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Between “Investigative History” and Solid Research: The Reorganization of Historical Studies about the Former German Democratic Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Anna-Sabine Ernst
Anna-Sabine Ernst
Affiliation:
Humboldt University, Berlin
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Extract

The days are gone when conferences on GDR studies were limited to a small community of cognoscenti gathered far from the bright lights of public scrutiny. The fall of the Berlin Wall changed this situation drastically. After a brief moment of panic in which the entire field threatened to disappear along with its object of study, the now historical GDR has become an attractive area of research and, with the expansion of scholarly interest, one so broad as to make recently undertaken by the University of Mannheim's program in GDR histry lists no fewer than 759 projects in progress. Although it was never completely apolitical, the field is more contested than ever nowadays. The media have been only too happy to use research results as ammunition in daily political battles. Scholars themselves are still hotly debating who should be authorized to reappraise the history of the GDR, and how they should be doing it. This conflict has long since moved beyond scholarly circles and is being carried out aggressively on the culture pages of the tone of this debate appears no less peculiar than the particular fronts and alliances that have developed around it. In the following essay I shall try to shed some light on the background of this new outbreak of scholarly politics, which is in many ways reminiscent of the Historikerstreit of the 1980s, and then go on to introduce some of the newly founded institutions for the study of GDR history, all of them located in and around Berlin-Brandenburg.

Type
A Survey of Institutional Research on the GDR
Information
Central European History , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 373 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1995

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References

1. German Bundestag, Commission of Inquiry on the “Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland,” Forschungsprojekte zur DDR Geschichte. Ergebnisse einer Umfrage des Arbeitsbereiches DDR-Geschichte im Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung der Universität Mannheim, ed. Heimann, Thomas (Mannheim, 1994)Google Scholar.

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3. Most of the members, however, were taken on by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, so that the expertise accumulated in the GI was not lost altogether.

4. Cf. Danyel, Jürgen, “Die geteilte Vergansgenheit. Gesellschaftliche Ausgangslagen und politische Dispositionen für den Umgang mit Nationalsozialismus und Widerstand in beiden Deutschen Staaten nach 1949,” in Historische DDR-Forschung. Aufsätze und Studien, ed. Kocka, Jürgen (Berlin, 1993), 129–48Google Scholar.

5. In contrast, Jürgen Habermas argued in early May 1994 before the Bundestag's Commission of Inquiry that, to be sure, something akin to an economically and and socially based “faith in the system” had been able to develop under the favorable conditions of the immediate postwar period, among a population shielded from crises. Not until the 1960s, however, when a normative confrontation with the National Socialist past was demanded, did this “faith in the system,” anchored in the convictions of a liberal political culture, turn into loyalty to the Constitution.

6. Habermas, Jürgen, “Was bedeutet ‘Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit’ heute?” Die Zeit, 10 April 1992Google Scholar. In this case the old warriors were cold warriors. By using a term that originally referred to men who had joined the National Socialist Party before it came to power in 1933, Habermas indicated the proximity of these cold warriors to the political far right.

7. Cf. FAZ, 9 September 1993. The above-named authors had already opened the debate in August. See “Der Bielefelder Weg” FAZ, 10 August 1993, as well as Eckert, Rainer, “Nicht ohne Reue,’ FAZ, 22 September 1993Google Scholar. The interim director as well as a member of the institute were given the opportunity for rebuttal. See Kocka, Jürgen, “Auch Wissenschaftler Können lernen,” FAZ, 25 August 1993Google Scholar; Hübner, Peter, “Ein Labyrinth, in dem es nur falsche Wege gibt”, FAZ, 8 September 1993Google Scholar.

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10. With a view toward the initiators of the Forschungsverbund SED-Staat, formerly aligned with the Left in university politics, Gesine Schwan, dean of Berlins' Otto-Suhr-Institute, rejects sweeping accusations, pointing out that the notion of “outside direction… is particularly strong among former Maoists or members of the former K-groups, who now, (having done a political turnaround) ‘fear a read under every bed.’” Cf. Schwan, Gesine, “Kein Anlass zu pauschalen Verdächtigungen,” in Der Tagesspiegel, 18 January 1995, p. 21Google Scholar.

11. The document goes on to say that the “ease” with which these might be discarded “tends to damage the country's political culture and diminish the reputation of the historical profession.” Cf. the resolution of 30 September 1994, in Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 11 (1994): 1000Google Scholar.

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14. The papers of Robert Havemann, including his STASI file, constitute its basic holding, and the “Neues Forum” has also brought its collection here. Cf. Freier, Friederike, “Das Robert Havemann Archiv in Berlin,” in Deutschland Archiv 8 (1994): 790–92Google Scholar.

15. Their previous chairman, the recently deceased Wolfgang Harich, wanted contemporary history to be understood as resistance (“Zeitgeschichte als Widerstand”). The work, which was done exclusively by unpaid volunteers, was meant to convey “pride in accomplishment” and to encourage people to “stand tall.” See the interview with Harich in Scheinschlag. Zeitung aus der Mitte 11 (1994): 16, as well as the contribution by the present chairman and former professor of contemporary history at the Humboldt University, Prokop, Siegfried, “Über Sinn und Unsinn von Enquête-Kommissionen zur ‘Aufarbeitung’ von Geschichte,” in Z. Zeitschrift für marxistische Erneuerung 20 (Frankfurt/Main, December 1994): 95–108Google Scholar.

