Antifascism and Memory in East Germany: Remembering the International Brigades 1945-1989 (Oxford Historical Monographs)

OXFORD HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS EDITORS R. R. DAVIES

R. J. W. EVANS

J. HARRIS

B. WARD-PERKINS

J. ROBERTSON

R. SERVICE P. A. SLACK

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Antifascism and Memory in East Germany Remembering the International Brigades –

JOSIE M C LELLAN

CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Josie McLellan  The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Data available ISBN –––           Typeset in Ehrhardt by Cambrian Typesetters, Frimley, Surrey Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk

To S O N I A , I A N , and A L I C E

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PREFACE From the outset, I have been lucky enough to meet countless kind and knowledgeable people who have gone out of their way to help and advise me. Chief amongst them are Peter Grieder and Tom Buchanan, the tireless and exemplary supervisors of the doctoral thesis on which this book is based. Peter Grieder provided expertise on the East German political system, and first-hand experience of the workings of the German archives. Most of all, he provided boundless enthusiasm for this project: I always left our meetings with renewed optimism. Tom Buchanan’s knowledge of the Spanish Civil War was a constant reminder that there was life outside the GDR. And as if putting up with my East German fixation was not bad enough, he went far above and beyond the call of duty by nobly agreeing to act as advising editor for this book. It is unlikely that I would have even have thought of postgraduate work had I not been an undergraduate at Sussex University’s School of European Studies. It was an inspirational place to study, personified for me by Rod Kedward, my personal tutor for three years. It is even more unlikely that I would have been able to undertake this research without financial assistance, and I was most fortunate to receive an Arts and Humanities Research Board studentship. The Theodor Heuss Research Fellowship, awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, funded a year-long stay in Germany, during which I carried out the bulk of my archival research. Follow-up trips were supported by travel grants from Mansfield College, Oxford and the German Historical Institute, London. The most memorable and enjoyable part of my research was the interviews I carried out with former citizens of the GDR. I am very grateful to all those who consented to be interviewed, some of whom also gave me access to unpublished material. The archivists of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, the Akademie der Künste, the Landesarchiv Berlin, the Gauck Behörde, the Matthias Damaschk Archiv, the Staatsbibliothek Berlin and the Staatsund Universitätsbibliothek Karl von Ossiestky, Hamburg, were unfailingly helpful, often going out of their way to find documents and even set up interviews. At the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam, I was lucky enough to meet Simone Barck, Thomas Heimann, Mario Keßler, and Siegfried Lokatis, inspirational researchers who were most generous with their time and expertise. Andreas Graf and Dieter Nelles were a mine of information on German anarchism. Birke Stahl provided accommodation,

viii

Preface

friendship, linguistic help, and an East German perspective. Thanks also to fellow ‘archive rats’ Alan McDougall, Mark Fenemore, and Damian Mac Con Uladh for companionship, references, and gin. Back in Oxford, Martin Conway has been an unfailing supporter of this project. Conversations with Jeffrey Herf, Wolfgang Emmerich, and Karen Leeder proved crucial, perhaps more than they realized. Zoe Waxman has been a great friend and an insightful critic. The examiners of my thesis, Jonathan Osmond and Nick Stargardt, made invaluable suggestions for publication. The staff of the Department for Historical Studies at the University of Bristol have listened to my research papers and bought me a drink afterwards—nobody could ask for nicer colleagues. Leon Quinn has seen this project evolve from Berlin to Bristol, reading every word along the way (sometimes twice). I am sure he never realized that the Spanienkämpfer would come to play such a big role in his life, but he has put up with it generously and uncomplainingly. If anybody deserves a medal, it is him. Finally, this book is dedicated to my parents and sister, who have inspired and encouraged me at every step. J.M.

CONTENTS List of Illustrations

x

Abbreviations

xi

Introduction



. The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



. Strangers in a Strange Land: The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



. The Uses of History: The Party Appropriates Spain



. Reluctant Heroes: Veterans and the State Contest the Meaning of the War



. Heroes Like Us? The Second Generation Rediscovers the Volunteers



. Undiplomatic Statements: Censoring Spain



. Stalinism and Silence



Conclusion



Bibliography



Index



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . Fritz Cremer’s initial design for the International Brigades memorial statue . The International Brigades memorial statue, BerlinFriedrichshain . National People’s Army soldiers, watched by members of the Free German Youth, lay wreaths at the International Brigades memorial statue, 

  

ABBREVIATIONS AAV

AdK AKA

BArch BHE BZA CDU CEDA CNT CPSU DAS DBD DEFA DFD DWK FDGB FDJ FRG GDR GST IML KdAW

Archiv des Aufbau Verlages (Dep. 38), Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Aufbau Publishing House Archive) Akademie der Künste der DDR (East German Academy of Arts) Alfred-Kantorowicz-Archiv, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl- von Ossietzsky (Alfred Kantorowicz Archive) Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive) Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach  ( vols., Hamburg, ) Beiträge zur Geschlichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung Christian Democratic Union Confederacion Espanola de Derechas Autonomas (Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right) Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Labour Confederation) Communist Party of the Soviet Union Deutsche Anarchosyndicalisten im Ausland (German Anarcho-Syndicalists Abroad) Demokratische Bauernpartei Deutschlands (Democratic Peasants’ Party of Germany) Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (GDR State Film Studio) Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands (Democratic Women’s League of Germany) Deutsche Wirtschaftskommission (German Economic Commission) Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (Free German Trade Union Association) Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth) Federal Republic of Germany German Democratic Republic Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik (Society for Sport and Technology) Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus (Institue for Marxism-Leninism) Komitee der Antifaschistischen Widerstandskämpfer

xii KPD KPO MELS ND NDPD NSDAP NVA OSS POUM RIAS SA SadK SAP SAPMO-BArch SED Sektion Spanienkämpfer SIM Spanienkämpfer Spanienkämpferinnen SPD Stasi SS USC VVN ZPKK

Abbreviations (Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters) Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party) Kommunistische Partei (Opposition) (Communist Party (Opposition) ) Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institut (which became the IML in ) Neues Deutschland (‘New Germany’, the official newspaper of the SED’s Central Committee) National-Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany) Nationalsozialistische Partei Deutschlands (German National Socialist Party) Nationale Volksarmee (National People’s Army) Office of Strategic Services Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification) Radio in the American Sector Sturmabteilung (Nazi paramilitary organization) Stiftung Archiv Akademie der Künste (Archive of the Academy of Arts) Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschland (German Socialist Workers’ Party) Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party) Subcommittee of the KdAW run by International Brigade veterans Servicio Investigacion Militar (Military Investigation Service) ‘Spain-warriors’, East German International Brigade veterans Female East German International Brigade veterans Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Ministry for State Security) Schutzstaffel (Nazi elite guard) Unitarian Service Committee Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes (Union of the Victims of Nazism) Zentral Parteikontrollkommission (Central Party Control Commission)

Introduction ‘ V E N C E R E M O S !’

WA LT E R JA N K A A N D T H E W E N D E

On the evening of  November , just four days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsches Theater in East Berlin found itself with a full house. The crowd was so large that loudspeakers had to be set up to relay proceedings to the people packed in the foyer. What brought so many East Germans out on a chilly Sunday evening? Perhaps surprisingly, the occasion was a reading from the memoirs of Walter Janka, a German veteran of the International Brigades. Following the reading, Janka took to the stage and addressed the audience, ending his short speech with a rallying cry: ‘I repeat the call which, in the hard years, always gave us German antifascists [and] the Spanish and international volunteers courage, as we gained hardwon victories before Madrid, Teruel, Saragossa and on the Ebro: Venceremos! We will win!’ The reading and Janka’s speech were broadcast live on East German state radio, and later shown on state television. The hundreds of letters listeners and viewers sent to Janka give some indication of the popular response to his story. Janka’s memoir, previously only available in West Germany, quickly appeared in the East, and was followed eighteen months later by a full-length autobiography. These books described his workingclass childhood and involvement with the KPD, his time in Spain as the only German in charge of a Spanish division, the years of exile in Mexico during the Second World War, and his return to East Germany, where he became a successful publisher. Janka’s life in the GDR was turned upside down in  when he was arrested for ‘counter-revolutionary’ activities. Despite his protestations of innocence at his show trial, he served three years in prison and then languished in obscurity after his release, stripped of all official status, even recognition as an antifascist veteran. Janka returned to centre stage during the Wende, or ‘change’, as the collapse of the GDR has come to be known. His story was seen as emblematic of the failure of the GDR and specifically the SED regime to live up to  

W. Janka, Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit (Hamburg, ), . A. Eichhorn and A. Reinhardt, Nach langem Schweigen endlich sprechen: Briefe an Walter Janka (Berlin and Weinheim, ).  W. Janka, Spuren eines Lebens (Hamburg, ).



Introduction

the antifascist-democratic aspirations of its foundation. Many saw Janka as the embodiment of the noble tradition of German socialism, antifascism, and resistance which had been betrayed in the years after . His working-class background and particularly his participation in the Spanish Civil War marked him out as a representative of ‘authentic’ communism, not the distorted version peddled by the SED. His story represented the many untold stories of the victims of state repression which were beginning to be heard in the autumn of . This rediscovery of history, led in many cases by prominent GDR intellectuals (the writer Christa Wolf introduced the reading from Janka’s book, which had been organized by the dramatist Heiner Müller amongst others), contrasted with the regime’s unwillingness to countenance any open discussion about the past and its negative attitude towards the USSR’s policy of glasnost. However, the question remains as to why the past, and specifically the antifascist past, took on such great importance in this period. What relevance did Janka’s experiences in the Spanish Civil War—over fifty years previously—have for a generation of Germans born and raised under state socialism? With their country and indeed the entire Eastern bloc in a state of turmoil, they might have been expected to be preoccupied with more immediate concerns. So what was it about ‘Venceremos!’ that struck a chord? These questions will be central to this book, and the answers lie not just in the ‘hard years’ that Janka and his comrades spent in Spain, but also in a longer, more attritional battle spanning the lifetime of the GDR itself.

M E M O RY A N D A N T I FA S C I S M I N E A S T G E R M A N Y

The German Democratic Republic was set up in  as a self-proclaimed ‘antifascist-democratic’ state. Its leaders hoped to define the new state as the better Germany, heir to the progressive traditions of the resistance to Nazism. The founders of the GDR understood fascism to be a capitalist phenomenon. Following this logic, the establishment of socialism in the GDR had removed the roots of fascism and ensured a clean break with the Nazi past. West Germany, on the other hand, had kept both the social structure and the individuals who had made Nazism possible. Thus, underground resistance against Hitler, political activities in exile, German participation in the Allied forces, and involvement on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War were all seen as part of the prehistory of the East 

See Ch.  below for a more detailed discussion of the SED’s conception of antifascism.

Introduction



German state. As the GDR lacked a liberal democratic system, antifascism was a crucial means of gaining legitimacy and support inside and outside its borders. A considerable number of East German citizens, especially intellectuals, felt real loyalty to a state that defined itself as antifascist. The leaders of the GDR, many of whom had been in the resistance, in concentration camps, or in exile, also benefited from their morally unimpeachable position as proven antifascists. Logic demanded that anyone who dared to attack or criticize an antifascist state must themselves be fascist. Therefore, the popular uprising against the regime on  June  was branded a ‘fascist putsch’, and the Berlin Wall became known as the ‘antifascist protection bulwark’ after its erection in . That antifascism outlasted the ‘antifascist protection bulwark’ was demonstrated by the heated debate on the subject which took place after the Wende. Antifascism’s defenders saw it, despite its faults, as a positive German historical tradition and a uniquely East German contribution to reunification. East German writers and intellectuals emphasized their very real emotional attachment to antifascism. Many of them saw an examination of the mistakes of communism as a vital part of reinvigorating socialism. This desire to preserve their ties to ‘good’ antifascism through a dissection of ‘bad’ Stalinism is demonstrated by the resonance of Walter Janka’s experiences. Christa Wolf ’s introductory speech at the reading in the Deutsches Theater described Janka’s story as an example of the mistakes of the past which must be confronted if the ‘renewal of society’ was to take place. Academics also tried to separate antifascism and Stalinism, emphasizing the multiplicity of antifascist traditions and the lives and aspirations of German émigrés.  Cf. M. R. Thompson, ‘Reluctant Revolutionaries: Antifascism and the East German Opposition’, German Politics, / (), –.  West Germany had its own specific tradition of antifascism, largely originating in the late s, when student protesters began a critical confrontation with the experiences of their parents’ generation under fascism.  Cf. D. Bathrick, The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR (Lincoln, Nebr., ), –; M. Fulbrook, German National Identity after the Holocaust (Cambridge, ), –.  C. Wolf, ‘Vorwort’, in W. Janka, Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit (Berlin and Weimar, ), . Cf. ead., ‘Das haben wir nicht gelernt’, in Angepaßt oder mündig? Briefe an Christa Wolf im Herbst , ed. P. Gruner (Frankfurt am Main, ), –, which places similar emphasis on the importance of a critical confrontation with the past.  See the special edition of New German Critique,  (winter ) on ‘Legacies of Antifascism’, esp. the articles by Frank Stern and Mary Nolan: M. Nolan, ‘Antifascism under Fascism: German Visions and Voices’, –; F. Stern, ‘The Return to the Disowned Home: German Jews and the Other Germany’, –.



Introduction

Antifascism’s opponents, however, saw it as ‘prescribed’ from above— purely a Stalinist state ideology which bore no relation to the memories and sympathies of the population. Antonia Grunenberg’s analysis of antifascism before, during, and after the Second World War paints a picture of an antidemocratic ideology, based on the authority of the state and the communist party. According to this view, antifascism and Stalinism are not only linked, they are virtually synonymous. Writers on the GDR often saw antifascism as the cynical abuse of history by the SED in order to legitimize an undemocratic state. The political scientist Sigrid Meuschel described how antifascism simultaneously ensured the loyalty of an educated antifascist intelligentsia and suppressed any potential discussion of Stalinism, thereby helping to maintain the GDR’s reputations as one of the most stable countries in the Eastern bloc. Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle, meanwhile, saw antifascism merely as proof that ‘where tyrants appear to be solicitous and keen to educate the nation [volkspädagogisch], they produce the opposite of their proclaimed aim’. While some commentators used antifascism as a convenient stick with which to beat the GDR and the German left in general, there can be no doubt that many of antifascism’s critics had valuable points to make, in particular their emphasis on the shortcomings of GDR historiography. This has prompted historians to explore areas crucial for an understanding of the GDR: ‘the double morality of a rigorous antifascism and an underdeveloped anti-Stalinism’; the ways in which the dominant antifascist discourse prevented a thorough confrontation with topics such as the  A. Grunenberg, Antifaschismus: Ein deutscher Mythos (Hamburg, ), . Cf. id., ‘Dichotomous Political Thought in Germany before ’, New German Critique,  (winter ), –. H. Ammon, ‘Antifaschismus im Wandel? Historisch-kritische Anmerkeungen zur Aktualität eines Begriffs’, in U. Backes, E. Jesse, and R. Zittelmann (eds.), Die Schatten der Vergangenheit: Impulse zur Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, ), –, shares her critical perspective, particularly in relation to the German Left.  S. Meuschel, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft: Zum Paradox von Stabilität und Revolution in der DDR – (Frankfurt am Main, ), –.  A. Mitter and S. Wolle, Untergang auf Raten: Unbekannte Kapitel der DDR-Geschichte (Munich, ), .  e.g. Dan Diner, ‘On the Ideology of Antifascism’, New German Critique,  (winter ), –.  K. H. Jarausch, ‘The Failure of East German Antifascism: Some Ironies of History as Politics’, German Studies Review,  (Feb. ), –.  C. Kleßmann, ‘Das Problem der doppelten “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” in der früheren DDR’, in R. Eckert, W. Küttler, and G. Seeber (eds.), Krise—Umbruch—Neubeginn: Eine kritische und selbstkritische Dokumentation der DDR Geschichtswissenschaft / (Stuttgart, ), .

Introduction



Holocaust; and how communist experiences during the Second World War affected the relationship between the regime and population in East Germany. Much of this work echoed wider historiographical debates on history and memory. These debates have often focused on national or collective memory, particularly intriguing in the East German context due to the contrast with West German attempts to ‘come to terms with the past’. But to write about ‘collective memory’ or ‘East German antifascism’ in such broad terms is perhaps misleading. Neither memory nor antifascism are fixed, in fact it is perhaps more accurate to think about these topics as a many-layered and changing collection of discourses about the past. That the state can and does intervene in processes of memory, particularly in a one-party dictatorship such as the GDR, does not mean that these ‘official’ interventions are hegemonic. Bernd Faulenbach’s formulation  J. Herf, ‘German Communism, the Discourse of “Antifascist Resistance”, and the Jewish Catastrophe’, in M. Geyer and J. W. Boyer (eds.), Resistance Against the Third Reich – (Chicago and London, ), –; id., ‘East German Communists and the Jewish Question: The Case of Paul Merker’, Journal of Contemporary History,  (), –.  O. Groehler, ‘Erblasten: Der Umgang mit dem Holocaust in der DDR’, in H. Loewy (ed.), Holocaust: Die Grenzen des Verstehens (Hamburg, ), –.  J. Winter and E. Sivan provide a lucid and comprehensive introduction to current work on history and memory in their ‘Setting the Framework’, in E. Sivan and J. Winter (eds.), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, ), –. K. Lee Klein ‘On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse’, Representations,  (winter ), pp. –, is an incisive and critical look at the ways in which historians use the term ‘memory’.  See e.g. J. R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, ); M. Fulbrook, German National Identity after the Holocaust; T. Judt, ‘The Past is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe’, Daedalus  (fall ), –; M. Geyer, ‘The Place of the Second World War in German Memory and History’, New German Critique,  (spring–summer ), –.  Comparisons between Eastern and Western Vergangenheitsbewältigung include U. Herbert and O. Groehler, Zweierlei Bewältigung: Vier Beiträge über den Umgang mit der NSVergangenheit in den beiden deutschen Staaten (Hamburg, ); P. Reichel, Politik mit der Erinnerungen: Gedächtnisorte im Streit um die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit (Munich and Vienna, ); J. Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanies (Cambridge, Mass., ); A. Maislinger, ‘ “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, der DDR und Österreich: Psychologish-pädagogische Maßnahmen im Vergleich’ in Backes, Jesse, and Zittelmann (eds.), Die Schatten der Vergangenheit, –.  See A. Rabinbach, ‘Introduction: Legacies of Antifascism’, New German Critique,  (winter ), ; and Tim Cole’s excellent review article, ‘Scales of Memory, Layers of Memory: Recent Works on Memories of the Second World War and the Holocaust’, Journal of Contemporary History, / (), –.  On memory under state socialism, cf. R. S. Watson, Memory, History and Opposition under State Socialism (Santa Fe, ); C. Merridale, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia (London, ); C. Merridale, ‘War, Death and Remembrance in Soviet Russia’, in Sivan and Winter (eds.), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, –.



Introduction

‘SED-antifascism’ is more precise, but attributes to it a stability and homogeneity it did not possess. Even the official state interpretation of the past was subject to change, and not every member of the SED (. million strong in ) can have held an identical view on the topic. Rather than trying to define a specific East German collective memory or concept of antifascism, it seems to make more sense to look at the variety of narratives about the past. My study of the memories of the International Brigades in the GDR is a case study of East German antifascism ‘in action’. As an army of international volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War occupied a unique position in the history of the European Left. They present a particularly interesting window onto questions of antifascism and memory, combining military, political, social, cultural, and international aspects. Although many would agree with Eric Hobsbawm’s assertion that the Spanish Civil War ‘now seems to belong to a prehistoric past’, the events of – continue to exert a considerable hold over the popular imagination. In the GDR, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War were not just remembered by those who had taken part in the war. Veterans such as Walter Janka were of course of central importance to the memory of the Brigades, but their history also meant something to people who had not experienced Spain. At opposite ends of the spectrum, the war was used by the SED as an important part of education and propaganda campaigns, and was discussed by non-Stalinist socialists searching for an alternative to ‘really existing socialism’. The way in which Spain became an object of remembrance for East German society as a whole reveals much about both antifascism and the process of remembering under state socialism.  B. Faulenbach, ‘Zur Funktion des Antifaschismus in der SBZ/DDR’, Deutschlandarchiv,  (), .  M. Allinson, Politics and Popular Opinion in East Germany – (Manchester, ), .  On East German antifascist narratives see esp. S. Barck, Antifa-Geschichte(n): Eine literarische Spurensuche in der DDR der er und er Jahre (Cologne, ), . On narratives in oral history see M. Chamberlain and P. Thompson (eds.), Narrative and Genre (London, ); R. Samuel and P. Thompson (eds.), The Myths We Live By (London, ). On written narratives and autobiography cf. P. Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Invention in Narrative (Oxford, ); L. Marcus, Auto/biographical Discourses (Manchester, ); P. Sloterdijk, Literatur und Organisation von Lebenserfahrung (Munich, ).  E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century – (London, ), .  See e.g. the burgeoning historiography of the International Brigades discussed below, the special edition of the Guardian newspaper devoted to the British survivors of the Brigades (‘They shall not pass’, Guardian,  Nov. ), and the recent republication of Orwell’s writings on the Spanish Civil War (G. Orwell, Orwell on Spain (Harmondsworth, )).

Introduction



S O U RC E S

Perhaps even more so than in Western countries, history in the GDR was by no means confined to conventional historiography. While a large historical profession did exist, with a corresponding output of monographs, articles, and conference proceedings, professional historians did not possess a monopoly. Newspaper articles, brochures and pamphlets, films and TV documentaries, schoolbooks, anniversary commemorations and ceremonies, memorial statues and plaques, street names, sporting events, commemorative stamps—all formed part of the wide-ranging ‘theatres of memory’ in which the past was ‘presented’. In fact, these more popular forms of history had a much wider circulation and a far greater impact on the historical consciousness of the GDR population than professional historiography. Fiction and poetry, films, and paintings provided another perspective on the war, which often contrasted with the depiction provided by formally ‘historical’ accounts. The archives are a particularly rich source of information for any historian of East German antifascism. The Berlin branch of the German Federal Archive is an invaluable resource, as it holds not only the main East German state archive, but also the archives of the parties and mass organizations of the GDR, including the SED party archive. The IML collected large amounts of original material on the Spanish Civil War, as well as commissioning veterans to write pieces for their memoir archive. Stories of censorship and book production can be traced using the records of the Ministry of Culture, which kept a file on every book published in the GDR. The archives of publishing houses, such as that of the Aufbau Verlag, now to be found in the Berlin City Library, help to fill in any gaps. Elsewhere, the archives of the AdK are a rich source of information on writers and artists, containing large collections of letters, unpublished manuscripts, diaries, and drawings. Archives, despite their rich and varied holdings of official and personal material, cannot tell the whole story. Those individuals who fell into disfavour with the state were unlikely to be asked to write for the memoir archive or deposit their letters for posterity. Equally, those who did write for the archive often practised a measure of self-censorship. The silences created by these omissions can never be fully reconstructed, but memoirs 

R. Samuel, Theatres of Memory (London, ). A. Nothnagle, ‘From Buchenwald to Bismark: Historical Myth-Building in the GDR’, Central European History, / (), . 



Introduction

published in the period following  fill in some of the gaps, as do archives such as the Matthias Damaschk Archive, set up in  by former GDR dissidents to allow access to samizdat literature and material on the history of the East German opposition. Oral history also goes some way toward creating a more detailed picture of memory in the GDR. In  and , I carried out a series of interviews with seven International Brigade veterans, two widows of veterans, a number of GDR historians who had written on the Spanish Civil War, several film-makers and literary critics who had worked on Spain, as well as one former dissident activist. These interviews provided valuable insights into the volunteers’ experiences of the war, veteran life, and the nature of cultural production in the GDR.

S PA I N I N A C O L D C L I M AT E : T H E I N T E R NAT I O NA L B R I G A D E S A N D E A S T G E R M A N P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E

Despite its later focus on East Germany, this story begins in Spain. The German volunteers’ decision to travel to Spain and their reactions to the new and strange situation that they found there are what made the Spanish Civil War such a compelling subject. Their delight at the warm welcome they received from the Spanish people and the camaraderie of life in the Brigades was soon overshadowed by the grim reality of battle. The military superiority of the Nationalist forces and the eventual defeat of the Republic were bitter pills to swallow for men and women who had staked everything on Spain. The ‘odyssey’ of the German volunteers deserves a book in its own right, and my first chapter can only sketch the contours of German participation in Spain. Although the remaining chapters of this book deal with the memory of the Spanish Civil War from  to , they are not ordered chronologically. The memory of the war did change significantly in the course of this forty-four-year period, but I have chosen to track these changes in six thematic chapters, all of which draw on material from throughout the lifespan of the GDR. Chapter  looks at the lives International Brigade veter On the practice and pitfalls of oral history see R. Perks and A. Thomson (eds.), The Oral History Reader (London, ); R. Samuel and P. Thompson, ‘Introduction’, in Myths We Live By, –; A. Portelli, ‘The Peculiarities of Oral History’, History Workshop Journal,  (), pp. –; Chamberlain and Thompson, Narrative and Genre; G. Prins, ‘Oral History’ in P. Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Cambridge, ), –. L. Niethammer, A. von Plato, and D. Wierling, Die volkseigene Erfahrung: Eine Archäologie des Lebens der Industrieprovinz der DDR (Berlin, ) is a pioneering oral history of GDR life.

Introduction



ans made for themselves in the GDR, their interactions with the regime, and their shared identity as Spanienkämpfer. The following chapter examines the party’s attempts to appropriate the war for educational and propaganda purposes. While veterans were happy to see ‘their war’ commemorated, this did not mean that they accepted the party’s version of events unquestioningly. Chapter  focuses on the contested territory of heroism: both veterans and the regime agreed that the volunteers had been heroes, but they had great difficulty agreeing on the nature of their heroism. The communist heroes depicted in official history books were often rejected by both veterans and the general reading public as one-dimensional. The shortcomings of official publications spurred some young writers and artists to tackle the subject of Spain themselves. Their interpretations—often radically different from that of the SED—are explored in Chapter . Chapter  examines the ways in which the regime, veterans, and the younger generation interacted within the confines of the censorship process and how those whose stories had little chance of publication preserved their memories in the family. Finally, Chapter  tackles the thorny topic of Stalinism, the one topic which remained truly taboo in discussions of the war. Within these chapters, five main thematic areas emerge: the specific experiences of the veterans as an antifascist generation; the continuities between pre- and post-war German communism; the central position of antifascism in East German culture; the interpretations of antifascism developed by groups other than the SED; and the plurality of memories and discourses about the past which coexisted in the GDR. The German volunteers were to bear the marks of life in the International Brigades for the rest of their lives. Despite the new beginning offered by the end of the Second World War and the foundation of the GDR, they were unable to escape the personal and political legacies of the pre-war period. The leaders of the GDR were predominantly, at least in the early years of the state, veterans of the antifascist resistance and exile. Both Walter Janka and his persecutor-in-chief Erich Mielke, head of the East German Stasi or secret police, had been members of the International Brigades, in fact the two men had first met in Spain. Officially the antifascist aristocracy of the GDR, veterans found themselves in an ambiguous situation as the political priorities and visions which had sustained them throughout twelve years of Nazi persecution were subsumed to the contingencies and necessities of post-war reality. During the Cold War, suspicion fell on those who had spent time in the West during the exile period. Faced with such difficulties, veterans often turned to each other for support and



Introduction

comradeship, forming networks which were later used to bring the war into the public eye. Just as the veterans represented the human continuity between the s and the s, there were also strong ideological continuities between pre- and post-war communism. The political culture of East Germany did not emerge fully fledged in  or , but was profoundly influenced by the experiences of German communists in the Weimar and Nazi periods. An understanding of the mentalities of the s can offer important insights into the mindset of the East German leadership. Even those who fell victim to Stalinist party justice, such as Walter Janka and Politburo member Franz Dahlem, were often deeply committed party members, who were involved in censorship and the suppression of opposing views. Yet antifascism was more than just a fig leaf used to cover the SED’s democratic deficit. It was a central component of East German political culture. How it was used, and the silences surrounding it, reveal a great deal about the state and the nature of opposition to the regime, from its foundation to its collapse. The history of antifascism occupied a central place in the ‘disciplinary grid’ of GDR society, and helped to ensure obedience and adherence to societal norms. Antifascist heroes were used to exhort young people to greater achievements in the name of the socialist state and its antifascist founders. SED commemoration of the International Brigades was used to justify domestic and foreign policy and as an educational tool in work with young people. But as well as being used to encourage young people to become good socialist citizens, antifascism was also used horizontally within the party to discipline the veterans themselves. The party purges of the s not only neutralized potential focuses of veteran discontent, such as Franz Dahlem, but also left many veterans with an enduring sense of fear and insecurity in relation to the past. Not only did this make them unlikely to question the party’s version of history, it also permanently altered their relationship to the SED, making them more obedient party members. However, the state’s use of history for its own disciplinary ends did not guarantee it a monopoly on the past. Because the SED had elevated anti On other examples of veteran communities, see P. Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, – (Cambridge, ), chs. –; J. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, ), ch. .  M. Foucault, ‘Truth and Power’, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (Harmondsworth, ), .

Introduction



fascism to the centre of state ideology, it automatically became important for other groups in society too. Antifascism was not simply an official ideology produced by the state—it was also a discussion about history which involved not only the SED, but also veterans, intellectuals, dissidents, and members of the public. Some participants in this discussion were more powerful than others; weaker groups had trouble getting their voices heard at all. But this did not mean that they were not involved in thinking about and interpreting the past. The SED’s domination of historical discourse should not lead us to overlook other, significant contributions. Talking or writing about Spain was a way of discussing antifascism and, by extension, socialism. In this sense, Spain was a point of departure, a screen onto which people could project their own agendas. The veterans, of course, had a lot invested in their memories of the war. But as the resonance of Walter Janka’s ‘Venceremos!’ in November  shows, the responses of those who were too young to have experienced the war at first hand were no less strong and emotional. Even though their knowledge of the war was purely second-hand, their readings of events sometimes varied drastically from those of the older generation. The SED did attempt to suppress other versions of history. But it is important to remember that memory and commemoration always involve what Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan term ‘negotiation’. Looking at how different interpretations of the past influenced and interacted with each other can tell us much about the nature of East German society. But how was this process of negotiation possible under state socialism? Since the collapse of the GDR and the opening of party and state archives, many historians have chosen to focus on the repressive aspects of East German life, the dictatorial nature of SED rule, and the pervasive presence of the Stasi. Much of this work is based on previously unavailable archival material and has proved essential to an understanding of what Mary

 On the nature of ‘interpretive communities’ see S. E. Fish, ‘Interpreting the Variorum’, in J. P. Tompkins (ed.), Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore, ), . This essay originally appeared in Critical Inquiry,  (spring ), –. See also S. E. Fish, Is there a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, Mass., ).  Robert Darnton’s work is a pioneering example of the use of reader-response criticism as a historical tool. R. Darnton, ‘Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity’, in id., The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes of French Cultural History (New York, ), –; id., ‘History of Reading’ in P. Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Cambridge, ), –.  Winter and Sivan, ‘Setting the Framework’, .



Introduction

Fulbrook calls the ‘anatomy of a dictatorship’. Nevertheless, a concentration on the undemocratic and illegitimate nature of SED rule, however important, risks obscuring other aspects of East German society and political culture. Recent publications on GDR history have focused on the interaction between party and population at the grassroots to develop a more differentiated view of the SED and its relationship to the East German people. The SED, a mass party, was neither monolithic nor homogenous, and the same is true of political culture in the GDR. Those who write about the dictatorial nature of the SED regime often conclude that the SED’s political and discursive monopoly meant that civil society was non-existent. However, while much official historiography and journalism did present a one-dimensional view of the past, alternative arenas such as literature and art, and semi-public spheres such as letters and oral memory preserved a far more vibrant picture of history. The lack of an independent civil society did not mean that civic debate did not take place. The division of the population of the GDR into the rulers and the ruled, the party and the people, means that historical actors are pre-assigned roles of, on the one hand, domination and, on the other, either resistance or compliance. Clearly, an individual’s position in society did restrict her or his choices. But a closer examination of the mechanisms of GDR society shows that even the leaders of the SED were not communist automatons. One individual could be simultaneously a veteran of the International Brigades, a party functionary, a victim of political justice, a censor, a reader, and a family member. Along with the rest of the population, their official roles or jobs concealed a multiplicity of identities, determined not just by politics and society, but gender, the family, sexuality, and religion. All of these affected the ways in which individuals made sense of the past. The idea of a monolithic, impermeable state history which hijacked and exploited ‘authentic’ experience is an oversimplification which mistakenly pits the state against the individual. The state apparatus was composed of individuals, each with their own personal view of the past, and individuals in turn had varying levels of emotional and political investment in the state. Despite the regime’s control of information, different readings of the past  

M. Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR – (Oxford, ). P. Major and J. Osmond, The Workers’ and Peasants’ State: Communism and Society in East Germany under Ulbricht – (Manchester, ) gives a good overview of current research in Britain; Allinson, Politics and Popular Opinion in East Germany –; G. Pritchard, The Making of the GDR –: From Antifascism to Stalinism (Manchester, ); C. Ross, Constructing Socialism at the Grass-Roots: The Transformation of East Germany – (London, ).

Introduction



were possible. In fact, institutions of party and state often played an important role in preserving memories of the past which contested the official version, for example the International Brigade memoirs collected in the party’s memoir archive. Even in the seemingly cold, inhospitable, climate of East Germany, a multitude of memories could survive.



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers N O N O R M A L DAW N

‘It started getting light around us as we reached the mountain’s peak. It appeared to me that that was no normal dawn, but the outbreak of brightness, of the new day. We marched along an almost level plateau and saw the sun rise. It rose over Spain. We had arrived.’ Long after their wounds had healed and their halting Spanish had been forgotten, the German veterans of the International Brigades remembered their arrival in Spain with astonishing clarity. Many of them had first glimpsed Spanish soil after a night-time trek over the Pyrenees—often the only way to evade the French border authorities. As the would-be volunteers reached the top of the mountain range and saw the sun rise over the Iberian landscape, they knew their journey had been successful. As one veteran explained to me, this was an unforgettable moment: that was a very arduous path and above all the older [members of the group], they got worn out [die machten dann doch schlapp] and had to lie down at the side [of the path] and he, our French guide, said he would come and get them later, and we went on and when morning came we were high up in the Pyrenees but you could see Spain down below. And that was very exciting and then we arrived in Spain.

The difficulties presented by the ‘arduous path’ over the mountains had become depressingly familiar to the German Left since : unfamiliar terrain, illegality, fear of capture by the authorities, comrades falling by the wayside. Even those such as Eberhard Schmidt, whose journey to Spain took the more prosaic form of a bus ride, remembered the trip as ‘so fantastical, that I cannot express it in words’. For many Germans, getting to  SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Ernst Scholz), p. . International Brigade veteran Ernst Scholz remembers arriving in Spain in a memoir held in the East German party archive.  Interview with Alfred Katzenstein,  Feb. .  See G. Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London, ), , for a discussion of soldiers’ use of metaphorical narrative structures of alienation, journeying, arrival, conflict, and belonging.  E. Schmidt, Ein Lied—ein Atemzug: Erinnerungen und Dokumente (Berlin, ), .

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



Spain was their first significant victory or achievement since . As they watched the Spanish dawn on the morning of their arrival, the volunteers felt that a new stage of their lives was beginning—one which would be legal, active, and purposeful.

T H E G E R M A N V O LU N T E E R S

As Peter Carroll argues in his account of the ‘odyssey’ of the American volunteers: For most of the men and women who went to Spain, that experience constituted merely one chapter of a longer and more elaborate story. By placing the Spanish war within the context of lifelong commitments, we can better understand the motives and expectations, the values and beliefs, of those who put their lives on the line when they volunteered to fight against fascism in Spain. No less important has been the war’s legacy in their lives. The ordeal of Spain, the loss of so many friends and comrades, inevitably followed the veterans long after they had returned home. For most of the Lincolns, commitments made in the s persisted through the remainder of their lives.

The same holds true for the German veterans who are the subject of this book. The s saw a remarkable renaissance in the historiography of the International Brigades, and recent work on the French, British, and American volunteers has used new archival material to bring the volunteers themselves into focus. The history of the German volunteers, however, is still a work in progress. Patrik von zur Mühlen’s masterly study of the German Left in the Spanish Civil War, published in , made impressive use of the available sources, but was hampered by lack of access to the records of the Brigades in Moscow. In addition, von zur Mühlen’s evident sympathy for the non-communist Left leads him to devote large sections of the book to social democratic, anarcho-syndicalist, and anti-Stalinist  P.N. Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford, ), p. x.  R. Skoutelsky, L’Espoir guidait leurs pas: Les Volontaires français dans les Brigades internationales, – (Paris, ); P. N. Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade; J. K. Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire: The British in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford, ).  An introductory survey in English is A. Krammer, ‘Germans Against Hitler: The Thälmann Brigade’, Journal of Contemporary History,  (), –. I have deliberately excluded the GDR historiography of the Spanish Civil War from this overview, as it is dealt with in greater detail in the body of the book.  P. von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung: Die deutsche Linke im spanischen Bürgerkrieg  bis  (Bonn, ). See also id., ‘Säuberungen unter deutschen Spanienkämpfer’, Exilforschung,  (), –.



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

volunteers, at the expense of the numerically much greater and predominantly communist International Brigade volunteers. As yet, no historian has taken on the challenge of updating von zur Mühlen’s book, although work by Klaus-Michael Mallmann, which uses oral history as well as material from the East German archives, suggests the possibilities of the topic and echoes many of the themes present in the work on volunteers of other nationalities. Michael Uhl’s ground-breaking article, which draws on East German, Soviet, and Spanish archives, is a model of historical research, and sets out the agenda for future work. But despite the incomplete nature of the historiography, we still know a great deal about the German volunteers. This chapter aims to outline the contours of their ‘odyssey’ in Spain and beyond: who were the volunteers and where did they come from? How many were there? What was their social background and political affiliation? Why did they travel to Spain? What awaited them when they arrived? And finally, what was their fate once the war was over? It is very difficult to estimate the number of German volunteers in Spain, as many fought under assumed names, and war conditions made accurate record-keeping impossible. The commonly cited figure of , German and Austrian volunteers seems likely to be an overestimate, which can be attributed to the fact that German, Austrian, Swiss, Dutch, Danish, and Norwegian volunteers were under the jurisdiction of the same cadre office from May . Together, these national groups made up around , volunteers. Skoutelksy’s archival research suggests , Germans and  Austrians out of a total of , international volunteers, a figure backed up by Mallmann’s figure of , German volunteers. Uhl suggests that the number of German volunteers may have been nearer ,, especially when the volunteers who fought outside the International Brigades are taken into account, and the most recent figures  K.-M. Mallmann, ‘ “Kreuzritter des antifaschistischen Mysteriums”: Zur Erfahrungsperspektive des Spanischen Bürgerkrieges’, in H. Grebing and C. Wickert (eds.), Das ‘andere’ Deutschland im Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Beiträge zur politischen Überwinding der nationalsozialistischen Diktatur im Exil und im Dritten Reich (Essen, ), –.  M. Uhl, ‘Die Internationalen Brigaden im Spiegel neuer Dokumente’, Internationale Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der Deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, / (), –.  Cf. K. Bradley and M. Chappel, International Brigades in Spain – (London, ); S. Alvarez, Historia política y militar de las Brigada Internacionales (Madrid, ), ; von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, .  Skoutelsky, L’Espoir guidait leurs pas, ; Mallmann, ‘ “Kreuzritter des antifaschistischen Mysteriums” ’, .  M. Uhl, ‘Die Internationalen Brigaden im Spiegel neuer Dokumente’, .

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



from the Austrian archives indicate that , Austrians fought on the Republican side. So while exact numbers are impossible to come by, it is perhaps more realistic to speak of , German speakers within the Brigades, with a further , on the Republican side fighting in the Spanish army, or in non-communist units, or carrying out non-military roles. Research on volunteers from the Saarland indicates that ‘almost %’ were working class. The overall percentage of working-class volunteers was undoubtedly a little lower, particularly when writers and medical staff are included, but figures for other national groups also imply a very high level of working-class participation. Many, like Eduard Schmidt, were members of the Weimar Republic’s ‘lost generation’, who had never known stability or regular employment. Initially apprenticed to a builder, Schmidt lost his job and, unable to find work, led a vagabond-style existence around Europe. He joined the KPD in  and left Germany for Switzerland after Hitler’s rise to power. Schmidt was among the first German volunteers to reach Spain, arriving in October . One of the first members of the Edgar André Battalion, he was severely wounded in November  during the defence of Madrid, but eventually returned as commissar of another unit. Schmidt was later to immortalize his experiences in Spain in his autobiographical novel, Grüne Oliven und nackte Bergen (Green Olives and Bare Mountains), published under the pen name Eduard Claudius. There is also evidence of substantial Jewish representation amongst the German volunteers—Arno Lustiger estimates their number to have been around . Some, but not all, of these Jewish volunteers came from  A. Fellinger, ‘Österreicher im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg—eine biographische Forschung’. http://www.univie.ac.at/OEGS-Kongress-/AbstractsF.html.  Jan. .  Mallmann, ‘ “Kreuzritter des antifaschistischen Mysteriums” ’, . Von zur Mühlen’s estimate, based on fragmentary data, is more conservative, at around %: Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, .  Skoutelsky names a figure of .% for the French volunteers (a figure which tallies remarkably well with Hugh Thomas’s estimate of % working-class participation across the Brigades), and Hopkins asserts that the ‘overwhelming majority’ of the British battalion was composed of workers, probably about % of whom were unemployed. Skoutelsky, L’Espoir guidait leurs pas, ; H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (rd edn., Harmondsworth, ), ; Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire, .  G. Pichler, Der spanische Bürgerkrieg im deutschsprachigen Roman (Frankfurt am Main, ), . Cf. E. Claudius, Ruhelose Jahre (Halle and Leipzig, ).  E. Claudius, Grune Oliven und nackte Bergen (Berlin, ).  A. Lustiger, ‘German and Austrian Jews in the International Brigade [sic]’, Leo Baeck



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

middle-class backgrounds. Hans Schaul was a typical case: a communistvoting lawyer in the Weimar republic, he lost his job in , and was forced to emigrate to France. Schaul’s politicization was accelerated by first-hand experience of police brutality at antifascist demonstrations and contact with the communist movement, and when war broke out in Spain, he immediately decided to go.  Hans Schaul’s political sympathies (he joined the party while in Spain) were typical of the volunteers as a whole. Communists were unquestionably in the majority. Mallmann’s Saarland sample consisted of .% communists and communist sympathizers, as opposed to .% social democrats. As Mallmann points out, the social democratic presence in his sample is probably unrepresentatively high as a result of cooperation between communists and social democrats around the time of the Saarland plebiscite. According to Mallmann, the number of German social democrats in Spain never exceeded , and von zur Mühlen estimates that only around  German social democrats fought in the Brigades. In contrast, the number of German anarchists in Spain was relatively high in comparison to their political profile in Germany: Andreas Graf and Dieter Nelles’s research indicates at least  Germans in anarchist militia, most of them in the International Group of the Durruti Column. The German anarcho-syndicalist Augustin Souchy was head of the foreign section of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, the CNT. Spain had been the most popular exile destination for German anarchists, attracted by its liberal asylum and employment laws and strong anarcho-syndicalist tradition. The organization DAS set up a group in Barcelona and, upon the outbreak of civil war, its members immediately became involved with the street fighting in Barcelona and subsequently joined the militias. Others were converted to anarchism by their experiences in Spain: the poet Carl Einstein travelled to Barcelona as early as Institute Year Book,  (), p. . Cf. id., Schalom Libertad! Juden im spanischen Bürgerkrieg (Berlin, ), .  H. Schaul, ‘Mein Weg nach Spanien’, in Pasaremos: Deutsche Antifaschisten im nationalrevolutionären Krieg des spanischen Volkes (nd edn., Berlin, ), .  Von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, .  A. Graf and D. Nelles, ‘Widerstand und Exil deutscher Anarchisten und Anarchosyndicalisten (–)’, in R. Berner, Die unsichtbare Front: Bericht über die illegale Arbeit in Deutschland () (Berlin and Cologne, ), ; D. Nelles, ‘Deutsche Anarchosyndikalisten und Freiwillige in anarchistischen Milizen im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg’, Internationale Wissenschaftlich Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung,  (), .  Nelles, ‘Deutsche Anarchosyndikalisten und Freiwillige’, .

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



August , joined the Durutti Column, and embraced anarchism, convinced by its spontaneity and enthusiasm for social revolution. By no means all of the militia soldiers were convinced anarchists, and in fact Graf and Nelles suggests that % of Germans in anarchist militia were members of the KPD, some of whom were probably planted there for surveillance purposes. Despite the impressive anarchist presence, the German volunteers, and particularly those of the Brigades, were dominated by communists. Finally, most, but not all, of the volunteers were men. Women were not allowed to fight in the International Brigades, but German women did travel to Spain as nurses, doctors, journalists, and party workers. There are no reliable figures on this subject but a recent study estimates that between  and  women worked on the Republican side. Nineteen-year-old Auguste Marx was killed by Nationalist troops in October  while working as a nurse in the Durruti Column. Golda Friedemann, who had emigrated to Spain with her husband Max in , worked in Barcelona, registering volunteers, and travelled to the front in August  on an information-gathering mission for Hans Beimler, the KPD’s representative in Spain. Beimler was not the only man to use a woman as his eyes and ears: Bertold Brecht refused to travel to a war zone, but sent his lover and collaborator Ruth Berlau, basing Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar (The Weapons of Frau Carrar) on her experiences. 

