The Parteihochschule Karl Marx under Ulbricht and Honecker, 1946-1990: The Perseverance of a Stalinist Institution (Palgrave Studies in Political History) 3030702243, 9783030702243

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN POLITICAL HISTORY

The Parteihochschule Karl Marx under Ulbricht and Honecker, 1946–1990 The Perseverance of a Stalinist Institution

Dietrich Orlow

Palgrave Studies in Political History Series Editors Henk te Velde Leiden University Leiden, The Netherlands Maartje Janse Leiden University Leiden, The Netherlands Hagen Schulz-Forberg Aarhus University Aarhus, Denmark

The contested nature of legitimacy lies at the heart of modern politics. A continuous tension can be found between the public, demanding to be properly represented, and their representatives, who have their own responsibilities along with their own rules and culture. Political history needs to address this contestation by looking at politics as a broad and yet entangled field rather than as something confined to institutions and politicians only. As political history thus widens into a more integrated study of politics in general, historians are investigating democracy, ideology, civil society, the welfare state, the diverse expressions of opposition, and many other key elements of modern political legitimacy from fresh perspectives. Parliamentary history has begun to study the way rhetoric, culture and media shape representation, while a new social history of politics is uncovering the strategies of popular meetings and political organizations to influence the political system. Palgrave Studies in Political History analyzes the changing forms and functions of political institutions, movements and actors, as well as the normative orders within which they navigate. Its ambition is to publish monographs, edited volumes and Pivots exploring both political institutions and political life at large, and the interaction between the two. The premise of the series is that the two mutually define each other on local, national, transnational, and even global levels. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15603

Dietrich Orlow

The Parteihochschule Karl Marx under Ulbricht and Honecker, 1946–1990 The Perseverance of a Stalinist Institution

Dietrich Orlow Boston University Boston, MA, USA

Palgrave Studies in Political History ISBN 978-3-030-70224-3    ISBN 978-3-030-70225-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70225-0 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 The PHS Under Ulbricht and Honecker 1949–1990: The Perseverance of a Stalinist Institution 1 2 Origins and Early Years, 1930–1950 5 3 The Wolf Era: The Ulbricht Years (1950–1971)15 4 The Hanna Wolf Era: The Honecker Years (1971–1983)27 5 The PHS Under Kurt Tiedke, 1983–198949 6 Epilogue85 Index91

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CHAPTER 1

The PHS Under Ulbricht and Honecker 1949–1990: The Perseverance of a Stalinist Institution

Abstract  The introduction provides an overview of the scholarly and memoir literature covering the “Advanced Training Institute for Functionaries ‘Karl Marx’” (PHS), highlighting the fact that there relatively written on this important institution. The single monograph on the PHS ends its coverage in 1961, and two books of reminiscences by the school’s faculty are little more than exercises in self-serving hagiography. Keywords  Secondary literature • Memoir literature • Parliamentary investigation • German Democratic Republic (GDR) When the East German Communist regime collapsed in 1990, one of the supporting pillars that disappeared with it was the “Advanced Training Institute for Functionaries ‘Karl Marx’” (Parteihochschule “Karl Marx,” PHS). Formally established in 1946, the PHS provided the East German ruling Communist Party, the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED), with top-ranking, full-time party cadres. By the time the Communist dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had ended, the PHS had graduated somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 functionaries (the sources vary). Reporting to the SED’s Central Committee (CC), the PHS was an important, well-financed

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Orlow, The Parteihochschule Karl Marx under Ulbricht and Honecker, 1946–1990, Palgrave Studies in Political History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70225-0_1

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component of the party’s societal control apparatus.1 In time graduation from the PHS became a prerequisite for appointment to the higher ranks of the nomenklatura; in 1989 all 15 of the SED’s First District Secretaries, for example, had completed a course of studies at the PHS. The graduates were also entitled to the academic title of “certified social scientist” (Diplomgesellschaftswissenschaftler).2 And yet, remarkably, despite its significance the PHS is rather neglected in the by now voluminous literature covering all aspects of the East German Communist regime’s history and rule. There is one monograph on the PHS, but its treatment ends in 1961.3 The PHS is also not well represented in the memoir literature. In 1986, a book of reminiscences by former teachers at the school was published to celebrate the PHS’ 40th anniversary, but this hagiographic volume did little except to reinforce the PHS’ image as a bastion of Marxism-Leninism. A second, somewhat less one-sided, but still essentially apologetic book of remembrances, also by former teachers, appeared after the fall of the regime in 2006.4 Surprisingly, neither of the multi-volume publications issued by the German parliament’s two Enquête Commissions after the fall of Communism in East Germany devoted a full-scale analysis to the PHS.5

Notes 1. Uwe Möller, Die Parteihochschule der PHS: ein kritischer Rückblick (Schleunitz, 2006), p. 7; Hermann Weber, Damals als ich Wunderlich hiess: Vom Parteischüler zum kritischen Sozialisten—die SED Parteihochschule “Karl Marx” bis 1949 (Berlin, 2002), p. 46; and Gerd Meyer, Die Machtelite in der Ӓra Honecker (Tübingen, 1991), p. 149. 2. The nomenklatura (the East Germans used the Russian term) consisted of positions in the ruling party, the state bureaucracy, state-run economic enterprises, academic institutions, and other societally relevant organizations which required the approval of the party authorities before a candidate could be appointed. The top ranks required confirmation by the Politburo; lesser positions were handled by the secretariat of the Central Committee. In 1949 the nomenklatura consisted of some 700 positions. See Heike Amos, Politik und Organisation der SED-Zentrale (1946–1963): Struktur und Arbeitsweise von Politbüro, Sekretariat und ZK-Apparat (Münster, 2003), pp.  98 and 634; and Hans-Hermann Hertle and Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan, eds., Das Ende der SED: die letzten Tage des Zentralkommittees (Berlin, 1997), p. 24 n. 5.

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3. Thekla Kluttig, Parteischulung und Kaderauslese in der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Berlin, 1997). 4. PHS, ed. Unsere Hochschule: Vorgestellt anlässlich des 40. Jahrestages der Parteihochschule ‘Karl Marx’ beim ZK der SED (Berlin, 1986), and Möller, PHS. 5. Deutscher Bundestag, Enquête Kommission, ed. Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland (Baden-Baden, 1995), 9 vols.; and Deutscher Bundestag, Enquête Kommission, ed., Űberwindung der Folgen der SED-Diktatur im Prozess der Deutschen Einheit (Baden-Baden, 1999), 6 vols.

CHAPTER 2

Origins and Early Years, 1930–1950

Abstract  This chapter traces the origins of the “Advanced Training Institute for Functionaries ‘Karl Marx’” (PHS) back to the Weimar-era German Communist Party (KPD). The narrative then describes the Antifa (Anti-Fascist) Schools, which were set up by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in cooperation with the KPD’s leaders in exile in the Soviet Union during the Second World War, to attract (not very successfully) and train Communist sympathizers among the millions of German prisoners of war in Russia. The Antifa Schools were disbanded in 1949. In the meantime, in 1946, the newly formed Socialist Unity Party (SED) had set up the PHS in the Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany. Initially the school was a training institute for party functionaries with a relatively liberal educational atmosphere. That changed as the Cold War intensified. The SED, following the model of the CPSU, re-labeled itself “a party of the new type.” The PHS now became an institution of indoctrination rather than education. There was now a heavy emphasis on “studying” (really memorizing) the “classics,” which at this time meant Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. The centerpiece of the curriculum became Stalin’s History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik): Short Course.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Orlow, The Parteihochschule Karl Marx under Ulbricht and Honecker, 1946–1990, Palgrave Studies in Political History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70225-0_2

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After Stalin broke with the Yugoslav Communist leader, Marshal Tito, students at the PHS were admonished to be “vigilant” and expose “traitors” among the students and instructors. Keywords  Antifa-Schools • Communist Party of Germany (KPD) • Socialist Unity Party (SED) • Soviet Zone of Occupation • Cold War • Stalinism • Beginnings of the PHS • Cadres training • “Classics” of Marxism-Leninism • Kurt Hager • Nomenklatura The SED’s system of schooling party functionaries did not originate with the post-war East German Communist Party. Rather, the PHS traced its origins back to the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) or, more precisely, to the Stalinization of that political organization. As the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin gained control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the worldwide Communist movement, he decreed that the most important prerequisite for building a socialist society was a corps of thoroughly indoctrinated party functionaries, a group of professional revolutionaries.1 The leaders of the KPD enthusiastically endorsed Stalin’s dictum. During the Second World War, the party’s leaders in exile in the Soviet Union reiterated the importance of indoctrinating future party functionaries with the principles of what was then called Marxism-Leninism-­ Stalinism. But they did more than pass resolutions.2 Working together with the CPSU, the German Communists during the Second World War created a string of “Antifa [Anti-Fascist] Schools” in the Soviet Union. Anticipating the need for a large corps of functionaries as the Communists took control of all of Germany after the defeat of Hitler—as they fully expected to do, their wartime slogan was “after Hitler it’s our turn”—the Antifa Schools were set up to attract and train potential sympathizers of Communism among a large number of German prisoners of war (POWs) in the Soviet Union. The Antifa Schools would later be given an aura of importance and success by the regime’s official historians,3 but their actual significance was limited. There were not all that many volunteers among the German POWs, and among those that did come forward, at least some were attracted by the better living conditions at the schools (in comparison with the regular POW camps) rather than by the desire to be politically

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indoctrinated. Again, the sources vary, but between 1100 and 4300 students graduated annually from the Antifa Schools, an exceedingly small percentage among the 2 million German POWs in the Soviet Union. Not surprisingly, the schools became more popular after Nazi Germany had been defeated. However, it is also true that some later high-ranking SED functionaries received their first schooling as party cadres at one of the Antifa Schools. Among these were Hans Modrow, the GDR’s last prime minister, and Kurt Tiedke, the PHS’ rector from 1983 to 1989. The teachers at the Antifa Schools were German Communists in exile in the Soviet Union and Soviet instructors who were fluent in German. Both the first co-rector of the PHS, Rudolf Lindau, and his successor, Hanna Wolf, taught at the Antifa Schools.4 The curriculum, according to the East German Communists’ official version, consisted of teaching the “basic problems of dialectical materialism,” including the importance of Marxist-Leninist philosophy as the ideology of the working class and a critique of contemporary bourgeois philosophy. “With unending patience,” so the approved history, the teachers stressed three overarching topics: the ultra-reactionary and demagogic character of fascism, the importance of democratic and humanistic ideas, and the truth about the Soviet Union, its socialist society, and the nature of Soviet policies.5 The Antifa Schools were dissolved in 1949.6 The PHS opened its doors in May 1946. Its first home was in Kleinmachnow, a village outside of Berlin. Here the PHS took over a building that had been the property of the German Post Office and during the Second World War was used for armaments research. Initially, the school was not yet the rigid “functionaries’ smithy” (Kaderschmiede in German; the East German Communists were very proud of this term) that it was soon to become. Early graduates and instructors remembered a relatively open atmosphere with lively discussions among the students and between students and teachers. The curricular core was Marxism, not yet Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism.7 The early teachers at the PHS were, for the most part, German Communists who had spent the Nazi years in exile in the Soviet Union, but there were also some Social Democrats, like Erich Paterna, who headed the PHS’ Department of History, and former members of the Weimar-era dissident Communist organization, the KPO. The orthodox Communists included Viktor Stern, who had joined the KPD almost immediately after it was founded in 1918. He headed the PHS’ Department of Philosophy. Frida Rubiner, another exile in the Soviet Union, chaired

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the Department of Marxism-Leninism. The head of the Department of Political Economics was Alfred Lemmnitz. He joined the KPD in 1931. At first activities at the PHS and other party schools were a rather small-­ scale affair, but that changed abruptly with the results of the various local and state elections in the Soviet Zone in the course of 1946. In the spring of that year, yielding to massive pressure from the Soviets, the Social Democrats in the Soviet Zone of Occupation agreed to merge with the Communists to form a new party, the SED.  Although the Soviets provided the SED with massive material support for its electoral campaigns, the party was disappointed by the results. Contrary to its expectations, nowhere did the SED obtain a majority of the popular vote. From the party’s perspective, the September 1946 Municipal elections in Berlin were particularly disastrous. The SED obtained only 19.8% of the popular vote, far behind the rival Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) with 48.7%. (Because all of Berlin was under Allied rather than East or West German control, unlike in the rest of the Soviet Zone, the SPD retained its organizational and political autonomy in both East and West Berlin.) After the disappointing 1946 election results, the SED’s leadership decided that the schooling of party cadres was now a top priority.8 The atmosphere at the PHS also changed as the Cold War heated up, and the SED, following the model of the CPSU, transformed itself into a “party of the new type.” The concept of the “party of the new type” was invented by Lenin and perfected by Stalin. The “new type” was characterized by a number of unique features. To begin with the “new type” was a self-­ proclaimed “vanguard party.” That meant that the Communist Party, and only the Communist Party, had a monopoly on political truth that enabled it to chart and implement the path to building a successful socialist society. The organizational principle of the “party of the new type” was “democratic centralism,” which was certainly not democratic. This organizing dictum proclaimed that in a Communist Party information flowed from the bottom to the top and decisions and orders came from the top down. The “party of the new type” was also rigidly authoritarian. The party members committed themselves to carry out the decisions of the party leadership without question or criticism. Independent thinking was punished by penalties ranging from reprimand to expulsion and incarceration. (Under Stalin alleged deviations led to the purges and mass executions, but the SED stopped short of imposing the death penalty on suspected enemies within its ranks.) A particularly serious offense was what the East

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German Communists called “faction building” (Fraktionsbildung). This involved the accusation that a group of party members had attempted to organize a collective attempt to criticize or change the party line or depose the party leaders. The watershed years for change were 1947/1948. Stung by criticism from officials at the Soviet Military Administration for Germany (Sowjetische Militäradministration in Deutschland, SMAD) that the SED’s schooling system was too relaxed and inadequate, the party’s leaders ordered the party schools to provide “ideological clarity”.9 There had been complaints that too many functionaries thought ideological indoctrination was superfluous and that practical training was more important. Following Stalin’s pronouncement that “the higher the [student’s] ideological knowledge, the better his practical qualifications”,10 the SED’s schooling system underwent the Stalinization that was to be its hallmark until the collapse of the GDR.11 The teachers at the PHS now created a “closed system of thought, a substitute religion”12 that elevated the “classics,” which at that time meant Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, to the level of secular scripture. However, as Wolfgang Leonhard has pointed out, the “classics” were taught very selectively at the party schools. Among Marx’s and Engels’ voluminous writings, only those that fit the current party line were selected as “classic.” Actually, in these years, the work attributed to Stalin, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik): Short Course, became the most important teaching material at the PHS. As Norman Naimark has pointed out, “a new Stalinist uniformity was imposed over Eastern Europe—brutal, mindless, and repressive”.13 The Hungarian Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch called Stalin’s vulgar Marxism “a set piece with four or five quotations, or a scholasticism composed of a sect and a pre-­scientific catechism.” Graduates from this time remembered that Marxism-Leninism-­ Stalinism already provided answers to all theoretical and practical problems. Among the more surprising skills learned at the PHS was the ability to provide a Marxist interpretation of Einstein’s theory of relativity. A graduate from these years was proud that, in his later professional life (he was an SED county secretary), he never made any decisions without consulting the “classics.” The school also gave itself the aura of a scholarly institute. In October 1948 the PHS established a research institute for “scientific socialism (wissenschaftlicher Sozialismus)” which focused on “dialectical materialism.” On May 26, 1948, an SED party delegation, led

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by Wilhelm Pieck, soon to be the first president of the GDR, met with Stalin in Moscow. Here the Soviet dictator emphasized, once again, the “great significance of [party] schooling”.14 After the Yugoslav leader Josip Tito broke with Stalin in 1948, a new pedagogical priority was added to the PHS’ focus: vigilance. In addition to insisting on ideological purity, there now began a search for doubters and traitors among the students and faculty. In January 1950 Kurt Hager, the Central Committee functionary responsible for supervising the PHS, proclaimed the most important responsibility of the party schools was “enhanced vigilance”.15 For most of its existence the PHS reported to Kurt Hager, the SED official responsible for enforcing the party’s cultural and educational policies. Hager was born on July 24, 1912, and joined the KPD in 1930. After the Nazis came to power, he was arrested and spent some time in a concentration camp. He left Germany in 1936 and spent the rest of the Hitler years in a variety of Western countries, including Switzerland, France, and, beginning in 1939, Great Britain. Hager returned to Germany in 1946 and joined the SED.  He immediately embarked on a career as a party functionary. He became head of the Central Committee’s Department of Party Schooling and also attended a teacher training course at the PHS. In the 1950s Hager had a meteoric rise in the SED. He became a candidate member of the Central Committee in 1950 and a full member in 1954. A year later he was appointed the Central Committee’s secretary responsible for science, education, and culture. In 1959 he was elected a candidate member of the Politburo, and again four years later, he became a full member, heading the Politburo’s Ideological Commission. In the course of his career, he also occupied a number of state offices, including membership in the State Council, the GDR’s “collective presidency,” from 1976 to 1989, and the National Defense Council from 1979 to 1989. Especially in the later Stalin years, many Communists who had emigrated to the West to escape Nazi persecution were suspected of “having gone native.” This meant that they sympathized with Western values or, even worse, cooperated with Western governments. Remarkably, unlike some other Western exiles in the SED, Hager’s party career was not negatively affected by his decision not to spend the Nazi years in the Soviet Union. The most famous “traitor” at this time was Wolfgang Leonhard, an instructor at the school who did indeed break with Marxism-Leninism-­ Stalinism and in 1948 escaped to Yugoslavia. His departure was all the

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more embarrassing for the SED as Leonhard had grown up in the Soviet Union and worked for the Soviet propaganda services during the Second World War. Leonhard was also the youngest member of the Ulbricht Group, one of the collections of German Communists in exile in the USSR which the Soviets had sent back to Germany in April 1945 to serve as the core of German administrators in the Soviet Zone of Occupation. Although the PHS worked hard to fulfill the party directives for ideological purity and vigilance, the impact of the school on the party’s corps of functionaries at this time was decidedly limited. The PHS’ mandate was to provide the SED with a supply of full-time functionaries, but in 1947/1948 there were not many graduates, and among these few were appointed to positions in the nomenklatura. The bulk of the graduates either stayed on as instructors or soon returned to teach at the school.16 And “teach” was the operative word here. The PHS claimed to engage in “scientific research,” but the faculty members produced very little in the way of scholarly publications, in large part because of the heavy teaching loads. (Of the 421 dissertations that were completed in the GDR between 1955 and 1961, the teachers at the PHS were responsible for 9 [2.1%].17)

Notes 1. Alfred Lemmnitz, “Lernender Lehrer: Aus den Anfängen meiner Arbeit an der Parteihochschule,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, 26 (no. 3, 1984), 347–55; Hartmut Zimmermann, “Ű berlegungen zur Geschichte der Kader und Kaderpolitik in der SBZ/DDR,” in: Hartmut Kaelble et  al. eds. Sozialgeschichte der DDR, Stuttgart, 1994), p.  352; Rudolf Schwarzenbach, Die Kaderpoltik der SED in der Staatsverwaltung (Cologne, 1976), p.46; Gert-Joachim Glaessner, Herrschaft durch Kader: Leitung der Gesellschaft und Kaderpolitik in der DDR (Opladen, 1977), pp. 71 and 77–78; and Hermann Weber, Die Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, 1946–1971 (Hanover, 1971), p. 137. 2. Mike Schmeitzer, “Totale Herrschaft durch Kader? Kaderpolitik von NSDAP und KPD/SED,” Totalitarismus und Demokratie, 2 (no. 1, 2005), 71; Mario Frank, Walter Ulbricht: eine deutsche Biographie (Berlin, 2001), pp.  74–75; and Günter Neef, “Die Gründung und Konstituierung der Parteihochschule ‘Karl Marx’ beim ZK der SED: Ihre revolutionäre Tradition,” Bundesarchiv Berlin-Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen (hereafter: BAB-SAPMO), DY 30 vol. 42,769.

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3. Gottfried Handel, “Politisch-weltanschauliche … Bildung in den Antifa-­ Schulen in der UdSSR,” in: Albert Behrendt et al. eds., Kampfgemeinschaft SED-KPdSU: Grundlagen, Traditionen, Wirkungen (Berlin, 1978), pp. 377–86. 4. Handel. “Antifa-Schulen,” p.  380, and Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, Legitimation eines neuen Staates: Parteiarbeiter an der historischen Front-­ Geschichtswissenschaft in der SBZ/DDR, 1945–1961 (Berlin, 1997), pp. 46, 75, and 212. 5. Peter Erler, “Moskau-Kader der KPD: Bestandaufnahme zu einem Forschungsthema,” in: Heiner Timmermann, Die DDR: Politik und Ideologie als Instrument (Berlin, 1999), p.  347, n. 82; and Handel, “Antifa-­Schulen,” pp. 379–83. 6. Catherine Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century (Cambridge, MA, 2003), p. 84. 7. n. a. “Das erste Jahr der Parteischulung: eine neue Etappe der ideologischen Entwicklung der Partei,” Einheit, 5 (no. 10, 1950), 873–80; Wolfgang Leonhard, Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder (Cologne, 1955), p.  477; and Spurensuche: Vierzig Jahre nach Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder (Cologne, 1992), pp. 184ff and 201ff; Weber, Wunderlich, p. 35, and “Machthiearchie der SED,” in: Enquête-Kommission, ed., Aufarbeitung, II/1:427. For an account of daily life at the PHS in 1947/1948 see, Erich Hanke, Im Strom der Zeit (Berlin, 1976), pp. 104ff. 8. Leonhard, Spurensuche, p.  181. See also Wolfgang Triebel, Gelobt und Geschmäht—Wer war Otto Grotewohl: Aufsätze und Interviews mit Zeitzeugen (Berlin, 2000), pp. 223–24. 9. ‘Vortrag Chef SMA Thüringen, Generalmajor Iwan S.  Kolesničenk, 10.1.1947,’ in: Jürgen John and Elke Scherstjano, eds. “‘Perestroika’in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone, 1947,” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 65 (no. 3, 2017), 418; and Weber, Wunderlich, p. 204. 10. Werner Müller, “Der Transformationsprozess der SED,” in: Hermann Weber, ed. Parteiensystem zwischen Demokratie und Volksdemokratie: Dokumente und Materialien zum Funktionswandel der Parteien und Massenorganisationen in der SBZ/DDR, 1945–1950 (Cologne, 1982), p.  73, doc. 16. The Stalin quotation is from Schwarzenbach, Kaderpolitik, p. 76. 11. Hermann Weber, Geschichte der DDR (Munich, 1999), p.  14, “Machthierarchie,” p. 428, and Wunderlich, 400–01. 12. Weber, Wunderlich, p.  249. See also, Weber, “Einleitung,” in: SED‚ 1946–1971, p. 27. 13. Wolfgang Leonhard, “Die unbekannten Klassiker: Marx und Engels in der DDR,” Deutschland-Archiv, 28 (no. 7, 1995), 709–20; Norman M. Naimark, “Revolution and Counterrevolution in Eastern Europe,” in:

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Christiane Lemke and Gary Marks, eds. The Crisis of Socialism in Europe (Durham, NC, 1992), p.  75. See also, Monika Kaiser, Machtwechsel von Ulbricht zu Honecker: Funktionsmechanismen der SED-Diktatur in Konfliktsituationen, 1962 bis 1972 (Berlin, 1997), p.  27; Neef, “PHS,” p.  9; Heinz Heitzer, “Hauptetappen der Kampfgemeinschaft von SED und KPdSU,” in: Albert Behrendt et al., eds., Kampfgemeinschaft, p. 114; and Leonhard, Spurensuche, p. 222. For a recent scholarly edition of the work attributed to Stalin, see, David Brandenberger and Mikhail Zelenov, eds. Stalin’s Master Narrative: A Critical Edition of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course (New Haven, CT, 2018). Ernst Bloch is quoted in, Gunnar Decker, 1965: Der kurze Sommer der DDR (Munich, 2015), p. 167. 14. PHS, ed. Kaderschmiede der Partei: Schule für das Leben—Erinnerungen und Erfahrungen von Absolventen (Berlin, 1986), pp.  22 (Marianne Lange), 44 (Werner Toerne), and 63 (Günther Wyschofsky); and Wilhelm Pieck, Aufzeichnungen zur Deutschalndpolitik, 1945–1953, ed. by Rolf Badstübner and Wilfried Loth (Berlin, 1994). 15. Hager is quoted in, Jens Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern: Die Geschichte der Stasi, 1945–1990 (Stuttgart, 2nd ed., 2001), p. 25. See also, Weber, Wunderlich, pp. 210 and 222; Petzold, “Auseinandersetzung,” p. 113; and Kowalczuk, Legitimation, p. 86. 16. Weber, Wunderlich, p. 401. 17. Kowalczuk, Legitimation, p. 295.

