Occupied Germany
the east 1945-1948 		Recent History
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The GDR 1949-1969 : Domestic Policy



Establishment of the GDR . The USSR responded on the creation of the Federal Republic by establishing the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in its zone in 1949. On the other hand, the USSR was not yet willing to give up the concept of Germany being one political entity; nominally she maintained a Soviet administration over East Berlin (until 1961), and in 1955-1956 she proposed a unified Germany which, like Austria, would have to oblige herself to a course of political neutrality. The GDR thus was a provisional political entity, and the establishment of a full scale socialist state/society was affected by this situation, at least in the early 1950es. The GDR did not adopt a written political constitution until 1968. State and society were, step by step, transformed so that ultimately they appeared as a one-party socialist people's republic, although the term people's republic was avoided, and the charade of a multiparty state was upheld.

Political Constitution . The GDR began as a, by name, federal multiparty democracy; the state was composed of 5 Länder - Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen and Thüringen. The multiparty system consisted of the dominant SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, created by the enforced merger of KPD and SPD) offered, and a series of docile parties, the so-called block parties. These parties formed an Anti-Fascist Coalition; they did not compete against each other, but in elections to the People's Chamber, presented a united list; voters could only approve of disprove of the entire list. The People's Chamber was a rubber stamp institution; representatives of the Block Parties stooges of the SED. While nominally a multiparty state, the GDR functioned as a one party state.
Only once in GDR history did a number of CDU representatives vote against an SED-proposed law - in the case of abortion legislation in 1972.
The GDR had a kind of cabinet, the Council of Ministers or Council of State. It was another rubber stamp institution. Political power was concentrated in the SED, which, like the USSR, had a Central Committee. The most powerful political body in the country was the Politburo of the Central Committee.
In 1952 the charade of the GDR being a federal state was given up, the Länder dissolved, replaced by 14 districts.

Head of State was, until 1960, a president, since 1960 the Chairman of the State Council; this was a representative function. The most powerful office was that of First Secretary of the SED, held by Walter Ulbricht from 1950 to 1971. The GDR adopted a written constitution only in 1968.

The German-German Problem : To counter the massive outflow of manpower into Western Germany, the Line of Demarcation was closed-off and fortified (begun in 1948) : a massive, guarded fence was erected across Germany (and beyond), a part of the Iron Curtain.
However, Stalin did not give up his idea of a united, neutralized Germany. The Soviet eastern sector of Berlin was not integrated into the new GDR, Berlin as a whole remaining an island located in the GDR. And as there was neither a wall nor a fence separating the sectors of Berlin, Germans living in the GDR continued to pour into the west, via Berlin. They migrated in numbers averaging between 200.000 and 250.000 per year, until 1961.
The GDR accused the west - the US and its 'lackey" FRG to be an imperialist threat; the fortified border was called Antiimperialistischer Schutzwall (anti-imperialist protection wall). The GDR claimed to properly have dealt with Nazis on its territory (Denazification) and accused the FRG to tolerate many Nazis in political office or on other important positions in society.
Not without justification; in the years after the war, a number of prominent German exiles, among them Bertolt Brecht, returned to the GDR as 'the better German state'. Heinrich Mann died before he could realize his intention of settling in East Germany.

Control of Society . In the GDR, the media (radio, newspapers, tv) were controlled by the state. Import of anything printed from the west was banned; however, while listening to radio broadcasts from the west, watching tv broadcasts from the west was declared illegal, this could not be inforced. RIAS, a radio station broadcasting from West Berlin, reached a wide audience in the GDR.
The Federation of Labour Unions (FDGB) was to keep GDR workers in line. It did not function as a labour union - GDR politicians declared this function anachronistic, as the GDR was owned by the workers and peasants. The FDGB offered her members privileges, such s making use of their hostels in vacation areas. The events of June 1953 proved that the FDGB failed in her main task, to keep the workers in line.
The youth was to be raised in the spirit of socialism by schools (Russian first foreign language), by the FDJ, and to be prepared for warfare by the Society for Sports and Technology, the latter founded before the GDR had an army.
The churches (the Lutheran being more important) were permitted to operate, as long as they did not challenge the political system. The party propagated atheism; in 1954 the FDJ introduced the Jugendweihe, a socialist early coming-of-age ceremony intended as a secular replacement of the Lutheran confirmation.
In the early 1950es, the GDR, like other Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, actively pursued policies to transform the country into a socialist state accoding to the Soviet model - she pressed for Collectivization, pressurized the churches, was lucky to escape Soviet-engineered party purges due to the death of Stalin.

