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The Practice of Ideals: Erich Honecker, Rudolf Bahro, and East Germany's Socialist Imaginary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 June 2022
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In July 1992, nearly two years after the demise of the German Democratic Republic (GDR/East Germany), Erich Honecker, former general secretary of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) was arrested in Berlin for his complicity in the murder of citizens fleeing his country. Yet his subsequent imprisonment brought forth unexpected help: former SED member Rudolf Bahro, who had been imprisoned by Honecker's regime a decade earlier for publishing a party-critical text, Die Alternative. Bahro wrote to his former jailer on August 17, ironically to offer support for his legal defense. Now, Bahro also expressed hope for a “human understanding … about the substance of our undoubtedly still existing difference of opinion about the path of the GDR” and enclosed his recently published article connecting his support for Honecker with the GDR's founding ideals. In the article, Bahro rejected reducing East German history to the SED's abuses, arguing that “our impulse was conceived with the heart, and no such impulse is ever entirely lost.” That impulse, for Bahro, ultimately emanated from antifascism, its entwined relationship with socialism on German soil, and those who fought for both. Though he acknowledged that “a German revolutionary continuity did not exist en masse” after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, it did survive among the few socialists, like Honecker, who struggled against fascism and “rightly wanted a new German state” after 1945. For his role in building this alternative to capitalism, Bahro argued that Honecker should be allowed to retire in peace.
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References
1 Archiv Grünes Gedächtnis (AGG) A (Bahro)/43/19, letter from Bahro to Honecker, August 17, 1992; and “Wenn Erich hiemkommt—oder von der Legitimität der DDR.” See also Herzberg and Seifert, Rudolf Bahro—Glaube an das Veränderbare, 525–27.
2 AGG A (Bahro)/43/19, letter from Honecker to Barao [sic], October 23, 1992.
3 AGG A (Bahro)/43/19, letter from Bahro to Honecker, November 2, 1992.
4 Leading antisocialist critics in the 1970s were Soviet author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Polish historian and journalist Adam Michnik, and the Charter 77 group in Czechoslovakia.
5 Bahro's termination letter stated that “your behavior has shown you are unwilling to meet the demands placed upon you,” despite having been awarded the title “Activist for Socialist Work” a few months prior. For his Activist for Socialist Work award, see AGG A (Bahro)/100/40.
6 “Autor—Erich Honecker,” Der Spiegel, October 25, 1979, 284.
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11 AGG, A (Bahro)/18/5, “Text der einleitenden Worte von Rudolf Bahro auf der Pressekonferenz in Bonn, Hotel Bristol,” October 22, 1979.
12 Sigrid Meuschel, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft in der DDR (Frankfurt: Edition Suhrkamp, 1992); Klaus Schroeder, Der SED-Staat. Partei, Staat und Gesellschaft 1949–1990, (Munich: Hanser-Verlag, 1998), and Peter Grieder, The German Democratic Republic, (New York: Palgrave, 2012). Numerous observers and scholars have analyzed the GDR through various conceptual taxonomies. See Donna Harsch, Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 11.
13 Franziska Becker, Ina Merkel, and Simone Tippach-Schneider, Das Kollektiv bin ich: Utopie und Alltag in der DDR (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000), 7–10.
14 Katherine Pence and Paul Betts, ed., Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2007), 11–21.
15 See Paul Betts, Within Walls: Private Life in the German Democratic Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Josie McLellan, Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Heather L. Gumbert, Envisioning Socialism: Television and the Cold War in the German Democratic Republic (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013); and Eli Rubin, Amnesiopolis: Modernity, Space, and Memory in East Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). For recent political studies, see Konstanze Körner, Leitungsstile in der DDR. Ein Vergleich der Eliten in Partei, Industrie und Dienstleistungszweig 1971 bis 1989 (Berlin: Metropol, 2016); Tilman Pohlmann, Die Ersten im Kreis. Herrschaftsstrukturen und Generationen in der SED (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017); and Inga Markovits, Diener zweier Herren. DDR-Juristen zwischen Recht und Macht (Berlin: Christopher Links Verlag, 2020).
16 Soviet scholars have examined subjectivity through the personal narratives of socialist activists, fashioning themselves through or against Marxism-Leninism. See Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), and Anatoly Pinsky, “The Diaristic Form and Subjectivity under Khrushchev,” Slavic Review 73, no. 4 (Winter 2014): 805–27.
