Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:44:22.880Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Love, Lust, and Lies under Communism: Family Values and Adulterous Liaisons in Early East Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2011

Andrew I. Port
Andrew I. Port
Affiliation:
Wayne State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

According to a joke that made the rounds in the former Soviet Union, women from different countries held on to their husbands in different ways: the German by her skills as a housewife, the Spaniard by her passionate lovemaking, the Frenchwoman by her refined elegance—and the Russian by the party committee. This sexist quip was a not so oblique reference to the ways in which the communist party intervened in the private domestic affairs of its members. But—even leaving aside the obviously offensive—it was not entirely accurate, for the practice was just as common in other communist countries as well. This included the eastern half of postwar Germany, where, as in the Soviet Union, the wives of adulterous members of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) sometimes appealed to local functionaries for assistance with their straying husbands.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 478 - 505
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Quoted in Perrot, Michelle, ed., A History of Private Life, vol. IV: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1990), 669Google Scholar.

2 Quoted in Betts, Paul, “Alltag und Privatheit,” in Erinnerungsorte der DDR, ed. Sabrow, Martin (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2009), 315Google Scholar.

3 Kon, Igor S., The Sexual Revolution in Russia: From the Age of the Czars to Today (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 83Google Scholar.

4 On the Soviet Union, see Cohn, Edward D., “Sex and the Married Communist: Family Troubles, Marital Infidelity, and Party Discipline in the Postwar USSR, 1945–64,” The Russian Review 68 (July 2009): 429–450CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See the essays in Bessel, Richard and Jessen, Ralph, eds., Die Grenzen der Diktatur. Staat und Gesellschaft in der DDR (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996)Google Scholar; Lindenberger, Thomas, ed., Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur. Studien zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1999)Google Scholar.

6 For an overview of the totalitarian model and its application to developments in the GDR, see Jesse, Eckhard, ed., Totalitarismus im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine Bilanz der internationalen Forschung (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 1996)Google Scholar; Jesse, Eckhard, “War die DDR totalitär?,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B40 (1994): 12–23Google Scholar; Siegel, Achim, ed., Totalitarismustheorien nach dem Ende des Kommunismus (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1998)Google Scholar; Wippermann, Wolfgang, Totalitarismustheorien. Die Entwicklung der Diskussion von den Anfängen bis heute (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1997)Google Scholar. For persuasive arguments rejecting the application of this concept to the GDR in particular, see Jessen, Ralph, “DDR-Geschichte und Totalitarismustheorie,” Berliner Debatte INITIAL 4/5 (1995): 17–24Google Scholar. See also Port, Andrew I., Conflict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 8–9Google Scholar, 281–283, where I have already made these arguments.

7 Schroeder, Klaus, Der SED-Staat. Geschichte und Strukturen der DDR (Munich: Bayerische Landeszentrale für Politische Bildungsarbeit, 1998), 633Google Scholar. See also Schroeder, Klaus, “Einleitung. Die DDR als politische Gesellschaft,” in Geschichte und Transformation des SED-Staates. Beiträge und Analysen, ed. Schroeder, Klaus (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), 11–26Google Scholar.

8 In fact, outcomes were supposedly often at odds with official desires for a variety of reasons: the weight of traditional social structures, mentalities, and milieus, for example, or the supposedly immanent contradictions of the socialist project. See Jessen, Ralph, “Die Gesellschaft im Staatssozialismus. Probleme einer Sozialgeschichte der DDR,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 21 (1995): 96–110Google Scholar.

9 On the concept of Eigen-Sinn, see Lüdtke, Alf, Eigen-Sinn. Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus (Hamburg: Ergebnisse Verlag, 1993)Google Scholar. For ways in which it has been applied to the GDR, see the essays in Lindenberger, ed., Herrschaft.

10 Several East German authors dealt with the topic of adultery and the tension between the public and the private, especially for SED members, in the 1960s. These included Jacobs, Karl-Heinz, Beschreibung eines Sommers (Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben, 1961)Google Scholar; Bruyn, Günter de, Buridans Esel (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1968)Google Scholar; and, most famously, Neutsch's, Erik highly realistic but controversial Spur der Steine (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1964)Google Scholar. All three novels were later made into films. For a thoughtful West German review, see Brandt, Sabine, “Unternehmen Ehebruch. Ein Roman über fremdgehende DDR-Bürger,” Die Zeit, January 16, 1970Google Scholar. On thaw-era Soviet literature dealing with adultery, see Fields, Deborah, Private Life and Communist Morality in Khrushchev's Russia (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 46Google Scholar. See the adultery and divorce statistics in Mertens, Lothar, Wider die sozialistische Familiennorm. Ehescheidungen in der DDR 1950–1989 (Opladen and Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998), 57Google Scholar.