CHAPTER 3

The Wolf Era: The Ulbricht Years (1950–1971)

Abstract  This chapter covers the history of the “Advanced Training Institute for Functionaries ‘Karl Marx’” (PHS) from 1950 to 1971. In 1950 a new chapter began at the PHS. Hanna Wolf was appointed rector of the school; she was to remain in this position for the next 33 years. Wolf was born in Poland but moved to Germany to study at the University of Berlin. While at the university she joined the Weimar-era German Communist Party (KPD). In 1930 she moved to the Soviet Union, where she became a fervent and lifelong admirer of Stalin. She moved back to Germany after the Second World War and became a full-time Socialist Unity Party (SED) functionary. As rector of the PHS she imposed what came to be called a “bureaucratic-­ dictatorial Stalinism” on the school. Although as a private person she was congenial and not without a sense of humor, as leader of the PHS she imposed a rigidly authoritarian teaching program on the institution. What was called the “science” of Marxism-Leninism centered on the “classics” and the doctrine of the infallibility of the Communist Party. In the 1960s Walter Ulbricht, the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR’s) strongman at the time, embarked on a program of (limited) economic and political reforms that called for party functionaries who were professionally competent as well as ideologically committed Communists. Hanna Wolf and the PHS opposed Ulbricht’s reforms. They supported the faction of the Politburo, led by Ulbricht’s heir apparent Erich © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Orlow, The Parteihochschule Karl Marx under Ulbricht and Honecker, 1946–1990, Palgrave Studies in Political History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70225-0_3

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Honecker, which was equally critical of Ulbricht’s proposed changes. In January 1971 this group persuaded the Soviets to force Ulbricht from power. Keywords  Hanna Wolf • Walter Ulbricht • Economic and political reforms • Soviet Union • Ideological indoctrination • Vladimir Lenin • Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) • Feindbild • Fehlerdiskussion • Marxism-Leninism • Erich Honecker • SED The year 1950 marked a milestone in the history of the PHS. In September of that year, Hanna Wolf was appointed rector of the school; she was to remain in this position for the next 33 years. Wolf was born on February 2, 1908, in Poland into a family of what she described as “petit-bourgeois Zionists.” Her father was a teacher and rabbi, and her mother a homemaker. She had three siblings: a sister who moved to the Soviet Union in the 1930s; another sister who lived in Tel Aviv, Israel; and a brother who resided in Nebraska. In her party personnel papers (Kaderakte), Wolf noted proudly and pointedly that she had no contact with either of her siblings who lived in the capitalist countries. As a Jew, Wolf was prohibited from attending a university in Poland at this time, so she moved to Germany and enrolled in the prestigious University of Berlin, later and now Humboldt University. She majored in philosophy, but did not graduate. In 1932 she followed her sister and moved to the Soviet Union. Before then, in 1930, she had joined the German Communist Party. It was only in the Soviet Union, as she put it in her Kaderakte, that “my actual life began.” Here she claimed to have learned the truths of Marxism-Leninism and “the meaning of real party work.” She also became and remained a fervent admirer of Joseph Stalin. She claimed to have studied his works intensely, and she acknowledged him “as the great heir (Fortsetzer) of Lenin.” She summed up her experience in the Soviet Union with the words, “all that I know, and as much as I can do for the party, I learned in Moscow”.1 In the Soviet Union she also began her teaching career in party schools. She taught at the Lenin School in Moscow in 1932/1933 and during the Second World War at several Antifa Schools. Interestingly, in her Kaderakte she described her main work as “party schooling,” but she insisted she was not primarily a teacher, but a “party worker and propagandist”.2 After the Second World War, she returned to Germany and worked in the SED’s

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Central Committee’s Department of Party Schooling. In August 1950 she was put in charge of writing the curricula for all party schools. In fulfilling this task she made the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik): Short Course the centerpiece of the teaching materials. In time she also achieved an “unassailable” position of influence over the entire party schooling system.3 Once installed as rector at the PHS, Wolf quickly imposed her personal stamp on the school. At the PHS she increased the number of teachers, primarily by keeping more graduates on as instructors. She eliminated what remained of free discussions at the PHS, replacing it with the “bureaucratic-dictatorial Stalinism” that was to characterize the teaching style at the PHS for the next 30 years.4 In September 1955 Wolf also persuaded the SED leaders to relocate the PHS from Kleinmachnow to East Berlin. Hanna Wolf’s worldview,5 from which she never wavered, was an ideological straightjacket which she imposed upon herself and the PHS.  To begin with, like Stalin, she insisted that ideological indoctrination was the most important feature of any party schooling. Indoctrination in turn focused on two key events. The first was the overriding importance of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the lessons that all Communist Party functionaries needed to learn from this dramatic upheaval. The second was to insist that only the Communist party, the “party of the new type,” could lead the proletariat in building a socialist and eventually Communist society. To understand the significance of these principles and apply them in practice, party functionaries needed to intensely study the “classics”— Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Wolf and the SED initially included Stalin in this pantheon, but since the mid-1950s that was no longer politic. (After the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had denounced Stalin’s crimes at the CPSU’s 1956 congress, Walter Ulbricht, the SED’s first secretary and the GDR’s de facto strongman, declared that “one could no longer count Stalin as one of the classic theorists of Marxism.”) This meant that the writings of Lenin were now of paramount importance since, according to Wolf, the Soviet leader was “the Marx of our age.” In addition, Wolf concluded “the guarantee of [our] success is the harmony (Einklang) of our policies with those of the CPSU, and that included modeling the SED’s schooling system on that of the CPSU.” Wolf never abandoned her admiration of Stalin. In 1965 she wrote that while an unfortunate cult of personality developed around the Soviet

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leader, the important thing to remember was that Stalin created the socialist society that defeated fascism in the Second World War. Wolf also lauded Stalin as a distinguished historian. In a clear reference to Stalin’s Short Course, Wolf claimed the Soviet leader provided the model of good history writing. As rector Wolf was also adamant that the party must never criticize itself or allow outside criticism of its actions, even if it had admitted errors in the past. (The East German Communists called this inappropriate activity a Fehlerdiskussion, the discussion of [past] mistakes.) As late as October 1989, Wolf demanded that Hermann Kant, then the chairman of the GDR’s Writers’ Association, be expelled from the SED because he had criticized the party’s lack of initiatives in dealing with the mounting crisis in the fall of 1989.6 Wolf insisted that in guiding and ruling the GDR, the SED applied the scientific laws of societal evolution which had been discovered and developed by the “classics.” This precluded spontaneous action of any kind. Again, quoting Lenin, Wolf wrote, “spontaneity is the equivalent of abandoning socialism.” Whims and hunches were to play no part in the party’s decision-making.7 And then there was the enemy, what the East Germans called the Feindbild (picture of the enemy). Wolf was a particularly enthusiastic participant in the anti-Tito crusade. The SED constantly reiterated that the party and people must never lose sight of the intensifying class struggle fomented by the capitalist enemy. The capitalists and imperialists (in SED parlance they were the same entity) took pride of place in Hanna Wolf’s Feindbild, but the Social Democrats ranked a close second. Here was a political organization and ideology that pretended to serve the interests of the working class, while actually acting as lackeys of capitalism. Again quoting Lenin, Wolf proclaimed Social Democratic parties and governments to be “an organized tool of the bourgeoisie within the labor movement.” The PHS’ rector could get positively emotional when attacking “renegades” like Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky.8 Another enemy category, especially in the late 1940s and early 1950s, were the so-called deviationists (Abweichler). This was a large and varied group that included some Western exiles, KPD members who had opposed the Stalinization of the party during the 1920s, and all alleged Trotskyists and Titoists. Wolf also had no sympathy or understanding for those who fled from the GDR to the West. She said that only after it had been

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established that such individuals were “dirty dogs (Schweine)” could one talk about “psychology” and such. Hanna Wolf presented two quite different facets of her personality as a private person and as a rector of the PHS.  As a private person she was described as congenial and not without a sense of humor; on occasion she even enjoyed ballroom dancing.9 But in her professional capacity, she was a fervent Stalinist and rigidly authoritarian taskmaster. In June 1976 she expressed her dislike of a book by the noted East German historian Alfred Kosing because the author had criticized Stalin’s views on the national question. Kosing should have known, Wolf wrote, that Lenin approved of Stalin’s position.10 Wolf always remained a fervent admirer of Stalin. Even after Khrushchev exposed and denounced Stalin’s crimes, Wolf insisted that the issue for the Communist parties was not whether to expose Stalin’s misdeeds, but to ask who benefitted from exposing them. And in the context of the class struggle, the answer was obvious: the class enemy.11 During the 1950s and the first part of the 1960s, the PHS flourished. As the SED asserted and implemented its claim to infallibility and a monopoly on political truths, the number of full-time party functionaries increased substantially. In time the party established a set of offices paralleling the departments of the state administration. For the most part these SED offices were established as part of the steadily increasing bureaucracy affiliated with the party’s Central Committee. Also, beginning in the 1950s the party increasingly asserted the right of the party offices to give orders and instructions to their governmental counterparts. In 1960 the school had eight departments, each headed by a full professor: Political Economics, History, History of the International Workers’ Movement, Economics of the DDR, Administrative Law of the GDR, the Party Life of the SED, German Literature, and German and Russian Linguistics. The faculty consisted of the rector and 3 deputies, 10 full professors, and 134 lecturers and graduate assistants. By the 1950s all of the teachers who taught at the PHS in 1948 had been replaced with new appointees. The curriculum was also “significantly changed” wrote one of the early teachers. There was “even more emphasis on the classics.” During these years Walter Ulbricht agreed with Wolf that the primary qualification for a party functionary was an unshakable belief in the truths of Marxism-­ Leninism. Ulbricht also hewed closely to the Soviet line at this time, and he was no more fond of any Fehlerdiskussion than Wolf.12 During the early and mid-1950s, Ulbricht came under attack from some of his fellow SED leaders for his increasingly authoritarian ways of

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running the party. Wolf helped Ulbricht to stay in power by engaging in the time-honored practice in Communist parties of denouncing the leader’s opponents and rivals. The opposition to Ulbricht was led by Wilhelm Zaisser, the head of the GDR’s security apparatus, and Rudolf Herrnstadt, the editor of the official party newspaper, Neues Deutschland. Wolf supplied Ulbricht with “dirt” on both men. She claimed that in a conversation with her, Zaisser had criticized Ulbricht’s work habits, which fulfilled the criteria for the political crime of violating party discipline. As for Herrnstadt, he was guilty of “intellectual arrogance.” He had compared himself to Karl Marx because both Herrnstadt and Marx were Jews.13 In the end Ulbricht prevailed. Both Zaisser and Herrnstadt were expelled from the party. No wonder the rector eagerly joined the cult of personality around Ulbricht, proclaiming in 1961 that the party leader was “synonymous with the party”.14 The relationship between Wolf and Ulbricht changed in the second half of the 1960s. In his later years, Ulbricht (he died in August 1973 at the age of 80) developed ideological and political ambitions that brought him on a collision course with the Soviets and his critics in the SED. Ulbricht increasingly resented what he felt were excessively tight controls which the Soviets imposed on the SED and the GDR. As early as April 1961, Ulbricht suggested that the future socialist Europe would be led by the GDR, not the Soviet Union, and in June 1970 the SED’s leader pointedly reminded the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that the GDR was a “true German state. We are not Belorussia, we are not a unit of the Soviet Union.” Taking their cue from the leader, the SED party functionaries echoed such sentiments. The noted East German novelist Erwin Strittmatter described a talk by an SED Central Committee functionary in June 1970 as exhibiting a chauvinistic attitude that “would have done any Nazi proud.” For his part Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, resented what he saw as Ulbricht’s arrogance. The Soviet party boss complained that on occasion Ulbricht had the gall to lecture the “friends” (the official East German terms for the Russians) on the correct interpretation of Marxism-Leninism.15 Ulbricht also developed economic ambitions beyond his station. Under ̋ the catchy title New Economic System (Neues Okonomisches System, NES), he proposed to modernize the GDR’s economy so that in short order, as a non-sensical slogan had it, East German economic productivity would “surpass the productivity of West Germany without catching up to it (überholen ohne einzuholen).” To accomplish this Herculean task, Ulbricht proposed decentralizing the East German economy somewhat and

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abolishing some of the political micro-management of economic planning and decision-making in the GDR.16 The East German leader recognized that the reforms he proposed would require more professionally trained party functionaries and competent economic managers. To that end he proposed enhancing professional and managerial training at the PHS at the expense of Marxist-Leninist indoctrination. (Incidentally, the question of the relationship between professional competence and ideological indoctrination in the schooling of party cadres was not new. As early as 1952 there were proposals that at least 25% of the students admitted to the PHS should be professionally competent. In view of Hanna Wolf’s priorities, it is not surprising that such ideas were never implemented.17) The PHS’ rector did not support Ulbricht’s reforms ideas. And she was not alone. The growing criticism of the first secretary came to a head at a meeting of the SED’s Central Committee in December 1965. Part of Ulbricht’s proposals for reforms included loosening the rigid censorship of artistic endeavors in the GDR. The December 1965 Central Committee meeting focused on the ostensible shortcomings of the party’s cultural policies. Led by Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s longtime heir apparent, the critics unleashed a barrage of attacks on the regime’s cultural policies and indirectly on Ulbricht himself. The critics complained that the responsible SED functionaries had permitted films to be produced that unfairly criticized the party (the delegates were shown a couple of particularly egregious examples), while books and plays were published that exuded a sense of pessimism instead of the required optimism about the future of socialism. There were also complaints that East German youths were allowed to listen to Western rock-and-roll music, which the critics claimed zapped their enthusiasm for building socialism. Honecker’s “clear cutting” attack on the GDR’s cultural scene at the meeting was vigorously encouraged by shouts from the members of the Central Committee in the audience, foremost among them Margot Honecker, the second secretary’s wife and the GDR’s Minister of Education, and Hanna Wolf. The rector was a member of the Central Committee, but she was not one of the featured speakers at the December meeting. She did, however, offer a lengthy and wide-ranging contribution to the discussion, which left no doubt about what in her view was wrong with Ulbricht’s policies. In good Stalinist fashion, she began by warning her comrades about “deviationists and potential traitors” in the party. She then insisted that there must be no Fehlerdiskussion and no doubts about the party’s infallibility

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(Unfehlbarkeit). Not surprisingly, Hanna Wolf also argued against excessive criticism of Stalin. Concentrating on the negative aspects of the Soviet leader’s cult of personality, she proclaimed, led to doubt, doubt led to skepticism, and skepticism hindered the progress of building a socialist society. Contradicting herself, she engaged in her own Fehlerdiskussion. She complained that the party had made the mistake of downgrading the importance of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Turning to the focus of the meeting, she demanded that cultural policies must be determined by the party, not by state agencies and certainly not by individual artists. Youthful alienation? Bring the young people closer to the ideals of the party. The way forward was not to discuss policy issues with the young people, but to make it abundantly clear what the party’s position was. Finally, for good measure and without naming Ulbricht, Wolf also attacked the first secretary’s plans for the NES. The answer to the GDR’s economic problems was not “economism,” but the better application of the “ideological process” to economic production. Wolf reinforced her arguments at the Central Committee meeting with an article in the SED’s official newspaper, Neues Deutschland. Here she especially criticized the relaxed youth policies. These were particularly dangerous because they implied that young people were now free to criticize the party.18 How to deal with alienation and criticism among the GDR’s youth was a recurrent theme in Hanna Wolf’s writings. In 1964 she denounced Robert Havemann, a well-known Communist (during the Second World War he had been imprisoned in the same Berlin jail as Erich Honecker), physicist, and philosopher. Havemann had delivered a series of reformist lectures in his classes at the Humboldt University, and Wolf characterized Havemann as a “destroyer (Verderber)” of youth. Havemann was eventually prohibited from teaching and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. He died in April 1982. The last years of the Ulbricht regime were not happy ones at the PHS. The school’s leaders paid lip service to the ideal of a corps of functionaries who were professionally competent as well as ideologically firm, but it was clear that for Wolf ideology always came first. For their part Ulbricht and his supporters were not satisfied with the PHS’ efforts to produce professionally competent party workers. At the end of the 1960s they determined that graduates of the PHS needed additional professional training before they could be sent out into the “field” as party functionaries.19

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Despite the attacks on his policies at the “clear cutting plenum,” Ulbricht maintained his position as leader of the SED and the GDR for another five and a half years by doing what he always did when confronted with insurmountable obstacles: He joined the critics and made himself their spokesman.20 The functionaries whom Ulbricht had appointed to advance his reform program were made into scapegoats and dismissed. The first secretary also tried to regain the initiative. In July 1970 Ulbricht dismissed Honecker as the SED’s second secretary. He described his 58-year-old heir apparent as a “green, unripe Communist; he still has to learn,” and suggested that Honecker should be sent to the PHS for remedial education. Honecker fought back. He contacted the Soviets, and they moved into action. The Soviet ambassador in East Berlin, Pyotr Abrassimov, met Ulbricht in his dacha and demanded that the SED leader rescind Honecker’s dismissal. Ulbricht yielded and the SED’s Politburo promptly re-installed Honecker as the party’s second secretary. It was the beginning of the end for Ulbricht. In January 1971 a majority of the Politburo asked the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to force Ulbricht to resign as the SED’s first secretary. As a good party soldier Ulbricht agreed, but he did so with singular ill grace.21 In May 1971 Erich Honecker succeeded Ulbricht as leader of the SED; his title was now general secretary of the party. In short order, like Ulbricht before him, Honecker added the GDR’s two highest state offices to his portfolio: He became chairman of the State Council, East Germany’s “collective” presidency, and head of the National Defense Council, the country’s highest military decision-making body. Honecker also worked swiftly to eliminate Ulbricht’s name from public life in East Germany. The former first secretary’s name was quietly removed from the numerous institutions and streets that had been named to honor Ulbricht when his cult of personality was in full force.22

Notes 1. This information is based on Wolf’s autobiographical statements in her Kaderakte. See BAB-SAPMO, DY 30/IV/2/ vol. 5533. 2. Ibid. 3. Kluttig, Parteischulung, p. 43; and Erler, “Moskau-Kader,” p. 337, n. 21. 4. Lothar Mertens, Rote Denkfabrik? Die Akademie für Gesellschaft swissenschaften beim ZK der SED (Münster, 2004), p.  50. See also

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“Protokoll Kleines Sekretariat,” 6 April 1949, BAB-SAPMO, DY 30/ IV/2, vol. 5533; PHS, “Kaderschmiede,” pp.  32 and 80; and Rüdiger Bergien, Generalstab der Partei: Organisationsstruktur und Herrschaftspraxis in der SED-Zentrale (1946–1989) (Berlin, 2017), p. 199. 5. This analysis of Hanna Wolf ’s ideological positions is based on statements and proclamations in her Ausgewählte Reden und Aufsätze (Berlin, 1979). 6. Epstein, Revolutionaries, p.  169; Bergien, Generalstab, p.  488; and Alexander Haritonow, Ideologie als Institution und soziale Praxis: Die Adaption des höheren sowjetischen Parteischulungssystems in der SBZ/ DDR (1945–1956) (Berlin, 2004), pp.  216 and 223; Karl-Wilhelm Fricke, “Chefwechsel in der Kaderschmiede,” Deutschland Archiv, 16 (no. 8, 1983), 795; and Joachim Petzold, “Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen den Lampes und den Hampes: Zuum Konflikt zwischen Parteidoktrinären und Geschichtwissenschaflern in der NS-Zeit, in der SBZ und der frühen DDR,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 42 (no. 2, 1994), 114. 7. Möller, PHS, p.  14; Norbert Podewin, Der Rabbinersohn im Politbüro: Albert Norden, Stationen eines ungewöhnlichen Lebens (Berlin, 2001), p.  8; Petzold, “Auseinandersetzung,” p.  113; and Mertens, Denkfabrik, p. 149. 8. Markus Wolf, Im eigenen Auftrag: Bekenntnisse und Einsichten—Tagebuch, 1989 (Munich, 1991), p. 99 (entry for 8 May 1989); and Heinz Lippmann, Honecker: Portrait eines Nachfolgers (Cologne, 1971), p. 202. 9. Erwin Strittmatter, Nachrichten aus meinem Leben: Aus den Tagebüchern 1954–1973, ed. by Almut Giesecke (Berlin, 2012), p.  238 (entry for 24 April 1964); Neef, “PHS,” p. 12; and Michael Hems, Heinz Lippmann: Portrait eines Stellvertreters (Berlin, 1996), p. 202. 10. Wolf to Honecker, 15 June 1976, BAB-SAPMO, Bestand Büro Werner Lamberz (hereafter: Best. Lamberz), DY 30/69516; and Raina Zimmering, Mythen in der Politik der DDR: Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung politischer Mythen (Opladen, 2000), p. 108. 11. Mertens, Denkfabrik, p. 149; Weber, Wunderlich, pp. 37, 169, 274, and 295, n. 37, and “Die SED und die Geschichte der Komintern,” Deutschland-­Archiv, 22 (no. 8, 1989), 898; Joachim Petzold, “Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen den Lampes und den Hampes: Zum Konflikt zwischen Parteidoktrin und Geschichtswissenschaftlern in der NS-Zeit, in der SBZ und der frühen DDR,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 42 (no. 2, 1994), 101–17; Leonhard, Spurensuche, p.  232; and Carola Stern, Portrait einer bolschewistischen Partei: Entwicklung, Funktion und Situation der SED (Cologne, 1957), p. 183.

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12. Frank, Ulbricht, p. 387and 397ff; Kaiser, Ulbricht, pp. 64ff and 75; Kurt Gossweiler, “Unter Ulbricht widerstand die SED dem Revisionismus ­maximal,” in: Egon Krenz, ed., Walter Ulbricht: Zeitzeugen erinnern sich (Berlin, 2016), p. 421, and Neef, PHS, p. 12. 13. Amos, SED-Zentrale, 1946–1953, pp. 308–09. 14. Wolf at the Central Committee meeting, 23–26 Nov. 1961, quoted in: Weber, DDR, p. 227. 15. “Aus einem geheimen Gespräch über die gemeinsame Besprechung der Delegation des ZK der KPdSU mit der Delegation des ZK der SED am 21. 6. 1970  in Moskau,” 21 June 1970, in: Peter Przybylski, ed., Tatort Politbüro (Berlin, 1991), I:296, doc. 16. See also Frank, Ulbricht, pp.  404–06; Kaiser, Ulbricht, pp.  40–41, 60ff, 377, and 394–95; Strittmatter, Tagebücher, 1954–73, p.  400 (entry for 1 June 1970); and Krenz, ed., Ulbricht, p. 176. 16. Kaiser, Ulbricht, pp. 134ff and 200ff. 17. Ibid., pp.  49 and 213; Amos, SED-Zentrale 1946–1953, p.  164; Schwarzenbach, Kader, p. 124, and Bergien, Generalstab, pp. 217ff, 239ff, and 252. 18. SED, Central Committee, “Sitzung 15.-18.12. 1965,” BAB SAPMO, DY 30/IV/2/1/336. Excerpts from the discussion at the meeting were published in, Günter Agde, ed., Kahlschlag: Das 11. Plenum des ZK der SED— Studien und Dokumente (Berlin, 1991). See also Frank, Ulbricht, pp.  369–70; Otto Schön, Űber den Inhalt politischer Leistungstätigkeit (Berlin, 1960), pp. 4–7; Meyer, Machtelite, pp. 309–10; Schwarzenbach, Kader, p. 130; and Gert-Joachim Glaessner and Irmhild Rudolph, Macht durch Wissen: Zum Zusammenhang von Bildungspolitik, Bildungssystem und Kaderqualifizierung in der DDR (Opladen, 1978), p. 157; Heinz Branndt, Ein Traum der nicht entführbar ist: Mein Weg zwischen Ost und West (Munich, 1963), p. 285; and Decker, 1965, pp. 76–77 and 285. In June 1990 the executive committee of the SED’s successor organization, now called the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), adopted a resolution denouncing in “every way … the infamous decisions of the 11th plenum.” See Parteivorstand der PDS (Ӓra Gysi), 1989–93 (hereafter: PDS-PV, 1989–93), Archiv des Demokratischen Sozialismus (hereafter: ADS), no. 192, 11 June 1990. 19. Joachim Schultz, Der Funktionär in der Einheitspartei: Kaderpolitik und Bürokratisierung in der SED (Stuttgart, 1956), p.  81, n. 299; Ernst Richert, Macht ohne Mandat: Der Staatsapparat der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone (Cologne, 1958), p. 162; and Andreas Malycha, Die SED in der Ӓra Honecker: Machtstrukturen, Entscheidungsmechanismen und Konfliktfelder in der Staatspartei, 1971 bis 1989 (Munich, 2014), p. 216;

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Kaiser, Ulbricht, p. 170 n. 138; Schwarzenbach, Kaderpolitik, pp. 123–24 and 131; and Schön, “Leistungsfähigkeit,” pp. 6–7 and 33. 20. Frank, Ulbricht, pp. 370–71. 21. Frank, Ulbricht, pp.  415–15; Kaiser, Ulbricht, pp.  373ff; and Erich Honecker, Nach dem Sturz: Gespräche mit Erich Honecker, ed. by Reinhold Andert (Leipzig, 2001), p. 140. 22. Andreas Malycha, SED, pp.  120–21; Frank, Ulbricht, pp.  426–27; and Kaiser, Ulbricht, pp. 437–38.