 P. Monteath, Writing the Good Fight: Political Commitment in the International Literature of the Spanish Civil War (Westport, ), .  Graf and Nelles, ‘Widerstand und Exil deutscher Anarchisten und Anarchosyndicalisten (–)’, ; see also Oskar Heinz, ‘Bei der Kolonne “Durruti” in Aragon’, in Brigada Internacional ist unser Ehrenname, ed. Hans Maaßen,  vols. (rd edn., Berlin, ), i. –, for an account of a German communist ordered to join an anarchist division in order to ‘introduce military order and discipline’ (p. ).  Von zur Mühlen’s estimate of –% is probably conservative; Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, . This accords with the figures for the rest of the Brigades: around % for Britain and .% for France (neither country had a communist tradition as strong as Germany’s); Thomas estimates % for the Brigades as a whole, rising to % by the end of the war. Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire, ; Skoutelsky, L’Espoir guidait leurs pas, ; Thomas, Spanish Civil War, .  A. Goppel, ‘Fighting Fascism: German and Austrian Women in the Spanish Civil War –’ (LSE Masters Thesis, ), .  Nelles, ‘Deutsche Anarchosydikalisten und Freiwillige’, .  Friedemann, ‘Hans Beimler in Barcelona’, in Brigada Internacional, i. .  For Berlau’s account of this see SAdK, Berlin, Ruth-Berlau-Archiv, Nr. ; R. Berlau, Brechts Lai-Tu (Berlin, ), –.



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

M O T I VAT I O N

So what motivated these mostly male, mostly working-class, and mostly communist volunteers to go to Spain? The most important factor was a desire to defeat European fascism. By , Hitler’s dictatorship had taken on an air of permanence. Defeat in the Saarland plebiscite combined with growing international acceptance of the Nazi regime, and the impact of anti-Nazi activity within Germany was negligible. For the Left, this was a profoundly depressing state of affairs: the German people appeared to have made their peace with the Nazis and any hopes that the regime might collapse within a few years had dissipated. Those who had suffered police or concentration-camp imprisonment in Germany had first-hand experience of the brutal nature of the regime and the isolated position of German antifascists. As one veteran put it: ‘I must say, there was enormous enthusiasm for Spain . . . most of the political emigrants had already done time in Germany. They had been imprisoned, beaten. It was an opportunity to face the Nazis with a weapon in your hand. That played a huge role.’ After three years of political and personal suffering, the war offered the chance to defeat Spanish, and by extension German, fascism. The opportunity to fight ‘with a weapon in your hand [mit der Waffe in der Hand]’ is a leitmotif of veteran testimony. Here was an opportunity to make good the mistakes of the Weimar period and the crushing defeat of . Willy Grunert described the soldiers of the Edgar André Battalion’s reaction to the arrival of the first consignment of weapons: It was a great day, we had weapons! Gold prospectors must have clung to their first find in the same way that we did to the rifles. What I had dreamt as a child, when my father told me stories about the struggle of the working class for a decent existence—Spartacus, Berlin, Leuna on the Ruhr, the victorious Soviet army—wasn’t a dream any more, it had become reality. I was a soldier of the working class. 



Interview with Roman Rubinstein,  Jan. . Cf. S. Salter, ‘The Object Lesson: The Division of the German Left and the Triumph of National Socialism’, in H. Graham and P. Preston (eds.), The Popular Front in Europe (London, ), –; and P. von zur Mühlen, ‘The Spanish Civil War and the Question of the German Popular Front’, in L. Costa, R. Critchfield, R. Golsam, and W. Koepke (eds.), German and International Perspectives on the Spanish Civil War: The Aesthetics of Partisanship (Columbia, ), –.  SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//, p. : Erlebnisbericht Willy Grunert,  May . 

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



Grunert was not the only one to evoke the militant socialist tradition: Karl Deutscher, remembering his arrival in Barcelona, described it as the ‘concrete fulfilment of Karl Marx’s slogan “workers of the world, unite” ’. For these men, joining the Brigades was a logical extension of their commitment to communism. One volunteer remembered a comrade saying: ‘I wanted to become a little Lenin.’ Significantly, however, German communists were only able to fight in Spain thanks to a recent deradicalization on the part of the international communist movement. Following the  Comintern Congress, the communist movement and its allied associations had thrown their weight behind efforts to form a German Popular Front. Communist attempts to build a more inclusive antifascism had included courting high-profile writers such as Thomas and Heinrich Mann, organizing events like the International Writers’ Congress in Paris in , and funding ‘fellow-traveller’ media and organizations such as those masterminded by Willi Münzenberg. By  a degree of reconciliation had taken place, as non-communist antifascists’ distrust of the KPD was diluted by the powerful presence of a common enemy and the painful realization that disunity had led to their current situation. The plurality of German responses to the war in Spain reflected the ideological breadth of the embryonic Popular Front. The proletarian exodus across the Pyrenees was accompanied by condemnations of the generals’ coup from the pens of literary heavyweights such as the Mann brothers and Leon Feuchtwanger. The Germans who converged on Spain in  had experienced much in the previous three years. In a survey carried out by GDR veterans of the Brigades, % travelled to Spain from the Soviet Union, % from Czechoslovakia, % from France, % from Germany, and % from Holland. Other volunteers travelled from Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Britain, Poland, Austria, Palestine, Algeria, Argentina, the 

SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Karl Deutscher), p. . SAPMO-BArch, DY  V /, p. : report by Hans Schubert. On communist policy and ‘fellow-travellers’ see D. Caute, The Fellow Travellers: Intellectual Friends of Communism (rev. edn., New Haven and London, ). S. Koch, Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Münzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals (London, ) is entertaining but partisan and unreliable.  Here cf. Costa et al. (eds.), German and International Perspectives on the Spanish Civil War; S. Schlenstedt, ‘Exil und antifaschistischer Kampf in Spanien’, in H. Fetting, K. Hermsdorf, and S. Schlenstedt, Exil in den Niederlanden und in Spanien (Leipzig, ), –; H. A. Walter, ‘No pasarán! Deutsche Exilschriftsteller im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg’, Kürbiskern,  (), –; F. Raddatz, ‘Mit Gewehr und Feder’, Die Zeit,  July , pp. –; and the special editions of Weimarer Beiträge,  () and Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik,  ().  



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

USA, Uruguay, and Yugoslavia. These figures only represent a relatively small sample of volunteers () and are undoubtedly skewed: the very high percentage for the USSR can be explained by the over-representation of party functionaries in the sample. It is also likely that the actual number of those who travelled from Germany was higher. However, they do offer a snapshot of the spectrum of left-wing German exile. Prague and Paris were the centres of the German emigration during this period (the SPD had its headquarters in the Czechoslovakian capital and Paris was the centre of cultural activity and exile publishing), while Moscow was of utmost importance for communist émigrés. Many of the KPD functionaries who travelled to Spain had spent time in Soviet Union, often at the Comintern’s ‘Lenin school’. Exile in Moscow had its own peculiarities, particularly as  wore on, and the extent of the arrests and show trials became clear. The writer Gustav Regler saw the International Brigades as an escape from the purges and a chance to rescue the communist project. ‘In Spain, I felt sure of it, I would breath a different air. There, death was a protection against treachery and judges; one died at the hands of the enemy. How good it was to think of death!’ For Regler, Spain was ‘where the light shone and the new geography began’, a second chance for communism to make good its mistakes and tackle the threat of fascism head on. But wherever you lived, exile could be boring, depressing, and demoralizing. Émigrés were cut off from family, work, and political networks. The language barrier and employment restrictions meant that many found it impossible to find work and were forced to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence. Poverty and isolation were often accompanied by feelings of disillusionment and impotence, as possibilities for meaningful political work were also very limited. Max Kahane, a young Jewish émigré in Czechoslovakia, felt that in comparison with the crimes of the Nazi regime, his political work was trivial, ‘too conventional, too small’. Spain offered the chance to escape these frustrations and throw in his lot with the wider European antifascist struggle.  SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/, p. : Statistische Angaben über ehemalige Spanienkämpfer in der DDR. Jan. .  This question was not answered by  respondents. Many of them may have travelled from Germany. Dieter Nelles cites convicing evidence that % of the German members of the Brigades had travelled directly from Germany. Nelles, ‘Deutsche Anarchosyndikalisten und Freiwillige’, .  G. Regler, The Owl of Minerva (London, ), .  Ibid, –.  Interview with Max Kahane,  Feb. .

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



Finally, a number of Germans were already in Spain when the war broke out: some had settled in Spain after , amongst them a relatively high proportion of anarcho-syndicalists. Others had travelled to Spain for the Workers’ Olympiad, an alternative to the Berlin Olympics, which had been scheduled to take place on – July . Gerhart Wohlrat and his girlfriend had cycled from Geneva to take part. By the time they arrived, Barcelona was already in the hands of the Republicans. The Olympiad forgotten, they were among the first Germans to join the militia.

S PA I N A N D T H E I N T E R NAT I O NA L C O M M U N I T Y

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, along with Popular Front victory in France, provided much-needed hope for the antifascist cause. For Spaniards, it was the culmination of years of political polarization. Following the collapse of the monarchy in , growing tension between Republican and socialist modernizers and the massed ranks of the Church, army, landowners, and conservatives destabilized the Second Republic to the point of collapse. The republican/socialist coalition of  was replaced in  by a Radical government dependent on a confederation of autonomous right-wing groups (CEDA) for support. A series of rural crises radicalized the peasantry and the brutal repression of the Asturian rebellion in  made the existing mistrust between the workers and middle and upper classes virtually insurmountable. The forces of the Left were far from united, with republicans, socialists, communists, anarchists,  

Bradley and Chappell, International Brigades in Spain, . G. Wohlrat, ‘Als Arbeitersportler zur Volksolympiade nach Barcelona’, in Brigada Internacional, i. –.  On the Popular Front see Graham and Preston, ‘The Popular Front and the Struggle against Fascism’, in eid. (eds.), Popular Front in Europe, –.  Introductory accounts of the outbreak and course of the Spanish Civil War include P. Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform, Reaction and Revolution in the Second Republic (nd edn., London, ); G. Esewein and A. Shubert, Spain at War: The Spanish Civil War in Context – (Harlow, ); Thomas, Spanish Civil War; P. Preston, A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War (London, ); P. Preston (ed.), Revolution and War in Spain – (London, ); P. Broué and E. Témime, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain (London, ); A. Mackenzie and P. Preston (eds.), The Republic Besieged: Civil War in Spain – (Edinburgh, ); R. Carr (ed.), The Republic and the Civil War in Spain (London, ); T. Rees, ‘Battleground of the Revolutionaries: The Republic and Civil War in Spain –’, in M. Donald and T. Rees, Reinterpreting Revolution in TwentiethCentury Europe (London, ), –; H. Graham, ‘Spain , Resistance and Revolution: The Flaws in the Front’, in T. Kirk and A. McElligott (eds.), Opposing Fascism: Community, Authority and Resistance in Europe (Cambridge, ), –.



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

and dissident communists unable to agree on a political programme. Catalan and Basque nationalism muddied the waters still further. This disunity was to have decisive consequences for the Left after the outbreak of the war. The election of a Popular Front government in February  created new hopes on the Left, but triggered almost immediate plotting amongst the military. The old elites and the supporters of the Republic held incompatible views of Spain and its future, and violence seemed the only way to resolve their differences. Falangist gunmen targeted left-wing politicians, while peasants and workers took revenge for the preceding ‘two black years’ with retaliatory attacks and land seizures. The military uprising of – July was the moment when political violence turned into civil war. Despite the initial refusal of the government to arm the workers, popular resistance to the coup was fierce. Spain was rapidly divided into Republican (southern and western Spain, including Madrid and Barcelona) and Nationalist (northern Spain, except the Basque country, and the southernmost tip of the country, including Seville) zones. Nationalist executions made the conflict even more bitter; on the Republican side, attacks on landowners and Church property took place alongside widespread industrial and agricultural collectivization, turning the war into a social revolution. Outside the war zone, the bravery of the Spanish people and the defence of Madrid rapidly became a symbol of Leftist unity and resolve. A week after the generals’ coup, the Comintern resolved to send a small group of international volunteers to fight for the Republic. The KPD Politburo responded in early August , calling for volunteers to go to Spain and sending functionaries Albert Schreiner and Hans Beimler from Paris. Schreiner and Beimler set up the ‘Centuria Thälmann’ as soon as they arrived, but the Centuria was not the first German unit to take part in the war. Émigrés living in Barcelona had already set up the ‘Grupo Thälmann’ in late July . However, many Germans who wanted to follow their path to Spain were, at least at first, frustrated. Despite the international communist movement’s initial flurry of activity, the International Brigades were not formally established until late October . Members of the KPD had to get permission from their local party leadership to travel to Spain and in the early stage of the war many were told that they were not needed. Some, like Roman Rubinstein, travelled to Spain anyway, only to be sent back after a  Von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, , , –. Both the ‘Centuria Thälmann’ and the ‘Grupo Thälmann’ were named after Ernst Thälmann, leader of the KPD.

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



week, having been threatened with execution for disobeying party orders. Only in late  and early  did Germans start to arrive in Spain in large numbers. Some of this reluctance to send volunteers to Spain was due to unwillingness on the part of local party functionaries to lose valuable personnel; the risk and expense involved in reaching Spain was also high. However, their hesitance also reflects the ambiguous attitude of the Soviet Union towards the war in Spain. The Soviet Union’s immediate outward show of solidarity with Spain contrasted with the leadership’s hesitancy towards intervention. Germany and Italy’s military involvement on the Nationalist side made intervention risky, particularly given that the CPSU and the Red Army were internally riven by the Terror. Intervention came into direct conflict with many tenets of Stalinism, particularly ‘socialism in one country’.  Soviet support for the Popular Front was, at best, shaky, and the NonIntervention Pact proposed by France and supported by Britain came as a welcome escape for the USSR. Although the Soviet Union did send both military and humanitarian aid, it was not enough to ensure a Republican victory. It also came with the condition that the Spanish Left concentrate on winning the war, rather than continuing the social revolution, seen by the Soviets as a distraction from the war effort and as a deterrent to potential supporters within the Spanish and European middle classes. As a result, the International Brigades made a relatively late arrival in the war. Once established, they were the responsibility of the Comintern,  

Interview with Roman Rubinstein,  Jan. . G. Howson, Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War (London, ),  ff. D. Smyth, ‘ “We are with you”: Solidarity and Self-Interest in Soviet Policy towards Republican Spain’, in Mackenzie and Preston (eds.), Republic Besieged, –.  J. Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe, – (London, ). See also T. Rees, ‘The Highpoint of Comintern Influence? The Communist Party and the Civil War in Spain’, in id. and A. Thorpe (eds.), International Communism and the Communist International – (Manchester, ), –; E. H. Carr, The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War (London, ).  J. Haslam, ‘The Soviet Union, the Comintern and the Demise of the Popular Front –’, in Graham and Preston (ed.), The Popular Front in Europe, –.  Cf. M. Alpert, A New International History of the Spanish Civil War (London, ). Geoffrey Roberts is more sympathetic to the USSR, concluding, ‘Moscow did what it could’. G. Roberts, ‘Soviet Foreign Policy and the Spanish Civil War, –’, in C. Leitz and D. J. Dunthorn (eds.), Spain in an International Context, – (New York and Oxford, ), –.  Gerald Howson is particularly scathing about the number and age of the arms sent by the Soviets to Spain. Some of the rifles supplied to Republican troops dated back as far as  and came with only a day’s supply of ammunition. The Soviets also charged well above the odds, effectively cheating the Republican government out of $ million. Howson, Arms for Spain,  ff., .



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

and national and local communist parties did much of the recruiting and vetting of volunteers. The headquarters of the International Brigades were set up at Albacete in central south-eastern Spain, with the French communist André Marty as chief of staff and the Italian communist Luigi Longo (known as Gallo in Spain) as head of the political commissariat. Franz Dahlem, who replaced Hans Beimler as the KPD’s representative in Spain after Beimler’s death in December , also worked in Albacete as the representative of the Comintern. Other prominent Germans in the Brigade leadership included Wilhelm Zaisser (known as General Gomez), who led the Thirteenth International Brigade; Hans Kahle, commander of the Eleventh Brigade; and his Chief of Staff, Ludwig Renn. ‘General Kleber’, commander of the Eleventh Brigade during the defence of Madrid, was actually Manfred Stern, a communist and Comintern functionary of Austrian extraction, whose two brothers, Wolf and Leo, also fought in Spain.

A R R I VA L I N S PA I N

Upon arrival in Spain, volunteers were sent to Albacete, where they received a certain amount of rudimentary training and were allocated to a brigade. German volunteers were concentrated in the Eleventh International Brigade, in the Edgar André, Hans Beimler, and Ernst Thälmann battalions. The fourth battalion, made up mostly of Austrian volunteers, was named the Twelfth of February in memory of events in Vienna in . There were considerable numbers of Germans in the Thirteenth International Brigade, concentrated in the Chapiev Battalion, who later joined the Eleventh Brigade. German volunteers took part in almost all the major battles of the war: the early arrivals were involved in the defence of Madrid, suffering particularly heavy losses at Boadilla and Las Rozas, a military disaster which led to the virtual annihilation of the Thälmann Battalion. In February , the Eleventh Brigade were called in to reinforce Republican troops under attack in the Jarama valley. They were able to prevent the loss of the Madrid–Valencia road, but lacked the strength to counter-attack. With barely time to draw breath, they were sent 

Bradley and Chappell, International Brigades in Spain, . Von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, . Ibid. –. The Ernst Thälmann Battalion was initially part of the Twelfth International Brigade.  Renn, Der Spanische Krieg, .  

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



to Guadalajara in March , where Republican troops successfully repelled Mussolini’s Italian troops—a crucial propaganda victory for the Republic, although at great cost. The German members of the Thirteenth Brigade, meanwhile, found themselves on the bleak southern front, where cold, hunger, and boredom were extremely detrimental to morale. As Jef Lasts’s song ‘On the Sierra Front’ put it: ‘These bare mountains were so lonely | That enemy fire almost cheered us up’. The men of the Thirteenth wryly dubbed themselves the ‘forgotten brigade’, feeling the Eleventh was getting all the glory, while they languished at the top of a godforsaken mountain range. They were reunited with the Eleventh at the battle of Brunete. In this surprise attack on Nationalist troops, the German volunteers were used as a shock force, initially winning ground, before Republican tactical errors led to the breakdown of the offensive and the troops were forced to defend their hard fought territory in the baking sun. The German volunteers would remember the war as one of extremes: six months after the parched conditions of Brunete, they found themselves fighting the battle of Teruel in the coldest winter of the century. Here again, initial advance gave way to stalemate and eventual retreat, at the cost of , Republican casualties. As with so many of the Republican campaigns, the superior equipment and organization of the other side eventually prevailed: the Nationalists could simply hold out longer. The Ebro campaign of summer  seemed to offer a last glimmer of hope. The Hans Beimler Battalion was the first unit across the Ebro on the night of  July, but when the International Brigades were withdrawn from the fighting three months later, the battle was still grinding on, at enormous human cost. Outside the International Brigades, Germans fought in anarchist and POUM militias and in the Spanish army; worked as doctors and medical staff; acted as Comintern functionaries; and reported on the war as writers, journalists, and photographers. International volunteers and observers who met Germans during the course of the war were struck by their resolve and determination. John Cornford wrote: ‘They are the finest people in some ways I’ve ever met. In a way they have lost everything, have been through enough to break most people, and remain strong and cheerful and humorous. If anything is revolutionary it is these comrades.’ Ernest Hemingway saw the volunteers as  E. Busch, Lieder der Arbeiterklasse & Lieder aus dem spanischen Bürgerkrieg (CD)  Thomas, Spanish Civil War, . (Dortmund, n.d.).  Preston, Concise History of the Spanish Civil War, .  J. Cornford to M. Heinemann, in V. Cunningham (ed.), The Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse (Harmondsworth, ), .



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

representatives of ‘the true Germany’, idyllic and proletarian. ‘How I loved to be in your mountains, to speak with your farmers, how happy they were! How I loved to walk through North Berlin, to see the intelligent workers, to hear their strong humorous language!’ He contrasted the Germans in the Condor Legion with those in the Thälmann Battalion, ‘true, worthy Germans. Germans as we love them. Germans as they live in their millions in Germany, we are sure of that’. The volunteers themselves were delighted by this recognition, which, along with their national grouping within the Brigades, allowed them to reclaim a positive, antifascist, German identity. As another Englishman, Esmond Romilly, recognised, ‘they were fighting for their cause and they were fighting as well for a home to live in . . . they had staked everything on this war’. In a letter to his girlfriend written in October , shortly after his arrival in Spain, Alfred Katzenstein, a young Jewish volunteer, proudly described the layout of the training camp in Albacete: ‘A comrade has written “Germany” very beautifully in front of the tents of the German section. (The real Germany is here.)’  For men and women who had been stripped of their nationality on racial or political grounds, even identifying themselves as German could be problematic. Rudi Engel recalled how the newly arrived German recruits stood out: while the French and British volunteers sang and talked and laughed unselfconsciously, the German group was ‘quieter, more reserved, in a word, mistrustful. Conversations only came about slowly, the suspicion that the other might be a Nazi spy lay in the air.’ Few men were willing to admit to being German: most identified themselves in regional terms as Bavarians, Rheinlanders, Silesians, or Saxons. The lifting of this burden of mistrust and the rediscovery of the camaraderie which came so easily to the French and the British were crucial elements of the German volunteer experience. Membership of the International Brigades was a chance for Germans to fight fascism legally and legitimately. The previous three years of illegal, clandestine work had been a terrible strain, and several volunteers remembered their emancipation at being able to ‘fight with an open visor’. As Karl Mewis put it: ‘the outlaw [Illegale] became a person again, a

 

E. Hemingway, ‘An das wirkliche Deutschland’, in Pasaremos, . Quoted in Preston, Concise History of the Spanish Civil War, .  A. Katzenstein, Einblicke. Berichte, Bilder, Briefe,  vols., ms, (Berlin, ), ii. .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Rudolf Engel), p. .  E. Glückauf, Begegnung und Signale: Erinnerungen eines Revolutionärs (Berlin, ), ; G. Szinda, ‘Behütet von guten Christen’, Wochenpost,  (), .

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



comrade’. The collective nature of the war was perhaps particularly significant for communists such as Mewis, for whom group identity was so important. Fritz Dickel described the relief of the German volunteers as a collective exhalation, ‘as if liberated from a heavy burden’. However demanding life in the Brigades was, it was infinitely preferable to the isolation and subterfuge of underground work. For those who had been committed communists before their arrival in Spain, the war was in many ways a reinforcement of their political identity, which had been weakened and undermined by the experiences of  and after. Arrival in the International Brigades was an opportunity to reclaim the verve and dynamism of political action and turn German communism into a success story once again. On an individual level, it was a chance to prove one’s political commitment and offered a renewed chance of a communist group identity. For people who had grown up in large families in very poor conditions and had suffered poverty and unemployment in the s, the communist youth groups and the KPD offered protection and security. There was minimal separation between political activity and the private sphere, and the party became an ersatz family and home. This sense of security had been shattered in ; the community of the International Brigades offered a chance to rebuild it. Those who were not communists at the time, but later joined the party, tended to remember Spain in terms of political enlightenment or revelation. Their time in the Brigades often emerges as a crucial phase in the emergence of their communist identity. Fritz Mergen, a former member of the Rotfrontkämpferbund, had tried to join the party in French emigration, but was only allowed candidate status. He saw Spain as ‘a great turning point in my life’, and wrote about how he was ‘filled with pride’ to ‘be allowed to help’ as an International Brigades volunteer: ‘I have never forgotten the trust the party gave me.’ For him, political action was something inextricably linked to the communist movement, participation something which could only be granted (and taken away) by the party. For German communists, the party provided the only point of permanence during their years of exile. Many had been stripped of their German citizenship, and their past records meant that there was no possibility of   

SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Karl Mewis Erinnerungen), p. . SAPMO-BArch, DY  V /, p. : Bericht von Fritz Dickel,  Apr. . A. Leo, ‘Die Helden erinnern sich’, in id. (ed.), Die wiedergefundene Erinnerung: Verdrängte Geschichte in Osteuropa (Berlin, ), –.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /SgY /V //, p. : F. Mergen, ‘Mein Weg als Parteiloser nach Spanien’,  Nov. .



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

returning to Germany while the Nazis remained in power. The party provided networks of support for exiled communists and for those who ended up in German concentration camps, it was often the clandestine party networks within the camps which enabled them to survive until the end of the Second World War. It is therefore unsurprising that, for communist volunteers, their political identity was central to the way they experienced and remembered the war. Life in the Brigades also freed the volunteers from the burden of political failure and physical suffering. Richard Seipel wrote to his wife from Spain shortly before his death in December : ‘How well I felt, when I had the shooter [die Knarre] in my hand for the first time . . . I had missed what I have now, now I am quite healthy. Life has such a deep meaning here.’ Spain appeared to be an antidote to the poison of fascism. One account described the volunteers as being physically changed by their new roles: ‘You couldn’t see the years in prisons and concentration camps any more. Joy and the confidence of victory were written on their faces.’ The Spanish people’s enthusiastic response to the International Brigades, from their welcome in Madrid in  to their farewell parade in Barcelona in , also provided the German volunteers with a psychological boost. Ewald Munschke remembered feeling ‘as if we were at home, with friends, with comrades’. Fred Müller recalled how local farmers pushed oranges, bread, and wine onto the train which was bringing the soldiers to the front. For German communists embittered by the defeat of , this kind of popular enthusiasm formed a poignant contrast to the indifference of the German masses. Ludwig Renn told his Spanish political commissar that there was more good and nobility in the Spanish than the Germans. The German proletariat had been subverted by the bourgeoisie, the Spanish working class had, in contrast, ‘stayed pure, and we [Germans] find that very beautiful’. Renn was in many ways atypical of the German volunteers: born Arnold Friedrich Vieth von Golßenau, he had been a captain in the German army during the First World War, but joined the KPD in  following the publication of Krieg (War), his stinging critique of the military. As a leading communist writer, Renn was arrested in  and fled to Switzerland  

SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. . SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//: K. Höfer, F. Baumgärten, W. Kinzel, ‘Feuertaufe an der Jarama-Front’, .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Ewald Munschke), .  F. Müller, Da kamen sie aus aller Welt, ms. n.d., no pagination.  L. Renn, Der spanische Krieg (Berlin, ), .

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



upon his release. He travelled to Spain in the autumn of  and on account of his military experience became the commander of the Thälmann Battalion and later chief of staff of the Eleventh Brigade. Communist writers such as Renn were a small minority of the German volunteers, but played a disproportionately large role, due to their political and military experience. (Of course, not all German intellectuals in Spain were communists: Carl Einstein is a notable exception, as is the Catholic journalist Albert Müller, who became deputy company leader in the Thälmann Battalion before his death in January .)

I N T E L L E C T UA L S A N D T H E WA R

The German communist writers active in the Spanish Civil War can broadly be classed as members of three groups: worker-intellectuals, bourgeois writers, and aristocratic communists. Paradigmatic for the workerintellectuals was Willi Bredel. A former lathe operator, who had joined the KPD in , Bredel was one of the Weimar Republic’s best-known authors of popular working-class novels. Bredel travelled to Spain in the summer of  to attend the Writers’ Congress and stayed on with the Eleventh Brigade as commissar of the Thälmann Battalion, taking part in the battles of Quinto and Belchite. Bredel published extensively on his experiences in Spain, including a novel, Begegnung am Ebro (Encounter on the Ebro), short stories, and journalism. At the other end of the class spectrum were the aristocratic communists, typified by Ludwig Renn. A close associate of Renn’s was Hans Kahle, commander of the Eleventh Brigade who, although ten years younger than Renn, had also been an officer in the First World War, and had joined the KPD as early as . During the s Kahle worked as a journalist and  

Ibid. On intellectuals and the Spanish Civil War see S. Weintraub, The Last Great Cause: The Intellectuals and the Spanish Civil War (London, ); F. Benson, Writers in Arms: The Literary Impact of the Spanish Civil War (London, ); J. Pérez and W. Aycock (eds.), The Spanish Civil War in Literature (Lubbock, ) is informative on French responses to the war. P. Monteath, Writing the Good Fight covers a broader range than most accounts, including Nazi, communist, and anarchist literature. On German intellectuals see Costa et al. (eds.), German and International Perspectives on the Spanish Civil War; Schlenstedt, ‘Exil und antifaschistischer Kampf in Spanien’; Walter, ‘No pasarán!’; Raddatz, ‘Mit Gewehr und Feder’; and the special editions of Weimarer Beiträge,  () and Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik,  ().  G. Wirth, Ein Katholik als Kämpfer für das republikanische Spanien (n.p. [GDR], ).  Pichler, Der spanische Bürgerkrieg im deutschsprachigen Roman, –.



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

allegedly as a Comintern functionary. In Spain, he was an immensely popular and successful officer and eventually became commander of the th Division. Other members of the German upper classes took longer to ‘convert’ to communism. Born into a Prussian officer family, Bodo Uhse took part in the Kapp Putsch and was a member of the Nazi party before joining the KPD in the early s. A close friend of Kahle, he spent over a year in Spain, most of it in the officer corps of the Eleventh Brigade. He combined his experiences of Nazism with those in Spain in his novel Leutnant Bertram, the story of a Condor Legion pilot who defects to the International Brigades. His war diaries were published nearly twenty years after his death. The third category of communist intellectual were those from a bourgeois background. In many ways, it was this group which had the most difficulty in being accepted into the communist movement. The worker-intellectuals were the embodiment of communist aspirational ideals, and the aristocratic communists’ patrician droit de seigneur gave them sufficient confidence in their usefulness to the party to carry off the transition successfully. But intellectuals from a middle-class background lacked the social authenticity of the workers and the self-belief of the Prussian officer class. They also tended to be burdened with class guilt and a longing to identify with the working class, which led them to go to great lengths to overcome their perceived shortcomings. However, the barriers of class, and in the case of Jewish communists, religion, were hard to transcend. For many, their class origins were an indelible stain on their communist credentials and their party careers were an ongoing and futile struggle to overcome this. Alfred Katzenstein, for example, believed his middleclass upbringing had made him unwilling to question orders while in Spain: ‘I had learnt that in some respects I had had the wrong experiences, and that I could not simply rely on my feelings . . . in the course of time, such experiences naturally made me unsure and contributed considerably to a feeling of self-insecurity, which became characteristic for me.’ Alfred Kantorowicz, although a senior party functionary at the time of the war, shared Katzenstein’s insecurities. A journalist from a bourgeois Jewish background, Kantorowicz joined the KPD in . As a member of  According to Hans-Peter Kahle, the son of Hans Kahle, he spent some time in Mexico in the s (AKA, K, : H-P Kahle to A. Kantorowicz,  Aug. ).  BHE ii. –.  B. Uhse, Leunant Bertram (Berlin, ).  Id., Reise- und Tagebücher,  vols. (Berlin, ).  Katzenstein, Einblicke, iii. .

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



the Wilmersdorf artists’ colony, he had known many leading communist intellectuals such as Arthur Koestler, Max Schroeder, Ernst Busch, and Erich Weinert. After , he went into exile in Paris, where he was involved with German literary circles and worked on several Münzenberg projects. In Spain he served as an officer with the Eleventh and later the Thirteenth Brigade, working on the brigade newspaper and a history of the Chapiev Battalion. But despite his literary connections, Kantorowicz’s diaries of the period betray his fear of exclusion and his need to prove himself. Kantorowicz was deeply hurt when Egon Erwin Kisch, the Czech journalist, told him (probably in jest), that he would never quite belong. Kantorowicz wrote repeatedly of the need to prove himself, of the feeling of an endless struggle ‘month to month, week to week, day for day’ to justify his membership of the ‘antifascist avantgarde’. Exile presented a particular set of difficulties for writers. Living in countries where German was not widely spoken, most had little opportunity to practise their profession and even the lucky ones were dependent on the small-circulation German-language exile newspapers, journals, and publishing houses for an outlet. In such cramped, hothouse conditions, professional jealousy and petty rivalries were rife and many writers felt the personal stigma of failure to be added to the deprivations of exile. Kantorowicz travelled to Moscow shortly before his departure for Spain. During his visit, he discussed his novel-in-progress with other German exiles, all of whom condemned the book as politically flawed and unpublishable. Attacked both as a writer and a communist, Kantorowicz felt hurt, angry, and full of self-doubt. He wrote in his diary: ‘At the moment it seems to me as if the cleanest thing to do would be to stay somewhere on the front in Spain: so that it would be quiet and at an end.’ Not all writers were so melodramatic about their motives for travelling to Spain, but the war had a profound effect on them nonetheless. Erich Arendt, the son of a teacher and a member of the KPD since , was already in Spain when the war broke out. Arendt joined the Catalonian  A. Kantorowicz, Nachtbücher: Aufzeichnungen im französischen Exil  bis , ed. U. Büttner and A. Voß (Hamburg, ), : diary entry  Aug. .  Ibid. p. : diary entry  Jan. .  Ibid. p. : diary entry  Sept. .  For a sample of the tone and severity of this criticism, cf. Pieck’s letter to Kantorowicz, dated  Oct. : SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv, Nr. .  Kantorowicz, Nachtbücher, : diary entry  Oct. .  On the details of Arendt’s activities in Spain cf. BHE ii ; S. Schlenstedt, ‘Kunst und antifascistischer Kampf ’,  ff., , –, ; M. Schlosser, ‘Gespräch mit Erich Arendt’, in G. Laschen and M. Schlosser (eds.), Der zerstückte Traum: Für Erich Arendt zum . Geburtstag (Darmstadt, ),  ff.



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

th Division ‘Carlos Marx’ where he worked as a journalist and organized a ‘flying library’ to provide books for the soldiers at the front. Arendt remembered Spain as a political and an artistic awakening. Since  he had not been active politically, partly because of his exile situation and, he implied, due to the ideological and political chaos of the last years of the Weimar Republic. ‘I first became political again, when civil war broke out in Spain and I was called for as an antifascist, not as a functionary,’ he told an interviewer in the s. The poems are populated in the main by Spanish people—peasants, soldiers, and mothers—and take place in an Iberian landscape. ‘Aragonesischer Abend’, written in  shortly after his arrival in Spain, begins with a description of clay houses stretching their faces from the heat (‘Lehmhäuser recken aus der Hitze ihr Gesicht’) and dwells on the ‘summer blaze of the sky’ over the ‘bare endless fields’. As the day draws to a close, mules ‘thunder’ down to drink at ‘the eveningblack vein of a river’ which runs through ‘the violet land’, the ‘silver strokes’ of their hooves ringing up to the stars. Arendt was clearly fascinated by the new climate, sights, and sounds which surrounded him; this is Regler’s ‘new geography’ in a literal sense. Spain and the Spanish people were to remain central themes of Arendt’s poetry well into the s and he continued to include certain war poems in his readings until his death. Wolfgang Emmerich points out that Arendt’s poems lack the self-pity and tone of lamentation present in much exile poetry. His feelings of pity and sorrow are for Spain and the Spanish people, not himself. Arendt knew Spanish culture and language relatively well due to his time in Mallorca, and during the war he was surrounded by Spanish soldiers, not Internationals. The poems centre on the Spanish, not the German, experience of the war. His empathy with the new and exotic country and people provided an outlet for his emotions and a political arena in which he felt comfortable.  

Schlosser, ‘Gespräch mit Erich Arendt’, . On Arendt’s Spanish Civil War poetry cf. ibid. ; J. von der Thüsen, ‘Lederfaust und Hand: Der Kampf um die Einsetzung der Sinne in Erich Arendts Spanien-Gedichten’, in Laschen and Schlosser (eds.), Der zerstückte Traum, –; E. Bleier-Staudt, ‘Die deutschsprachige Lyrik des Spanischen Bürgerkriegs’, LiLi,  (), –; S. S. Toliver, Exile and the Elemental in the Poetry of Erich Arendt (Bern, ); and esp. W. Emmerich, ‘Mit rebellischem Auge. Die Exillyrik Erich Arendts’, text kritik, / (July ), –.  A collection of Arendt’s Spanish poems was published in the GDR in : E. Arendt, Bergwindballade: Gedichte des spanischen Freiheitskampfes (Berlin, ). A further volume of poems and essays originally published during the war appeared in : id., Spanien-Akte Arendt, ed. S. Schlenstedt (Rostock, ).  ‘Aragonesischer Abend’, in id., Bergwindballade, .  W. Emmerich, ‘Mit rebellischem Auge’.

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



But to what extent did the concerns of writers and intellectuals overlap with the war aims of the KPD, the dominant political force in the lives of the German volunteers? One way to answer this question is to return to two very different writers: Hans Kahle, the aristocratic commander of the th Division and Willi Bredel, the lathe-operator turned commissar. During the Second World War, as Hans Kahle languished in an internment camp, he received a letter from a ‘true friend and old war comrade’ from Spain. Ernest Hemingway wrote: A lot of water has flowed under the Ebro since we crossed that day. I wish we could have that sort of exercise twice a week. With whiskey afterwards. I always remember afterwards when we were walking through the shelling as happy as children because we were both the same age and re-living our boyhood in that great state of invulnerability that all we old soldiers have instead of the state of grace.

He continued with news of his forthcoming book (For Whom the Bell Tolls), commenting, ‘It will not be as good a book as Men Against Metal but there are parts of it you will like. There is something about you in it.’ The letter ended with the wish that ‘you were commanding the th Division and that I had a small job on your staff ’. Hemingway’s letter is suffused not only with his admiration for Kahle, but with nostalgia for Spain. Kahle, the dashing commander of the Eleventh, embodied the spirit of youth, adventure, and cameraderie, and the masculine, romanticized, individualist image of the war which Hemingway was to immortalize in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Gustav Regler later recalled Hemingway’s deep affection for Kahle, a man who inspired great devotion: He liked looting, but handed everything he found in the castles over to the legal Government, departing from this principle only with a big china vase which he took with him from one field headquarters to another in a packing-case. He wore silk shirts and during lulls in the fighting went to Madrid, where he slept in the Empire bed of a film-star who had fled, swam in her pool and slowly drank her cellar dry.

Kahle was by all accounts a handsome and charming man (Alfred Kantorowicz described his ‘manly-comradely charisma’) and Regler maintained a tactful silence on his affairs with high-profile women, such as  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : E. Hemingway to H. Kahle, n.d. (this letter was probably written during the course of , the year For Whom the Bell Tolls was published).  The character ‘Hans’ is described as ‘a fine soldier and a good companion’ in E. Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (Harmondsworth, ), .  G. Regler, Owl of Minerva, .  AKA, A, pp. –: ‘Die deutschsprachige Exil-Literatur über den spanischen Bürgerkrieg.’



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

Erika Mann and the photographer Gerta Taro. His sometimes flamboyant behaviour does not seem to have damaged his standing with his troops. A Dutch volunteer remembered Kahle riding in front of the marching soldiers on a white horse, but despite commenting wryly ‘I didn’t know that he was a cavalryman’, continued to view the commander with respect and affection. But despite the widespread admiration felt for Kahle, there can be no doubt that he was far from a model Marxist-Leninist. His eventful personal life fitted poorly with the moralistic attitudes towards sex and the family prevalent in the communist movement at the time, and his highlevel and prolific socializing was hardly the behaviour of a devoted and disciplined functionary. His background, which made him such a confident and successful officer, was far from an ideal communist biography. The war as experienced by Kahle seems very different to the war of official party histories. Although the enemy remains the same, Kahle’s war is based on strong elements of hierarchy and privilege (the officer corps, populated by semi-aristocratic figures such as Renn, Kahle, and Uhse), individualism, glamour, and celebrity. The conflict between intellectuals and the party also preoccupied Willi Bredel. He wrote to his wife Lisa about ‘how unpopular writers in general are here. Everyone thinks writers are only here to blow their own trumpets [der eigenen Reklame wegen].’ He went on to add, ‘several writers have done serious damage to the whole of proletarian literature there’, but despite this implication that the writers themselves were (at least partially) to blame, the problem also lay with attitudes within the party. Begegnung am Ebro, Bredel’s novel of the war, is highly autobiographical. The narrator, like Bredel, is appointed commissar in the Eleventh Brigade, where he meets Schorsch, the brigade commander, a real-life figure, who Bredel had known for two weeks before he was killed in battle. In the novel, the narrator’s first impressions of Schorsch are not good: He was a sceptic and a cynic, this boorish building worker and now the commander of the battalion, particularly with regard to those who knew how to write and give smooth, wordy speeches. The work of a war commissar, he said to me on the first day of our acquaintance, is not deskwork, your future occupation is not a propaganda tour, and you’ll probably refrain from writing books under artillery fire and during aerial bombardments. Maybe, he said, we’ll even get along. 

SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Petros Laros), pp. –. SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv Nr. , p. : W. Bredel to L. Bredel,  Sept. . SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv, Nr. , p. : diary entry  Aug. .  W. Bredel, Begegnung am Ebro: Aufzeichnungen eines Kriegskommissars (Paris, ), –.  

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



Despite his admiration for Schorsch’s bravery and political credentials, the narrator cannot stand the constant derision. In a later version of the novel he describes their relationship as ‘unbearable’, and asks to be moved to another battalion. Schorsch mocks his commissar publicly, telling the troops that he is there to tell them stories and read poetry. The narrator is incensed and insists that he has come to fight, and that writing is of secondary importance. But the commander’s prejudices are deeply entrenched: in a passage which remained unpublished, Schorsch explains that his hatred of writers springs from his contempt for the behaviour of German intellectuals under Hitler: ‘What are these oh so clever, oh so sensible men doing in Germany now? Aren’t they the loudest “Heil!” criers? Don’t they bow and scrape in front of their new idols with the most appalling lack of dignity? . . . Nothing with less backbone crawls under the sun!’ Schorsch’s views are clear: intellectuals are bourgeois, unprincipled and unreliable. While he spent time in concentration camps, German writers and academics were making their peace with the Nazi regime. War is not a book tour or a conference and the only possible reason for writers to be in the Brigades is for their own self-promotion. There is convincing evidence to suggest that these prejudices were shared by many KPD functionaries. After the end of the Spanish Civil War the KPD set about cataloguing German participation in the war. To this end, Gustav Szinda, a senior functionary, wrote a series of reports in Moscow in . In all, , men and women were assessed on both military and political criteria. The tone of the reports is critical and suspicious; there are many (unsubstantiated) reports of contact with Trotskyists and the Gestapo, cowardice, and venereal disease. The reports on those considered to be intellectuals are very revealing of contemporary KPD attitudes towards writers and artists. Despite praise for his organizational skills and good work as a translator, Götz Berger is described as ‘a typical intellectual, who has contact to many uncontrollable intellectual circles’. Similarly, Ludwig Renn is described as ‘unclear’ in political matters, but  

Id., Begegnung am Ebro (Berlin, ), . SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv, Nr. /: M/s ‘Begegnung am Ebro’,  May , n.p.  On the observation and repression of members of the International Brigades see the essential article by Peter Huber and Michael Uhl, ‘Politische Überwachung und Repressionen in den Internationalen Brigaden (–)’, Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte, / (), –.  Very similar reports were written about the British volunteers. Cf. Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire, –.  SAPMO-BArch, RY /I //, p. .



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

earned praise for his willingness to recognize his mistakes. In the same vein, Albert Schreiner was portrayed as indecisive and distant, tending to be ‘uncomradely’ and superior, while inactive politically. Intellectuals appear in these reports as insecure and uncertain individuals, lacking the instinctive political reflexes of the working-class party member. This reflected communist contempt for liberal thinking as opposed to the ‘partiality’ demanded of party members. But at least Renn and Schreiner earned praise for their malleability and eagerness to subsume themselves to the will of the party. Szinda saved his real venom for the singer Ernst Busch, ‘a very arrogant person, very often played at being the injured party, because he was not as celebrated in Spain as he had imagined. His manner in Spain was that of a film diva.’ Despite Busch’s proletarian background, his artistic renown, and his undeniable popularity with the troops, to the communist party he was guilty of the most unforgivable intellectual sin: individuality.

T RO U B L E I N PA R A D I S E

However, as the war progressed, the German volunteers were faced with more immediate problems: they found themselves fighting for a beleaguered cause. Popular support for the Republic could not compensate for lack of arms and military expertise. The Republicans faced a Nationalist side substantially reinforced by aid from fascist Germany and Italy, and were increasingly reliant on conscripts to fill the holes in the ranks caused by the high casualty rate. Even the highly motivated International Brigaders were not immune to despair. KPD records show that about two hundred of the volunteers spent some time under lock and key—that is to say that, on average, every tenth German volunteer was arrested at some stage of his time in Spain. About half of these arrests took place as a result of desertion or breaking brigade discipline, a quarter were on suspicion of espionage, and a quarter were for political reasons, usually alleged Trotskyism. At least one volunteer was shot on political grounds, and three were shot as alleged agents. 