17 Erich Honecker, Aus meinem Leben (Berlin: Dietz, 1981), 7–9.
18 Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 25; emphasis in original.
19 Bundesarchiv-SAPMO (BArch) NY 4167/8, “Charakteristik der ausgeführten Arbeiten.”
20 Martin Sabrow, Erich Honecker: Das Leben davor, 1912–1945 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2016), 63–78.
21 Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 43. For an account of conditions in Magnitogorsk, see Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
22 BArch NY 4167/1, “Vorwärts, die junge Garde der Volksrevolution!…”
23 Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 91–107.
24 BArch NY 4167/17, “Betrifft: Gnadensache Erich Honnecker … [sic],” November 13, 1942. See also Sabrow, Erich Honecker, 346–54.
25 Sabrow, Erich Honecker, 392–403.
26 Alan McDougall, “A Duty to Forget? The ‘Hitler Youth Generation’ and the Transition from Nazism to Communism in Postwar East Germany, c. 1945–49,” German History 26, no. 1 (2008): 28. See also Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 115.
27 Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 131–32.
28 Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 128–29.
29 BArch DY 30/40017, “Stenographische Niederschrift des III. Parteitages der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands vom 20.–24. Juli 1950,” 391–97.
30 Rudolf Bahro, From Red to Green: Interviews with New Left Review, trans. Gus Fagan and Richard Hurst (London: Verso, 1984), 6–13.
31 AGG A (Bahro)/18/5, letter from Bahro to Svante Weyler, April 2, 1980, 2–3.
32 Rudolf Bahro, In dieser Richtung (Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1960), 20–21.
33 Bahro, In dieser Richtung, 11.
34 Bahro, From Red to Green, 48.
35 AGG A (Bahro)/18/5, letter from Bahro to Svante Weyler, April 2,1980, 5–6. The SAPD or SAP was a left-socialist Marxist Party formed in 1931 after breaking away from the SPD. From its foundation the SADP strongly advocated for a united antifascist front, including the KPD, SPD, trade unions, and smaller socialist groups.
36 AGG A (Bahro)/25/8, letter from Bahro to Sergio Segre, January 8, 1980. For an account of Wetzel's life, see Michael F. Scholz, Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht?: Nachexil und Remigration. Die ehemaligen KPD-Emigranten in Skandinavien und ihr weiteres Schicksal in der SBZ/DDR (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2000).
37 Bahro, From Red to Green, 16.
38 Bahro, From Red to Green, 25–27.
39 BArch DY 30/2059, “Manuskript des Berichtes des Politbüros an die 35. Tagung des ZK der SED,” February 3–6, 1958, 81–90.
40 Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 193.
41 Hope Harrison, Driving the Soviets up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953–1961 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 100–01.
42 Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 205.
43 Bahro, From Red to Green, 36–37.
44 BArch DY 30/80327, “Richtlinie für die Planung und Leitung der Volkswirtschaft/Kritische Einschätzung des bisherigen Systems der Planung und Leitung der Volkswirtschaft,” June 11–12, 1963.
45 Walter Ulbricht, Zum neuen ökonomischen System der Planung und Leitung (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1966), 204.
46 BArch DF 4/1697, “Betr.: Auswertung der Wirtschaftskonferenz,” August 12, 1963.
47 Ulbricht, Zum neuen ökonomischen System der Planung und Leitung, 677.
48 Andreas Herbst et al., eds., Die SED. Geschichte, Organisation, Politik. Ein Handbuch, (Berlin: Dietz, 1997), 685.
49 Bahro, From Red to Green, 38–41; see also Rudolf Bahro, “Rudolf Bahro Interviews Himself,”The Socialist Register 15 (1978): 11–12; the interview was translated by Paul Edmunson and Gunter Minnerup.
50 Bahro, “Rudolf Bahro Interviews Himself,” 11, 15–16.
51 BArch DY 3023/435, “Wesen und Hauptbestandteile des ökonomischen Systems des Sozialismus…,” 14.
52 Peter Grieder, The East German Leadership 1946–1971: Conflict and Crisis (New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 166. Bahro derided this innovation in Alternative for its “cowardly” introduction but acknowledged its tacit recognition that contemporary socialism did not resemble what Marx had foreseen. See Rudolf Bahro, Die Alternative. Zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus (Cologne: Europäische Verlangsanstalt, 1977), 19–20.
