Rezension

Adelheid von Saldern, ed. Inszenierte Einheit:
Herrschaftsrepräsentationen in DDR-Städten. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003. 420 pp. EUR 68.00, ISBN 3-515-08301-4.

Reviewed for H-German by Ulf Zimmermann, Department of Political
Science and International Affairs, Kennesaw State University

Focusing on festivals, celebrations, and exhibitions, Adelheid von
Saldern and her contributors examine how the GDR regime used cities to represent itself on such occasions and how, in turn, the cities were able to use the regime to promote their local interests. What is novel about this undertaking is that cities in the GDR had received little scholarly attention before because they were not thought of as (political) agents since they did not have self-rule and were, in theory, at best regional representatives of the central government. As this research richly demonstrates, while the general refrain was "Berlin gets the best, the Republic the rest," other cities did compete, with various leaders in them seeking to build up social capital in the government and the party to exchange (à la Pierre Bourdieu) for economic capital for their cities.

Within a framework provided by Saldern three fellow historians examine a small assortment of cities that affords both a cross-section of different sizes and different social and economic character. Ranging from first-tier regional capitals like Leipzig and Rostock to second-tier ones like Magdeburg and Karl-Marx-Stadt, as well as small regional capitals like Erfurt and the little town of Leinefelde, the authors show, sampling different kinds of events, how local interests, contested identities, and individual agency are expressed with and against state directives. They concentrate on the 1960s when a new generation of party faithful was just coming to the fore and there were still clear-cut socialist goals, a moment
at which they see the clearest sense of a GDR identity--before it began its ineluctable decline in the O70s.

In the first section Lu Seegers deftly analyzes in one chapter
Rostock¹s 750th anniversary and in another Magdeburg¹s cultural celebrations. The regime wanted to use Rostock¹s "Baltic Week" (which it represented as celebrating "a sea of peace") as a counterweight to West Germany¹s "Kiel Week" (which it portrayed as NATO aggression). Rostock was perfect for this because it was a major East German tourist attraction with a somewhat important port (it had been a Hanseatic city that had, significantly, traded
with Novgorod). This was, moreover, the first modern anniversary that had not taken place in wartime (1918 and 1943), so that the regime could claim credit for a peaceful one.

The population was generally willing to support the regime by helping to clean up the city, though people were typically less enthusiastic about participating in marches and carrying banners. Here, as in the other cities, the people also participated because becoming a showplace meant that there would be unusual plenitudes of consumer goods. But as the authors do well to
explain, it was not long before this began to backfire because it
simply called further attention to the fact that such goods were not
ordinarily available. Once the GDR was granted international recognition as a nation in 1975, the regime no longer needed Rostock for its international self-representation and thus neglected the city, and the local attitude toward the regime declined commensurately, which confirms, as Seegers aptly notes, how much people¹s identification with a regime depends on consumer
issues.

In the case of Magdeburg Ulbricht himself wanted to promote this "city of heavy machinery construction" as a "show window to the West," partly because it was then the westernmost outpost of socialism. Magdeburg had never been much of a cultural center, though thanks to the initiatives of a new mayor who was able to network with party and ministry acquaintances in Berlin, it developed into something of a theatre and music city. Since it was
generally known that Till Eulenspiegel had committed some of his pranks in Magdeburg, the party was quick to cast him as sort of a socialist Robin Hood in a mass play. It also invoked the famous scientist Otto von Guericke since he had led the effort to rebuild the city after the Thirty Years¹ War, as the socialists would claim to have done after World War II. As Seegers judiciously demonstrates here, things did not always go only top down, even in a dictatorship like the GDR--an enterprising individual like this mayor could also get things done from the bottom up, demonstrating the importance
of historical contingency and personal agency.

In the second section Alice von Plato gives, in a chapter each,
thorough accounts of building a monument in Karl-Marx-Stadt, of the
international garden show in Erfurt, and of the "double diaspora" of Catholics and socialists in Leinefelde. Chemnitz had been renamed Karl-Marx-Stadt (though he had no personal connection whatever to it), after being daily legitimized to the citizenry in the local paper with references to the city as the "Saxon Manchester" and a stronghold of the German workers¹ movement, and thus predestined to be named after "Germany¹s greatest son." Locals
adapted: by abbreviating the new name into "Kammst" it was pretty close to what they had called "Chamms" anyway.

There was to be a monument to him, originally one of those standard 10-meter-tall monoliths in the middle of a huge plaza in which the state could demonstrate its massed might. German sculptors were disinclined to design such "megalomaniacal" pieces and in any case Ulbricht had already met a Russian sculptor, Lew Kerbel, who would do it since, as Plato reminds us, in such regimes the leader¹s wish is everyone¹s command. Kerbel and the city leaders quickly recognized, though, that a statue like this would mean that, from a pedestrian perspective, people would basically see Marx¹s shoes and his head would be the size of a pea. So he decided to do a more monumentally-sized version of a head he had already done on a smaller scale (it is, indeed, really more of a pure "head" than a traditional "bust").