CHAPTER 4

The Hanna Wolf Era: The Honecker Years (1971–1983)

Abstract  The “Advanced Training Institute for Functionaries ‘Karl Marx’” (PHS) reached the pinnacle of its success and prestige during the years that Erich Honecker ruled the Socialist Unity Party (SED) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). At this time the PHS realized its self-proclaimed status as the SED’s Kaderschmiede (functionaries’ smithy). Wolf and Honecker were ideological soulmates. Like Wolf, Honecker was at heart a Stalinist. He had little interest in scientific and technical matters. Instead, again like Wolf, he emphasized the importance of indoctrinating party functionaries with the “science” of Marxism-Leninism. The school also had good relations with Kurt Hager, a member of the Politburo who supervised the work of the SED’s “scientific” institutions. In the 1980s the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe encountered a number of challenges, notably the demands for economic and social reforms spearheaded by the Polish independent labor union, Solidarity. The SED leaders, fully supported by the PHS, claimed the “counter-­ revolution” was making inroads in Poland because the Polish Communist Party had failed in its duty of indoctrinating the party and the Polish people with “truths” of Marxism-Leninism. There was also the problem brought on by the computer, or, as the East Germans called it, the scientific-technical revolution. The party would eventually admit that it failed to grasp the importance of developments in this field, but in the 1980s the PHS still claimed that Marxism-Leninism © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Orlow, The Parteihochschule Karl Marx under Ulbricht and Honecker, 1946–1990, Palgrave Studies in Political History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70225-0_4

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fully explained how the computer revolution would be used to increase economic production and improve social life in a socialist society. In June 1983 Hanna Wolf retired as a rector of the PHS. She was now 75  years old and suffered from a variety of physical ailments. Over the years she had also aroused a number of critics in the SED. She was notorious for refusing to participate in party-sponsored “collective” endeavors unless she and the PHS were in charge of the project. In addition, although the PHS was ostensibly a scholarly institution, the school’s faculty and graduate students produce very little scholarship, mostly because of very heavy teaching loads. Wolf retired as rector of the PHS, but her role as a party worker did not end. Honecker appointed her as a special advisor—Honecker, to monitor the international Communist press. In this capacity her duty was to assiduously comb the left-wing press in Europe and the Soviet Union looking for criticism of reforms in the socialist camp. She annotated her findings and presented them to Honecker and the Politburo. Keywords  Erich Honecker • Functionary training • Hanna Wolf • Marxism-Leninism • Poland • “Scientific-technical revolution” • SED • Nomenklatura • Ideological revolution • Wolfgang Schneider • Kurt Hager • Teaching of history • Crisis of the 1980s Honecker, who was to remain East Germany’s strongman until the fall of the regime at the end of 1989, quickly subordinated the SED’s Politburo and the Central Committee to his control. Unlike Ulbricht, who in his later years often worked in his dacha or his office at the State Council, Honecker was a genuine party functionary. When not traveling he maintained regular working hours at his office in the Central Committee building. He also saw to it that the salaries of the party bureaucrats were significantly increased. And he took personal charge of major appointments to the nomenklatura.1 For the highest positions, he tended to prefer functionaries whom he knew and valued from his days as head of the Communist Youth Organization (Freie Deutsche Jugend, FDJ).2 In time, again following Ulbricht’s example, there also developed a veritable personality cult around Honecker, a development which he did not discourage.3 For Wolf and the PHS, Honecker’s selection as head of the party was welcome news. The PHS’ rector had been a member of the Honecker

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faction in the SED since 1964, and like Wolf, Honecker was at heart a dogmatic Stalinist. Egon Krenz, Honecker’s successor and the last leader of the SED, wrote after the fall of the East German Communist regime that Honecker could never “liberate himself from Stalin’s heritage … He failed because of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist construction of socialism.” Honecker’s latest biographer, Martin Sabrow, also concluded that the general secretary admired Stalin to the end of his days.4 Honecker shared Wolf’s belief in the overriding importance of ideological indoctrination in the training of party functionaries. In contrast to Ulbricht in his later years, the new SED leader had little interest in scientific and technological matters, and he assigned lower priority to professional and managerial skills among the SED’s corps of functionaries.5 In December 1968 Honecker delivered a major address (in its printed form the speech was more than 100 pages long) at the PHS.  He emphasized that all party members and especially the party’s functionaries had to achieve “ideological maturity.” He also insisted that while economics and politics formed a unity, politics always came first. For the next 20 years he never wavered from this line. Honecker and Wolf also agreed about the importance of an undiminished Feindbild. In the same December 1968 speech, the then still second secretary proclaimed, “whoever allows himself to be infected by the theories of imperialism consciously or unconsciously gives direct aid to the counter-revolution.”6 At the same time Wolf wanted to have it both ways. In a 1976 speech studded with statistics, she claimed that 98.8% of all SED county secretaries had not only graduated from party schools, but also earned a diploma from a university or professional school. But these claims about professional competence among party functionaries needed to be put in perspective. Half of the teaching time at engineering schools, for example, was devoted to the study of Marxism-Leninism. Another trait that linked Honecker and Wolf was their relationship to the party. Both regarded the Communist Party as their psychological and spiritual home. Honecker felt an emotional bond not to the working class (although he certainly came from a proletarian background), but to the party. Wolf had been socialized in Moscow when she worked for the CPSU, and Honecker found his true home in the Weimar-era KPD. With the founding of the SED in 1946, the new party provided the same sort of warm coven for him. Henrik Eberle, who conducted a series of interviews with Honecker after the general secretary’s fall from power, described

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Honecker’s worldview as essentially consisting of two parts, “the party and the rest of life.”7 A symbiotic relationship quickly developed between the new SED leader and the PHS’ rector. Wolf received the GDR’s highest honor, the Karl Marx Order, for the second time in 1978. Honecker called Wolf a pioneer in the “battle against revisionism.” In return the rector, faculty, and students at the PHS participated fully in the developing personality cult around Honecker. In 1975 Wolf wrote, “even now we can recognize that the VIIIth Party Congress [the first one chaired by Honecker after he became the SED’s General Secretary] inaugurated a qualitatively new step (Stufe), an objectively necessary turnaround (Wende) in the evolution of our party.”8 The decade of the 1970s represented the high point of Hanna Wolf’s prestige and the PHS’ elite standing among the SED’s “scientific” institutes. The assessments of Wolf ranged from an “unsurpassable (unüberbietbare) female personification of Stalinism” and “unbearable” to an “intelligent woman, who was not ungenerous (engherzig).”9 But there was never any doubt about Wolf’s leadership style at the PHS or the school’s curriculum. Both remained unabashedly rigid and authoritarian. The students were taught that the verities of Marxism-Leninism were absolute, never to be questioned or doubted.10 Erwin Strittmatter complained that “we are ruled by a corps of functionaries who were trained Stalinists and (even worse) were members of the Hitler Youth.”11 In 1973 the PHS had three deputy rectors: Manfred Herold, who was in charge of planning and organizing the curriculum; Rudi Wiederänder, responsible for the SED party organization at the PHS; and Wolfgang Schneider, who handled research and publications. Wolf’s closest associate during these years was Schneider. Born in 1931, he became a member of the SED in 1947. Schneider was by training what the East Germans called a “textile engineer,” but his career was really that of a party functionary. He graduated from the PHS and in 1961 obtained his PhD with a dissertation entitled, in the stilted manner of Communist publications, “The SED’s Battle for Educating the Working Class about Friendship with the Soviet Union: An Objective Pre-Condition for the Transition to the Socialist Revolution in the GDR (1948–1959).” After obtaining his doctorate Schneider stayed on at the PHS, becoming a full professor in 1969. The evaluations in his Kaderakte from this period are overwhelmingly positive. His superiors described Schneider’s “deep attachment to the

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Soviet Union,” and attested that he possessed “great abilities to conduct scientific research about Marxism-Leninism.” In 1970 Schneider was sent into the “field” as the SED’s party secretary at the Textilkombinat Cottbus. Despite his earlier professional training in textile manufacturing, things did not go well in Cottbus. The entries in his Kaderakte noted that essentially Schneider was not qualified to lead a party collective. His superiors acknowledged that he recognized his shortcomings and tried to improve his performance, but to no avail. The problem was that Schneider was unable to convince the employees and managers at the Kombinat that the decisions of the SED party congresses and the resolutions of the party’s Central Committee were important elements in the textile production process. In July 1973 Schneider was dismissed as party secretary “because of insufficient leadership activities.”12 He returned to the PHS and stayed there for the rest of his career. Like the SED’s other two “scientific” institutions, the Academy for Social Sciences and the Institute for Marxism-Leninism, the PHS reported to Kurt Hager, the SED official responsible for developing and enforcing the SED’s cultural and educational policies. Like Wolf, Hager was a hardliner, too, so there were no substantive disagreements between Hager and the school’s rector. However, Hager was also not of much help when it came to party infighting. Stefan Heym, one of East Germany’s most prominent novelists and someone who over the years had many dealings with Hager, described him as “ideology made flesh; in all his many appearances he never uttered a word that might embarrass him if the party line changed. Approachable, helpful within reason, but notably anonymous.” The longtime president of the East German Writers’ Association, Hermann Kant, painted a similar picture: “Although I liked him [Hager] as a person, I disliked about him that he was constantly afraid of annoying someone.”13 During the 1970s, the PHS came closest to fulfilling its self-proclaimed function as the SED’s Kaderschmiede. By this time, the PHS was quite a large operation with between 1200 and 1400 students enrolled in one-­ year and three-year courses of study. The graduates could look forward to successful careers as party functionaries because a diploma from the PHS was “an entry ticket for the nomenklatura.”14 Schooling at the PHS continued to be based on the unchallenged postulate that Marxism-Leninism was a scientific-philosophical system that could explain all societal developments in past, present, and future. As Hanna Wolf put it, “there are other theories of society (Gesellschaftstheorien), but they are not

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scientific.” Marxist-Leninist indoctrination would create a “Communist human being” who was morally and, in terms of knowledge, superior to those not trained in Marxism-Leninism. The curriculum also emphasized the exalted self-image of the SED: “The Communist party is the highest form of class organization of the working class.”15 In the 1970s the PHS also became an important part of the GDR’s foreign policy operations. In 1963 the school had established the Thälmann Institute to train functionaries of foreign Communist parties. In the 1970s and 1980s the institute’s activities were significantly expanded. By 1989 the school enrolled some 200 functionaries annually, primarily from African and Latin American Communist parties. (Hanna Wolf had high praise for the Weimar-era chairman of the KPD because Thälmann had subordinated the KPD to Stalin’s direction. As a result, she said, the SED could build upon the experience of the KPD’s Central Committee.) In line with the belief system that Marxism-Leninism was a science, the curriculum at the PHS was rigidly controlled and designed to correct whatever shortcomings the students exhibited when they first enrolled in the school. An analysis of the results of the entrance exam in May 1974 revealed that some of the incoming students had difficulties understanding the concept of democratic centralism or seeing the connections between decisions by the SED party congresses and the “classics.” Some of the prospective students also had little philosophical or historical knowledge, and Gerda Opitz, a professor of “scientific” philosophy, complained that not all students appreciated the importance of the class struggle.16 These shortcomings were overcome, as Wolf put it, by the “objective, combative (streitbar), and party-oriented (parteimässig) atmosphere” which the teachers created at the school.17 An internal “working session” (Arbeitsberatung) at the PHS in December 1981 determined that the curriculum at the school had to focus on two key issues: first, the historical development of Marxism “to show the truth, the correctness of Marxist analysis,” and second, “Marxism-Leninism, as the ideology of our time, must be presented using the strictest … scientific evidence and argumentation.”18 As noted earlier, neither Honecker nor Wolf had much interest in scientific or technological research. Or rather, they saw Marxism-Leninism as the epitome of scientific knowledge because all other fields of knowledge were not scientific. Wolf repeatedly rejected the thesis that the scientific-­ technical revolution superseded the social revolution, or that technology would solve society’s problems.19 In an address at the PHS in February

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1970, Honecker proclaimed, “anyone who actively participates in the revolutionary upheaval of society needs, above all, as our experience has shown, a reliable Marxist-Leninist compass.” The official textbook for the basic study of Marxism-Leninism put it this way, “Within scientific Communism, the scientific predictability of societal prophecies occupies a central place.”20 In 1989, Wolfgang Schneider still warned about the danger of doing empirical research that was not grounded in Marxist-Leninist theory.21 This same line of reasoning also decreed that university students could pursue computer studies only if they had first passed a course in Marxism-Leninism. From the belief that Marxism-Leninism revealed the laws of history and that the SED was the vehicle that applied these verities in its management of East German society, it was only a small step before Marxism-Leninism became a secular religion complete with dogma and priesthood.22 As for how to teach the “science” of Marxism-Leninism, here the answer was easy: the body of “scientific” knowledge was contained in the writings of the “classics,” specifically Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Among this triad of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, Marx and Lenin took pride of place. Marx was the premier god, and Lenin was his immediate heir (unmittelbarer Fortsetzer). Lenin was especially credited with the discovery that the proletariat could only realize its destiny of building a socialist and eventually Communist society if it was led by the Marxist-Leninist Party.23 The practical application of this methodological and intellectual straightjacket for actual research at the party institutes can be illustrated by the guidelines which students were issued as they embarked on writing their masters’ theses and dissertations. They were asked to answer three questions in connection with their research: (1) how did the work reflect the decisions of the SED, (2) how were the “classics” and the newest results of the Marxist-Leninist social sciences, especially the work being done in the Soviet Union, evaluated, and (3) were bourgeois and revisionist conceptualizations effectively challenged?24 From time to time there was criticism of this closed system of scholarship. As early as 1957 Vladimir Fock, a distinguished physicist at the University of Leningrad, proclaimed that “one cannot solve scientific problems with selected quotations from the classics.”25 Even at the PHS there were some expressions of doubt. Karl Hartmann, the head of the Economics Department, noted at a faculty meeting in December 1981 that “especially in the field of economics further thought is more than necessary, not just the classics.”26 Hanna Wolf would have none of it. She

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countered, “socialism and whatever is the pinnacle of science and technology, by [the] laws (gesetzmässig) of history, form a unity.”27 Although not part of the classics, the students and faculty at the PHS were also admonished to “study intensely” the decisions of the SED’s party congresses and the resolutions of the party’s Politburo and Central Committee. As the cult of personality around Honecker steadily grew in the 1980s, the general secretary’s speeches and writings, including his ghost-written autobiography, became additional important pieces of “evidence” for constructing the “scientific” body of Marxism-Leninism.28 The teaching of history occupied an especially important place in the curriculum at the PHS, but it was an essentially ahistorical concept of history because, as Hermann Weber pointed out, “the present [was] projected onto the past.” That is to say, the portrayal of the past had the purpose of showing that the SED’s present course of action was correct.29 The story of the SED was a key component of the teaching of history at the PHS. This was at least in part because the historiography of the East German party was a subject of abiding and deeply personal interest for Hanna Wolf. Technically, of course, the SED was the result of the merger in the Soviet Zone of Occupation of Germany’s two working-class parties, the SPD and the KPD. Wolf rejected this thesis. She insisted that from its founding the SED had been a Communist, or more precisely a Leninist, party. As she put it, “from the beginning the actions and political tactics of the SED were Leninist.” The union of the KPD and the SPD in the Soviet Zone did not take place on “some imaginary middle line.” Rather, in 1946 the Social Democrats in the Soviet Zone had finally recognized that the SPD had always been wrong, and the KPD always right. By joining to form the SED, the Social Democrats acknowledged that Social Democratism was a false and dangerous ideology. For this reason the history curriculum at the PHS stressed the importance of studying the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union rather than the traditions of German Social Democracy. The CPSU, not the SPD, was the model for the correct evolution of a Marxist-Leninist Party.30 It should come as no surprise that “real,” academically trained East German historians did not think much of the parteilich-oriented teaching of history at the PHS.  They regarded the PHS graduates as much less competent than their university-trained peers, and they complained bitterly that under Honecker the PHS graduates working in the Central Committee’s apparatus increasingly dominated the direction of historical research in the GDR.31

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The PHS’ distortion in the teaching of history is well illustrated by the SED-dictated development of the two German nations’ theory in the 1970s and 1980s. Earlier the party had portrayed itself as the champion of a united, socialist, and democratic Germany, but now the new line was that there had never been and certainly there was not now a single German nation. Only the GDR embodied the truly progressive and humanistic side of German history. The capitalist West Germany had never and was not now contributing anything positive to German culture and history. Kurt Hager insisted, “The German question has been solved. It was solved when the [East German] working class [realized its] historic mission by creating the GDR.” Interestingly, some teachers at the PHS opposed German reunification even when it was still the official party line. In 1948, Klaus Zweiling, an instructor at the PHS and later editor of the journal for SED functionaries, Einheit, proclaimed that “the unity of Germany means that we would have to give up all that we have achieved in the GDR.” At the time, Hager denounced this position.32 As part of its teaching of history, the faculty at the PHS continued to reject any discussion of past mistakes which the party might have made, and they had the support of the party leaders. Hager called such endeavors “petit bourgeois criticism fetish (kleinbürgerliche Kritikklasterei).”33 The prohibition of analyzing past mistakes became increasingly relevant in the 1980s as the Communist monolith in Eastern Europe showed signs of breaking up. A faculty member at the PHS pointed out that any Communist Party which engaged in discussions of past mistakes inevitably “falls into a deep crisis.” The best contemporary example of such wrong-headed efforts was the sorry state of the crisis-ridden Polish United Workers’ Party.34 As the 1980s progressed, the PHS was also increasingly faced with questions raised by the digital revolution, or as the East German called it, the scientific-technical revolution. Some PHS faculty members noted that a number of incoming students thought science and technology and Marxism-Leninism were parallel universes that had very little to do with each other. Needless to say, the PHS’ administrators and faculty members rejected this view as completely wrong. They insisted the party, armed with the tools of Marxism-Leninism, had recognized the importance of the digital revolution early on and succeeded in applying these insights to the running of the East German economy. Reflecting the growing cult of personality around Honecker, the SED’s general secretary was given “personal” credit for the correct application of the advantages of the digital

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revolution to the management of the GDR’s economy.35 The PHS faculty also noted with satisfaction that by the time the doubters among the students were ready to graduate, they understood that Marxism-Leninism and the digital revolution were indeed intricately linked.36 In addition to the problems raised by the scientific-technical revolution, there were also questions raised about the relevance of the PHS’ curriculum for the actual administration of the GDR’s economy and society. In theory, of course, there was no problem. The party, or more precisely, the general secretary and the Politburo, armed with the scientific knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, made the correct decisions for all aspects of East German societal life. In reality, economic managers and state functionaries were not readily convinced that ideological indoctrination was all that useful for performing their daytime jobs. The PHS attempted to remedy such skepticisms in two ways. It created special courses on Marxism-Leninism for economic managers and state bureaucrats, and it sent its faculty and graduates into the “field” to teach state employees and economic managers the importance of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Neither effort was particularly successful. Despite claims that courses for industrial managers at the PHS had once again demonstrated the “creative relationship” between Marxism-Leninism and practical decision-­making in the economy,37 the SED had to admit that state and economic functionaries were far more interested in professional advancement courses than in lectures on Marxism-Leninism. As for sending the PHS faculty into the “field,” that too had its drawbacks. As we saw, a particularly glaring example of failure in the “field” was the case of Wolfgang Schneider. As for sending the PHS students to the factories, that, too, had some unwelcome side effects. The students often came back with nagging questions of their own about the relationship between ideology and the real world.38 To many outsiders and some students, it became increasingly apparent that ideological indoctrination and professional training were not complementary elements as the faculty at the PHS insisted, but the school’s leaders continued to convince themselves that they were producing a cohort of ideologically committed and professionally well-trained party functionaries.39 In the PHS’ idealized view of its work, the school produced a sort of socialist superman.40 The PHS graduates were professionally competent functionaries, who also knew that they and they alone were able to correctly and effectively implement the laws of history for East German society.41

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In addition to their ideological steadfastness and professional competence, the PHS graduates were also expected to exhibit a set of personal qualifications. First of all, they had to be superb organizers. As one commentator put it, “the cadres had to create the political organization that makes economic success possible.”42 But the SED functionary was also expected to be something of a social worker or even secular cleric. (Kurt Hager actually used the word Seelsorger, one of the German words for a religious cleric.) People would come to a party functionary with their personal problems because they knew that whatever the difficulties might be, the party functionary would be able to help.43 According to the official party propaganda, the party functionaries were motivated in accomplishing their Herculean tasks solely by their desire to serve the people and advance the inevitable victory of socialism. Supposedly, material benefits were never a motivating factor for the SED’s cadres. Reality presented a different picture. There is considerable evidence that material benefits did indeed play a part in attracting candidates to full-­ time party work. By GDR standards especially the top-level functionaries earned relatively high salaries. The functionaries’ health was taken care of in special hospitals and clinics. They spent their vacations in Central Committee-owned resorts, and they were entitled to periodic wellness treatments at party-owned spas. The pension system in the GDR was complicated—there were 63 separate plans—but the party workers’ retirement benefits were among the most generous.44 Despite the material comfort, or perhaps because of it, there were also persistent complaints that the higher echelon cadres lived in self-created cocoons, isolated from the masses. There was also criticism, ironically from Hager himself, that party functionaries lacked empathy for the personal problems of the people they were supposedly serving, and that all too often they “papered” over difficulties (Schönfärberei) “and engaged in bootlicking (Lobhudelei).”45 Overall, despite the PHS’ continuing affirmations that the school was fulfilling its mission, the institution faced increasing problems in the 1980s. True, during the early years of the decade, the school continued to enjoy the prestige of being the premier training institute for high-level party functionaries and Hanna Wolf and Erich Honecker remained ideological soulmates. But the administrators also had to admit that the students’ attitudes and qualifications fell short of expectations. Wolf complained that some of the students did not understand why learning about the class struggle in contemporary East Germany was still important for their future work. After all, according to the SED class antagonisms in

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the GDR had been eliminated. Wolf responded that to overcome their doubts, the students should intensify their study of the class struggle,46 but it is questionable that the trainees found this admonition very helpful. The qualifications of the graduates also left something to be desired. Among those graduating between1981 and 1983, 61.7% went to work in party offices, but only 4.6% were considered good enough to be placed on the Central Committee’s nomenklatura list. Among the graduates, 23.1% of the graduates went to work in state offices, 10.7% found employment in the GDR’s mass of the organizations, but only 4.6% worked in economic enterprises. The school’s claim to be a beacon of scholarly research and writing was also rather hollow. Between 1981 and 1983, the PHS awarded 17 PhDs, but 12 of those doctorates went to members of the faculty or administrative staff.47 In the late 1980s, the SED and the PHS were confronted with a series of increasingly serious challenges, both foreign and domestic. There was, for example, the Sino-Soviet split. Here the SED stood firmly on the side of the Soviet Union and proclaimed that the Chinese opposition to the Soviets was part of a Chinese-US plot,48 but the split clearly exposed the long-proclaimed solidarity of the global socialist countries as a myth. Closer to home and far more disconcerting to the East German regime were the continuing developments in Eastern Europe. In the 1980s both Poland and Hungary embarked on programs of political and economic reforms that would lead these two countries away from the path of Marxism-Leninism. Not surprisingly, the SED leaders and the faculty at the PHS were profoundly skeptical of these initiatives. The East German Communist leaders determined early on that the independent Polish Solidarity Labor Union and its demands for political and economic reforms in Poland were part of a counter-revolutionary plot organized by the West German imperialists. Speaking at the PHS graduation ceremonies in 1981 and again in 1982 (Hager was the usual graduation speaker at the PHS) as well at a “working session” at the PHS in December 1981, Kurt Hager drew lessons from Poland’s problems for the future of the GDR and the graduates’ work as party functionaries. He claimed Poland’s problems arose because “the Polish [Communist] party had seriously neglected the political-ideological work among the masses.” The Polish party had consistently retreated in the face of the counter-revolutionary enemy, and it was time for the party to re-establish the leading role of a Marxist-Leninist Party in Polish society. Fortunately, Hager claimed, these problems did not exist in the GDR. The SED “would in no way tolerate any

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counter-revolutionary activities. … We will stop activities of this kind from happening.” As evidence for the nascent counter-revolutionary developments in the GDR, Hager pointed specifically to the independent peace and environmental movements which were getting organized in the GDR in the l970s and 1980s. According to Hager such groups were incubators of the counter-revolution, and just like Solidarity in Poland they were controlled by West German outside agitators.49 Honecker and the SED leaders argued that the Polish situation was a repeat of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Consequently, they urged that once again military intervention by the Warsaw Pact countries was necessary to restore Communist rule in Poland. But, unlike 1968, this time the Soviets refused to countenance a military invasion. Instead, in December 1981, the Polish leader, General Jaruzelski, proclaimed a national state of emergency. Publicly the SED expressed the hope that this would restore the political power monopoly of the Polish Communist Party, but privately the East German leaders remained skeptical.50 Remarkably, for quite some time Hager and the SED leaders viewed developments in Hungary with less jaundiced eyes. In what was to be his last graduation speech at the PHS in July of 1989, a time when Hungary had already begun to partially open its border with Austria and allowed thousands of East German vacationers to escape to the West (a development the speaker did not mention), Hager thought the events in Hungary might lead to “surprising new solutions,” and he predicted that “Hungary’s leaving the socialist camp was highly unlikely.”51 (Hungary opened its borders completely in September 1989.) On the domestic side in the 1980s, the GDR’s economic problems were also becoming increasingly apparent. In his commencement address at the PHS in July 1982, Hager admitted that the GDR’s predicted growth rate of 5% p.a. would probably be 1 or 2% less. But, he hastened to add, this was not the fault of the party and its management of the economy. Instead, Hager again pointed to Poland as a scapegoat. The Poles had failed to deliver the contracted amounts of coal, their functionaries were lazy, and Poland’s personnel policies were inadequate.52 In a rare moment of acknowledging the obvious, in this same speech Hager conceded that in dealing with the digital revolution, the GDR had made mistakes. Here, he admitted, “we did not listen to the scientists early enough, and so we fell behind.” Nevertheless, following the dictum of parteilich optimism, Hager concluded that while things might not always go smoothly, overall the GDR was making progress on all fronts.53

