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Red Power: Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich and Indian Activist Networks in East and West Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2008

H. Glenn Penny
H. Glenn Penny
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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Extract

A curious photograph appeared in 1976 in the East-German newspaper Junge Welt (Fig. 1). Two well-known members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), Dennis Banks and Vernon Bellecourt, were shown together with an elderly German woman, Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, at her home in East Berlin. This photo, like so many of the photos of Indians in unexpected places, always seems to amuse people, leading them to ask with a snigger why the Indians were there. The Indians' presence in such places, however, is seldom a laughing matter, and in this case, scholars of the post-war era might find the answer to the simple question of the Indians' presence somewhat disconcerting.

Type
Research Article
Information
Central European History , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , September 2008 , pp. 447 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2008

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References

1 Deloria, Philip J., Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas, 2004).Google Scholar

2 She was unable to continue working toward her Habilitation because her family had lost its savings during the inflation, and she became responsible for supporting herself and her aging mother; those concerns were also the reason she chose to emphasize economics over history during her Ph. D. Oettinger, Angelika and Schneegass, Beate, eds., Gebraucht, Gebremst … Gefördert. Frauen und Politik in Charlottenburg nach 1945 (Berlin: Hentrich, 1993), 15–17.Google Scholar

3 She also took a number of smaller jobs before gaining this position. Liselotte Welskopf, “Lebenslauf,” December 11, 1953. In Humboldt University Archive, Philosophy Faculty, Liselotte Welskopf Habilitation File.

4 Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, “Lebenslauf,” 1954, Nachlass (collected papers) at the Archiv der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaft (hereafter ABBAW) (Nachlass), Folder 1.

5 Rudolf Welskopf, “Meine illegale Tätigkeit,” April 6, 1947, in ABBAW Nachlass, Folder 6. Untitled personal statement on wartime activities by L. Welskopf-Henrich, Berlin-Charlottenburg 5, Neue Kantstr. 7a, July 3, 1948, in Bundesarchiv Lichterfelder, Sampo-Barch-RY1/l2/3/147 (Bl. 129–131). A copy of this statement is also in her ABBAW Nachlass, Folder 1. The story is also retold in her novel Jan und Jutta (Berlin: Tribüne, 1954), which holds very closely to these early statements and details her repeated close calls with the police and Gestapo. It also captures the convictions she admired in the Sachsenhausen communists and tried to emulate herself. Her portrait of the camps, especially the ways in which communists supported each other and persisted in their convictions, is strikingly consistent with historical accounts of other old communists provided by Catherine Epstein and others. See Epstein, , The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and their Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).Google Scholar

6 Welskopf-Henrich (LLWH) to Müller, September 12, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass, Folder 189 II. She worked as a Handlungsbevollmächtigte (manager) of the Baustoff-Beschaffungs-GmbH (Kommunalbetrieb) from 1946–1947, and then as Geschäftsführerin (general manager) of the Baustoff-Ost GmbH from 1947–1949.

7 These included the Vaterländischer Verdienstorden in bronze, 1958; the Vaterländischer Verdienstorden in silver, 1961; Orden Banner der Arbeit 1966; and the Pestalozzimedaille, 1965.

8 For a discussion of similar visits, see Weßel, Daisy, Bild und Gegenbild. Die USA in der Belletristik der SBZ und der DDR (bis 1987) (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1989), especially 39–45.Google Scholar

9 Epstein, Catherine, “East Germany and its History since 1989,” Journal of Modern History 75 (September 2003): 634–661.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Epstein was neither the first nor last to note this. See inter alia Jarausch, Konrad H., “Beyond Uniformity: The Challenge of Historicizing the GDR,” in Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR, ed. Jarausch, (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999), 3–16Google Scholar; Ross, Corey, The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR (London: Arnold, 2002)Google Scholar; Eley, Geoff, “After 1989. The Unease of History: Settling Accounts with the East German Past,” History Workshop Journal 57 (Spring 2004): 175–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fulbrook, Mary, The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; see also the flurry of responses to Gary Bruce's recent review of Port's, AndrewConflict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar at http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/other/ostalgie07.html.