June 1953 . In June 1953, workers spontaneously stopped work and demonstrated against sudden price increases and increased emands of them at the workplace. Within a few days, demonstrators demanded free elections, and Soviet tanks rolled onto the streets, suppressing what western media called the June Uprising.

Policies since 1953 . Now the SED underwent party purges; those whose loyalty to the party (Soviet line) was regarded suspect were eliminated. Regarding the populace, the SED took on a much more careful policy. The churches were granted more freedom (the majority of GDR citizens were not church-going christians anyway); the citizens were allowed to express their individuality in private pursuits, which communist terminology until recently had branded s petit-bourgeois - stamp collecting, hobby gardening, pigeon breeding etc. Sports was promoted, both mass sports and professional sports.
The state pursued a policy of subsidizing or selling at cost most products - GDR citizens could consume (consumption limited by what was available), enjoyed housing at ridiculously low fees.

Berlin 1961 : In 1961, the USSR transferred East Berlin to GDR administration, and the Berlin Wall was constructed. The mass exodus of GDR citizens came to a halt, which hitherto had provied serious problems for the GDR. The refugees did not just compose statistics; many refugees were educated professionals difficult to replace.








EXTERNAL
FILES 		DDR im WWW, website on GDR, many links, in German
Popular Uprising on June 17th 1953, by Karl-Heinz Pahling
DDR Geschichte, from DDR Zeitzeugen, in German; articles on numerous aspects
Norbert Schnitzler's DDR Page, in German
Articles Walter Ulbricht, Socialist Unity Party, Leaders of East Germany, Broadcasting in East Germany, Free German Trade Union Federation, Subdivisions of the GDR, Uprising of 1953 in East Germany, Volkskammer, German Democratic Republic, Education in the GDR, Politics of East Germany, History of the GDR, from Wikipedia
East Germany : The Party System in 1950-1956 and 1957-1962, in : Kenneth Janda, Political Parties : A Cross-National Survey
DOCUMENTS DDR-Wappen - Hammer und Zirkel, from DDR im WWW, in German
From Ron Wise's World Paper Money : Soviet Occ. Zone 1 Mark banknote, 1948; GDR, 100 Mark banknote, 1975;
East German banknotes, from DDR im WWW
East German Propaganda, from German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College, speeches, posters, other propaganda items
Poster collection DHM, clickable titles, in German (5 posters from GDR)
The Lost Border, photographs of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall by Brian Rose
Transnational Poster Art : Former East Germany (GDR) and Latin America 1970-1989 , from Stanford Univ. Library
REFERENCE Hermann Weber, Geschichte der DDR (History of the GDR), München : dtv 1999, in German [G]
> Stefan Sommer, Das grosse Lexikon des DDR-Alltags (The Large Lexikon on GDR Everyday Life), Berlin : Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf 2002, in German [G]
Mary Fulbrook, The Divided Nation. A History of Germany 1918-1990, Oxford : UP 1991 [G]
A. James McAdams, Germany Divided. From the Wall to Reunification, Princeton UP 1994 [G]
Henry Ashby Turner Jr., The Two Germanies since 1945, Yale : UP 1987 [G]
Chapter 5 : Soviet Sector, Soviet one, pp.58-67 in : John Gunther, Inside Europe Today, NY : Harper & Bros. 1961 [G]
Article : Germany, in : Britannica Book of the Year 1950, pp.318-323, 1951 pp.322-326, 1952 pp.314-317, 1953 pp.311-315, 1954 pp.310-314, 1955 pp.359-362, 1956 pp.298-301, 1957 pp.359-361, 1958 pp.294-297, 1959 pp.295-298, 1960 pp.292-296, 1961 pp.299-303, 1962 pp.291-295, 1963 pp.405-410, 1964 pp.390-395, 1965 pp.386-390, 1966 pp.342-348, 1967 pp.371-374, 1968 pp.373-377, 1969 pp.368-372 [G]
Article : Germany, in : Americana Annual 1957 pp.318-324, 1961 pp.302-308, 1962 pp.304-310, 1963 pp.278-285, 1964 pp.275-282, 1965 pp.296-300, 1967 pp.307-312, 1968 pp.299-304, 1969 pp.315-320, 1970 pp.317-322 [G]
Article : Germany, in : Funk & Wagnall's New Standard Encyclopedia Year Book 1952 pp.180-182, 1961 pp.134-138 [G]


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2001, last revised on September 28th 2007

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