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The early 1980s were also the twilight years of Hanna Wolf’s long tenure as rector of the PHS. In 1983 she was 75 years old and suffering from a variety of physical ailments. At the end of 1982 Wolf herself raised the question of continuing as rector. She told an official at the Central Committee that she was willing to do so, but she recommended the appointment of an additional deputy rector, who would also be the rector-­ designate to succeed her when she did retire.54 Wolf’s declining health was not the only reason for considering a change of leadership at the PHS. Over the years there had been persistent, if muted, complaints about the rector’s rule at the “red cloister.” Long regarded as “the female personification of Stalinism in the SED”,55 Wolf became the object of open, personal attacks in December 1982. At this time a series of anonymous flyers (Flugblätter) circulated at the PHS. The documents accused the rector of “acting like a machine that destroyed human beings” and described her as “a senile egotist and notorious ignoramus.”56 Wolf did not think the authors were the present students, but the perpetrators were clearly familiar with the conditions at the PHS, which suggested they were former students or teachers. Her successor as rector, Kurt Tiedke, agreed. Wolf’s own reaction to the flyers was to complain that the author (or authors) had violated party discipline.57 The matter was turned over to the State Security apparatus (Stasi), but apparently those responsible were never identified. Wolf’s superiors at the Central Committee had their own reasons for being dissatisfied with the longtime rector. The PHS faculty was notorious for not fulfilling its obligations under The Plan. Like all other components of GDR society, the academic institutions were required to submit proposals to be incorporated into society-wide Five-Year Plans which were drafted by the Central Planning Bureau and eventually approved by the SED’s Politburo. The “researchers” at the PHS had a well-deserved reputation for turning in their agreed-upon projects late or not completing them at all. To be sure, the problem was not unique to the PHS. In general, East German scholars (and especially historians) spent far more time developing rather than fulfilling their part of The Plan. As early as 1955, Fritz Hartung, at the time one of East Germany’s most distinguished historians, complained, “It’s all a tempest in a teapot … we talk a lot about what we are planning, but seldom about the actual results because we don’t actually accomplish the goals of the Plan. Rather, after a year, we replace The Plan with a new and even more grandiose one.”58 Over the years the

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situation did not materially improve. Wolf was also criticized for not cooperating with the party’s other “research” institutes. She had, again well-­ deserved, reputation of refusing to join collective enterprises unless the PHS and its rector were in charge of the project.59 However, in the end all of the substantive complaints were glossed over, and Hanna Wolf retired as rector for “reasons of health.” Kurt Hager delivered a fulsome eulogy at her retirement ceremony.60 • Wolf did not, however, vanish into private life. When she first broached the idea of retiring as rector of the PHS, she told an official at the Central Committee that she hoped to continue working for the SED in some other capacity. As she put it rather melodramatically, “I cannot live without working for the party.”61 The Central Committee granted her wish. After leaving the PHS, Wolf became a personal advisor to Erich Honecker. Her official title was “Consultant in the Central Committee for the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and other Theoretical Questions,” but her actual job was to select, translate, and annotate excerpts from the foreign Communist press for presentation to the general secretary.62 It was a task for which Wolf was well suited. Unlike Honecker, who had no gift for languages, Wolf was fluent in Russian, Polish, and French in addition to German. In her new position, Wolf was not a neutral observer. Rather, she and her staff selected items from the Communist press that reinforced Wolf’s and Honecker’s well-established skepticism of any reform efforts in the socialist countries. For Wolf and the SED’s general secretary, the old ways of Stalin and Brezhnev were good, but since then, things had been going downhill. In a private letter to Jürgen Kuczynski, an SED member, noted economic historian, and a perennial curmudgeon among the East German intellectuals (he entitled one of his memoirs “a loyal dissident [Ein lientreuer Dissident]”), Wolf vigorously defended Stalin as the builder of socialism in the Soviet Union. Reforms were not necessary, and neither was any Fehlerdiskussion. Yes, some mistakes had been made, but this was not the time to make them public. The imperialist enemy was just waiting to pounce on any Fehlerdiskussion to discredit socialism. Wolf was particularly annoyed that in 1983/1984, one of Kuczynski reminiscences, entitled “Dialogue with my Great Grandson” (Dialog mit meinem Urenkel), was allowed to be published in the GDR. Hager had refused publication of the book for some years, but he

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was eventually overruled by Honecker. The book was indeed somewhat critical of Stalin, although it was hardly a full-throated attack on the dictator and his system.63 Wolf’s work for the SED ended when Honecker was dismissed as general secretary in October 1989. As a proponent of reforms, Egon Krenz, Honecker’s successor, had no use for her services. In addition, unlike Honecker, Krenz was fluent in Russian. As she ended her work for the party, the Central Committee passed a resolution thanking Hanna Wolf for her long years of service to the SED.  She died in 1999 at the age of 91.64

Notes 1. Frank, Ulbricht, pp. 438ff; and Krenz, ed. Ulbricht, pp. 460–63 (Bruno Mahlow); Bergien, Generalstab, pp. 410ff and 427ff, and Anneliese Bräuer and Horst Conrad, Kaderpolitik der SED: Fester Bestandteil der Leitungstätigkeit (Berlin, 1981), pp. 28 and 33; 2. Thomas A. Baylis, “Agitprop as a Vocation: The East German Ideological Elite,” Polity, 18 (no. 1, 1985), 45–46; and Weber, DDR, pp.  281–82 and 298. 3. Schwarzenbach, Kaderpolitik, pp.  57, 61, and 175; and Bergien, Generalstab, p. 377. 4. Egon Krenz, Wenn Mauern fallen—Die friedliche Revolution: Vorgeschichte, Ablauf, Auswirkungen (Vienna, 1990), p.  69. See also Otto Anweiler, “Wissenschaft und Bildung in der DDR: politische Instrumentalisierung und deren Folgen heute,: in: Enquête-Kommission, ed., Űberwindung, IV/1:230–31 (contribution by Dr. Bernd Florath); and Meyer, Machtelite, p. 307; Henrik Eberle, Anmerkungen zu Honecker (Berlin, 2000), p. 208; and Martin Sabrow’s interview in Der Spiegel (no. 34, 20 Aug. 2012), 48. 5. PHS, Politisches Grundwissen (Berlin, 2nd ed., 1972; Joachim Petzold, Parteinahme wofür? DDR-Historiker im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Wissenschaft, ed. by Martin Sabrow (Potsdam, 2000), p. 183; and Mertens, Denkfabrik, p. 85. 6. Erich Honecker, Zu einigen aktuellen Fragen der Parteiarbeit: Vorlesung an der Parteihochschule “Karl Marx” (Berlin, 1969), p. 15; Wolf, Reden, p. 351; and Mertens, Denkfabrik, p. 19. 7. Honecker, Sturz, p. 115 (quotation), Wolf, Reden, p. 253; and Przybylski ed., Tatort, p. 44; and Krenz, Mauern, pp. 41 and 69. 8. Hanna Wolf, Reden, pp. 159ff, 241–42, 249, and 271, “Der Leninismus in siegreicher Aktion,” Einheit, 29/2 (nos. 9/10), 1109–11, and in: Theorie und Praxis (an official journal of the PHS) (no. 1, 1976), 12ff. See

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also Meyer, Machtelite, pp. 310–11; Glaessner, Macht, pp. 30 and 156 n. 95; and Jörg Schütrumpf, “Steuerung und Kontrolle der Wissenschaft durch die SED-Führung,” in: Enquête-Kommission, ed., Aufarbeitung, II/1: 262; and Erich Honecker, Reden und Aufsätze, ed. by Institut für Marxismus-­Leninismus (Berlin, 1986–88), XII: 373. 9. Alfred Neumann, Poltergeist im Politbüro: Siegfried Prokop im Gespräch mit Alfred Neumann, ed. by Siegfried Prokop (Berlin, 2009), p.  92; and Günter Benser, DDR—gedenkt ihrer mit Nachsicht (Berlin, 2000), p. 322. See also Malycha, SED, p.  98; and Krenz, ed. Ulbricht, p.  231 (Herbert Weiz). 10. Horst Bednareck, “Siegreiche sozialistische Revolution auf deutschem Boden,” in: Kurt Tiedke, ed., Alles für das Wohl und Glück des Volkes: Zum Wirken der SED (Berlin, 2nd ed., 1989), pp. 9–43.; and Wolf, “Leninismus,” p. 1109. Hanna Wolf argued against the publication of Jürgen Kuczynski’s book Dialog mit meinem Urenkel because, among many other failings, it weakened “the [belief] in the inevitability of our victory.” See Wolf to Hager, 1 Aug. 1983, BAB-SAPMO, Bestand Büro Kurt Hager (hereafter: Best. Hager), DY 30/27490. 11. Strittmatter, Tagebücher 1953–74, p. 60 (entry for 3 June 1976). 12. See Schneider’s Kaderakte, BAB-SAPMO, SED/ZK, DY 30/J IV/ 3 A/ 1951; and Wolfgang Schneider, “Marxistisch-Leninistische Analyse: Grundfragen schöpferischen Handelns,” in: Kurt Tiedke et al., eds., Die führende Rolle der SED bei der weiteren Gestaltung der entwickelten sozialistischen Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1989), p. 90. 13. Heym, Nachruf, pp. 62 and 379; and Hermann Kant, Die Sache und die Sachen: Interviews mit Irmtraud Gutschke (Berlin, 2007), p. 102. 14. Eberle, Honecker, p.  207; Wolf, Reden, pp.  150 and 351; and Malycha, SED, p. 206. 15. Wilfriede Otto, “SED und MfS: Zur Rolle einer stalinistischen Grundstruktur,” in: Gregor Gysi et al., eds., Zweigeteilt: Űber den Umgang mit der SED-Vergangenheit (Hamburg, 1992), p.  165; Wolf, Reden, pp.  241–42; and G.  Grosser et  al., Wissenschaftlicher Kommunismus: Lehrbuch für das marxistisch-leninistische Grundlagenstudium (Berlin, 1987), p. 51. 16. PHS, “Informationen über die Aufnahmeprüfungen zu den Dreijahreslehrgängen an der [PHS]…,” 17 May 1974, Best. Hager, DY 30/26468; PHS, “Arbeitsberatung,” Dec., 1981, Best. Hager, DY 30/26461; and Bergien, Generalstab, p. 260 n. 205. 17. Wolf to Lamberz, 4 Oct 1974, Best. Lamberz, DY 30/69516. 18. PHS, “Protokoll der Lehrerkonferenz Dezember, 1981,” Best. Hager, DY 30/26473; and Jürgen Kuczynski, Schwierige Jahre—mit einem besseren Ende? Tagebuchblätter, 1987–1989 (Berlin, 1990), p.  116 (entry for 16

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Oct. 1988); Gerhart Neuner, “Erziehung des‚ neuen Menschen’: Licht und Schatten,” in: Hans Modrow, ed. Das Grosse Haus von aussen: Erfahrungen im Umgang mit der Machtzentrale in der DDR (Berlin, 1996), pp. 196–222; and PHS, ed., Grundwissen, p. 552. 19. PHS, “Information: Aufnahmeprüfung … Lehrgang 1983,” 5 April 1983, Best. Hager, DY 30/26468; Wolf to Hager, 26 Oct. 1981, 25 May 1982, ibid.; and Wolf’s contribution at the SED’s, Central Committee meeting, 15–18 Dec. 1965, BAB-SAPMO, DY 30/IV 2/1336. See also Schütrumpf, “Steuerung.” p. III/1: 362; and Weber, DDR, pp. 281 and 298. 20. The quotation is from Eberle, Honecker, p.  207. See also PHS, ed., Grundwissen, p. 563; and Werner Böhme and Bruno Stolz, Zur Parteiarbeit in den Staatsorganen: Einige Aufgaben und Erfahrungen (Berlin, 1973), pp. 5–6; and Grosser, Wiss. Kommunismus, p. 19; and Wolf, “Leninismus,” p. 1107. 21. Schneider, “Analyse,” p. 90; and Kuczynski, Jahre. p. 116 (entry for 16 Oct. 1988). 22. PHS, “Information: Aufnahmeprüfung … Lehrgang, 1983,” 5 April 1983, Best. Hager, DY 30/26468 and Wolf to Hager, 26 Oct. 1981, ibid. See also Mertens, Denkfabrik, pp. 24ff; and Honecker, Sturz, pp. 75–76. 23. Wolf, Reden, p. 396. 24. Mertens, Denkfabrik, p. 20. 25. Quoted in, Heym, Nachruf, p. 706. 26. PHS, “Arbeitstagung,” Dec., 1981, Best. Hager, DY 30/26461. See also Wolf’s article, “Die Partei Lenins—die Avantgarde der internationalen Arbeiterklasse,” Einheit, 27 (no. 11, 1972), 1437–45. 27. Wolf, Reden, pp. 165–66. 28. See Hager’s graduation address at the PHS, 14 July 1981, Best. Hager, DY 30/ 26,476, and Dippe, “Information,” ibid., 26,468; Tiedke, “Zielstrebig jene Aufgaben in Angriff nehmen, die uns der XI. Parteitag gestellt hat,” Wissenschaftliche Beiträge der Parteihochschule “Karl Marx”, 35 (no. 3, 1986), 7; Böhme, Parteiarbeit, pp. 17 and 77; and Michael Th. Greven, “Bericht über das Ende des Wissenschaftlichen Kommunismus,” in: Greven and Dieter Kopp, eds., War der Wissenschaftliche Kommunismus eine Wissenschaft? (Opladen, 1993), p. 157. See also Karl-Dietrich Ebisdorf, Waldemar Krupa, and Georg Godewols (students at the PHS) to Honecker, 15 July 1987, Best. Hager, DY 30/26468; and PHS, Kaderschmiede, p. 79. 29. Weber, Aufbau, p.  245, and DDR, p.  302; and Helmut Bock, “Partei-­ Staat-­ Bürokratische Kaste,” in: Lothar Bisky et  al., eds., Rücksichten: Politische und juristische Aspekte der DDR-Geschichte (Hamburg, 1993), p. 167. On the progressive politicization of historical research in the GDR, see Kowalczuk, Legitimation.

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30. See Wolf’s contribution in, Theorie und Praxis—Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der PHS (no. 1, 1976), pp. 13ff. 31. Petzold, Parteinahme, p. 273. 32. PHS, “Arbeitsberatung,” Dec. 1981, ibid., 26,461. Hager is quoted in, Böhme, Parteiarbeit, p. 11. See also Günter Mehnert, Das Programm der SED über die Pflege und Aneignung aller humanistischen Kulturleistungen der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (Berlin, 1982). See Hager’s graduation address 14 July 1981, BAB-SAPMO, Best. Hager DY 30/26476; PHS, “Bericht … 1982/83,” ibid. 27,632. See Wolfgang Harich’s contribution to the discussion in, Bisky et al., eds., Rücksichten, pp. 68–69. 33. Hager to Ursula Ragnitz, 10 Aug. 1982, Best. Hager, DY 30/27490; and PHS, “Arbeitsberatung,” Dec., 1981, Best. Hager, DY 30/26461. 34. PHS, “Information,” 6 Oct 1982, Best. Hager, DY 30/26468; Böhme, Parteiarbeit, pp.  9–11, 15, 19, and 77; Preusser, “Massenarbeit 1986,” Best. Hager DY 30/26472; Kurt Tiedke, “Die SED: Eine kampferprobte Partei leninschen Typs,” Einheit, 52 (no. 10/11, 1987), 879–81; [PHS], “Bericht über die Forschungsarbeit der [PHS] im Jahre 1988,” Dec. 1988, pp.  17–19, Best. Hager, DY 30/26474; and Kurt Hartmann and Uwe Müller, “Dem Wohl des Volkes gilt das Sinnen und Trachten der Partei,” in: Tiedke et al., eds., Wohl, pp. 69–102. 35. Tiedke to Hager, 23 Feb 1989, Best. Hager, DY 30/26475; and Schwarzenbach, Kaderpolitik, p. 155. 36. Tiedke, “Information … Ausbildung,” Nov. 1988, p. 3. 37. Mertens, Denkfabrik, p. 20; and PHS, Unsere Hochschule, p. 29. 38. Anneliese Bräuer and Horst Conrad, Kaderpolitik der SED—fester Bestandteil der Leitungstätigkeit (Berlin, 1988), pp. 28 and 36–38; Rüdiger Bergien, “Parteiarbeiter: die hauptamtlichen Funktionen der SED,” in: Jens Gieseke, ed., Die Geschichte der SED (Berlin, 2011), p.  179; and Meyer, Machtelite, p. 406. 39. PHS, Kaderschmiede, pp.  73–75; Bräuer, Kaderpolitik, pp.  13–14; Gero Neugebauer, Partei und Staatsapparat in der DDR: Aspekte der Instrumentalisierung des Staatsapparates durch die SED (Opladen, 1978), p. 180; Matthias Wagner et al., “Die Kaderpolitik der SED an Schulen und Hochschulen in der DDR und ihre Folgen,” in: Enquête-Kommission, Űberwindung, p. IV/1: 25; and Heinz Vietze, “Rück-Sichten—Partei und Staatssicherheit,” in: Gregor Gysi et al., eds., Zweigeteilt, pp. 149 and 152. 40. Bräuer, Kaderpolitik, p. 12. See also Hans Modrow, “Zur Einheit der ideologischen und organisatorischen Arbeit der Parteiorganisation,” Einheit, 29/2 (no. 11, 1974), 1242; Bernd Preusser et  al., “Zur Arbeit des Lehrstuhls von der marxistisch-leninistischen Partei…,” in: Möller, PHS, p. 206; and PHS, Kaderschmiede, pp. 72–73 (Heinz Wedler).

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41. PHS, “Arbeitsberatung,” Dec., 1981, Best. Hager, DY 30/26461. See also Wolf, Reden, pp. 79–80 and Thomas Ammer, “Die Machthierarchie der SED,” in: Enquête-Kommission, Aufarbeitung, pp. II/2:848–49. 42. Amos, SED-Zentrale, p. 186; Meyer, Machtelite, pp. 24, 93–97, 147, 164, and 176; Donner, “Ideologie,” p. III/1: 321; and Leonhard, “MarxismusLeninismus und die Umgestaltung in der SBZ/DDR,” in Enquête Kommission, Aufarbeitung, p. III/1: 321. 43. See Hager’s commencement address at the PHS, 6 July 1984, Best. Hager, DY 30/26478; and the student letter by Waldemar Krupe (1981), ibid. DY 30/26468. 44. Bock, “Partei,” p. 165. 45. PHS, “Entwurf … Information,” n.d. (ca. middle of 1983), Best. Hager, DY 30/27632; Wolf, Reden, p. 215 (29 Oct. 1973), and Hager‘s graduation address at the PHS, 14 July 1981, Best. Hager, DY 30/26476. See also Meyer, Machtelite, p. 210. 46. Hanna Wolf, “Zu einigen Fragen … erster Weiterbildungslehrgang von Parteiorganisationen des ZK der SED … PHS. 13.9.-1.10. 1982,” 21 Oct. 1982, Best. Hager, DY 30/26468. See also Holger Wortmann, “War der wissenschaftliche Kommunismus eine Politikwissenschaft?” in: Greven, Wissenschaftlicher Kommunismus, p. 18. 47. Meyer, Machtelite, p. 147. 48. See Hager’s graduation address at the PHS, 6 July 1989, Best. Hager, DY 30/26479; and Schneider, “Forschungsgruppenarbeit 1986,” pp. 91 and 93. See also Zimmermann, “Kader,” p. 337, and “Machtverteilung,” p. 277. 49. Hager at PHS, “Arbeitsberatung,” Dec. 1981, and Hager’s graduation addresses at the PHS, 14 July 1981 and 14. July 1982, Best. Hager, DY 30/ 26,461 and 26,476–77; Achim Dippe (PHS), “Information. wissenschaftliche Rundtischdiskussion: Die Vervollkommnung der planmässigen Leitung der Volkswirtschaft … Prag.0.29.9.-1.10. 1981,” ibid., 26,468; and Manfred Wilke, “Die Solidarność und die SED,” in: Wilke, ed. Der SED-­Staat: Geschichte und Nachwirkungen (Cologne, 2006), pp. 252–53 and 262. 50. PHS, “Arbeitsberatung” Dec. 1981, Best. Hager, DY 30/26461; Manfred Wilke and Michael Kubina, “‘Die Lage in Polen ist schlimmer als 1968 in der Č SSR’: Die Forderung des SED-Politbüros nach einer Intervention in Polen im Herbst 1980,” Deutschland Archiv, 26 (no. 3, 1992), 335–40, and Wilke, “Solidarność,” pp. 253 and 262. 51. Hager’s commencement address at the PHS, 6 July 1989, Best. Hager, DY 30/26479. 52. PHS, “Arbeitsberatung.” Dec., 1981, and Hager’s commencement address at the PHS, 14 July 1982, Best. Hager, 26,461 and 26,477.

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53. PHS, “Arbeitsberatung,” Dec., 1987, Best. Hager, DY 30/26461, and Hager’s graduation address at the PHS, 14 July 1982, ibid., 26,477. 54. Kurt Rätz, “Gespräch mit Genossin Hanna Wolf,” 3 Dec. 1982, Best. Hager, DY 30/27632. 55. Benser, Nachsicht, p. 322. 56. “Zum 75. Geburtstag von Prof. Dr. h. c. Hanna Wolf: Sentenzen und Impressionen,” Best. Hager, DY 30/27632. 57. PHS, “Entwurf … Information,” n.d. (ca. beginning of 1983), and [Tiedke], “Entwurf-Information,” June, 1983, ibid. See also Petzold, Parteinahme, pp. 230–31. 58. Quoted in, Kowalczuk, Legitimation, p. 288. 59. Hörning (an official in the Central Committee’s Department of Scholarship) to Hager, 21 April 1983, Best. Hager, DY 30/27632; and n.a. “Interne Hinweise für Gespräch mit K[urt] T[iedke],” n.d. (ca. Dec., 1982), ibid.; and Mertens, Denkfabrik, p.  128. One collective project which Wolf did join was the 8-volume Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung which was published in 1966. The editorial board was headed by Walter Ulbricht. See Kowalcsuk, Legitimation, p. 258. 60. PHS, “Verabschiedung Wolf,” 22 June 1983, Best. Hager, DY 30/26462; Neues Deutschland, 26 June 1983; and Eberhard Röhmer, “Erfahrungen eines Lehrstuhlleiters,” in: Möller, ed., PHS, p. 100. 61. Rätz, “Gespräch,” 3 Dec. 1982, Best. Hager, DY 30/27632. 62. Neumann, Poltergeist, pp. 92–93. For an example of Wolf’s work in her new job, see [Wolf], “Information,” 13 July 1989, Best. Honecker, DY 30/2559. 63. Jürgen Kuczynski, Ein linientreuer Dissident: Memoiren 1945–1989 (Berlin, 1992); Neumann, Poltergeist, p. 95; Wolf to Hager, 4 Aug. 1983, Best. Hager, DY 30/27632; and Wolf to Kuczynski, 4 Jan. 1984, Best. Honecker, DY 30/2559. See also Walter Schmidt, “Geschichte zwischen Politik und Professionalität,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 40 (no. 11, 1992), 1024; and Meyer, Machtelite, pp. 210 and 393. 64. Siegfried Lorenz (Abt. Kaderfragen), “Beschlussentwurf,” 17 Nov. 1989, in: Kaderakte Hanna Wolf, BAB-SAPMO, DY 30/IV 2/11 vol. 5533.