53 BArch DY 3023/435, “Wesen und Hauptbestandteile…,” 14.
54 BArch DY 30/87188, “Bisherige Ergebnisse bei der Erfüllung des Forschungsauftrages ‘Die Gestalt und der Prognose zu einem echten Führungsinstrument,’” July 6, 1967.
55 Bahro, From Red to Green, 49–52.
56 Bahro, From Red to Green, 62–63. Bahro also worked on a dissertation for the Carl Schorlemmer Technical School on industrial management. Conducting extensive interviews for this project, his dissertation called for greater local managerial control and creativity. Although rejected due to Stasi interference, the dissertation was later published in the West. See Rudolf Bahro, Plädoyer für schöpferische Initiative. Zur Kritik von Arbeitsbedingungen im real existierenden Sozialismus (Cologne: Bund-Verlag, 1980). For an account of the writing and rejection of the dissertation, see Guntolf Herzberg and Kurt Seifert, Rudolf Bahro—Glaube an das Veränderbare. Eine Biographie (Berlin: Christopher Links Verlag, 2002), 118–32.
57 Monika Kaiser, Machtwechsel von Ulbricht zu Honecker. Funktionsmechanismen der SED-Diktatur in Konfliktsituationen 1962 bis 1972 (Berlin: Akademie, 1997), 284–301.
58 BArch DY 3023/429, “Der Hauptinhalt der Maßnahmen zur Gestaltung des ökonomischen Systems des Sozialismus in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik,” May 13, 1969.
59 Grieder, The East German Leadership 1946–1971, 177.
60 Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, 1945–1989, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 68–69.
61 Grieder, The East German Leadership 1946–1971, 178–83.
62 Zentralkomitee der SED, Bericht des Zentralkomitees an den VIII. Parteitag der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Berlin: Dietz, 1971), 38–42.
63 Zentralkomitee der SED, Bericht des Zentralkomitees an den VIII, 93.
64 BArch DY 30/2085, “Bericht des Politbüros an die 9. Tagung des ZK,” May 28–29, 1973, 146.
65 Bahro, From Red to Green, 192.
66 Bahro, From Red to Green, 47; and Bahro, Die Alternative, 407–08. Bahro later affirmed this in interviews, expressing the shame with which party members wore their SED lapel pins in public by the 1970s. See Bahro, “Rudolf Bahro Interviews Himself,” 17–18.
67 AGG A (Bahro)/91/37, leather booklet/notes for Alternative, 1973.
68 Bahro, Die Alternative, 58; see also Bahro, From Red to Green, 60.
69 Bahro, Die Alternative, 80–81. This racially essentializing concept has deep roots in the socialist imaginary. In the Grundrisse (1858), Marx described the “Asiatic mode of production” as a group of small communes living under the protection and control of a despot, who in turn takes a share of their communal product. See Karl Marx, Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Random House, 1973), 473–74.
70 Marx, Grundrisse, 69.
71 Marxist-turned-anticommunist Kurt Wittfogel draws similar parallels between the “Asiatic mode of production” and the Stalinist USSR; see Kurt Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957). Bahro was influenced by Wittfogel's thesis; see Bahro, From Red to Green, 41.
72 Bahro, From Red to Green, 114.
73 Bahro, From Red to Green, 167.
74 Bahro, From Red to Green, 318–19, 484–85.
75 Bahro, From Red to Green, 312.
76 Bahro, From Red to Green, 299.
77 Bahro, From Red to Green, 306–07.
78 Bahro, From Red to Green, 408–09.
79 Bahro, From Red to Green, 423–25.
80 Bahro, From Red to Green, 430–34.
81 Bahro, From Red to Green, 326–60.
82 AGG A (Bahro)/25/8, letter from Bahro to Sergio Segre, January 8, 1980.
83 Herzberg and Seifert, Rudolf Bahro—Glaube an das Veränderbare, 133–39.
84 Herzberg and Seifert, Rudolf Bahro—Glaube an das Veränderbare, 142–43. Wetzel negotiated the contract on Bahro's behalf.
85 Herzberg and Seifert, Rudolf Bahro—Glaube an das Veränderbare, 292.
86 AGG A (Bahro)/18/5, interview with Ort & Bild (Sweden), April 2, 1980.
87 Scholz, Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht?, 380.
88 BArch NY 4167/646, “Über die Beratung mit Beauftragten von Abteilung des ZK…,” November 16, 1979.
89 BArch NY 4167/646, “Über eine Information, die Genosse Gemkow von Genossin Hanna Wolf…,” November 19, 1979.
90 These researchers received sliding bonuses for their work. See DY 30/34472, letter from Hager to Heyden, June 13, 1980.