SAPMO-BArch, RY /I //, p. . SAPMO-BArch, RY /I //, p. . SAPMO-BArch, RY /I //, p. .  Uhl, ‘Die Internationalen Brigaden’, . Cf. Mallmann, ‘ “Kreuzritter des antifaschistischen Mysteriums” ’, –.  Uhl, ‘Die Internationalen Brigaden’, –.  

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



Bodo Uhse, writing in his diary in July , described the low morale of troops and officers and the high level of desertion and asked: ‘Why is Hans [Kahle] talking about the second battle of the Marne all the time?’ (A reference to the final German offensive of the First World War, which ended in disaster and decisively pushed the balance of the war in favour of the Allies.) In a diary entry written on New Year’s Day  Hans Kahle described his ‘loneliness’ and the ‘emptiness’ and ‘boredom’ of the war. ‘Has the war already blunted everyone, so that no one can be happy with all their heart? Is the hard battle of Teruel weighing on us all? Are we all thinking too much about home, about our homeland somewhere in Europe?’ Willi Bredel expressed a similar malaise in a series of letters to his wife Lisa. He had been released from his military position as commissar and sent to Barcelona to write the history of the Eleventh Brigade. Here, in contrast to life as an officer, conditions were bad and Bredel, who was unenthusiastic about his task, complained about the cold and lack of money. Simultaneously working on what would become Begegnung am Ebro, he worried about the ‘cloud of pessimism’ which hung over the book’s ending: ‘By the way, originally I didn’t want to let so many die in my story. But meanwhile unfortunately they have all now actually died.’ Particularly in the later stages of the war, when defeat seemed certain and more and more friends and comrades were killed, exile in Spain could be just as dispiriting as elsewhere. After his first experiences at the battle of Quinto in late August , Bredel had written in his diary, ‘I don’t just feel healthy, but fresh and lively like seldom before’; but on return to Paris in the summer of , Bredel estimated that the past year had aged him by ten years. Matters were made worse by conflict within the Popular Front, particularly the tensions between those groups who favoured a continuation of the revolution, and those who argued for a halt to revolutionary activity and the imposition of military discipline. Communist intolerance towards those of other political convictions came to a head in May , when the communist Catalonian police commissioner ordered a raid on the central telephone exchange, which was controlled by the anarcho-syndicalist CNT. Fighting broke out between the communists and a loose confederation of rank and file anarchists and the POUM, a party made up of anti  

.  

SAdK, Berlin, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, Nr. a, p. : diary entry  July . AKA, B:K. SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv, Nr. , p. : W. Bredel to L. Bredel,  Apr. SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv Nr. , p. : diary entry  Aug. . SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv Nr. , p. : W. Bredel to L. Bredel,  July .



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

Communist dissidents and Trotskyists. Between  and  lost their lives in the fighting, the POUM was purged, and its leader Andrés Nin murdered. Relations in the Republican camp were damaged irretrievably. The consequences of this for German anarcho-syndicalism in Spain were disastrous: almost every member of DAS was arrested and interrogated by German and Russian communists. On the military front, matters were not much better. After the defeat of the Republican troops at Teruel in early , Nationalist forces were able to break through to the coast, cutting off Catalonia from the rest of the Republican territory. Despite dogged resistance during the battle of the Ebro in the summer of , the tide had turned against the Republic. The Nationalists eventually entered Madrid on  March , marking the end of the war.

A F T E R T H E WA R WA S OV E R

It is very difficult to ascertain how many Germans were killed or wounded in Spain. East German historians consistently claimed that , German volunteers (out of ,) had died in Spain for the Republican cause by the time the International Brigades were demobilized in . Other historians name figures of between , and ,. It is likely that the casualty rate amongst German volunteers was higher than that of other national groups, as the majority of the wounded volunteers returned to the front after a short convalescence. For them, a return to Germany was inconceivable and impossible. This also meant that their options after the demobilization of the International Brigades in  were limited. Apart from a small number of KPD functionaries who were recalled to Moscow, most of the volunteers remained in Spain until the fall of Barcelona and took part in further fighting in early . Once they crossed the Pyrenees amongst a flood of refugees, there was no alternative to the notorious French internment camps, initially in Saint Cyprien, and subsequently in Gurs, Le Vernet, and Les Milles. Conditions were horrendous and the outlook for German  

Esewein and Schubert, Spain at War, . R. Tosstorff, ‘ “Ein Moskauer Prozeß in Barcelona”: Die Verfolgung der POUM und ihre internationale Bedeutung’, in D. Staritz and H. Weber (eds.), Kommunisten verfolgen Kommunisten: stalinistischer Terror und ‘Säuberungen’ in den kommunistischen Parteien Europas seit den dreißiger Jahren (Berlin, ), –.  Nelles, ‘Deutsche Anarchosyndikalisten und Freiwillige’, .  Von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, . Bradley and Chappel, International Brigades in Spain, .

The Odyssey of the German Volunteers



internees, particularly after the outbreak of war in September , was extremely bleak. Some managed to acquire visas for the USA or Mexico or were ‘invited’ to the USSR, but the fall of France in  meant that many faced deportation to Germany and the concentration camps. A number managed to escape from internment and join French resistance groups. Statistics collated in the GDR give an impression of where the veterans who later returned to the Eastern half of Germany spent the war years: .% in Nazi imprisonment within Germany; .% in the French resistance; .% in the Soviet Union; % in Switzerland; .% respectively in Sweden and Mexico. Other veterans spent the war in Denmark, Czechoslovakia, China, England, Chile, Argentina, Belgium, the USA, Holland, Columbia, and Greece; .% remained in Spain in Nationalist captivity, some of whom were not be released until . The significance of German involvement in the International Brigades must be seen as part of the antifascist exile experience as a whole. Given that Spain was followed by internment, renewed illegality, underground work, or deportation to German concentration camps, it is no wonder the veterans looked back on Spain as ‘almost a utopia’. Commenting on the German communist leadership in Buchenwald concentration camp, Jorge Semprun described the Spanish Civil War as ‘the green paradise of their antifascist memory’. Minna Arzt said that during her later interrogations by the Gestapo she had thought back to Spain as a time when ‘everyone was still healthy and together’. For her, Spain remained a source of strength and resistance against the insults of her captors. Hans Kahle’s letters after the war are also filled with nostalgia for the days of the Eleventh Brigade. He wrote to his former lover Erika Mann in February : ‘Everything was much less complicated in Spain, there was the Ebro, we stood here and the fascists lived on the other side.’ Once in exile in Surrey, Kahle became increasingly frustrated with his inactivity and the decorum and ‘puritanical’ attitudes of life in English writers’ circles. He wrote to Kurt Stern in April , ‘I am sick of playing the nice and charming boy’, and told Bodo Uhse in January :

 SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/, p. : Statistische Angaben über ehemalige Spanienkämpfer in der DDR, Jan. .  Quoted in Schlenstedt, ‘Exil und antifaschistischer Kampf in Spanien’, .  J. Semprun, Quel beau dimanche! (Paris, ), .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /SgY /V //, p. : report by Minna Arzt.  AKA, Ostberlin : Kahle to E. Mann,  Feb. .  AKA, BI: K: Kahle to Kurt,  Apr. .



The Odyssey of the German Volunteers

Swimming pools, cocktails, whiskey and girls are perfectly allright for some time. I enjoyed them during the first half year of my stay in England. But now I fell back to the times of the first months of the Spanish War—Madrid—Jarama— Guadalajara—when you stood alone upon yourself and your  or  hundred men with only one choice either to win by holding out or to get killed in the debacle. And I won; and we want to win and I believe we will win.

For a communist like Kahle, there seemed no immediate prospect of fighting against Nazi Germany, let alone a chance of winning. The personal and political allegiances of the Spanish Civil War had broken down irretrievably: in August  Kahle had written to Mann, recalling ‘our short intermezzo . . . which is one of the strongest and most beautiful memories of my life’ and requesting a ‘resumption’. But one month later he broke off all contact when she condemned the Nazi–Soviet Pact. The choice between victory or death in battle had been replaced by a moral and political stalemate, leaving Kahle longing for the days of open battle and wartime romance. By , however, the German veterans of the International Brigades were scattered across the globe, with only their memories of Spain to sustain them through the hard years of the Second World War. We turn now to their return from these far-flung destinations and the start of their East German story after the end of the war in .  SAdK, Berlin, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, Nr. /: Kahle to Uhse,  Jan.  (English as original).  AKA, EII, , : H. Kahle to E. Mann,  Aug. .  SAdK, Berlin, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, Nr. /: H. Kahle to B. Uhse,  Apr. .



Strangers in a Strange Land: The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany In September  Hans Kahle wrote from London to Franz Dahlem. The war was finally over, and Kahle pleaded with Dahlem to use his connections to get him out of England: ‘Our most burning desire is to return to Germany as quickly as possible and take part in the final extermination of fascism and the rebuilding of a new and genuinely democratic Germany.’ Kahle was not alone. The archives are full of similar letters detailing the veterans’ longing to return to Germany now that Nazism had finally been defeated. As one veteran described it, ‘after our important abilities have lain stagnant for so long . . . life in Berlin will use them again, despite the difficulties we are well aware of; and life will have a point’. Many émigrés experienced great difficulty in returning to Germany, having to collect money to pay their passage, visas, and exit permits, as well as permission to enter the Soviet Zone of Occupation. Despite these problems, over , veterans chose to live in East Germany after . They returned with high hopes for the new state and the prospect of a socialist post-war order. These political goals were also tied up with personal hopes: after twelve years of Nazi rule and illegality, veterans finally had the opportunity to restart a private life and resume contact with friends and family.

RETURN AND READJUSTMENT

–

The years – were a period of great activity for the Spanienkämpfer, or Spain-fighters, as the veterans of the International Brigades became known. Not all veterans had to make their way back from exile: some, who  

SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : H. Kahle to F. Dahlem,  Sept. . E. Arendt to P. Merker, quoted in S. Schlenstedt, ‘Die Rückkehr Erich Arendts aus dem Exil’, Exilforschung,  (), –.  East German statistics name a figure of ,. The actual figure may have been slightly higher, when those not known to the veterans’ association are taken into account. SAPMOBArch, vorl. DY /K/, p. : Statistische Angaben über ehemalige Spanienkämpfer.



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

had managed to survive the war years in Germany, witnessed the defeat of Nazism in  and the liberation of the concentration camps. The days and weeks immediately following German capitulation were marked by intense grass-roots activity and the formation of antifascist committees (antifas) and workers’ councils. Members of the pre-war German Left who had spent the war in Germany lying low or in concentration camps sprang into action in the towns and villages. ‘Soviets’ were set up, street names changed, and towns decorated with red flags. Some committees began the collectivization of agriculture. In a town in Saxony, the communist committee changed the day of rest from Sunday to Friday and ordered that the greeting ‘good day’ should be replaced by ‘red front’. German antifascists, after twelve years of persecution and frustration, finally had the opportunity to take the initiative and assume political leadership. They also found the time to seek out their former comrades. The Spanienkämpfer had much in common with other antifascist veterans, but their experiences in Spain, their relative youth, and the fact that all had been in exile outside Germany at some stage, also made them a unique group. Veterans enjoyed the opportunity to talk about old times. But their activities also had a political purpose: antifascist activity and visibility were explicitly seen as a contribution towards the moral rehabilitation of the German people. One International Brigader wrote: ‘It will surely only be a drop in the ocean in view of the shame which has befallen our people, but I think that every justified activity to this end should be developed.’  Norman Naimark’s groundbreaking study The Russians in Germany (Cambridge, Mass., ) was the first major work on the Soviet Zone of Occupation to make use of both German and Russian archives; Pritchard, Making of the GDR focuses on the interaction of indigenous working class politics with the occupying forces; E. Weitz, Creating German Communism, – (Princeton, ) has a substantial section on continuity and change in the transition from KPD to SED; C. Kleßmann, Die doppelte Staatsgründung: Deutsche Geschichte – (Bonn, ) puts events in a German–German context.  Naimark, Russians in Germany, .  On antifascists in the Soviet Zone of Occupation see C. Epstein, ‘The Last Revolutionaries: The Old Communists of East Germany’ (Harvard D.Phil. thesis, ); R. Kessler and H. R. Peter, ‘Antifaschisten in der SBZ: Zwischen elitärem Selbstverständnis und politischer Instrumentalisierung’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, / (), –.  While antifascism in post-war Germany has been the subject of considerable scholarly interest, very little work has been done on the Spanienkämpfer. The only major pieces of work are two Masters’ dissertations written by German graduate students: S. Bolzen, ‘Die Spanienkämpfer von / in der DDR’ (Magisterarbeit, Cologne, ); F. Schütze, ‘Die Rolle der kommunistischen Spanienkämpfer in der Führungsspitze der SED (–)’ (Magisterarbeit, Frankfurt am Main, ). I am most grateful to Felix Schütze for sending me a copy of his dissertation.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /SgY /V//, p. : A. Dorf to F. Dahlem,  July .

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



By late July  there were already between forty and fifty veterans of the International Brigades in Berlin, thirty-five of whom attended an initial meeting on  September . In June  Karl Kormes, a veteran of the Eleventh International Brigade, wrote to Nan Green, a friend from his exile years in Britain who had become the secretary of the British International Brigade Association: ‘Anyhow, we had already two small parties in Berlin. Recently I met Hans Kahle, Dahlem and others. It is rather astonishing how many of those old battle-horses [. . .] are still alive.’ Even veterans who had been posted far from the bustle of Berlin were not left out: Hans Kahle and Willi Bredel, finding themselves together in the town of Schwerin, wasted no time in organizing a reunion for the veterans of the region. However, private reminiscences soon gave way to public commemoration, as Kormes’s next letter to Green shows: On July th [] we had our first public meeting organised by the SED. It took place in one of the biggest Berlin theaters . . . We Brigaders were put in the first place of honour, as a matter of fact it was a big show. More than  people took part. When they left we all had the impression they felt as enthusiastic about us as the spanish people felt when we marched through the streets of one of their ‘pueblos’. There was even a spaniard who spoke in ‘catellano puro’. He was very acclaimed although nobody did understand him.

Bringing the memory of the war into the public eye was a chance for the German International Brigaders to bask in some belated glory. It was also a way for them to commemorate their friends who had not made it back to Germany: during the Berlin event, the names of those who had been killed in Spain were read aloud to the accompaniment of the funeral march. But the evening was first and foremost a public event with a clear political message. The press described the event as an anti-Franco rally, stressing the connection between the battles of the International Brigades and the continuing fight against repression. As the banners in the theatre proclaimed, ‘the struggle for Spain’s freedom continues’. The organizers  SAPMO-BArch, DY /SgY /V//, p. : attendance list for Kameradschaftsabend; SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //v. , p. : letter from K. Kormes to N. Green,  Oct. .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //v. , p. : K. Kormes to N. Green,  June  (English as original).  SAPMO-BArch, NY /: invitation to ‘geselligen Beisammensein’,  July .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //v. , p. : K. Kormes to N. Green,  Aug.  (English as original).  ‘In ihrem Geiste wollen wir wirken’, ND,  July .  ‘Kundgebung gegen Franco’, Der Tagesspiegel,  July .  ‘Spanienabend im “Palast” ’, Der Kurier,  July .



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

did not pass up the opportunity to link the evening to events closer to home: the closing item of the programme was a declaration of loyalty to the Socialist Unity Party, founded three months earlier on  April  by the merger of the KPD and SPD. From mid- onwards, commemoration of the Spanish Civil War increasingly became a matter of public education. Memoirs and novels about Spain were published, and July rallies to mark the anniversary of the outbreak of the war became an annual fixture. These rallies were often organized in conjunction with the VVN, the umbrella veterans’ organization, showing how the history of the International Brigades was being integrated into the larger story of anti-Nazi resistance. According to the dominant discourses of the time and the restitution legislation introduced in , the Spanienkämpfer, like other ‘fighters against fascism’, ranked above those, such as Holocaust survivors, who were classified as ‘victims of fascism’ and were deemed to have resisted only passively. ‘Fighters against fascism’ enjoyed greater prestige and were perceived to represent an antifascist elite (an attitude which, in some cases, was shared by veterans and lasted well into the s). It was with these ‘fighters’ that the East German population was supposed to identify. Spanienkämpfer took part in VVN meetings, and Spain was a prominent part of the touring exhibition about the antifascist resistance, ‘The Other Germany’, organized by the VVN in , which was visited by over , people (many of them on compulsory school or factory group visits). Although commemorative rallies were aimed at the general public, the Spanienkämpfer usually took the opportunity to organize a private gathering parallel to the main event. A speech given by the writer Alfred Kantorowicz at a meeting in  gives a sense of the atmosphere of these meetings. Kantorowicz emphasized the continued importance of political action: ‘We were and are political soldiers. We remain political soldiers in all

 In  Walter Gorrisch’s Um Spaniens Freiheit was published;  saw the appearance of Eduard Claudius’ Grune Oliven und Nackte Berge and Bodo Uhse’s Leutnant Bertram (both of which had been published previously outside the Soviet Zone);  marked the publication of two books by Alfred Kantorowicz, Spanisches Tagebuch and Tschapiew, and one by Willi Bredel, Begegnung am Ebro (again, a reprint).  SAPMO-BArch, DY /V //.  e.g. in Leipzig on  July  and the series of local events in July .  Herf, Divided Memory, ch. ; Kessler and H.R. Peter, ‘Antifaschisten in der SBZ’, .  Interview with Fred Müller,  Mar. .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /V //– on the planning and execution of the exhibition. See also J. Danyel, ‘Bilder vom “anderen Deutschland”: Frühe Widerstandsrezeption nach ’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, / (), –.

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



struggles, not just the ones on the battlefields.’ This political commitment was what had given the Spanienkämpfer the strength and resolve to fight in Spain against enormous odds. His strong sense of their historical mission was underscored by a picture of the veterans as the vanguard of a new Germany: ‘executors of a better future’, whose revolutionary resolve had been forged by suffering in the concentration camps and in the underground resistance. Kantorowicz concluded, ‘our front is now the front of reconstruction of our new democratic order’, and it was here that many veterans saw their future role. The records of a similar meeting, which took place the following year in Berlin, give a snapshot of what veterans were doing during these early years: of the  veterans who attended, % described themselves as members of the SED, and % of them had functions within the party. Eight per cent were members of the government (although many of those who were most prominent in the provisional governmental of the Soviet Zone did not attend, presumably due to pressure of work), and % were members of the police force. Interestingly, only % of those at the meeting classed themselves as workers (%) or peasants (%). This sample of veteran occupations, while not definitive, can be taken as reasonably representative. It is broadly comparable with a later survey carried out by the veterans’ association, which also underlines the importance of the army, police, state, and party as employers. Most of the veterans who returned to the Soviet Zone of Occupation were either already in the KPD or joined the SED shortly after its formation. Those who had been in the exile leadership, like Franz Dahlem and Anton Ackermann, were quickly integrated into the new SED structures: Dahlem and Ackermann were both signatories of the KPD declaration of May  and became members of the first SED central secretariat formed in April . Other veterans took on important administrative roles, Heinrich Rau becoming head of the DWK, where he soon had a number of other International Brigade veterans on his staff. As the SED head of personnel, Franz Dahlem also played an important role in co-opting veterans for party work and was often the first port of call for Spanienkämpfer arriving in  SAPMO-BArch, DY /V //: Alfred Kantorowicz’s speech to ‘Kameraden’, n.d., but held on eleventh anniversary of outbreak of Spanish Civil War.  Ibid.  Ibid.  SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V //: Fragebogen und Delegierten-Ausweise.  SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/, pp. –: Statistische Angaben über ehemalige Spanienkämpfer in der DDR.  Cf. esp. Schütze, ‘Die Rolle der kommunistischen Spanienkämpfer’,  ff.



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

Berlin. Veterans were also prominent in the cultural sphere: writers such as Willi Bredel and Erich Weinert, journalists like Max Kahane, or cultural functionaries like Walter Janka, who was head of the DEFA film studios, before moving to the Aufbau publishing house. It is not surprising that these long-time communists, with their years of experience and proven political records, often ended up working for the party. Returnees from exile and those released from concentration camps tended to report to the party leadership for duty as soon as they got to Germany. As Ralf Kessler and Harmut Rüdiger Peter point out in their study of antifascist veterans in Saxony-Anhalt, working for the party or the government was a step up in the world for most long-term communists, the majority of whom came from working-class backgrounds and had suffered long-term unemployment in the Weimar Republic. As a result, many were fiercely loyal to the new political order, feeling that the fate of the new state was bound up with their own personal hopes. However, the party had fairly set ideas about where Spanienkämpfer could be best put to use and, due to their military experience, this often involved some kind of police role. As one veteran remembered: ‘In those days, Dahlem said that all Spanienkämpfer should go into the People’s Police [Volkspolizei] if possible.’ Kurt Lohberger, a veteran of the Eleventh International Brigade, was from a mining family in Saxony and remembered sabotaging army equipment during strikes in the Weimar period: clearly, he had considerable reservations about being a part of any state organ of control. Following his experiences in Spain, he had promised himself that he would never wear another uniform. Nevertheless, despite his doubts, he followed party orders, and eventually became a general in the East German army: ‘I would have preferred to do something else, but you get used to it [mit dem Essen kommt der Geschmack].’ Many of those who entered the police force ended up in the armed forces, like Lohberger, or in the secret police. Take Hermann Gartmann’s exemplary career path: initially regional secretary of the Potsdam SED, he was made deputy police chief in , by a fellow Spanienkämpfer and chief of police Richard Staimer. In  he was put in charge of constructing the regional state security organization in Brandenburg and in  he was  Interview with Kurt Lohberger,  Mar. ; interview with Max Kahane,  Feb. ; Janka, Spuren eines Lebens, ; Epstein, ‘Last Revolutionaries’, ch. .  Kessler and Peter, ‘Antifaschisten in der SBZ’, .  See Naimark, Russians in Germany, ch. .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //: Befragung E.G.,  Nov. , p. .  Interview with Kurt Lohberger,  Mar. .

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



made commander of the border police, while maintaining his connections to the Stasi. Five years later, he was seconded to the NVA (founded in ), first as a military attaché in Moscow and finally as head of a border troop officers’ training school. Gartmann’s career demonstrates the interconnectedness of police, army, and state security in the GDR and the ease with which veterans moved between these three spheres. According to one report, twenty-nine International Brigade veterans rose to the rank of colonel, with a further seventeen becoming generals. The most prominent Spanienkämpfer in the armed forces were Wilhelm Zaisser, Minister for State Security, his deputy and successor Erich Mielke, and Heinz Hoffmann, who began his military career in the police, before becoming deputy minister for the Interior and finally minister for National Defence from  until his death in . All three were also members of the Politburo. Other veterans, such as Richard Stahlmann, did not play such a visible role, but enjoyed a great degree of influence behind the scenes. The veterans had returned home full of enthusiasm for the task ahead, but they soon discovered that what was to be done with the ruins of the old Germany had not yet been decided. The ad hoc activities of the local antifas were soon moderated by the Soviet authorities, who planned a less radical, more centralized, occupation. But the way in which the country was to be reconstructed was still open to debate. In the immediate afterwar period, the KPD supported the theory of ‘a special German path to socialism’, developed by Anton Ackermann. This was to build on the heritage and traditions of the Weimar-era German Left. Ackermann argued that Germany did not necessarily need to follow the Soviet model of socialist transformation, as the defeat of Nazi Germany had destroyed the reactionary state apparatus of capitalism and militarism, thereby making a peaceful, non-revolutionary transition to socialism possible. While the merger of the KPD and the SPD to form the SED in  bore more than a passing resemblance to a communist takeover, it was also motivated by a desire on the part of both communists and social democrats to put aside the differences of the s and s and prevent another fateful split in the German Left. This pluralist mood also 

SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Hermann Gartmann), p.  ff. SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/, p. : Statistische Angaben über ehemalige Spanienkämpfer in der DDR.  A. Herbst, W. Ranke, J. Winkler, So funktionierte die DDR, iii. Lexikon der Funktionäre (Berlin, ).  M. Wolf with A. McElvoy, Memoirs of a Spymaster (London, ), .  On Ackermann, cf. P. Grieder, The East German Leadership –: Conflict and Crisis (Manchester, ), –. 



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

extended to antifascist commemoration. The VVN, the veterans’ organization set up in , was intended as an interest group for all antifascists, and early commemoration often included members of the Church, representatives of the non-communist resistance, and members of the Jewish community bearing Zionist flags. However, in the years that followed, religious, conservative, and Jewish resistance were all to become more or less taboo in East German historiography, as these groups were excluded from antifascist discourse and replaced by an almost exclusive focus on communist resistance. This process was inextricably linked to the escalation of the Cold War. As relations between the United States and the Soviet Union worsened, the Socialist Unity Party, now the dominant political party in the Soviet zone, underwent a gradual process of Stalinization. The policy of a ‘special German road to socialism’ was abandoned in  and Ackermann forced to recant, when the Stalin-Tito split made Moscow regard all national variants of socialism as highly dangerous and potentially counter-revolutionary. This was accompanied by a campaign against former social democrats in the SED. According to one historian, it quickly became more dangerous to be a former social democrat than a former Nazi, as the West replaced fascism as the political enemy. The SED was transformed into a ‘party of the new type’; this involved tightening party discipline, restructuring along the lines of the Soviet model, and eliminating opinions which did not correspond exactly to the party line.  Cf. esp. A. Leo, ‘Antifaschismus und kalter Krieg: Eine Geschichte von Einengung, Verdrängung und Erstarrung’, in Brandenbürgische Gedenkstätten für die Verfolgten des NSRegimes: Perspektiven, Kontroversen und internationale Vergleiche, ed. Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur des Landes Brandenburg (Berlin, ), –.  The literature on this subject is voluminous. Of particular interest are Danyel, ‘Bilder vom “anderen Deutschland” ’; id. (ed), Die geteilte Vergangenheit. Zum Umgang mit Nationalsozialismus in beiden deutschen Staaten (Berlin, ), esp. his ‘Die Opfer- und Verfolgtenperspektive als Gründungskonsens? Zum Umgang mit der Widerstandstradition und der Schuldfrage in der DDR’; id., ‘Die geteilte Vergangenheit: Gesellschaftliche Ausgangslagen und politischen Dispositionen für den Umgang mit Nationalsozialismus und Widerstand in beiden deutschen Staaten nach ’, in J. Kocka (ed.), Historische DDRForschung (Berlin, ); E. Rosenhaft, ‘The Uses of Remembrance: The Legacy of the Communist Resistance in the German Democratic Republic’, in F. R. Nicosia and L. D. Stokes (eds.), Germans Against Nazism: Nonconformity, Opposition and Resistance in the Third Reich (New York and Oxford, ), –; Herf, ‘German Communism, the Discourse of “Antifascist Resistance” and the Jewish Catastrophe’; id., ‘Multiple Restorations: German Political Traditions and the Interpretation of Nazism, –’, Central European History, / (), –.  Grieder, East German Leadership, p. .  Ibid., ch. ; Weitz, Creating German Communism, ch. ; J. Laufer, ‘From Dismantling to Currency Reform: External Origins of the Dictatorship, –’, in K. H. Jarausch (ed.),

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



This Stalinization of the SED marked a significant shutting-down of opportunities. However, it would be wrong to over-romanticize the early years of the Soviet occupation as a time of unlimited possibility and pluralism, which was crushed by the weight of Soviet pressure and Germany’s position on the Cold War front line. The divisions in the German Left were bitter and enduring—recriminations and resentment can be traced back through the war years, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and the end of the Weimar Republic to the Spartacist uprising in . Although it is possible to speak of a degree of antifascist unity in , the fact that the German Left had been fighting a common enemy had not necessarily improved relations. In fact, suspicion of other political groups was rife, not helped by events such as the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Survival, especially in the concentration camps, had often been a matter of partisanship and ruthlessness towards outsiders. The KPD in particular was not known for its tolerance towards fellow antifascists. The attitudes of German members of the International Brigades towards Spanish anarchism were a good example of this; anarchists were uniformly portrayed as disorganized, dirty, and politically unreliable: at best childlike and naïve, at worst collaborationist counterrevolutionaries. As the SED accumulated power in the GDR and the communists accumulated power within the SED, it is unsurprising that the communist interpretation of antifascism began to prevail. Several historians have remarked on the changing usage of the term antifascism in the post-war period. ‘Antifascism’ and ‘fascism’ were increasingly used to refer to current affairs—and in particular to East and West Germany—rather than the events of the Nazi period. The identification of the GDR with the forces of progress and victory set up a contrast with West Germany, which was seen as the continuation of the reactionary trend in German history, from Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm to Hitler. The population of the ‘antifascist’ Soviet Zone found themselves on the side of the Red Army and the heroic fighters of the resistance movement, irrespective of what they had actually done during the Nazi period. Of course, this placed those who had actually taken part in the resistance in an ambiguous position. A frequent source of frustration for old communists was the Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR (New York and Oxford, ), –; Pritchard, Making of the GDR, ch. .  Cf. esp. L. Niethammer, Der ‘gesauberte’ Antifaschismus: Die Roten Kapos von Buchenwald (Berlin, ) and J. Semprun, Was für ein schöner Sonntag! (Frankfurt am Main, ) on relationships between communists and other prisoners in Buchenwald concentration camp.  Leo, ‘Antifaschismus und kalter Krieg’; Herf, Divided Memory.



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

treatment of ex-Nazi party members. Although de-Nazification at a high level had been fairly comprehensive, the SED was keen to integrate ‘small Nazis’ into the new society as soon as possible, both in order to make use of their expertise in various areas and to promote unity within the zone. The foundation of the DBD and the NDPD in the spring of  marked the beginning of the political aspect of this process.  Members of the VVN were expected to work together with members of these parties within the National Front, regardless of previous political affiliations. In , Walter Ulbricht, who was to be named general secretary of the SED Central Committee at its first meeting in July , pronounced: ‘Today . . . anyone who raises the question “Is this person a former member of the Nazi party or not” works against the formation of the National Front.’ This was often difficult for antifascist veterans to stomach. Those in positions of political power tended to accept the situation: as minister for National Defence, Heinz Hoffmann must have known that Heinrich Neukirchen, Vice Admiral in the East German army, had been awarded the Spanish Cross in Bronze for his part in the Nazi intervention in the Spanish Civil War. Equally, Egbert von Frankenberg und Proschlitz, chief military commentator for GDR radio, had fought against the Spanish Republic as a member of the Condor Legion and had joined the SS in . Hoffmann, presumably for pragmatic reasons, chose to work with such people, who had usually undergone a process of re-education in Soviet POW camps. However, veterans further down the political pecking order were less willing to gloss over former political enmities. One International Brigade veteran, in charge of personnel in the forestry commission in Potsdam immediately after the war, discovered that  per cent of foresters and head foresters were former members of the NSDAP, the SS, or the SA. For him, the only possible course of action was to sack them all and replace them with less-qualified forestry workers who had not been in the Nazi party. However, he was informed by his superior and fellow Spanienkämpfer Heinrich Rau, that things had changed and that it was no longer possible or desirable to view matters from a ‘partisan perspective’. He was forced to leave his job, and remained very bitter about the episode, writing in his  J. Danyel, ‘Die SED und die “kleinen PG’s”: Zur polititischen Integration der ehemaligen NSDAP-Mitgleider in der SBZ/DDR’, in A. Leo and P. Reif-Spirek (eds.), Helden, Täter und Verräter: Studien zum DDR-Antifaschismus (Berlin, ), –.  See Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship,  on the role of the bloc parties.  Quoted in Herf, Divided Memory, .  O. Kappelt, Braunbuch DDR: Nazis in der DDR (Berlin, ), –; –. Cf. Untersuchungsausschuß Freiheitlicher Juristen (ed.), Ehemalige Nationalsozialisten in Pankows Diensten (Berlin, n.d. []).

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



memoirs: ‘If we . . . had fought for our ideals as resolutely as we did in Spain . . . such mistakes would have been impossible.’ Another veteran, who was responsible for land reform in the same region, also got into trouble for what he called ‘breaking out to the Left’, by redistributing Church land, which was not meant to be affected by the land reform. As well as this impromptu dispossession, he also admitted to further unilateral leftist action: any farms over  hectares were meant to be broken up, so, in an attempt to create a loophole, landowners declared several parcels of less than  hectares, distributed among family members. An application for dispensation was then to be made to the authorities. This particular veteran, however, collected all such applications and had them burnt in the basement furnaces. Other veterans publicly voiced their discontent: in Saxony, VVN members condemned the party’s cooperation with former Nazis as ‘opportunistic behaviour’ and went so far as to distribute leaflets to this effect. It was reported that, at a VVN meeting in Dresden, veterans concluded ‘once a fascist, always a fascist’: working with former Nazis was impossible, and while it was possible to re-educate young people, dyed-in-the-wool fascists would simply have to be left to die out. One prominent veteran who fell foul of the authorities on this issue was the singer Ernst Busch, famous for his renditions of International Brigade songs. Officials from the FDJ, the communist youth organization, asked Busch whether he and his orchestra would play the national anthems at the world youth games to be held in East Berlin in . Busch’s retort to the suggestion that he should play the Spanish Francoist anthem was furious and to the point: ‘the FDJ can kiss my arse’. This was to have long-term repercussions for Busch, as the First Secretary of the FDJ at the time, Erich Honecker (later to become First Secretary of the SED Central Committee), enjoyed great influence with Ulbricht. Not only was Busch subjected to a party investigation, he was airbrushed out of public life. His name was removed from a poem by Brecht, written for an FDJ publication; there were rumours that his songs had been banned from state radio; and, by order of the Politburo,   

SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Heinrich Fomferra), pp. –. SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Ernst Scholz), p. . SAPMO-BArch, DY / IV //, p. : letter from Gustav S. to Neues Deutschland,  Oct. .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //, p. : Überprüfungsprotokoll Betr: Genossen Ernst Busch,  Mar. .  E. Wichner and H. Wiesner, Zensur in der DDR: Geschichte, Praxis und ‘Ästhetik’ der Behinderung von Literatur (Berlin, ), .  SAdK, Berlin, Ernst-Busch-Archiv, Nr. .



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

his name was removed from the list of those nominated for the  Nationalpreis. When he refused to hand his party membership book over to the local party organization, on the grounds that his queries about the investigation had not been answered, his case was referred to the Central Committee, with the comments that Busch ‘thinks a lot of himself ’, was guilty of name-dropping, and had serious ‘political-ideological’ weaknesses. There can be no doubt that Busch’s difficulties had much to do with his reputation as a ‘sensitive, proud artist’—a temperamental breed that the new-style SED were not particularly adept at handling. But his feelings about the new political order were shared by many.  A common concern was that jobs were being given to former Nazis or German POWs at the expense of long-time communists. An antifascist veteran in Saxony-Anhalt complained that while those who had returned to their home towns in  had been made head of the local council, those who did not return until later were more likely to get a job as caretaker at the council building. The professionalization of the administration of the zone, combined with the rehabilitation of former Nazis, meant that antifascist veterans (who tended to be older, less skilled, and have chronic health problems) faced much stiffer competition for important positions. The Spanienkämpfer Herbert Ney had been a member of the communist movement since  and had spent time in the Soviet Union before fighting in Spain. After capture by the Nationalists, he was handed over to the Nazi authorities and spent the years – in a series of prisons and concentration camps. Following the liberation of Mauthausen, he travelled to the USSR and did not return to Germany until the end of . Despite this impressive record of political activity, he ended up working in a Berlin slaughterhouse. A letter sent to Franz Dahlem in  gives a glimpse of what life may have been like for other ‘ordinary’ Spanienkämpfer: Oscar Heinz, a veteran of the early days of the Spanish Civil War, wrote to congratulate Dahlem on his sixtieth birthday. Heinz was working as a caretaker in a castle in the Erz region, and evidently followed the activities of his high-flying Berlin comrades with great interest from his ‘owl’s nest’ in the mountains. But, he  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //v.: Auszug Nr.  aus dem Protokoll / der Stizung des Politbüros des ZK v. ...  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //v.: Schäfer to Jendretzky,  July .  W. Bredel, ‘Ernst Busch: Der Sänger der Freiheit und des Friedens’, Sonntag,  Dec. .  Kessler and Peter, ‘Antifaschisten in der SBZ’, p. .  SAPMO-BArch, DY  V //.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : letter from K. Schwotzer to F. Dahlem.

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



added, ‘detailed work [Kleinarbeit] also has to be done’, and he had devoted himself to the political conversion of the local middle class. He hoped to achieve this through the work of the local Kulturbund (cultural federation) and its activities for nature-lovers, with the eventual aim of ‘slowly winning them over for political work’. However, it must be stressed that veterans such as Heinz and Ney were the exception rather than the rule. East German research carried out in the s uncovered only three veterans (out of a total of ) who described themselves as ‘workers’ by profession. But, despite such determination and political commitment, return to Germany sometimes awakened mixed emotions. This was particularly true for Jewish antifascists. Heinz Priess described how his wife, whose family had been killed in Auschwitz, felt ‘surrounded by old Nazis’ in Hamburg and quickly moved to Berlin, where she felt more at home amongst friends from her exile years. Hilde Eisler, who had also lost her family in the Holocaust, spoke of her ‘hatred of everything German’. Eisler had spent the war in the USA and, waiting on Ellis Island for a boat to Europe, she seriously contemplated suicide as an alternative to return to the ‘foreign land’ which Germany had become. When she arrived in Berlin, she felt agoraphobic and refused to go out on the street, due to her fear of passersby. Such feelings of despair were not confined to Jewish veterans. Eduard Claudius wrote: ‘We felt as if we had landed on a strange, ravaged planet. We had seen Madrid and Barcleona after the bombings and also Almeria after it had been bombarded from the sea. But this here? We caught our breath. I felt a terrible fear and hopelessness. Would we ever be able to sort all this out? And I didn’t just mean the houses, the streets, the towns.’ Not all returnees reacted so strongly, but many must have, like Bodo Uhse, surveyed the rubble of Germany with mixed emotions. Uhse described his changed relationship to Berlin after the war as ‘the disappointment of a great love . . . The encounter with her ruins after the long years of estrangement was depressing, but it didn’t trigger any grief.’ 

Ibid., p. : letter from O. Heinz to F. Dahlem,  Jan. . SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/: Statischtische Angaben über ehemalige Spanienkämpfer in der DDR, p. .  K. Hartewig, Zurückgekehrt: Die Geschichte der jüdischen Kommunisten in der DDR (Cologne, ).  H. Priess, Spaniens Himmel und keine Sterne (Berlin, ), .  ‘Gespräch mit Hilde Eisler’, in M. Engelhardt (ed.), Deutsche Lebenslaufe: Gespräche (Berlin, ), .  Ibid. .  Ibid. .  Claudius, Ruhelose Jahre, .  SAdK, Berlin, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, Nr. a, p. : diary entry  Apr. . 



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

Joel Agee, Bodo Uhse’s stepson, offers another perspective on the exiles’ return to Germany: We had brought with us from Mexico fat sacks of rice and flour to help us through the food scarcity we knew existed in Germany, never suspecting that Bodo would be the beneficiary of an institution he had spent half a lifetime attacking: privilege, a distant target during the years of exile, now softly and treacherously enveloping him, like an octopus with years for tentacles and flattery for suction cups and a dogmatic faith for the blinding shroud of ink. We were well taken care of from the start.

Considered to be one of the state’s most valuable assets, prominent veterans such as Uhse led a sheltered existence, at least in comparison to ordinary East German citizens. Agee is perhaps a little harsh: Uhse and the other returning exiles had suffered twelve years of deprivation and hunger, leaving them susceptible to a little flattery and privilege. It seemed logical that those who had fought Nazism should reap some of the benefits of victory. But these benefits came at a price: not only, as Agee implies, an inevitable distance from the population, but also obedience to the regime which took care of them. The prejudices of Weimar communism which intellectuals had faced in Spain died hard. ‘Bourgeois intellectuals’ may have got extra rations, but they were still regarded with suspicion, and too much contact with ‘intellectual circles’ was considered suspect, even for the most proletarian party members. In , Walter Janka was criticized for his failure to deal with ideological problems within DEFA, the state film studio. According to Anton Ackermann: ‘Comrade Janka was sent to DEFA as a workercomrade. But instead of leading the wavering elements and the bourgeois intellectuals, he is inferior to the DEFA milieu.’ By failing to ensure that all films were anti-imperialist and pro-Soviet, Janka was deviating from the party line and following ‘on the tail’ of the bourgeois elements. A strongminded individual such as Janka was robust and self-confident enough to dismiss such criticisms. Others, particularly those from bourgeois backgrounds, were left with permanent feelings of insecurity.

 

J. Agee, Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany (New York, ), . SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //, p. : ‘Sitzungsprotokoll der Sitzung vom . Mai  über die Angelegenheit des Genossen Janka’.  Ibid., p. .

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany A N T I FA S C I S T S I N T H E C O L D WA R



–

But the escalation of the Cold War and the crystallization of German division in  were to present the veterans with even more immediate political problems. As wartime alliances were reassessed, all those who had spent time in Western emigration or had had contact with the Western allies became targets of suspicion and investigation. This Cold War paranoia reached its height in the series of political trials which became known as the Field affair. Noel Field was an American Quaker and communist who had worked for a humanitarian organization, the USC, in Europe during the war. Many German and European communists had come into contact with him, primarily because the USC had provided them with humanitarian aid or visas to America and, in some cases, because Field had acted as an informal link between German communists and the American OSS (the forerunner of the CIA). Field was arrested in Prague in April  and handed over to the Hungarian authorities, who began to prepare the Rajk trial, the first of the post-war Eastern European show trials. The trial took place in September , on the premiss that Field and his agents had undermined the development of the indigenous resistance, particularly in Germany, in order to strengthen Western allied influence and create a divided post-war Germany. In this rewritten version of the Second World War, only the USSR had been genuinely interested in liberating Europe from fascism—the Western Allies had been chiefly concerned with the creation of an anti-Soviet West Germany.  See N. Annan, Changing Enemies: The Defeat and Regeneration of Germany (London, ) for a British view of this process. Cf. M. Lemke, ‘Foreign Influences on the Dictatorial Development of the GDR, –’, in Jarausch (ed.), Dictatorship as Experience, –, on the dual influences of the USSR and the Federal Republic.  On the Field affair, G. H. Hodos, Schauprozesse: Stalinistische Säuberungen in Osteuropa – (Frankfurt, ) is a general account of the Eastern European show trials; Staritz and Weber (eds.), Kommunisten verfolgen Kommunisten is a thought-provoking collection which puts events in the GDR in a European context and also draws parallells with the political purges of the s; W. Kießling, Partner im ‘Narrenparadies’: Der Freundeskreis um Noel Field und Paul Merker (Berlin, ) is partially based on clandestine interviews Kießling carried out with Merker before his death; Herf, Divided Memory provides a fascinating account with an emphasis on the anti-Semitic elements of the affair; Grieder, East German Leadership is based on previously inaccessible archival material and places events in the context of political intriguing in the Politburo; cf. also T. Klein, ‘Widerstand und Verfolgung von Kommunisten während der Stalinisierung der SED –’, in Realsozialistische Kommunistenverfolgung: utopie kreativ Sonderdruck (Dec. ); T. Klein, W. Otto, P. Grieder, Visionen: Repression und Opposition in der SED (–),  vols. (Frankfurt am Oder, ).  For a flavour of these accusations, see László Rajk and his Accomplices before The People’s Court (Budapest, ); D. Kartun, Tito’s Plot Against Europe: The Story of the Rajk Conspiracy in Hungary (New York, ).



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

The reverberations of the Rajk trial were felt almost immediately in the newly founded GDR, as all those who had spent time in Western emigration or POW camps were to be screened by the central party control commission (ZPKK). The ZPKK (and its regional branches), set up in September  as the main disciplinary organ of the party, played a major role in the Field affair. The screenings involved a lengthy process of information-gathering: those affected had to write detailed and comprehensive ‘political CVs’, describing their activities during the years  to  and naming other party members who could corroborate their version of events. Any discrepancies or ambiguities were treated as highly suspicious and led to more CV writing and sometimes interrogation. Investigations were focused on two groups: those who had had contact with Noel Field and those who had had contact with the OSS. Even though communists who had cooperated with the OSS had done so with Soviet and party approval, they were still treated as though they had wilfully collaborated with the class enemy. The first public results of the investigations appeared in late August  with the Central Committee Resolution on the Field Affair and the expulsion from the party of Politburo member Paul Merker and six others. Merker was demoted from his Politburo position to a job as a waiter, others who were less lucky were handed over to the Soviet authorities and the Gulag. One International Brigade veteran, Willi Kriekemeyer, died under mysterious circumstances in a secret police prison. However, this purge was not considered to be sufficient and a wholesale screening of the entire party was launched in . This involved an investigation of every party member, who, with heavy-handed symbolism, was required to hand in her or his SED membership book and be issued with a new one, subject to a positive outcome. Once these screenings had been completed, a new wave of investigations were prompted by the Slansky trial in Czechoslovakia, which took place in November . Again, the accused were primarily Western emigrants, many of them Spanish Civil War veterans, who were seen as a dangerous factional group and accused of collaboration with Western espionage agencies during their internment in France. This was to  Exemplary here is the case of Karl Kormes. SAPMO-BArch, DY /J IV // and see below.  W. Kießling, ‘Leistner ist Mielke’: Schatten einer gefälschten Biographie (Berlin, ); W. Otto, ‘Das Verschwinden des Willi Kreikemeyer‘, utopie kreativ,  (Feb. ), –.  Cf. Prozess gegen die Leitung des staatsfeindlichen Verschwörerzentrums mit Rudolf Slansky an der Spitze (Prague, ); J. Osers, ‘Die Spezifika des Slansky-Prozesses in der CSR im Vergleich mit den übrigen Schauprozessen in Osteuropa’, in Staritz and Weber (eds.), Kommunisten verfolgen Kommunisten, –.