CHAPTER 5

The PHS Under Kurt Tiedke, 1983–1989

Abstract  In June 1983 Hanna Wolf was succeeded as rector of the “Advanced Training Institute for Functionaries ‘Karl Marx’” (PHS) by Kurt Tiedke, a longtime Socialist Unity Party (SED) functionary. Tiedke spent most of his career in the SED’s Central Committee’s bureaucracy. However, at the time of his appointment at the PHS, the party had sent him into the “field”; he was the SED’s first secretary in the Magdeburg district. Tiedke represented a generational shift at the leadership of the PHS (he was born in 1924) but not an ideological change. Teaching and research at the PHS continued to mean a heavy dose of Marxist-Leninist indoctrination, which meant that especially in the second half of the 1980s the curriculum at the PHS was increasingly out of touch with reality in the larger East German society. In June 1986 the Central Committee issued a directive outlining the tasks which four departments at the PHS were to fulfill in the next five years. Much of the quite long document was a familiar litany of Marxist-­ Leninist homilies, although the school was admonished to pay more attention to gender equality, agriculture, and the “scientific-technical revolution.” The PHS faculty responded to the Central Committee document by developing five-year “conceptions” for all of the school’s departments. The “conceptions” were singularly predictive. They agreed with

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Orlow, The Parteihochschule Karl Marx under Ulbricht and Honecker, 1946–1990, Palgrave Studies in Political History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70225-0_5

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the Central Committee’s recommendations, of course, and reiterated the “truths” of Marxism-Leninism. The arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Soviet Union and his reform program perestroika and glasnost presented the SED and the PHS with unexpected challenges. The East Germans’ first reaction was to pretend nothing had changed. This evolved into the claim that while reforms might be appropriate for the Soviet Union, there was no need for any changes in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Eventually, after 1986, Honecker and Gorbachev were on a collision course. The PHS did its best to support Honecker and the SED’s hardliners. Tiedke sent a steady stream of reports to Kurt Hager (who forwarded them to Honecker), documenting that Soviet functionaries visiting the PHS were full of praise for the SED and the school, while they vigorously criticized Gorbachev’s reform efforts. Tiedke championed no ideological changes at the PHS, but he did introduce a pedagogical innovation: university-type seminars. In fact, he acted as though he had invented this form of instruction, and claimed it was the triumph of “modern socialist pedagogy.” As the crises in the GDR mounted in 1989, the party leaders fell back on the ultimate Stalinist reaction to perceived problems, an ideological offensive. The PHS was scheduled to play a major part in this effort, and in May 1989 Hanna Wolf and Wolfgang Schneider, one of the pro-rectors at the PHS, did publish a lengthy article in the party’s newspaper, Neues Deutschland, defending Stalin and attacking glasnost as a vehicle for the illegitimate criticism of the doctrine of the Communist Party’s infallibility. But the ideological offensive never got off the ground. Developments undermining the SED’s rule in East Germany were moving too fast. In October 1989 the party’s Politburo forced Honecker to resign as general secretary. He was succeeded by his heir apparent, Egon Krenz. Predictably, the faculty and staff at the PHS unanimously endorsed Krenz’s election as leader of the SED. But it was all to no avail. The days of the SED and the PHS had come to an end. The school had failed in its mission to train effective functionaries for a socialist society. Keywords  Kurt Tiedke • Kurt Hager • “Scientific-technical revolution” • Gorbachev reforms in the Soviet Union • Pedagogical innovations • PHS and Gorbachev reforms • Reforms in the GDR • Marxism-­ Leninism • Criticism of the PHS • Feindbild • Teaching of history •

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Erich Honecker • “Classics” of Marxism-Leninism • Streitpapier • Stalinism • Hanna Wolf • Fehlerdiskussion • Crisis of 1989 • China At Hanna Wolf’s retirement ceremony, Hager also introduced Kurt Tiedke as her successor. Born on May 30, 1924, the new rector was marked early on by the SED as a man of promise. In 1947–1948, he was selected for attendance at one of the Soviets’ Antifa Schools, and after his return to East Germany in 1948, he immediately joined the SED. In 1954–1955 he became personally acquainted with Erich Honecker; they were students together at the CPSU’s School for Advanced Training in Moscow. Tiedke spent most of his career in the Central Committee’s apparatus; he headed the Propaganda Department from 1961 to 1979. In 1967 he became a member of the SED’s Central Committee, and in 1981, he was elected to the East German parliament, the Volkskammer. In the 1960s he was also a member of the PHS faculty, and in 1969 Tiedke became secretary of the SED party organization at the school, a position equivalent to that of a county chairman. He received various party and state honors in the course of his career, culminating in the title “Hero of Labor,” which was awarded to him in May 1989 on the occasion of his 65th birthday. In 1979, the SED sent Tiedke into the “field”; he was appointed the party’s first secretary for the district of Magdeburg.1 He remained there until his appointment as rector of the PHS.  Tiedke was not without his critics. They complained that he had no appreciation of art or culture and that he ran the PHS as though it were a provincial party office.2 Although Tiedke was 16 years younger than Wolf, he promised to follow in her footsteps. As late as August 1989, Tiedke insisted the GDR needed no course correction. “We do not need any ‘social market economy, or any sort of reform.” The SED would continue to adhere to the science articulated by Marx and Engels and developed, in “exemplary fashion,” by Lenin. It is true that in the 1980s, the so-called GDR generation, those born after the founding of the GDR, moved into second- and third-tier positions within the SED’s apparatus. Many of them came to the SED’s functionary corps from leadership positions in the Communist youth organization, the FDJ. However, from the available evidence, there were no advocates of reform among the PHS’ faculty and administrators. The school personnel followed Tiedke’s lead.

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He wrote that under his leadership, the PHS would continue to graduate functionaries who would implement all party directives “without reservation” (abstrichlos) and who, by studying the classics, would have “an even deeper understanding of Marxism-Leninism.”3 In contrast to Wolf, Tiedke was more open to collective enterprises. He was willing to work on an equal footing with the SED’s other two “scholarly” institutions, the Institute for Marxism-Leninism and the Academy for the Social Sciences.4 While Tiedke was willing to cooperate with the SED’s other “scientific” establishments, he claimed an elite status for the PHS.  The new rector praised the “fighting atmosphere (kämpferische Atmosphäre)” at the school and claimed that the PHS was better than the other party-affiliated schools, and he asserted that the faculty at the PHS was “ideal.” Among the stellar faculty was Karl Hartmann, an economist and in 1983 chairman of the SED’s party organization at the PHS.  Although Hartmann had earlier expressed some doubts about the sufficiency of the “classics” for making economic decisions, in October 1985 Tiedke recommended that Hartmann be appointed deputy rector.5 Like Wolf, Tiedke and the PHS faculty remained convinced ideological indoctrination was the “core (Herzstück)” of party work, and consequently teaching the principles of Marxism-Leninism was the key to training successful party functionaries. In practice this still meant essentially rote learning of selected passages from the “classics” and intensive “study” of party documents, notably the resolutions passed by the Politburo, the Central Committee, and the party congresses. For good reason the PHS under Tiedke retained its reputation as the most dogmatic of the SED’s “scholarly” institutions.6 In line with the growing cult of personality around Honecker, one focal point of “scientific” study at the PHS in the 1980s was Honecker’s doctrine of the union of economic and social policies. Although the PHS’ faculty claimed that research and teaching formed an “indivisible unity,” at the school, teaching always took priority. According to Hager, the curriculum at the PHS had the dual purpose of demonstrating the correctness of Marxism and simultaneously proving the falsehood of all other theories of societal development. At the end of the decade, preparations for the 12th party congress, which was scheduled for 1990, moved to center stage. At this congress Honecker expected to be re-elected as the SED’s general secretary for another five years. In November 1988 Tiedke proudly reported to Hager that at the PHS all comrades “are determined to do everything possible to prepare [themselves] effectively for the XIIth party congress.”7

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As noted earlier, in the 1980s graduation from the PHS was a prerequisite for appointment to the highest ranks of the party’s functionary corps. As we saw, most of the graduates went to work in the offices of the Central Committee’s apparatus, but by 1989 the top ranks of the party’s “field” personnel were also filled with graduates of the PHS.  All of the SED’s first and second district secretaries were graduates of the school. According to party doctrine, the PHS’ graduates were able to fulfill their leadership roles in the central party apparatus and out in the “field” because, armed with the knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, they would guide East German society toward an ever more prosperous and harmonious future.8 Although the problem of youthful alienation was becoming an increasingly serious concern in the last years of the GDR’s existence,9 the party leaders were convinced the SED’s functionary corps would be able to motivate youthful East Germans to serve the state and party. The faculty’s task at the PHS in the 1980s, then, was clear enough: The teachers had to convince the students that only applying the tenets of Marxism-Leninism to all aspects of societal decision-making could assure the GDR’s economic and social success. As Tiedke put it in December 1987, the aim was “to double the economic power of socialism by 2000, and to multiply many times its political appeal.”10 The problem was that meeting this goal became increasingly difficult as the decade progressed. A report on the incoming class for the academic year 1983/1984 noted that while most of the students had attempted to prepare themselves well for attendance at the PHS, some of the prospective students exhibited significant weaknesses. A number of them seemed unclear about the Feindbild, and others questioned the relevance of the “classics” for solving the GDR’s practical problem. Equally disconcerting, the incoming students’ knowledge of the SED’s program was “not always good.”11 To overcome the students’ deficiencies, the PHS continued to prioritize ideological indoctrination at the expense of scientific and professional training. True, the curriculum paid lip service to the importance of empirical research and the significance of the digital revolution, but in practice ideology always came first. As the PHS faculty member Preusser put it, “the point is not to turn the party functionary into a fully qualified engineer, but to enable the party functionary to politically lead collectives that master the computer technologies.” At the PHS, the circle was squared by declaring that the science of Marxism-Leninism was the only truly scientific body of knowledge. This meant that a better understanding of Marxism-Leninism was itself the most effective form of scientific research.

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Did the PHS succeed in accomplishing its pedagogical goals? Tiedke certainly thought so. He reported that after a deeper penetration of the party’s decisions at the school, “certain [intellectual] insecurities” among the students were replaced by “real optimism and [intellectual] certainty.” And at least some students do seem to internalize the desired ideological worldview. In his 1986 reminiscences about what he had learned at the PHS in 1983/1984, Walter Schmidt, then the SED’s party secretary for economic policy at the Chemiekombinat Bitterfeld, wrote that “the theoretical and practical basis of the strategy and tactic of our party is the creative application of Marxism-Leninism.” In a similar vein Sylvia Luthardt, in 1986 the agitprop secretary of the SED’s county organization in Sonneberg, was certain that “since socialism became a science, it must be studied like a science.”12 However, as the 1980s progressed, there was increasing evidence that the PHS’ curricular priorities and the practical problems in the real world were at variance. Critics noted that the curriculum at the PHS concentrated too much on the role of the party in East German society, while neglecting the functions of the state and the economy.13 As the GDR’s economic problems became glaringly apparent in the second half of the 1980s, party workers in the “field” hoped for answers from the SED’s “scientific” institutions. They were disappointed. In July 1988 the PHS organized a program of lectures for the SED’s first and second district secretaries. In his report on the event, Heinz Vietze, the party’s first secretary in the Oranienburg district, noted that Tiedke’s lectures on ideological issues “received special praise” from the attendees, but that the single lecture on economic strategy did not meet “the [participants’] expectations.”14 As we saw, in the 1980s administrators and faculty members at the PHS complained that some incoming students were not sufficiently concerned about the dangers posed by the class enemy. Consequently, the faculty set out to reinforce the Feindbild, but the instructors’ efforts were neither original nor convincing. Despite the admonition that “cogent (treffsichere) arguments [against the imperialist enemy] should be a part of every teaching situation,” the faculty offered little but time-worn agitprop phrases.15 Moreover, despite the constant denunciation of capitalism, there was actually very little research done at the PHS on what contemporary capitalism actually looked like. This, too, was a consequence of the sanctification of the “classics.” Research on capitalism essentially ended with Lenin’s 1917 conclusion that “imperialism is dying capitalism.” This

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meant that nothing about capitalism had changed since 1917 except that its demise was coming ever closer.16 In the 1980s in addition to the time-worn components of capitalism and imperialism, West German neo-fascism and revanchism became increasingly prominent parts of the Feindbild. Fascism always had a fundamental and unique place in the PHS’ Feindbild, and anti-fascism was the founding myth of the GDR.17 According to the SED’s official interpretation of history, only in East Germany had fascism been radically and irrevocably destroyed. In contrast, under American guidance, West Germany had allowed capitalism to flourish again, and that meant the potential rebirth of fascism, since capitalism was the spawning ground of fascism. Neo-fascism was a new version of the old enemy. (The East Germans seldom used the term National Socialism; perhaps they did not want socialism to be associated with a negative concept.) The anti-fascist myth led to some ludicrous conclusions. For example, the Berlin Wall was officially the “anti-fascist protective barrier.” In 1989 teachers at the PHS still claimed that the Berlin Wall was built because the Western powers were planning to use “military intervention” to destroy East Germany’s socialist society and re-establish fascism in all of Germany.18 As some extreme right-wing groups became active in West Germany in the 1980s, the SED pounced on this development to claim that fascism was once again gaining a foothold in the Federal Republic. With the accusation that West Germany was guilty of “revanchism,” the SED stipulated that West Germany, again in contrast to the GDR, refused to recognize the geo-political results of the Second World War. The charge of “revanchism” consisted of two elements. One was the Federal Republic’s claim that Germany remained a single nation, and that East and West Germany would eventually be reunited as a liberal, pluralist democracy. The SED, of course, countered that history had given a different answer to the German question: For the foreseeable future there would be two German nations, one socialist and progressive, the other capitalist and reactionary. The second component of “revanchism” was the SED’s contention that the Federal Republic was planning military action to restore Germany to its 1937 boundaries. As “evidence” for this accusation, the East German Communists cited the Federal Republic’s claim that, until a formal peace treaty to end the Second World War was signed, legally Germany continued to exist within the boundaries of 1937. This meant, for example, that West Germany, unlike the GDR, did not formally recognize the Oder-Neisse line as the legitimate and final

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boundary between Germany and Poland. Actually, no responsible West German political leader thought there was any possibility that East Prussia and Silesia would be returned to German control in any future peace treaty. Keeping the Oder-Neisse question politically “open” had to do with domestic politics in West Germany, not foreign policy. It was a device by the Christian Democrats that hoped to continue to garner the votes of the refugees (or, by this time, mostly their descendants) from Germany’s lost eastern territories. The SED also linked Western calls for political pluralism in the socialist countries to neo-fascism. The PHS faculty taught that Western support for political reforms in the GDR and the other Soviet bloc countries was intended to undermine socialist democracy and prepare these countries for the return of fascism. As noted earlier, the PHS also identified the emerging human rights groups in the GDR as a Trojan horse acting on behalf of the class enemy. The SED claimed these groups, like the Solidarity union in Poland, were created and controlled by outside agitators, specifically West German counter-revolutionaries. Similarly, demands for economic reforms hid the imperialists’ actual goal of restoring capitalism in the countries of Eastern Europe.19 Remarkably, there was one historiographic topic on which the SED now called for a more nuanced analysis. In April 1989, at a closed meeting of East German historians, Hager demanded that more attention should be paid to the suffering of the Jews during the Nazi years and that East German historians should do more to highlight the contributions of Germany’s Jews to the country’s earlier history.20 After the fall of the regime in the 1980s, Rainer Eppelmann, one of the GDR’s leading human rights activists, pointed out that Hager’s urging of a new treatment of German-Jewish history was not motivated by historical insights. Rather, it was part of Honecker’s effort to lay the groundwork for securing an invitation from the American government to the general secretary to make an official visit to the United States.21 The year 1986 was a year of stock-taking and long-range planning at the PHS. In April the school’s administration and the leaders of the SED party organization at the PHS issued a joint resolution. It committed students, faculty, and administrators to an “intense study” of the documents produced at the 11th SED party congress, especially Honecker’s report on the work of the Central Committee. The school would organize three seminars to make sure that “all Communists” understood the greatness

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(Grösse) of the coming years from 1986 to 1990. The resolution culminated in the admonition that all teaching activities at the PHS must concentrate on celebrating the “outstanding accomplishments for the well-being of the people and peace; everything [must be done] to put into practice the decisions of the XIth party congress.”22 Two months later, on July 2, 1986, the Central Committee’s secretariat issued a directive about the PHS’ future work. It was entitled “The Tasks of the Party’s Advanced Training Institute ‘Karl Marx’… after the XIth Party Congress.”23 The document was long (more than 60 typewritten pages), detailed, rather repetitious, but also comprehensive. It covered everything from the SED’s role in local politics to the importance of ideological indoctrination for the GDR’s armed forces. Much of what the functionaries at the Central Committee wrote was familiar. There was the usual emphasis on the importance of reading and studying the classics— Marx, Engels, and Lenin. There was also the oft-repeated postulate that the victory of socialism and the demise of capitalism and imperialism were inevitable (gesetzmässig), although the document was short on specifics as to when and how this would happen. There were repeated references (pp. 34–35, 82, and 84) to Stalin’s dictum (but no mention of the dictator) that ideological schooling was the core (Herzstück) of all party activity. But there were some new emphases as well. Although Günter Mittag and the men in charge of the East German economy were slow to appreciate the significance of the computer, by 1986 the functionaries at the Central Committee did recognize the importance of the age of electronics. There were repeated references in the document to the game-­changing “scientific-technical revolution.” although the functionaries still attempted to link the computer revolution to the classics. The PHS students were admonished to read Marx’s “Foundations of the Critique of Political ̋ Economy (Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie)” to understand the significance of the “scientific-technical revolution” (p. 59). In another innovation the document paid lip service to the need for gender quality. The Central Committee functionaries emphasized the need for more female students at the PHS (p. 33). There was some praise for Tiedke’s work at the school. The document lauded the introduction of seminars (more on this in a moment) and welcomed the emphasis on the students’ research activities (p. 35). And the PHS received an organizational boost. The SED members at the school, which included everyone from the janitors to the top administrators, had always formed their own organization

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headed by a party secretary, who was usually a member of the faculty. The Central Committee now formally raised the party formation at the PHS to the level of a county (Kreis) organization. The document reflected the by now unabashed cult of personality around Erich Honecker. The SED’s general secretary almost achieved the status of a classic. Students at the PHS were admonished to study Honecker’s speeches and writings alongside the publications of Marx, Engels, and Lenin (p. 34). The document stressed the importance of the 8th SED party congress in 1971 (the first one over which Honecker presided as general secretary) and, above all, the significance of the 11th meeting in 1986, the high point of Honecker’s power and prestige. Again and again the Central Committee functionaries admonished the PHS to stress the importance of the resolutions passed at the 11th congress because this meeting was the culmination of the SED’s uninterrupted success story since 1971. Especially important was Honecker’s doctrine of the unity of economic and social policies in the GDR (pp. 34, 37–38, and 59). The bulk of the document provided detailed lesson plans for four departments at the PHS: History, “Scientific” Philosophy, Political Economics, and the Marxist-Leninist Party. (There was no mention of the other departments.) The departmental lesson plans were preceded by a description of the compulsory introductory lectures for incoming students. Here the party workers would hear a first celebration of the victories of Marxism-Leninism, especially the effective way in which the SED had applied the principles of Marxism-Leninism as the party created the developed socialist society in the GDR (p. 44). The Department of History was given the task of demonstrating to the students that history is an “inevitable” (gesetzmässig) process that climaxed with the triumph of socialism in “our epoch” (pp. 36–37). The teaching of history had practical and political purposes. The knowledge of history contributed to strengthening East German socialist patriotism. In line with the SED’s current historiographic doctrine, the GDR was the “heir” (Erbin) of all that was progressive in German history. In contrast West Germany embodied Germany’s reactionary heritage. For that reason it was important to stress the continuing class warfare between East and West Germany (p. 45). The teaching of history was also to demonstrate the seamless progression from Marx and Engels to Lenin. Despite the rising tensions between Honecker and the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev (more about this in a moment), the document still emphasized the “brotherly bond”

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(Bruderbund) between the SED and the CPSU. It was important for the students to learn that the Russian Communist Party had built a socialist society in the Soviet Union which had enabled the USSR to defeat fascism in the Second World War (pp. 36 and 47–49). (Again, there was no mention of Stalin.) As far as the specifics of German history were concerned, the faculty at the PHS was admonished to maintain the cult of personality around Ernst Thälmann, the KPD’s Weimar-era leader. He was important because he had turned the KPD into a Marxist-Leninist Party (p. 48). The founding of the SED and the GDR received due attention (p. 49), as did the building of the Berlin Wall. (Interestingly, the document labeled the barrier that sealed off East Berlin and the rest of the GDR from West Germany “security measures,” rather than the usual propaganda term “Anti-Fascist Protective Barrier.) Moving toward more contemporary times, the students were to learn about the GDR’s active pursuit of peace and disarmament, and the country’s engagement in the post-colonial countries of Africa and Latin America (pp. 51–52). According to the Central Committee document, the primary task of the Department of “Scientific” Philosophy was to convince the PHS students that Marxism-Leninism’s application of dialectical materialism was the only legitimate and effective form of scientific or scholarly inquiry (pp. 37 and 55). Marxism-Leninism had created a qualitatively new form of philosophy which needed constant “fortification” (Stählung) because only Marxism-Leninism produced the unity of politics, ideology, economy, and organization that was necessary to build a socialist society (p. 87). Having established the importance of Marxism-Leninism and dialectical materialism as the foundation of “scientific” philosophy, the Central Committee document seemingly veered off into topics that were only tangentially related to philosophy. These included the advantages of the GDR’s cultural and educational policies (under capitalism cultural policies were controlled by the “monopolies” [pp. 60–62]), the SED’s effectiveness in local politics, and the need for ideological indoctrination among the soldiers of the National People’s Army (p. 88). As might be expected, the Department of Political Economics has the task of celebrating the socialist methods of ownership and production while also demonstrating the “inevitable” (gesetzmässig) crises and demise of capitalism. Once again the classics, especially Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and Lenin’s writings on imperialism, produced the evidence (pp. 38–39

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and 65–68). The cult of personality around Honecker was also in evidence here. There was much praise for the Kombinat, the large-scale industrial enterprises developed under Honecker, because they were the most efficient form of managing industrial production. They would also be able to utilize the benefits of the computer revolution most effectively (pp.  68 and 74). In line with Honecker’s priorities, the Central Committee document emphasized once again the need for “political-ideological leadership activities” in the industrial production process (p. 71). (For reasons that were not clear, The Plan, which is the “working program of the party and the entire people,” was to be covered by the Philosophy Department, not the Economics Department.) Somewhat surprisingly, the Department of Political Economy was instructed to pay particular attention in its teaching to agriculture (pp. 77–78). To be sure this was a perennial weak spot in the East German economy, but it was also a topic in which the classics, who were fixated on industrial production, had shown no great interest. The Department of the Marxist-Leninist Party celebrated the “general validity” (Allgemeingültigkeit) of the revolutionary party, the “party of the new type,” and the SED’s contributions toward the development of this in the form of political organization. Once again there was the picture of the idealized party functionary. By the time the students graduated, they would be able to recognize new challenges as they emerged and deal with them, guided by the decisions of the party congresses, notably those of the 11th meeting (pp.  40–41). The graduates would work collectively, but accept personal responsibility (p.  40). The document emphasized the mutual trust between people and party (p. 85), and the students’ ability to combat the elements of the SED’s long-standing Feindbild: anti-­ Communism, revisionism, and opportunism (pp.  41–42 and 83). The Department was also instructed to emphasize that the students and later the graduates were to work closely with the relevant offices of the Central Committee (p. 42). In response to the Central Committee document, the various departments at the PHS drafted their own Five-Year Plans, called “conceptions” (Konzeptionen), and submitted them not to the Central Committee, but to Kurt Hager. The “conceptions” outlined the departments’ priorities for teaching and research in the next five years, that is to say, until the next scheduled SED party congress. Tiedke reported to Hager that by December 1986 all of the academic units, and not just the four singled out by the Central Committee, had submitted their “conceptions,” and defended them before the rector and his deputies.24 The PHS also

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organized a teachers’ conference in December 1987 to analyze to what extent the Central Committee’s directive had been realized.25 In many ways the “conceptions” paralleled the Central Committee document. In fact, they were remarkable for their lack of originality and surfeit of predictability. Here the world of Marxism-Leninism was alive and well and needed no innovations. All of the departments promised to teach even more fervently the inevitability of the victory of socialism. The faculty committed itself to study even more intensely Erich Honecker’s speeches and writings, and the authors of the “conceptions” underscored the importance of the Communist Party as the avant-garde of the socialist revolution. All of the departments asserted they would work even harder to expose the evils and shortcomings of the imperialist class enemy. With a nod to modernity, the Department of “Scientific” Philosophy promised to stress the ideological foundation of the digital revolution. In its “conception,” the Department of the History of the CPSU underlined that the Soviet Union’s victory over fascism in the Second World War demonstrated the superiority of socialism, but, like the Central Committee document, the “conception” never mentioned Stalin. In trying to keep up with the times, the History Department’s “conception” did stress the importance of studying the speeches of Mikhail Gorbachev, the new Soviet leader. It was perhaps indicative of how seriously (or not) the departments took the writing of these “conceptions” that only the Department of History promised to deliver its research projects “on time and with proper quality.”26 In the fall of 1986 the PHS seemed poised to continue operating along the traditional lines for the next five years, but a year later the situation had become much more uncertain. Under pressure from the Politburo, one part of the SED’s traditional Feindbild was visibly (albeit temporarily) softened. Beginning in April 1987 the East German Communists and the West German Social Democrats organized a series of meetings between representatives of both parties. This was a new development; traditionally the SED had portrayed the SPD as a particularly dangerous component of its Feindbild. Social Democratism was part of the political superstructure created by the capitalist enemy to deceive the workers. Meeting alternately in East and West Germany, the SED delegation was chaired by Otto Reinhold, the director of the party’s Academy for the Social Sciences. The SPD side was headed by Erhard Eppler, one of that party’s most distinguished intellectuals and the chairman of the SPD’s Commission on Basic Values (Grundwertekommission).