Commanded to appear for the unveiling, the citizenry, of course, gave the regime its massive show "endorsement," but the people likewise appropriated the piece in their own way by referring to it as "Nischel" (Saxon for someone "pigheaded"). After the Wall came down there was, as in so many cases, some sentiment to get rid of it, but it was given official historic status and is now viewed as representing not the state and socialist politics but the "Stadt mit Koepfchen" ("city with brains") representing philosophy.

In this case, then, as Plato sees it, the state had not been able to
enact its original plan because of the artistic consideration of the sculptor on the one hand and the city leaders¹ conspiring with him to come up with their own plan on the other hand, demonstrating again the importance of contingency and agency. Even though Ulbricht himself had chosen him, this sculptor and local leaders changed everything.Plato is able to make a very similar case for the international gardening exhibition ("iga") in Erfurt. Previously the ministry of agriculture had held such an exhibition outside of Leipzig, but Erfurt had long been lobbying the ministry to get this ermanently. With its congenial climate it had, after all, always been the "flower city." And it was a happy coincidence that a friend of the mayor, a local boy who was a professional in the field and working at the ministry in Berlin, was a perfect candidate to lead this "iga." What was done here, therefore, was (mostly) what the local leaders wanted--partly, of course, because this kind of show was not really important enough to those in Berlin to worry too much about it.

Leinefelde is a more complicated tale. The population in this little
outpost near the West was 85 percent Catholic, mostly poor family farmers rather than organized labor, and they did not "come out" politically or otherwise, so that the regime was at a loss as to how to deal with them. Its solution was to make it a model workers¹ city--all that needed to be done was to start a large factory here, a cotton mill, which would require a huge number of workers. These, of course, could not be found in the small local population but a lot of people competent in that industry were to be found among the Saxons, who were not Catholics and considered most loyal to the
regime. By 1969 Leinefelde thus had a sufficient proportion of this
population that the government could proclaim it at least "a city under socialism" if not "a socialist city" and therefore granted it official municipal status, which gave it a small competitive edge in the region. As Plato shows, city leaders benefited their whole community economically from the new industry, and this important industry in turn gave them more clout with the regime in Berlin.

In the third section Elfie Rembold finely details two events in Leipzig
in 1965, the anniversary of the city¹s fair and that of the city itself.
There is a document from 1165 that grants Leipzig the sole right to hold a fair in its area. Now, while the city was likely founded earlier, it was in the interest of the party and Ulbricht to celebrate in 1965, because they believed they would have achieved some main socialist plans by then. City and fair officials wanted to celebrate the two together, but Ulbricht wanted the city¹s anniversary to coincide with that of the GDR to highlight those socialist achievements ("20 years are more than 780," i.e., socialism has done more for the people in the last 20 years than the previous regimes in all that other history). Accordingly, the fair was held in the spring and
the anniversary in early fall--when it really mattered the state got
its way and, as Rembold demonstrates, the city had little say (native son Ulbricht after all had the whole country, not just his city, to celebrate). But though the republic was foregrounded in speeches and flag displays, local historians presented the city in terms of architectural and other such history, rather than in terms of socialist progress, and that at least made the celebration more palatable to the populace.

In a rather lengthy summary, Saldern draws the various lessons from these case studies. For a city to get support for its goals from the regime the local actors had to demonstrate how those goals were in accord with the party¹s goals. As these cities illustrate, the double-edged lesson here is that the more of a stake the party had in a city¹s activities, the less operating room city leaders had--and vice versa. Lay participation was important to the state, so huge orchestras, choruses, mass plays, and the like were promoted.

Citizens did participate, but they "appropriated" more or less
positively (cf. Marx above) to suit their own tastes. Saldern rightly sees it as a kind of distance, an ironic stance of participation--one must remember that many people still had memories of the Nazis, after all. In people¹s own recollections of these events they see their participation positively, but, significantly, as having contributed to their local community--the city but not the state. It is important to note that, in addition to the scholarly literature available on the subject and the several archives, the contributors also consulted numerous local participants.

On the basis of her collaborators¹ substantial evidence Saldern
convincingly argues that we should therefore see the whole not as a conventional hierarchy but as a "Dispositiv" (à la Foucault), a more complex network of power and authority knitting these elements together. The state needs the cities (and their supportive populations) to represent itself palpably to the world; the cities need the state for their local economies. The fact that the cities soon began literally falling apart is likewise a concrete demonstration of this state¹s ultimate impotence. After this high point in the ¹60s, the state supported the cities¹ festivals less and less and the cities¹ discontent built up more and more opposition to the state.

Within that network, as illustrated in the cases, what got done was
accomplished through "Aushandlung," negotiation or bargaining, that seems to this reader much more akin to American intergovernmental relations than one might have expected of a centralized (and not really democratic) state. The discrepancies between "policy" made at the state/party level and "implementation" at the city level, which involved various groupings of actors and their shifting negotiations, are highly reminiscent of
American federalism. Perhaps Tip O¹Neill had pronounced a universal truth when he said "All politics is local."

Well-written by all hands, these trenchant political analyses and rich
microhistories not only give one a first-hand insight into intrastate
GDR politics but also truly make one get a sense of "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist." One should therefore look forward to their forthcoming comparative volume with special anticipation.

Copyright (c) 2005 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.

Zurück zur Publikationsliste