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



have a knock-on effect in the GDR: as the novelist Ludwig Renn commented in : ‘I hear it rumoured that at the moment speaking about Spain is unwanted, and that everything connected with it is cancelled. Supposedly this is happening because there were too many traitors in Spain. I don’t understand such points of view. The Slansky investigations also introduced a powerful anti-Semitic element into the Field affair, which had an immediate impact on events in the GDR. Echoing Stalin’s anti-cosmopolitan campaigns in the Soviet Union, Jews were seen as unreliable communists, with Zionist, Western, anti-German, and anti-national leanings. Karl Kormes, who had already lost his job due to his connections to the OSS, was unceremonially expelled from the party. In a letter to the ZPKK, Kormes correctly identified the factors which had sealed his fate: his middle-class background, contacts with the OSS, correspondence with the West (the letters to Nan Green quoted above), and membership of a Zionist youth organization at the age of . Kormes also wrote to Hermann Matern, head of the ZPKK, asserting: ‘I was never a Zionist . . . I am no cosmopolitan . . . I am not Trotskyist and Trotskyists have played no role in my development.’ His protestations were in vain; the party disciplinary apparatus was deaf to issues of actual guilt or innocence and Kormes was unlucky enough to fit the immovable logic of the Slansky criteria. The conclusion of the Slansky trial and the sentencing of eleven of the defendants to death led to the investigation of many veterans in the GDR. They included Franz Dahlem, the most senior International Brigade veteran, a member of the Politburo, and probably Ulbricht’s most dangerous rival, due to his popularity with antifascist veterans. One Spanienkämpfer and his partner wrote to Dahlem in early : ‘For us, as  L. Renn to H. Duncker,  May ; quoted in C. Epstein, ‘Last Revolutionaries’, –.  H. Eschwege, ‘Auswirkung des Stalinismus auf die Juden der DDR von  bis ’, in Staritz and Weber (eds.), Kommunisten verfolgen Kommunisten, –.  SAPMO-BArch, DY / IV //, pp.  ff.  Green had herself been accused of political unreliability, both in Spain and in Britain in . See Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire, –; and T. Buchanan, ‘Holding the Line: The Political Strategy of the International Brigade Association’, Labour History Review, / (), . There is no archival evidence that the East German authorities knew of this: in any event, the fact that Kormes had contact to a capitalist country would have been enough to cast him in a suspicious light. He also broke off contact with his brother in France around this time.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /J IV //: K. Kormes, letter to ZPKK,  May .  Ibid.: K. Kormes, letter to Matern,  June .  See Grieder, East German Leadership, – for a definitive account of Dahlem’s fall from grace.



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

for many, many comrades, you are such an embodiment of the party, that, when one says party, [one] means you.’ Recent research has indicated that preparations for a German show trial—the GDR equivalent of the Rajk and Slansky trials—were ongoing, with either Dahlem or Merker earmarked as defendants. These plans were hindered by both men’s dogged resistance, a possible intervention on behalf of Merker by Wilhelm Pieck, the president of the GDR, and finally by Stalin’s death. It is clear that the course of the Cold War and events in the rest of the Eastern bloc had a great impact on the GDR. The fate of antifascists after  is an exemplary case of the impact of shifting loyalties and the projection of Cold War preoccupations onto the wartime alliances. However, it would be inaccurate to see the post-war purges as purely an effect of the Cold War, imposed from above without any specifically East German characteristics. German communism had suffered from a siege mentality long before  (often for good reason) and had never taken kindly to critics or dissenters, be they internal or external. The dictum ‘trust is good, control is better’ had long been applicable to party life. The party screenings silenced potential dissenters within the party with the result that veterans were too cowed to challenge the SED’s one-dimensional portrayal of history. Anti-Semitism was not unknown in the German communist movement before , and endured after Stalin’s death: a Jewish Spanish Civil War veteran and his family, returning from American emigration in , after nine years saving for their passage, were greeted by a Central Committee cadre functionary with the words: ‘But you are Jews, i.e. cosmopolitans, you’ve got no business being here.’ Finally, there can be little doubt that the screenings and party discipline of the early s were partially motivated by Ulbricht’s power politics and his desire to ensure the dominance of those communists who had spent the war in Moscow. Franz Dahlem’s popularity with Spanish Civil War and concentration-camp veterans was a threat to this dominance. Undermining all those who had spent time in the West was one way to counter this potential faction within the party. Another was the dissolution of the VVN, the veterans’ organization, in February , thereby depriving Dahlem of his power base and the veterans of a forum where they could voice their opinions.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : letter from M. Rentmeister and F. Rettmann,  Jan. .  H. Weber, ‘Schauprozeß-Vorbereitungen in der DDR’, in Staritz and Weber (eds.), Kommunisten verfolgen Kommunisten, –.  Grieder, East German Leadership, –, .  Katzenstein, Einblicke, ii. .  E. Reuter and D. Hansel, Das kurze Leben der VVN von  bis  (Berlin, ).

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



As a result of this sequence of events, veterans felt that their relationship with the party had been severely damaged. Many antifascists objected strongly to the manner of the investigations and felt that party members should not be treated so badly. One wrote of his interrogation by the cadre chief of the Central Committee: ‘He questioned me almost like a Gestapo man and then demanded that I write more about this and that in my life . . . (You cannot and should not carry out cadre discussions in the way he treated me, even if you had an enemy in front of you.)’ The same sentiments were echoed by one Spanish Civil War veteran during his ZPKK interrogation. Questioned about his cooperation with the Americans during the war, he became increasingly frustrated by suggestions that he had acted as an agent. He insisted that he was not hiding anything, saying ‘What I know, I am telling you, because if I betray the party, I betray myself, without the party I am nothing. I didn’t join the party yesterday, you know.’ Obviously shocked at the aggressive and hostile questioning, he repeatedly referred to his long-time party membership, appealing in vain to his interrogators’ sense of comradeship. Similarly, a report on Hans Teubner, who had been divested of all his functions in August , remarked in a baffled tone: ‘He always returns instinctively to his past.’ Veterans tended to relate to their past in an emotional way, and see it as something that should work in their favour, not be used against them. Those who had been in Spain often cited it as a formative political experience and proof of their dedication to the party. Rudolf Neumann, a doctor considered by the party to be a politically unreliable intellectual, assured them in his political CV: ‘The time in Spain was decisive for my fitting in [Einordnung] to the workers’ movement and my commitment to the party.’ The modus operandi of the investigations came as a great shock to most of the veterans at the centre of the Field affair. As they had spent their exile years in the West, they had not experienced the Moscow trials of the s at first hand. Despite the fact that many German communists had fallen victim to the Great Terror, from a distance it was much easier to assume that the accused were guilty. Only when they themselves were the subject of allegations did the abnormal nature of the purges become clear. Artur London, one of the accused in the Slansky trial, described his shock as   

SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Ernst Scholz), pp. –. SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //, p. : Befragung E.G.,  Nov. . SAPMO-BArch, DY / IV //, p. : Betr.: Die Überprüfung des Genossen Hans Teubner,  Mar. .  SAPMO-BArch, DY / IV //, p. .



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

party documents, some of them from Spain, were used against him: ‘Everything became petty and dirty. Everything was turned against us.’ At first, London and his co-defendants went to great lengths to explain matters to their interrogators, but were horrified how they ‘turned not one or some, but all our answers, inside out like a glove, that they distorted their very substance’. Party procedures transformed the veterans’ past history into a kind of discipline. Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, describes this process as the ‘turning of real lives into writing’. Biographies become ‘a means of control and a method of domination’, meaning that an individual’s history is ‘no longer a monument for future memory, but a document for possible use.’ For the East German Spanienkämpfer, events which had been the source of pride and positive identity became a reason for fear and shame. In this way, the past took on a dual disciplinary role: for the general public, it was held up as an example of socialist heroism and bravery, but for antifascist veterans, it became a tool to be used against them. For many, the lasting legacy of the Field affair was a fear of their own history. The historian Annette Leo has written about her experiences interviewing antifascist veterans in the GDR, remarking that many of them were extremely unwilling to let the interviews be taped. They saw the tape recorder as a means of control and refused to talk on the record. Even a decade after the collapse of the GDR, some of the veterans I interviewed were unwilling to have their memories captured on tape. As one man explained, if the interview is recorded ‘you can’t say any of the interesting things’. Veterans were left with enduring feelings of self-doubt and insecurity, which led to a high degree of self-regulation with regard to their personal histories. This had a particularly strong effect on those who later wrote memoirs—aware of the boundaries and taboos of East German historical discourse, the majority were over-cautious and wrote accounts which had more in common with school textbooks than their own experiences. They ended up censoring their own memories much more effectively than the SED could ever have done. Even those not directly affected by the Field affair were touched by the 

A. London, On Trial (London, ), . Ibid. . M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth, ), . R. Müller, ‘Permanenter Verdacht und “Zivilhinrichtung”: Zur Genesis der “Säuberungen” in der KPD’, in Staritz and Weber (eds.) Kommunisten verfolgen Kommunisten, –, is a fascinating examination of party mentalities.  Leo, ‘Die Helden erinnern sich’, –.  Interview with Max Kahane,  Feb. .   

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



atmosphere of fear and suspicion. Bodo Uhse, a close friend of André Simone, one of the defendants in the Slansky trial, began to dream about undercover policemen with arrest warrants. Other writers burnt their diaries for fear of incriminating themselves. Many veterans who were not specifically accused of being agents felt that their relationship with the party had been irrevocably damaged. The poet Erich Arendt arrived in Berlin from South America in March , at the height of the Field affair, and his contacts with Field were the subject of investigation. He had also been a close friend of Artur London and it is clear from his later poetry that the events of the early s had a lasting effect on him.  In a poem originally entitled ‘After the Trials’, but changed for publication to ‘After the Trial of Socrates’, he wrote about the ‘all-knowing ears’ and ‘leather hearts’ of unnamed authorities, who ‘spun’ and ‘threshed’ words until they were divorced from their original meaning, creating a place: where happiness and justice Lay assassinated Against the wall of history.

D E - S TA L I N I Z AT I O N ,

–

In , the situation for antifascist veterans was a bleak one. Their position in society had been profoundly damaged by the Field affair and the replacement of the mass VVN by the twenty-strong KdAW. Victor Klemperer, a member of the KdAW, noted with morose sarcasm in his diary: ‘The whole world is SED-loyal through and through and Ulbricht [is] a powerful and wise man . . . where is [the] truth?’ Many felt that the political suspicion which had befallen the Spanienkämpfer had also had a detrimental effect on the profile of the Spanish Civil War. According to Franz Dahlem, the  commemorations of the war contained not a single reference to the International Brigades. Dahlem himself was a physical symbol of the veterans’ poor treatment at the hands of the regime. Those who had lost 

SAdK, Berlin, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, Nr. a, p. : diary entry  Dec. . Ibid., p. : diary entry  Feb. . Cf. S. Schlenstedt, ‘Die Rückkehr Erich Arendts aus dem Exil’.  E. Arendt, ‘Nach dem Prozeß Sokrates’ [written –], in Ägäis: Gedichte (Aachen, ), –.  V. Klemperer, So sitze ich denn zwischen allen Stühlen: Tagebücher –, ed. W. Nowojski,  vols. (Berlin, ), ii. .  SAdK, Berlin, Ernst-Busch-Archiv, Nr. : F. Dahlem to W. Bredel,  Dec. .  



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

their jobs or party positions sympathized with his fall from grace, removal from the Politburo, and banishment to Biesdorf, a Berlin suburb remote from the centre of power. Only in , after Khrushchev’s secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU, did matters improve somewhat. The Central Committee set up a commission in April , headed by Ulbricht, to examine the events and decisions of the early s in the light of ‘changed societal and political conditions’ and correct any ‘excesses [Überspitzungen]’ which might have occurred. Accordingly, in June , the Central Committee Resolution on the Field Affair was repealed, restrictions on the employment of those who had been in Western emigration were lifted, and those who had been imprisoned in the Soviet Union were rehabilitated. This cultural and political thaw coincided with the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the occasion was marked by the publication of a number of books, notably Gustav Szinda’s history of the Eleventh Brigade and the reprinting of Alfred Kantorowicz’s book on the Chapiev Battalion. Kantorowicz described receiving an early morning phone call in March  from a Ministry of National Defence official, who said that the Ministry’s publishing arm wanted to produce a new edition of the book. Kantorowicz’s first reaction was to refuse, believing that this would only be possible with the removal of certain names, chiefly those of ‘General Gomez’ (Wilhelm Zaisser, who had been expelled from the Politburo and lost his job as minister for State Security in ) and Otto Brunner, a Swiss veteran who had subsequently broken with the party. However, the official went to great lengths to assure him that the book would appear unabridged, as it subsequently did. The timing of the publication, the haste with which the book was rushed through the printing process, and the high quality of the finished product (Kantorowicz was particularly proud of its handsome black linen binding), all point to a hurried reaction to events in the Soviet Union. Other publications included a collection of documents produced by the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute (MELS) (which was to become the Institute for MarxismLeninism (IML) after further de-Stalinization), a brochure published  SAPMO-BArch, DY /J IV //: Bericht über die Ergebnisse der Tätigkeit der Kommission des Zentralkomitees zur Überprüfung von Angelegenheiten von Parteimitgliedern.  ND,  June .  A. Kantorowicz, Deutsches Tagebuch,  vols. (Berlin, ), ii. –.  Der Freiheitskampf des spanischen Volkes und die internationale Solidarität: Dokumente und Bilder zum national-revolutionären Krieg des spanischen Volkes – (Berlin, ).

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



by the KdAW, and a collection of photographs and drawings. Planning for the brochure was still going on in late April , and the fact that the veterans’ committee produced the brochure in liaison with members of the Politburo and Central Committee also demonstrates the politically delicate and volatile nature of the project. The final product certainly shows signs of being hastily produced, as much of the material was simply reprinted from pre- publications. The MELS’s publication was also produced in consultation with senior party figures. The Institute had, in fact, started preparations for some kind of Spain-related anniversary publication as early as December ; but Kurt Hager, the Central Committee member responsible for liaison with the Institute, who had worked as a journalist in Spain, warned them in January  that this was a delicate matter which required a ‘special resolution [Beschluß]’ and that publication would only go ahead subject to (his) approval of the manuscript. Hager’s later claim that he spent the early s in constant fear of arrest offers an explanation for his cautious attitude to the subject of Spain. The editorial committee of the book, which included several Spanienkämpfer, proceeded with a high degree of caution and was particularly keen to avoid the use of any material produced post. The manuscript was sent to Hager for approval in April . Hager, however, never read it, due to overwork. The changed political climate may have contributed to his uncharacteristically laissez-faire attitude; the fact that Hager was unable to find the time to read the manuscript, despite prompting from the MELS, and that publication was allowed to go ahead without his approval, implies that Spain was no longer the politically sensitive issue it had been prior to the onset of de-Stalinization. The flood of material on Spain was enabled by the political liberalization of early , but cannot be seen purely as a product of de-Stalinization. It also performed an invaluable political function for the SED regime, as legitimation for the foundation of the National People’s Army in January  Immer bereit für die Verteidigung der Freiheit des Volkes: Spaniens Freiheitskampf –, ed. Komitee der antifaschistischen Widerstandskämpfer in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin, ).  Salud Internationale: Bildmappe zum XX. Jahrestag der Internationalen Brigaden (Berlin, ).  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : letter from G. Spielmann to H. Rau,  Apr. .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV /./, p. : Résumé Spanienband.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV /./, p. : MELS-Institut,  Jan. .  P. Grieder, East German Leadership, .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV /./, p. .  SAPMO-BArch, DY / IV /./, pp. –: Einicke to Hager,  Apr. .



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

. The International Brigades provided not only an important precedent for a socialist army, but also a valuable source of educational material for young soldiers. The fact that Kantorowicz’s book, Szinda’s history of the Eleventh Brigade, and the collection of pictures were all published by the Ministry of National Defence was not coincidental. The brochure produced by the veterans’ association was also aimed at the armed forces; while copies were to be sent to a number of mass organizations, at least twothirds were destined for the army and the police. On the cover of the brochure, a young East German Volkspolizist stands in the foreground, defending a state-owned factory. Ghostly members of the International Brigades lurk in the background, providing moral support and political inspiration, but not themselves the main subject of the tableau. Unsurprisingly, the official commemorations made no reference to the fate of the Spanienkämpfer since . In fact, as Heinrich Rau’s speech to a commemorative rally shows, the authorities did their best to pretend that this was the first time that Spain was being commemorated. He began with the words: ‘Dear Comrades! For the first time, a large number of us German former Spanienkämpfer gather together on German soil.’ This was simply not the case, as Rau and the assembled veterans must have known. While veterans were happy to see their history and their former comrades become visible again, their patience was not unlimited. The most striking example of this was the ceremony to award former Spanienkämpfer with the Hans Beimler Medal. This occasion marked the state’s reacceptance and recognition of the veterans, including some of those who had been caught up in the Field affair. The most prominent of these was Franz Dahlem, who, while by no means fully rehabilitated, had seen his official party penalty lifted and had been allowed to travel to an international commemoration of the Spanish Civil War in Poland. That Dahlem was to receive the Hans Beimler Medal was, for many, a mark of the veterans’ rehabilitation. However, this was somewhat marred by the fact that Walter Ulbricht, the perceived cause of their travails and with, at best, a dubious claim to being a Spanienkämpfer, was also to receive the award. Roman Rubinstein (who was not at the ceremony to collect a medal, as he had only been in Spain for one week, but had been invited as a guest) became very animated when recalling the event, over forty years later:     

SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/: G. Spielmann to G. Röbelen,  Apr. . Immer bereit für die Verteidigung der Freiheit des Volkes. Ibid., H. Rau, Rede zur Kundgebung. Beimler’s death and its commemoration are dealt with in more detail in Ch. , below. SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. .

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



The first person to be called up for the presentations of the medals was Walter Ulbricht. The guy wasn’t in Spain for any longer than I was. He never had a gun in his hand. He only spoke on the radio or something like that. But he let them pin the Hans Beimler Medal on him. Deadly silence in the hall. Three, maybe four people started to clap and the clapping died away. Then Franz and Käthe Dahlem were called up. The comrades jumped up and stood on the seats [bangs table with hand]! Yes! Minutes of applause. That was a flea in Ulbricht’s ear!

The writer Eduard Claudius remembered the incident in similar terms in an unpublished extract from his autobiography, which he sent to Dahlem in : An oppressive, expectant silence lay over the hall . . . I saw furrowed faces, which became hard, and I saw eyes, which flashed wildly, as they once had in the expectation of attack and counterattack . . . As the name Franz Dahlem was called, cheering broke out, the like of which I have seldom heard. I saw how the wild-flashing eyes became gentle, the faces relaxed and arms were put around the shoulders of the neighbour. Each one felt that a bitter, dark, pointless time was over.

In both accounts, the ceremony is a key incident for the Spanienkämpfer: the public rehabilitation of Dahlem is a rehabilitation for the group as a whole. The humiliation of Ulbricht is also important. Dahlem himself described the incident as a ‘downright demonstration’, and the veterans felt that their protest had been heard when the following day’s Neues Deutschland failed to name Ulbricht among those who had received the medal. However, the relief felt by many in the GDR in the spring and summer of  was not to last. As the autumn wore on, the limits of deStalinization became increasingly evident: repression in Hungary was mirrored in East Germany with the arrest of Walter Janka, a Spanienkämpfer and head of the Aufbau publishing house. Aufbau and the journal of the same name had been making the most of their new-found freedom and were an obvious target for repression. Janka was accused, along with Wolfgang Harich and other Aufbau employees, of plotting to  

Interview with Roman Rubinstein,  Jan. . SAPMO-BArch, NY /, pp. –.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //v. /, p. . For further references to this incident cf. H. Mayer, Der Turm von Babel: Erinnerung an eine Deutsche Demokratische Republik (Frankfurt am Main, ), ; and Kantorowicz, Deutsches Tagebuch, ii. –.  Kantorowicz, Deutsches Tagebuch, ii. .  On the Janka trial cf. Der Prozeß gegen Walter Janka und andere: Eine Dokumentation (Hamburg, ); Janka, Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit; id., Spuren eines Lebens; id., Die Unterwerfung (Munich, ); id., Bis zur Verhaftung (Berlin, ); J. Marschall, Aufrechter Gang im DDR-Sozialismus: Walter Janka und der Aufbau-Verlag (Münster, ).



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

overthrow Ulbricht. Janka consistently denied these charges, but, after a show trial in , was sentenced to five years in prison. The fact that the writers Willi Bredel, Bodo Uhse, and Anna Seghers were “invited” to the trial (and that their actions were subject to constant Stasi surveillance throughout)  is a clear indication that the Janka case was intended as a warning to any intellectuals who might be tempted to step out of line and take the new cultural freedoms too far. Despite its limits,  did mark the beginning of a more normal existence for the Spanienkämpfer. Some veterans, of course, had not been affected by the Field affair: in the period –, Heinrich Rau was a member of the Politburo and Albert Neumann a candidate member. They were later to be joined by Erich Mielke, Heinz Hoffmann, Kurt Hager, Paul Verner, and Karl Mewis. As previously discussed, other veterans held high positions in the army and state security forces, and writers such as Willi Bredel (also a member of the Central Committee) and Bodo Uhse enjoyed considerable social prestige. Those who had been purged in the early s were gradually rehabilitated and allowed to rejoin the party. It was rare, however, that such veterans ever regained the positions they had previously held. As ever, Franz Dahlem is a salutary example. The former Politburo member suffered the relative indignity of being made deputy minister for Higher Education. Dahlem poured much of his energy into fighting for his own full rehabilitation and that of other veterans such as Karl Kormes, Walter Janka, and Norbert Kugler. His efforts also extended to those who had subsequently died and he kept up a voluminous correspondence with the widows and relatives of Wilhelm Zaisser, Paul Merker, and Manfred Stern.

C O M M E M O R AT I O N A N D C O M M U N I T Y,

–

Despite these indignities, commemorative events and veteran meetings were once again allowed to take place and the KdAW gradually extended its membership to involve many more veterans. The Solidarity Committee for the Spanish People (Solidaritätskomitee für das spanische Volk) was founded in , part of the international anti-Franco movement set up in the early s in response to worker militancy in Spain. Under the leadership of  

Janka, Die Unterwerfung, . See e.g. his efforts on behalf of Janka: SAPMO-BArch, NY /.  T. Buchanan, ‘ “The Truth Will Set You Free”: The Making of Amnesty International’, Journal of Contemporary History, / (), –.

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



Franz Dahlem, the committee aimed to support anti-Franco forces within Spain and thereby continue the work of the International Brigades. However, as Dahlem wrote in the committee’s first brochure, this work was not to be confined to ‘one section or one party, but [was] an affair of the heart for our entire population’. To this end, the committee, while dominated by fourteen Spanienkämpfer, also included one FDJ representative, two Christians, two academics, two members without party affiliation, and one representative apiece from the CDU and NDPD. It is probable that some of the non-veteran members were only there to give a non-partisan gloss to the organization, and at least one of them failed to respond to the invitation to join the committee and never attended a single meeting. By , all those attending committee meetings were referred to as ‘comrade’, implying that only party members were still involved in the committee. The committee’s goals were fourfold: to demand an amnesty for Spanish political prisoners and émigrés; to raise money for the anti-Franco activists within Spain; to disseminate information about the situation in Spain, the struggle of the Spanish people against Franco, and the ‘aggressive, revanchivist plans’ of West German imperialism; and, finally, to publish a regular bulletin. Typical activities included sending protest letters and telegrams to Spain, sending money and parcels to Spanish families who were persecuted by the Franco regime, accepting political refugees into the GDR, ensuring that articles were published in the press, and organizing an annual Solidarity with Spain week in the run-up to  July, the anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The committee continued its activities until it was shut down in  after the first democratic elections in Spain. Unsurprisingly, the veterans on the committee were initially keen to use their position to work on publications about the Spanish Civil War, despite the fact that this fell outside the committee’s remit. However, this became unnecessary when, in mid-, the Sektion Spanienkämpfer was  Solidaritätskomitee für das spanische Volk in der DDR (ed.), Solidarität mit dem spanischen Volk (Berlin, ).  SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/: Gründungsprotokoll.  Ibid.: Protokoll der . Sitzung des Sekretariats des Solidaritätskomitees am . März .  Ibid.: Gründungsprotokoll.  Ibid.: Über die Solidaritätsarbeit für das spanische Volk in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, pp. –: F. Dahlem’s Abschiedsschreiben.  SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/: Über die Solidaritätsarbeit für das spanische Volk in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik.



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

formed within the KdAW, also with Dahlem as its head. The Sektion functioned as a parallel organization to the Solidarity Committee: while the committee concerned itself with the present and future of Spain, the Sektion was interested primarily in the commemoration of the war and the welfare of International Brigade veterans. Starting with the thirtieth anniversary commemorations in  and the erection of the Spanienkämpfer memorial statue in , the Sektion became central to the memory of Spain in the GDR, initiating book projects such as Brigada Internacional, a collection of memoirs published in . Veteran influence on the ways in which the Spanish Civil War was remembered was at its strongest in the s. The founding of the Sektion coincided with the retirement of many of the veterans and those who had previously had little time to reflect on their Spanish experiences were now able to write their memoirs and give talks in schools. Some of the taboos surrounding the war had lessened since  and those who had remained at the pinnacle of power had little time or inclination to agitate about Spain. Decisions about the commemoration of the war were rarely discussed at Politburo or even Central Committee level; commemorative activity was thus left to the members of the secondary and tertiary elites, such as Franz Dahlem and Hans Teubner, a veteran employed by the IML. While Dahlem and Teubner may not have been at the very top of the political tree, they did enjoy enough influence to put pressure on friends and acquaintances in the party to get their projects completed. For some, such as Dahlem, this became a displacement activity which replaced the real political power he had been denied. Dahlem’s efforts on behalf of other veterans who had been affected by the Field affair, while undoubtedly motivated by genuine fellow-feeling, should also be seen in this light. Spain and the Spanienkämpfer was the one area where he still enjoyed unrivalled influence and enormous popularity. The veterans’ letters to Dahlem suggest that many Spanienkämpfer felt a strong sense of group identity based on their experiences during the war. Many closed their letters with the greeting ‘Salud!’ or ‘No pásarán!’ This sense of community often focused on the figures of Franz and Käthe Dahlem, described by some veterans as the ‘father and mother of the International Brigades.’ The image of the Spanienkämpfer as a family is echoed in veteran memoirs and interviews. For Alfred Katzenstein, contact with former comrades from Spain helped him get through the difficult  

SAPMO-BArch, NY /, pp. , . Ibid., pp. , .

The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany



early years in Germany: ‘we trusted each other and gained strength and confidence from our discussions’. The Spanienkämpfer were connected by more than just their memories of Spain. They also shared a certain status in society (which brought with it preferential housing, health benefits, and pensions), similar occupations, and, in most cases, a common political outlook. Max Kahane implied that the bonds between the Spanienkämpfer were strong enough to overcome otherwise powerful social and educational divides, and even personal antipathies: There was always, even with the idiots, an opportunity to meet, a small remnant of inner understanding, more understanding than the other emigrants had . . . There were idiots everywhere, amongst the Spanish veterans as well. I could say to an officer in the NVA, who had always been stupid, but had become even stupider: ‘You are an idiot. It’s terrible that you are a captain here.’ They were always stupid, but you could talk to them. You could say: ‘You’re still an ape.’

Veteran activities included writing and collecting memoirs, talking to young people about their experiences in Spain, writing to each other, and travelling to social and commemorative events, both inside and outside the GDR. There are marked parallels here with Jay Winter’s ‘social agency’ approach to the study of memory. According to Winter, ‘collective memory’, rather than being a national phenomenon, is primarily created by small groups of social agents, for example those French survivors of the First World War who had suffered permanent injury and mutilation. These groups often feel ‘fictive kinship bonds’, due to their shared experiences and, for them, commemorative activity is not just about remembering the war, but also a way of dealing with trauma and pain. Veterans can offer each other practical support, consolation, and shared commemorative activity. Much of this is true of the GDR Spanienkämpfer and there can be no doubt that Winter’s is an extremely useful approach. However, Winter tends to see social agency as something which occurs in civil society, separate and opposed to the state. Indeed he and Emmanuel Sivan go so far as to 

A. Katzenstein, Einblicke, ii. . Cf. Komitee der Antifaschistischen Widerstandskämpfer in der DDR, Übersicht über die gesetzlichen Grundlagen für die Betreuung der Kämpfer gegen den Faschisums und Verfolgten des Faschismus (VdN) sowie für deren Hinterbliebene (Berlin, n.p., ).  Interview with Max Kahane,  Feb. .  Pieter Lagrou calls such veteran groups milieux de mémoire (a reference to Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire). Lagrou, Legacy of Nazi Occupation, .  Sivan and Winter (eds.), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, esp. ‘Setting the Framework’ and Winter, ‘Forms of Kinship and Remembrance in the Aftermath of the Great War’.  Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, ch. . 



The Spanienkämpfer in East Germany

say, ‘the key issue is the tension between these two foci of remembrance’. The same cannot be said for memory under East German state socialism: first, public commemorative activity and publication were impossible outside a state-sponsored framework—civil society, as a discrete sphere, did not exist. Secondly, almost all of the veterans involved identified strongly with the GDR and its institutions, and while tension between private and public memories did undoubtedly exist, veterans saw themselves as operating within the state, not outside it. While it is true to say that the framework for this commemorative activity was given by the state and communist ideology, initiatives were taken within this framework by veterans’ groups. Events and publications relating to Spain were often a direct result of veteran activity. They therefore had considerable power to shape the picture of the war, albeit within certain limits imposed by both state structures and their own beliefs. The s were the high water mark of veteran influence: in the s and s, as the Spanienkämpfer grew older and more infirm and withdrew from public life, Honecker’s relaxation of cultural policy encouraged other, younger, groups to start talking and writing about Spain. We will return to the interaction between veterans and the state in Chapter . First, however, we must turn our attention to the framework in which this took place: the state’s appropriation of the memory of the war.  

Ibid, p. . See Ch.  below, for a further discussion of this point.



The Uses of History: The Party Appropriates Spain The SED was the most powerful player involved in discussing the International Brigades. As the ruling party, it had automatic access to the widest possible audience, as well as the ability to suppress any account which came into conflict with its own interpretation of the war. Those who wrote about Spain were unable to ignore the party’s version of events, whether they decided to breach, stretch, or remain within the limits of debate set by the SED. It was impossible to think or write about Spain without referring implicitly or explicitly to the official narrative of the war. It may well be asked, however, why the party cared about the International Brigades in the first place. The Spanish Civil War did not seem to have any immediate relevance to the problems of building socialism in Germany. Popular memories of Spain had largely been eclipsed by the catastrophic years since; and even at the time, most ordinary Germans might have been more likely to identify with the victories of the Condor Legion than those of the International Brigades. Nevertheless, the SED valued the legacy of the International Brigades for two reasons: the importance of antifascism in legitimating the East German state and the potentially inspirational effect of the Spanish Civil War.

C O M M U N I S T D E F I N I T I O N S O F FA S C I S M A N D A N T I FA S C I S M

In , Georgi Dimitrov, head of the Comintern, described fascism as ‘the open dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital, which directs itself against the interests of the whole nation’. This interpretation of fascism was adopted by East German historians, with important implications for the writing of history in the GDR. Any discussion of antifascism which took the  J. Agnew and K. McDermott, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin (London, ), .  e.g. Wörterbuch der Geschichte (Berlin, ), –.



The Party Appropriates Spain

Dimitrov definition as its starting point assumed that fascism had only represented the interests of a tiny minority, the most reactionary, chauvinist, and imperialist finance capitalists. The remainder of the nation was therefore by definition antifascist. This effectively exculpated the vast majority of Germans from any responsibility for Nazism. A second important conclusion was that the natural leader of the antifascist struggle was the working class, led by its political representatives, the KPD. This not only emphasised the pre-eminence of the workers as the driving force of history, but also cast the communist party as the natural focus of the resistance. As an East German historical dictionary put it in : ‘Because fascism . . . directs itself against the interests of the whole nation, it is both possible and necessary to attract large sections of the population to the antifascist movement and to organize them around the working class and their revolutionary party.’ A third important corollary of the identification of fascism with capitalism was that all capitalist regimes were inherently prone to fascism. The GDR’s leaders argued that by abolishing capitalism, they had removed the roots of fascism for ever. The fact that this had not taken place in West Germany meant that the Federal Republic was a dangerous breeding ground for the remnants of Nazism and the resurgence of fascism. The identification of the GDR with the antifascist forces of progress owed as much to political pragmatism on the part of the SED leadership as to ideological conviction. Those communists who returned to Germany or emerged from concentration camps after the end of the war did not have any illusions about the inherently antifascist nature of the German nation. However, early demands that the German people accept their share of responsibility for Nazism soon disappeared, as SED functionaries realized that accusations of blame and guilt were not the way to achieve a stable political order and the broad public support they so badly needed. The inhabitants of the Soviet Zone of Occupation were preoccupied with the practical problems of life in defeated Germany and exhibited low tolerance levels for talk of the Nazi period. As well as avoiding painful and divisive confrontations about the past, blaming finance capitalism for the sins of National Socialism allowed the SED to integrate former Nazi party members, sympathizers, and collaborators. By propagating a comforting legend of a communist-led antifascist German nation, the SED achieved two things: they began to bridge the  

Ibid, –. Quoted and trans. in Herf, Divided Memory, –.

The Party Appropriates Spain



chasm between those who had resisted and those who had not, and they also claimed the leadership of the nation for their own. Ordinary East Germans were relieved of their responsibility for Nazi war crimes and the leaders of the SED were provided with an almost unchallengeable claim to power. As Christa Wolf put it in : ‘A small group of antifascists, who ruled the country, had, for pragmatic reasons and at some unspecified point, transferred their feelings of victory onto the whole population.’ Wolf also remarked on the moral power this conferred on the SED leadership, at least amongst that section of the population sympathetic to socialism and antifascism: ‘We felt a strong reluctance to organise resistance against people who had been in concentration camps during the Nazi period’. The presence of such antifascists in the government also went some way towards reassuring the outside world that the legacy of Nazism could be overcome in Germany. The relationship between history and official antifascism worked in two directions: on one hand, antifascism was a means of interpreting the past. On the other, the past was used to bolster and legitimate the antifascist state. The legitimating ideology of antifascism was to form a powerful influence on the study and writing of history. In the GDR, as in other socialist states, history was not seen as a dispassionate or impartial discipline, but as a weapon in the class struggle which would simultaneously prove the legitimacy of the state and mobilize the population to further socialist achievements. The past was important not as an object of study in itself, but as a stage in the history of the struggle between socialism and capitalism from which conclusions could be drawn and lessons learned. The role the historian was meant to play in this process was made clear by guidelines produced by the IML in the early s. The starting point for all historical endeavours was to be the question of how they could help the party’s ideological work, what contribution they would make to the Seven Year Plan and to the solution of the ‘national question’ (of crucial importance at the time this was written, shortly before the building of the Berlin Wall). This was essential in order for history to become ‘a weapon in the national and international struggle against imperialism and militarism’ and to provide the proof that the GDR was the ‘rightful German state’. This was to be achieved by combating the ‘bourgeois history-forgers’ with a 

Wolf, ‘Das haben wir nicht gerlernt’, . Quoted and translated in D. Bathrick, Powers of Speech, . Cf. here J. Danyel, ‘Die unbescholtene Macht: Zum antifaschistischen Selbstverständnis der ostdeutschen Eliten’, in Peter Hübner (ed.), Eliten im Sozialismus (Cologne, ), –.  SAPMO-BArch DY /IV /./, p. . 



The Party Appropriates Spain

‘true, Marxist-Leninist picture of history’. As Simone Barck has shown in her study of the historiography of resistance and heroism in the s, historical accounts were judged by the end product and its political and educational value to the party, rather than by the quality of the historical research. Historians who took too literal an approach could be labelled ‘archive rats’, a term of abuse first coined by Stalin in . History performed a number of functions for SED propagandists: it provided historical parallels with which to illustrate current political events, exemplary historical figures with which to motivate and inspire the population, and it formed part of the personal histories and legitimacy of individual SED leaders. The potential appeal of antifascism is easy to identify—it located the GDR within a grand narrative of struggle and victory, placed the citizens of East Germany on the side of the winners, and reunited, theoretically at least, the German communists with their people. Its rhetoric of action and power was designed to enthuse the population about post-war reconstruction and encourage loyalty to the new state. The antifascist struggle continued—whether against the enemy within or along the fault lines of the Cold War—and the SED were offering the chance to join the winning team.

S PA I N A N D T H E A N T I FA S C I S T F R A M E WO R K

So where did Spain fit into this antifascist framework? The war had a number of important features which made it valuable material for antifascist propaganda. Unlike the resistance within Germany, Spain had been a collective experience. In contrast to the misery of the concentration camps, the International Brigade volunteers had faced their opponents from a position of strength, not hopeless inferiority; they had been able to fight fascism on a more equal basis, ‘with a gun in their hands’. Spain offered a unique combination of international Leftist military action and a positive, working-class tradition of German militarism. The value of this for East German propaganda could not be overstated. Another pronounced advantage of the Spanish Civil war was that— unlike the Second World War—only a tiny percentage of the population  

SAPMO-BArch DY /IV /./, p. . S. Barck, ‘Widerstands-Geschichten und Helden-Berichte. Momentaufnahmen antifaschistischer Diskurse in den fünfziger Jahren’, in M. Sabrow (ed.), Geschichte als Herrschaftsdiskurs: Der Umgang mit der Vergangenheit in der DDR (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna, ), .

The Party Appropriates Spain



had experienced it at first hand. This meant that historians and writers had greater leeway and readers were more likely to be convinced by their interpretation of events. Those who had fought in Spain were a small, fairly cohesive group, in the main fiercely loyal to the regime and unlikely to publicly contradict the official narrative. Because the vast majority of East Germans were not allowed to travel to Spain (or any other capitalist country), the places where the war had taken place remained inaccessible and inevitably gained a certain air of romance and adventure. However, possibly the most important aspect of Spain for the SED was that it offered a positive opportunity for identification. Young East Germans could emulate the International Brigades in a way which would have been impossible for the history of the concentration camps. The message of many SED histories of the war was that by joining the People’s Police or the National People’s Army, it was possible to follow in the footsteps of the Spanienkämpfer. German participation in the International Brigades was described as one of the ‘immortal events of human history, from Sparta, to the peasant rebellions of the middle ages, from the Paris Commune, Red October , the Battle of Stalingrad, to the current war of defence fought by the Vietnamese people’. If antifascism, like other national identities, was about a shared legacy and a shared destiny, then Spain was both a part of that heritage and a signpost to a common future. The consequences of this for those writing about the war were considerable. First, the term ‘Spanish Civil War’ was very rarely used, the preferred expression being ‘national-revolutionary war’. ‘National’ referred to the Spanish people’s fight for freedom and independence against German and Italian intervention; ‘revolutionary’ to their struggle against the domestic forces of reaction and to protect and extend their democratic rights. (What the term ‘revolutionary’ did not refer to was the social revolution and collectivization which took place during the war, which was generally disapproved of by communist observers.) ‘Civil war’ was an unacceptable term, as it implied that the people of Spain had been divided. According to Marxist-Leninist and Dimitrovian orthodoxy, this was an impossibility, because fascism only represented elite interests. Hence the emphasis on the war’s ‘national’ character, which stressed the unity of the Spanish people against foreign aggression. Another common  SAPMO-BArch, NY /Ü, p. : Entwurf für die Rede Franz Dahlems zur Denkmalseinweihung [].  On destiny, legacy, and national identity cf. Mary Fulbrook, German National Identity after the Holocaust, .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : Informationsmaterial zum . Jahrestag.



The Party Appropriates Spain

term used to describe the war was ‘the Spanish people’s fight for freedom’. Even during the war itself, the International Brigade commissariat had urged those writing about the conflict to stress that it was not just a civil war, but also a war against world fascism and for the liberation of Spain. While events in Spain were still being described as a ‘civil war’ in  by Sonntag, a weekly newspaper and even by the Tägliche Rundschau, the newspaper set up by the Soviet occupation forces, the phrase soon disappeared from official discourse about the war. Hans Teubner reacted with horror when it appeared in the working title of a book being edited by Hans Maaßen, also a veteran, in . He wrote in his report: ‘This term is wrong and unusable in Marxist-Leninist history.’ According to Teubner, ‘civil war’ was only applicable to the period immediately following the putsch, after which the war became national-revolutionary. The term was used by ‘imperialist historians’ to obscure the nature of the war and conceal fascist intervention, and was totally unsuitable for a socialist historian. (Maaßen replied that the conflict was simultaneously both a civil war and a national-revolutionary one and that he was not about to ‘throw the baby out with the bath water.’ He saw the debate as pedantic ‘exaggerated zeal’ and commented laconically: ‘Maybe it’s because most of us Germans haven’t read Don Quixote in the original, otherwise he would have been able to warn us about such escapades’. However, Teubner, the IML expert on Spain, prevailed and the book appeared without mention of ‘civil war’.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, East German historians tended to focus on German involvement in the war, both fascist and antifascist. The East German historian Marion Einhorn argued that, although Nazi Germany’s reasons for intervention were primarily political and strategic, to deny economic motives was to fall into the trap set by bourgeois historians who wished to hide the capitalist nature of the war (and, by extension, fascism) by concealing Hitler’s economic gains. Spain was also seen as a testingground for the Wehrmacht’s weapons, military strategies, soldiers, and offi SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : E. Blank, Kommission für Agitation und Presse des Kommissariats der Internationalen Brigade, to H. Kahle, Chef der . Division,  Jan. .  AKA Ostberlin .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, pp.  ff.: Hans Teubner Gutachten for Brigada Internacional, vol. i,  Aug. .  Ibid., pp. –: letter from H. Maaßen to Franz Dahlem,  Feb. .  M. Einhorn, ‘Die ökonomischen Hintergründe der Intervention des faschistischen deutschen Imperialismus’, in Interbrigadisten: Der Kampf deutscher Kommunisten und anderer Antifaschisten im national-revolutionären Krieg des spanischen Volkes (Berlin, ), –; and Die ökonomischen Hintergründe der faschistischen deutschen Intervention in Spanien – (Berlin, ).

The Party Appropriates Spain



cers. The ‘war of extermination’ waged against Spanish women and children showed the inhumanity of German capitalism and the lengths to which it was prepared to go in order to secure world domination. The reaction of the other European powers also proved the class-based nature of international politics to East German historians. The ‘comedy of so-called non-intervention’ was condemned as one of the chief causes for the defeat of the Republic. According to this interpretation, the capitalist democracies had ignored the danger of fascism because they feared the effect a Popular Front might have in their own countries. Additionally, the capitalist elites of Britain and France hoped to establish reactionary regimes in London and Paris, whilst isolating the Soviet Union. By choosing to defend the interests of the grande bourgeoisie rather than those of democracy, the Western democracies had supported German and Italian intervention. The issue of Soviet involvement in the war was, unfortunately for GDR historians, not quite so clear-cut. The word ‘intervention’ was never used, as it might have encouraged comparisons with the actions of the Germans and Italians. Instead it was referred to as ‘help’ or ‘support’. However, East German accounts failed to give a coherent picture of the nature of this aid to the Republic. There were a number of reasons for this, chiefly the twists and turns of Soviet policy and the sensitive topic of Stalin and Stalinism. However, the most important reason for the muted reception of Soviet involvement may have been the fact that the war had, after all, been lost. Although the supposedly mighty USSR had been the only major power to help Republican Spain, this had not been enough to prevent eventual defeat, and did not provide a particularly convincing illustration of the ubiquitous GDR propaganda slogan: ‘Learning from the Soviet Union means learning how to win.’ International relations, however, only formed the backdrop to what was first and foremost military history. As Horst Kühne, one of the leading historians of the Spanish Civil War, put it, interest in the subject was primarily ‘with regard to the current ideological tasks of the NVA and the military education of the population’. The German volunteers were central to this function of the war as a tool of military education. All accounts focused on the fact that the majority of the volunteers were communist, and the positive effect this had on their bravery and morale. 

