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Cigarette Butts and the Building of Socialism in East Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Young-sun Hong
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Extract

Since the nineteenth century, cleanliness and hygiene have played an integral role in the construction of bourgeois subjectivity and notions of self-governance in Europe. Drawing on this reservoir of potential signification, the spread of a mass consumer society in the twentieth century has capitalized on commodified images of health, hygiene, and cleanliness, while the maintenance and representation of clean bodies for modern men and women became virtually inseparable from consumption. The Nazis both accelerated and gave a racial spin to the idea of a clean, healthy body as the symbol of racially superior, socially productive, and sexually virile Aryans. Whether commodified and sexualized under consumerism or channeled into a murderous project under the Nazis, hygienic and healthy bodies became the object of pleasure and a signifier of superior social and racial identity. When these considerations are taken into account, it is important to inquire into the problems faced by the founding fathers of the GDR with regard to questions of health and consumption. The vision of the socialist “New Man” and the ideal of pure and healthy living that were so frequently invoked in the early years of the GDR must be seen as attempts to forge a positive identity for the new socialist state while avoiding the twin ideological dangers posed by the memory of Nazi racial policies and the implicit connections made between health, consumption, and freedom in the pluralistic consumer society to the west.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , September 2002 , pp. 327 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2002

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47. The Ministry of Health clearly differentiated between alcoholism and “nicotinism.” The authorities defined alcoholism as a “genuine illness” (echte Krankheit) that required clinical treatment, which was itself covered by health insurance. In contrast, the drug, Lobelin, which was designed to help people overcome nicotine addiction, was not covered by insurance in part because the government felt that making people pay for this medication themselves would provide a strong incentive to give up smoking. See Thränhardt's reply to Frau Stier, a pharmacist in Karl-Marx-Stadt, 9 November 1965, BA: DQ1/3614. Like alcohol and tuberculosis, there was a link between smoking and productivity in terms of the cost of medical treatment, work time lost, and indirect harm to the health and working conditions of nonsmokers.

48. Many citizens wanted to (re-)establish voluntary health-reform and antismoking associations, but the government criticized such groups as unscientific and superstitious organizations that existed only in an individualistic, bourgeois society.

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58. Frau S. did not forget to relate in her letter “How happily I think back on the time (I'm now 52 years old) when one could shop without constraints and when shopping bags were printed with the words ‘Eat more fruit and you'll stay healthy.’ These words weren't a hollow slogan …” It is the responsibility of the state, and especiaily the public health authorities, to spend no money for poison, but rather for fruit, tropical fruits, almonds and nuts, in order to finally respond to the huge demand and the much too small supply.” Elfriede Steude 28 October 1958, BAB: DQ1/6017.

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