grünberg, Gottfried, Kumpel, Kämpfer, Kommunist (East Berlin, 1977), 248.Google Scholar The originals reads: “Volksbildung? Dabei habe ich nur eine einklassige Dorfschule besucht. Justiz? Die kenne ich von der Anklagebank und den Gefängnissen her. Gesundheitswesen—da erinnere ich mich an die sogenannten Vertrauensärzte und die Gesundbeterkommission der Knappschaft. Na, und von der Kultur habe ich überhaupt keine Ahnung.” “Das ist doch prima” meinte Kurt Bürger lachend. “Du weisst also, wie es nicht gemacht werden darf, mach es besser.”

95. The original reads: Das Volk ist gegen diesen künstlich aufgebauschten volksschädlichen Rummel… die Universität ist eine Einrichtung des Volkes, und die Studenten haben die Pflicht, dem Volke zu dienen, sie sind Diener des Volkes. Sie studieren nicht zum Selbstzweck, sondern studieren, um wichtige Funktionen im Volksleben auszuführen. At this same meeting Paul Wandel proclaimed that two years earlier a decision had to be made whether the new German intelligentsia would be formed “with or against the universities.” He and the majority of those present had been opposed to surrendering to universities the role of reshaping the German intelligentsia. Now he found his previous hesitations had been justified. BAAP R2/53/23–24.

96. Groehler, “Integration und Ausgrenzung,” 116. Anti-Semitism within the SED apparatus, let alone GDR society, has not been the subject of systematic study. The alacrity with which the apparatus supported its leadership's post–1949 anti-Zionist policy points to strong anti-Semitic attitudes in the party as a whole, however. On this shift toward anti-Zionist policy, in conformity with Soviet policy, see Kessler, Mario, “Zwischen Repression und Toleranz. Die SED-Politik und die Juden (1949 bis 1967),” in Historische DDR-Forschung, ed. Kocka, , 149–67.Google Scholar On the earlier period see Groehler, 105–27. The SED leadership at no point recognized the centrality of anti-Semitism in National Socialist ideology and practice. In 1945 Wilhelm Pieck spoke of the need for Wiedergutmachung for damages done to other peoples, but did not mention the Jews. Walter Ubricht wrote of annihilation camps, and gas chambers, but not that they had been used against Jews. Herf, Jeffrey, “East German Communists and the Jewish Question: The Case of Paul Merker,” Journal of Contemporary History 29, no. 4 (October, 1994): 629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

97. See the frank remarks by Herbert Busse on differences between perceptions from above and below within the SED, Vierte Tagung des Zentralen Hochschulausschusses der SED, 7. und 8. Februar 1948, 2. Verhandlungstag, SAPMO-BA, ZPA, IV 2/9.04/6 (unnumbered), 201–15.

98. The elections were the second point of order of the 19 January 1948 meeting of the SED's highest leadership body, the Central Secretariat. It elected a seven-man commission to draft new guidelines for SED higher education policy. SAPMO-BA, ZPA, IV 2/2.1/166.

99. Broszat and Weber, SBZ-Handbuch, 1044, 60.

100. Original (including commentary): “Für uns kommt nicht die in Ostzonesien gebräuchliche orientalische Volksdemokratie, sondern die Demokratie (damit meint er die westliche) in Frage.” Staatsarchiv Weimar, Ministerium für Volksbildung Land Thüringen, 3325. In an article for the press entitled “Volksstudent und Universität? Torhorst wrote “In Jena a student who had been elected as non-party candidate into the student council recently tried to ridicule our new people's state using the term ‘oriental people's democracy’ (the Nazis used to say ‘Asian’).” Staatsarchiv Weimar, Ministerium für Volksbildung Land Thüringen, 3123/33. For Nazi understanding of “Asian,” see Klemperer, Victor, LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen (Leipzig, 1982), 172–73Google Scholar, Also: Brackmann, Karl-Heinz, Birkenhauer, Renate, NS-Deutsch: “Selbstverständliche” Begriffe und Schlagwörter aus des Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Straelen/Niederrhein, 1988), 25–26.Google Scholar

101. In a letter of 18 June 1948 from West Berlin Erich Weber taunted Torhorst, asking whether she had found time to ask about the whereabouts of arrested students Wilhelm Wehner and Günter Höfer, who “had the misfortune of remaining Social Democrats.” Staatsarchiv Weimar, Ministerium für Volksbildung Land Thüringen, 3325/78–79.