Hoffman, ‘Die militärische Unterstützung’, in Pasaremos, . H. Kühne, ‘Der Kampf deutscher Kommunisten und anderer Antifaschisten im national-revolutionären Krieg des spanischen Volkes’, in Interbrigadisten, .  Ibid. . 



The Party Appropriates Spain

They were ‘political soldiers’, a completely different breed to the conscripts of previous wars. The writer Erich Weinert claimed that there was no trace of the sort of psychological damage he had witnessed in the First World War and described his astonishment at the soldiers’ ‘uninterrupted vitality, even happiness’: ‘the loss of mental powers is constantly refilled from the inexhaustible power which comes from the awareness of fighting for the most righteous and noble cause of humanity’. This idealization of the volunteers meant that aspects of the war such as fear and desertion were underplayed or simply ignored. Much attention was devoted to communist leadership, the role of the political commissars, and the party schools set up in Pozo Rubio and Benicasim. One of the explanations for the ability of the International Brigades to withstand an enemy whose weapons and ammunition were far superior was the moral certainty and determination the volunteers had gained from their study of MarxistLeninist principles. Paul Verner, a volunteer who later became a Politburo member, wrote that historians could never hope to understand how Republican troops had held their positions for so long during the battle of the Ebro. Their moral strength and the military advantage this gave them could not be ‘estimated or categorized, only observed and felt’ and would therefore remain a mystery for ‘book-learning’. The German volunteers represented the ‘other’, antifascist Germany, and East German historians made much of the links between the campaign in Spain and resistance activities in Germany. Damage to Hitler caused by the German resistance movement could aid the Republic; conversely, a victory for the Republicans would have weakened Nazi Germany and strengthened the embryonic German Popular Front. This was closely tied to the need to prove that significant resistance had existed inside Germany. According to GDR accounts, German workers’ interest in Spain demonstrated that illegal party activists had been able to ‘keep the spirit of proletarian internationalism alive amongst the antifascist workers’. 

.

Hanns Maaßen, quoted in Schlenstedt, ‘Exil und antifaschistischer Kampf in Spanien’,

 E. Weinert, ‘Die Kinder der XI. Brigade’, in Immer bereit für die Verteidigung der Freiheit des Volkes, .  Jäntsch, ‘Die militärischen Formationen deutscher Interbrigadisten’, –; Pasaremos, –.  A. Dorf, ‘Zur Rolle des moralischen Faktors im Kampf der Interbrigadisten’, in Interbrigadisten, .  P. Verner, ‘Vier Monate Kampf im Ebro-Bogen’, in Pasaremos, .  Kühne, ‘Der Kampf deutscher Kommunisten’, .  IML beim ZK der SED, Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung,  vols. (Berlin, ), v. .

The Party Appropriates Spain



Examples of this included pamphleteering, delaying weapon transports, collecting money to help Spanish women and children, and demonstrations by the mothers and wives of Condor Legion airmen who had fallen in action. A contemporary report on the ‘echo of the Spanish struggle in the German proletariat’, published in Rundschau, a communist newspaper, in  and reprinted in , went to great lengths to differentiate between Nazi intervention in Spain and the true feelings of the working people in Germany. According to this account, workplace conversations were dominated by talk of the war, money for the Spanish republic was collected in factories, and Berlin builders greeted each other with the words ‘Heil Spanien!’. This overly optimistic view of popular German support for the Republican side was reproduced in essentially unaltered form in most SED accounts of the war. Like the debates over the term ‘civil war’, this demonstrates the extent to which East German historians adopted contemporary interpretations and views of the war. Even with the benefit of hindsight, knowing that solidarity within Germany had played an unimportant and insignificant role in the war, they were unwilling to abandon the fiction that the antifascist struggles of the two countries were somehow inextricably connected. As well as supporting the myth of a powerful German internal resistance, the emphasis on the links between Germany and Spain also contributed to the idealization of the volunteers as the liberators of the German nation. Their presence in Spain was often portrayed as part of a German war of deliverance from fascism and terror. Helping Spain was ‘not only called for by proletarian internationalism, but [was] also a national duty’. In the words of one veteran: ‘As we antifascists volunteered for the battle in Spain we knew that we were also making a contribution to the liberation of the German nation.’ In one sense, this referred to physical liberation from fascism; in another sense, it implied that the volunteers were rescuing the reputation of Germany, defending ‘the honour of the German nation in front of the whole world’, as Heinrich Rau put it in . The members of the International Brigades proved in the eyes of the world that ‘German’ did not automatically mean ‘Nazi’.   

Ibid. –. Der Freiheitskampf des spanischen Volkes, –. F. Dahlem, ‘Der spanische Freiheitskrieg’ and H. Hoffman, ‘Die militärische Unterstützung des spanischen Volkes’, in Pasaremos, , .  Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, v. .  J. Zettler, ‘Im Auftrag der NKFD’, in Pasaremos, .  Pasaremos, .



The Party Appropriates Spain

As well as stressing the exemplary nature of the International Brigade volunteers, SED accounts also drew parallels between events in Spain and topical issues and politics. In the early post-war years, these tended to refer to the lessons Germans could learn from the Spanish experience. Heinrich Rau wrote in  that incomplete land reforms and the disunity of the forces of antifascism were major contributors to the defeat of the Spanish Republic. This emphasis on the importance of land reform, so pertinent in the early years of the new regime, was echoed in a speech written for schoolchildren and members of youth groups in the predominantly rural Brandenburg area in , which described how the redistribution of land in Spain had strengthened the Popular Front. Reflecting a mood of postwar introspection, many felt that hard work was the way to rebuild the country, morally and politically. One veteran was quoted as saying at a meeting in : ‘We must work and work with discipline. We must show the working people [of the world] that we are capable of building our own house.’ In  Franz Dahlem told assembled veterans: ‘Our front is now the front of work to rebuild our new democratic order.’ However, as the tensions of the Cold War began to mount, many felt that the GDR had already taken the lessons of Spain to heart. As Franz Dahlem put it in : ‘In the GDR we have learnt the lessons that these imperialist policies which were carried out in Spain teach us. We have dispossessed the Junkers, put big business in the hands of the people, we have carried out school reforms.’ Spain was now described as a ‘warning’, a historical lesson about the dangers of capitalism and imperialism which had been heeded only by the socialist bloc. In the political climate of the early s, much of this anti-imperialist invective was directed against America. Commemorations of the war in  took place under the slogan ‘ Spain,  Korea’. As the veterans’ organization, the VVN, put it: ‘The spirit of the Spanienkämper lives on for all people who are fighting for the



–.

SAPMO-BArch, NY /: ‘Der Freiheitskampf des spanischen Volkes’ (),

 SAPMO-BArch, DY /SgY /V//, p. : ‘Referat für die Schulfeiern und Feirien der FDJ’.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : ‘Begegnung mit den Kämpfern von Madrid’,  June .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /V//, p. : F. Dahlem, ‘Vom . Juli  zum . Juli . Einige geschichtliche Lehren’.  SAPMO-BArch DY /V//: ‘Spanien, eine Mahnung für uns’ ().  Ibid.; ‘Spanien und Korea mahnen zum Kampf um Freiden’, Sächische Zeitung,  July .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /V//: VVN, Agit. Prop,  July .

The Party Appropriates Spain



independence of their countries against American imperialism.’ It was also argued that the USA, aware that it was impossible ‘to bring about a third world war without the German people’, was nurturing the rebirth of West German imperialism. One veteran pledged at a meeting in Schwerin in , ‘we will fight, so that Adenauer’s days are as numbered as Franco’s’. By  and the thirtieth anniversary celebrations, attention had moved to US action in Vietnam: supposedly, the American war aim was to have a base in Asia from which to wage war against the USSR, just as Hitler had intervened in Spain for strategic reasons. Parallels were also drawn between the solidarity campaigns in support of the Spanish and Vietnamese people. Two years later, ‘imperialism’s battle against the Arab people (Israeli aggression)’ was used as an example of what proletarian internationalism must fight against. However, one of the most striking parallels was that drawn between the Nationalists in Spain and the reformers of the Czechoslovakian Prague Spring. Advisory notes produced for the unveiling of the Spanienkämpfer memorial statue in East Berlin on  September , shortly after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, described the invasion as part of the ‘legacy of the Spanish freedom fighters’. They went on to order all GDR citizens to be ‘steadfast, like the International Brigaders were’ in order to resist the influence of the ‘ideological poison’ which the enemy was ‘pouring out by the tonne’. The use of Spain as an explanatory tool for conflicts within the socialist bloc was not without precedent. The novelist Anna Seghers had legitimized the Soviet invasion of Hungary in  with the help of parallels drawn between the Hungarian uprising and the Spanish generals’ putsch. In fact, some students, young workers, and members of the FDJ seem to have taken this comparison at face value, sending telegrams to FDJ headquarters declaring their support for the new Hungarian regime and their willingness to fight in ‘International Brigades’ to protect it.  

Ibid.: VVN, Agit. Prop.,  July . SAPMO-BArch, DY /V//: ‘Spanien, eine Mahnung für uns’ ().  Ibid.: ‘Bericht von VVN Landes-Sekretariat Mecklenburg’,  July .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : ‘Zum . Jahrestag’,  June .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /Ü, p. : ‘Anregungen zur Erläuterung der Gendenkstätte in Berlin-Friedrichshain’,  Oct. .  Ibid., p. : ‘Hinweise für Ansprachen und Vorträge’,  Aug. .  M. Rohrwasser, Der Stalinismus und die Renegaten (Stuttgart, ), .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /, FDJ Zentralrat, Abteilung Org.-Kader: Abt. Verbandinformation Kurzinformation, Berlin,  Nov. ; Abt. Verbandorgane Berlin, Informationsbericht  Nov. . Thanks to Alan McDougall for this reference.



The Party Appropriates Spain

YO U T H WO R K

Many books, commemoration ceremonies, films, and publications were designed specifically with schoolchildren, students, apprentices, army recruits and young workers in mind. Veterans routinely visited schools and FDJ groups to talk about their experiences. The Jugendweihe or socialist confirmation ceremony was usually accompanied by a visit to a concentration camp and a talk by antifascist veterans, symbolically passing on both their experiences and their duties to the next generation. Young people were felt to be the section of society which had the most to gain from education about the history of antifascism—particularly in the early years of the GDR, they were the only members of the population who had not been affected by Nazi propaganda and educational techniques, providing a blank slate for an antifascist education. The involvement and commitment of young people was also crucial for the success of the GDR. Youth was an essential resource for post-war reconstruction, for the army, industry, and agriculture. The SED therefore felt it necessary to propagate an identification with and loyalty to the antifascism of the East German state amongst young people. In , at a meeting of the FDJ and the veterans’ committee to discuss the ‘preservation and maintenance of revolutionary traditions in working-class youth’, the veteran Ernst Melis explained to the assembled youth leaders: ‘the vow of the liberated antifascists [a reference to the pledge made by Buchenwald inmates in ] is still fully valid for the younger generation and is their duty and their instructions’. The teaching of history was primarily intended to give students a strong sense of their place and obligations in the antifascist order and to inculcate them against the powerful counter-narratives offered by Western TV and other sources. Teaching plans used by school history teachers emphasized the importance of teaching history in ‘an emotionally moving way’. Pupils were to form a view of history which was ‘concrete, academic and in accordance with the party line’; this would equip them to confront ‘the politics and ideology of imperialism, above all anticommunist lies and fabrications about history’. For example, pupils were meant to see  A. Döhnert, ‘Jugendweihe: Die Familie als Feld der SED-Kirchenpolitik’, in D. Vorsteher (ed.), Parteiauftrag: Ein neues Deutschland (Berlin, ), –.  SAPMO-BArch, NY , p. : ‘Erfahrungsaustausch unseres Komitees mit dem Zentralrat der FDJ . . .’, .  Ministerrat der DDR, Ministerium für Volksbildung, Lehrplan Geschichte Klassen  bis  (Berlin, ), .  Ibid. , .

The Party Appropriates Spain



Nazism as a development of imperialism and should identify strongly with the German resistance movement and the leadership of the KPD; coupled with an awareness of the crucial role of the Soviet Union, this was to reinforce their readiness for service in the army. School history books conveyed the same picture of Spain as academic works, often with illustrative quotes, such as this extract from an interview with a German volunteer carried out in , who said that he had gone to Spain because I am a German antifascist and know that in this country I will continue the struggle which I began against Hitler in my country. In my homeland I worked as a metal worker. I am married and have several children. My wife let me go, because she knew that I must continue my struggle. My short experience of the struggle in Spain has proved to me the heroic courage with which the people of this country are fighting against troops which often are superior from a military viewpoint.

Here, in a nutshell, are all the essential elements of the party’s interpretation of Spain: the displaced fight against German fascism; the workingclass nature of the war; sacrifice and selflessness, both on the part of the solider and his loyal wife; the heroism of the Spanish people; the pernicious role of German and Italian intervention; and the essentially unequal nature of the situation. Antifascist heroes were held up as both role model and friend, figures whom young people could simultaneously identify with and emulate. An FDJ appeal issued on  July  urged ‘all young patriots’ to Learn from the antifascist fighters of the Spanish fight for freedom how one fights resolutely, bravely and steadfastly for the cause of the people! Emulate the heroic courage and readiness to fight demonstrated by the leading sons of our people like Hans Beimler and the fighters of units like the Ernst-Thälmann and Edgar-André Battalions! . . . On this occasion of this day take on new commitments to join the armed forces of our republic, to increase your achievements in learning and working for the building of socialism! Defend peace and the homeland in the spirit of the International Brigades! 

The heroes of the International Brigades were first and foremost fighters: heroism was measured by one’s willingness to take up weapons and join the military struggle. The message to be drawn from this was clear: the most 

Unterrichtshilfen Geschichte Klasse  (Berlin, ), –. Geschichte Lehrbuch für Klasse  (Berlin, ), . E.g. M. Stoll, Hans Beimler: Unser Vorbild unser Freund (Berlin, ).  ‘Verteidigt den Frieden und die Heimat im Geiste der Internationalen Brigaden! Aufruf der FDJ zum Jahrestag des faschistischen Überfalls auf Spanien’, ND,  July , p. .  



The Party Appropriates Spain

important way in which young GDR citizens could emulate this behaviour was join the NVA or the police. In the words of one apprentice who took part in the Hans Beimler paramilitary competition, ‘his way of living and behaving must be a role model for every FDJ member. To become like him is a beautiful and difficult task.’ The qualities emphasized were primarily courage and determination: the men of the International Brigades were presented as preternaturally calm and composed in all situations, immune to fright or panic. The impact this picture of resistance had on the East German population is hard to measure, but one teenager, ‘Marko’, quoted in a newspaper article written in , gives a flavour of the impression some may have had. Marko, asked what he knew about Hans Beimler, replied: ‘He didn’t just order people around [er hat nicht nur rumkommandiert], he fought alongside them. He was a proper role model: just, makes sacrifices, jumps in to help others. My father was in the police for ten years, he also said that this is important.’ Marko’s image of Beimler contains many of the elements central to the official picture of heroism: self-sacrifice, solidarity, willingness to fight. The fact that the young man, presumably influenced by both Beimler and his own father, wanted to join the armed forces and become an officer in the NVA, demonstrates that, in this case at least, the pedagogical exercise has had the desired effect. (Others were more critical, as we shall see.) Another example of the ways in which history was produced for the younger generation was the Tatsachenreihe (pocket series) produced by Militärverlag. These short books, written in a lively Boy’s Own style and based on true stories, appeared every month and were aimed at young male soldiers and members of the GST, the paramilitary youth organization. Two books in the series purported to be based on the diaries and memoirs of two International Brigades veterans, Adolf Lemke and Fritz Perlitz. The first, Auf heimlichen Pfaden (On Secret Paths) describes the attempts of two German antifascists to travel from Prague to Spain and join the International Brigades. Fritz (based on Perlitz) is a communist and the elder and more experienced of the two travellers. His companion, Gerd, a member of the social democratic youth movement, is much younger and less experienced. Social democrats were traditionally portrayed in commu

Stoll, Hans Beimler, n.p. ‘Im Geiste Hans Beimler den Frieden stark machen’, Thüringische Landeszeitung,  Feb. .  Cf. K. Wieckhorst, Die Darstellung des ‘antifaschistischen Widerstandes’ in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der SBZ/DDR (Frankfurt am Main, ), –. 

The Party Appropriates Spain



nist discourse as weak, cowardly, and less manly than the powerful and determined communists, and the characterization of Fritz and Gerd is no exception. During the journey Gerd is quick to panic and has to be advised and reassured by the older, more experienced communist. At Prague train station he worries about undercover policemen: ‘Look, the fat guy over there by the barrier with the bowler hat and the glasses!’ whispered Gerd excitedly. ‘If that’s not a cop . . .’ ‘He’s got much too much luggage with him’ said Fritz calmly, ‘he’s waiting for his wife, not for us.’ He had enough experience to be able to say that.

Later the pair are arrested by the Austrian authorities. In prison, they manage to coax a cigarette and a single match out of the guard; Gerd despairs that they will manage to light the cigarette at the first attempt, but Fritz ‘is already practised in this method’ and lights the match ‘with astonishing confidence’. The message is that Fritz, as a communist, is knowledgeable and resourceful, while the inexperienced social democrat lacks courage and intelligence and needs the guidance and lessons that Fritz can provide. In the end, sickly Gerd does not even get to fight in the International Brigades, as he is taken ill and left behind. In Flakbatterie ‘Georgi Dimitroff ’, published in , German members of a flak battery shoot down a Condor Legion officer. It transpires that he is the son of an unemployed Brandenburg metalworker, and joined the army when he was unable to find work. The head of the battery wastes no time in explaining the implications of this to the pilot: So your father is a worker like our fathers. You are a worker’s boy like we are. And now we face each other as enemies. You are following some order from above, but we are following our conscience. You are shooting at the Spanish workers and at us, but we are protecting them. Do you understand now why Germans are facing Germans here? Think about it!

Not only did this episode demonstrate the existence of two Germanies in Spain, it also contained clear lessons for NVA soldiers and members of the East German border police. They too lived in a world where Germans faced Germans; the object of much GDR propaganda material was to convince them that they were on the right side. Identification with the International Brigade volunteers was one way to achieve this goal.    

Cf. Weitz, Creating German Communism, pp.  ff. G. Gregor, Auf heimlichen Pfaden (Berlin, ), . Ibid. . G. Gregor, Flakbatterie ‘Georgi Dimitroff ’ (Berlin, ), .



The Party Appropriates Spain

The Tatsachenreihe books were written in a simple lively style. Army life is portrayed in a positive manner, with lots of banter between the soldiers. There is much use of slang and dialect, for example the soldiers describe ammunition as ‘Muni’. In many ways these books resemble children’s stories: the older male characters are essentially father figures, not characters that the reader could personally identify with. Although the action takes place in a predominantly male world, any women who do appear fleetingly are depicted in a resolutely non-sexual manner, like Anni the sensible Prague Genossin, or the brightly dressed village girls in Spain. They are more likely to remind the adolescent reader of his mother or sister than of a potential girlfriend. The soldiers are painted in broad strokes—Orje, an obstreperous but honest Berlin worker; Arno, a student, who describes the enemy as being ‘from the other faculty’. In a key episode, it is Orje’s worker instincts which lead him to mistrust the suave Spanish intellectual Fernando, who has seduced the other members of the battery with his linguistic skills and storytelling. He is eventually caught trying to join enemy lines. The troops react with incomprehension and ‘find no word of accusation. This planned betrayal is simply too dirty for them . . . Each one loses himself in his thoughts: that is the class struggle too.’ Not only has Fernando betrayed his battery, he has betrayed the workers (represented by Orje) as well. Orje’s class-based mistrust had been proved right. The emphasis on the military and ideological lessons to be learned from Spain was not confined to the literary sphere. In the early years of the GDR the Thälmannpioniere, a group for children in the fourth to seventh school classes, carried out annual field exercises under the motto ‘We defend Madrid!’. The children sang International Brigade songs, read books and memoirs, carried out exercises in the field, made their own equipment, and listened to veterans’ tales of the ‘heroic battles of the International Brigades’ around the campfire. Finally, they re-enacted a scene from the war. A Leipzig GST group named after Richard Seipel (who died in Spain in ) wrote to his widow Anni in  describing how they had carried out a cross-country march in honour of the seventieth anniversary of Seipel’s birth. The aim of the march was to ‘prove by means of good premilitary achievements, that they want to fulfil Richard Seipel’s legacy  

 Id., Auf heimlichen Pfaden, . Gregor, Flakbatterie ‘Georgi Dimitroff ’ , .  Ibid. .  Ibid. . Id., Flakbatterie, .  K.-H. Schüler, ‘Es begann  mit einem Geländespiel . . .’, Der antifaschistische Widerstandskämpfer,  (), .

The Party Appropriates Spain



through their deeds’. Around  schoolchildren and teachers had marched a distance of between  and  kilometres, during which they had to find documents relating to Seipel’s life in a wooded area, ‘defend’ them by means of a shooting competition, and then find their way back to the ‘comrades’, using a map and compass. This was followed by a march through the town to the local cinema, where the ‘conquered’ documents were ‘symbolically’ handed over to an International Brigade veteran. The uniformed GST members also stood guard over a ‘virtually life-size’ picture of Seipel, decorated with a red flag and flowers, and lit by a flame. Similarly, on a national scale, the annual Hans Beimler competitions, organized for schoolchildren in the eighth, ninth, and tenth classes, were designed to give the competitors an opportunity to ‘show stamina, discipline and courage . . . and prove themselves worthy of the legacy of the revolutionary fighters’. Some SED officials even believed that the legacy of the Spanish Civil War could be used to control the wayward tendencies of youth and combat pernicious and corrupting Western influences. Following the  ‘BeatUprising’ in Leipzig, where young people clashed with the police over their right to play and listen to Beatles-inspired pop music, it was suggested that a performance by the Spanienkämpfer and singer Ernst Busch (by now partially rehabilitated after his brush with party discipline in the early s) might act as a panacea. Songs from past political struggles could be combined with ‘explanations . . . as there is a lot that young people just do not know any more’. The delusion that Busch could somehow placate an audience obsessed with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Western jeans demonstrated the gulf that existed between the party and the young people of the GDR. The SED could be remarkably inept at gauging and responding to their audiences. Spain was considered to be as relevant to Leipzig mop-tops as it had been to those who had fought in the Thälmann Battalion. It was with this principle in mind that the commemorations of the thirtieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War were planned and carried out.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : ‘Maßnahmen zur : Wiederkehr des Geburtstages von Richard Seipel’.  Ibid., p. : letter to A. Seipel,  Jan. .  H. Meyer, ‘In erster Reihe bei der Verteidigung Madrids’, ND,  Dec. , p. .  Ergänzung zu den Ursachen über das Überhandnehmen negativer Erscheinungen in den Beat-Gruppen. Abteilung Kultur, ZK der SED, Berlin,  Nov. , in H.-D. Schütt (ed.), Klaus Renft: Zwischen Liebe und Zorn (Berlin, ). Thanks to Mark Fenemore for this reference.  On failed attempts to reform youth policy in the s see A. McDougall, ‘The Liberal

 :

The Party Appropriates Spain T H E T H I RT I E T H A N N I V E R S A RY O F T H E O U T B R E A K O F

WA R I N S PA I N

Large-scale commemorations of the outbreak of the war had taken place before, particularly in , , and , and commemorative articles appeared annually in newspapers and magazines, but the thirtieth anniversary was probably the biggest ever Spain-related event in the GDR, as well as the best documented. As outlined in the previous chapter, by the mids, the political purges of the s had begun to fade in SED memory and many of the victims had been at least partially rehabilitated. Many other Spanienkämpfer were, for reasons of age or health, now less heavily involved in political life and therefore had more time to devote to commemorative activities. As the campaign against the Western émigrés receded into the past, topics such as the Spanish Civil War lost their piquancy and could be reintegrated into the national narrative of antifascism. After the building of the Berlin Wall, the East German government was also keen to demonstrate its international credentials, both to its domestic audience and to the outside world. The International Brigades offered an example of German proletarian internationalism; the anniversary was also an opportunity to invite foreign visitors to visit East Germany. Non-German International Brigade veterans who visited the GDR were carefully vetted by their national veterans’ organizations and by the GDR authorities; many were members of the Communist Party and were therefore naturally sympathetic to the East German cause. This was a chance to show them the delights of life in the GDR, hopefully earning good publicity on their return home. During the main commemorations in July, eighty-seven International Brigade veterans from twenty-three different countries visited the GDR. The GDR was also represented at international events to commemorate the war, both inside and outside the socialist bloc: two Spanienkämpfer travelled to a meeting of International Brigade veterans in Paris in November , and five veterans travelled to the commemorations of the founding of the International Brigades in Warsaw in October. Interlude: SED Youth Policy and the Free German Youth (FDJ), –’, Debatte, / (), –; M. Fenemore, ‘The Limits of Repression and Reform: Youth Policy in the early s’, in Major and Osmond (eds.), The Workers’ and Peasants’ State, –.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV A //: Bericht über die internationale Arbeit der Komitee der Antifaschistischen Widerstandskämpfer in der DDR .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /J IV //, p. : Reinschriftenprotokoll Nr.  vom . Aug. .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /J IV //, p. : Reinschriftenprotokoll Nr.  vom . Sept. .

The Party Appropriates Spain



Planning for the thirtieth anniversary commemorations started in  under the chairmanship of Franz Dahlem, head of both the Sektion Spanienkämpfer and the Solidarity Committee for the Spanish People. A long list of events was drawn up, which ranged from an academic conference at the Dresden military academy to ceremonies in schools and factories named after International Brigade veterans. There was to be a series of stamps depicting prominent Spanienkämpfer, commemorative plaques and badges, and articles in the press. On  July, regiments of the NVA were to receive the names of Spanish Civil War brigades, battalions, and regiments. However, although the workload was being shouldered by the Sektion Spanienkämpfer, the anniversary was not simply a veteran-run affair. The initial planning began only after the Secretariat of the Central Committee had produced a resolution in November , and ultimate responsibility for the commemorations lay with the SED, with the Secretariat advising on political issues and matters of terminology. For example, the official title of the celebrations was to be: ‘The Thirtieth Anniversary of the Beginning of the Spanish People’s Fight for Freedom’. The Secretariat also demanded that the original plans be rewritten to tie in more closely with present-day issues. The plan was then passed on to the Foreign Minister, Otto Winzer, for approval. The revised plan drew attention to the continuities between Nazi Germany and West Germany, for example the fact that the general inspector of the West German army had been a major in the Luftwaffe. According to the material produced in preparation for the commemorations, this man was now helping West German imperialists and neo-fascists to plan a nuclear war, just as he had planned the destruction of Guernica, Rotterdam, and Florence. The plan went on to outline the main lessons to be learnt from Spain: that it was possible for a country to take a peaceful, democratic path to popular rule and the importance of the unity of the working class and all democratic forces in this process, a unity which had been lacking in Spain, but had been achieved in the GDR. Other important political messages were also to be drawn from the war, among them the need for young people to defend their socialist fatherland and the need to be vigilant against secret imperialist preparation for war, for example US aggression in Vietnam and West German preparations for an attack on the GDR.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, pp. –: Vorbereitung und Durchführung des . Jahrestages des Freiheitskampfes des spanischen Volkes.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : Bericht über den Verlauf der Veranstaltungen des . Jahrestages.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /K /: ‘Für Genossen Franz Dahlem’.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /K /, pp. –.



The Party Appropriates Spain

The main core of the festivities took place between  and  July . Foreign delegates were presented with the Hans Beimler medal, visited the Berlin Wall and the Soviet war memorial, and took part in state receptions. The foundation stone for a memorial statue was laid and a nearby street was renamed Hans-Beimler-Straße. After a day relaxing on a boat trip, the delegates visited the regions of the GDR and spoke at ceremonies and celebrations. These regional events were run by local veteran organizations, branches of the FDGB, and the National Front. According to veteran committee records, , events took place, attended by , people. Local organizers had gone to some trouble to involve the population in proceedings, for example bringing an exhibition on ‘Spain and Vietnam’ to a regional mushroom festival, which was visited by thousands of people the anniversary might otherwise have passed by. Another travelling exhibition on ‘Spain’s fight for freedom –’ was organized by the Museum for German History, and the German Army Museum in Dresden also set up a mini-exhibition on the war. Many of the events stressed the similarities between the Spanish and Vietnamese situations, and the ‘brutality and inhumanity of West German imperialism’. People were encouraged to sign protest resolutions against US policy in Vietnam, donate money, aid packages, and even blood. A report on the anniversary activities, produced by the Sektion Spanienkämpfer on the basis of local reports written by veterans and representatives of the FDGB and National Front, provides a rare glimpse into the public reaction to these events. The East Germans mentioned in the report were by no means an uncritical audience. As in , some people took the parallels literally and declared themselves ready to join International Brigades to defend Vietnam. But others expressed doubts about this line of action, fearing that it might lead to world war. This view often came from artisans, traders, Christians, members of the intelligentsia, and particularly from women, and reflected a tension between pacifism and militarism which was common in East German society. Other awkward questions related to cooperation between communists and Catholics in Spain and the reasons for the workers’ and peasants’ defeat.  

SAPMO-BArch, DY /K /, pp. –: Programm zum . Jahrestag. SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : Bericht über den Verlauf der Veranstaltungen des . Jahrestages, n.d.  Ibid.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /  (F. Dahlem Nachlaß), p. .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : Bericht über den Verlauf der Veranstaltungen des . Jahrestages, n.d., p. .  Ibid., p. .

The Party Appropriates Spain



Some members of the public found it difficult to understand why antifascists had fought in Spain instead of in Germany; others asked why the socialist bloc was not doing more to help the Vietnamese people. The writers of the report had particular problems with the West German visitors they encountered, who related to Spain primarily as a tourist destination and were more likely to mention the favourable exchange rate than the struggle of the proletariat. The East German population did not just swallow passively the information which the regime presented it with; instead, people engaged in a process of reception, often influenced by their social or family background and political or religious views. This is not the only evidence which suggests that the party’s portrayal of Spain failed to have the desired effect of motivating and inspiring the population. In fact it may have even backfired by alienating young people from the antifascist tradition. Research carried out by the SED in  on young people’s awareness of antifascism demonstrated that young East Germans regarded the heroes of the resistance as interchangeable: regardless of their individual stories, they were all perceived to have shared the same personal characteristics, political orientation, and class background. Young people tended to see the ritualized commemoration of the war as irrelevant to them. Karen Leeder points out that many of the young poets of the s complained about the way in which history had become formulaic and second-hand. As Stefan Schütz, an East German author who left the GDR during the s, put it: For a citizen of the GDR, it was absolutely normal to grow up with the dead. We were always being confronted with some corpse as a glowing model to live up to. The SED practised a massive cult of the dead. After all, we were walled in for years with the great corpses of the working-class movement, and at some point we all turned into ghosts.

In a similar vein, Heiner Müller described the GDR as ‘a dictatorship of the dead over the living’. As well as the oppressive nature of official commemoration and its omnipresent dead figures, there seemed to be an inordinate contrast between the mundanity of GDR life and the epochal and heroic deeds of the antifascist heroes.  

 Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . H. Meier, Geschichtsbewußtsein und historische Identität in der DDR: Versuch einer kritischen Bilanz (Berlin, ), .  K. Leeder, Breaking Boundaries: A New Generation of Poets in the GDR (Oxford, ), .  Quoted in Hell, Post-Fascist Fantasies,  (Hell’s trans.).  Quoted in Leeder, Breaking Boundaries, .



The Party Appropriates Spain

Even the children of veterans found it hard to recognize their parents in the tales of heroism they learnt in school. Bodo Uhse’s son, Joel Agee, remembered a friend’s father, also a Spanienkämpfer, who ‘told spellbinding stories, mostly about his past, and perhaps about the past of others as well, for it was hard to believe that one man could have experienced so much’. The boys found the veteran’s stories difficult to swallow, but years later they discovered that not only had he been telling the truth, but that ‘far from boasting, had modestly withheld information that would have singled him out as a hero’. Agee and his friend found it hard to reconcile their parents’ disappointingly bourgeois existence in the GDR with such daring deeds. As his friend put it: He [his father] was a hero in the French Resistance—you know about that—and in Spain too—and now he’s wrapped himself up in office work and domesticity. His only concerns seem to be his child, his plants, and the latest cultural gossip. And it’s not just age that did it. The minute the war was over, the moment our fathers came back from exile, they stopped being artists and fighters and turned into anxious obesquious little officials.

Annette Kahane, the daughter of a veteran, also found it hard to recognize her parents in an antifascism which she found profoundly alienating: ‘I never saw any people in the whole antifascist culture. There were sometimes leadership models or exemplary figures, there were sometimes ideals or some heroes, which my parents also belonged to.’ What is especially interesting in this interview is Kahane’s unwillingness to glorify her own role in the East German Wende of /. Despite the fact that she had represented the New Forum citizen’s organization at the Round Table negotiations in  and was later responsible for the welfare of foreigners in Berlin, she laconically described her political activities as ‘quite funny [ganz lustig]’, and emphasized, ‘I don’t want to say, I was a resistance fighter’. The SED’s appropriation of the language of resistance appears to have left Kahane, and possibly countless others, estranged.

C O N C LU S I O N

The fact that the SED was unable to enthuse the population about their 

Agee, Twelve Years, .  Ibid. . Ibid. . V. von Wroblewsky, Zwischen Thora und Trabant: Juden in der DDR (Berlin, ), . Interview with A. Kahane.  Von Wroblewsky, Zwischen Thora und Trabant, .  

The Party Appropriates Spain



version of the Spanish Civil War will come as no surprise to anybody familiar with East German historical writing. Much of the material on the International Brigades was little more than crude propaganda, and more scholarly accounts tended to be an unreadable combination of dry description and ideological analysis. The party’s hopes that this material could act as a counterweight to the lure of the West seem naïve, to say the least. What is surprising is that the party did not manage to kill off all interest in the subject. As will become clear in the remaining chapters, Spain was to be the subject of heated debate amongst veterans, writers, and readers, right up until the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Intellectuals, literary critics, and members of dissident political groups all had their own distinctive take on the war. The party could control the content of official produced accounts, but it was unable to control the ways in which readers reacted to them. Nor could it silence every account which contradicted its own. Spain would have quickly lost its potency as an antifascist rallying-point if it had had to rely on East German historical writing. As a literary critic wrote in praise of the complexity of the characters in Eduard Claudius’ novel about Spain: ‘They are not pale figures from school readers [sie sind keine blassen Lesebuchfiguren], but lively people, with whom the reader would be able to live, to love and to hate, to think and to do.’ Claudius’ three-dimensional characters contrast starkly with the schoolbook heroes with whom, it is implied, no one would want to live, love, or hate. The poverty of its own accounts forced the SED into negotiations with other groups interested in the war. Perhaps the most important of these groups, and certainly the most powerful, were the veterans of the International Brigades.  I. Hiebel, ‘Über Helden, Heldentum und Heroismus: Anmerkungen zum Menschenbild in zwei Romanen von Eduard Claudius’, Weimarer Beiträge, / (), –.



Reluctant Heroes: Veterans and the State Contest the Meaning of the War For the veterans of the International Brigades, antifascism was much more than a way of legitimating SED rule. Most veterans were, it is true, members of the party. They agreed that there were valuable lessons to be learnt from the Spanish Civil War and were delighted that their contribution to the antifascist fight was being publicly commemorated. Those who wrote their memoirs often aimed to convince young people of the moral superiority of the East German state, hoping that the appeal of the Spanish Civil War would be enough to stop them deserting to the other side of the Wall. But the fact that the veterans and the SED shared a political agenda did not necessarily mean that their interpretations of the war were identical. For the most part, the veterans were happy to publicly endorse the party’s version of events. Party discipline alone would have been enough to ensure that. But they were not shy about setting the record straight amongst themselves and even to party officials. When they had the opportunity to speak in private, as one party member to another, veterans were keen to record their version of events for posterity, even if this sometimes meant contradicting the official view of Spain. One area where this was particularly apparent was the subject of heroism, so central to the SED’s strategy of providing young people with military role models. Many veterans felt that the party’s version of heroism bore little resemblance to what they had experienced on the battlefields. Worse still was the party’s falsification of history, leaving out or even changing inconvenient events or details. This chapter will focus on the different ways party and veterans defined heroism, and the challenges posed by veteran memoirs to the party’s version of events. Hans Beimler, Artur Becker, and Otto Stank were commonly held up as heroes of the International Brigades, but a closer look at their histories throws up countless inconsistencies and silences, which veterans often recognized and challenged.

Veterans and the State ‘WRITE



I T D OW N , C O M R A D E !’ M E M O I R W R I T I N G I N T H E G D R

Right from the outset, antifascist veterans in the GDR were put under a fair degree of moral and political pressure to preserve their memories for socialist posterity. The SED Central Secretariat’s Department of the Party History of the Illegality (which was to become the Cadre Section of the Central Committee), led by Karl Schirdewan, began to collect memoirs and reports on resistance work almost immediately after the foundation of the party. They hoped to preserve the experiences of exile and persecution and inform the German public of the sacrifice and suffering of the antifascist movement. More pragmatically, the party needed to collate reliable information on what its members had done in the twelve years since . On return to Germany, members of the KPD had to apply for re-entry to the party by writing a detailed account of their activities in exile or the resistance. In fact, by , there were complaints that antifascist veterans had started to ignore repeated calls for memoirs, as they had grown tired of the endless political résumés demanded by official bureaucracy. The screenings and purges of the early s intensified this process, as party members had to write even more detailed accounts, which were painstakingly cross-checked, often by means of interrogation. Beatrice Vierniesel describes this process as the starting point and foundation of all later memoirs written by the veterans, and it is true many continued to fear contradicting either their earlier accounts or the reports of others. These early reports ended up in the memoir section of the central party archive, under the auspices of the IML. The IML also actively collected and commissioned memoirs for the archive. This involved a high degree of  On narratives in oral history see Chamberlain and Thompson, Narrative and Genre; Samuel and Thompson, Myths We Live By. On written narratives and autobiography cf. Brooks, Reading for the Plot; Marcus, Auto/biographical Discourses; Sloterdijk, Literatur und Organisation von Lebenserfahrung; J. Olney (ed.), Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical (Princeton, ). On working-class autobiography, cf. W. Emmerich (ed.), Proletarische Lebensläufe,  vols. (Reinbek, –); C. Epstein, ‘Last Revolutionaries’, ch. . For a GDR perspective cf. A. Arndt, ‘Geschichtserlebnis als Lesestoff ’, Neue Deutsche Literatur, / (May ), –.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //, p. : Arbeitstagung am . April  in Dresden.  B. Vierniesel, ‘Gestalten statt beschreiben: Biographien als sozialistische Lebensberichte‘ in G. Feist, E. Gillen, and B. Vierniesel, Kunstdokumentation SBZ/DDR: Aufsätze, Berichte, Materialien (Cologne, ), .  Interview with Roman Rubinstein,  Feb. .  On the history of the memoir archive see K. Hartewig, ‘Das “Gedächtnis der Partei”: Biographische und andere Bestände im Zentralen Parteiarchiv der SED in der “Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv” ’, Jahrbuch für



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preparation before a word was written: an IML employee would visit the veteran to discuss the subject matter, provide background information, and a list of questions or areas considered to be particularly significant. Only then was the veteran encouraged to write; if they were unable or unwilling to write, an interview was carried out. The transcriptions of these interviews give an insight into just how structured the process was: veterans were questioned rigorously on names and dates, and interviewers quickly glossed over any areas considered irrelevant or politically dangerous. Officials from the IML questioning Gustav Szinda for a planned publication on the communist youth functionary Albert Hößler ignored his references to Hößler’s activities with the secret police in Spain, and asked instead about his work with Spanish orphans. As Vierniesel points out, this method of interviewing bore little resemblance to the oral history produced in the West. IML historians were ruthlessly focused on their own priorities. However, this is not to say that the memoirs stored in the archive are historically neutered or valueless. On the contrary, they provide a fascinating record of the clash of state and veteran priorities. Like Gustav Szinda, many veterans, particularly as they got older, were not afraid to challenge their interviewers or wilfully stray from the line of questioning. Some seem to have taken a positive pleasure in it: Ernst Scholz, interviewed by members of an SED party training school in , punctuated tales of his anticlerical and anti-landowner activity after  with interjections such as ‘ach, you are not allowed to say that’ and concluded by complaining that constant demands to write his memoirs interfered with his other commitments: ‘The problem is also that you are always pushed to write it all down. “Write it down, comrade!” ’ Others, knowing their memoirs were for internal party consumption only, seemed to have regarded writing as an opportunity to present their side of the story and, in some cases, to settle old political scores. Heinrich Fomferra went about this with great gusto: his Historische Kommunismusforschung  (Berlin, ), –; Vierniesel, ‘Gestalten statt beschreiben‘; id., ‘Das Erinnerungsarchiv: Lebenszeugnisse als Quellengruppe im Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED’, in M. Sabrow (ed.), Verwaltete Vergangenheit. Geschichtskultur und Herrschaftslegitimation in der DDR (Leipzig, ), –; Barck, AntfaGeschichte(n), –.  

Vierniesel, ‘Das Erinnerungsarchiv’, . SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Gustav Szinda), Gespräch mit Gen. Gustav Szinda,  Apr. , pp. –.  Vierniesel, ‘Das Erinnerungsarchiv’, .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Ernst Scholz), p. . The IML clearly agreed with Scholz that ‘you are not allowed to say that’, as this file was classified ‘TeilGesperrt’ (partially closed).

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

memoirs, written in , are full of phrases such as ‘unfortunately, one must say that . . .’; ‘the fact is and was . . .’; ‘today, I am still of the opinion . . .’; ‘I must say quite openly . . .’ Due to its sensitive nature, most of the material collected was never made available to the East German public; if it was published at all, it was usually in heavily edited and censored form. The opening of the GDR archives after  allows these memoirs to be read in their entirety for the first time, thereby offering a unique glimpse into the divergence of state and veteran priorities. Many veterans had positive memories of the party in Spain, but their memories were also about freedom of action, and escape from the constraints of orthodox politics. Alfred Berger’s memoirs of the early days of the war have a tone of pride at his own independence and selfreliance. He claimed to have stormed a police headquarters using only rocks and cobblestones. Following this, he joined a partisan group of ninety men, which advanced  kilometres from Barcelona, liberating Lerida along the way. He also recalled disguising himself as a peasant and travelling along the Ebro with a Spanish companian, blowing up bridges in an attempt to halt the fascist advance. Although Berger later joined the Eleventh Brigade and worked as a military instructor, his memories of this are rather one-dimensional in comparison to his descriptions of life as a partisan and lack their sense of spontaneity and excitement. Older volunteers also felt pride in their own initiative: Erich Liesegang,  years old in , was initially considered too old to go to the front and was assigned to the transport section at International Brigade headquarters. However, when a Soviet officer arrived looking for Russian-speaking communist drivers, who were in short supply, Liesegang volunteered, ignoring the protests of his German superior. ‘He rejected it [the idea] immediately and said, he can’t take responsibility for that, when our cadre chef comes back, he’ll shoot him dead if he had sent me to the front. The Soviet friend said: “I don’t care”.’ Liesegang went on to drive tanks in the International Tank Company, rising to the rank of political commissar. For this long-time KPD functionary and veteran of the First World War, this was a reaffirmation of his ability to fight against fascism, regardless of his age. As well as being a victory over the small-mindedness of the German 

.

SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Heinrich Fomferra), pp. , ,

 Representative of numerous cases of overzealous editing or censorship are K. Mewis, Im Auftrag der Partei. Erlebnisse im Kampf gegen die faschistische Diktatur (Berlin, ) and the collection of veteran memoirs edited by Hanns Maaßen, Brigada Internacional.  SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Alfred Berger), p. .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Erich Liesegang), p. .

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Veterans and the State

cadre system, it was also a recognition by a Soviet official of his skills and qualities as a communist. Such picaresque episodes were, sadly, thin on the ground in official histories of the war. Like the Soviet socialist realist novels discussed by Katerina Clark, accounts of heroes and their heroic deeds had to conform to certain stereotypes, making them instantly recognizable. Unsurprisingly, such flawless heroes did not exist in real life, and could only be created by distorting the truth and ignoring uncomfortable fact. The polished and published stories of these men were often profoundly different to the tales to be found in veteran memoirs and party files. 

T H R E E E X E M P L A RY M E N : H A N S B E I M L E R , A RT U R B E C K E R , A N D O T T O S TA N K

Hans Beimler: A Suitable Hero Hans Beimler, a KPD functionary killed at the Madrid front on  December , was perhaps the most famous figure in the East German historiography of the Spanish Civil War. He was the subject of countless newspaper and magazine articles, a TV series, and a documentary film. The veterans’ medal was called the Hans Beimler medal; young East Germans competed in the annual paramilitary Hans Beimler competition; a street in central Berlin and numerous schools and factories bore his name. But, in spite of Beimler’s ubiquity, East German accounts of the war which mention him are riddled with inconsistencies. Research on Beimler was incomplete and contradictory, due to two problematic areas in his biography; first, his lack of a military function in Spain, and secondly, rumours that he had been killed by his own side. In an effort to gloss over these problems, it seems that East German historians deliberately avoided carrying out comprehensive research into Beimler’s time in Spain, preferring to rely on heroic clichés and inexact formulations. The mythologization of Beimler began almost immediately after his death, when obituaries in International Brigade newspapers claimed that  

K. Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (nd edn., Chicago, ), . On constructions of heroism, see G. Cubitt, ‘Introduction: Heroic Reputations and Exemplary Lives’, in id. and A. Warren (eds.), Heroic Reputations and Exemplary Lives (Manchester, ), .  ‘Ein Werk des Freidens: LEW “Hans Beimler” ’, Die Tat,  (); ‘LEW heisst jetzt “Hans-Beimler-Werk” ’, Märkische Volksstimme,  Sept. .