10 File “Welskopf” in Die Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (hereafter BStU) Berlin (Reisekader, 1968), 14, and (1972), 49–50. This is further confirmed by records in the Foreign Ministry: Auswärtiges Angelegenheiten der DDR, Sektion USA, ZR/2464/70, October 1965–1969, which details travels by academics, artists, and scientists. While little was made of her desire to travel, she did provide them with reports of what she observed upon her return. See, for example, “Über ein Gespräch mit der Schriftstellerin Genn. Welskopf am 14.1. 1969 in den Räumen des MfAA,” January 16, 1969, pages 9–10, in which she detailed the development of racial politics in the U.S., including African-American civil-rights movements, rising anti-Semitism, and the emerging American Indian Movement, which she felt could glean much from contact with the Sorbs. She suggested inviting some AIM members to an upcoming twentieth anniversary of the GDR in order to use that opportunity to introduce them to Sorbs; she also suggested that material concerning the “solution to the Sorb question” be sent to AIM.

11 “Welskopf,” BStU. The lack of material is consistent with what Epstein found during her work on a broad sample of old communists. Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries.

12 “Welskopf,” BStU, October 10, 1973, 51.

13 Stark, Isolde, ed., Elisabeth Charlotte Welskopf in der DDR. Beiträge der Konferenz vom 21. bis 23. November 2002 in Halle/Saale (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005), 204, 230, 235–236, 242.Google Scholar

14 Merkel, Ina and Mühlberg, Felix, eds., Wunderwirtschaft. DDR-Konsumkultur in den 60er Jahren (Vienna, Weimar, Cologne: Böhlau-Verlag, 1996)Google Scholar; Merkel, Ina, Utopie und Bedürfnis. Die Geschichte der Konsumkultur in der DDR (Vienna, Weimar, Cologne: Böhlau-Verlag, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Becker, Franziska, Merkel, Ina, and Tippach-Schneider, Simone, eds., Das Kollektiv bin ich. Utopie und Alltag in der DDR (Vienna, Weimar, Cologne: Böhlau-Verlag, 2000)Google Scholar. On the dual economy, see Zatlin, Jonathan R., The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).Google Scholar

15 Heermann, Christian, Old Shatterhand ritt nicht im Auftrag der Arbeiterklasse (Dessau: Anhaltische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1995).Google Scholar

16 Bundesarchiv Lichterfelder West, DR 1/624, DR 1/6241, and DR 1/6242.

17 Ross, The East German Dictatorship, 113.

18 Sheehan, James J., “What is German History? Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography,” Journal of Modern History 53 (March 1981), 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 23.

19 Reflecting on the extent of her travels in a letter to Ann Rourke at the Akwesasne Library in Hogansburg, New York, just a few years before her death in 1979, Welskopf-Henrich noted that she had traveled to North America in 1963, 1965, 1968, and 1970 and visited (among other groups) the Oglala, Blackfeet, Tshimshian, Bella-Coola, Navajo, Hopi, Creek, and Cherokee in Oklahoma; Seminoles and Miccosuki in Florida; and the Mohawks in New York. She had also been to many institutions run by Americans Indians, such as the Akwesasne Library and some of the newly created survival schools in South Dakota and other states. LLWH to Rourke, March 17, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass, Folder 179.

20 LLWH to Patty Frank, September 13, 1952. In possession of Hartmut Rietschel, Dresden. For a concise description of her efforts to publish her book, see Thomas Kramer, “‘Die Söhne der großen Bärin’ und ‘Das Blut des Adlers’: Liselotte Welskopf-Henrichs Indianerbücher 1951–1980,” in Elisabeth Charlotte Welskopf in der DDR, ed. Stark, 206–228.

21 That reworking of the novel also did not take place within a vacuum, but included much interaction with writers, ethnologists, and others such as ethnologist W. Krickeberg, at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Dahlem, whose criticisms of the first edition were immediately incorporated into the third. Krickeberg to LLWH, February 15, 1952, in ABBAW Nachlass File 163.

22 It was later published in Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Polish, Romanian, Czech, Lithuanian, Russian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Slovak, and in West Germany and Austria. Elsa Christina Muller, “A Cultural Study of the Sioux Novels of Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1995), 107.

