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From Buchenwald to Bismarck: Historical Myth-Building in the German Democratic Republic, 1945–1989

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Alan Nothnagle
Alan Nothnagle
Affiliation:
State University of New York UniversityAt Buffalo
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Extract

In the opening lines of his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx writes: The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries, and costumes on order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed language.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 91 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1993

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References

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51. The pro-Chinese campaign began with the GDR's heavy press coverage of the Tienanmen “counterrevolution” in June 1989. From then until 9 Novemebr scarcely a day passed without full front-page coverage of joint government communiques, youth delegation visits, Chinese film festivals, etc. The campaign culminated in the GDR's first ever celebration of the Chinese Revolution in October.Google Scholar

52. The Politburo's detachment was obvious, as was the sad performance of most Western journalists and political scientists throughout the 1980s. But even the “Stasi” secret police held on to its mythic worldview until the very end. For example, according to former GDR state secretary Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, Stasi boss Erich Mielke did not crush the GDR opposition in 1989 because he was convinced that the Soviet Union would come to the GDR's rescue. Berliner Zeitung, 4 April 1990. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that while the Stasi was aware of neo-Nazi activity in the GDR, it believed so strongly that the GDR was an antifascist state that it could never admit that this problem—or any other sign of discontent—was homemade and not imported from the West. See Walter Süss, “Was wusste die Stasi über die Neonazis in der DDR?” Die Zeit, 30 April 1993.Google Scholar

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54. See Weber, Hermann, “Abstruse Legenden beschwören das Bild einer heilen DDR”, Berliner Zeitung, 16/17 Novemebr 1991.Google Scholar