Veterans and the State



Beimler had been a member of the Central Committee of the KPD, as well as commissar of the German battalions of the Eleventh Brigade, or even commander of the entire Brigade. None of these claims were true, in reality Beimler was a functionary, not a soldier. But by restyling him as a military man, the KPD leadership were able to create a communist hero fit to rival the anarchist Durruti, who had died just a few weeks previously. To this end, Beimler’s body was brought from Madrid to Valencia and Albacete, followed by a large-scale funeral in Barcelona. His fate seems to have captured the popular imagination, and it is estimated that , people paid their last respects to Beimler in Barcelona alone. One East German account claimed that two million Spaniards took part in Beimler’s extended funeral procession around Spain. A new battalion of the Eleventh Brigade was named in his honour and Ernst Busch’s song ‘Hans Beimler, Comrade’ ensured his memory was kept alive in the ranks of the International Brigades. Busch’s song repeated the line ‘Hans, the commissar’, and the myth of Beimler the commissar proved long-lasting in both GDR and Western accounts, as did the confusion about Beimler’s membership of the KPD Central Committee, both inaccuracies dating from the early reports of Beimler’s death. Beimler, born into a Bavarian proletarian family in , had been a member of the KPD since its foundation and was elected to the Reichstag in August . Arrested and imprisoned in April , he managed to escape from Dachau and sought refuge in the Soviet Union. From  to  he worked for the KPD in Prague. After a short spell in Paris, it was decided that he should go to Spain as the KPD’s representative at the Workers’ Olympiad in Barcelona. However, the outbreak of civil war meant that these plans had to be rapidly revised, and Beimler eventually set  SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//, p. : ‘Genosse Hans Beimler gefallen’, Le Peuple en armes, n.d. [Dec. ].  Ibid.  ‘Der deutsche Kommunist an der Madrider Front gefallen’, Rundschau,  Dec. .  Von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, .  K. Haferkorn, ‘ “Wir haben das Recht, stolz zu sein auf einen solchen Kämpfer . . .” Hans Beimler’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, / (), .  E. Busch, ‘Hans Beimler, Kamerad’, Lieder der Arbeiterklasse & Lieder aus dem spanischen Bürgerkrieg.  e.g. H. Meyer, ‘In erster Reihe bei der Verteidigung Madrids’, ND,  Dec. , p. ; Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, .  A. Schreiner, ‘Mein Auftrag in Spanien’, in Brigada Internacional, i. . Schreiner certainly knew that Beimler had not been a member of the Central Committee. It can only be assumed that this section of his contribution was added by the editor of the book.  K. Haferkorn, ‘ “Wir haben das Recht, stolz zu sein . . .” ’; von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, –.

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off for Spain on  August . Once there, he acted as the KPD’s man in Barcelona and the party’s most senior representative in Spain. This role had no exact job description, particularly so soon after the outbreak of the war, but his activities seem to have involved a lot of cadre work, interviewing German exiles already in Barcelona, as well as those who had just arrived, to assess their suitability for the front or other war work. He was also involved with the political and personnel aspects of the foundation of the Centuria Thälmann and visited the front several times. However, he was in no way responsible for the military activities of the German antifascists in Barcelona. That was the job of Albert Schreiner (known in Spain as Albert Schindler) who had travelled to Spain with Beimler and three others. According to Schreiner, Beimler found his work in Barcelona frustrating and longed to join the troops at the front, but was prevented by his party obligations and a severe stomach complaint. However, historical accounts credit Beimler as the founder and organizer of the Centuria Thälmann. So powerful was this legend that it also surfaced in veteran memoirs. Schreiner suffered greatly from this distortion of the truth and waged a tireless letter-writing campaign to rectify the matter, continued by his widow after his death. Apart from the fact that crediting Beimler with the foundation of the Centuria concealed his own pivotal role, Schreiner feared that the discrepancies between the published accounts of the Spanish Civil War and his own political CV written for the party screenings would lead the party to brand him a liar. Unfortunately for Schreiner, while later historical accounts did correctly describe Beimler’s role, journalistic commemorations of Beimler continued to recycle the familiar myths. In , Schreiner replied to a school group’s request for information about Beimler with the resigned, but diplomatic, words:

  

SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//, p. : A. Schreiner, ‘Hans Beimler’. Von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, . SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//, p. : A. Schreiner, ‘Hans Beimler’.  Ibid.  Ibid.  e.g. Komitee der Antifascistischen Widerstandskämpfer, Spaniens Freiheitskampf –, –; Helga Meyer, ‘In erster Reihe bei der Verteidigung Madrids’, ND,  Dec. , p. .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//, p. : Wilhelm Jagow memoir.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : Schreiner to Dahlem,  Dec. ; p. : E. Schreiner to Schabowski,  Jan. . SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV /./, p. : Schreiner to Knittel,  Aug. .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : Schreiner to Dahlem,  Dec. .  e.g. Haferkorn, ‘ “Wir haben das Recht, stolz zu sein . . .” ’, ; Stoll, Hans Beimler, .

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

In the last years, much has been written about him, and it is really hard, with the wealth of material, to always distinguish between what is historical fact and what is legend; and our job should be to find out as precisely as possible, how a hero of the working class becomes one of its heroes by his tireless devotion to the cause of his class.

The erasure of Schreiner’s role may have taken place for a number of reasons: Beimler, as a long-standing KPD functionary, was a convenient figure for heroization and his death came at a pivotal time during the defence of Madrid. In order to portray him as an exemplary soldier and heroic role model, it was necessary to give him some kind of military function, either as a commissar or as the leader of the German volunteers. These myths, once established, proved to be powerful and almost impossible for a man like Schreiner, unknown outside party and academic circles, to alter. Additionally, Schreiner, although he too had joined the KPD in , had left the party for the KPD-Opposition in the early s, rejoining only in . This ‘factionalism’, plus the fact that he was an academic and intellectual, meant that he was no competition for Beimler, the loyal KPD functionary. Whether or not Beimler had actually carried out the tasks he was credited with was irrelevant: his symbolic power as a martyred hero for the communist cause outweighed any shortcomings in his actual biography. The second mystery of the Beimler story is the manner of his death. The standard version was based on the account of Richard Staimer, at the time commander of the Ernst Thälmann Battalion, who was with Beimler when he was killed. According to Staimer, he, Beimler, and Louis Schuster, the commissar of the battalion, were on the way back from visiting the troops in the front line, when Beimler was shot in the chest by a Moroccan sniper. He fell down, cried out ‘Red Front, Red Front, Red Front!’, and was dead on the spot. As Staimer and Schuster tried to recover his body and fetch an ambulance, Schuster was shot in the head. He later died of his injuries. This account was reproduced with minor variations (too detailed to describe here) in numerous publications pre- and post-. However, there have also been persistent rumours that Beimler was shot by his own side, with Staimer the obvious suspect, as he would have had the opportunity to shoot both Beimler and Schuster. An important proponent of this 

.   

SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : A. Schreiner to ‘Liebe junge Freunde!’,  Feb. BHE, i. . SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//, p. : ‘Richard’, ‘Hans Beimlers Tod’. See von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, – for a detailed analysis.

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thesis was Antonia Stern, a former lover of Beimler, who went to Spain after his death and spent six months researching the circumstances in which he died. Similar rumours circulated amongst the International Brigades during the war, but were dismissed by the Brigade leadership as fascist and Trotskyist attempts to smear a communist hero. Stern’s interpretation of Beimler’s death rests on his alleged antiStalinist leanings and dissatisfaction with the KPD, which eventually led to his ‘liquidation’. However, the German archives provide little evidence of this: although Albert Schreiner refers in one letter to Beimler’s ‘situation with the party’, he also describes his and Beimler’s frequent hostile confrontations with anarchists and POUMists. A letter about Beimler, written by Wilhelm Zaisser to the commander of the Eleventh Brigade, General Kléber, in November  and published in Walter Janka’s memoirs, does suggest that Beimler’s interventions in military matters did little to endear him to the military leadership of the International Brigades. However, the letter in no way supports Janka’s suggestion that Beimler may have been eliminated by his own side. Janka’s interpretation says more about his desire to paint Zaisser and his deputy Erich Mielke as Stalinists, than about the circumstances of Beimler’s death. According to Janka, he sent a copy of this letter to Erich Honecker in . He rightly saw Honecker’s failure to respond as a result of the fact that neither Zaisser’s letter nor Janka’s interpretation could be squared with ‘the picture of Beimler built up for our young people’. While Janka’s and Stern’s accounts of Beimler’s ‘liquidation’ are inconclusive, they were and are doubtless worthy of further investigation, particularly given the inconsistencies present in other accounts of Beimler’s death. However, such research would have been politically impossible in the GDR, with potentially catastrophic implications for both the Beimler legend and the role of the party in Spain. It was therefore easier to continue to reproduce the tried and tested, if inaccurate and unsatisfactory, version of events.

 

Ibid. Cf. Thomas, Spanish Civil War,  on the rumours surrounding Beimler’s death. SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv, Nr. : ‘Trotzkisten besudeln unseren unvergesslichen Kameraden Hans Beimler’ Signed WB, Politkomm. des Battalion Ernst Thälmann and G. Elsner, Kommandant des Batillon, n.d. [July/Aug. ].  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : Schreiner to Dahlem,  Dec. .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//, p. : A. Schreiner, ‘Hans Beimler’.  Janka, Spuren eines Lebens, –.  Ibid. .

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Artur Becker: A Vanishing Hero After Hans Beimler, Artur Becker was one of the foremost Spanienkämpfer role models for young people. The Artur Becker Medal was the highest decoration of the FDJ, and schoolchildren produced projects entitled ‘Artur Becker: our role model, our friend’. A communist youth functionary, Becker travelled to Spain in the summer of . According to the History of the German Labour Movement, he was injured and captured while covering the battalion’s retreat with a machine gun. Once in Nationalist captivity, he was tortured, interrogated, and finally killed on  May . The story of Becker’s death contained all the elements of a hero’s end: a brave young communist sacrifices his life to allow his comrades to reach safety. However, like the other heroes of the International Brigades, the actual circumstances of his death remain unclear. The ‘official’ account was perpetuated in other memoirs, such as Erich Glückauf ’s ungrounded assertion that Becker ‘fought to the last cartridge’. An article on Becker’s death in Brigada Internacional, a collection of veteran memoirs, purportedly written by Karl Pioch, states that Becker was wounded while at his machine gun. However, neither Pioch’s published memoirs nor his unpublished memoirs in the party archive mention Becker’s death. According to these accounts, Pioch was himself wounded in January , underwent a major operation and subsequently travelled to France, thereby making it impossible for him to have witnessed Becker’s capture in April . Whoever wrote the article attributed to Pioch in Brigada Internacional, it cannot be regarded as an eyewitness account. It is much harder to find a consistent account in the memoirs of those veterans who do appear to have had some personal contact with Becker. Even the question of what he was doing at the front is unclear. Becker was first and foremost a functionary and had come to Spain to carry out party work, not to fight in the International Brigades. According to Gustav Szinda, Becker became aware of the low morale in the Eleventh Brigade after their defeat at Teruel during a visit to the front and asked to stay with the Brigade and take on the function of party secretary of the Ernst

    

SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. . Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, v. . Glückauf, Begegnung und Signale, . K. Pioch, ‘Der Tod des Genossen Artur Becker’, in Brigada Internacional, ii. –. id., Nie im Abseits (Berlin, ); SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V //, p.  ff.

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Thälmann Battalion. Hans Teubner, however, remembered Becker being sent to the front and fatalistically giving Teubner his tobacco, saying ‘ “Take it Hans, I don’t need it any more.” ’ Hardly the words of a man going into the Brigade to raise morale. Alfred Richter, a member of the second company of the Thälmann Battalion, remembered an influx of officers to the Brigade in early : due to the heavy losses suffered at Teruel, it was necessary for functionaries who had previously enjoyed protection behind the front to fill the ranks of ordinary soldiers. According to Richter, as soon as the battalion was surrounded by Nationalist forces, ‘something happened, which I have been carrying around with me for  years, without being able to explain it to myself ’: all the officers seemed to disappear, including the leader of their company, Captain Adolf Frank. Richter was adamant that Becker and the other officers were not imprisoned in San Pedro with the rest of the battalion. He and his fellow soldiers believed that Becker and the other officers had been taken prisoner and shot. Richter wrote to Hans Teubner at the IML with this information in . However, the information (received well before the publication of Pioch’s bogus ‘memoir’ in ) was never used in any official accounts of the war. This was not the only account of Becker’s death which contested the official version. An FDJ group doing a project on the life and death of Becker wrote to Adolf Frank, the leader of the second company mentioned above. He, in accord with Richter’s version of events, claimed to have been with Becker in his last hours and wrote to his young correspondents: I know there are accounts where he is said to have covered the retreat of our group with a machine gun. But that is not true. At this time we had only one light machine gun, others were in charge of that. And it was no longer possible to consider retreating . . . When we saw the hopelessness of our situation, we buried all our documents under an olive tree.

Frank’s laconic reference to the History of the German Labour Movement (‘I know there are accounts . . .’) prefaces an unheroic story of surrender. The issue of Becker’s death then died down until the mid-s, when Charlotte and Walter Janka made an archival visit to Spain. Whilst there, they attempted to research the actual circumstances of Becker’s capture. According to Charlotte Janka, Becker ‘didn’t have a clue about the military’  

SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Gustav Szinda), p. . SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Hans Teubner), p. .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V //, p. : Alfred Richter, ‘Besonderheiten unserer Gefangennahme am . April .  June .  Ibid.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. .

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and the idea that he was operating a machine gun was ‘mendacious propaganda’. She and her husband discussed the matter with veterans who had been with Becker at the time of his capture. According to them, the column had stopped for the night, and then quickly moved on as they had heard the Nationalist advance. They only realized later that Becker had disappeared, and presumed that he had fallen into the hands of the Gestapo. Such oral evidence demonstrates the way in which ‘official’ party history was besieged by individual memory: while it is probably impossible to establish the exact circumstances of Becker’s death, it is not difficult to ascertain that the party’s account was more the result of wishful thinking and political pragmatism than historical research. A Stubborn Hero: Otto Stank Unlike Beimler and Becker, Otto Stank was an ordinary soldier, not a functionary, and he did not die in Spain. Stank (or Stang as he appears in some accounts) was a miner from the Ruhr area, who fought in the International Brigade in the defence of Madrid. A report written in  describes him as ‘an excellent soldier and good antifascist’, although ‘politically very weak’. He was badly wounded in December  and lost both eyes. Although Stank only spent a month in Spain, the story of how he was blinded recurs frequently in East German accounts of the war. The basic story recounts how Stank and his comrades became trapped in an abandoned house during the fighting. With munitions running low, the soldiers, led by Stank, began to throw makeshift Molotov cocktails at the encroaching Nationalist tanks. Despite the success of this strategy, Stank was wounded and immediately lost his sight. After his injury, he lay on the ground, singing ‘the Internationale’ to encourage his comrades. In this version, Stank embodies the ‘wonderful heroism’ and resolve of the German proletariat. One account reported that when asked, thirty years later, what had gone through his head during the battle, he answered immediately: ‘I thought of the Kronstadt sailors. I had learnt from them that in such moments, you must save your ammunition and let the enemy advance, in order to be sure of hitting him. And you must sing, when courage sinks.’ Truly, it seemed, learning from the Soviet Union meant learning how to win. 

 Ibid. Interview with Charlotte Janka,  Apr. . SAPMO-BArch, RY /I //, p. . SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : ‘Begegnung mit den Kämpfer von Madrid’, Newspaper article ( June ).  Dorf, ‘Zur Rolle des moralischen Faktors’, .  

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However, a closer examination of the various accounts of the incident throws up a number of discrepancies. First, there is no agreement as to how he lost his sight: in various accounts he is blinded by a hand grenade, a bullet, or his own bottle of petrol. An unpublished memoir written by one of Stank’s fellow soldiers describes a different scenario: after the Nationalist tanks had been turned back by the bottles of petrol, ‘The following thing happened: our comrade Otto went outside, he couldn’t control himself anymore. He cursed the fascists, he said: “You rogues, you cowardly dogs, come on!” Then they turned their weapons around and shot at Otto, and Otto was blinded for life.’ In this account, Stank’s injury is a result of hot-headedness and lack of military discipline, rather than heroic bravery. This incident is uncorroborated, but certainly fits with another veteran’s description of him as ‘a stubborn mule [Dickkopf]’, who refused to leave Germany after Hitler’s rise to power, saying ‘Never! Only cowards run away!’ Secondly, confusion surrounds Stank’s actions after his injury. One writer alleges that the blind Stank continued to use his machine gun after his injury and helped to repel the Nationalist attack. Another account describes him passing his ammunition belt to his comrades, so that they could continue to fire, shouting ‘Shoot to the last cartridge!’ Yet another writer, who was actually at the scene, alleged that he had to ask the badly wounded Stank for his spare ammunition. Given the extent of Stank’s injuries, this seems like the most likely scenario, and is backed up by another eyewitness, who describes the wounded man as lying in the corner, unable to move. It is certainly unlikely that Stank would have been able to fire a machine gun. Finally, there is disagreement about why Stank began to sing ‘The Internationale’. The published accounts concur that his singing was intended to ‘spur on his comrades and support them with his belief in the fight’. However, one veteran I interviewed ascribed Stank a different motivation.  

SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. . SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Karl Mewis), p. .  Fritz Rettmann, ‘Das Battalion “Edgar André” bei der Verteidigung Mardrid’, in Pasaremos, .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Petros Laros), p. .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Karl Mewis), p. .  Ibid. .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. .  H. Weiland, ‘Der Kampf um die Casa Velázquez’, in Brigada Internacional, i. .  Interview with Roman Rubinstein,  Jan. .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. .

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And really we were finished and discussed amongst ourselves that no one should fall into the hands of the Moroccans alive, they were very gruesome . . . When they found somebody, they cut off [their] sexual organs and [their] head and so on. And we discussed this and decided that one of us would shoot Otto. And he must have heard that; a little while later, he started singing ‘The Internationale’.

Whether or not Stank did begin singing out of a sense of self-preservation, the soldiers’ decision to shoot him if the Nationalists were about to take them prisoner is corroborated by another eyewitness account.

T H E S PA N I E N K Ä M P F E R M E M O R I A L S TAT U E A N D T H E P RO B L E M O F D E F E AT

One of the reasons for dwelling on the derring-do of individual volunteers such as Stank was that the outcome of the Spanish Civil War was a painful memory for veterans and an embarrassment for party historians. The sacrifices and heroism of the volunteers seemed senseless in the context of the defeat of the Spanish Republic. But even the SED could not rewrite the war as a Republican victory and defeat could not be entirely ignored. During a meeting to discuss a planned history of the German labour movement, it was Walter Ulbricht who pointed out to the historians present that their account of the war was less than convincing: ‘They [Franco’s troops] suffer so many crushing defeats and at the end they beat us to death! I don’t think that we should exaggerate here. We should say: they suffered defeats.’ Despite this, East German historiography tried to explain the end of the war as a victory of sorts: as a part of an antifascist chronology it was possible to see the ultimate result of the Spanish Civil War as the foundation of the GDR, the state which fulfilled the ideals for which the volunteers had fought. An article written by a veteran in  is worth quoting at length to demonstrate the power of this longue durée interpretation, which provided both legitimation for the East German state and meaning for the sacrifices of the veterans: The seed of our fighters has begun to grow. Its fruit is the German Democratic Republic. We, the architects of the first German peaceful state in the history of our people, creators of the truly human, socialist society, may with good reason regard ourselves as the heirs of all national and revolutionary traditions of our people. Our   

Interview with Roman Rubinstein,  Jan. . H. Weiland, ‘Der Kampf um die Casa Velázquez’, in Brigada Internacional, i. . SAPMO-BArch., DY /IV A /./, p. .

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wishes and deeds correspond with the laws of development of human society. That is the pledge of our final victory. This demands from us the meaningful connection of past, present and future.

Here, the veterans are the vanguard of the future GDR; pre-emptive architects of the new state, they naturally enjoy a considerable claim on power within it, further reinforced by the fact that their actions coincide with the Marxist laws of history. Any account which challenged this interpretation touched upon a very delicate subject, as the planning of a memorial statue for the German volunteers shows. The Central Committee had passed a resolution in November  decreeing that a memorial for the fallen German volunteers should be built. A foundation stone for the memorial was laid in July  as part of the thirtieth anniversary commemorations, in Friedrichshain People’s Park, a popular Berlin park approximately  miles from the city centre. The nearby street was simultaneously renamed Hans Beimler Strasse. The memorial was funded by the Ministry of Culture, and lay in the jurisdiction of the mayor of Berlin. Responsibility for the statue was shared jointly by the Sektion Spanienkämpfer and the Culture Section of the Berlin Magistrat (municipal authorities), but it was the Sektion who took on the lion’s share of the planning. Their original design for the memorial centred around the figure of an attacking Spanienkämpfer with fixed bayonet, springing out of a trench. The statue was to be elucidated by three bronze reliefs: two illustrated with scenes from the war and one with an inscription dedicated to the soldiers who had fought in Spain. In February  they approached Fritz Cremer, one of the GDR’s best-known sculptors. Cremer had also designed the memorial statue at Buchenwald concentration camp and repeatedly stressed his emotional connection to the subject matter of antifascism. He showed one interviewer the death masks of German Spanienkämpfer hanging on the walls of his studio, describing them as a ‘constant reminder’ to continue the struggle against fascism. Cremer went to work on the assignment, and produced a series of designs based loosely on the Sektion’s original plan. He felt strongly that the 

Dorf, ‘Zur Rolle des moralischen Faktors‘, –. Staatsarchiv Berlin, Rep. , : Stadtrat Dr. Horst Oswald to Genossen Oberbürgermeister Fechner,  Apr. .  SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/: ‘Betr. Ausführung des Beschlusses des ZK der SED vom . .  . . .’  SAPMO-BArch, NY /Ü, p. : Aktennotiz über eine Unterredung mit Professor Cremer am ...  M. Heidecke, ‘Würdiges Denkmal im Friedrichshain’, Berliner Zeitung,  Aug. . 

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bronze reliefs they suggested were unnecessary and dated, arguing that ‘in the era of the cinema, radio, and television one should presume that people understand a work of art, even when it only expresses the most important elements of the subject matter.’ As he later put it in an interview: ‘Sculpture . . . cannot narrate history or anecdotes.’ This was to become a point of conflict with the party and veterans, who had envisaged a much more literal representation of historical events. They believed that rather than reminding passers-by about the war, the memorial should actually tell them what had happened. The situation became even more strained when Cremer presented his plans for a statue of a soldier, bearing a sword, springing from a trench and falling in the act of attack (see Fig. ). For Cremer, the International Brigade statue was a memorial for the soldiers who had died in Spain. His other sketches for the memorial show an injured solider about to fall to the ground, and a volunteer on his knees, raising his fists to heaven in a gesture of frustration and powerlessness. Clearly, Cremer associated the war with the tragedy of defeat, not the positivistic triumphal antifascism of SED accounts. However, defeat was not what the Sektion had had in mind and in a meeting in June , the artist was informed that ‘the figure must not . . . fall, but must symbolize the fighter who storms forward, determined to attack. The stance of the fighter must express that the struggle goes on, it must not express anything passive.’ They also demanded that the position of the figure’s left arm must be altered, as it implied that the figure was trying to defend or protect itself. Cremer reacted to these suggestions with annoyance, saying that it was not fair to ask him to produce a ‘victorious figure [Siegergestalt]’. The representatives of the Sektion reassured him that they expected nothing of the sort, they simply wanted the figure to appear more active and dynamic. Cremer eventually agreed to their suggestions and his modified version of the statue shows a much more determined figure (see Fig. ). The precariously balanced soldier of the first proposal now appears much  SAPMO-BArch, NY /Ü, p. : Aktennotiz über eine Unterredung mit Professor Cremer am ...  ‘Neue Erlebniswelten für die Kunst sind zu entdecken’, Berliner Zeitung,  Jan. .  SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/: ‘Gedenkstein für deutsche Spanienkämpfer’,  June .  SAdK, Berlin, Kunstsammlung, Z: Fritz Cremer, Studie zum ‘Spanienkämpfer’, .  SAdK, Berlin, Kunstsammlung, Z: Fritz Cremer, Studie zum ‘Spanienkämpfer’, .  SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/: ‘Unterredung mit Genossen Prof. Cremer am ..’.  Ibid.

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Fig. . Fritz Cremer’s initial design for the International Brigades memorial statue (Stiftung AdK, Berlin, Kunstsammlung, Z )

Fig. . The International Brigades memorial statue, Berlin-Friedrichshain

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more stable and secure. The first figure looks as if he is about to let his sword drop, but this has been replaced by a much firmer grip on his weapon. The left hand, which had been criticized as defensive and self-protective, is now clenched in a resolute fist, the communist greeting. A despairing, defeated tragic figure has been replaced by a determined, political, fighting soldier. Although the changes deemed necessary to the statue were communicated to Cremer by a delegation of Spanienkämpfer, they had actually been demanded by Friedrich Ebert, the mayor of Berlin and Politburo member. Ebert’s objections carried a lot of weight, and the statue was not finally accepted until after two further visits to Cremer’s studio, by Ebert’s successor as mayor Herbert Fechner, and the secretary of the Berlin SED, among others. Shortly before the memorial was due to be unveiled, Ebert wrote to Franz Dahlem to say that he was particularly pleased that ‘the comrades of the antifascist resistance fighters’ committee and the author of the memorial agreed to my suggestion of a fighting rather than a dying antifascist’. Like other official commemoration of the war, the statue did not simply have a memorial function, but was meant to act as an inspiration and example to the population of the GDR, the memorial’s audience. This audience would presumably find it more difficult to identify with a falling and dying figure. In addition, the association of death and defeat with the International Brigades would have undermined the positive narrative of antifascist victory, which had been propagated so assiduously since . Despite the fact that the memorial statue had been planned and executed by the Sektion Spanienkämpfer, many veterans seem to have had mixed feelings towards it. There was a certain amount of dissent amongst veterans when a picture of the planned statue was printed in Neues Deutschland in April . One saw it as ‘anatomically distorted’, a sentiment echoed by Hans Teubner, who objected violently to the position of the statue’s right arm arguing: ‘No circus contortionist could manage that. It is not possible without breaking your shoulder blade, without dislocating your arm [ohne den Arm auszukegeln]. And such an arm is meant to be capable of a sword blow?’ Teubner was also perturbed by the fact that the statue’s fist was as big as its head. ‘The heads of the (thinking!)  Cf. R. Zimmering, Mythen in der Politik der DDR: Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung politischer Mythen (Opladen, ),  ff.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /Ü, p. . Betr. Denkmal für deutsche Spanienkämpfer,  Nov. .  Staatsarchiv Berlin, Rep. , : Stadtrat Dr. Horst Oswald to Genossen Oberbürgermeister Fechner,  Apr. .  SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/: F. Ebert to F. Dahlem,  July .  Ibid.: F. David to Kulturredaktion des ‘Neuen Deutschland’,  May .

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Interbrigaders were bigger than their fists! The proportions are completely wrong. No Interbrigader looked like this!’ Teubner felt that, as a socialist realist artwork, the statue should give a more realistic representation of the soldiers of the International Brigades, and feared that the famously irreverent Berlin population would make up a disrespectful nickname for the figure. (Although, to the best of my knowledge, this never happened, the original sandstone inscription slab had to be replaced with a bronze one, due to damage caused by children using it as a slide.) Veterans interviewed in  were still ambiguous about the memorial. Alfred Katzenstein laughed when I asked him what he thought about the statue, adding: ‘Well, it’s a memorial. We never liked it all that much, but I’m not an artist and I can’t do that sort of thing, I couldn’t make a better one.’ This view was shared by other veterans, who generally agreed with Roman Rubinstein that, although it was politically important that there was an International Brigade memorial, it was not to their taste. Rubinstein himself described it as ‘a bit too heroic’. Generally, veterans felt that the statue was not realistic enough, that ‘artistic liberties’ had been taken. Kurt Lohberger grumbled: ‘I would have done it differently. It has symbolic character, but we didn’t fight with swords.’ But, like Rubinstein, he agreed that ‘apart from its appearance, I am very happy that such a thing exists’. As the veterans recognized, the political function of the memorial was of far greater importance than its artistic intent. The plans for the unveiling of the statue show how the memorial was supposed to be associated not only with the soldiers of the International Brigades, but also with the East German armed forces. The honoured guests (including Spanish Civil War veterans from Germany and abroad, representatives of the state, and the mayor of Berlin) were to be surrounded by armed members of the army and police force. Furthermore, , members of state youth groups were to take part in the ceremony. The unveiling was to be watched by  inhabitants of Berlin. Walter Ulbricht had been asked to make the keynote speech, but declined, so his place was taken by Franz Dahlem. In the years following the unveiling of the memorial, anniversary commemorations regularly took place at the site of the memorial, always in presence       

Ibid.: H. Teubner to F. Dahlem,  Apr. . Ibid.: Sektion Spanienkämpfer to Bezirksleitung der SED Groß-Berlin,  Mar. . Interview with Alfred Katzenstein,  Feb. . Interview with Roman Rubinstein,  Jan. . Interview with Kurt Lohberger,  Mar. . SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K/: Plan für Einweihung.  Sept. . ‘Ehrenvolles Kapitel unserer Geschichte’, ND,  Sept. .

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of soldiers and members of youth groups (see Fig. ). At one such event in , banners read ‘Long live proletarian internationalism!’ and ‘All power to the continuation of our tried and tested economic and social policy!’ Such commemorations had much more to do with the future of the GDR than with the history of the Spanish Civil War and, as such, the ‘revised’ memorial was a more useful example of resolve and determination. Cremer may have been reassured that he was not being asked to produce a ‘victorious figure’, but this was in fact exactly what he was required to do.

‘THE

W E E D S O F L E G E N D ’: V E T E R A N S A N D H E RO I S M

While the party felt it needed shining examples of heroism for pedagogical purposes, many veterans felt ambiguous about the term itself. Its connotations of fearlessness did not tally with their own experiences of war, and they found it hard to recognize themselves in the exemplary soldiers of party legend. A veterans’ meeting in September  gives an interesting insight into how the Spanienkämpfer understood the term ‘heroism’. A ‘Comrade Schmidt’ (probably the composer Eberhard Schmidt) related his experiences working with the nascent FDJ and how young people were greatly impressed by the experiences of the Spanienkämpfer. ‘A young man said to me, he sees heroes in us. I said to him, there are no heroes, only [politically] convinced people.’ This view was supported by another veteran, who added: ‘I don’t think that young people need heroes; we must prove to them that it is the proletariat which achieves things, not individuals.’ These remarks demonstrate not only a reluctance on the part of the veterans to set themselves up as heroes, but also an awareness that to do so might in fact be counterproductive. In their view, it was better to try to unlock young people’s own potential by stressing the power of political and class conviction, than to labour the exemplary nature of a small group of antifascists, with whom young people might find it difficult to identify. However, this was not an opinion shared by Karl Mewis, one of the most senior party representatives present at the meeting. Mewis was clearly perturbed by the turn the discussion had taken and felt moved to intervene:



Pictured in SAPMO-BArch, Bildarchiv /. SAPMO-BArch, DY /V //: Niederschrift über die Arbeitstagung der Spanienkämpfer am  September , p. .  Ibid. . 

Fig. . National People’s Army soldiers, watched by members of the Free German Youth, lay wreaths at the International Brigades memorial statue to mark the forty-fifth anniversary of the formation of the Brigades,  September  (SAPMOBArch, Bildarchiv, Zo/H)

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Veterans and the State

As regards the question: are there heroes? Our comrades were [heroes]. They are heroes of the people and the working class, and we would be idiots [Dummköpfe], if we closed our eyes to this fact. We can’t leave it to the others. Who is aware of the heroes of the antifascist struggle? This must be made clear to young people. The names Barneck (?) and Elsner (?) [sic] for example must be popularized. Every child must know who these comrades were, who shot them, and so on. They are a special type of people. The working class can produce such heroes.

Mewis’s intervention is interesting on a number of counts: his status as a party functionary allowed him to override the other veterans present at the meeting and provide a definitive answer to ‘the question: are there heroes?’ There is also a strong sense that these heroes are a legitimate weapon in the battle being waged on two fronts: against the West and against the remnants of Nazi education and propaganda. Communism and the working class must prove that they too can produce heroes to match those of their opponents. Finally, he was willing to label the other participants in the discussion ‘idiots’ and dismiss their doubts and scruples about the concept of heroism out of hand. This tension between party and veterans is a continuous thread in writings about the heroes of the Spanish Civil War. Some Spanienkämpfer, like Anton Ackermann, felt that official depictions of the war did not do justice to the real life courage and commitment of the volunteers. According to Ackermann, historians tended to play down the difficulties and divisions the Republican side had faced, thereby making the war seem more straightforward than it actually was. He wrote aphoristically: ‘when research does not bring the truth to light, the weeds of legend proliferate’. These weeds hid the true extent of the volunteers’ achievements. Franz Dahlem expressed a similar sentiment in a letter to a fellow veteran, requesting information on the death of Hans Beimler. Referring to the recent TV film about the life of Beimler, he wrote: ‘The Hans Beimler film tries to give a depiction of it, but for us old Spanienkämpfer this depiction is not enough, because it was much more realistic and undramatic in real life.’ The overdramatization which took place in official accounts meant that veterans could not recognize their own experiences. One veteran, remembering his time in Spain, commented: ‘We didn’t think about heroes.’ Others felt  Ibid. –. The question marks were added by the transcriber of the meeting. ‘Barneck’ is a reference to Wilhelm Bahnik. ‘Elsner’ is Georg Elsner.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : Genossen Franz Dahlem zum . Geburtstag am . January .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : F. Dahlem to B. Hahn,  Oct. .  Interview with Kurt Lohberger,  Mar. .

Veterans and the State

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that the picture of fearless, heroic fighters was inaccurate. As a Spanienkämpfer and concentration camp survivor put it: ‘Everyone who had resisted was a hero. Only the heroic struggle was shown. But the whole filth and so on . . . Once, when I was speaking to a school class, children asked me whether I had been scared. And were totally astonished that I said yes. Fear is something human. But a hero can’t be frightened.’ As this veteran pointed out, part of the problem was that depictions of communist heroes tended to totally leave out anything personal or emotional. This included not only perceived weaknesses such as fear or doubt, but also the private life of the volunteers. His wife added that it would have been impossible for veterans to write about relationships with women without being ‘rapped on the knuckles’. She went on: ‘Communists have a family and it’s stable, right? And they didn’t have affairs or anything like that . . . That’s just half your life then, the official side of things. What’s the use of that? The history books sum it up better.’ The problem was that the heroes of the International Brigades had been painted as such flawless figures that it was impossible to leaven this depiction with any sort of domestic or personal detail without seeming to trivialize or undermine it. As the work of Graham Dawson shows, the soldier hero is a powerful figure in Western culture, signifying a powerful and idealized masculinity: ‘Military values such as aggression, strength, courage and endurance have repeatedly been defined as the natural and inherent qualities of manhood, whose apogee is attainable only in battle.’ In East German accounts of the civil war, as in Dawson’s study of British imperial heroes, this ‘martial masculinity’ is often defined against a ‘domestic femininity’, trivial or irrelevant to the main, male-dominated narrative of the war. Any signs of weakness were excised from official accounts of heroes’ lives, as were references to the domestic sphere. This excluded men who could not identify with this narrow definition of masculinity or whose behaviour did not fit such rigid patterns of behaviour. Ludwig Renn’s memoirs were edited to remove all references to homosexuality; Bodo Uhse’s diaries were also censored to cut out an episode where Renn picked up a Spanish boy in a Valencia cinema and enthused to Uhse about the boy’s beautiful underwear.

    

Interview with Roman Rubinstein,  Jan. . Interview with Ilse Rubinstein,  Jan. . Dawson, Soldier Heroes, . See Ch. , below for a full account. SAdK, Berlin, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, Nr. a, p. : diary entry,  June .

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Veterans and the State

An emphasis on traditional forms of masculinity also excluded women: East German historians and the veterans themselves tended to neglect women’s role in Spain. What little research there was on female veterans was often carried out by amateur historians. One report in a veteran newspaper described how Maria Strasde, a long-forgotten Spanienkämpferin, was brought to their attention by an FDJ group, who had discovered her headstone in a graveyard for Soviet soldiers. Despite the fact that she had joined the KPD in , been a nurse in Spain, and a member of the French resistance movement, the Sektion Spanienkämpfer had never heard of her. Similarly, the memory of the German photographer Gerta Taro, who had been killed during the war, was kept alive in the Leipzig area by one DFD activist, whose son had known Taro in Spain. Her efforts were rewarded with a string of newspaper articles, a Tarostrasse and the commemoration of Taro on a Leipzig antifascist memorial, as well as a script for a TV series based on her life, which was never produced. However, it was not until the s and s that Taro became better known on a national level as a photographer; the GDR journalists’ union named a photojournalism prize after her, but it was only awarded once, in . This was indicative of some later efforts to write women back into the war: Silvia Schlenstedt remembered making a conscious effort to include as many women as possible (amongst them Taro) in her work on the cultural aspects of the war. Despite the fact that accounts of women’s participation in the war are somewhat fragmentary and that many female veterans never had the chance to tell their stories or write their memoirs, the evidence which can be gathered is telling and points to important continuities between attitudes towards women during the Spanish Civil War and in the GDR.

WO M E N A N D T H E WA R : G E N D E R A N D T H E L I M I T S O F R E P R E S E N TAT I O N

In Spain, men heavily outnumbered women at the front. A memoir written  K. Kormes, ‘Grabmal löste Neugier aus’, Der antifaschistische Widerstandskämpfer,  (), .  I. Schaber, Gerta Taro: Fotoreporterin im spanischen Bürgerkrieg (Marburg, ), –.  Interview with Silvia Schlenstedt,  Apr. . The collection of women‘s memoirs published in East Germany shortly after the Wende is another example of this phenomenon: P. Lataster-Czisch, Eigentlich rede ich nicht gern über mich. Lebenserinnerungen von Frauen aus dem Spanischen Bürgerkrieg – (Leipzig and Weimar, ).

Veterans and the State

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by Minna Arzt, describing her visit to the Centuria Thälmann in , gives a flavour of what it must have been like for a female visitor. She felt proud when one of her male companions told her: ‘none of our women have ever gone so far forward before’. Clearly, the men of the Centuria saw ‘their’ women more as a diverting novelty than comrades on an equal footing. After their visit to the front, they were received without ceremony by an Austrian doctor who showed them to a room with sacks of straw on the ground and told them to bed down. Arzt was surprised at this treatment and, sure enough, the doctor was amazed when he discovered the next morning that there was ‘a woman behind the cap and trousers’. Both men and women had fixed ideas about the role of women in the war effort. Women were to be sheltered from the harsh realities of the war, be they bombs or uncomfortable bedding. The presumption that women were weak and needed to be protected naturally led to the assumption that they were inferior to men. Women such as Käthe Dahlem, the wife of a KPD Politburo member and political activist in her own right, were the exception. Walter Janka’s faux pas the first time he met Dahlem is illustrative of women’s low social status; the young Janka, arriving in Barcelona to meet her husband Franz, ignored Dahlem when she opened the door to him. Describing the incident forty years later, he justified the gaffe by saying that he had seen only a ‘middle aged-woman’ and had not ‘paid her any more attention than any other woman’. Dahlem, by virtue of her age and gender, was as good as invisible. For Janka, only men were potentially important and worthy of attention. This experience was shared by Golda Friedemann. Friedemann had been resident in Spain since  and spoke reasonable Spanish by the time the war broke out. When Hans Beimler arrived in Barcelona, she volunteered to go to the front on a fact-finding mission. She later recollected: ‘Hans Beimler looked at me a bit doubtfully at first, as if he wanted to say: send such a little girl to the front? But finally he smiled and said: Why not. We’ll send you!’ The fact that she had felt patronized by Beimler clearly affected Friedemann, who concluded her report from the front: ‘Is my work useful for you, are my reports interesting for you as comrades, or are they too personal for you?’ Her initial confidence and willingness to     

SAPMO-BArch, DY /SgY /V //, p. . Ibid. SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. . Sonntag,  July , p. . Ibid., p. .

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Veterans and the State

volunteer seem to have been replaced with self-doubt and deference. A member of the KPD since , Friedemann had internalized the party’s attitudes about women and, despite her political credentials, still feared that her female perspective was too subjective. Women were only considered capable of fulfilling certain roles: wife or lover, mother or nurse. Käthe Dahlem’s nickname as ‘the mother of the International Brigades’ was not accidental. According to Erich Glückauf: ‘she lived in word and deed for the International Brigades, for each one of the comrades, from the lowliest soldier to the highest commander’. In this and other accounts, Dahlem takes on the typical, self-sacrificing qualities of the mother who lives and dies for her family, rather than for herself or for an explicitly political cause. She is representative of the wives and mothers many of the Spanienkämpfer had left behind; one veteran wrote that his wife had also taken part in ‘the struggle of the Spanish proletariat’ by staying at home with their family without knowing when or if he would return. Like this veteran, many Spanienkämpfer were very aware of the sacrifices their partners had made and felt that posterity undervalued the work of what Hans Teubner called ‘the second rank [die zweite Reihe] . . . who lit the stoves and cooked the soup, who bore children and brought them up . . . who typed the manuscripts, were couriers and waited for their man at night’. While veterans’ concern that their partners’ contributions be recognized is touching, women are still placed squarely in the home, stoically standing by their men. Self-sacrificing men were, as we have seen, heroes. Self-sacrificing women were simply fulfilling their domestic duty. Even women who had actually been in Spain were cast in this light. Marta Drumm had trained as a nurse in order to volunteer in Spain and worked in a field hospital in Albacete. However, two articles published in the GDR dwell on her relationship with her husband and children. An interview with another former nurse, Gertrud Santiago, describes her as ‘the wife of a communist . . . She wants to help him and helps many others.’ Santiago is seen as a wife first, and political activist second, 

Glückauf, Begegnungen und Signale, . SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V// (E. Michel Erinnerungen), p. . W. Geißler und W. Sabath, ‘Hans Teubner aus Aue’, Sonntag,  (), .  On the wives of East German resistance veterans see R. Scheer, ‘Die Namenlosen: Über Frauen der Widerstandskämpfer’, in A. Leo and P. Reif-Spirek (eds.), Helden, Täter und Verräter: Studien zum DDR-Antifaschismus (Berlin, ), –.  K. Hagel and R. Klinke, ‘Schwester der Brigadisten’, Für Dich,  (), ; ‘In kampferfüllter Zeit als Interbrigadist im Arztkittel’, Sächsische Zeitung, n.d. [s]; both refer to M. Drumm.  U. Frase, ‘Genossin Santiago’, Weltbühne,  ( Sept. ), .  

Veterans and the State



ignoring the fact that she had been a long-time member of the Austrian social democratic party. Although they had been absolutely central to the Spanish republican war effort, these women were chiefly seen as the mothers and lovers of male soldiers. Some women may have chosen to emphasize their roles within the family. Anna Bravo’s research on women in the Italian resistance found that they often chose to tell their stories in a ‘maternal register’, whether or not they were actual mothers. Motherhood was not only ‘the strongest female image on which [women] could draw’, but also avoided any association with sexuality. Given the often hostile attitudes towards women who did not conform to the stereotype of wife and mother, it is unsurprising that many chose to portray themselves in these terms. However, this had a lasting and detrimental effect on the prestige of female veterans. Women were rarely referred to as Spanienkämpferinnen; they were, at best, ‘sisters’ of those who had fought in the brigades. This was in marked contrast to the many male ‘Spanienkämpfer’ who had, in fact, been functionaries far from the front and seen less action than many of the nurses. Women who did not fit the narrow repertoire of gender roles were often dismissed. Käthe Hempel’s memoir, originally called ‘The First Day of Fighting in Tardienta’ was published as ‘A Nurse In Tardienta’, probably because the male editor could not imagine that a woman who was not a nurse had been so close to the front. Hempel was not in fact a nurse, but an athlete who had come to Barcelona for the Workers’ Olympiad and had got caught up in the war and co-opted into helping with the wounded. This is crystal clear in her original memoir, but changes to the published version give the reader the impression that Hempel was a nurse. A similar stereotyping of female experience can be seen in a series of articles about Golda Friedemann, entitled ‘Young Woman in Spain’, which describe her as ‘delicate and beautiful. Gifted in drawing, talented in dealing with flattering things.’ Her career as a fashion draughtswoman also looms large in an interview with Friedemann carried out in , where the interviewer emphasized that although she was among ‘the few women’ who fought in Spain, it was ‘not with a weapon in her hands—they were made for the

 P. R. Wilson, ‘Saints and Heroines: Re-Writing the History of Italian Women in the Resistance’, in Kirk and McElligot (eds.), Opposing Fascism, .  Hagel and Klinke, ‘Schwester der Brigadisten’.  Cf. SgY /V//, pp. –; Käthe Hempel, ‘Der erste Kampftag in Tardienta’ and ead., ‘Als Krankenschwester in Tardienta’, in Brigada Internacional, i. –.  BZA,  Aug. , p. .