11 It should also be noted that there were no formal institutional mechanisms governing such appeals by wives; there were also no formal protocols, apart from the general principles and regulations laid down in the SED Party Statute, that governed such interventions, set forth punishments, or determined who took part at such meetings, which were conducted on an ad hoc basis.

12 As Carlo Ginzburg has suggested, “a close reading of a relatively small number of texts … can be more rewarding than the massive accumulation of repetitive evidence.” The following is not a specimen of microhistory, however. Because of the limits imposed by the archival material, there is no extended analysis of a single case of adultery. Quote from Muir, Edward, “Introduction: Observing Trifles,” in Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe, ed. Muir, Edward and Ruggiero, Guido, trans. Branch, Eren (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), viiiGoogle Scholar.

13 With respect to the last point, the records of the approximately one dozen known sessions that took place in Thalburg in the late 1950s and early 1960s are similar in character to the published descriptions of ones that took place elsewhere in the GDR and that appeared in contemporary literary treatments (see footnotes 10 and 22). This suggests that they were representative of larger developments in the GDR as a whole.

14 Herzog, Dagmar, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 8Google Scholar.

15 Thüringisches Staatsarchiv (ThStA) Rudolstadt IV/7/230/1156, Protokolle der Leitungssitzungen der SED-Grundorganisation (GO) Wema, April 21, 1959, and July 2, 1959.

16 ThStA Rudolstadt IV/7/230/1156, Protokolle der Leitungssitzungen der SED-GO Wema, July 3, 1959, and July 11, 1959.

17 ThStA Rudolstadt IV/7/230/1156, Protokoll der Leitungssitzung der SED-GO Wema, Dec. 7, 1959.

18 For examples of other types of “improper” behavior that led to intervention by the party in the 1950s and 1960s, see the interview with Kurt Starke, a former sex researcher at the Central Institute for Youth Research in KolanoLeipzig, in Uta Leipzig, in Uta, Nackter Osten (Frankfurt an der Oder: Frankfurt Oder Editionen, 1995), 83Google Scholar.

19 The Party Control Commission was a watchdog entity responsible for monitoring the performance and behavior of individual members and cells. See Klein, Thomas, “Für die Einheit und Reinheit der Partei.” Die innerparteilichen Kontrollorgane der SED in der Ära Ulbricht (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002)Google Scholar. Also see the SED membership statistics in ThStA Rudolstadt IV/A-4/10/086.

20 ThStA Rudolstadt IV/7/224/1116, Protokoll der Mitgliederversammlung der SED-GO Pumpspeicherwerk Hohenwarte, Dec. 3, 1958.

21 ThStA Rudolstadt IV/7/230/1156, Protokolle der Leitungssitzungen der SED-GO Wema, July 3, 1959, and Dec. 22, 1959.

22 See, for example, ThStA Rudolstadt IV/7/224/1116, Protokoll der Mitgliederversammlung der SED-GO Pumpspeicherwerk Hohenwarte, Aug. 14, 1958; ThStA Rudolstadt IV/B-7/220/237, Auszug aus dem Protokoll der Mitgliederversammlung der SED-GO VEB Kraftverkehr, April 18, 1968. See also the minutes of a 1967 session that took place in the Potsdam district, reprinted in Mühlberg, Felix, “Die Partei ist Eifersüchtig,” in Erotik macht die Hässlichen schön. Sexueller Alltag im Osten, ed. Rohnstock, Katrin (Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1995), 122–143Google Scholar, 125, 142–143. See also the 1962 session described in Reimann, Brigitte, Ich bedauere nichts. Tagebücher 1955–63, ed. Drescher, Angela (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2001), 237Google Scholar, cited in McLellan, Josie, Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)Google Scholar, 93.

23 Despite some politicized passages and the occasional sexist remark, this popular manual—which quoted liberally from western publications and which had to be obtained “under the counter”—offered sensible advice. For example, it emphasized the sociological and physiological (and not purportedly political and ideological) causes of adultery. See Neubert, Rudolf, Das neue Ehebuch. Die Ehe als Aufgabe der Gegenwart und Zukunft (Rudolstadt: Greifenverlag, 1957)Google Scholar, quotes on 16, 190. Also see Herzog, Sex, 187; Kolano, Nackter Osten, 92.