91 BArch DY 30/34556, letter from Heyden to Honecker, January 7, 1980.
92 Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 210–12.
93 Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 249.
94 Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 355.
95 Honecker, Aus meinem Leben, 354–57.
96 BArch DY 30/IV B 2/2.024/119/51, letter from Axen to Hager, March 13, 1980.
97 BArch NY 4167/647, letter from Maxwell to Hennig, April 11, 1980.
98 BArch DY 30/16198, letter from Hennig to Honecker, September 4, 1980.
99 BArch DY 30/16201, letter from Maxwell to “the director—institute of Marxism and Leninism,” August 14, 1980.
100 Catherine Epstein attests to the book's ubiquity in GDR bookstores. See Catherine Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and their Century, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 202.
101 Thomas Klein et al., Visionen: Repression und Opposition in der SED (1949–1989), vol. 1 (Frankfurt/Oder: Frankfurter Oder Editionen, 1996), 114–21.
102 Rudolf Bahro, Socialism and Survival: Articles, Essays and Talks 1979–1982 (London: Heretic Books, 1982). For Thompson's work on exterminism, see E. P. Thompson, Exterminism and Cold War (London: New Left Books, 1982).
103 AGG A (Bahro)/25/8 (2 of 3), “Who can stop the apocalypse? Or the task, substance and strategy of the social movements,” IFDA dossier 34, March/April 1983.
104 Rudolf Bahro, Logik der Rettung (Stuttgart: Edition Weitbrecht, 1987). For an account of the text, see Herzberg and Seifert, Rudolf Bahro—Glaube an das Veränderbare, 409–21; for his efforts to build an ecospiritual commune in 1987–1989, 436–47.
105 Raymond G. Stokes, Constructing Socialism: Technology and Change in East Germany 1945–1990 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 153–54.
106 Mark Allinson, “More from Less: Ideological Gambling with the Unity of Economic and Social Policy in Honecker's GDR,” Central European History 45, no. 1 (2012): 102–27. See also Andre Steiner, The Plans that Failed: An Economic History of the GDR (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010).
107 BArch DC 20-I/4/5063, “Anordnung zur Gewinnung oder Bearbeitung und Schutz von Informationen…,” November 16, 82, 203–11; and “Information über Probleme des Geheimnisschutzes…,” November 8, 1982, 140.
108 Ehrhart Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR 1949–1989 (Berlin: Christopher Links Verlag, 1998), 343.
109 Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft (RGH) OWK 07, “Bücherliste für uns,” 1987, 26–31.
110 A “Stalinism seminar” planned for November 1988 was canceled due to the arrest of its coorganizers, including Thomas Klein. See Klein's proposed essay in RHG SWV 05, “Die Bedeutung der Stalin—Frage für eine Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie des Sozialismus,” 1988, 2–17.
111 Herzberg and Seifert, Rudolf Bahro—Glaube an das Veränderbare, 237–38.
112 Zeno and Sabine Zimmerling, ed., Neue Chronik DDR, vol. 1 (Berlin: Verlag Tribüne, 1990), 138–39.
113 Oswald, Franz, The Party that Came Out of the Cold War: The Party of Democratic Socialism in United Germany (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002), 3Google Scholar.
114 Bahro had been stripped of his GDR citizenship after emigrating. It was restored December 11, 1989. See AGG A (Bahro)/100/40,, “Urkunde …” December 11, 1989.
115 Hornbogen, Lothar, Nakath, Detlef and Stephan, Gerd-Rüdiger, eds Außerordentlicher Parteitag der SED/PDS. Protokoll der Beratungen am 8/9. und 16/17. Dezember 1989 in Berlin (Berlin: Karl Dietz, 1999), 255Google Scholar. Bahro's speech can be heard on a CD included in the book.
116 Rumors that Bahro's cancer was caused by irradiation by the Stasi during his imprisonment have not been supported by archival evidence. Bahro had been in declining health since 1994 and believed his illness was due to his wife's suicide in 1993. See Herzberg and Seifert, Rudolf Bahro—Glaube an das Veränderbare, 584.