16. Cf. also Suckut, Siegfried, “Eine neue Forschungseinrichtung stellt sich vor. Die Abteilung Bildung und Forschung beim Bundesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR,” in Deutschland Archiv 5 (1993): 555–57Google Scholar, as well as the first progress report of the Bundesbeauftragten (federal comissioner) Berlin, 1993, p. 69–74Google Scholar.

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18. A particular criticism is that scholars do not compensate for the onesidedness of the sources, which is a result of the archive situation. See among others, Sabrow's, Martin review in Comparativ. Leipziger Beiträge zur Universitätsgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 2 (1995): 150–55Google Scholar.

19. According to Manfred Wilke, one of the founders of the association, in an interview with Norddeutscher Rundfunk, program “Zeitgeschichte,” NDR 4, 28 October 1994.

20. The quotation is from Manfred Wilke, who used the unmasking of Dietrich Staritz as the occasion to accuse the community of GDR scholars of having been “infiltrated.” In their (for lack of proof) sweeping attacks, Jochen Staadt, a member, and Klaus Schroeder, speaker and coordinator of the Center, have focused of late on the Otto-Suhr-Institut at the Free University, where Staritz worked before his call to Mannheim. On this issue, see the discussion in the Berlin Tagesspiegel newspaper, which begins with an account by Staadt: “Fred Winter. Ein neuer Blick auf die Geschichte der FU,” 13 January 1995; Klaus Schroeder, “Für einen redlichen Umgang mit der Geschichte,” 25 January 1994; letters to the editor from the dean of the faculty Gesine Schwan, 18 and 21 May 1995, and from Klaus Schroeder, 5 May 1995.

21. “Zwei Jahre Forschungsverbund SED-Staat,” Press release January 1995.

22. The “block parties,” CDU, LDPD, NDPD, were formally independent parties that were actually controlled by the SED.

23. Ibid.

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26. Progress report of the Research Programs (Forschungsschwerpunkte) in the humanities and social sciences, published by the Fördergesellschaft wissenschaftliche Neuvorhaben mbH Munich, 1994, p. 19Google Scholar.

27. Recommendations of the Wissenschaftsrat VI (1990), cited in Potsdamer Bulletin für Zeithistorische Studien 2 (1994): 5Google Scholar.

28. According to the director of the Research Program in Literary Studies (Forschungsschwerpunkt Literaturwissenschaft) and former president of the Free University. Laemmert, Eberhard. Cf. Interview in Frankfurter Rundschau, 10 November 1994, p. 6Google Scholar.

29. Cf. Küpper, “Hoffen und Bangen.”

30. Funding application to the DFG, May 1995, pp. 2ff; cf. also the contribution of the visiting professor, and since autumn of 1994 deputy interim director of the FSP Jarausch, Konrad, Die DDR denken. Narrative Sturkturen und analytische Strategien (forthcoming in Berliner Debatte, early 1996)Google Scholar, as well as the article by Martin Broszat taking a stand against the ideological instrumentalization of the results of research on National Socialism, “Plädoyer für eine Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus,” in Merkur 5 (1985): 373–85Google Scholar.

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32. Indeed, the rejection of this theory in older research on the GDR was based, among other factors, on the attempt to investigate not only the communist system of rule but also the changes in society that were brought about by power politics and their impact on the political regime. Cf. Meuschel, “Auf der Suche,” 414ff. On the changing reception of theories of totalitarianism in research on the Nazi period, see KleΒmann, Christoph, “Zwei Diktaturen in Deutschland. Was kann die zukünftige DDR-Forschung aus der Geschichtsschreibung zum Nationalsozialismus lernen?” in Deutschland Archiv 6 (1992): 601–6Google Scholar. The author has been one of the deputy interim directors of the FSP since 1993.

33. Progress report, see note 26, 21.

34. Bessel, Richard and Jessen, Ralph, “Introducation” in idem, eds., Die Grenzen der Diktatur. Staat und Gesellschaft in der DDR (forthcoming: Göttingen, early 1996)Google Scholar. In the above cited work see Thomas Lindenberger's article on the methodological and theoretical problems of writing a history of everyday life in the GDR.

35. See DFG application. 10.

36. In the 1970s, Martin Broszat, in his important work in contemporary history, was the first scholar to address the National Socialist period from the perspective of “history from below.” Broszat was director of the Institut Für Zeitgeschichte in Munich from 1972 to 1989.See Broszat, Martin, ed., Bayern in der NS–Zeit, 6 vols. (Munich, 1977–1983)Google Scholar.

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45. While scholarly appraisals of National Socialism could only begin after considerable delay, the usual waiting period for access to official documents was largely suspended for the SED archives in 1989. As is usual in the early phase of work in a new field, the data grew “more quickly than the capacity to analyze it.” See Kocka, Vereinigungskrise, 103.

46. Cf. the contributions of Friedrich, Wolfgang-Uwe and Jesse, Eckhard, in “Totalitäre Herrschaft—totalitäres Erbe”, German Studies Review, special issue (1994): 1–21 and 157–72Google Scholar.