24 Bretschneider, Wolfgang and Dierl, Wolfhilde, Liebe und Ehe (Leipzig: Urania-Verlag, 1961), 291–298Google Scholar, quote on 291.

25 Italics not in original. See Dokumente der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands, vol. 3 (Berlin: Dietz, 1952), 163Google Scholar.

26 See Mühlberg, “Eifersüchtig,” 125, 129, 134, 138–139, 142.

27 ThStA Rudolstadt IV/7/230/1160, Informationsbericht der SED-GO Wema, July 5, 1957. Speaking more generally about the GDR as a whole, one East German official from the Ministry of Justice similarly noted the “very important political consequences” of “the local population's anger about the moral behavior of our comrades and functionaries.” See Herbert Wächtler, “Zu Fragen der Moral in Ehe und Familie,” in Neues Leben, Neue Menschen. Konferenz des Lehrstuhls Philosophie des Instituts für Gesellschaftswissenschaften beim ZK der SED über theoretische und praktische Probleme der sozialistischen Moral am 16. und 17. April 1957 (Berlin: Dietz, 1957), 149. As one East German sex expert put it with studied understatement after the demise of the GDR, “I suspect that socialist moral preaching and the ‘real socialist’ behavior of the vanguard and rearguard did not correspond perfectly with one another.” See the interview with Kurt Starke in Kolano, Nackter Osten, 82.

28 See Scott, James, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

29 The NDPD was a conservative middle-class party created in 1948 to attract and integrate craftsmen as well as former Nazis.

30 According to Stasi reports, this woman had had affairs with approximately one dozen leading functionaries in the district, which—if true—suggests how widespread adultery was in Thalburg. That the Stasi kept records of such relationships is, in itself, worth noting. See the reports in Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, Außenstelle (BStU ASt) Gera, KD “Thalburg” X778/60.

31 For examples of such locution, see the investigations by the District Party Control Commission in ThStA Rudolstadt IV/4/10/238 and 239. See also Mühlberg, “Eifersüchtig,” 124, 134, 138.

32 The relevant sections from the 1949 constitution and 1965 Family Code are reprinted in Helwig, Gisela, Jugend und Familie in der DDR. Leitbild und Alltag im Widerspruch (Cologne: Edition Deutschland Archiv im Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1984), 107–108Google Scholar. For the 1955 decree, see Hagemeyer, Maria, Zum Familienrecht in der Sowjetzone. Der “Entwurf des Familiengesetzbuches” und die “Verordnung über Eheschliessung und Eheauflösung,” 3rd ed. (Bonn: Bundesministerium für Gesamtdeutsche Fragen, 1958), 63Google Scholar. Ulbricht's “Commandments” are listed in the entry on “socialist morals” in Zimmermann, Hartmut, ed., DDR Handbuch, vol. 1, 3rd ed. (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1985), 918Google Scholar.

33 Quoted in Goldman, Wendy Z., Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Geiger, H. Kent, The Family in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 15–16, 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Drobnig, Ulrich, “Ideologie, Recht und Wirklichkeit der Familie in der DDR,” Jahrbuch für Ostrecht 8, no. 2 (1967): 158–160Google Scholar.

34 On Soviet mores, see Hoffmann, David L., Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 88–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 139–143Google Scholar; Kon, Sexual Revolution, 55–60, 63; Drobnig, “Ideologie,” 160–162.

35 This was supposedly a populist move aimed at winning over the more conservative sectors of Russian society. The term itself was coined in Timasheff, Nicholas, The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1946)Google Scholar. This thesis is embraced by Goldman, Women, 337–343, but dismissed by Hoffmann, Stalinist Values, 1–4, 184–187. See also BRosenthal, ernice, “Love on the Tractor: Women in the Russian Revolution and After,” in Becoming Visible, ed. Bridenthal, Renata and Koonz, Claudia (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 370–399Google Scholar.