23 Heinrich Döring translated The Last of the Mohicans in 1826. The following four volumes were translated just as quickly—within a year of their publication in English. Rossbacher, Karlheinz, Lederstrumpf in Deutschland. Zur Rezeption James Fenimore Coopers beim Leser der Restaurationszeit (Munich: W. Fink, 1972).Google Scholar

24 Tower, Beeke Sell, Envisioning America: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs by George Grosz and his Contemporaries (Cambridge: Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1990).Google Scholar

25 Warburg, Aby M., Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America, trans. Steinberg, Michael P. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995) especially 50–54.Google Scholar

26 Fest, Joachim, Hitler. Eine Biographie (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1974), 615Google Scholar. See also Haible, Barbara, Indianer im Dienste der NS-Ideologie. Untersuchungen zur Funktion von Jugendbüchern über nordamerikanische Indianer im Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac, 1998).Google Scholar

27 For further discussion of this long relationship, see Bolz, Peter, “Indians and Germans: A Relationship Riddled with Clichés,” in Native American Art: The Collections of the Ethnological Museum Berlin, ed. Bolz, Peter and Sanner, Hans-Ulrich (Berlin: G&H, 1999), 9–22Google Scholar; Calloway, Colin G., Gemünden, Gerd, and Zantop, Susanne, eds., Germans and Indians: Fantasies, Encounters, Projections (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002)Google Scholar; and Penny, H. Glenn, “Elusive Authenticity: The Quest for the Authentic Indian in German Public Culture,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 48, no. 4 (2006): 798–819.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 She underscores those characteristics in her novel Jan und Jutta, the statements about her war experience and the experiences of her husband on which it was based, and in many other documents in her ABBAW Nachlass. These include, for example, a statement she sent to the 1946 “Celebration for the Victims of Fascism,” in which she relates one such encounter with a young inmate whose convictions failed to waver even after spending the entire third decade of his life incarcerated in Nazi prisons and camps. His unwillingness to abandon his convictions and his pride in standing for what he thought was the right position “had an incredibly deep impact” on her. ABBAW Nachlass, Folder 204. These also fit her own musing about how she had read Karl May and began disagreeing with him at a young age, finding his hero Winnetou too subservient; e.g. “Zum Karl May Problem,” (No Date) ABBAW Nachlass, Folder 15.

29 “Red point” refers to the markings on the prison uniforms worn by communist inmates in concentration camps.

30 She makes this explicit, for example, in a letter to AIM leader Russell Means, who she states is a “prototype,” a model leader whom many are watching for clues about how to face down dangers. He is, she states, “encouraging others” with his actions. LLWH to Means, April 15, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 170.

31 Tokei-ihto is also the name she later gave to Means.

32 Welskopf-Henrich, “Zum Karl May Problem,” in ABBAW Nachlass, Folder 15. Indeed, she even denounced DEFA's first Indianer film, based on her book Die Söhne der großen Bärin, because it returned to precisely the kinds of kitschy romantic images of Indians she sought to overcome. LLWH to M. D., (no exact date 1968), in ABBAW Nachlass, File 183. See also her trenchant correspondence in ABBAW Nachlass, DEFA File 121, and in the Bundesarchiv: DR 117/20.799. Her self-representation vis-à-vis Karl May has been more or less accepted by many Germans. See inter alia Hetmann, Frederik and Keil, Alfred, Indianer heute. Bericht über eine Minderheit (Weinheim: Beltz Verlag, 1977), 24Google Scholar. For a recent attempt to refute such differences between her characters and those of Karl May, see Kramer, Thomas, “Tokei-ihto vs. Winnetou? Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich's Roman ‘Die Söhne der großen Bärin,’” Mitteilungen der Karl May Gesellschaft, December (2003): 35–47.Google Scholar

33 Kramer, “‘Die Söhne der großen Bärin’ und ‘Das Blut des Adlers,’” 208. It also placed her in a position to help to channel and shape youth literature in the GDR as she engaged in critical public discussions of Karl May and adventure literature. Some of these, such as an important 1956 meeting with the public, authors that included Welskopf-Henrich, and party officials, are reproduced in Bundesarchiv DR 1/6240.

