In early December 1945, the Communist Party functionary Karl Lewke sent an alarming report to the leadership of the German Communist Party (KPD). It was entitled “One million anti-Bolshevists are approaching. The democratic reconstruction of Germany is threatened by greatest dangers!” The report referred to the thousands of returning German POWs from the Soviet Union who daily entered the Soviet zone of occupation through Frankfurt an der Oder. Lewke's description of the mentality and the attitudes of these returning POWs was not very comforting for his party superiors in Berlin.

In East Germany, official memory was reputedly embodied in Old Communists, those men and women who had joined the German Communist Party (KPD) before Hitler's rise to power in 1933. After 1945, the Socialist Unity Party (SED), East Germany's ruling party, exploited the tragic experiences of Old Communists during the Third Reich—exile, resistance, and concentration–camp incarceration—to foster a triumphant official memory of heroic, Communist-led antifascist struggle. Intended to legitimate the SED regime, this official memory was rehearsed in countless “lieux de mémoire,” including films, novels, school textbooks, museum exhibitions, and commemorative rituals. Concurrently, party authorities encouraged Old Communists to share their past lives with younger East Germans; in particular, they urged Old Communists to write memoirs of their participation in the antifascist struggle against Hitler.

Spurder Steine (Trail of Stones) is probably the best-known of the approximately two dozen East German films that were banned by state officials. Combining epic proportions with subversive humor, the picture still retains the ability to fascinate and amuse audiences well over three decades after its completion in 1966. In one scene, its most arresting protagonist, the foreman Balla, leads his small band of carpenters across the Iunar landscape of the chemical plant under construction, where the film is set. As martial music blares in the background, the “Ballas,” conspicuously dressed in the black corduroy suits traditionally associated with their trade in Germany, march against a sea of humanity streaming toward a political rally. They rudely shove people out of their way, grope women, and chug beer. Over a loudspeaker, the Communist functionary leading the rally proclaims, “We are already building the road leading into a bright future.” In response, Balla remarks to his cronies, “They comfort you with the future like the priests with the hereafter, but by the time you get there, you're already dead.”