36 For a comprehensive overview, see Mouton, Michelle, From Nurturing the Nation to Purifying the Volk: Weimar and Nazi Family Policy, 1918–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Blasius, Dirk, Ehescheidung in Deutschland, 1794–1945. Scheidung und Scheidungsrecht in historischer Perspektive (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), 164–223CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pine, Lisa, Nazi Family Policy, 1933–1945 (Oxford: Berg, 1997), 6–7Google Scholar, 15–18; Betts, Paul, Within Walls: Private Life in the German Democratic Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 91–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 “In conformance with the traditional sexual double standard,” one scholar has observed, “the purity of German blood necessitated women's chaste behavior more than it did men's”—which meant that women who had affairs (adulterous or otherwise) with foreign slave laborers were treated more harshly, as a rule, than men. See Kundrus, Birthe, “Forbidden Company: Romantic Relationships between Germans and Foreigners, 1939 to 1945,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, nos. 1/2 (January/April 2002): 201–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote on 221.

38 Pine, Family Policy, 15, 39, 180. See also Blasius, Ehescheidung, 204–206, 210, 215–217; Mouton, Nurturing the Nation, 63–64, 89–91, 103; Heineman, Elizabeth D., What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 7–8Google Scholar, 54–56, 58–59.

39 See Kolano, Nackter Osten, 82–83, 100; Herzog, Sex, 193, 199–200; McLellan, Josie, “State Socialist Bodies: East German Nudism from Ban to Boom,” The Journal of Modern History 79 (March 2007): 55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Italics not in original. See Hagemeyer, Familienrecht, 65.

41 The “guilt principle” became the primary ground for divorce in 1900 with passage of the German Civil Code (BGB), which tried to “standardize marriage and divorce law at the national level. It echoed a strong Protestant tradition, and sought to ground marriage as the main pillar of moral and social order.” It should be noted that the 1938 marriage law had also abandoned the “guilt principle” in favor of a “breakdown principle,” but one applied in accordance with racialist criteria. See Betts, Within Walls, 91–92.

42 In fact, western feminists had long fought for such a reform, which the Federal Republic first introduced two decades later in 1977. According to Donna Harsh, a 1957 addendum to the marriage ordinance “turned divorce back in a less-liberal direction” by introducing a variety of even stricter standards. “By 1959, it had become more difficult for any couple to get a divorce.” See Harsh, Donna, Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 220–221Google Scholar. See also Schlicht, Götz, Das Familien- und Familienverfahrensrecht der DDR (Tübingen: H. Erdmann Verlag, 1970), 55–68Google Scholar; Zieger, Gottfried, “Die Entwicklung des Familienrechts in der DDR mit Berlin (Ost),” in Das Familienrecht in beiden deutschen Staaten. Rechtsentwicklung, Rechtsvergleich, Kollisionsprobleme, ed. Zieger, Gottfried (Cologne: Heymann, 1983), 53–58Google Scholar; Heineman, What Difference, 194.

43 In fact, divorce rates rose from fourteen per 100 marriages in the early 1960s to thirty-eight per 100 by 1989. See the statistics in Mertens, Familiennorm, 57; Betts, Within Walls, 88, 100; Fulbrook, Mary, The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 118Google Scholar. See also the statistics in “Beschluß des Plenums des Obersten Gerichts über die erzieherische Tätigkeit der Gerichte zur Erhaltung von Ehen,” “Zur Erforschung der Ursachen und begünstigenden Bedingungen für Ehekonflikte,” and “Erfahrung aus der Ehe- und Familienberatung,” Neue Justiz 19, no. 10 (May 2, 1965): 310Google Scholar, 319, 323.

44 See Artzt, Werner, “Der Grundsatz der Gleichberechtigung in der ostdeutschen Rechtsprechung,” Neue Justiz 8, no. 12 (June 30, 1954), 361Google Scholar; “Richtlinie des Plenums des Oberstens Gerichts über die Voraussetzungen der Ehescheidung nach § 8 Eheverordnung vom 24. November 1955,” Neue Justiz 11, no. 14 (July 20, 1957): 441–442Google Scholar. See also Stein, J., “Notwendigkeit der Befreiung vom Eheverbot des Ehebruchs nach dem neuen Ehescheidungsrecht der ‘DDR,’” Ehe und Familie 3, no. 9 (Sept. 1956): 265–266Google Scholar.

45 See Wächtler, “Ehe und Familie,” 148–149. On the public discussion and criticism of these reforms, see Harsh, Revenge, 204–210. For an official assessment of that discussion by the East German Minister of Justice, who vigorously defended the decision to eliminate adultery as an absolute ground for divorce, see Benjamin, Hilde, “Einige Bemerkungen zum Entwurf eines Familiengesetzbuches,” Neue Justiz 8, no. 12 (June 30, 1954): 349–353Google Scholar; Benjamin, Hilde, “Zum Abschluß der allgemeinen Diskussion über den Familiengesetzentwurf,” Neue Justiz 8, no. 24 (Dec. 20, 1954): 724–725Google Scholar.