34 Ibid., 210.

35 R. to LLWH, March 22, 1966, and June 27, 1966, in ABBAW Nachlass, File 183. Other mothers wrote similar stories; e.g., H. to LLWH, May 5, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 189/II.

36 U. K. to LLWH, December 11, 1971, in ABBAW Nachlass File 187. M. G. to LLWH, May 11, 1969, in ABBAW Nachlass File 184. R. L. to LLWH, January 11, 1971, in ABBAW Nachlass File 185. I only located one letter in the ABBAW Nachlass from a girl expressing disappointment with the lack of strong female characters. Too much of the focus, she complained, was on “war and warriors” and not enough on “the everyday life of an Indian village, including the women and girls.” This would no longer be a concern with the new series. B. E. to LLWH, September 14, 1969, ABBAW Nachlass File 184.

37 See inter alia K. B. to LLWH, October 11, 1972, in ABBAW Nachlass File 187.

38 R. K. to LLWH, March 5, 1974, in ABBAW Nachlass File 187.

39 LLWH to P. S., June 12, 1968, in ABBAW Nachlass File 186.

40 LLWH to I and A, February 28, 1969, in ABBAW Nachlass File 186.

41 See, for example, G. P. to LLWH, February 7, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 190.

42 LLWH to M. S., October 13, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 190.

43 LLWH to Berglöwen Children's Association, December 6, 1974, in ABBAW Nachlass File 190.

44 LLWH to G. P., February 13, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 190, LLWH to N. T., November 17, 1977, in ABBAW Nachlass File 192, and LLWH to S., January 7, 1976, in ABBAW Nachlass File 195.

45 H. B. to LLWH, December 27, 1973, in ABBAW Nachlass File 187.

46 Although the GDR's leadership certainly recognized the potential of supporting American Indian activists as the first victims of imperialism, they were also just as certainly aware that too much contact with this sort of rebellious activism could make their citizens less pliable. Consequently, the flow of information and interactions with American Indians were delimited by the state.

47 For example, she was an avid reader of Akwesasne Notes as well as leading American Indian scholar Vine Deloria's books. Indeed, she even noted that she wanted to translate his book We Talk, You Listen (New York: Macmillan, 1970) into German. LLWH to E. K., February 26, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 189/II.

48 LLWH to C. O., March 17, 1968/9 [sic], in ABBAW Nachlass File 174, and Arthur Amiotte to LLWH, April 17, 1971, in ABBAW Nachlass File 179.

49 D. T. to LLWH, March 21, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 174.

50 Sometimes those struggling individuals were also Europeans. For example, when she received the Gerstäcker Preis from the city of Braunschweig, she not only sent 450 of the 3,000 West-German-Mark prize to the Association on Indian Affairs in New York City and another 450 to the United Natives of America INC in Berkeley, California, but she also gave 400 of it to a Wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiter der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaft to support a research trip to Paris. Giving away 1,300 of the 3,000 highly coveted West-German Marks to struggling individuals and groups she respected fit precisely into her vision of resistance and community that she gained more than two decades earlier during the war. She used the remainder of the money to travel to an archeological dig in Italy, an international conference on youth literature in Munich, and for her and her husband to visit relatives in Austria and South Tyrol. LLWH to Ministerium für Kultur, Abteilung Finanzen, December 3, 1968, in ABBAW Nachlass Folder 168.

51 Chris Spotted Eagle to LLWH, February 3, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 179. She also went out of her way to write him an extensive letter in response to his inquiries about Karl May, of whom many American Indians had heard but, because his works were not translated into English, few had read. LLWH to Chris Spotted Eagle, November 25, 1974, in ABBAW Nachlass File 179.

52 See, in particular, her correspondence with G. R. in the Illinois State Penitentiary in Pontiac and the short discussion in Muller, “A Cultural Study of the Sioux Novels of Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich,” 112. For a quick discussion of her largess and her unflinching willingness to work around any political bureaucracy in the east or west, see ibid., 104–106.