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The two sides eventually produced a document commonly called the “Streitpapier” (Conflict Paper), although the official title was “The SPD/ SED Paper: The Conflict of Ideologies and Mutual Security.”27 Both parties agreed on the text of the document, but their motivations for the meetings and the Streitpapier itself were quite different. Substantively, the SED was interested in only one issue: It wanted the SPD to endorse a Central Europe free of nuclear and chemical weapons.28 (By the 1980s Honecker had become quite obsessed with the danger of nuclear and chemical armaments, what he called the “devil’s stuff” [Teufelszeug].) The SPD had no objection to endorsing a call to keep nuclear and chemical weapons out of Central Europe, but the West German Social Democrats also wanted the SED to acknowledge the importance of human rights and internal reforms in the GDR. To this end the SPD delegates insisted that both parties agree to permit debate and criticism of each other’s domestic policies. Moreover, the SPD wanted the SED to acknowledge that the competing socialist and pluralist political and economic systems both wanted peace and prosperity for their people. To commit publicly to the content of the Streitpapier, the SPD also insisted that both parties publish the full text of the document in their official press organs. The SED leaders did fulfill this obligation,29 but it soon became clear the party’s leaders had no intention of undertaking reforms or permitting more human rights in the GDR.30 The SED’s propaganda apparatus put a quite erroneous and one-sided spin on the joint document. The party’s agitprop functionaries claimed the Streitpapier was an unabashed victory for the SED’s positions and policies. Not only had the SPD accepted the SED’s position on nuclear and chemical weapons and agreed to put pressure on NATO to reduce its armaments (which was not true), but the Social Democrats had recognized the SED’s successes in building socialism in the GDR and even expressed the expectation that West Germany could benefit from the East German experiences. This interpretation of the Streitpapier continued until the collapse of the regime.31 The PHS was not involved in organizing the meetings between the SED and the SPD, and no one on the school’s faculty or administrative staff was a member of the SED’s delegation. In fact, although Tiedke and the faculty did their best to accommodate the new line, the PHS certainly did not welcome this partial weakening of the traditional “enemy picture.” The PHS faculty continued to distinguish between peaceful co-­ existence and ideological relativism. The first was acceptable, the second

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was not. There might be a dialogue with supporters of bourgeois ideologies (which according to the SED included Social Democratism) but never any convergence between Marxist-Leninist ideas and those advanced by capitalist politicians. There could be “no common ground with anti-­ socialist ideologies.”32 Still, in the spirit of the new era, in November of 1987, the PHS arranged its own form of dialogue with the SPD. The West German party and the PHS scheduled an exchange of speakers. The PHS invited Karsten Voigt, an SPD member of the Bundestag and the party’s leading spokesman on foreign affairs, to address students and faculty at the PHS.  In return Tiedke would deliver a speech to an invited audience in Bonn, at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation, FES), the SPD’s think tank. The exchange was not a very fruitful enterprise; the two sides talked past each other. Speaking to some 200 students and members of the faculty at the PHS, Voigt emphasized the need for peace and disarmament, but he also stressed the importance of human rights and liberal democracy. He argued that with the publication of the Streitpapier, SED and SPD had recognized the “right to existence” of both socialism and democratic pluralism. Voigt also rejected the SED’s contention that the socialist countries had always been peaceful and that only the military might of the socialist bloc had forced the imperialist camp to be peaceful.33 A year later Tiedke spoke at the FES. Like Voigt, he stressed the need for peace and disarmament, but he also insisted that the SPD had no right to interfere in the GDR’s domestic affairs, that is to say the West Germans were not entitled to raise the issues of human rights and political reforms in the GDR.34 In principle, the two sides agreed to arrange additional speakers’ exchanges, but Tiedke, clearly uncomfortable with the discussion of human rights and political reforms, wanted to limit the focus of any future discussions. The talks should be restricted to an analysis of the challenges facing the working-class movement as it “creates the basis for the existence of humanity, peaceful co-existence, and the digital revolution.”35 As it turned out, the dramatic events of 1989 prevented any further speakers’ exchanges. On the more practical issues of teaching and research at the PHS, while Tiedke did not alter the rigidly ideological curriculum at the school, the new rector did introduce some new teaching methods. Under Wolf, the prevailing form of instruction had been lectures delivered in the

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traditional manner by the faculty. These presentations were set pieces, studded with many quotations from the “classics.” The students were expected to absorb the lectures as rote learning and be able to give back the memorized material as requested. There was little opportunity for discussion among the students or between students and instructors. Students also complained that they did not receive much guidance in writing their required masters’ theses (Diplomarbeiten) or dissertations.36 The key to Tiedke’s pedagogical “innovations” was the introduction of seminars at the PHS.  In fact, the new rector acted as though he had invented university seminars.37 He portrayed these pedagogical devices as solving all of the PHS’ teaching problems. In a “congenial (kameradschaftlich) atmosphere” students and teachers would engage in scholarly discourse and interdisciplinary cooperation. The seminars were hailed as instrumental in producing independent work by students in line with the concepts of “modern socialist university pedagogy.”38 There were even times at which students were asked to lead a seminar. Tiedke also claimed the seminars allowed students to begin research on their masters’ or doctoral theses at the beginning of their days at the PHS. At the same time the seminars encouraged the notoriously unproductive faculty members to engage in research and writing, although Wolfgang Schneider acknowledged that research activity at the PHS “was still very uneven.”39 While the rector and faculty congratulated themselves on their pedagogical prowess, significant problems remained. There were distinct limits to the students’ freedom of expression in the much-lauded seminars. Whatever opinions the students expressed had to be based on a “sovereign mastery of Marxism-Leninism.”40 If the students strayed from the true path, they had to practice self-criticism at a meeting of the entire student body. To avoid such an embarrassment, the students usually played it safe: Instead of engaging in spontaneous discussions, they presented stock positions that they knew would not be criticized.41 As a result there were complaints that the seminars degenerated into school-like (verschult) sessions of set questions and answers.42 To be sure, on occasion the PHS did try to move with the times. In 1986, the school organized a “collective research group (Forschungsgruppenarbeit),” focusing on “micro-electronics, information technology, and automation.”43 Despite Tiedke’s assertion that research and teaching at the PHS had embarked on a new era, all was not well in this area either. The curriculum was criticized for not paying sufficient attention to practical concerns, notably the problem of economic productivity. The old guard at the PHS

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countered that Marxism-Leninism embodied the perfect unity of theory and practice, and that practice alone could never replace ideological certainty. In fact, the traditionalists insisted undue emphasis on increasing economic productivity reduced socialism to mere materialism. There were also perennial complaints that the requirements for students were not stringent enough. Grade inflation meant that good grades at the PHS were no reliable prediction of success in the “field.”44 In addition, despite many admonitions, students continued to be late in finishing their masters’ theses and dissertations or, even worse, not completing them at all. As for the instructors, they were still overloaded with teaching assignments; few produced publishable works. And when they did, for the most part the research products were not allowed to be read. As a result of the regime’s secrecy fetish, all of the dissertations produced at the PHS were classified as “confidential” or “secret” because they supposedly contained sensitive material that might endanger national security.45 As we now know, in the second half of the1980s, the PHS and the East German regime had to deal with life-and-death challenges that came from an unexpected and most unlikely source. In 1985 the CPSU elected a new general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev. At first glance the new leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union seemed to be a typical apparatchik. He had risen through the nomenklatura ranks of the CPSU and was a protégé of Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s secret police. His only distinguishing characteristic was his relative youth; he was only 54 years old when he was elected general secretary. Much to the surprise of most observers, Gorbachev embarked on a program of far-reaching reforms with the catchy titles of glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (restructuring). Taking advantage of the new freedoms provided by glasnost, Soviet historians began engaging in what the SED had always dreaded and rejected: a Fehlerdiskussion. Russian scholars now admitted that the CPSU and the Comintern had made mistakes and committed serious crimes in the past. The new scholarship focused especially on the Stalin era and brought into the open the evils of Stalin’s personal dictatorship. The SED’s and the PHS’ initial reactions to the changes in the Soviet Union was to pretend that nothing had really changed. Supposedly the SED and the CPSU continued to march in lockstep. For a time the façade of harmony was kept up. Familiar agitprop phrases like “unbreakable friendship (unverbrüchliche Freundschaft),” “closest possible fighting association (engste Kampfgemeinschaft),” and “band of brothers (Bruderbund)”

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continued to pepper the speeches and writings of the PHS’ faculty and administrators. In 1987 Tiedke still claimed that the relationship between the GDR and the Soviet Union was a “powerful, historic accomplishment of the SED.” The SED leaders praised Gorbachev for promising to uphold the principles of Marxism-Leninism, and the East German party was especially fulsome in its praise for Gorbachev’s proposals for nuclear disbarment.46 In time the SED line evolved to acknowledge that reforms might be necessary in the Soviet Union, but not in the GDR because everything that was being done in Russia had been implemented in East Germany long ago. Kurt Hager earned his 15 minutes of fame in an interview with the West German magazine Stern in April 1987. When asked what relevance Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union might have for the GDR, he replied none, or as he memorably put it, “Just because your neighbor puts up new wallpaper, do you feel you need to do the same?” The novelist Erwin Strittmatter commented in his diary that with this comment, the SED’s cultural czar had revealed himself as “the calcified head (Kalkkopf ) of old who feared to lose his privileges.”47 On one occasion, at an address to a closed meeting of East German historians in April 1989, Kurt Hager actually participated in a Fehlerdiskussion. Yes, the KPD and the Comintern had made some mistakes, and Stalin’s personal rule and cult of personality had some “disastrous (verhängnisvolle)” consequences for German Communists. These were “painful” facts, although in the same speech Hager quickly relativized the admissions. Overall the Communist International had remained the most effective political force in the struggle for “progress, [and the] rights and interests of employees (Werktätigen).” Stalin’s terror had unfortunate consequences for German Communism and Communists, but the party’s leaders in exile in the Soviet Union had always attempted to prevent even worse developments.48 Despite Hager’s one admission of past mistakes, the SED leaders and the faculty at the PHS continued to celebrate the glories of the present, which included adding to the narrative a good dose to the growing cult of personality around Honecker. At a faculty meeting in December 1987, Manfred Herold, one of the deputy rectors at the PHS, emphasized that it was especially important to incorporate Honecker’s speeches into the teaching materials at the school.49 Since 1971, when Honecker became the SED’s general secretary, “real, existing socialism” and “socialism in the colors of the GDR” constituted an unending series of successes.50

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Honecker’s policy of the unity of economic and social measures had brought unprecedented prosperity to the East German people; the GDR was even a beacon of hope for the oppressed West German workers.51 All this was possible because East Germany was led by the unerring Communist Party whose corps of dedicated functionaries, under Honecker’s leadership, were implementing the laws of history in guiding the GDR on its path to true socialism.52 This view of the party’s function included rejecting any form of political pluralism. Questioning the party’s actions was not only objectively wrong because all decisions by the party were always correct (one of the songs that were part of every mass meeting was entitled “The Party Is Always Right”), but such criticism had the additional, negative effect of hindering the party as it labored to serve the people. The party’s agitprop functionaries hastened to add, however, that the SED was not a static institution; it would make policy and personnel changes as they became necessary.53 (Actually, the SED carefully avoided the word “change.” New policies were always described as an improvement on, or perfecting of, existing decisions.) According to the party propagandists, the successes of the SED were also reflected in the GDR’s standing on the international stage. The party-­ controlled media never tired of reporting how many foreign statesmen made official visits to the GDR, and how often the general secretary was invited to visit foreign countries. Especially Honecker’s official visit to West Germany in 1987 was portrayed as an unmitigated triumph for the general secretary and the GDR.54 But, of course, all was not well in the GDR, and the students at the PHS knew it. Increasingly in the second half of the 1980s, there were misgivings among the student body that too little was being done to address the problems they encountered in the “field.”55 After all, all of the students were full-time party functionaries with prior experience in the “field” before coming to the PHS. They had been sent to the school for advanced training by their administrative superiors. Based on their experience in the “field,” some students raised the question, for example, whether the present GDP growth rates for the GDR could be continued in the future. Tiedke replied that the 11th party congress had answered that question with a resounding “yes.” The students should have known, of course, that doubt about the future was not an acceptable attitude. The faculty advised the students that they would overcome their skepticism by a “deep penetration (Eindringen)” of the party’s decisions. Like their instructors they would then recognize

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that there were no serious problems in the GDR, and whatever difficulties did exist, they were being taken care of.56 Adding to the regime’s domestic difficulties, beginning in 1986 Honecker and Gorbachev were on a collision course.57 Increasingly, Honecker criticized Gorbachev in an “almost disgusting (widerwärtig) manner.” The previously ubiquitous agitprop slogan “von der Sowjetunion lernen, heisst siegen lernen” (To learn from the Soviet Union means to learn how to win”) was no longer the guiding light of the SED’s policies. Increasingly, newspapers in the GDR published abbreviated and edited versions of Gorbachev’s speeches, something which had not been done for earlier Soviet leaders. The East German critics saw much to criticize about the Soviet leader’s initiatives. They pointed out that glasnost put too little emphasis on the continuing class struggle and paid too much attention to the discussion of past mistakes. The SED critics also identified what really was the weak point of Gorbachev’s reforms: There were many good intentions, and much talk of future benefits, but few concrete policies were actually implemented. At the Central Committee’s meeting in December 1988, Honecker and other members of the committee criticized Gorbachev, albeit still in a somewhat veiled manner. The main agenda item at the meeting was the supposed rise of neo-fascism in West Germany, but Honecker and his allies used the occasion to accuse the Soviet leader of cultivating a far too cozy relationship with elements of the West German political establishment. Without saying so directly, the East German Communists claimed that Gorbachev was abandoning Marxism-Leninism and embracing part of the SED’s Feindbild, Social Democratism. This amounted to the political crime of revisionism. It did not help, of course, that the West German Social Democrats enthusiastically praised Gorbachev’s reform efforts in the Soviet Union.58 The PHS buttressed the SED’s old guard by providing information on the critics in Russia who highlighted the various inadequacies of Gorbachev’s policies. The PHS gleefully reported that visiting Soviet delegations to the school had nothing but praise for the SED and its activities. Tiedke reported to Hager that a visiting delegation of Soviet functionaries envied the SED because the German Communists had “qualitatively and quantitatively met the demands (Anforderungen) of life, while the Soviet party had not.” A PHS delegation visiting the CPSU’s Advanced Training Institute reported back to Hager that not only did the Soviets have no concept of the work of a party functionary in the age of

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glasnost and perestroika, but that faculty members in the Soviets’ training institute defended the discussion of past mistakes. Colleagues in the Department of Political Economics thought capitalism was successful in solving its contradictions. Hager promptly forwarded the PHS delegation’s report to Honecker.59 One of the most vociferous voices in the chorus of East German crestroikaritics of Gorbachev was Hanna Wolf. Her “anger at Gorbachev would never go away,” and from her office a few feet away from Honecker’s, she fed the SED leaders a steady stream of critical comments on “Gorbachev and his reforms.” Honecker and Erich Mielke, the head of the Stasi, in turn used the “dear Hanna as a sort of secret weapon against the danger of ideological softening” in the SED.60 The party’s leaders, and especially Honecker, also had personal reasons for being skeptical about Gorbachev’s initiatives. As early as 1984 rumors surfaced that some Soviet leaders were willing to sacrifice the GDR in return for better relations and financial aid from West Germany.61 In the end, the SED’s old guard, the “cement blocks,” prevailed, with the Politburo and the faculty and administrators at the PHS leading the charge against any reforms. In February 1988, Hans Modrow, the SED’s first secretary in Dresden, and one of the party’s advocates for domestic reforms in the GDR, delivered a speech at the PHS.  There was spontaneous applause from the students when he remarked that the functionaries who were 35–45 years old should be able to take on leadership positions. The PHS’ leaders characterized the students’ reactions as a sign of political immaturity.62 Jürgen Kuczynski commented on the establishment’s attitude by noting that, “we are on our way to strengthening Stalinism [in the party].” Part of his evidence for this conclusion was a letter he received from a PHS faculty member. In an interview Kuczynski had quoted Lenin to the effect that the party had to admit when it made mistakes. In turn, Gerda Opitz, a professor of “scientific” philosophy at the PHS, accused Kuczynski of holding “opportunistic” views. Kuczynski commented, “The level of the [intellectual] niveau is sad.”63 Despite the dark clouds looming on the horizon, in May 1989 Tiedke still presented an exceedingly positive balance sheet. In articles and speeches studded with quotations from the classics, the rector repeatedly proclaimed that the SED had made all the right decisions. Imperialism was still agitating, but its machinations were being effectively stopped by the GDR and the Soviet Union. The East German economy was booming; a

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new type of human being, the “socialist man,” had been created in the GDR, and the present generation had the good fortune of witnessing the worldwide transition to socialism. All these accomplishments came about because of the SED’s and the PHS’ consistent emphasis on ideological work.64 There was even good news on the technological front. By the mid-­1980s, the SED and the PHS had recognized the significance of the computer and concluded that the GDR had to stand in the front ranks (in vorderster Reihe) of developments in this area. In November 1988 Tiedke proudly reported that 44 teachers and 131 students had taken a basic course in micro-technology.65 But the old guard at the PHS continued to insist computer literacy by itself was not the answer to the GDR’s technological problems. Faculty and administrators argued that more important than professional computer competence were improved agitprop measures to place the digital revolution in the context of Marxism-Leninism. This was necessary because only the party could explain the role which the digital revolution played in an advanced socialist society.66 In September 1989, two months before the collapse of the regime, Tiedke wrote to Hager that the 1989/1990 academic year had gotten off to a good start. “All comrades are determined to work in every way possible for a successful preparation of the XII Party Congress.”67 The students had other ideas. Since the early 1980s the faculty noted that incoming students often expressed the view that Marxism-Leninism had nothing to do with the scientific-technical revolution. The teachers, of course, claimed that in time, they were able to convince the students that Marxism-Leninism was indeed the key to understanding and applying the benefits of the digital revolution.68 Actually, as the PHS’ pro-rector for research, Wolfgang Schneider, admitted after the collapse of the GDR, by the 1980s the GDR had fallen hopelessly behind the West in the design and application of computer technology.69 There were other complaints as well. Ironically, the SED was guilty of committing the faults which the East German Communists identified with Gorbachev’s reforms. There was running criticism of the manner in which party functionaries in the GDR were conducting their day-to-day work. The constant emphasis on the joys of the future meant the cadres failed to take responsibility for solving the problems of the present. This was a recurrent theme in Hager’s presentations at the PHS.  He complained SED functionaries failed to make decisions at their level of responsibility

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(Unentschlossenheit), and instead kicked the decision-making upstairs. However, Jürgen Kuczynski noted that failure to act (Handlungsunent schlossenheit) was also very characteristic of Hager himself.70 When the SED transformed itself into a new party in December 1989, a group of former Politburo members and Central Committee functionaries submitted what amounted to a comprehensive Fehlerdiskussion to the new party’s founding congress. The leading author was Wolfgang Herger, from 1985 to 1989 the head of the Central Committee’s Department for Security Affairs. Entitled “On the Causes of the Crisis in the SED and [East German] Society,” the document constituted an admission that over the years the SED had made many mistakes. Included in the mea culpa was the realization that party functionaries “lacked empathy in dealing with the citizens. The [functionaries’] absence of appreciation for individuality and competence in their occupational and societal work led not infrequently to ignorance of the intellectual capital among the people and allowed creativity to atrophy.”71 Before then, in December 1988, the SED leadership announced that between September and December 1989, there would be an “exchange of party documents.” Hager described this process as the “perfecting (vervollkommnen) of democratic centralism through the broad spreading (Ausbreitung) of intra-party democracy.”72 Actually, the exchange of party documents was traditionally the signal for the beginning of a purge of the party membership. But this time it was an empty threat; in 1989 the SED was losing members through resignation faster than they could be purged. In the last months of 1989, 900,000 SED members had voluntarily turned in their party membership cards.73 The regime’s reaction to what would be its ultimate crisis was a combination of the denial of reality, propaganda lies, implied threats to use force to regain control of the streets, and ideological delusions. The lies were most apparent in the leadership’s handling of the local elections in May 1989. The vote count revealed widespread falsifications of the results by party functionaries, but the official agitprop line was that as usual more than 99% of the ballots had been cast for the official list of candidates, confirming once again the close and positive relationship between the party and people.74 Alongside such obvious agitprop lies, the party leadership also indicated that it would resort to strong-armed tactics if its monopoly on political power was challenged. In June 1989, the SED dispatched a delegation

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to China. It was headed by Egon Krenz, then a member of the Politburo responsible for security affairs. The delegation’s ostensible mission was to congratulate the Chinese Communist Party on the 40th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, but the East Germans also praised the Chinese leaders for their recent, successful defeat of the “counter-­revolutionary” protests by students. While in China the SED delegation also evaluated to what extent the Chinese tactics in dealing with “counter-revolution” might be relevant for the GDR.75 The PHS reinforced the image of the close relationship between the GDR and China by issuing a glossy photo album celebrating the cooperation of the Chinese and German workers in advancing the proletarian revolution.76 As the challenges to its intact world mounted, the SED’s leaders fell back on what, since Stalin’s time, had always been its first and last line of defense against opposition and doubts. Beginning in 1987 there were increasing calls for an “ideological offensive” to enable the party to regain control of the deteriorating situation. The PHS and Hanna Wolf played a major role in this effort. Wolf tirelessly sought to demonstrate the negative consequences of Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union. As noted earlier, beginning in 1986 Honecker and members of the Politburo received a steady stream of material from the Soviet press critical of Gorbachev and his initiatives. According to Wolf, the material proved that changes in the Soviet were undermining the ultimate foundation of the party’s political power: ideological certainty.77 In the spring and summer of 1989, the PHS took center stage in the SED’s last ideological offensive. In early May Hanna Wolf and her longtime associate, Wolfgang Schneider, jointly published a lengthy article in the SED’s official newspaper, Neues Deutschland. Entitled “On the History of the Comintern,” the piece was a vigorous attack on Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost which, the authors claimed, had unleashed a wholly unwarranted Fehlerdiskussion in the Soviet Union. In addition, Wolf and Schneider heaped praise upon Stalin as the builder of a socialist society in Russia.78 On the express orders of the Minister of Education, Margot Honecker, the article was also reprinted in the journal Geschichtsunterricht und Staatsbürgerkunde (History Teaching and Civic Education). After the fall of the regime, at the beginning of 1990, the journal’s editorial board apologized to the readers for the decision to reprint the article. In late August, Schneider followed Wolf’s and his contribution with a long piece of his own in Neues Deutschland entitled “On the Science and Practice of

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Socialism.” According to Honecker’s personal secretary, this was to have been the first of six articles, but the other five were never published.79 In what would be his last commencement address at the PHS in early July 1989, four months before the collapse of the regime, Kurt Hager still painted the traditional, positive picture of the GDR’s present and future. Marxism-Leninism was based on the party’s exact knowledge of the laws of history, Honecker’s policy of the unity of economic and social policies had had proven the effectiveness of the party’s economic policies, and “the foundation of the GDR’s economic and social success was the mutual trust between party and people.” Hager devoted four whole pages of the speech to the supposed success of the country’s technical innovations. Even the Feindbild remained intact. Hager attacked “social democratism” as a pillar supporting capitalism, and he argued that, contrary to Western views, there was no such thing as democracy itself. Democracy was always a form of class rule. In the West, this meant the capitalist class was in charge; in the GDR democracy meant the rule of the workers. Above all, Hager assured the graduates the future triumph of socialism was inevitable. Capitalism might still exist in some countries for the next 50–100 years, but it was a form of societal organization that “belongs to the pre-history of mankind.” Hager even praised the research being done at the party’s “scientific” institutes, including the PHS. All members and candidates of the Politburo knew it took time to really study these research products, “but it was worth it.”80 Joachim Petzold, a genuine academic historian, characterized the speech as a series of “hollow phrases to show the inevitability of the socialist world system.”81 In October the Politburo “recommended”—actually ordered—that the Central Committee embark on yet another large-scale effort to advance the ideological offensive and regain the initiative. In response the Central Committee created new a committee, chaired by Kurt Hager, to begin a full-scale program of ideological indoctrination. The group was to be composed of representatives from a number of departments at the Central Committee as well as delegates from the SED’s “scientific” institutes, including the PHS. The committee was to launch “Activities against Anti-­ Socialist Collective Measures,” which was the party’s characterization of the increasingly active human rights groups in the GDR. The initiative was a stillborn effort; the committee never met and it took no action.82 Far more dramatically, on October 18 the Politburo forced Honecker to resign as general secretary. His closest associates also stepped down or

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were voted out of office. The new leader, Egon Krenz, announced that he would lead a turnaround (Wende), but it was a very timid and limited effort. The SED, Krenz announced, “was a party that embraced reforms, but it was not reformist.” The PHS’ initial reaction to the change in leadership followed the traditional model of Communist succession scenarios. Tiedke reported to Hager that a meeting of party activists at the PHS—students, faculty, administration, and support staff, some 1000 people in all—had enthusiastically and unanimously welcomed Krenz’s election as the SED’s new leader. The party activists also fully supported Krenz’s new policy line and promised to work even harder to help carry out the decisions of the Central Committee.83 Krenz’s efforts to combine a cautious new line while preserving the glories of old did not convince either the rank-and-file members of the party or the Central Committee. At a November meeting the members of the Central Committee, newly liberated from the straightjacket of party discipline, demanded not only new initiatives, but also attacked the old leaders, especially the members of the Politburo. Wolfgang Junker, the GDR’s minister for construction, questioned whether the 1971 party congress, which launched Honecker’s long tenure as head of the party and the state, was really as important as the personality cult around Honecker proclaimed. Was the party leadership not guilty of increasingly “subjectivist decisions” since 1971? At the Central Committee’s last meeting, the attacks on the old party leaders were spearheaded by Otto Reinhold, the head of the Academy for the Social Sciences. Specifically blaming “not the party, but the party leadership,” Reinhold complained that the Politburo had ignored the numerous socioeconomic analyses which the party institutes had sent to the party leadership. They were all locked away, Reinhold claimed, unread, and unacted upon. In his lame defense of the Politburo, Kurt Hager noted that it was not true that the analyses were locked away. As he had said in his commencement address at the PHS, they were duly distributed to the members of the Politburo. However, even Hager did not claim that the Politburo members read the papers or that they took any action based upon these contributions. Remarkably, this exchange at the November meeting involved only Hager and Reinhold. Neither Wolf nor Tiedke, both of whom were members of the Central Committee, spoke at the meeting.