46 Hagemeyer, Familienrecht, 16–17.

47 According to Harsh, “Fewer than 350 women asked for alimony among more than 250,000 who divorced in 1961.” See Harsh, Revenge, 218, 221. Also see Heinemann, What Difference, 194–195, 220, 224; Schlicht, Familiensverfahrensrecht, 67–68; Hagemeyer, Familienrecht, 11–15; Drobnig, “Ideologie,” 179–181.

48 See Betts, Within Walls, 97–100.

49 See Mertens, Familiennorm, 77; Port, Conflict and Stability, 207–208, 254–255.

50 That said, having a husband became gradually less important the following decade thanks to a number of important legal and socioeconomic developments, especially with respect to increased female training and employment opportunities. See Heinemann, What Difference, 178, 185, 210–211; “Richtlinie des Plenums,” 443; Harsh, Revenge, 201.

51 With respect to increasing secularization, East Germans with a religious affiliation declined from 92.2 percent of the population in 1950 to 68.1 percent in 1964. See Bundesamt, Statistisches, ed., Ausgewählte Zahlen der Volks- und Berufserzählungen und Gebäude- und Wohnungszählungen 1950 bis 1981 (Wiesbaden: Statistisches Bundesamt, 1994), 42Google Scholar. In Thalburg itself, the number of marriage ceremonies with religious content declined from 18.2 percent in 1959 to 2.3 percent in 1971. See the statistics in StA “Thalburg” 10711.

52 Though party members in the Soviet Union often asked similarly intrusive questions, many were apparently not especially keen to police their peers. See Cohn, “Sex and the Married Communist,” 432, 444–445, 449. This seems to have often been true in the GDR as well. According to a statement in 1957 by one official in the East German Ministry of Justice, many local functionaries in the GDR refused to intervene, typically claiming that the man in question was an “indispensable and industrious worker; his private life doesn't concern us.” See Wächtler, “Ehe und Familie,” 150. According to one former East German judge, public discussions about the new Family Code of 1965 led to similar complaints concerning the expectation that local factory and neighborhood organizations would get involved in marital conflicts: “This was considered to be an unwelcome interference in the personal sphere.” See Zieger, “Entwicklung,” 62. Similarly, see Mühlberg, “Eifersüchtig,” 124; Bretschneider and Dierl, Liebe und Ehe, 296.

53 On the intrusive behavior of the medieval church, see Ozment, Steven, The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), 16–32Google Scholar.

54 Zimmermann, ed., DDR Handbuch, 917.

55 These efforts to “improve” the masses came in the wake of a public discussion about a wide range of social problems, including juvenile delinquency, that began following Stalin's demise in 1953. On developments in the Soviet Union, see Cohn, “Sex and the Married Communist,” quote on 441. See also Fields, Private Life, 5, 20–22. For the allusion to Foucauldians, see Foucault's, Michel ideas about the post-Enlightenment transformation of social control in his Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995)Google Scholar. On official codes of behavior for the communist rank and file prior to World War II, see Hoffmann, Stalinist Values, 57–87.

56 That is not to say that such practices ended completely. In 1967, party proceedings were conducted in the Potsdam district against four adulterous members after their wives had approached local SED officials for assistance. Although the district secretariat had ordered them “not to interfere in marital questions,” political considerations may explain their involvement nonetheless. One of the men had an affair with a woman who had tried to flee the GDR; another had earlier been in the SA as well as the East German Liberal Party, both of which made him politically suspect. See Mühlberg, “Eifersüchtig,” 122–143.

57 See Schlicht, Familienverfahrensrecht, 105; Zieger, “Entwicklung,” 66; Drobnig, “Ideologie,” 169. On the practical consequences of the return to the “guilt principle,” see Wolff, Friedrich, “Ehescheidung und Schuld,” Neue Justiz 19, no. 13 (July 1, 1965): 416–419Google Scholar.

58 In practice, officials had been much more tolerant of divorce during the immediate postwar period, when the upheaval of the war and its aftermath had critically disrupted a number of marriages, leading to a sharp increase in marital breakup. See Betts, Within Walls, 93–94, 100–102.