53 LLWH to S. D., January 8, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 189.

54 Ibid., 11–112.

55 LLWH to A. K., December 20, 1977, in ABBAW Nachlass File 191. Means's visit to her house after the human rights conference in Geneva was their third meeting.

56 LLWH to A. K., March 14, 1974, in ABBAW Nachlass File 188.

57 This sort of action continued over the years, and LLWH received ongoing reports from people about the number of signatures they managed to collect. See, for example, B. B. to LLWH, February 26, 1975, and S. D. to LLWH, April 27, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 189.

58 Interview over “Problems of the Indian Minority in the USA,” April 18, 1973, in ABBAW Nachlass File 149.

59 It is difficult to prove empirically that she took these rhetorical strategies directly from American Indian activists, but the evidence we have indicates that this was most probably the case. There is no sign of this language in her publications or correspondence before her first trip to North America, where American Indian activists began harnessing the rhetoric of genocide in their public statements at least as early as the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. After repeated meetings and correspondence with activists this language appeared in her public and private statements, and her followers began adopting it as well. On the public use of the rhetoric of genocide at Alcatraz, see Paul Chaat Smith and Warrior, Robert Allen, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: New Press, distributed by W. W. Norton, 1996), 18–35.Google Scholar For further information on the effort made to secure the political capital linked to this rhetoric on an international stage, see Niezen, Ronald, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 For example, H. G. to LLWH, September 13, 1972, in ABBAW Nachlass File 187, and P. G. to LLWH, March 29, 1973, in ABBAW Nachlass File 187. A. K. to LLWH, January 12, 1974, in ABBAW Nachlass File 187.

61 For example, LLWH to B. B., March 19, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 189/1.

62 For example, LLWH to W. G. in Bulgaria, November 11, 1974, and LLWH to A. H., November 12, 1974, in ABBAW Nachlass File 188.

63 For example, one group was told that they were not allowed to send textiles valued at more than sixty marks to the U.S., nor could they send any children's clothing. U. K. to LLWH, April 3, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 189/II. Welskopf-Henrich taught them how to get around many of those limitations.

64 LLWH to S. D., April 7, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 189.

65 LLWH to F., November 11, 1974, in ABBAW Nachlass File 188; LLWH to M. S., January 21, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 190; A. H. to LLWH, August 7, 1977, in ABBAW Nachlass File 191.

66 H. K. in Cologne to LLWH, November 3, 1973, and LLWH to S., July 26, 1974, in ABBAW Nachlass File 188; P. K. to LLWH, May 24, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 189/II; I. W. in Hamburg to LLWH, July 28, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 195/II; Waltraud Wagner to LLWH, March 31, 1968, in ABBAW Nachlass File 174.

67 The correspondence is extensive, including many long letters. See especially her initial letters: I. G. to LLWH, April 24, 1972, and then during the crises on Pine Ridge: I. G. to LLWH, May 27, 1974; July 16, 1974; October 6, 1974; February 18, 1975; and LLWH to I. G., March 4, 1975, and May 5, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 179. For another example of a woman who traveled to North America to help out, see the correspondence between S. W. from Metzkausen and LLWH in 1975 in ABBAW Nachlass File 195/II. She began with correspondence, sent packages, and then traveled to Cornwall Island, Ontario, where she worked for a period with the North American Traveling College. See also the less politically engaged correspondence: S. to LLWH, August 13, 1977, and S. G. to LLWH, September 18, 1977, in ABBAW Nachlass File 196.

68 Indeed, she never wavered on this position and continued to argue it in the last years of her life. See, for example, LLWH to J. G., May 22, 1979, in ABBAW Nachlass File 196.

69 LLWH to Amiotte, January 1, 1969, in ABBAW Nachlass File 173 (English in the original).

70 For a discussion of her pursuits as a historian, see Stark, ed., Elisabeth Charlotte Welskopf in der DDR.

71 There is a long history of Germans making arguments about the German tribes, their character, and their relationship to the Romans when discussing the potential of the German nation, a tendency that became a kind of passion in the nineteenth century. Welskopf-Henrich, however, diverges from it in striking ways by placing Christianity at the center of the problem and making the division between two sets of Germans rather than the Germans and the French. That kind of division between Germans emerged later in archeological research, which may have influenced her arguments even if it had little impact on those of a century earlier. I am grateful to Brent Manner for these insights. For more on that archeology, see Marchand, Suzanne L., Down from Olympus: Archeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

72 LLWH to Rourke, March 17, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 179 (English in the original).

73 Indeed, in an earlier and more general letter to Akwesasne, she stressed that she as a German understood what it meant to live in a divided nation. The Mohawk reservation is divided by the U.S./Canadian border. LLWH to Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, December 26, 1969, ABBAW Nachlass File 174.