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As the regime was rapidly disintegrating, the SED leaders also participated in the time-honored Communist practice of self-criticism. Honecker, in one of his interview-reminiscences after his fall from power, acknowledged that “our ideological and propagandistic work did not meet the needs of our time.” Hager confessed that the party did not put enough trust in the masses and that he was too cowardly to admit this in public. As for the ideological offensive, Wilfried Possner, the first secretary of the FDJ’s central council, put in succinctly: “It did not succeed.”84 Alongside the SED’s leadership, the PHS also had to recognize that it was a failed institution. On balance, the PHS was unable to fulfill its core mission: to train party functionaries who could effectively lead a socialist society. There were several reasons for this failure. The most important was the persistent disconnect between ideology and reality. Marxism-­ Leninism was never a science, and the “intense study of the classics” could not supply answers for contemporary problems. In addition, the persistent rejection of any Fehlerdiskussion led to teaching serious distortions of reality at the PHS. As Wolfgang Leonhard pointed out, the presentations of the histories of the SED and the CPSU painted a far more favorable picture than was warranted by the historical record. In contrast, the West was portrayed in an equally unrealistic and false manner. Western society was pictured as essentially stuck in the nineteenth century, while the socialist GDR embodied the future. The self-critical report “On the Origins of the Crisis” also alluded to the problems caused by the lack of any Fehlerdiskussion. The ubiquitous slogan that “problems would be solved by marching forward” meant that mistakes in the past would never be analyzed and consequently it was highly likely that errors would occur again.85 Above all, however, the PHS could never escape its self-imposed straightjacket of Stalinism. This was a “heavy mortgage.” Under both Wolf and Tiedke, the PHS never abandoned the mindset and cadres training of the Stalinist model. The PHS (and the SED) essentially remained Stalinist institutions for virtually all of their history. In his address to the new party’s founding congress in December 1989, Michael Schumann, one of the genuine reformers in the SED, devoted 13 pages to the negative consequences of holding on to a Stalinist mindset and structures. The mea culpa “Origins” report put it this way, “in creating the transition to socialism the SED increasingly oriented itself toward the Stalinist policy of the time….Democratic evolutionary tendencies in the party and in society

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were stopped. Our rich heritage going back to Marx and Engels that resulted in the creation of the SED was narrowed and distorted.”86 The public and the party never took the activities at the PHS and the party’s other “scientific” schools seriously. As far as the public was concerned, evidence for this can be found in political jokes—always a bellwether of public opinion in dictatorial regimes—circulating in the GDR. Just two examples: “What is party schooling? Red x-rays without any effect,” or “What is political schooling? When one person speaks and everyone else sleeps.”87 The faculty and administration at the PHS were probably not unduly concerned about their reputation among the general public, but it was also true that the SED’s decision-making bodies, the Politburo and the Central Committee, were not paying much attention to what the party’s “scientific” institutes were producing. As Lothar Mertens has pointed out, “there exists practically no evidence” that the decisions of the Politburo and the Central Committee were influenced by any of the papers produced at the SED’s think tanks.88 Reinhold had been right. There were good reasons for this. The PHS and the other two party-­ owned “scientific” institutions did not have much to offer. It is not surprising that Hans Modrow, the former SED first secretary in Dresden and the GDR’s prime minister from November 1989 to March 1990, chose Christa Luft as his economics minister. Luft was the rector of the Berlin ̋ Economics College (Hochschule für Okonomie), one of the few research institutes in East Germany that was not subject to the direct control of the SED’s Central Committee. Ironically, Luft’s husband, Hans Luft, worked at the Institute for Marxism-Leninism. Hanna Wolf had lured him to the PHS to head a new Department of Economic Leadership, but he declined. The mindset at the PHS produced what Jürgen Kuczynski called the “mentally completely calcified” corps of SED functionaries. Despite the incessant proclamation that the cadres served the people, in fact they served only the party, that is to say themselves. At the PHS they were not trained for independent thought, but only for carrying out whatever the party decreed. Even the generational change at the top in the fall of 1989, personified by Egon Krenz, did not fundamentally change the regime’s contours.89 There is no doubt that the problems intensified during the 1980s. In the last decade of Honecker’s rule, Marxism-Leninism, especially at the PHS, was reduced to a series of endlessly repeated agitprop phrases. As Alfred Neumann, the perennial curmudgeon on the Politburo,

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acknowledged, there was too much emphasis on the sacrosanct “classics” and too little on the important issues and questions of the day, especially the economy. And in the final analysis all of these problems could be traced back to the PHS’ “heavy mortgage” of Stalinism. The school was founded as a Stalinist institution and it remained dominated by this mindset until the fall of the Communist regime.90 After the fall of the GDR, Kurt Hager, for many decades the ultimate supervisor and controller of the PHS, seemed embarrassed by his association with the school. In his memoirs, he mentioned Hanna Wolf only once, and then not in her capacity as the PHS’ rector, but as head of a committee which in 1949 prepared a German version of Stalin’s History of the CPSU: Short Course as teaching material for party indoctrination purposes.91 Tiedke, who was rector at the PHS for more than six years, made no appearance at all in Hager’s reminiscences. Hager’s last years were marked by bitterness and defiance. Along with Egon Krenz, he was the only member of the old guard who was elected to the founding congress of the SED-PDS; neither Krenz nor Hager took an active part in the deliberations. In January 1990 the SED-PDS revoked Hager’s party membership. He did not attempt to be re-instated. Instead, like Honecker, he joined the newly established and miniscule KPD. (It never had more than 40 members.) Hager died on September 18, 1998; he was 86 years old.

Notes 1. Kaderakte Tiedke, DY 30/IV 2/1/1, vol. 5501. See also Bergien, Generalstab, pp. 374 and 433; and Malycha, Honecker, p. 85. 2. Röhmer, “Erfahrungen,” pp. 100 and 105. 3. Tiedke to Hager and Honecker, 27 Sept.1983, and Tiedke to Hager, 9 and 281,988, Best. Hager, DY 30/26474. See also Malycha, SED, p.  328 (quoting Tiedke in: Neues Deutschland, 30 Aug. 1989); Meyer, Machtelite, p. 406; and Bräuer, Kaderpolitik, pp. 13–14, 28 and 36–38. 4. Meyer, Machtelite, pp.  147–49, 163, 207 and 406; and Begien, “Parteiarbeiter,” p. 178. 5. Tiedke, “Bericht … Hauptergebnisse: Aus- und Weiterbildung von Parteikadern, PHS-Studienjahr … 1882/83,” 26 July 1983; “EntwurfInformation,” June 1983, Best. Hager, DY 30/27632; and Tiedke to Hager, 12 Oct. 1985, ibid. DY 30/26469. 6. Rita Kokisch, “Die ideologische Arbeit—Herzstück der Parteiarbeit,” in: Tiedke, Rolle, pp. 43–47; and Hager’s remarks at the “Arbeitsberatung,”

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December 1981 and his graduation address at the PHS 6 July 1984, Best. Hager, DY 30/26478. See also Schneider, “Forschungsgruppenarbeit, 1986” pp. 91–93; Margedank, “Bildungssystem” (quoting Gerda Opitz 0, III/3: 1518–19); and Meyer, Machtelite, p. 203. 7. Tiedke to Hager, 9 Nov. 1988, Best. Hager, DY 30/26474; Hager, “Arbeitsberatung 11/81,” Best. Hager, DY 30/26461; Schneider, “forschungsgruppenarbeit 1986, pp. 91–93, and Margedank, “Bildungssystem,” III/3: 1518–19 (quoting Gerda Opitz). 8. Hager’s graduation address at the PHS, 6 July 1989, Best. Hager, DY 30/24679; Tiedke, “Schlussbemerkungen,” PHS, “Lehrerkonfrenz,” Dec., 1987, ibid., DY 30/26473; [Tiedke], “Forschungsarbeit,” Dec., 1988, pp. 6 and 28, ibid. DY 30/26474; K. Hartmann and H. Hümmler, “Bericht … Konferenz … Rektoren der Akademie der Gesellschaftswissenschaften und PHS,” 28 Oct. 1986, ibid., DY 30/24671; and Preusser, “Massenarbeit,” ibid., DY 30/26472. See also Bräuer, Kaderpolitik, p. 41; and Richert, Macht, p. 164. 9. Walter Friedrich (director of the Zentralinstitut für Jugendforschung) to Krenz, “Einige Reflexionen über geistig-kulturelle Prozesse in der DDR,” 21 Oct. 1988, in: Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan, ed., Vorwärts immer, rückwärts nimmer: Interne Dokumente zum Zerfall von SED und DDR (Berlin, 1994), pp. 39–53 (doc. 6). See also Stephan, “Wir brauchen Perestroika und Glasnost für die DDR, Deutschland-Archiv, 28 (no. 7, 1995), 721–33. 10. Tiedke, “Schlussbemerkungen” at the PHS, “Lehrerkonfrenz,” Dec., 1987, and Herold’s remarks at the same conference, Best. Hager, DY 30/ 26,473. 11. PHS, “Ű bersicht über Aufnahmeprüfungen und Gespräche, 14.2–4.3. 1983,” n.d., Best. Hager, DY 30/26468. 12. Tiedke to Hager, 6 Sept. 1983 and 13 Dec. 1985, Best. Hager, DY 3027632 and 26,469; PHS, ed., Unsere Hochschule, and Tiedke, “Information zur Ausbildung,” Nov. 1988, p.  9. See also Fritze, Ruin, p.  26; Zimmermann, Machtverteilung, p.  234; and Kowalczuk, Legitimation, pp. 28–29 and 40. 13. See Schabowski’s comment in Enquête-Kommission, Aufarbeitung, p. II/1:502. On the SED’s problems after 1987 see esp., Heinrich Bortfeldt, Von der SED zur PDS: Wandlung zur Demokratie? (Berlin, 1992). 14. Heinz Vietze (1st secretary of the SED in the county of Oranienburg), “Einschätzung des 63. Lehrganges zur Weiterbildung der 1. und 2. Sekretäre der Kreisleitungen der SED an der PHS, 6.6.-1.7. 1988,” 30 June 1988, Best. Hager, DY 30/26474. 15. PHS, “Lehrerkonferenz,” Dec., 1987, ibid., DY 30/26473 (Manfred Herold). For an example of the anti-imperialist rhetoric at the PHS, see Götz Dieckmann and Helmut Neef, “Die Deutsche Demokratische Republik: Bollwerk des Friedens,” in: Tiedke, ed., Wohl, pp. 44–68.

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16. Fritze, Ruin, p. 72; and Bock, “Partei,” p. 168. 17. On the importance and instrumentalization of the anti-fascist myth in the GDR, see Zimmering, Mythen, pp. 37–168; and Antonia Grunenberg, “Ich finde mich überhaupt nicht mehr zurecht,” in: Thomas Blanke and Rainer Erd, eds, DDR: Ein Staat vergeht (Frankfurt a. M., 1990), pp. 174–75. 18. Horst Bednarek, “Siegreiche Revolution auf deutschem Boden,” in: Tiedke, ed. Wohl, p. 16. 19. Tiedke, “Frieden ohne Alternative” (address at the Friedrich-Ebert-­ Stiftung, 20 Oct. 1988), p.  19 (quoting Honecker) (Friedrich- Ebert-­ Stiftung, Archiv der sozialen Demokratie, Best. Karsten Voigt (hereafter: Best. Voigt), 1/KVAC/00582; Hager, “120 Jahre Das Kapital: Aktualität und Lebenskraft des Hauptwerkes von Karl Marx” (address at the PHS, 4 May 1987), pp.  8–10 and 27, Best. Hager, DY 30/26465, graduation speech at the PHS, 6 July 1989, ibid., 24,679. 20. Kurt Hager, “Unter dem Banner des Marxismus-Leninismus dem XII.  Parteitag der SED entgegen,” pp.  52–53, Best. “Hager, DY 30/26467,” pp.  52–53 and 62–64, Hager, “Die Geschichte und das Verständnis unserer Zeit: Die nächsten Aufgaben der Geschichtswissenschaft der DDR,” 7 April 1989, pp. 48–51, ibid.; and Hager’s graduation address at the PHS, 6 July 1989, ibid., DY 30/26478. 21. Christian von Ditfurth, Zwei deutsche Sichten: Dialog auf gleicher Augenhöhe (Bad Honnef, 2000), p. 49 (quoting Rainer Eppelmann). 22. PHS, “Gemeinsamer Beschluss Lektorat und Parteileitung zur Auswertung des XI. Parteitages,” 14 April 1986, Best. Hager, DY 30/26470. 23. SED, Secretariat of the Central Committee, “Die Aufgaben der Parteihochschule ‘Karl Marx’ beim ZK der SED nach dem XI. Parteitag der SED,” 2 July 1986, BAB-SAPMO, Sekretariat des ZK der SED, DY 30/59627. 24. Tiedke to Hager, 8 Dec. 1986, Best. Hager, DY 30/ 26,471. 25. PHS, “Lehrerkonferenz,” Dec., 1987, ibid., DY 30/26473. 26. The documents are in, ibid., DY 30/26470 and 26,471. 27. Wolfgang Brunkel and Jo Rodejohann, ed. Das SPD/SED Papier: Der Streit der Ideologien und die gemeinsame Sicherheit (Freiburg, 1988). 28. See Honecker’s address at the meeting of the Central Committee’s secretariat and the SED’s county secretaries, 6 Feb. 1987, Honecker, Reden, p. XII: 284. 29. Neues Deutschland, 28 Aug. 1987. 30. Frank Fischer, “Im deutschen Interesse”: Die Ostpolitik der SPD von 1969 bis 1989 (Husum, 2001), p. 204. 31. Hager’s graduation address at the PHS, 6 July 1989, Best. Hager, DY 30/26478; Tiedke, “Frieden,” pp. 4–5; Krenz’s remarks at the meeting of the SED’s Central Committee, 8 Nov. 1989, in: Hertle, ed. Ende … SED, pp. 229–30; and Fischer, Ostpolitik, pp. 208–11.

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32. See PHS, “Lehrerkonferenz,” Dec., 1987, p. 5 (Manfred Herold), Best. Hager, DY 30/26473; Tiedke, “Information … Ausbildung,” Nov., 1988, Best. Hager, DY 30/26394; Wolfgang Schneider, “Das Wirken der Partei für die volle Schöpfungskraft des freien Menschen,” in: Tiedke, ed. Wohl, pp. 149–50; and Grosser, Wissenschaftlicher Kommunismus, pp. 441ff. 33. Karsten Voigt, “PHS Vortrag,” 23 Nov. 1987 and “Bericht über einen Aufenthalt in Magdeburg und Ostberlin vom 21.-23. November 1987,” 30 Nov. 1987, Best. Voigt, 1/KVA, C 005112. 34. Tiedke, “Frieden,” Best. Voigt, 1 KVA, C OO582. 35. Ibid., p. 28. 36. Tiedke to Hager, 4 Dec. 1987, Best. Hager, DY 30/26472; and PHS, “Lehrerkonferenz,” Dec., 1987, pp. 6 and 15–16 (Herold), ibid. 37. PHS, “Lehrerkonferenz,” 4 Dec. 1987, pp.  1–3 (Herold and Edgar Karsch), 4 (Wofram Friedersdorff) and 18 (Herold); Tiedke to Hager, 8 Aug. 1985, Best. Hager, DY 30/26469; and [Tiedke], “Information … Ausbildung,” Nov. 1988, p.  4, and “Forschungsarbeit,” Dec. 1988, pp. 9–10. 38. Tiedke to Hager, 28 April 1987, Best. Hager, DY 30/26472; Tiedke, “Forschungsarbeit,” Dec. 1988, p. 9; and PHS, Kaderschmiede, p. 80. 39. Schneider, “Forschungsgruppenarbeit,” pp. 90–91 and 95. 40. Schneider, “Analyse,” pp. 83–89. 41. Donner, “Ideologie,” pp. III/1:319–20. 42. PHS, “Lehrerkonferenz,” Dec., 1987, pp.  19, 24, and 31–32 (Manfred Herold), Best. Hager, DY 30/26472. 43. Schneider, “Forschungsgruppenarbeit,” p.  97; and [Tiedke], “Information … Ausbildung 11/88,” p. 2. 44. PHS, “Lehrerkonferenz,” Dec., 1987, pp. 16ff (Manfred Herold), Best. Hager, DY 30/26473. 45. Tiedke, “Schlussbemerkungen,” in: “Lehrerkonferenz,” Dec.1987, and “Bericht—Hauptergebnisse Aus- und Weiterbildung von Parteikadern … PHS..Studienjahr 1982/83,” 26 July 1983, Best. Hager, DY 30/27632. See also Erhard Crome, “Die SED: Umrisse eines Forschungsproblems,” Deutschland-Archiv, 25 (No. 12, 1992), 1294; and Lothar Mertens, “Die geheimen Dissertationen der DDR-Hochschulen,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 42 (no. 9, 1994), 832–33. 46. Tiedke, ed. “Zielstrebig jene Aufgaben in Angriff nehmen, die uns der XI.  Parteitag gestellt hat,” Wissenschaftliche Beiträge der Parteihochschule “Karl Marx” beim ZK der SED, 35 (no. 3, 1986), 5–6, and PHS, “Lehrerkonferenz,” Dec. 1987, p. 7 (Manfred Herold). See also Tiedke, Arbeit, p. 12. 47. Strittmatter, Tagebücher ‘74’-94, p. 328 (entry for 20 April 1987). Egon Krenz, Honecker’s successor, wrote after the fall of the GDR that Honecker

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had personally ordered Hager to use the wallpaper metaphor. See Egon Krenz, Herbst ‘89, p. 183. 48. Hager, “Aufgaben,” April, 1989, pp. 62–63 and 79. See also, Bortfeldt, SED, p. 32. 49. PHS, “Lehrerkonferenz,” Dec., 1987, p. 13, Best. Hager. DY 30/26473. See also Tiedke’s sycophantic letter to Honecker, 29 Jan. 1986, ibid., DY 30/26470. 50. Tiedke to Hager, 13 Dec. 1985, ibid., DY 30/26469; Hager, “120 Jahre…Kapital,” pp. 71ff and 88a [sic]; and Tiedke, Wohl. 51. Hager, graduation addresses at the PHS, 6 July 1984 and 6 July 1989, Best Hager, DY 30/26478 and 26,479; “Aufgaben,” pp.  23–24, Kontinuität und Veränderung (Berlin, 1988), p.  18; and Tiedke, ed., Rolle … SED, p. 12. 52. PHS, “Lehrerkonferenz,” Dec., 1987, Best. Hager, DY 30/26473; [Tiedke], “Forschungsarbeit,” Dec., 1988, p.  22, and “Vorwort,” in: Wohl, p. 8; Hager, “Aufgaben,” pp. 58–59, and “Banner,” p. 66. See also Crome, “SED-Forschung,” p. 1297; and Eberle, Honecker, p. 211. 53. Tiedke to Hager, 27 April 1987, Best. Hager, DY 30/26472; Hager, “120 Jahre … Kapital,” pp. 67 and 87, and Kontinuität, p. 15. 54. PHS, “Lehrerkonferenz,” Dec., 1987, pp.  3–5 (Manfred Herold), Best. Hager, DY 30/26473. 55. PHS, “Entwurf-Information,” n.d. (ca. beginning of 1986), Best. Hager, DY 30/27632; and Tiedke, “Aufgaben 1986,” p. 17. 56. Tiedke, Rolle … SED, p. 27; Hager, “120 Jahre … Kapital,” pp. 59–60,and “Banner.” See also Udo Margedant, “Bildungssystem,” p. III/3:1504; and Tiedke, “Fragen,” and Wohl, pp. 19ff. 57. Daniel Küchenmeister, “Wann begann das Zerwürfnis zwischen Honecker und Gorbatschow?” Deutschland-Archiv, 26 (no. 1, 1993), 37 and 39; and Wolfgang Leonhard, Meine Geschichte der DDR (Berlin, 2007), p.  215. The growing estrangement between Honecker and Gorbachev is also the subject of Egon Krenz’s latest book, Wir und die Russen: Die Beziehungen zwischen Berlin und Moskau im Herbst‘89 (Berlin, 2019). 58. Johannes L.  Kuppe, “Zum 7. Plenum des ZK der SED,” Deutschland-­ Archiv, 22 (no. 1, 1989), 2–3 and 5; and Voigt, “PHS Vortrag,” p. 7. See also Ilse Spittmann, “Die SED und Gorbatschow,” Deutschland-Archiv, 20 (no. 3, 1987), 225–28. 59. [PHS], “Information … Erfahrungsaustausch. Bildungseinrichtungen des ZK der KPdSU … 16. bis 19. Sept. 1986,” 19 Sept. 1986, and Tiedke to Hager, 9 Jan. 1986, Best. Hager, DY 30/26470. 60. Hager to Honecker, 30 Nov. 1987, Best Hager, DY 30/26472; Neumann, Poltergeist, pp.  92–93; and Iwan Kusmin, “Die Verschwörung gegen Honecker,” Deutschland Archiv, 28 (no. 3, 1995), 287–88.

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61. Egon Winkelmann, Moskau das war’s: Erinnerungen des DDR-­Botschafters in der Sowjetunion 1981 bis 1987 (Berlin, 1997), pp.  32 and 276–77 Kusmin, “Verschwörung,” pp.  286–90; Manfred Uschner, Die zweite Etage: Funktionsweise eines Machtapprates (Berlin, 1993), pp.  134–35; Neumann, Poltergeist, p.  95; and Erich Honecker. Moabiter Notizen: Letztes schriftliches Zeugnis und Gesprächsprotokolle vom BRD Besuch aus dem persönlichen Besitz Erich Honeckers (Berlin, 1994), p.  89. See also Hertle, ed., Ende, p. 35. 62. Quoted in, Bergien, Generalstab, p. 478. 63. Kuczynski, Jahre, pp. 50 (entry for 19 July 1987) and 129 (entry for 25 Dec. 1988). 64. Tiedke, Wohl, pp. 9ff. 65. Hager’s address at the PHS, 6 April 1984, Best. Hager, DY 30/26478 (quotation); and Tiedke, “Information … Ausbildung,” Nov. 1988, p. 9, Best. Hager, DY 30/26471. 66. Tiedke to Hager, “Forschungsbericht,” Dec., 1986, Best. Hager, DY 30/ 26471; and Tiedke, “Rolle … SED,” pp. 32–36, and 86. 67. Tiedke to Hager, 6 Sept. 1989, Best. Hager, DY 30/26475. 68. PHS, “Bericht … Ausbildung … Kader … 1982/83,” Best. Hager, DY 30/27632. 69. Wolfgang Schneider, Die Marxsche Vision-Anspruch, Scheitern, historisches Schicksal: Theoriegeschichtliche Reflexionen (Hamburg, 2008), pp.  229 and 251–52. 70. Hager, graduation addresses at the PHS, 14 July 1982 and 6 July 1989, Best. Hager, DY 30/24679 and 26,477; and Kuszynski, Dissident, pp. 245ff. 71. Wolfgang Herger et al., “Zu den Ursachen für die Krise in der SED und in der Gesellschaft,” in: SED-PDS, Ausserordentlicher Parteitag der SED-­ PDS: Protokoll der Beratungen, ed. by Detlef Nakath et al. (Berlin, 1989), pp. 384–96. 72. Hager, “Aufgaben,” p. 70. See also Bergien, Generalstab, p. 481. 73. Don Hough, ed., The Left Party in German Politics (Basingstoke, UK, 2007), p. 14. 74. Hager, “Aufgaben,” p. 70; and his graduation address at the PHS, 6 July 1989, Best. Hager, 26,479. 75. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, Endspiel: Die Revolution von 1989  in der DDR (Munich, 2015), p. 340. Krenz’s own versions of his visit to China are in, Herbst ‘89, pp. 71–73, and Mauern, p. 134. 76. Kurt Tiedke, ed., Aus dem Kampf der deutschen Arbeiterklasse zur Verteidigung und Unterstützung der Revolution in China: Dokumente und Fotos aus den Jahren 1918/19 bis 1988 (Berlin, 1989).