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Veterans and the State

brush and pen’. This interviewer also dwells repeatedly on her small stature, his first reaction on meeting Friedemann being: ‘Such a small woman and such great courage.’ As in the case of Marta Drumm, the interview ends with a discussion of her son and her two grandsons. The fact that male Spanienkämpfer and historians and journalists of both sexes found it hard to imagine women as war heroes is inextricably linked to the way heroism was imagined in GDR accounts. There can be little doubt that these attitudes towards women had an effect on East German readers. A woman who had grown up in the same building as the Friedemanns later wrote that it was Golda Friedemann’s husband Max who for her embodied the ‘total power and total optimism’ of Spain, while she never associated Golda with the war at all. The portrayal of heroes solely as powerful, male, fighting communist soldiers, effectively excluded a woman such as Golda Friedemann. The patronizing and dismissive attitude displayed towards women like Hempel and Friedemann, both in Spain and the GDR, was one way of neutralizing the perceived threat posed by women who could not be classified as wives and mothers. In his diary Bodo Uhse described a conversation with Willi Bredel about the ‘Säuferinnen (female drinkers)’ they had known in Spain, particularly the Norwegian journalist Lise Lindbaek and Brecht’s partner Ruth Berlau. Women such as Lindbaek and Berlau were judged in a way that their male counterparts—heavy-drinking, fast-living intellectuals such as Hemingway and Uhse himself—were not. Women who did not conform to certain ‘feminine’ roles were unwelcome. This is certainly the impression given by Albert Schreiner’s report on Lindbaek’s book on the International Brigades: he described the book as ‘naïve’, lacking in military knowledge, and concluded that it should not be published, adding that one got the impression she had spent too much time in the kitchen. It is tempting to conclude that Schreiner was really objecting to the fact that she had left the kitchen in the first place and strayed into the male territory of military history. Julia Hell suggests that such antipathy towards women in the war was a result of the rise of Nazism and the defeat of the Left, experienced by male communists as ‘an assault on their masculinity’. Their way of coping with  D. Bischof, ‘Eine Frau an der Front für die spanische Republik’, Der antifaschistische Widerstandskämpfer  (), .  Jeanne Pachnicke, Sonntag,  (), .  SAdK, Berlin, Bodo Uhse Archiv, Nr. b, p. : diary entry  June .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. .  J. Hell, ‘At the Center an Absence: Foundationalist Narratives of the GDR and the Legitimatory Discourse of Antifascism’, Monatshefte, / (),  (italics in original).

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feelings of powerless and impotence was to label such emotions as feminine. Weakness was therefore projected onto women, absolving men from the sins of cowardice and indecision. There can be little doubt that the events of the Nazi period had a profoundly disruptive effect on communist men’s attitude to women. As Willi Bredel wrote to his wife from Spain: ‘One lives like a monk here . . . prison, conc[entration] camp, Spain, God damn it all [verfluchtundzugenäht], one’s either got to go mad or become impotent, or at the very least develop obsessions.’ Men who were injured, interned, or imprisoned suffered not just from the absence of female companionship, but also feelings of helplessness and dependence, due to their failure to live up to the model of heroic communist behaviour. The psychological blow of political defeat and the physical effects of Nazi persecution clearly constituted a threat to communist masculinity. However, as Michael Rohrwasser’s study of the proletarian novels of the s and s shows, many of the gendered attitudes within the communist movement pre-dated Hitler’s rise to power and cannot be seen as purely a reaction to defeat. Communism’s emphasis on class interests means that there was no place for ‘unproletarian’ interests such as nationalism, religion, and sexuality. Despite such literature’s claims to be revolutionary, in this respect it was intensely conservative and tradition-bound. Family, the home, and, by extension women, had little to do with the public, male, world of politics. A good example of the marginalization of the domestic sphere are two interviews with Centa Herker Beimler, the widow of Hans Beimler, which were published in the GDR in the s. Her memories of their married life put Hans Beimler’s dedication to the party in a new and not altogether flattering light. ‘Hans subordinated everything to party work. The family too. I didn’t always think that was a good thing’. She was in an excellent position to see the personal cost of party work. Describing his chronic stomach ulcers, she said ‘the party ate him up . . . I could say what I liked, he wouldn’t go to hospital, he smoked like a broken stove and drank coffee by the pot.’ She painted a bleak picture of the effect of political work on functionaries’ health and their families’ well-being. ‘Our marriage was actually first and foremost illegal party work. There wasn’t a lot of time for  Cf. J. Hell, Post-Fascist Fantasies: Psychoanalysis, History and the Literature of East Germany (Durham, NC and London, ), ch. .  SAdK, Willi-Bredel-Archiv, Nr. : W. Bredel to L. Bredel,  Mar. .  M. Rohrwasser, Saubere Mädel, starke Genossen, –.  ‘Wir heirateten im Parteibüro’, Junge Welt,  Dec. .  Ibid.

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each other. . . . His principle was: the party always comes first of all, then nothing for a long, long stretch, and then the family.’ The impact this had on their marriage is summed up by a single incident, which she recounted in both interviews. She had been saving, unbeknownst to her husband, for a new kitchen. However, One day, a motorbike clattered into the yard. I went to the window, and there is my Hans on a brand new bike, waving happily to me: ‘I’ve bought a motorbike for the party!’ I could just imagine what had happened—and yes, the money for the new kitchen was gone and had turned itself into a motorbike. But what good was it, I did understand him, he hadn’t thought of me or of himself, but of the party.

From Centa Herker Beimler’s perspective, antifascist heroism involved not just self-sacrifice, but the suffering of your family too. Beimler’s purchase of a motorbike ‘for the party’ necessitated stealing money from his wife and depriving his family of a much-needed new kitchen. While she tried to excuse his behaviour as essentially unselfish, the fact that she still recounted the story sixty years later hints at the feelings of hurt and betrayal she may have felt. This contrasts sharply with the anodyne oneline reference to Centa Herker Beimler in an official account of her husband’s life, which comments that she ‘stood understandingly and comradely by his side in all questions and was a loving mother to his two children from his first marriage’. Taking the private lives of men such as Beimler into account would have meant drawing a more complicated picture of antifascist bravery and exploring the consequences of political dedication. The rigidity of communist conceptions of politics, heroism and the family made such a radical rethink impossible.

C O N C LU S I O N

Heroes were soldiers, who died in the thick of battle, preferably with a weapon in their hands. Many of those who had travelled to Spain were instantly excluded by this model of heroism: women, homosexuals, doctors, writers, cooks, functionaries. But even carefully selected heroes could not live up to the high expectations of communist heroism. In all three cases, signs of weakness or fallibility have been excised: Beimler’s stomach ulcer, Becker’s fatalism, Stank’s outburst against the Nationalist   

‘Aus geplanter Küche wurde ein Motorrad für die Partei’, Junge Welt,  Dec. . Ibid. Haferkorn, ‘Wir haben das Recht, stolz zu sein’, .

Veterans and the State



tanks. The very characteristics which made them fully rounded people were removed in the name of heroism, producing flawless, but ultimately unattainable standards of behaviour. The veterans knew this, and took every opportunity they could to discreetly correct the party’s version of events. Despite the SED’s efforts, it was to be the veterans’ brand of heroism which would do most to interest the younger generation in Spain.



Heroes Like Us? The Second Generation Rediscovers the Volunteers If even veterans could not identify with the unnaturally perfect and prematurely dead heroes of the International Brigades, it is hard to imagine how the rest of the population was expected to. But despite this, many East Germans who had not even been born in  were drawn to the Spanish Civil War. Rather than seeing the war as a rehearsal for the GDR, as the SED did, they saw it as an inspiring alternative to existing state socialism. For East German citizens, whose opportunities for travel were limited, the idea of travelling to a Mediterranean country and joining an indigenous liberation struggle was exotic and exciting. There was a certain anarchist tinge about the war which made it a counterpoint to the stuffiness and conventionality of life in the GDR. Some writers and academics saw Spain as part of a ‘good’ antifascism; while communists in Moscow had been preoccupied with the purges and show trials, those in Spain had been fighting for the liberation of the Spanish people. The war was part of the positive legacy of communism and a source of political succour: according to Silvia Schlenstedt, an East German literary critic and historian, her work on Spain was a ‘support’ after the political upheavals and disappointments of the Biermann affair in , when the dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann was stripped of his GDR citizenship during a trip to the West. Similarly, the Spanienkämpfer were often seen as the ‘good’ antifascists, particularly those such as Walter Janka and Ernst Busch who had had difficulties with the SED. For many people, Spain promised a new perspective on East German socialism and antifascism.

T H E A E S T H E T I C S O F R E S I S TA N C E : R E A D I N G P E T E R W E I S S

Younger East Germans were not wholly reliant on official histories and veteran memoirs. The later years of the GDR saw the publication of a 

Interview with Silvia Schlenstedt,  Apr. .

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range of literary accounts of the war, many of which cast the war in a new and exciting light. Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, published in the GDR in , dwelt on the romance and adventure of partisan missions and evenings drinking Spanish wine. The main character’s affair with a Spanish woman was very different to the Spain depicted in East German schoolbooks. The political aspects of the book were similarly intriguing: the emphasis on conflict within the Brigades, unflattering portraits of André Marty and Richard Staimer, and the thinly disguised portrait of Mikhail Kolzov, who had died in Stalin’s purges. Kolzov’s war diaries had in fact been published in the GDR, to the great interest of writers and academics. Not only had Kolzov been a victim of the Gulag, he had also met the anarchist leader Durutti, meetings which are described in some detail in his diaries. Peter Weiss’s Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (The Aesthetic Of Resistance), although only published in the last decade of the GDR, was to prove enormously influential. This three-volume epic novel on the German resistance to Nazism was published in West Germany from  to  and appeared in East Germany in . However, many GDR intellectuals with contacts in the West would have had the opportunity to read it before this date. Most of the first volume is set in Spain and populated by both fictional characters and real historical figures such as Karl Mewis, Lisa Lindbaek, Hans Kahle, Richard Stahlmann, and Willi Bredel. Weiss’s concerns—socialism and resistance, the possibility of a unity of aesthetics and politics, the relationship between workers and intellectuals, the nature of artistic representation—were highly relevant to East German readers. His insistence on the political nature of art, and the necessity of unity between resistance, art, and culture was particularly alluring to GDR intellectuals. Weiss’s history included the subjective—art, memory, sex, daily life—contrasting sharply with the SED’s rather rigid and orthodox viewpoint. He offered an antifascist history which was emotionally and intellectually appealing. Unlike the one-dimensional military histories produced by party historians, Weiss concentrated on the tensions and conflicts within  

M. Kolzov, Die rote Schlacht (Berlin, ), –, –. P. Weiss, Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (Frankfurt am Main, ). On Spain in the novel cf. A. Stephan, ‘The Civil War as Model: Peter Weiss, Spain, and Die Ästhetik des Widerstands’, in Costa et al. (eds.), German and International Perspectives on the Spanish Civil War, –; V. Lilienthal, ‘ “Das Atavistische in diesem Krieg”: Spanien in der Ästhetik des Widerstands von Peter Weiss’, LiLi,  (), –; D. Kliche, ‘Epos des Widerstands: Zur Ästhetik des Widerstands von Peter Weiss’, Weimarer Beiträge, / (), –. On the genesis of the novel and its reception in the GDR, see Barck, Antifa-Geschichte(n), ch. .  Kliche, ‘Epos des Wiederstands’, .

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the Republican side. His narrator discusses indigenous Spanish anarchism, the POUM, the secret police and their ‘elimination’ of political opponents. He contrasted the simplicity of the antifascist idea and the complicated realities which lay behind it. Weiss’s novel was not just a nuanced view of the Spanish Civil War, but also touched on preoccupations and dilemmas central to life in the GDR. For many, reading Weiss was inspirational: Dieter Kliche, a literary critic, saw Die Ästhetik des Widerstands as a ‘radical challenge’, a call for historical action ‘inspired by courage, resistance, reason, and fantasy’, which united the narrator, the author, and those born after the events in a ‘chain of political, intellectual, literary resistance’. In his introduction to a seven-volume history of antifascist art and literature in exile (written in , well before the novel was published in the GDR), Werner Mittenzwei, the series editor, wrote that it was intended as ‘a contribution to an aesthetic of resistance’. Silvia Schlenstedt, one of the authors of the series, confirmed that Weiss’s novel was of central importance to the conception and writing of the seven volumes and that Mittenzwei had been instrumental in its publication in the GDR. However, Schlenstedt personally disagreed with his description of the series as a contribution to Weiss’s project, as she felt that their literary history was not really on the same level as the novel. Others focused on the taboos broken by the book. Gerold Hildebrand, a member of the East German opposition, used Weiss as one of his main factual sources in an article on Spanish anarchism published in the Umweltblätter (a samizdat published under the auspices of the Church) in November . A poem by Steffen Mensching, published in  and entitled ‘For Peter Weiss’ begins with the words: Einmal, später, irgendwann werden wir die Siegel der Archive brechen. Beieinander sitzend dann das nie Ausgesprochene aussprechen. (One day, later, sometime | we will break the seals of the archives. | Sitting together then | say that which has never been said.)      

–.

Weiss, Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, . Kliche, ‘Epos des Widerstands’, , , . W. Mittenzwei, ‘Vorwort’, in Hermsdorf et al., Exil in den Niederlanden und in Spanien, . Interview with Silvia Schlenstedt,  Apr. . ‘Anarchisten im spanischen Bürgerkrieg’, Umweltblätter, Nov. . S. Mensching, ‘Für Peter Weiss’, in Tuchfühlung: Gedichte (Halle and Leipzig, ),

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Mensching too saw Die Ästhetik des Widerstands as a challenge, or a call to action, but he emphasized the limitations under which writers in the GDR had to work. He hoped that Weiss’s work would help to break the silences surrounding history and end the bitterness and accusation which currently surrounded it. Auf den Tisch die Hände legen, sie nicht mehr zur Faust ballen. Nicht soviel die Finger bewegen, keiner über keinen herfallen. (Lay hands on the table | Don’t ball them into fists any more | Not wagging the finger so much | Nobody attacking anybody.)

Only the truth could defuse history’s power to wound and allow reconciliation to take place: Sehr grell wird das Licht sein in diesen Tagen, wenn wir die Wunden einander zeigen, die wir einander geschlagen, die alten eiternden Narben, die verfluchten verhaßten, (The light will be very dazzling in these days, | when we show each other the wounds, | that we have inflicted on each other, | the old suppurating scars, the damned | hated,)

The party, of course, were wont to argue that revealing unpleasant truths about history would only play into the hands of the class enemy and damage the socialist cause. Mensching disagreed, arguing that it was time to break ‘the tactical, dulled, talkative silence [das taktische dumpfe beredsame Schweigen]’. This airless silence prevented the festering wounds of the past from healing—only the bright, exhilarating light of historical truth could break it and rescue the GDR from its suffocating grasp. Mensching assured the reader: Wir würden den Sieg nicht kleiner, wir würden ihn reiner machen. (We wouldn’t diminish victory, | We would purify it.)

It is likely that Mensching was inspired not only by Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, but also by Weiss’s Notizbücher (notebooks), in which he chronicled the genesis of the novel. The notebooks describe Weiss’s research trips to the GDR and his difficulties in obtaining material from

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The Second Generation

resistance veterans and the party archives. Unsurprisingly, they were never published in East Germany, but, like other Western accounts, still made a great impression on those who had access to them. Secondgeneration writers were often in a fairly good position to find out what was going on in the West, given their literary contacts and opportunities to travel. Academics also had access to the Giftschränke or ‘poison cupboards’ where libraries kept banned or Western literature. This leaching of knowledge and ideas into the GDR, despite the best efforts of the authorities, is demonstrated in an essay written by the film-maker Karlheinz Mund on his film about Hans Beimler, Spanien im Herzen. Mund mentions Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s novel about the life of Durutti, Der kurze Sommer der Anarchie (The Short Summer of Anarchy) as the major influence in his decision to make the film. Enzenberger’s novel was unavailable in the GDR. The Spanien im Herzen film-makers described their work as an attempt to find out ‘how much all that [Spain] still has to do with us’. They obviously felt that it was still relevant, and were keen to persuade the younger generation that Spain was still an important topic. However, the film was noticeably different to SED attempts to enthuse young people about antifascism. The film-makers did not attempt to portray Hans Beimler ‘as he really was’; their starting point was that Beimler was a historical legend, the product of storytelling and mythologizing. Spanien im Herzen was a film about the legend of Hans Beimler, rather than Beimler the man. This deconstruction of the Beimler myth would have been unthinkable in a historical monograph or article and would have also been unpopular in veteran circles. But the second generation approached the war in a different way, assuming that multiple interpretations of the past were possible. This was in its way a radical challenge to Marxist-Leninist historiography and reflects not just the influence of Enzensberger, but also modern literary and critical theory. Furthermore, they refused to go along with the common pretence that all Germans had been antifascist during the Nazi period. Klaus Wischnewski, Mund’s colleague, remembered rejoicing when 

.

P. Weiss, Notizbücher –,  vols. (Frankfurt am Main, ), i. –; ii. –,

 K. Mund, ‘Spurensuche nach  Jahren: Anmerkungen zum Film “Spanien im Herzen—Hans Beimler und andere” ’, in Spanien –: Dokumentarfilme (Berlin, ), .  J. Wisotzki, ‘Spanien im Herzen. Gespräch mit Karlheinz Mund und Klaus Wischnewski über ihren Film’, Sonntag,  (), .  Ibid.

The Second Generation

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German warships shelled Almeria. He pointed out that, unlike the veterans, Germans within Nazi Germany had had to reassess their views on the Spanish Civil War after . Communist orthodoxy made it difficult to acknowledge that a large proportion of the population had in fact supported Hitler. The composer Hanns Eisler, in the last of a series of interviews, said mischievously to his interviewer, the academic Hans Bunge: ‘I think, dear Dr Bunge, we are going around in circles the whole time and not talking about our war adventures, because it’s not proper to talk about such things in polite society—and with that I mean the socialist society. What do you think?’ Bunge admitted that he was very uncomfortable talking about his time as an officer in the Second World War, as he had been a convinced and enthusiastic member of the Wehrmacht, who had experienced the war as ‘a great comradeship, which united everybody’. Although one of the GDR’s leading intellectuals, Bunge felt unable to talk about his past, feeling that it contrasted badly with the antifascist commitment of old communists such as Eisler. Past support for Nazism was a strong taboo which could only be broken with difficulty.

T H E S PA N I E N K Ä M P F E R A S FAT H E R F I G U R E S

Later generations, like Wischnewski, had been too young to be politically active under Nazism. Many of them still felt compelled to address the contradiction between their family history of support or commitment to Nazism and the official state history of antifascism. Steffen Mensching contrasted the political biographies of the International Brigade volunteers and that of his own father: Als sich Die Spanier aller Länder Bei den Händen faßten, als mein Vater Im Kirschbaum in Görlitz herumturnte, Abrutschte und sich die neue Braune Hose zerriß.  The German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer and four destroyers shelled Almeria on  May  in retaliation for the bombing of the German battleship Deutschland by Russian aircraft.  H. Eisler, Gespräche mit Hans Bunge: Fragen Sie mehr über Brecht, ed. H. Bunge (Leipzig, ), .  Ibid. .  S. Mensching, ‘Späte Elegie’, in Erinnerung an eine Milchglasscheibe (Halle and Leipzig, ), .

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(As | Spaniards of the world | Took each others’ hands, as my father | Clambered about in the cherry tree in Görlitz, | Slipped and tore his new | Brown trousers.)

In contrast to the inspirational political solidarity of Spain, Mensching’s father seems like an SA buffoon, more clumsy than immoral. But this humanization of Nazism serves only to emphasize the division between those with genuine political convictions and those who unthinkingly ran with the pack. Disillusioned with their own flawed families, some writers turned to the Spanienkämpfer as father figures or idealized political parents. Mensching’s poem is dedicated to the composer Eberhard Schmidt, who had fought in Spain. Spanien, Tropfen Jod In meiner unordentlichen Erinnerung, Ich werde Dein Knabengesicht in meinem Hinterkopf, Dein Lächeln, nicht los. Du Von menschlichen Mistsäuen zerbissener Mund, Der das Wort Bruder ausgrub. (Spain, drop of iodine | In my untidy memory, | I cannot rid your boyish face | From the back of my mind | Your laugh. | You | Mouth chewed by human dirty swine, | That dug up the word brother.)

Here, Spain and Schmidt are sources of power and inspiration, which clarify and inspire. In contrast to the poet’s ridiculous, tree-climbing father, Schmidt is wise and experienced, yet somehow still retains youth and humour. This combination of vitality and experience is what allows Mensching to overcome his doubts and cynicism. Für dich Stecke ich heut drei schwarze Rosen In die pessimistischen Löcher Meiner Großhirnrinde. (For you | Today I stick three black roses | In the pessimistic holes | Of my cerebral cortex.)

This relationship to Schmidt was to be central to a theatre performance on Spain produced by the theatre group, Karls Enkel, which was run by  S. Mensching, ‘Späte Elegie’, in Erinnerung an eine Milchglasscheibe (Halle and Leipzig, ), .  Ibid.

The Second Generation

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Mensching and Hans-Eckardt Wenzel. In the late s and s, Karls Enkel combined cabaret, political songs, and theatre in Liedertheater (musical theatre) performances on subjects such as Goethe, Marx, and the anarchist writer Erich Mühsam. Their pointed commentaries on the legacy of socialism and life in the GDR had won them a devoted following amongst the GDR intelligentsia and in  Mensching and Wenzel’s interest in the Spanish Civil War led them to write and perform Spanier aller Länder. (The title—Spaniards of the World—refers the ‘workers of the world’ in The Communist Manifesto.) In the context of the usual commemorations of the war, Karls Enkel’s combination of clown scenes, original songs, and poems by Auden and Heine was a radical one. However, Spanier aller Länder disappointed the group’s previously supportive audience, who felt that Wenzel and Mensching had shirked the questions raised by Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, especially the problem of Stalinism in International Brigades. Wenzel and Mensching had hoped that their focus on the heroism of the volunteers would challenge the political resignation rife in mid-s East Germany, and contrast the idealism of Spain with the humdrum nature of GDR reality. However, many saw the performance as overly naive and too close to the official glorification of the Brigades. As David Robb puts it, ‘Spanier aller Länder had shown how immune a GDR audience had become towards the concept of a socialist utopia.’ Karls Enkel disbanded shortly afterwards. In retrospect, Mensching felt that the involvement of the Spanienkämpfer Schmidt might have affected the finished product. Schmidt’s moral authority and their personal admiration for him may have, in Mensching’s opinion, hindered their artistic freedom. However, another comment from Mensching implies that the group felt in thrall to an entire historical tradition: For Wenzel, Stefan Körbel [another member of the group] and me, this military operation of the International Brigades always meant something quite important in our political development. It was part of our historical experience, possibly as a transfigured historical experience . . . In this respect this Spain was something noble for us . . . And it was very hard for us to break free of the pathos . . . It was very hard for me to deal with this holy shrine in an impudent way.

 D. Robb, Zwei Clowns im Lande des verlorenen Lachens: Das Liedertheater Wenzel & Mensching (Berlin, ).  On the piece itself, see ibid., ch. ; id., ‘Clowns, Songs and Lost Utopias: Karls Enke’s Reassessment of the Spanish Civil War in Spanier aller Länder’, Debatte, / (), –.  Id., ‘Clowns, Songs and Lost Utopias’, .  Id., Zwei Clowns, .  Id., ‘Clowns, Songs and Lost Utopias’, .  Id., Zwei Clowns, .  Id., ‘Clowns, Songs and Lost Utopias’, .

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The Second Generation

Mensching was not the only one to fall under the spell of the Spanienkämpfer. Walter Janka was another veteran who enjoyed great respect and admiration, both before and after his arrest in . Within the Aufbau publishing house he was known as ‘the partisan’, and Anna Seghers’s description of the Janka figure in her novella Der gerechte Richter (The Just Judge) also plays on his Spanish connections: ‘with strong dark brows and dark hair, with an upright, proud bearing. You might have thought that the Spanish people had had an effect on his appearance.’ Janka’s participation in the Spanish Civil War and his proletarian background made him something of a role model for the younger employees. Günther Caspar, who had fought in the Wehrmacht as a young man, said ‘We had great respect for the Spanienkämpfer!’, and after Janka’s arrest, those interviewed by the Central Party Control Commission stated that their trust in him had been motivated by respect for his past. He was ‘always the example of an old communist’, who inspired ‘great devotion’. One employee said: ‘In Janka I saw the old party veteran, the Spanienkämpfer, the representative of the working class.’ Although these credentials did nothing to prevent Janka’s imprisonment, after his release he did achieve a certain iconic status in East German intellectual circles. He appears as Havelka in Stefan Heym’s roman-à-clef, Collin and under his own name in Heym’s memoirs (neither of which were published in the GDR). Konrad Wolf, who had worked with Janka on numerous films, wrote to Franz Dahlem in  that Janka was ‘a living connection to the best of the most recent past, not just for the younger colleagues, but also for our middle generation’. Wolf personally saw Janka as ‘an example of communist bearing’ and called him his ‘commissar’. The Spanienkämpfer father figure also appears in Ulrich Plenzdorf ’s Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. The narrator of Plenzdorf ’s story is Edgar, a young worker who abandons his apprenticeship and drops out to live in a garden shed in a Berlin suburb. Edgar rejects the norms of East German society, preferring to concentrate his energies on music, art, girls, and Western jeans. The book (and accompanying dramatization) struck a chord with East German youth, one poll showing that % of those questioned  

Marschall, Aufrechter Gang im DDR-Sozialismus, . A. Seghers, ‘Der gerechte Richter’, Sinn und Form, / (), .  Marschall, Aufrechter Gang im DDR-Sozialismus, .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //, pp. , , .  S. Heym, Collin (; Frankfurt am Main, ); Nachruf (; Frankfurt am Main, ).  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. .

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could imagine being friends with Edgar and % agreed with his criticisms of society. But the book was subjected to heavy criticism by SED functionaries, who felt that it encouraged its readers to identify with a flawed figure and failed to offer them a positive role model. Plenzdorf ’s use of slang and his pastiche of Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers were an act of defiance against socialist realism and East German reverence for the literary canon. Edgar’s death at the end of the story, whether by accident or suicide is unclear, seems to imply that unorthodox lifestyles and nonconformity are simply not possible in the GDR. Despite Edgar’s rejection of conventional lifestyles and the hierarchy of his apprenticeship and party youth organizations, he does have respect for one older figure, the Spanienkämpfer Zaremba, a colleague in his painting crew. Edgar describes his meeting with Zaremba as ‘love at first sight. I saw at once, the old man was an animal’. Although over , Zaremba is a tough, hardworking, muscular worker. ‘One of his tricks was to let somebody drop an opened penknife onto his biceps. It jumped away as if made out of rubber.’ He had lost an eye, his little finger, and two ribs in Spain, but still had all his own teeth, and both his arms and his chest were covered in tattoos of flags, stars, hammers and sickles, even a bit of the Kremlin wall. Edgar admires the older man for his strength and his masculinity: ‘But the best thing was, that he still went with women.’ Zaremba’s jeans show just how much they have in common. Edgar sees jeans as ‘an attitude, not trousers’, and pays Zaremba the ultimate compliment by saying that he is the only person he knows over the age of  who could wear a pair of jeans properly. But Zaremba is not apolitical: he collects the trade union subscriptions, and, to Edgar’s amazement, begins to sing communist songs to defuse a tense situation at work: not any old pop song, but one of those songs where you only know the first verse. But this lot roared out the whole song. I think [it went]: come socialists, close the ranks. The drum calls, the flags are waving . . . That was some crew, people! Come, socialists! The brush nearly fell out of my hand.

Despite Edgar’s ironic distance, he cannot help but be impressed. Zaremba is Plenzdorf ’s counterpoint to the petty-bourgeois conformity of 

W. Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR (Leipzig, ), –. U. Plenzdorf, Die neuen Leiden des jungen W (Frankfurt am Main, ), . Die neuen Leiden was first published in the journal Sinn und Form in  and in book form in .  Ibid. .  Ibid. .  Ibid. .  Ibid. . 

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East German society. The model of the proletarian antifascist, he embodies the potency of early communist ideals; this spirit and activism contrasts with the stultifying uniformity of the GDR and is Edgar’s only possible point of identification with socialism. Here, as with Mensching, the past, and specifically Spain, is seen as a bracing antidote to the malaise of state socialism and is personified in the idealized figure of a tough but principled Spanienkämpfer.

P RO B L E M AT I C I Z I N G S PA I N : WO L F B I E R M A N N A N D T H E S O N G S O F T H E WA R

In contrast to Mensching and Plenzdorf ’s fairly uncritical admiration, the singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann had a rather more ambiguous relationship to the legacy of the International Brigades. Biermann’s father, a dockworker from Hamburg, had died in Auschwitz and the young Biermann moved to the GDR in , motivated by his socialist convictions. He studied philosophy, worked in the theatre, and began to write and perform songs. Even his relatively early work shows the difficult nature of his relationship with the party and his problems with life in East Germany. ‘An die alten Genossen’ (To The Old Comrades), written in  and published in West Germany, is addressed to the old communists of the SED: Ihr sprecht mit alten Worten Von den blutigen Siegen unsrer Klasse Ihr zeigt mit alten Händen aus das Arsenal Der blutigen Schlachten. Voll Eifersucht Hör ich Berichte eurer Leiden Vom Glück des Kampfes hinter Stacheldraht Und bin doch selbst nicht glücklich: Bin unzufrieden mit der neuen Ordnung. (You speak with old words | About the bloody victories of our class | You point with old hands to the arsenal | Of bloody battle. Full of jealousy | I hear reports of your suffering | Of the happiness of the struggle behind barbed wire | But am myself not happy: | Am dissatisfied with the new order.)

Biermann’s concern here is the tension between the experiences of the past and the demands of the present. The ‘old comrades’ are preoccupied 

Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR, . W. Biermann, ‘An die alten Genossen’, in Die Drahtharfe: Balladen, Gedichte, Lieder (W. Berlin, ), . 

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with history and with their own achievements, but Biermann is unable to find inspiration in their ‘old words’. Instead he feels envious of their past ordeals. The younger generation is unable to compete with these stories of heroism, and the moral weight of the old communists prevents any change or progress within the party. Those who were not members of the old communist generation are put in an impossible position by the fact that the exile years have become an untouchable moral talisman. The ‘bloody victories’ and ‘bloody battles’ of the past oppress Biermann, making his own unhappiness and desire for change seem trivial. This was not an uncommon emotion, particularly among the children of antifascists. According to Annette Kahane, the daughter of a Spanienkämpfer: ‘I always, like often in our generation, stood in the shadow of my parents and had the feeling, I am not experiencing anything at all. A total emptiness spreads out around me, because fundamentally all the stories which had been experienced , are in the box which my father is sitting on.’ Kahane resented her father’s appropriation of history and felt robbed of the chance to experience things for herself. In her discussion of young East German poets, Karen Leeder quotes a Kurt Drawert poem which echoes these feelings of dispossession: Die Worte gehörten mir nicht, kalt lagen sie mir unter der Zunge als nichtgemachte Erfahrung (The words did not belong to me | they lay cold under my tongue as | unexperienced experience)

Leeder points out the way in which language has, through repetition, become divorced from actual events, meaning that Drawert feels denied both experience and the words to describe it. In the context of antifascism, this echoes Biermann’s semi-ironic attitude to the old communists’ stories of war and resistance. The death of his father must have made him deeply suspicious of tales of ‘the happiness of the struggle behind barbed wire’. This mistrust of official language and narratives mirrors Mensching’s concerns about the inauthenticity of official history. A critique of the emptiness of the language and ritual of SED commemoration is at the heart of Biermann’s work on Spain. Most of Biermann’s songs about Spain were written in the mid- to late s, at the time of the end of the Franco regime. This period also marked  

Von Wroblewsky (ed.), Zwischen Thora und Trabant, . Leeder, Breaking Boundaries, –.



The Second Generation

a low point in Biermann’s relationship to the East German state; in , during a trip to West Germany, he was stripped of his citizenship and forbidden to return. Although he was deeply interested in the war itself, virtually all his work on Spain also relates to the GDR and East German memories of the Spanish Civil War. Biermann felt a personal connection with the war, describing his father as a Spanienkämpfer, as he was sent to a concentration camp for sabotaging weapon transports which were being sent to Franco. Spain was part of the fabric of Biermann’s complicated relationship with the party and the past, in which personal and political threads were tightly intertwined. For Biermann, perhaps the most important commemorative form was the songs of the war, which had been popularized by Ernst Busch and played a central role in school and FDJ activities. (Hence Edgar’s reference to ‘those songs where you only know the first verse’ in Die neuen Leiden des jungen W.) These songs, filled with revolutionary pathos, were not only evocative for veterans, but also ‘crossed over’ to the second generation, even those who might have been cynical about other forms of commemoration. This was partly due to the admiration felt for Busch’s recordings and his refusal to kowtow to the SED. Many of the songs were designed to be stirring and uplifting and, as part of the Brecht/Eisler/Busch tradition of revolutionary song, they also had a certain cultural cachet. Singing groups such as the Oktoberklub and Pasaremos adopted the songs in the s, and many East Germans gained their first (and sometimes only) knowledge of the war from songs such as ‘Die Thälmann-Kolonne’ and ‘Die Ballade der XI. Brigade’. Biermann, however, refused to accept the war or its musical legacy in such uncomplicated terms. ‘Wir saßen am Feuer im Dunkeln’ (We Sat at the Fire in the Dark), written in , describes a common scenario in East German intellectual or artistic circles: a group sitting around a campfire and singing ‘the Spanish song’, to the delight of old and young alike. Only Biermann and the person to whom the poem is addressed feel differently: ‘The old song | Turned in our stomachs | Like a rusty bayonet.’ Why the song calls forth such an uncomfortable reaction is not specified: what becomes clear from the other songs and poems is that Biermann was unwilling to glorify the war or to forget the suffering inflicted over forty  

W. Biermann, Preußischer Ikarus: Lieder, Balladen, Gedichte, Prosa (Cologne, ), . Robb, Zwei Clowns, –.  Cf. Lied der Zeit: Spanien (Berlin, ); also the recent CD, E. Busch, Lieder der Arbeiterklassse & Lieder aus dem spanischen Bürgerkrieg.  Biermann, Preußischer Ikarus, .

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years by the Franco regime. As he argues in ‘Bedenkelied’, the songs are a poor consolation: Bedenk auch beim Krieg gegen Franco Wenn ihr debattiert im Salon: Das Schwein gewann all seine Schlachten —und was haben wir? Wir haben Lieder Die schönen Lieder Die traurigen Lieder Und wir haben Lieder davon —nur Lieder davon. (Reflect too about the war against Franco | When you are debating in the salon: | The swine won all his battles | —and what do we have? We have | Songs | The beautiful songs | The sad songs | And we have songs out of it | —only songs out of it.)

Even beautiful and sad songs are no substitute for winning battles. Biermann was acutely aware of the fact that Franco had not been called to account for his crimes, and his Spanish recordings in the mid-s were explicitly intended as a critical response to the GDR’s diplomatic recognition of Franco’s Spain in . Biermann’s critique was not limited to the commemoration of the war, but extended to the veterans themselves. During a meeting with a Spanienkämpfer from Hamburg, Walter T., Biermann was eager to talk about Spain. He asked the older man about the Trotskyists in the International Brigades, to which Walter T. replied that it was impossible to fight a war with them. He went on to say that anyone suspected of being a Trotskyist would be sent on patrol, ‘two of us behind him and the situation was dealt with. It was that easy, my boy!’ By calling into question the morals and behaviour of the International Brigaders, Biermann took a very significant step. He made explicit that Stalinism was not just a problem of the leadership but also seeped down into the rank and file. This represented a considerable problematicization of the war; Spain was not simply representative of ‘good antifascism’, but also of defeat and repression. By making such ‘everyday’ repression visible, he questioned not only the commemoration of the war, but the war itself.    

Ibid., ‘Bedenkelied’, . ‘Das Franco-Lied’, id., Alle Lieder (Cologne, ), –. Robb, ‘Clowns, Songs and Lost Utopias’, . Biermann, Preußischer Ikarus, .

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The Second Generation

S PA I N I N T H E U N D E RG RO U N D P R E S S

Biermann was not entirely alone in his critique of the veterans. In the s, samizdat such as the Umweltblätter, produced by the Umweltbibliothek (Environment Library) in Berlin, and Kopfsprung, published by the Kirche von Unten (Church from Below) put forward a proanarchist, anticommunist view of the war. Their critique of the GDR centred on its repressive, centralist tendencies; as anarchists they were against capitalism and imperialism, but also against state socialism, as it simply concentrated the evils of the capitalism in the state. Members of the opposition tended to deeply mistrust the state’s interpretation of history—a cartoon in Kopfsprung shows a father reading his son’s school report and exclaiming: ‘A  [the lowest mark in the German school system] in history! I’m proud of you.’ Encouraged by glasnost in the USSR, they began to challenge the SED’s appropriation of the antifascist tradition, reclaiming historical figures such as the anarchist Erich Mühsam, and protesting against NVA regiments and barracks being given his name. Groups also carried out informal ceremonies commemorating gay and lesbian victims of Nazism, often leading to conflict with the Stasi. They saw the social revolution which took place in Spain after the outbreak of civil war as a shining example of an anarchist revolution which had been crushed by communism. Along with the Red Army’s liquidation of Nestor Machno’s troops in the Russian Civil War and the Kronstadt rebellion in , it was cited as proof that attempts to put anarchism into practice had been systematically repressed and then ignored by both Marxist-Leninist and bourgeois historians. These samizdat accounts stressed the voluntary nature of collectivization in Spain and the way in which the revolution respected the freedom and rights of individuals, rejecting the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This led to an increase not just in productivity, but also in human happiness: ‘The high moral principle of this revolution also improved people’s relationships  Kopfsprung , Studienmaterial zum innerkirchlichen Dienstgebrauch—Kirche von Unten, Matthias-Damaschk-Archiv, ....  Kopfsprung, no number, n.d.  Umweltblätter,  Sept. , p. , repr. in Die Umweltblätter,  vols. (Berlin, ), i. .  Interview with Marion Selig,  July .  Kopfsprung , ‘Der kurze Sommer der Anarchie. Spanien –: Der Versuch, Anarchie zu verwirklichen’.  Kopfsprung , Studienmaterial zum innerkirchlichen Dienstgebrauch.  Kopfsprung, no number, n.d., ‘Thema—spanische Horizont oder “Freiheit herrscht nicht” ’.

The Second Generation

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with each other, following the slogan: “Hey you, I think a lot of you, now show me what you can do! [Hey du, ich trau dir was zu, nun zeig mal was du kannst!]” ’ The fact that this utopia was perceived to have been brought to an end by the actions of the Soviet Union meant that the International Brigades were often portrayed in an unflattering light. One writer criticized the ‘rationing of information’ on the war, meaning that the Brigades monopolized the historiography, before going on to state in stronger terms: ‘I don’t want to offend any soldiers of the International Brigades. But they were mostly in posh jobs in offices in the towns, well armed with the most modern weapons from the Soviet Union, while the anarchists bit the dust at the front, because they were so badly armed. I think that speaks for itself.’ This resentment towards German communist volunteers was reflected in the common claim that Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi, had been active in the liquidation of anarchists and communists during the Spanish Civil War. Although this may be true (there is certainly a neat symmetry about the assertion that a man who persecuted outsiders in the GDR must have done the same in Spain), there is no proof that this was the case. Although these groups saw themselves as a ‘counter-voice’ to the SED and gleaned much of their information from samizdat editions of Western books or literary accounts such as Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, they were also pursuing an interest sparked by their antifascist education. Even in the official texts, Spain could still seem like a ‘revolutionary moment’, part of the ‘big wide world, which we would have liked to engage with’, meaning that an unintended effect of the SED’s educational policy was to leave a certain section of society with a longing to ‘go away somewhere and support a war of liberation’.  

 Ibid. Ibid. Interview with Marion Selig,  July ; W. Biermann, ‘Ballade der verdorbenen Greisen’, in Alle Lieder, –.  W. Otto’s exhaustive Erich Mielke: Aufstieg und Fall eines Tschechisten (Berlin, ), –, concludes that while Mielke may have carried out interrogations, there is no proof that he had any connections to the NKVD. Otto, Zur Biographie von Erich Mielke: Legende und Wirklichkeit (Berlin, ), . This rumour has outlived the GDR. Cf. J. von Lang, Erich Mielke: Eine deutsche Karriere (Berlin, ), ; Janka, Spuren eines Lebens, , . In , Mielke tried to bring an injunction to stop the distribution of Janka’s book, on the grounds that these allegations were not true. Janka won the ensuing court case. ‘Walter Janka: Es gibt noch viel zu tun’, ND,  Dec. , p. . Cf. B. Lahann, Geliebte Zone: Geschichten aus dem neuen Deutschland (Munich, ), –.  ‘Anarchisten im spanischen Bürgerkrieg—Vorgeschichte’, Umweltblätter, Nov. , contains a lengthy quote from Weiss’s novel.  Interview with Marion Selig,  July .

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The Second Generation

C O N C LU S I O N

For much of the population, however, Spain was at best irrelevant. Thomas Brussig’s comic novel Helden wie wir (Heroes Like Us) demonstrates brilliantly just how empty antifascism looked to many by . The novel is centred on a phallocentric young Stasi employee, Klaus Uhltzscht, who believes that his penis caused the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is the GDR as farce, without any trace of nostalgia or sentimentality. Brussig was an East German ‘outsider’, who worked in a series of menial jobs before the wall came down. As well as satirizing the petty-bourgeois conformity of the GDR and the shabby surveillance activities of the Stasi, his novel lampoons the East German intelligentsia, personified by Christa Wolf, and what he sees as their sentimental attachment to socialism and the GDR. For Brussig, antifascism was a comfort blanket, which helped the post-war generation deal with their feelings of guilt and, later, their knowledge of the GDR’s shortcomings. In a reference to the sort of campfire singsongs criticized by Wolf Biermann, Brussig writes: ‘And today they still rave about true socialism—but really they mean their own campfire feelings.’ Like Biermann, Brussig criticizes unthinking identification with socialism and antifascism. However, what distinguishes him from the other writers in this chapter is his total rejection of socialism, meaning that he is spared an anguished relationship with the party and the past. In an early episode one of Klaus’s teachers is fired for playing a film about the Spanish Civil War backwards, creating ‘unforgettable pictures, for example as a pile of rubble suddenly began to create dust and turned itself into a house or as aeroplanes collected bombs, which spun up into them from underneath, as if they were using a magnet’. For an author with no emotional ties to antifascism, Spain (and the ritualized commemoration of the war) is a part of the heritage of the GDR and as such ripe for ridicule. The memory of the war becomes another farcical episode of East German life, rejected along with the state and the spurious ‘campfire feelings’ of its intellectual caste. Brussig’s irreverent attitude was probably fairly representative of his generation. As Karls Enkel had found to their cost, the heroism of the International Brigades no longer had the ability to stir their audience. Years of SED propaganda meant that only a minority still found inspiration in Spain.  On Brussig, see H. Hollmer, ‘The Next Generation: Thomas Brussig erzählt Erich Honeckers DDR’, in H. L. Arnold (ed.), DDR-Literature der neunziger Jahre (Munich, ), –.  T. Brussig, Helden wie wir (Berlin, ), .  Ibid. –.



Undiplomatic Statements: Censoring Spain The party, veterans, and the second generation gave such different accounts of the war, it is sometimes hard to imagine they were referring to the same events. It is even harder to imagine how these different interpretations coexisted in a dictatorship with a sophisticated censorship system. Those accounts which made it into the public sphere had to make their way through the labyrinthine censorship system first. What is surprising here is the room for manoeuvre available to canny writers. The authorities were, on occasion, open to negotiation. Once published, a precedent was set, and successive generations were able to stretch the boundaries of what could and could not be said about Spain. Although the SED was in the best possible position to enforce its own version of events, somehow, dissenting groups managed to voice their views. Of course, this often took place in private, in letters, around the kitchen table, or in samizdat circulated amongst a small circle of like-minded friends. This was a pale substitute for a robust public debate. But it does show just how resilient individual memories were—even those which directly contradicted the party line did not disappear altogether.