74 Here, too, Welskopf-Henrich was hardly alone. Robert Jungk declared to a public assembly in Munich during a tour of American Indian activists through West Germany in 1983 that the Indians had come to Germany to assist them in their “collective struggle against the destruction of our future,” and indeed they were there “to be our teachers” because “we need their help more than ever.” Miriam Geissler, “Indianer auf dem Friedenspfad,” Münchener Merkur 275, November 30, 1983.

75 LLWH to W., July 15, 1968, in ABBAW Nachlass File 174. See similar comments to an American couple in LLWH to V. and E. B. in Newport Beach, California, October 30, 1977, in ABBAW Nachlass File 176–8.

76 LLWH to M., July 23, 1975, in ABBAW Nachlass File 195/II.

77 It is not simply the statements that continued after her death and spread to the west, but also many of her actions. The Porcupine School on Pine Ridge, for example, continued to receive money from German enthusiasts in the following decades as the collections persisted. Interview with the leading hobbyist M. O., Munich, June 18, 2007. Such actions were also encouraged by West German authors who promulgated Welskopf-Henrich's essential message. See inter alia, Biegert, Claus, Indianerschulen. Als Indianer überleben—von Indianern lernen. Survival Schools (Reinbel: Rowohlt, 1979).Google Scholar

78 Geissler, “Indianer auf dem Friedenspfad.” This became a persistent theme for German activists, included in most books on contemporary Indians by the late 1970s. See inter alia Biegert, Claus, Seit 200 Jahren ohne Verfassung. 1976: Indianer im Widerstand (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1976), 149–150.Google Scholar

79 Geyer, Michael, “America in Germany: Power and the Pursuit of Americanization,” in The German-American Encounter: Conflict and Cooperation between Two Cultures, 1800–2000, ed. Trommler, Frank and Shore, Elliott (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 121–145.Google Scholar

80 “Von den Indianern Nordamerikas,” Das Ausland (March 23, 1874): 228–234, here 228. There are many similar examples. See inter alia “Aussrottung der Indianer in Nordamerika,” Globus 6 (1864): 287.

81 “Der Indianerkrieg,” Münchener Fremdenblatt und Handelszeitung 14, no. 11, located in the Munich Stadtarchiv, Zeitungs Ausschnitte, 504a “Indianer.” (This column appeared in the early 1890s, shortly after Buffalo Bill's tour through Germany; the exact date, however, is missing from the clipping in this collection).

82 Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 3rd ed., vol. 9 (Leipzig: Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, 1876), 252–256.

83 In 1967, for example, when ABC released a nine-episode series on George Armstrong Custer that portrayed him in a positive light, American Indian civil-rights groups launched a massive protest, terming him the “Adolf Eichmann of the nineteenth century.” Matthias Peipp and Bernhard Springer, Edle Wilde rote Teufel (Munich: Wilhelm Heyne, 1997), 61.

84 This was a fundamental shift. See ibid., especially 97–98. It also fit precisely into broader cultural shifts in the U.S. that Peter Novick has argued created a “cultural climate that virtually celebrated victimhood,” one that led to a “culture of victimization” that “allowed” Jews “to embrace a victim identity based on the Holocaust.” Moreover, according to Novick, their ultimate success in generating that identity and using it for political gain also led to “Holocaust envy,” as other minorities became irritated that their own pleas for recognition based on their joint victimization had much less political resonance. Novick, Peter, The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Mariner Books, 2000), 190–192Google Scholar; for an example of a specific American Indian retort, see Stannard, David E., American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (New York: Oxford, 1992), 318.Google Scholar

85 A German-language version of Dee Brown's Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee (New York: Holt, 1970), was published first in West Germany in Hamburg by Hoffmann und Campe Verlag in 1972 and in East Berlin by Verlag Neues Leben in 1976. It was hailed by East German reviewers as “a shocking condemnation of the colonial and exterminationist politics [Ausrottungspolitik] of the whites in the USA,” which was essentially how it was received in the United States as well. Neues Leben quickly sold its 30,000 copies. File “Dee Brown, Begrabt mein Herz an der Biegung des Flusses,” in Bundesarchiv Lichterfelder, DR 1/3550.

