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The Limits of Totalitarianism: God, State and Society in the GDR1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Mary Fulbrook
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Extract

History is not an exact science. In describing and seeking to resurrect—or at least reconstruct—past societies, historians make use of concepts which bear a double freight of meaning. Unlike the elements, atoms and molecules of natural science, which—however much they are artefacts of the inquiring scientist's mind rather than natural ‘givens’ of the outside world—cannot answer back, the terms which historians use to describe the human world are themselves not only part of the way in which that past world was lived and experienced by the historical actors, but are also part of the way in which historians see, experience and act in their own social and political world. Historical concepts at any level of abstraction beyond the most basic and immediate empirical reference are also part of broader contemporary debates.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 7 , December 1997 , pp. 25 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1997

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References

2 Cf., for example, Hacker, Jens, Deutsche Irrtümer (Berlin, 1992)Google Scholar; Schroeder, Klaus, ed., Geschichte und Transformation des SED-Staates (Berlin, 1994)Google Scholar.

3 For an excellent discussion of the state of debate, see Kershaw, Ian, The Nazi Dictatorship (3rd edn, 1993)Google Scholar.

4 Cf., for example, Besier, G., Der SED-Staat und die Kirche (Munich, 1993)Google Scholar; Neubert, Erhart, Vergebung oder Weiβwäscherei? Zur Aufarbeitung des Stasiproblems in den Kirchen (Freiburg: Herder, 1993)Google Scholar; Rein, G., Die Protestantische Revolution 1987–1990 (Berlin, 1990)Google Scholar; Reuth, Ralf Georg, IM ‘Sekretär’. Die ‘Gauck-Recherche’ und die Dokumente zum ‘Fall Stolpe’ (Frankfurt/Main and Berlin, 1992)Google Scholar.

5 Friedrich, Carl and Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, MA, 1956)Google Scholar.

6 Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951)Google Scholar.

7 Jesse, Eckhard, ‘War die DDR totalitär?’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschkhte, B 40/94, 7 10 1994, 12–23 at 15Google Scholar.

8 Meuschel, Sigrid, ‘Überlegungen zu einer Herrschafts- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR’, Geschichk und Gesellschqft, 19 (1993), 5–14Google Scholar.

9 Jessen, Ralph, ‘DDR-Geschichte und Totalitarismustheorie’ (unpublished MS, 02 1995)Google Scholar.

10 Jesse ‘War die DDR totalitär?’.

11 As in the Schroeder/Staadt interpretation, discussed further below: see Klaus Schroeder and Jochen Staadt, ‘Der diskrete Charme des Status Quo. DDR-Forschung in der Ära der Entspannunspolitik’, in Geschichte und Transformation des SED-Staates, ed. Schroeder.

12 Kershaw, Ian, ‘Totalitarianism Revisited: Nazism and Stalinism in Comparative Perspective’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte, 23 (1994), 23–40 at 25Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., 32.

14 Ibid., 33.

15 Nevertheless, Kershaw also sees the concept as in some sense describing the whole: he suggests that ‘the concept of totalitarianism should be used to depict an unusual revolutionary, violent and transitional phase in the life of a regime’ (ibid., 40) or ‘a dynamic, but transitional phase…[which] can give way either to complete collapse, or to systematisation’ (ibid., 32). It is not entirely clear why this should be the case, unless one assumes that no party or leader can sustain an attempt at mass mobilisation for very long for some intrinsic reason which is not made explicit in the model.

16 See Schroeder and Staadt, ‘Der diskrete Charme’; Mitter, A. and Wolle, S., Untergang auf Ratan (Berlin, 1993)Google Scholar, and my comments on this in Fulbrook, M., ‘Methodologische Úberlegungen zu einer Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR’, in Die Grenzen der Diktatur, ed. Jessen, R. and Bessel, R. (Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 1996)Google Scholar; T. Garton Ash's highly polemical and misjudged review of my book, Anatomy of a Dictatorship, in the TLS, 13 Oct. 1995, and my reply in TLS, 20 Oct. 1995.