102. In Lönnendonker's words: “Stolz had made the authorities seem ridiculous, and that was no doubt the greatest offense.” Freie Universität Berlin, 233.

103. Reproduced in Müller, “…stürmt die Festung.” 39.

104. “wie lange noch…” colloquium (March 1948): 14ff.

105. Professors of Leipzig's law faculty told investigators from the DVV in mid-1947 that the difference between worker students and students with Abitur was not great, because on the one hand worker students tended to be very diligent, and on the other, the Abitur had lost value during the Nazi period. Bericht über den Besuch der Leipziger Juristen-Fakultät am 15. und 16. Juli 1947, UAL, Rektorat 122/82. By the mid-1950s worker students in Leipzig were outperforming non-worker students in a number of subjects, including medicine, Archiv der Bezirksleitung der SED Leipzig, IV/4.14/27/73–84.

106. See note 77.

107. See the report on the final meeting of the first Berlin Student Council, which took place in the University's Auditorium Maximum on 5 December 1947 in colloquium. (December 1947): 13. The SED representatives peppered their opponents with invectives like “fascist,” “traitor,” “reactionary,” and themselves spoke “partly in lamentable German.” For examples of frequent untranslated Latin, Lönnendonker, Freie Universität Berlin, 229.

108. Emphasis in original. Reproduced in ibid., 233.

109. On the decisive role of students, see the histories of the Free University: Tent, , The Free University, Lönnendonker, Freie Universität Berlin, Bernd Rabehl, Am Ende der Utopie: die politische Geschichte der Freien Universität Berlin (Berlin, 1988).Google Scholar

110. In February 1947, 92 (2.1 percent) of Berlin's 4,312 students were officially classified as “victims of fascism.” Of those, 53 were “racial,” 39 “political.” BAAP, R2/644/82. In December 1947, 1.6 percent of the students studying in Berlin, Halle, and Greifswald were recognized as “victims of fascims.” “Die Studierenden der wissenschaftlichen Hochschulen der Sowjetzone im Wintersemester 1947/48,” 15 December 1947, BAAP, R2/1060/22–28. In early 1948 the percentage of victims of fascism at the University in Jena was .5 percent. Though worker preparatory courses made special efforts to attract “victims of fascism,” in 1947/48 only 16 (0.9 percent) of the 1,802 admitted could be counted in that category. The East German historian Kasper has calculated that no more than 10 percent of the first four classes of the Berlin worker preparatory course could be counted as “victims of fascism.” Kasper, “Der Kampf der SED.” 162–63.

111. Tent, The Free University, 38–40. BAAP, R2/1446/111 is a leaflet printed in West Berlin in December 1947 which lists candidates of the non-Communist parties for student council elections in Berlin, upon which a DVV official has made notations of party membership (in one case “Catholic student organization”), military service, and the appropriate Nazi racial categories (e.g.: Jude, Mischling). There are also notations of students fathers' experiences in the Third Reich. One is listed as “NSDAP,” another as “reprimanded by Gestapo.” An additional list of candidates for Berlin Student Council elections dated December 1947 also indicates, besides party membership, whether a candidate had been a Mischling. BAAP, R2/1446/29–41.

112. Another gradual change, related to normalization following war, that neared completion in 1948, was a lowering of age. The early student leaders were old: Hess and Coper were 35, Wrazidlo was 31 when arrested. The ministers decided on 9 October 1948, to stiffen restrictions on “overaged students.” BAAP, R2/76/2–3.

113. Tent, The Free University, 256.

114. Soviet officials made open threats. At a meeting of 15 March 1948 Zolotukhin told the student council that they should not worry about arrested students, but should work better, so that no further arrests were necessary. Despite this threat, the council later voted 15 to 5 against an SED proposal that students take part in the official May Day celebration. Lönnendonker, Freie Universität, 227.

115. Reproduced in Krönig, Waldemar and Müller, Klaus-Dieter, Anpassung Widerstand Verfolgung: Hochschule und Studenten in der SBZ und DDR 1945–1961 (Cologne, 1994), 531.Google Scholar

116. Original:“10. Alle Funktionäre verpflichten sich, für die Verwirklichung unserer Ziele alle Kraft einzusetzen, um somit unserer Hochschulgruppe im Wettbewerb zum Parlament die Sturmfahne ‘Sophie Scholl’ zu erobern.” The Leipzig group indeed won the “Sturmfahne.” Universitätsarchiv Leipzig, Rektorat 169/20.