59 It is worth noting, in this context, that women between the ages of twenty-five and forty were the ones most likely to visit these centers and most likely to file for divorce. See Harsh, Revenge, 289–290, 295–296. On marriage counseling in the GDR prior to this, see Timm, Annette F., “Guarding the Health of Worker Families in the GDR: Socialist Health Care, Bevölkerungspolitik, and Marriage Counselling, 1945–1970,” in Arbeiter in der SBZ—DDR, ed. Hübner, Peter and Tenfelde, Klaus (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 1999), esp. 484–494Google Scholar.

60 Whether they were truly active is another issue; official reports suggest they were not. See “Beratung des Plenums des Obersten Gerichts über bedeutsame familienrechtliche Probleme,” and “Die gesellschaftliche Kraft zur Erhaltung der Familiengemeinschaft einsetzen,” in Neue Justiz 19, no. 10 (May 2, 1965): 313–319Google Scholar.

61 Betts, Within Walls, 94–95, 100–102.

62 East German divorce statistics from 1958–1989 are in Mertens, Familiennorm, 36–37. On the challenges faced by working women, see Port, Conflict and Stability, 208–210; Harsh, Revenge, 238–239; Drobnig, “Ideologie,” 172.

63 To save a marriage, judges still had the right to request assistance from (i.e., intervention by) factory and neighborhood organizations. For a succinct overview of divorce procedure in the GDR, see Hans-Hermann Lochen, “Eherecht in der DDR und in der Bundesrepublik,” in Familienrecht, ed. Zieger, 91–93; Drobnig, “Ideologie,” 170–172. Divorce statistics are from Betts, Within Walls, 95, 100–102.

64 Betts argues just the opposite, suggesting that the “obsessive preoccupation of the state with the private sphere became more pronounced in the 1970s,” even though, as he writes, interference in divorce began to decrease that decade as well. See McLellan, Love in the Time of Communism, 98; Betts, “Alltag und Privatheit,” 319; Betts, Within Walls, 108 ff.

65 On the “sexual evolution”—not revolution—of this period, see Herzog, Sex, 192; Herzog, Dagmar, “East Germany's Sexual Evolution,” in Socialist Modern, ed. Betts, Paul and Pence, Katherine (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 71–95Google Scholar; Kolano, Nackter Osten, 81–82, 85. As Betts notes, this period was the “golden age of sex manuals … But even if the studies of sexual liberation were being pirated from the West, the blossoming of a new GDR sexual culture based on sensual pleasure was something that supposedly distinguished it from the uptight and prudish West.” This astute observation draws attention to the influence of the West German sexual revolution on the GDR, especially in the context of the Cold-War rivalry between the two postwar German states. See Betts, Within Walls, 103.

66 See McLellan, “State Socialist Bodies,” 77; McLellan, Love in the Time of Communism, 13.

67 McLellan, “State Socialist Bodies,” 74.

68 The types of denunciatory practices identified by Vandana Joshi during the Third Reich differed significantly from those in East Germany, however. In the cases she examined, the wives approached authorities to rid themselves of spouses, not hold onto them. For that reason, the nature of the appeal tended to be more political in nature, which meant that disillusionment regarding matters of the heart was often cloaked in language claiming “political deviance” on the part of the spouse. See Joshi, Vandana, Gender and Power in the Third Reich: Female Denouncers and the Gestapo (1933–45) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 43–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 50, 80. On denunciation more generally, see the collection of essays in Fitzpatrick, Sheila and Gellately, Robert, eds., Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789–1989 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

69 On the “conceptual messiness” of this dichotomy, see Weintraub, Jeff, “The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction,” in Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, ed. Weintraub, Jeff and Kumar, Krishan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 1–42Google Scholar. See also the essays in Benn, Stanley I. and Gaus, Gerald F., eds., Public and Private in Social Life (London: Croom Helm, 1983)Google Scholar.

70 There is a vast literature on this subject. A good place to start is the collection of essays entitled “Women's History in the New Millennium: Rethinking Public and Private,” Journal of Women's History 15, no. 1 (Spring 2003). See also the essays in Landes, Joan, ed., Feminism, the Public, and the Private (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Helly, Dorothy O. and Reverby, Susan M., eds., Gendered Domains: Rethinking Public and Private in Women's History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Gamarnikow, Eva et al. , eds., The Public and the Private (London: Heinemann, 1983)Google Scholar.

