Intellectual Ferment in East Germany
HILDEBRANDT, RAINER
Population laughing at Stalinist rulers Intellectual Ferment in East Germany By Rainer Hildebrandt Berlin It is axiomatic that the public recognizes revolutions only when they manifest...
...As additional Sunday work, everyone is allotted 7 pounds of mandatory reading matter.' The souls chosen for this project were dragged from the cauldrons and admitted to the new hell...
...Because of the title, the local official in charge of culture was willing to authorize the performance only if the District Council gave its approval...
...The new "liberal Communist" regime in neighboring Poland has acted as a special irritant...
...Let's create a hell in their own style for the condemned souls of the torturers: a huge room plastered with slogans from floor to ceiling, huge loudspeakers everywhere blaring forth boring commentaries and morale-building songs, the entire furniture consisting of flag-draped rostrums...
...Finally, the County Council wired the Ministry: "tonight lindenhagen a presumably highly obscene play by a dubious author named harry hendrick title the minister in bed stop please advise whether performance should be prohibited...
...Finally, at about 10 o'clock, the head of the People's Art Group announced from the stage that for technical reasons the performance could not take place...
...But the discussions that resulted split the Party into two bitterly hostile camps...
...These fellows thanked me...
...At that very moment, an official at the County Council sank back in his chair, exhausted...
...In a forum discussion at Leipzig University, 200 students cited Lenin as their authority for demanding that no state functionary receive a salarv "exceeding that of a worker's wages...
...So he sent it the following telegram: "performance of one-acter title the minister in bed author a certain harry hendrick stop please advise whether performance feasible...
...In the Hall of Culture in Lindenhagen, an audience in festive mood was vainly waiting for the curtain to rise...
...They are phrasemongers, quotation merchants, varnishers of unpleasant truths, miserable agitators, cloying poetasters, non-stop orators, composers of nerve-wracking popular tunes, cultureless functionaries of culture...
...The obedient pupils copied each new result with delight and enthusiasm, while the naughty ones decorated the lavatory wall with outrageous inscriptions like 2X2=4...
...The public attacks on the professors ordered by Party boss Walter Ulbricht have merely served to make them even more popular among the students...
...When Eisler explained that the army of the German Democratic Republic was serving peace, his audience burst out laughing...
...The latter's moral effect throughout the entire satellite bloc explains why...
...Some children appealed to the teacher after class for an explanation, but he put them off with various excuses...
...It all began last October with a satirical piece in the Sonntag (this and the succeeding satirical sketches have been somewhat abridged by the writer) : "In one school, the teachers suddenly discovered that the children had all along been taught that 2X2 = 9. In order to gently acquaint the pupils with the truth, that 2X2=4, it was decided to do it by stages...
...Marx and Engels, they pointed out, stated that socialism would develop in each country according to its own economic, political and cultural laws...
...They are thrown into the cauldron with other sinners of every description...
...The Polish Government has apparently forgotten that it was once liberated by the Soviet Union...
...But the Ulbricht regime was hardest hit by satirical attacks in the press...
...A glance at political books in the university library showed that passages refuting Stalinism were heavily marked and annotated...
...A few insisted that the first version was right, that 2X2=9, because they were too lazy to do the problem over and over again...
...authorize performance forthwith stop all subordinate officials should at once become better acquainted with people's art and my pseudonym stop i am author of the minister in bed stop minister of culture...
...It suits them perfectly...
...Furious, the audience went home...
...Every resident must speak eight hours a day, with self-criticism every evening...
...Wolfgang Harich, a professor at the University and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Philosophy, who has since been arrested and sentenced to ten years at hard labor...
...They did not succeed in this or in their demand for voluntary attendance at sociological lectures and Russian courses...
...We shall also put a stop to future visits by Polish delegations...
...See The New Leader, April 1, 1957...
...But no one in the class had the slightest doubt that 2X2=4, because even the smallest child could count that far with its fingers...
...Yet, the events of the last six months in Germany's Soviet Zone show that a revolution is in full swing even though its scene is not the street or the factory and many of its leaders are in jail...
...When he came out, his face was white and he was shaking...
...The District Council did not dare make a decision on its own, so it turned to the County Council: "performance of a very obscene one-acter title the minister in bed author a certain harry hendrick stop please wire whether intervention necessary...
...Thus, they raised the question of whether Soviet experience was relevant to German conditions...
...Just as in Hungary, a few professors in East Germany formed the focus of intellectual discontent...
...Some indifferently copied the results in their notebooks...
...The story dealt with a play, The Minister in Bed, which was to be performed in the town of "Lindenhagen...
...Do you seriously believe that boiling is any punishment for these people who are hard-boiled by nature?' "For a long time, the Infernal Work Council was unable to find a solution, until finally a young devil came up with an idea: 'We should pay them back in their own coin for the misdeeds they've committed...
...now manager of the Infernal Combine, complained that people were still being punished the same way as 1,000 years ago: 'These past few years, we have had a large influx of souls who have been guilty of very serious though quite novel offenses...
...They think they're in paradise.' " Eulenspiegel published another satire directed at East German Culture Minister Becher, who was notorious for his all-absorbing interest in his own poetry...
...Herr Hell Director,' said the Devil-in-Chief, "what is the matter...
...Others revolted inwardly without protesting publicly...
...Under the slogan "Sharpen the Weapons of the Mind," the students began to interpret Marxism in the Marxist manner and to refute Stalinism with the classics of socialism...
...A few days later, the satirical magazine Eulenspiegel published an anecdote which is still circulating in the Soviet Zone: "Lucifer, the Prince of Hell (ret...
...That afternoon, Lucifer inspected the new hell...
...Despite attacks on such foci of infection as Eulenspiegel and repressive measures against the Harich group, Ulbricht has been unable to stem the rising ferment among intellectuals or heal the split in the Party...
...Population laughing at Stalinist rulers Intellectual Ferment in East Germany By Rainer Hildebrandt Berlin It is axiomatic that the public recognizes revolutions only when they manifest themselves in barricades or strikes, columns of marchers or the shedding of blood...
...and philosophy professor Ernst Bloch, who has lost his job...
...The following day, they were to be taught that 2X2 = 8, the day after that 2X2 = 7, etc...
...Before him lay a wire from the Ministry...
...In Berlin, it was Dr...
...In Dresden, the students observed a minute of silence for the victims of the Hungarian struggle for liberation, and in East Berlin statements by Polish and Hungarian intellectuals were posted on bulletin boards...
...In a recent secret speech to Party functionaries, Ulbricht declared: "Poland now indulges in propaganda which we are going to protest vigorously...
...In Leipzig, many students rallied around the student chaplain Schmutzler, who has also been arrested...
...Have we made the new hell too cruel?' Lucifer groaned: 'It's terrible...
...Gerhart Eisler, who returned to Germany after emigrating to America and often leads discussion groups, was asked by students why East German toy shops sold People's Police tin soldiers whereas the West German Government vigorously opposed the sale of toy soldiers...
...Many East German Stalinists hope that Moscow will eventually remove the present Gomulka regime in Warsaw...
...Not all the pupils reacted in the same way...
...It started in September 1956, when the students of Humboldt University in East Berlin, prompted by the example of the Hungarian students, demanded representation for themselves independently of the FDJ, the Communist youth organization...
Vol. 40 • May 1957 • No. 21