86 Ibid., 174.

87 Pointed comparisons also became more common after 1968 in East Germany as well. See, inter alia, the critical comparisons made between the struggle of Indians and American actions in Vietnam in reviews of the DEFA Indianer films, e.g., Fuchs, “Unverfälschte Wahrheit. Bemerkungen zum jüngsten Indianerfilm der DEFA, ‘Die Spur des Falken,’” Lausitzer Rundschau, Cottbus, July 23, 1968, and the specific references to genocide in the promotional materials for films such as Tödlicher Irrtum; e.g., Film für Sie 22/70; Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv Fehrberlinerplatz 3, files: 2315, 12515, 15609, 15985, 16797, 17156, 18772, 19036, 20713, 29625.

88 Frederik Hermann, Der Rote Tag (Bayreuth: Loewes Verlag, 1975).

89 Welskopf-Henrich set the tone in both genres, since the first DEFA Indianer film Die Söhne der großen Bärin was based on her book and her screenplay. She discusses those connections and her desire to tell stories from the perspective of Indians (in opposition to the Karl-May and other western films that privileged the perspective of whites) explicitly in an interview: “Ein Indianer in Babelsberg. Die DEFA (Gruppe ‘Roter Kreis’) verfilmt ‘Dakotas—die Söhne der großen Bärin,’” in Junge Welt Berlin, April 18, 1965. Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv, file 15609. That tone was later greatly appreciated by many American Indians who had long been disenchanted with the Hollywood image of themselves. Thus Richard Restoule, known from his performance in “Northern Exposure” and himself a tribal elder of the Ojibways, stated in a speech given at the screening of Die Söhne der großen Bärin in Seattle in October 1996, “After everything that has been done to my people, also through bad films, it is good to know that already thirty years ago, people in East Germany began to think seriously how to do things differently.” Gemünden, Gerd, “Between Karl May and Karl Marx: The DEFA Indianerfilme,” Film History 10 (1998): 399–407Google Scholar, here 407.

90 The other person he praised was the West German Waltraud Wagner, a Dozentin for chemistry in Recklinghausen who had also traveled to reservations in 1968 and founded the periodical Indianer Heute, in an effort to publicize the state of Native America in West Germany. After Wagner read an essay by Welskopf-Henrich in Native Voice in 1968, they began corresponding with each other about organizing visits by American Indians to both Germanies, their experiences abroad, and the potential of their efforts to reach out to Indians. ABBAW Nachlass, Korrespondenz, File 174.

91 Biegert, Seit 200 Jahren ohne Verfassung, 7. The book is dedicated to a list of people who “died since Wounded Knee 1973 in the fight for their people.”

92 By 1976, this was no longer radical language. One found it in the general press in both East and West Germany. See inter alia, in the west Thilo Koch, “Indianer sein ist schwer. Wiedergutmachung durch den weißen Mann,” Die Zeit 18, May 1, 1964, 32, which discusses the “Ausrottung” and “Vertreibung” of the Indians. In the east, see “Mündel der Nation. Indianerreservate—Konzentrationslager der Vereinigten Staaten,” Der Morgen, Berlin, Ausgabe B, April 16, 1961; “USA lassen Indianer aussterben,” Neuer Weg, Halle, March 28, 1961.