71 Instead, they stress the many connections between the public and private. Apart from the obvious fact that men stood astride both worlds, their public activities were, for example, often made possible by those ostensibly excluded from the public, namely women. This emphasis on the blurred boundaries between the public and private is an implicit critique of ideas that middle-class European liberals first embraced and propagated during the nineteenth century. See the pathbreaking study by Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850, rev. ed. (London: Routledge, 2002). See also Carole Pateman, “Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy,” in Public and Private, ed. Benn and Gauss, 281–303.

72 See Lynn Hunt, “The Unstable Boundaries of the French Revolution,” in Private Life, ed. Perrot, 13–14, as well as Michelle Perrot, “Introduction” and “Conclusion,” in Private Life, ed. Perrot, 2, 669.

73 Farge, Arlette and Foucault, Michel, Le Désordre des Familles: Lettres de Cachet des Archives de la Bastille au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1982)Google Scholar.

74 See Kühne, Thomas, ed., Männergeschichte, Geschlechtergeschichte. Männlichkeit im Wandel der Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1996)Google Scholar; Evans, Richard J. and Lee, W. R., eds., The German Family: Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany (London: Croom Helm, 1981)Google Scholar; Weber-Kellermann, Ingeborg, “The German Family between Private Life and Politics,” in A History of Private Life, vol. 5: Riddles of Identity in Modern Times, ed. Prost, Antoine and Vincent, Gérard, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991), 503–508Google Scholar.

75 See Michelle Perrot, “The Family Triumphant,” in Private Life, ed. Perrot, 113, 124–125; Stanley I. Benn and Gerald F. Gaus, “The Liberal Conception of the Public and the Private,” and Stanley I. Benn, “Private and Public Morality: Clean Living and Dirty Hands,” in Public and Private, ed. Benn and Gaus, 31–65, 172–176.

76 Hoffmann, Stalinist Values, 7–10, quote on 7. See also Donzelot, Jacques, The Policing of Families, trans. Hurley, Robert (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979)Google Scholar.

77 For a critical discussion of the controversial term “totalitarian,” see Port, Conflict and Stability, 8–10, 281–283.

78 See Marc Garcelon, “The Shadow of the Leviathan: Public and Private in Communist and Post-Communist Society,” in Public and Private, ed. Weintraub and Kumar, 311–312, 324; and Oleg Kharkhordin, “Reveal and Dissimulate: A Genealogy of Private Life in Soviet Russia,” in Public and Private, ed. Weintraub and Kumar, 336, 343. Also see note 52.

79 He also argues, less convincingly, that the “state does not interfere with private life” in a democratic society. See Gérard Vincent, “The Secrets of History and the Riddle of Identity,” in Private Life, ed. Prost and Vincent, 147–148.

80 See Kharkhordin, “Reveal and Dissimulate,” 349–350. The Polish poet and dissident Czeslaw Milosz memorably referred to the practice of dissimulation as ketman (an old Arabic term for paying lip service to authority) in his classic treatise on state socialism. See Milosz, Czeslaw, The Captive Mind (New York: Vintage International, 1990), 54–81Google Scholar.

81 Betts, “Alltag und Privatheit,” 315. Also see Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Burger, Thomas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991Google Scholar).

82 Paul Betts's monograph Within Walls makes a significant contribution to this lacuna in the literature.

83 Betts, “Alltag und Privatheit,” 316–317. The German term sounds decidedly awkward, in fact.

84 Such “niches,” he notes, also existed in the Federal Republic and elsewhere, and were thus not peculiar to the GDR. See Gaus, Günter, Wo Deutschland liegt. Eine Ortsbestimmung (Munich: DTV, 1987), 115–169Google Scholar.

85 Are such similarities merely superficial, and if not, what are the essential differences? State interference in marital relations and sexuality has taken place, of course, under all types of political systems, and individuals have everywhere been subject to the pressures of prevailing social mores. But in a state such as the GDR, it was the ruling party itself that primarily defined and enforced such values; more to the point, it did so in an atmosphere not conducive to open debate—an obvious but essential difference from the situation in the west. That is not to say, however, that the “masses” had no influence whatsoever on official policies, actions, and decisions. The flood of archivally based studies that have appeared since the opening of the east European and Soviet archives (including this article) have clearly shown that there was indeed agency at the grass roots and that the state did not enjoy a complete monopoly on power. For a discussion of how the attitudes of ordinary East German women could concretely affect developments in family law, see Harsh, Donna, “Approach/Avoidance: Communists and Women in East Germany, 1945–1949,” Social History 25, no. 2 (May 2000): 156–182CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 See Korzilius, Sven, “Asoziale” und “Parasiten” im Recht der SBZ/DDR. Randgruppen im Sozialismus zwischen Repression und Ausgrenzung (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2005)Google Scholar.