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77. SED, Central Committee, “Beschluss 69/83,” 27 June 1983, Best. Honecker, DY 30/vol. 5533; M. Wolf, Auftrag, pp. 98–99 (entry for 8 May 1999); Neumann, Poltergeist, pp. 64–65; Eberle, Honecker, p. 181; Kusmin, “Verschwörung,” pp.  287–88. See also Egon Bahr, Zu meiner Zeit (Munich, 1988), pp. 559–60. 78. .Neues Deutschland, 5/6 May 1989; and Dietrich Orlow, “The last Hurrah: Hanna Wolf’s and Wolfgang Schneider’s May, 1989 Defense of Stalinism,” International Newsletter of Communist Studies, 24/25 (nos. 31–32, 2018/19), 111–120 (online); and Stephan, ed., Vorwärts, pp. 102–03 and 103 n. 154 (meeting of the Politburo, 29 Aug. 1989); and Nakath, “Schock,” pp. 18–19. 79. Stephan, ed. Vorwärts, pp. 102–03 and 103 n. 154. 80. Hager’s commencement address at the PHS, 6 July 1989, Best. Hager, DY 30/26479. The quotations are on pp. 16, 30, and 47. 81. Petzold, Parteinahme, p. 353. 82. Stephan, Vorwärts, pp. 64–65 (doc. no. 9). See also Kuppe, “7. Plenum,” pp. 1 and 6; and Dieter Segert, “Fahnen, Umzüge, Abzeichen,” in: Blanke, ed., p. 29. 83. Tiedke to Hager, 19 Oct. 1989, Best Hager, DY 30/26475. 84. Accounts of the dramatic last meeting of the Central Committee are in: Stephan, Vorwärts; and Hertle, Ende. See also Heberle, Honecker, p. 137; and Greven, Ende, p. 156. 85. Leonhard, Spurensuche, pp.  238–42; and Herger, “Ursachen,” p.  388; Weber, Aufbau, p. 173 (quotation), and DDR, pp. 11 and 185. See also Herbert Burmeister, Der Stalinismus in der KPD und SED (Berlin, 1991); Michael Schumann’s presentation to the SED-PDS, Parteitag 12/89, pp. 180–93; and Herger, “Ursachen,” p. 387. 86. Helga and Klaus-Dieter Schlechter, Witze bis zur Wende: 40 Jahre politischer Witz in der DDR (Munich, 1991), p. 245. 87. .Mertens, Denkfabrik, p. 31. 88. .Kuczynski, Dissident, pp.  230 (quotation) and 237; Wagner, “Kaderpolitik,” pp. IV/1: 13 and 21; Mertens, Denkfabrik, pp. 101–02; and Alfred Weinzierl and Klaus Wiegrafe, “Acht Tage, die die Welt veränderten” (Munich, 2015), pp. 131–32. 89. .Leonhard, “Marxismus-Leninismus,” III/1: 42; Zimmermann, “Kader,” p. 337; Heym, Nachruf, p. 717; Neumann, Poltergeist, p. 95; and Weber, Aufbau, p. 173. 90. Hager, Erinnerungen, p. 148. 91. SED-PDS, Parteitag 12/1989.

CHAPTER 6

Epilogue

Abstract  The history of the “Advanced Training Institute for Functionaries ‘Karl Marx’” (PHS) after the fall of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) regime was a tragi-comic story. Tiedke resigned as rector in December of 1989; he was replaced by Götz Dieckmann, until then the chairman of the history department at the PHS.  To judge from his published writings, Dieckmann, who was born in 1941, was as much of a hardline Marxist-­ Leninist as Wolf and Tiedke. The faculty and students at the PHS supported Krenz to the end, but in mid-December, the SED transformed itself into a democratic, left-wing party with a new leader, a lawyer in private practice, Gregor Gysi. (The party renamed itself “SED-Party of Democratic Socialism [PDS],” but in February of 1990, it dropped the SED and simply became the PDS.) The faculty and staff at the PHS congratulated Gysi on his election as well. Gysi wanted to keep the PHS as a training school for party functionaries, albeit with an “undogmatic” curriculum, but insurmountable obstacles soon emerged. Without the massive state subsidies that the school had enjoyed for more than 40 years and which now ceased, there was no way to pay for the 370 faculty and staff that remained on the payroll. In May 1990, the PDS decided to cease the PHS’ operations and replace the school with a self-sustaining public relations effort, a “Place for Meetings and Public Relations,” but that also proved to be too ambitious. In June, the PHS stopped operations all together. The school’s building Haus am © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Orlow, The Parteihochschule Karl Marx under Ulbricht and Honecker, 1946–1990, Palgrave Studies in Political History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70225-0_6

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Köllnischen Park reverted to its original owners, who turned it into high-­ priced condominiums. Keywords  Gregor Gysi • Götz Dieckmann • Attempts to continue the PHS • End of the PHS At its extraordinary party congress in December 1989, the SED1 abandoned its self-proclaimed status as a “party of the new type,” rejected democratic centralism as its command structure, and renamed itself “SED-­ Party of Democratic Socialism” (Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus, PDS). (The hyphenated construct was short-lived. In February 1990, the party dropped the SED part of its name, simply becoming the PDS.) In addition to eliminating democratic centralism, the SED-PDS also abolished the Politburo and the Central Committee, replacing them with a democratically elected executive committee. To further underline its image as a new party, the extraordinary congress also elected a political newcomer as its chairman. He was Gregor Gysi, a 41-year-old East Berlin lawyer in private practice who had defended a number of human rights activists. He was a member of the SED, but had never held any party office. His only direct connection to the old regime was through his father, Klaus Gysi, who in 1989 was the GDR’s state secretary for church affairs. Among the assets and liabilities, which the new, old party inherited, were the SED’s three “scientific” institutes. Initially, all three attempted to continue their institutional life under the new circumstances. The Academy for the Social Sciences shed its official affiliation with the party. In November 1989, the scholars and employees at the academy (some 1000 people in all) voted to drop the addition of “affiliated with the Central Committee of the SED” from its name. At the same time, Otto Reinhold, the longtime head of the academy (he was director from 1961 to 1989) resigned his position. He was succeeded by Rolf Reissig, a reformist SED functionary, who had also been a member of the SED delegation which negotiated the Streitpapier with the West German SPD two years earlier. Whatever plans the new leader might have had about the future of the academy, they quickly turned into illusions. By April 1990 most of the employees and researchers had either taken early retirement or simply left. Despite renaming itself the “Foundation for Societal Analysis,” the academy ceased operations in 1990.2

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The Institute for Marxism-Leninism had a rather more dramatic afterlife. It gave itself the new title of the Institute of the Working Class Movement, but remained attached to the SED-PDS. It also selected a new director, Günter Benser, a reformist and nostalgic historian. (One of the books he wrote after the fall of the Communist regime was entitled The GDR, Don’t Think Badly of It.) The institute’s attachment to the PDS was a short-term interlude. In January 1990, the executive committee of the SED-PDS decided that it would sever any affiliation with the new organization because the former Institute for Marxism-Leninism had “greatly tarnished the GDR’s reputation among historians”.3 Although the PDS severed its formal ties to the Institute for the History of the Working Class Movement, the party’s executive committee still had a use for the former Institute for Marxism-Leninism. In January 1990, the PDS’ executive committee proposed that the institute hire a number of old SED dignitaries, including Joachim Herrmann, Honecker’s private secretary, and Egon Krenz, Honecker’s successor, as “scholarly associates” (wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter).4 That was too much for the “real” scholars at the institute. They refused to work alongside the former SED functionaries, and the idea was dropped. The institute lingered on with a continuously reduced staff until 1992, when it was officially disbanded. The PHS, too, intended to carry on as it had before, albeit with a few nods to the new era. Tiedke resigned as rector in December 1989. His successor was Götz Dieckmann, pro-rector at the PHS since 1982 and chairman of the history department since 1979. To judge from his published writings, Dieckmann, who was born on August 27, 1941, came from the same mold as Wolf and Tiedke.5 His dissertation B, the East German name for the traditional German Habilitionsschrift, was entitled “On the History of the Theory of Scientific Communism: the Founding and Evolution of the Theory of the Socialist Revolution by Karl Marx Friedrich, Engels, and Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin.” Only two years after receiving his PhD, Dieckmann was appointed a full professor at the PHS. He stayed there for the rest of his academic career. After the dissolution of the PHS and his own dismissal as rector, Dieckmann remained true to his convictions. He became active in promoting the “Red Fox” organization, an association that endorses the ideas of orthodox Marxist communism. In the dramatic upheavals of December 1989, the PHS did its best to support Krenz against the more radical reformers in the SED. On the

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other hand, also true to form, the PHS promptly congratulated Gregor Gysi on his election as head of the reformed SED-PDS.6 In his keynote address to the SED-PDS’ founding party congress, Gregor Gysi touched on a wide variety of topics, including the future of the PHS. While he admitted that the traditional forms of teaching at the party schools had become “largely obsolete (weitgehend überlebt),” he did want to keep the party schooling system operational because the SED-­ PDS needed trained functionaries who could effectively represent the party’s positions in public.7 Following Gysi’s suggestion, initially the SED-PDS executive committee decided that the PHS should remain the central school for training party functionaries, although it was to shed its image as the “red cloister.” The curriculum would now be “undogmatic.” The PHS would also coordinate its activities with Humboldt University. In the future, the PHS students would enroll in regular classes at the university. It was also decided to initiate a public relations effort. The PHS planned to create an “Institute for Applied Theory” that would be a meeting place for ongoing political discussions. In the future, the PHS library would also be open to the public, and the school planned to publish a new journal, called Konstruktiv (Constructive). At the same time, the PHS would continue to cooperate with its sister school in the Soviet Union and the equivalent institutions in what remained of the other socialist countries.8 None of these plans worked out. There were both financial and political reasons for this. In late April 1990, the PHS still had 238 “scholarly” and 307 “technical” associates,9 but without state subsidies, which the school had enjoyed for more than 40 years and which were now eliminated, the PDS had no way of paying the salaries of its employees. (In his keynote address, Gysi had already indicated that the SED-PDS could not afford to maintain multiple “scientific” institutes.10) There were also political objections from the genuine reformers in the party; for them, the PHS was just too closely associated with the old SED. In May 1990 the party’s executive committee reversed its decision of early January. It now decided that the school would cease operations by June 1990; Dieckmann was charged with working out the details of the dissolution, including finding financial settlements for the remaining employees. Instead of housing a functionary training institute, the school’s building, now called again Haus am Köllnischen Park, which was its original name before the PHS took it over, would become a “Place for Meetings and Public Relations Work (Stätte der Begegnung und

6 EPILOGUE 

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̋ Offentlichkeitsarbeit).” There was no mention of a gift shop, but somehow, the scaled-down institution was to be self-sustaining by 1992.11 Even this vision of the future proved to be far too ambitious. The “Meeting Place” never got off the ground, and the PDS tried to find buyers for its real estate. By 2017, the PHS’ original home in Kleinmachnow lay in ruins, and the party’s efforts to sell the PHS building in East Berlin ran into difficulties. There were a number of interested real estate developers, but none were able to realize their ambitions. In its latest reincarnation, the new (and former) owner of the building, a local health insurance officer, restructured and renovated the interior of the building. (The appearance of the outside façade is protected as a historic monument.) The owner hoped that by 2018, the edifice could be turned into 250 high-end condominiums.12

Notes 1. SED-PDS, Parteitag 12/1989. 2. This information is based on the Wikipedia (deutsch) article, “Akademie der Gesellschaftswissenschaften beim ZK der SED,” 11 May 2019. 3. PDS-PV, 1989–1993, ADS, no. 148, 22 Jan. 1990. 4. Ibid., 4 Jan, 1990. 5. See, for example, Götz Dieckmann, “Zum 165. Geburtstag von Friedrich Engels,” Wissenschaftliche Beiträge der Parteihochschule “Karl Marx” beim ZK der SED, 35 (no. 1, 1986), 3–8, and “Studie Grundwidersprüche,” Best. Hager, DY 30/26470; and the Wikipedia (deutsch) article, “Götz Dieckmann, 17 Oct. 2018.” 6. Gysi, Das war’s, p. 108. 7. SED-PDS, Parteitag 12/89, pp. 315–16. 8. PDS-PV, 1989–1993, ADS, no. 148, 2 and 4 Jan. 1990. 9. Ibid., no. 173, 24 April 1990. 10. SED-PDS, Parteitag 12/89, p. 316. 11. PDS-PV, 1989–1993, no. 173, 7 May 1990 and no. 175, 14 May 1990. 12. See the Wikipedia (deutsch) article, “Haus am Köllnischen Park,” 5 July 2019.

Index

A Abrassimov, Pjotr, 23 Academy for the Social Sciences, 52, 61, 74, 86 Africa, 59 Agriculture, 60 Andropov, Yuri, 65 Antifa (Anti-Fascist) Schools, 6, 7, 16, 51 B Benser, Günter, 87 Berlin, 7, 8, 16, 22 Bernstein, Eduard, 18 Bloch, Ernst, 9 Bolshevik Revolution, 17 Brezhnev, Leonid, 20, 23, 41 Broz, Josip (Marshall Tito), 10 C Capitalism, 18, 54–57, 59, 69, 73 research on, 54 See also Imperialism

Central Europe, 62 Chemiekombinat Bitterfeld, 54 China, 72 Classics of Marxism-Leninism, 15, 33, 52, 57, 75 Cold War, 8 Comintern, 65, 66 Class struggle, 18, 19, 32, 37, 38, 68 Cold War, 8 Comintern, 65, 66 Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD), 6–8, 10, 18, 29, 32, 34, 59, 66, 77 Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), 6, 8, 17, 29, 34, 41, 51, 59, 61, 65, 68, 75 Communist Youth Organization (Freie Deutsche Jugend, FDJ), 28, 51, 75 Conflict Paper, 62 Crisis of 1989, 71 Czechoslovakia, 39

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Orlow, The Parteihochschule Karl Marx under Ulbricht and Honecker, 1946–1990, Palgrave Studies in Political History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70225-0

91

92 

INDEX

D Deviationists, 18, 21 Dialog mit meinem Urenkel (book), 41 Dieckmann, Götz, 87, 88 Digital revolution, 35, 36, 39, 53, 61, 63, 70 Dresden, 69, 76 E East German Writers’ Association, 31 East Germany’s most prominent, 31 Eberle, Henrik, 29 Engels, Friedrich, 9, 17, 33, 51, 57, 58, 76, 87 Enquête Commissions, 2 Eppelmann, Rainer, 56 Eppler, Erhard, 61 F Fascism, 7, 18, 55, 56, 59, 61 Fehlerdiskussion, 18, 19, 21, 22, 41, 65, 66, 71, 72, 75 Feindbild, 18, 29, 53–55, 60, 61, 68, 73 Fock, Vladimir, 33 Foundation for Societal Analysis, 86 France, 10 G German Communist Party (KPD), 16 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 1, 7, 9–11, 17–23, 30, 32, 34–41, 51, 53–59, 62, 63, 66–70, 72–77, 86, 87 armed forces, 57 Central Planning Bureau, 40 crises of 1989, 71 and dissidents, 41 economic problems, 22, 39, 54

and human rights activists, 56 ideological indoctrination, 57, 59 National Defense Council, 10, 23 The Plan, 40 State Council, 10 Germany, 6, 8–11, 16, 35, 55, 56, 58 Soviet Zone of Occupation, 8, 11, 34 Geschichtsunterricht und Staatsbürgerkunde (periodical), 72 Glasnost, 65, 68, 69, 72 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 58, 61, 65, 66, 68–70, 72 Great Britain, 10 Gysi, Gregor, 86, 88 H Hager, Kurt, 10, 31, 35, 37–39, 41, 51, 52, 56, 60, 66, 68–71, 73–75, 77 assessment of, 74 exile, 10, 66 and Hanna Wolf’s retirement, 51 and PHS, 10, 31, 35, 38, 52 political career, 10 Hartmann, Karl, 33, 52 Hartung, Fritz, 40 Haus am Köllnischen Park, 88 Havemann, Robert, 22 Herger, Wolfgang, 71 Herold, Manfred, 30, 66 Herrmann, Joachim, 87 Herrnstadt, Rudolf, 20 Heym, Stefan, 31 History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik): Short Course (book), 9, 17 Honecker, Erich, 1–2, 21–23, 28–30, 32–35, 37, 39, 41, 42, 51, 52, 56, 58, 60–62, 66–69, 72–77, 87 appoints Hanna Wolf as personal advisor, 41

 INDEX 

and Communist Party, 29, 39, 41, 59, 61, 67 and concept of unity of economic and social policies, 52 and cult of personality, 23, 34, 35, 52, 58, 60, 66 dismissal of, 23 doctrine of the unity of economic and social policies, 52 and functional training, 29, 37 and ideology, 29, 37, 69, 75 and nuclear and chemical weapons, 62 and personality cult, 28, 30, 74 relation to Gorbachev, 58, 68, 69, 72 relation to Hanna Wolf, 21, 28–30, 32, 37, 41, 42 relation to Stalin, 29, 41, 42 resigns as general secretary, 50, 73 and unity of economic and social policies, 58, 73 work habits and nomenklatura, 28 and writing of history, 34, 58, 67, 73 Honecker, Margot, 1–2, 21, 72 Humboldt University, 16, 22, 88 Hungary, 38, 39 I Imperialism, 29, 54, 55, 57, 59, 69 Institute for Applied Theory, 88 Institute for Marxism-Leninism, 31, 52, 76, 87 Institute of the Working Class Movement, 87 J Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 39 Junker, Wolfgang, 74

93

K Kaderakte, 16, 30, 31 Kaderschmiede, 7, 31 See also SED functionaries Kant, Hermann, 18, 31 Karl Marx Order, 30 Kautsky, Karl, 18 KGB, 65 Khrushchev, Nikita, 17, 19 Kleinmachnow, 7, 17, 89 Kombinat, 60 Konstruktiv (planned journal), 88 Krenz, Egon, 29, 42, 72, 74, 76, 77, 87 failure of, 50 and PHS, 28–29, 50, 74, 87 and reforms, 42, 74 Kuczynski, Jürgen, 41, 69, 71, 76 L Latin America, 59 Lemmnitz, Alfred, 8 Lenin, Vladimir, 8, 9, 16–19, 33, 51, 54, 57, 58, 69 Leonhard, Wolfgang, 9–11, 75 Lindau, Rudolf, 7 Luft, Christa, 76 Luft, Hans, 76 Luthardt, Sylvia, 54 M Magdeburg, 51 Marx, Karl, 1, 9, 17, 20, 33, 51, 57–59, 76, 87 Das Kapital (book), 59 Foundations of the Criticism of the Political Economy (Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen ̋ Okonomie) (book), 57 Marxism-Leninism, 6, 7, 9, 10

94 

INDEX

Marxism-Leninism (cont.) claim to be a science, 53 and creation of ideal functionary, 6, 19 and the economy, 36 as science, 32, 33, 53, 75 and scientific-technical revolution, 70 as secular religion, 33 and state administration, 19 Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism, see Marxism-Leninism Mertens, Lothar, 76 Mielke, Erich, 69 Mittag, Günter, 57 Modrow, Hans, 7, 69, 76 Moscow, 10, 16, 29, 51 N Naimark, Norman, 9 National People’s Army, 59 NATO, 62 Neo-fascism, 55, 56, 68 Neues Deutschland (newspaper), 22, 72 Neumann, Alfred, 76 New Economic System (Neues ̋ Okonomisches System, NES), 20, 22 Nomenklatura, 2, 11, 28, 31, 38, 65 Nuclear and chemical weapons, 62 O Oder-Neisse line, 55 Opitz, Gerda, 32, 69 Oranienburg, 54 P “The Party Is Always Right” (song), 67

Party of Democratic Socialism (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, PDS) founding, 77, 88 and functionary training, 88 and Institute for Marxism-­ Leninism, 31, 87 internal organization, 32 “On the Causes of the Crisis in the SED and (East German) Society” (document), 71 and “scientific” institutes, 30, 88 Party of the new type, concept of, 8 Paterna, Erich, 7 People’s Republic of China, 72 Perestroika, 65, 69 Petzold, Joachim, 73 Poland, 16, 38, 39, 56 Polish United Workers’ Party, 35 Possner, Wilfried, 75 R Red Fox (organization), 87 Reinhold, Otto, 61, 74, 86 Reissig, Rolf, 86 Revanchism, 55 Rubiner, Frida, 7 S Sabrow, Martin, 29 Schmidt, Walter, 54 Schneider, Wolfgang, 30, 31, 33, 36, 50, 64, 70, 72 Schumann, Michael, 75 Scientific-technical revolution, 27, 32, 35, 36, 49, 57, 70 SED functionaries, 7, 21, 35, 37, 70, 76, 86, 87 Sino-Soviet split, 38

 INDEX 

Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD), 8, 34, 61–63, 86 Social Democratism, 34, 61, 63, 68, 73 See also Feindbild Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) and agitprop, 54, 62 cadres and ideology, 37 Central Committee (CC), 1, 19–22, 28, 31, 32, 34, 41, 42, 56, 76, 86 Central Committee document, 59, 60 Commission on Basic Values (Grundwertekommission), 61 criticism of, 9, 21, 67, 70 cultural politics, 10, 31, 59, 66 and digital revolution, 35, 36 and district secretaries, 2, 53, 54 and economic policy, 54 and election, 8, 28, 74, 88 founding of, 29, 34, 51, 59, 77, 88 and functionaries, 7, 11, 17, 19–21, 29, 35–37, 51, 53, 67, 68, 70, 76, 86, 87 general secretary, 23, 29, 30, 35, 41, 42, 52, 58, 66 and German history, 58 and German Jews, 56 history of at PHS, 34, 35, 75 and human rights activists, 56, 86 ideological indoctrination, 9, 29, 57, 59 and imperialism, 69 local elections in May, 1989, 71 loss of members, 30, 41, 51, 57, 62, 63, 71, 86 and 1989 crisis, 18

95

opposition to reform, 62, 66, 68, 75, 86, 87 party functionaries, 6, 17, 20 party of the new type, 8, 60, 86 pension system, 37 Politburo, 23, 28, 34, 40, 61, 71, 76, 86 and political jokes, 76 propaganda apparatus, 62 and reforms, 62, 69, 70, 74, 88 and self-criticism, 75 and Soviet Union, 10, 20, 38, 65, 66, 68 and Stalinism, 40 two nation theory, 35 unity of economic and social policies, 52, 58, 73 VIIIth Party Congress, 30 XIIth party congress, 52 XIIth Party Congress, 52, 70 XIth party congress, 57, 60 XIth Party Congress, 56, 57 and youth, 22, 51 Solidarity (Polish labor Union), 38, 39, 56 Soviet Military Administration, 9 Soviet Union, 6, 7, 10, 11, 16, 20, 30, 31, 33, 34, 38, 41, 59, 61, 65, 66, 68, 69, 72, 88 The SPD/SED Paper: The Conflict of Ideologies and Mutual Security, 62 Staatssicherheitsdienst (Stasi), 40, 69 Stalin era, 65 Stalin, Joseph, 6, 8–10, 16–19, 22, 29, 32, 41, 42, 57, 59, 61, 65, 66, 72, 77 and functionary training, 29 and Marxism, 6, 9 Stalinism, 17, 30, 40, 69, 75 State Council, 10, 23, 28 Stern (periodical), 66

96 

INDEX

Stern, Victor, 7 Strittmatter, Erwin, 20, 30, 66 Switzerland, 10 T Textilkombinat Cottbus, 31 Thälmann, Ernst, 59 Thälmann Institute, 32 Tiedke, Kurt, 7, 40, 51–77, 87 birth and career, 51 decoration awarded, 51 and pedagogical innovation, 50 praise for PHS, 52 relation to Erich Honecker, 69 secretary of PHS party organization, 52, 56 Trotskyists, 18 Two German nations theory, 35 U Ulbricht Group, 11 Ulbricht, Walter, 16–23, 28, 29 criticism of, 21, 22 final years and Erich Honecker, 21, 23 and reforms, 21, 23 reforms of the 1960s, 15, 20, 22 relation to Soviets, 19, 20

Wiederänder, Rudi, 30 Wolf, Hanna, 7, 16–23, 28–42, 51, 52, 63, 69, 72, 74–77, 87 advisor to Erich Honecker, 41 appointed rector of PHS, 16 assessment of, 30 birth and education, 23 career after World War II, 16 and Communist Party, 16, 17, 19, 20, 29, 32, 34, 35, 38, 39, 41 criticism of, 18, 21, 22, 33, 35, 37 death of, 40 and history of SED, 33–35 ideology of, 18, 22, 32, 34, 36 “On the History of the Comintern” (article), 72 opposition to reform, 21, 23, 38, 41, 42 and professional competence, 21, 29, 37 relationship to SED, 20, 21, 29, 30 relation to CPSU, 17, 29, 34 relation to Erich Honecker, 28–42 relation to Lenin, 17, 18 relation to Soviet Union, 16, 20, 30, 31, 33, 34, 38, 41, 72 relation to Stalin, 16–19, 41 relation to Walter Ulbricht, 16–23 retirement as rector, 37, 41, 51 and Ulbricht’s reforms, 21

V Vietze, Heinz, 54 Voigt, Karsten, 63 Volkskammer, 51

Y Youthful alienation, 22, 53 Yugoslavia, 10

W Warsaw Pact, 39 Weber, Hermann, 34

Z Zaisser, Wilhelm, 20 Zweiling, Klaus, 35