117. For depictions of East German militarism, see Ehring, Klaus and Dallwitz, Martin, Schwerter zu Pflugscharen: Friedensbewegung in der DDR (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1982);Google ScholarKunze, Rainer, Die wunderbaren Jahre: Prosa (Frankfurt am Main, 1976).Google Scholar

118. On this party's founding see Staritz, Dietrich, “National-Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (NDPD), “in SBZ-Handbuch ed. Broszat, and Weber, , 574–83.Google Scholar

119. His former director in the Chemical Institute, Prof. Thilo, described Beyer's past in letters of 1946 and 1947: Beyer had “kept the technical and scientific staff in constant fear and terror and left nothing untried that might give everyone a feeling of insecurity. He acted as a watchman of the German Salute and participation in marches and manifestations and noted and registered every ill-considered or careless remark.” Beyer had been taken prisoner at Stalingrad, and become a supporter of the Soviet system. This made his former director no less wary. In 1947 he wrote the DVV. “The present full-scale renunciation of the beliefs that he once endorsed with the greatest energy—he joined the Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland after surrendering in Stalingrad and now endorses the ideas of Socialism of the Eastern sort with the same energy—does not change anything, if anything it strengthens the feelings of personal mistrust toward him.” Letters of 4 January 1946 and 7 January 1947 from Prof. Thilo, Berlin University, to Rector, Berlin University. Personalakte 2243, Universitätsarchiv Greifswald.

120. Letter of Wohlgemuth to Grünberg, 4 July 1949, Staatsarchiv Schwerin, Ministerium für Volksbildung Mecklenburg, 94/49. Universitätsarchiv Greifswald, Personalakte 2243. The academic senate of Greifswald University unanimously elected Beyer rector in March 1950. He retained this position throughout the 1950s.

121. In 1954 28.76 percent of East German professors belonged to the SED, and 28.43 percent were former NSDAP members. Jessen, “Professoren,” 241. No figures are given for the number of professors who belonged to both categories.

122. Havemann, Robert, Frage-Antworten-Fragen: Aus der Biographie eines deutschen Marxisten (Munich, 1970), 85.Google Scholar

123. Students were not active participants in the 17 June 1953 upheaval, nor did they take a significant role in the intellectual opposition (termed by the SED leadership “revisionism”) of 1956/57. Speakers at the Fourth SED Congress in 1954 took the limited activity at universities on 17 June 1953 as evidence that admissions policies to universities had succeeded. Lammel, Hans-Joachim, ed., Dokumente zur Geschichte der Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Fakultäten der DDR, Part II, 1949–1966 (East Berlin 1988), 122–23;Google ScholarHuschner, Anke, “Der 17. Juni 1953 an Universitäten und Hochschulen der DDR,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung 5 (1991): 681–92.Google Scholar

124. By 1954 there were more former NSDAP members in the SED than former SPD members. Foitzik, “Die stalinistischen ‘Säuberungen,’” 745.

125. For a description of the Stalinist SED's anti-Zionism, as well as its understanding of the roots of German fascism, see Meuschel, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft, 109–16. As early as December 1947 Wilhelm Pieck had accused the United States of using Nazi methods in its antifascist campaign. Lönnendonker, Die Freie Universität, 225.

126. Precisely the well-publicized return of former NSDAP members to positions of power in West Germany prevented many otherwise critical socialists from considering the Federal Republic a better alternative. See esp. Kantorowicz, Alfred, Deutsches Tagebuch (Munich, 1959–1961).Google Scholar For the failure of denazification in the West (Bavaria): Niethammer, Lutz, Die Mitläuferfabrik: Die Entnazifizierung am Beispiel Bayerns (Berlin, 1982).Google Scholar

127. “Totalitarianism” may have fallen out of favor in the West, but East European dissidents never stopped using it, because it best captured their experiences. See Malia, Martin, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia 1917–1991 (New York, 1994), 12;Google ScholarKlessmann, Christoph, “Zwei Diktaturen in Deutschland—Was kann die künftige DDR-Forschung aus der Geschichtsschreibung zum Nationalsozialismus lernen?” Deutschland Archiv 6 (1992): 602.Google Scholar The latter points out that this tendency “irritated” the West German Left.