87 See Betts, Within Walls, 96, 106.

88 See, for example, ibid., 173–192, quote on 175; Zatlin, Jonathan, The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 286–320Google Scholar; Port, Conflict and Stability, 265–267; Fulbrook, The People's State, 271–277; Mühlberg, Felix, Bürger, Bitten und Behörden. Geschichte der Eingabe in der DDR (Berlin: K. Dietz, 2004)Google Scholar; Staadt, Joachim, Eingaben. Die institutionalisierte Meckerkultur der DDR (Berlin: Forschungsverbund SED-Staat, 1996)Google Scholar.

89 Betts, Within Walls, 186. Others have made a similar point; see, for example, Port, Conflict and Stability, 147.

90 Betts, “Alltag und Privatheit,” 320–323.

91 See footnotes 6 and 7.

92 As Betts has argued, this is a false dichotomy. See Betts, Within Walls, 90.

93 See, for example, Kocka, Jürgen, “Eine durchherrschte Gesellschaft,” in Sozialgeschichte der DDR, ed. Kaeble, Hartmut, Kocka, Jürgen, and Zwahr, Hartmut (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1994), 547–553Google Scholar; Pollack, Detlef, “Modernization and Modernization Blockages in GDR Society,” in Dictatorship as Experience: Toward a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR, ed. Jarausch, Konrad, trans. Duffy, Eve (New York: Berghahn, 1999), 27–46Google Scholar.

94 This is a variation on the idea of “communist neo-traditionalism.” See Jowitt, Ken, “Soviet Neotraditionalism: The Political Corruption of a Leninist Regime,” Soviet Studies 35 (1983): 275–297CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walder, Andrew, Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Ettrich, Frank, “Neotraditionalistischer Staatssozialismus. Zur Diskussion eines Forschungskonzeptes,” PROKLA 22 (1992): 98–114Google Scholar.

95 As one scholar has similarly written with respect to spousal denunciation under the National Socialists, “It was as if the wives removed all blinds and curtains from the glass windows and doors of their houses for the inquisitive and searching eyes of the Gestapo functionaries. …  Equipped as these onlookers were with arbitrary powers, it was difficult for the hostesses to determine what the Gestapo functionaries could lay their hands on and what they would spare.” See Joshi, Gender and Power, 82.

96 In fact, according to officials, it was especially women who, during public discussions about the 1965 Family Code, voiced concern about public interference in their private affairs, especially by neighborhood associations (Hausgemeinschaften). See “Zum bisherigen Verlauf der Diskussion über den FGB-Entwurf,” Neue Justiz 19, no. 13 (July 1, 1965): 415Google Scholar. Vandana Joshi makes no bones about condemning the behavior of wives who denounced their husbands under the Third Reich and thus “invite[d] intrusion” into their private lives: “[They] made a vital contribution to the Nazi power [by] making their disillusionment public. … The ‘environment of hatred’ rubbed off on them too and they took part in it by trying to eliminate those whom they hated in their ‘separate sphere.’” See Joshi, Gender and Power, 46, 85. My own comments are not an attempt to revive the so-called Historikerinnenstreit (“female historians' controversy”) that erupted over the question of female complicity during the Nazi period, though similar issues are involved concerning culpability and the relationship between the public and private. For a succinct but useful overview of the Historikerinnenstreit, whose main antagonists were Gisela Bock and Claudia Koonz, see Saldern, Adelheid von, “Victims or Perpetrators? Controversies about the Role of Women in the Nazi State,” in Nazism and German Society, 1933–1945, ed. Crew, David (London: Routledge, 1994), 141–165Google Scholar.

97 Cohn makes this intriguing point with respect to wives in the Soviet Union. See Cohn, “Sex and the Married Communist,” 435.

98 Joshi makes a similar point about denunciatory practices during the Third Reich: “The private-versus-public dichotomy was not just being dismantled from above but also from below.” She misleadingly suggests, however, an earlier separation between the two spheres that was less strict in practice than in theory. See Joshi, Gender and Power, 86.