93 Biegert, Seit 200 Jahren ohne Verfassung, 21, 35.

94 Ibid., 69.

95 Ibid., 142.

96 Ibid., 149.

97 For further discussion of the kinds of displacement identified by Geyer among West-German activists, in which they embraced a victim status and positioned themselves against the U.S., see the essays by Belinda Davis, Elizabeth L. B. Peifer, and Michael Schmidtke in Gassert, Philipp and Steinweis, Alan E., eds., Coping with the Nazi Past: West German Debates on Nazism and Generational Conflict, 1955–1975 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006).Google Scholar

98 On the functions of the “anti-Fascist myth” in the GDR, see Ross, The East German Dictatorship, especially 177.

99 Allusions to the Holocaust became increasingly common among American Indian activists in the following years. One can find it in the writings of nationally acclaimed authors such as Sherman Alexie, e.g., “The Sin Eaters,” in his The Toughest Indian in the World (New York: Grove Press, 2000), as well as in speeches from public figures. On January 21, 2004, for example, Tex Hall, President of the National Council of American Indians, exclaimed in his State of the Indian Nations Address in Washington, D.C., that “the Indian plays much the same role in American society that the Jews played in Germany. Like the miner's canary, the Indian marks the shift from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere; and our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, marks the rise and fall of our democratic faith.” News from Indian Country, February 9, 2004, XVIII, no. 3. A few scholars have also drawn heavily on the rhetoric's political capital, underscoring American Indians' right to harness the language in descriptions of their own histories. See inter alia Stannard, American Holocaust; and Thornton, Russell, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990).Google Scholar Others have made it into a cottage industry with more questionable success: e.g., Churchill, Ward, A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (San Francisco: City Light Books, 1998)Google Scholar; Churchill, , Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1994)Google Scholar. Churchill, , Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide, and Expropriation in Contemporary North America (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Churchill, , Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema, and the Colonization of American Indians (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1992).Google Scholar

100 Simply the character of her personal life makes this clear. As Fulbrook points out, it was quite rare for women to achieve similar political or institutional positions in West Germany, and even rarer for professional women such as Welskopf-Henrich to remain married to someone from the working classes. Fulbrook, The People's State, 230.

101 Ibid., 15. This is a point about GDR citizens that a number of others made earlier as well. See inter alia Becker, Merkel, and Schneider, eds., Das Kollektiv bin ich.

102 Indeed, she fits very well into arguments made by Lindenberger and others about the Eigen-Sinn of people who worked in various levels of the state bureaucracy. Lindenberger, Thomas, “Die Diktatur der Grenzen. Zur Einleitung,” in Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur. Studien zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR, ed. Lindenberger, (Cologne: Böhlau, 1999), 36.Google Scholar

103 Like many East Germans, she quickly turned to Eingaben to engage the state, participating directly in its development as a citizen as well as a party member. This was true right from the beginning; for example, in response to an article in Neues Deutschland about the allocation of foodstuffs, she wrote letters to fifteen government officials on May 24, 1949, about the abuses of economic policy set up to generate state profits from agriculture while mothers and small children faced “hunger rations” much worse than those in West Berlin. The month before, she proposed a play titled “The History of the DHG or Socialism and Wholesalers: A Tragic-Comedy in Four Preliminary Acts.” ABBAW Nachlass, Folder 5. At the same time, her commitment to the essential parameters of the state, despite her disappointments with it, fit precisely into the patterns shared by many old communists portrayed by Epstein in The Last Revolutionaries. For an excellent summary of “Eigen-Sinn” as historians have used the notion with reference to the GDR and as I use it here, see Palmowski, Jan, “Between Conformity and Eigen-Sinn: New Approaches to GDR History,” German History 20, no. 4 (2002): 494–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

104 Undated (approximately 1952) manuscript titled “Diskussion um die Bärensöhne,” in ABBAW Nachlass Folder 163; see also LLWH to Müller-Tannewitz, Neues Leben Verlag, January 3, 1950, in ABBAW Nachlass Folder 162.

105 Grundig, Hans, Zwischen Karneval und Aschermittwoch. Erinnerungen eines Malers (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1957), 387.Google Scholar

106 She often underscored those heroic characteristics in public, as she did, for example, during a lecture in Plauen, when she stated that in response to the film Murderers in our Midst, that her book on the war years, Jan und Jutta, could have been called “Heroes in Our Midst.” “Vortrag in Plauen,” undated, in ABBAW Nachlass Folder 15.