17 Cf. Diedrich, Torsten, Der 17. Juni 1953 in der DDR. Bewaffnete Gewalt gegen das Volk (Berlin, 1991)Google Scholar.

18 Potsdam, Bundearchiv, O–4 1918, ‘Analyse der Kirchen-Hierarchie und ihrer Tätigkeit nach 1945’, n.d., c. 1955, p. 6Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., p. 93.

20 Ibid., p. 6.

21 Bundesarchiv Potsdam, O–4 1918, circular letter from Bishop Dibelius of 2/8/55, 130.

22 Cf., for example, Besier, G. and Wolf, S., eds., ‘Pfarrer, Christen und Katholiken’. Das Ministerium für Staatssuherheit der ehemaligen DDR und die Kirchen (2nd edn, Neukirchen, 1992)Google Scholar.

23 SAPMO-BArch IV 2/5/322, report of SED Stadtleitung Plauen to the Central Committee of the SED, 30/1/56. Cf. also SAPMO-BArch, IV 2/5/322, letter of W. Barth to Genosse Kleinert, Abteilung Leitender Organe, 28/9/55.

24 SAPMO-BArch, A 2/2021/370, ‘Kurzfassung über Probleme und Folgerungen zur Bewuβtseinsentwicklung Jugendlicher in der DDR, dic vom Zentralinistitut für Jugendforschung anläβlich der “Umfrage 69” vorgelegt wurden’, p. 11.

25 Potsdam, Bundearchiv, 0–4 459,‘ Der Prozeβ des Absterbens von Religion und Kirche in der DDR’ (02 1968), p. 9Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 11.

27 For a rather hostile interpretation, cf., for example, Steinlein, Reinhard, Die gottlosen Jahre (Berlin, 1993)Google Scholar.

28 Quoted in Przybylski, Peter, Tatort Politbüro. Band 2: Honecker, Mittag und Schalk-Golodkowski (Berlin, 1992), 74Google Scholar.

29 For more detailed discussion, documentation and source references, see Anatomy of a Dictatorship, chs. 4 and 8.

30 Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), ZAIG, Z 3396, No. 368/84, 27.9.84.

31 Wollenberger, Vera, Virus der Heuchler: Innenansichten aus Stasi-Akten (Berlin, 1992)Google Scholar.

32 Notably, they do not apply this kind of interpretation to their own substantive views of the GDR. One is led to wonder whether, in the pro-tos' view, value freedom may be possible on the right but not on the left of the spectrum?

33 Here, it should be noted, it is not sufficient to examine popular attitudes in isolation from the context of their expression. The behaviour to which these attitudes give rise is a product, not only of opinions, but of perceived opportunities and risks. Grumbling discontent is a quite different thing when leaving for the west implies—pre-1989—the chance of being shot on the Wall, or when it means—in summer/autumn 1989—being met with 100 DM ‘greetings money’, balloons and bananas.

34 I have elsewhere, not entirely flippantly, sought to develop the ‘Octopus theory’ of the GDR, using the analogy of an octopus seeking to extend its tentacles into every last aspect of society, developing a remarkable, but never quite complete, degree of penetration of ‘society’ by ‘state’: see Fulbrook, M., ‘Reckoning with the Past: Heroes, Victims and Villains in GDR History,’ in Rewriting the German Past, ed. Monteath, P. and Alter, R. (New York, 1997)Google Scholar. It would however have to be an octopus with permeable membranes, or perhaps an ink-spraying squid, to capture the real impact of state on society in what Jürgen Kocka has aptly termed a ‘durchherrschte Gesellschaft’: Kaelble, H., Kocka, J. and Zwahr, H., eds., Sozialgeschichte der DDR (Stuttgart, 1994)Google Scholar.

35 This might appear to be belabouring the obvious, but in certain quarters recently there have been noises to the effect that the latter form of comparison is in some way politically illicit; cf., for example, Ash, Garton, TLS, 13 10 1995Google Scholar.