The work does not constitute a historiographical revolution in itself,
it is a history of the GDR at the human level constructed from thetestimonies of ordinary citizens, political leaders and actors in East
German society between 1945 and 1989. However, it allows an initial
approach that allows a large part of the history of the GDR to be
reconstructed at the human level. ---- The author covers the major
phases of the history of East Germany, dividing its history into a few
major phases: the establishment of the regime until 1953, its
stabilization from the 1950s to the early 1970s, the consensual years
from the mid-1970s to the 1980s, and the collapse in 1989. ---- The GDR
was built with the Red Army and German exiles who had stayed in the USSR
between 1933 and 1945. Once Nazism was defeated, they imposed the
conditions for reconstruction. Many former KPD executives who had taken
refuge in the USSR, such as Walter Ulbricht or Wilhelm Pieck, or who had
been partly trained in Moscow, such as Erich Mielke, the head of the
Stasi, or Erich Honnecker, landed in Germany in 1945 to build socialism.
Shaped by ideology, "the song of the Party" and "Youth wake up!"
reproduced in the book, illustrate the hold on society. The construction
of socialism does not seem to be self-evident, the weapon of constraint
has been permanent. In 1953, the workers of East Berlin and Leipzig or
Halle revolted first to obtain decent wages and then to denounce the
regime. The intervention of the Red Army was necessary for the regime to
be saved. Behind the egalitarian discourse, the reality is the opposite.
In the 1950s, the GDR was a society of shortages and constraints, the
mass departures towards the West indirectly forced the leaders, helped
once again by the Army, to build the wall on the night of August 12 to
13, 1961. If the regime was hated, some were able to find in the regime
the means of a promotion like the "working class combat groups", this
group of about 200,000 people who were ready to do anything to support
the regime, some of them participating in the construction of the wall.
The GDR was also an excessively militarized society: out of 17 million
inhabitants, about 750,000 people worked for the police, the army and
the Stasi which exercised implacable surveillance forcing some of the
inhabitants to submit. Despite the constraint, the East Germans ended up
accommodating the regime. The Honnecker era allowed some improvements.
From the 1960s onwards, the inhabitants found material compensations
such as leisure and holidays offered by the regime. It ended up
tolerating alternative lifestyles. It partly explains what is now called
contemporary ostalgia. While the regime was convinced that it had
brought stability and a certain form of prosperity, the majority of the
population refused to comply, with 9 November 1989 constituting the
symbolic date of the rupture that was perceptible from the mid-1980s.
Beyond the Wall. History of the GDR.
Katja Hoyer
Ed. Passés-composés 2025 428 p. 26 EUR
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8221
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