LEVELS OF CENSORSHIP

In theory, censorship did not exist in the GDR. In fact, it was officially banned under the constitution. In practice, however, every book presented for publication had to go through what was known as a Druckgenehmigungsverfahren, or printing permit process. The process of obtaining a permit to print was a long and complicated one which involved author, publisher, the Ministry of Culture, and often the SED. An author  The standard work on censorship in the GDR is S. Barck, M. Langermann, and S. Lokatis’s outstanding ‘Jedes Buch ein Abenteuer’: Zensur-System und literarische Öffenlichkeiten in der DDR bis Ende der sechziger Jahre (nd edn., Berlin, ). Equally indispensible is S. Lokatis, Der rote Faden: Kommunistische Parteigeschichte und Zensur unter Walter Ulbricht

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Censoring Spain

would submit a manuscript to her or his publishers, who would in turn submit it to the Ministry of Culture, along with two readers’ reports. If the Ministry officials judged the manuscript to be acceptable, they issued the all-important Druckgenehmigung (permit to print), without which no book could be published. Censorship could and did take place at various points in this process. Authors censored their own work. Publishing house editors carried out pre-emptive censorship before submitting the manuscript to the Ministry. Ministry officials could either censor suspect manuscripts themselves or direct them to experts in the field. Finally, censorship also took place at the behest of higher party authorities, an unofficial level in the censorship process, dubbed the ‘fourth censor’ by Erich Loest. Even after a book had been published and distributed, it could be recalled from shops and libraries and pulped at the command of Politburo or Central Committee members. Such retrospective censorship could also result in the cancellation of a planned second edition. While it is possible to make certain generalizations about the censorship process, it is nevertheless important to look at specific censorship episodes in order to ascertain how censorship worked in practice. As the title of a recent publication has it, every book was an adventure. Self-Censorship Many authors felt that there was little point in writing material which would never be published. Bodo Uhse described a conversation with Willi Bredel in , in which ‘Bredel described a whole host of episodes to me. And each time he asked: “Can you write about that?” And answered himself: “You can’t write about that.” ’ Uhse tried to persuade him that: ‘ “You can write it all right. You just have to leave it in a drawer. [Man muß es eben liegenlassen.]” ’. But Bredel answered: ‘ “What’s the point of that? Then some editor will come along in twenty years and go at it with a red

(Cologne, ). See also Wichner and Wiesner, Zensur in der DDR. In English, see S. Klötzer and S. Lokatis, ‘Criticism and Censorship: Negotiating Cabaret Performance and Book Production’, in Jarausch (ed.), Dictatorship as Experience, –; R. Darnton, ‘The Viewpoint of the Censor’ in id., Berlin Journal – (New York and London, ), –; R. A. Zipser, ‘The Many Faces of Censorship in the German Democratic Republic, –’, Germanic Review, / (), –.  E. Loest, Der vierte Zensor: Vom Entstehen und Sterben eines Romans in der DDR (Cologne, ).  Barck, Langermann, Lokatis, ‘Jedes Buch ein Abenteuer’.  SadK, Berlin, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, Nr. b, p. : diary entry  June .

Censoring Spain

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pen.” ’ Most International Brigade veterans had a very detailed knowledge of the official narrative of the Spanish Civil War. As good party members, they saw it as their duty to uphold this version of events. To make matters worse, the purges of the early s had left an acute memory of the fate of those whose personal histories did not correspond to the party line. This contributed to a high level of self-censorship, both conscious and unconscious. As the wife of one veteran put it: ‘One stays with the facts which were in the curriculum vitae and fits in with the picture which is generally conveyed . . . The personal, the subjective viewpoint is left behind, and that is a pity . . . That’s only half a life then, the official. What’s the use of that? It’s summarised better in the history books. Self-censorship did not only apply to political matters, but also to aspects of the veterans’ experiences which they felt to be too personal or which strayed too far from the heroic antifascist blueprint. This often meant that the official censors in the Ministry for Culture found little to criticize in the manuscripts they were sent: veterans had done a more thorough job than they ever could have done. Willi Bredel’s novel Begegnung am Ebro is an intriguing example of selfcensorship during the writing process. Bredel began to write the novel in December , while he was living in Madrid working on a history of the Eleventh Brigade. Bredel was far more enthusiastic about his embryonic novel than about his historical ‘duty work’, and by the end of April  the book was almost finished. Even during the writing process, Bredel had struggled to find the right fictional form to express his wartime experiences. Not only had he rewritten certain ‘politically questionable’ passages in a more ‘diplomatic’ fashion, he had also had to contend with critiques of the work in progress sent from Moscow by his wife Lisa Bredel. Lisa, closer to the ‘socialist example’ of the Soviet Union, and perhaps more sensitive to the political climate of the time, advised that the main autobiographical character was not heroic enough and criticized her husband’s portrayal of lax discipline in the International Brigades. Bredel protested that he was trying to show conditions as they actually were, not as they should be in an ideal world. However, these criticisms were repeated after       

Ibid. Interview with Ilse and Roman Rubinstein,  Jan. . SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv, Nr. , p. : letter to Lisa Bredel,  Dec. . Ibid., p. : letter to Lisa Bredel,  Mar. . Ibid., p. : letter to Lisa Bredel,  Apr. . Ibid. Ibid., p. : letter to Lisa Bredel,  Apr. ; p. : letter to Lisa Bredel,  Mar. .

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the book’s publication in , when Heinrich Rau wrote to Bredel, threatening to ‘box his ears’. Like Lisa Bredel, Rau took exception to Bredel’s depiction of discipline in the Brigades, particularly in relation to Schorsch, the brigade commander who is killed in the opening chapters of the book. Although Bredel immediately sent Rau a robust defence of his novel, he clearly took the criticisms to heart. The version of Begegnung am Ebro which was published in the Soviet Zone in  was substantially different to the original version and shows the impact of Rau’s critique. In an episode in the original novel, Schorsch has to be torn away from a drinking session with some Spanish soldiers, and then wanders the streets drinking champagne and cognac until the narrator, who realizes that they are breaking brigade discipline, manages to persuade him to return to the brigade. In the  version, it is Schorsch who brings them back to the brigade. Later, the two are reprimanded for their behaviour. In the original novel, Schorsch can barely conceal his amusement. This disrespectful attitude to party and military discipline has disappeared in the later version, where Schorsch takes the criticism to heart. The revised Schorsch is altogether less laconic than the original version, and the whole tone of the novel has changed. While the original was naturalistic, the revised edition seems more fictionalized and resolved, containing lengthy reflective passages on the nature of the international volunteers and the Popular Front. Bredel’s revision of his novel offers an example of how the experience of war could be mediated over the course of time, and adapted to the demands of politics and genre. Criticism from friends and colleagues was also a very important factor here, especially amongst communist intellectuals. The East German publication process has been described by one writer as ‘censorship without censors’. Many of the actors in the production of a book had a high level of awareness of what was and was not acceptable for publication and were willing to pre-empt the censor in order to prevent gaining a ‘difficult’ reputation. Writers worked on sufferance to the state: if they wished to publish and make public appearances, it was necessary to remain within the boundaries set by the SED. Those who crossed the line risked the banning of their books, revocation of their travelling rights,      

Bredel, Begegnung am Ebro (Paris, ). SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv, Nr. , p. : H. Rau to W. Bredel,  Jan. . SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv, Nr. : W. Bredel to H. Rau,  Jan. . Bredel, Begegnung am Ebro (Paris, ), . Id., Begegnung am Ebro (Berlin, ), , . G. Holzweißig, Zensur ohne Zensor: Die SED-Informationsdiktatur (Bonn, ).

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surveillance by the Stasi, and ultimately either prison terms or exile in West Germany. Writers of the émigré generation tended to have a high degree of identification with the SED; most were long-time KPD members and sometimes functionaries and saw no reason to oppose the party. But this did not mean that their lives were untroubled by conflict between artistic and political considerations. Eduard Claudius, for example, personally disagreed with the severity of censorship practices and criticized them in letters to friends and colleagues such as Willi Bredel and Franz Dahlem. In his memoirs, he even went so far as to describe the attempts of his publishing house to censor one of his novels. But it would have been unthinkable for Claudius to publicly call for the end of East German censorship. Having committed themselves to the party, these first-generation writers found themselves in what Max Kahane, a journalist and party functionary, described as ‘a situation without alternatives’. In fact, some felt that it was the duty of the author to use their ‘inner scissors’ [Schere im Kopf], to avoid difficulties at a later stage, a view described scathingly by Erich Loest: ‘That was a bone of contention amongst writers and functionaries: some called for the inner censor, who was supposed to make his presence felt when something slipped out of the author’s pen which could possibly be exploited by the enemies of socialism. Then this little green man should scratch at the eardrum in the inner ear: Not like that!’ In an attempt to avoid this little green man, some authors ‘wrote for the drawer [für die Schublade schreiben]’, hoping that changes in the political climate would allow them to publish at a later date. In the case of antifascist veterans, many wrote memoirs for the party archive, setting out their version of events for posterity. However, for those who wanted to see their work in print, there was nothing for it but to bend with the wind and try to adapt their work to the censors’ demands as best they could. The next step in this process was the publishing house. Publishing House Censorship Like self-censorship, publishing house censorship attempted to secondguess the official censors in the Ministry of Culture. Many publishers felt  SAdK, Berlin, Willi-Bredel-Archiv, Nr. : Claudius to Bredel,  July ; SAPMO-BArch, NY /, pp. –. Claudius to Dahlem,  Jan. .  Claudius, Ruhelose Jahre, –.  Interview with Max Kahane,  Feb. .  Loest, Der vierte Zensor, .

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that this kind of pre-emptive censorship was necessary in order to preserve good relations with the Ministry. Publishers who submitted too many ‘difficult’ manuscripts soon gained a bad reputation, which led to increased scrutiny and decreased paper supplies. Many of those who worked in publishing were SED members with an acute sense of the party line. While the SED officially played no role in censorship, party censorship was in fact diffused at almost every level of the publication process. Ludwig Renn’s memoir of life in the International Brigades, Der spanische Krieg, is a textbook case of publishing house censorship. Renn had been a commander in the International Brigades and was of the opinion that everything that had so far been written on the Spanish Civil War was either ‘distorted or watered down and slipshod’. He delivered the finished manuscript in January  to his publishers, Aufbau Verlag, the leading literary publishers in East Germany. He sent the head of Aufbau, Erich Wendt, a lengthy letter about how he had written the book, emphasizing from the start how much he had ‘left out’ and ‘held back’, particularly in relation to his disputes with the political leadership of the International Brigades, above all the French communist André Marty. ‘My technique’, he wrote, ‘is to say just as much as is absolutely necessary, and then to let the reader forget Marti [sic] as well as the other unpleasant personalities, so that at the end the greatness of the healthy collective of our comrades becomes really clear.’ Within two weeks, Renn received a letter from one of the editors, who said that the manuscript had made a ‘very deep impression’ on him, but, because the International Brigades had been ‘a party action’, ‘a responsible party comrade’ (probably Politburo member Franz Dahlem) would have to read the book before publication. Renn, a member of the communist party since , agreed wholeheartedly with this course of action, and read the manuscript one more time, to remove ‘a few possible bones of contention’. Amongst other corrections, he rewrote the last chapter of the book, to ‘leave out all unpleasant matters’. There was no doubt in his mind as to who carried the ultimate responsibility for difficult political questions. ‘Here, Comrade Dahlem must simply decide.’ The corrected manuscript was sent to Franz Dahlem by Walter Janka, the deputy head of the publishing house and also a Spanienkämpfer. Janka  

AAV, . Renn to Wendt,  Apr. . On Aufbau, see C. Wurm, Der frühe Aufbau-Verlag –: Konzepte und Kontroversen (Wiesbaden, ), esp. – on Renn’s work.  AAV, : Renn to Wendt,  Jan. .  Ibid.: Schroeder to Renn,  Jan. .  Ibid.: Renn to Wendt,  April .  Ibid.  Ibid.

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promised that all work on the book would be put on hold until Dahlem had ‘examined and judged’ it, and added that he himself found the book ‘really questionable’. Dahlem in turn commissioned two prominent veterans, Heinz Hoffmann and Gustav Szinda, to write reports on the book. Their reports were extremely negative. Renn’s subjective perspective as a ‘private person’,  concentrating on his personal fate and military role, was the target of particular criticism. Both readers felt that the book was too ‘individual’,  and failed to describe the international situation adequately. They also criticized the lack of a party perspective and felt that the criticism of the military leadership, particularly the party cadres, was too strong. Hoffmann wrote: ‘One must not just describe and appraise historical facts and events according to their outward appearance, but one must see the essence of things.’ In this case, the ‘essence of things’ was that Hoffmann and Szinda felt that Renn’s autobiographical approach was completely unacceptable. Szinda wrote, ‘the book should not be printed under any circumstances’, adding, ‘that is not a book, but a meaningless load of rubbish [ein nichtssagender Schmarren]’.  Hoffmann saw the book as of no use ‘for the inspiration and education of our young people, and not even a correct depiction of the historical events’. Like Szinda, he was of the opinion that only accounts which agreed with the party line should be classified as history. Even Bodo Uhse, who wrote in his report for the publishers that the book ‘would prove itself to be the best of the books written about Spain’, felt that publication in full would be a ‘serious political mistake’. This devastating criticism came despite Renn’s careful and repeated self-censorship: as he wrote to the publishers, ‘things were actually much worse’. Based on Dahlem’s verdict that the book was ‘unusable’ and ‘not a real reflection’ of the war, the propaganda section of the Central Committee asked the publishers to refrain from publication. Janka tried to save the book and after a consultation between author and publishers, wrote to Dahlem that they had come to the conclusion ‘that it is possible to make a

        

Ibid., : Janka an das ZK der SED, z.H. des Genossen Franz Dahlem,  May . Ibid.: Hoffmann to Szinda,  June . Ibid.: Szinda to Dahlem,  June  Ibid.: Hoffmann to Szinda,  June . Ibid.: Szinda to Dahlem,  June . Ibid.: Hoffmann to Szinda,  June  SAdK, Berlin, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, Nr. : Hausmitteilung,  May . AAV, : Renn to Wendt,  Jan. . Ibid., : ZK der SED, Abt. Propaganda (Hager) to Janka,  July .

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book which will be useful for us’.  According to Janka, Renn wished to meet his critics to discuss how the book could be improved. However, this never took place, and Renn was neither given an explanation for why his book was not to be published, nor told who had banned publication. In an account published after , Janka blamed Erich Wendt for giving in to party pressure and failing to publish the book. However, there can be no doubt that the decision was Janka’s, albeit on party orders. Just three years later, Janka, now head of Aufbau, reread the book, and came to the opinion that publication was not just ‘possible’, but ‘necessary’. He wrote to Renn that the chances of publication had improved in the last two years:  probably a reference to the relaxation of the political climate since Stalin’s death. Nevertheless, there were conditions: Janka, like Hoffmann, Szinda, and Uhse, demanded that Renn replace his subjective perspective with disciplined party loyalty. Janka advised Renn to reduce his criticism of the KPD’s military cadres to ‘a necessary minimum’, emphasizing the achievements of the International Brigades rather their mistakes. The book which was finally published in , four years after Renn had completed the original manuscript, bears the marks of Janka’s comprehensive changes and deletions. Renn’s depictions of military incompetence and the shooting of deserters had been heavily edited. In the original, Renn emphasized the fact that panic was widespread amongst the troops, and described a episode where a Dutch volunteer who had run away from the fighting was sentenced to death, despite the protests of the Spanish political commissars. Such incidents are absent from the published book, along with the tragicomic episode where Renn’s troops received three lorry loads of pomegranates (Granatäpfel) instead of much-needed hand grenades (Granate). Numerous names had also disappeared from the text, mostly of volunteers who had later broken with the party, or those who had fallen victim to party purges, including the book’s initial censor, Franz Dahlem. Renn and Hans Kahle, the commander of the Eleventh Brigade are virtually the only people who are mentioned by name, giving the reader the 

Ibid.: Janka to Dahlem,  July . Ibid., : Renn to Janka,  Apr. . Janka, Die Unterwerfung, pp. –.  AAV, : ‘Betr.: Ludwig Renn—“Der spanische Krieg” ’,  Aug. .  Ibid.: Janka to Renn,  May .  Ibid.: ‘Betr.: Ludwig Renn—“Der spanische Krieg” ’,  Aug. .  Cf. the original ms: AAV, Ma–b, and the galley proofs Ma–b, which are identical to the published book [Ludwig Renn, Der spanische Krieg (Berlin, )].  AAV, M, pp. , .  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  

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impression that they were the only people at the front. The conflict between German officers, especially between Kahle, Renn, and Richard Staimer, had been toned down, as had Renn’s anger and emotion in the face of military defeat and the death of his friends. As a former First World War German officer, Renn had been scathing about the military capabilities of both the International Brigades and the Republican army. The original manuscript gives a strong impression of the strain Renn and the other officers were under: he describes the cold and hunger and how tiredness and stress led him to break down in uncontrollable tears in front of the troops, and to doubt his own abilities. These indications of human weakness were removed by Janka, as were any implicit references to Renn’s homosexuality, for example references to young, attractive men, and the fact that he shared a bed with his messenger. Perhaps the most blatant changes to the original text came at the end of the book, in the section where Renn described the ‘second action’ of the International Brigades in January , when the German volunteers rejoined the war to cover the Republican retreat. Originally, Renn had voiced grave reservations about this. In his opinion, Catalonia was lost and it made neither military or political sense for the International Brigades to get involved: ‘Should the best proletarian fighters from so many countries sacrifice themselves for a hopeless cause?’ Renn himself was put in charge of the officers’ battalion, which he thought would not be called to the front. These reservations have been totally removed from the published version, in which Renn writes of his ‘great disappointment’ when he is ‘forbidden’ to go to the front. Renn’s memoir was entirely rewritten to fit the prevailing legend of the International Brigades. The story of Renn’s memoirs show how censorship could take place at a number of levels: Renn’s own self-censorship; the ban on publication imposed by Dahlem as a senior party member; the suggestions of Renn’s fellow Spanienkämpfer Hoffmann, Szinda, and Uhse; and finally the censorship of Janka, head of the publishing house. By the time the book was presented to the Ministry of Culture in January , no further alterations were deemed necessary and the permit to print was issued without delay. However, not all publishing houses were as thorough as Aufbau, and in many cases, the Ministry of Culture was responsible for a book’s fate. 

 Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. –. e.g. ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. , . AAV, M, p. .  BArch, DR /a, p. : Druckgenehmigung, Ludwig Renn, Der Spanische Krieg,  Jan. .  

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Ministry of Culture Censorship The section of the Ministry of Culture responsible for censorship was the Chief Administration for Publishing and the Book Trade. Not only did they issue the all-important permit to print, they were also responsible for paper allocation and the planning of future publications—both of fundamental importance in a democratic centralist system such as the GDR. So far as censorship was concerned, if the author and publishers had done their duty, there was no need for the Ministry to involve itself in editing and alterations: its job was to inspect the finished product. In fact, Ministry officials disliked intervening in the publication process, as it could add to production costs and lead to wasted paper, a scarce commodity under state socialism. However, if they felt a book to be suspect, they would direct the manuscript to somebody considered an expert in the field, who would write another report to add to the two submitted by the publishers. In the case of the Spanish Civil War, there were two main sources of experts: the veterans themselves and the IML. The Spanienkämpfer, particularly those who held high-up positions in the party or state apparatus, were often felt to be best qualified to judge the suitability of manuscripts on the war. No less than five veterans were involved in the censorship of Ludwig Renn’s memoirs (six including Renn himself). In the s and s, Franz Dahlem and Hans Teubner were called upon particularly frequently, due to Dahlem’s senior party status and Teubner’s employment at the IML. The fact that these men, who had themselves felt the sharp end of party discipline, were willing to take part in the censorship process not only shows how this process was taken for granted by party members, but also points to the multiple roles played by many within East German society. It was by no means unusual for novelists to write reports for publishing houses or the Ministry on a freelance basis. Many moved between writing, publishing, and working as a cultural functionary. This also added to the importance of good connections and a certain degree of nepotism; as Sylvia Klötzer and Siegfried Lokatis put it: ‘It was not unusual for an author to work as a censor, and for his wife to be in a publishing house, his brother in a literary organisation, his aunt in  On the importance of economic, structural, and organizational factors, cf. S. Lokatis, ‘Einwirkungen des Verlagssystems auf die geschichtswissenschaftliche Forschung der DDR’, in M. Sabrow and P. T. Walter (eds.), Historische Forschung und sozialistische Diktatur. Beiträge zur Geschichtswissenschaft der DDR (Leipzig, ), –.  Klötzer and Lokatis, ‘Criticism and Censorship’, .  Darnton, ‘Viewpoint of the Censor’, .

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radio, and his cousin in the Ministry of Culture.’ On a personal level, good connections could ease the publication process, but as veterans and functionaries, party members and historians, politicians and publishers, writers and censors, individuals felt the strain of conflicting loyalties and responsibilities. All this was good news for the censorship process, meaning that writers and censors were increasingly ‘efficient’. This desire for efficiency also explains the importance of the IML in the censorship process. As a section of the Central Committee, and the main party institution for historical research, the employees of the IML were the unchallenged experts on the history of the labour movement. They were responsible for the production of works such as the eight-volume History of the German Labour Movement (). This ‘modern master narrative’ took on truly canonical status, and all historical works, even historical novels, had to be checked against it. In addition, all publications by ‘leading personalities of the labour movement’, including letters, collections of speeches, and memoirs, had to be approved by the IML. Even disciplined party members could not be trusted, particularly when it came to subjective memoir writing. The East German censorship process worked on the principle of Verantwortlichkeit or responsibility. Each person involved in the publication process was supposed to be aware of her or his responsibilities—as a writer, publisher, or functionary—to the party and the state. Not only did this implicate each of the actors in the censorship process, it also spread the responsibility across many shoulders, often meaning that the official censor had little or nothing to alter. The practice of having an ultimate expert or arbitrator—in the case of Spain, the IML—meant that there was an additional safety net, should this process break down. In most cases, the system worked efficiently, writers and publishers learnt what was expected of them, and the IML nipped any discrepancies in the bud. However, the

 

Klötzer and Lokatis, ‘Criticism and Censorship’, . Darnton, ‘Viewpoint of the Censor’, .  Cf. U. Neuhäußer-Wespy, ‘Der Parteiapparat als zentrale Lenkungsinstanz der Geschichtswissenschaft der DDR in den fünfziger und sechziger Jahre’, in Sabrow and Walter (eds.), Historische Forschung und sozialistische Diktatur,  ff.  On the genesis of the ‘eight volumes’ see Lokatis, Der rote Faden, chs. –.  Klötzer and Lokatis, ‘Criticism and Censorship’, .  AAV, : Ministerium für Kultur. Abt. Literatur und Buchwesen. An alle Verlage der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. z.Hd.d.Verlagsleiters. On the approval and Begutachtung process, cf. S. Lokatis, ‘Geschichtswerkstatt Zensur’, in Sabrow (ed.), Geschichte als Herrschaftsdiskurs, –.

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learning process inherent in East German publishing also meant that writers and publishers could start to use the system to their own advantage. Censorship, like many aspects of the planned economy, could sometimes resemble a prolonged negotiation between author, publisher, and Ministry. In particular, publishers would use readers’ reports to justify publication, listing the reasons why a book deserved to appear in print. An interesting example of such special pleading are the readers’ reports for Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. The book was presented for publication by Aufbau in , and, in terms of East German historical accounts of the Spanish Civil War, was an audacious suggestion. Neither Hemingway’s depiction of bitter conflict within the Left, nor the main character’s passionate affair with a Spanish woman, fitted into the rather dour and one-dimensional picture of the war presented by publications such as Pasaremos and Interbrigadisten, both of which had been produced for the thirtieth anniversary in . Neither the publishers’ nor the external reader’s reports tried to hide the controversial aspects of the book, in fact the external report went to some lengths to detail the controversy surrounding its publication in the West. Their strategy was to emphasize the importance of the collective for Hemingway and present the book as a key stage on Hemingway’s ‘path from isolation into the community [Gemeinschaft]’. Both reports emphasized Hemingway’s support for the Spanish Republic and his powerful depiction of the war. The external reader approvingly quoted Fidel Castro on the book’s educational qualities: ‘it told us about modern Civil War. Other books don’t teach us this.’ Perhaps the thought that lessons learnt in Cuba could also be learnt in the GDR persuaded the Ministry functionaries, for the permit to print was issued within a month and the book appeared in East German bookshops in . The IML do not appear to have been involved in the publication of For Whom the Bell Tolls, proving that some books did slip through their fingers. Had they been given the chance to read the manuscript, it is unlikely that publication would have been so straightforward. The important point was to persuade the Ministry that publication was necessary, for literary or political reasons. By  it was possible for the historian Wolfgang Kießling to write a report for the Hinstorff publishing  BArch, DR /a, p. : Gutachten über Ernst Hemingways Roman ‘Wem die Stunde schlägt’, Karl-Heinz Schönfelder, n.d.  Ibid., p. : Lektor Sigrid Klotz, Gutachen. Ernest Hemingway, ‘Wem die Stunde schlägt’,  Oct. .  Ibid., p. : Gutachten über Ernst Hemingways Roman ‘Wem die Stunde schlägt’, Karl-Heinz Schönfelder, n.d.

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house which recommended publication of Erich Arendt’s Spanish poetry on the grounds that Arendt’s investigation by the party in  had led to his neglect as a revolutionary writer. According to Kießling, publication was important primarily on political, not literary, grounds. Arendt’s bad experiences on his return from exile had led to his estrangement from the party and from his revolutionary past. Publication of his Spanish work would be a way of rectifying this and proving that ‘Erich Arendt belongs to us, to the national literature of the GDR—without any reservations.’ In cases such as those of Arendt and Hemingway, publishers and outside readers could see themselves as enabling publication, rather than acting as censors. In fact, even those who worked for the Ministry sometimes saw their job as getting books through the system, rather than stopping them. Despite the hegemonic aspirations of the East German censorship system, it was neither infallible nor particularly consistent. Books could slip through the net, as in the case of For Whom the Bell Tolls. The extent to which a manuscript was censored often depended on the publishers, their relationship to the Ministry, and the author’s personal contacts. Norms also changed over the course of time, as the case of Renn’s memoirs shows. The tense political situation of the early s was defused somewhat by Stalin’s death, and a de-Stalinization of sorts followed in . A further crackdown followed the Eleventh Plenum of the Central Committee in December  and continued until the beginning of the Honecker era in  signalled a relaxation of control. Furthermore, each book was not censored with the same rigour. This often depended on the book’s publisher. Memoirs which were published by Dietz Verlag, the publishing arm of the Central Committee, and Militärverlag, controlled by the Ministry of National Defence, were very carefully controlled, despite the fact that neither of these publishers were answerable to the Ministry of Culture. Veterans who brought out their memoirs with other publishers had more freedom. The Spanienkämpfer Eduard Claudius published his autobiography, Ruhelose Jahre (Restless Years), in  with Mitteldeutscher Verlag, literary publishers. The



BArch, DR /, p. : Gutachten zur ‘Spanien-Akte Arendt’. Ibid., p. . Darnton, ‘Viewpoint of the Censor’, .  On Dietz, cf. S. Lokatis, ‘Dietz: Probleme der Ideologiewirtschaft im zentralen Parteiverlag der SED’, in C. Jansen, L. Niethammer, and B. Wiesbrod (eds.), Von der Aufgabe der Freiheit: Politische Verantwortung und bürgerliche Gesellschaft im . und . Jahrhundert (Berlin, ), –.  

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publishers’ report emphasized that Claudius’ memories were of a personal nature and were ‘no history book’. This was key—the book was an individual memoir, not a work of historical research, and should not be expected to comply with the standards demanded of history books. However, the publishers still saw the book as a risk, making clear in their report to the Ministry that Claudius had refused to change certain passages (particularly those which referred to publishing in the GDR). This was a way of protecting their own interests, should the Ministry find the book unacceptable. They also emphasized that the manuscript had already been subject to numerous changes, describing it as a ‘strongly revised version’. The Ministry must have shared the publishers’ doubts about the viability of the manuscript, as they commissioned Dr Alfred Klein, an employee of the AdK, to write an additional report. Klein was very positive about the book, but ended with a recommendation that the publishers ‘work particularly carefully’ on the book, to ensure a successful publication. This was enough to persuade the Ministry to issue the permit to print, albeit on condition that Mitteldeutscher Verlag reach an agreement with Claudius on the passages which referred to publishing in the GDR. They also recommended that the appendix with Claudius’ biographical details be removed, as this compromised the ‘character of this fictional [belletristischen] manuscript’. Both Ministry and publishers went to great lengths to emphasize the literary nature of the book, and Claudius was subsequently persuaded to drop the planned index, presumably on similar grounds. However, he refused to accept the other changes, pointing out that he had already given in to the publishers on many points. All parties appeared to have reached an impasse. However, at this stage, Claudius’ personal connections came into play: Bruno Haid, the head of the Chief Administration for Publishing and the Book Trade, rang Claudius and, in exchange for two minor concessions on Claudius’ part, promised him that the book would be published within six months.  BArch, DR /, p. : Verlagsgutachten, Eduard Claudius; ‘Ruhelose Jahre’, Erinnerungen,  Jan. .  Ibid.  Ibid.  Ibid., p. : Alfred Klein, Eduard Claudius, Ruhelose Jahre.  Ibid, p. : Dr. E. Günther, stellv. Abteilungsleiter, to Gen. Fritz Bressau, Mitteldeutscher Verlag,  Mar. .  BArch, DR /, p. : Sachs, Cheflektor Mittledeutscher Verlag, to Genn. Borst, HV Verlage und Buchhandel,  Apr. .  Ibid.  Ibid., p. : Aktennotiz, Betr: Claudius, Ruhelose Jahre, Borst Hauptreferentin,  Apr. .

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The result of this process of negotiation and compromise was a book which was remarkable for the Ulbricht period. Merely in relation to the International Brigades, Claudius described the ‘traitors and weaklings and bandits’ among the communists in Spain, referred obliquely to the fate of the Russian veterans of the Brigades (many of whom were sentenced to death on their return to the USSR), reported conversations with his friends about the negative effect of the Moscow trials on morale in Spain and wrote about his refusal to rewrite his novel about Spain, for the Russian market. Readers’ responses to the book show just how controversial it was. Hans Teubner summarized his criticisms: ‘Not a good book, but worse: a book which damages the party; a book which should not have been allowed to appear in the GDR!’ Teubner objected to the overall tone of the book; to Claudius’ individualism and repeated references to drinking, to ‘criminals, black-marketeers, homosexuals!’ and his visits to bordellos. He was particularly offended by Claudius’ ambivalent attitude to the party and the Soviet Union. ‘A communist writes something like that! It makes me sick!’ Teubner’s protest, coming from a senior employee of the IML, along with a threatened lawsuit by Bruno Goldhammer, was enough to involve the Central Committee’s Department of Culture. The Ministry of Culture’s Fiction Department had evidently slipped up by publishing the book without consulting the IML or higher party instances, and the charade that it was a work of fiction had fooled no one. Teubner’s protest reveals a lot about his expectations of a communist autobiography, no matter who published it: ‘What’s the point of the book? To whom is it of use? Does it communicate a true picture of history? Is it a weapon in the service of our reconstruction and in the struggle against the imperialist enemy? I think: no!’ The Ministry’s embarrassment was consolidated by an RIAS programme about the book. The publishers assured the Central Committee that, in the event of a second edition, the IML would be consulted and the necessary changes carried out. Not all publications unauthorized by the IML got off so lightly, as Erich Glückauf, also a Spanienkämpfer, was to discover just a few years later. 

Claudius, Ruhelose Jahre, , , . BArch, DR /, p. : Prof. Hans Teubner, Einige Bemerkungen zum Buch von Eduard Claudius,  Mar. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. –: Rechtsanwalt Armin Thürmer to the director of the Mitteldeutschen Verlages,  Apr. .  Ibid., p. : Prof. Hans Teubner, Einige Bemerkungen.  Ibid., p. : Dr. Kocialek, Abteilungsleiterin, Abt. Belletristik, Kunst- und Musikliteratur to Gen. Dr. Hans Baumgart, Abt. Kultur, ZK der SED,  June . 

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Glückauf began to write his memoirs, at the behest of the party, in the early s. Like many memoirs, they were aimed at a youthful audience, and, in order to achieve this goal, they were to be published by Neues Leben, a publishing house for young people. The publishers rejected his first attempt as ‘too didactic’, and advised that, for younger readers, it was better to write from one’s own experience. Glückauf did so in no uncertain terms, producing a lively and entertaining manuscript. Unlike many of the interchangeable memoirs published in the GDR, Glückauf ’s was packed with amusing episodes, self-deprecating incidents, and jokes. He was unafraid to describe the normal, unheroic episodes of the exile period— eating, swimming, going out—and avoided the clichéd language used by many memoir writers. Although the publishers did carry out some changes to the original manuscript, they were keen to preserve the tone of the text. The manuscript was sent to the IML, but the publishers chose to ignore their recommendations, feeling they were too pedantic. As the publishers’ report to the Ministry emphasized, Glückauf ’s book was, after all, ‘no Dietz publication’ (a reference to the IML and Central Committee’s in-house publishers), but a ‘readable book for young people’, and therefore not necessarily subject to the standards of the IML. The report gave the impression that the book had been ‘accepted’ by the IML, and the Ministry quickly issued the permit to print. By implying that the manuscript had been approved by three members of the Politburo and that the reports were just a formality, Glückauf had succeeded in pulling the wool over the eyes of the IML’s employees. However, after publication, controversy quickly enveloped the book. References to Herbert Wehner, the former KPD politician who had defected to the West, were the main subject of concern but, as in the case of Claudius’ memoirs, there were also objections to the tone of the book. Glückauf ’s fellow Spanienkämpfer, Karl Mewis, sent Kurt Hager five pages of corrections and objections, mostly centred on Glückauf ’s ‘superficial’ and ‘politically unqualified’ style. He criticized Glückauf ’s ‘dirty’ refer BArch, DR /: Ingeborg Klaas-Ortloff, ‘Erich Glückauf, “Gefahren und Gefährten”—Verlagsgutachten’,  May .  E. Glückauf, Begegnung und Signale: Erinnerungen eines Revolutionärs (Berlin, ).  Cf. ibid. and the original ms, SAPMO-BArch, NY /.  BArch, DR /: Ingeborg Klaas-Ortloff, ‘Erich Glückauf, “Gefahren und Gefährten”—Verlagsgutachten’,  May .  Ibid.: Druckgehehmigung for Erich Glückauf, Gefahren und Gefährten,  June .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, pp. –: Erklärung zu dem Gutachten über das Buch des Genossen Glückauf,  Mar. .  Ibid., p. : ‘Bemerkungen zu dem Buch von E. Glückauf, “Begegnung und Signale” ’.

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ences to women from ‘the horizontal profession’, as well as an episode where a group of coffee-drinking women comment on Dimitrov’s attractiveness. Mewis was particularly concerned that leading communists were not portrayed with sufficient respect, but rather as objects of desire, travelling companions, drinkers, and card players. In fact, one of the IML report writers had objected to the frequent descriptions of meals and day trips, fearing that it might give young readers the wrong impression of the ‘harshness of the struggle’. However, an anonymous employee of the publishing house had annotated this with the comment ‘no!’ and ignored his advice. The IML was left with egg on its face for letting the manuscript through. Humiliatingly, the IML’s director had to write a report stating that the IML had not authorized the manuscript, and all copies of the book were recalled and pulped. Given Mewis’s and Teubner’s damning comments on the memoirs of their Spanienkämpfer colleagues, it might be logical to regard fellow veterans as another, perhaps even the main, hurdle which publications had to clear. This kind of peer-group censorship could be particularly damaging, as antifascist veterans were considered to be experts on the events they had personally experienced. Often, such criticism could stem from personal feuds or a desire to protect their own reputations (Bruno Goldhammer’s threats to sue, for example). However, it is also true that veterans were particularly sensitive to the tone and subject matter of memoirs. The memoirs of Renn, Claudius, and Glückauf were all criticized for being too personal and subjective, which their critics assumed would undermine the serious nature of the antifascist struggle. In their eyes, revising the heroic image of the war might have damaged their prestige as antifascist veterans and, by extension, the SED’s right to rule. In addition, many veterans aimed their memoirs at the young, and felt that they should describe exemplary behaviour rather than amusing incidents. Finally, veterans often treasured their memories of the war, and reacted badly to the suggestion that they might have fought more successfully. By censoring each other, the veterans preserved a one-dimensional view of the war, one which they did not necessarily subscribe to in private communications and conversations. Communists were expected to write serious political memoirs (Mewis’s 

Ibid., p. . BArch, DR /: Prof. Dr. Walter Wimmer an Verlag Neues Leben,  May . Ibid., pp. –: Stellungnahme zum Arbeitsablauf an den Erinnerungen des Genossen Erich Glückauf, IML,  Mar. .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Erich Glückauf), p. : ‘Aktennotiz über Gespräche mit Genossin Edith Glückauf ’.  

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own memoirs were entitled In the Service of the Party), not literary or picaresque accounts of their lives. The fact that Glückauf ’s and Claudius’ memoirs managed to slip past the attention of the IML at all indicates that the cultural atmosphere was somewhat more relaxed, at least in comparison to the early s. This was particularly evident after Honecker’s appointment as general secretary in , and his speech to the Fourth Plenum of the Central Committee in December , where he declared: ‘If one starts from a secure socialist position, there can, in my opinion, be no taboos in the field of art and literature.’ The ‘no taboos’ policy referred explicitly to the cultural sphere, and it is unsurprising that the IML, with its central role in the creation of communist historical orthodoxy, remained relatively unaffected by this new course. However, in comparison to the stagnation apparent amongst political historians, literary critics and literary historians were quick to make use of the new freedoms and relaxation of control. The Biermann affair at the end of  crushed the hopes of many writers that the SED might have adopted a truly liberal course but, for literary historians at least, the s and s were a time of greatly increased freedom. Literary historians, even those who worked on exile antifascist literature, were not subordinate to the IML, and were regarded by ‘party historians’ as marginal to the serious business of the history of the German labour movement. This gave them much greater room to manoeuvre, and literary accounts often pioneered new areas and reintroduced historical figures excluded from mainstream histories, particularly those who had broken with the communist party or fallen victim to Stalinism. The most substantial historical project about the exile period was the series Art and Literature in Antifascist Exile –, published in seven volumes during the period –. The project was initiated by Werner Mittenzwei at the Central Institute for the History of Literature, who coopted collaborators from the AdK, Academy of Sciences, and even from the ranks of the party historians. One of the literary historians who worked on the project pointed to Mittenzwei’s tactic of including people who might otherwise have criticized the project. Another way of protecting the   

Mewis, Im Auftrag der Partei. Quoted in Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR, . D. Schiller, ‘Zur Exilliteraturforschung in der DDR: Ein Rückblick aus persönlicher Sicht’, Exilforschung,  (), –.  On the ways in which literature and history were able to expand the boundaries of public discourse in the GDR, see esp. Helen Bridge, ‘Transforming History: Women’s Prose Writing and Historiography in the GDR’ (Oxford D.Phil. thesis, ).

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project from criticism was to include some of the more liberal party historians with connections to the IML, such as Wolfgang Kießling. The fact that the reports on the manuscripts were written by employees of the Central Institute for the History of Literature, rather than the IML, meant that the standards imposed were those of literary, not political, historians. Silivia Schlenstedt’s section on ‘Exile and Antifascist Struggle in Spain’ contains references to otherwise ignored writers such as the anarchist poet Karl Einstein and ex-communists Gustav Regler and Alfred Kantorowicz, as well as victims of communist purges such as the German writer Maria Osten. This was not to be the last word on Spain: as time went on, the war and its conflicts became more distant and less sensitive, a state of affairs which was reflected in literary historical works. Schlenstedt’s ground-breaking work was followed by a special edition of the literary journal Weimarer Beiträge on ‘The Spanish War and Literature’ in , and a conference in  on ‘Spain : Alliance and Literature’. These publications, which coincided with the beginnings of glasnost in the USSR, stretched the limits of discourse surrounding the war: Schlenstedt’s  article, ‘New Thoughts on Spain and German Antifascists’ emphasized the neglect of non-communist socialists in previous work on German exile, and examined female social democrats Anna Siemsen and Ilse Wolff. These later publications are also marked by their critical reading of memoirs and contemporary documents. Schlenstedt’s dismissed Rudolf Leonhard’s statement that the Spanish people felt not hatred, but forgiveness, towards the Germans after the bombing of Guernica. She saw this as politically motivated ‘pretty idealization’, adding: ‘What the actual reactions of the affected Spaniards were—they must doubtless have been diverse, varied, complex, changing—cannot be reconstructed.’ Whereas political historians saw contemporary accounts as objective representations of events, literary historians were more likely to examine external factors  

Interview with Silvia Schlenstedt,  Apr. . BArch DR /: Dr Wolfgang Klein, Gutachten zum Manuskript ‘Holland und Spanien’ des Projektes ‘Kunst und Literatur im antifaschistischen Exil –’.  Schlenstedt, ‘Exil und antifaschistischer Kampf in Spanien’, –.  Weimarer Beiträge, / ().  C. Giese, ‘Arbeitstagung “Spanien —Bündnis und Literatur” ’, Weimarer Beiträge, / (), –; id. (ed.), Spanien —Bündnis und Literatur: Beiträge einer wissenschaftlichen Arbeitstagung (Berlin, ). I am grateful to Silvia Schlenstedt for access to the protocol of this conference.  S. Schlenstedt, ‘Neues Nachdenken über Spanien und deutsche Antifaschisten’, Weimarer Beiträge, / (), –.  Ibid. .

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which might have influenced a writer. They were also more willing to criticize antifascist writers for overly ideological work, for example Schlenstedt’s critique of an Erich Arendt poem as ‘not a tenable picture of real experiences’. This refusal to see texts as communicating one stable and unmediated message, was a challenge to traditional historiography’s claims to a single, unified, objective view of history. The controversies over the publication of memoirs also demonstrate the existence of two competing views of history: one which accorded to strict laws of historical objectivity and another which, while still Marxist, allowed some place for individual experience and subjectivity. The extra freedoms of the literary sphere, as well as the controls imposed upon it by the state, go some way towards explaining its intense politicization. In the GDR, culture was often used to comment on politics. Volker Braun’s poem ‘Undiplomatic Statement’ was one of the few critical comments on the GDR’s diplomatic recognition of Franco Spain in . Braun was clearly furious that the regime had come to terms with the Spanish dictator and his poem started with the words: Was eigentlich noch Mutet man mir zu und soll ich aushalten Ohne aus der Haut zu fahren Schamrot? (What else | Is expected of me and must I endure | Without hitting the ceiling | Red with shame?)

Braun was clearly disgusted with the contrast between years of heroic tales of Republican Spain and the regime’s realpolitik. His poetry gave him a platform to express this anger and frustration. Other interested parties, for example the veterans, had no such outlet. As Hans Teubner wrote to Franz Dahlem, ‘don’t get angry about things which one cannot get angry about’, i.e. the fact that some people were handling ‘Hangman Franco with kid gloves’. In fact, the literary sphere was a very good place to get angry about things. Literature made it possible to express conflict, particularly the tension between socialist ideals and real existing socialism, in a way unthinkable in the political or historical arenas. This entwinement of  S. Schlenstedt, ‘Neues Nachdenken über Spanien und deutsche Antifaschisten’, Weimarer Beiträge, / (), .  V. Braun, ‘Undiplomatische Äußerung’, Gegen die symmetrische Welt (Halle, ), .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : Teubner to Dahlem,  Mar. .  S. Barck, M. Langermann, J. Requate, ‘Kommunikative Strukturen, Medien und Öffentlichkeiten in der DDR’, Berliner Debatte INITIAL, / (), .

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literature and politics is illustrated by Anna Seghers’s novella, Der gerechte Richter (The Just Judge). Seghers, one of the most senior antifascist novelists in the GDR, had spent part of her exile years in Mexico, where she became friends with Walter Janka. Upon their return to Germany, Seghers continued her writing career as Janka became head of the Aufbau publishing house. After Janka’s arrest in December , he was accused of attempting to bring the philosopher Georg Lukács from Hungary to East Germany to act as the intellectual leadership of a planned counter-revolution. In fact, it had been Seghers who suggested that Janka travel to rescue Lukács after the Soviet invasion of Hungary. However, she failed to come to Janka’s defence and sat in silence throughout his show trial. Janka remained very bitter about this betrayal, as demonstrated by his book on the trial, published in . She of all people should not have shirked her responsibility. If only because she was the most famous woman who could have afforded to lend her voice to the truth. A little bit of courage would not have harmed her reputation or endangered her position. Even Ulbricht would not have dared to let her be imprisoned or even bothered. She knew all this. But she still stayed mute.

Whatever Seghers’s position, she was clearly affected by the trial, and she subsequently wrote the novella Der gerechte Richter, seemingly as a response to Janka’s imprisonment. It was published posthumously in , possibly due to her executors’ wish to defend her reputation in the face of Janka’s attacks. The novella centres on the trial of a Spanish Civil War veteran, Viktor Gasko (modelled on Janka), and its effects on the young public prosecutor Jan, the ‘just judge’ of the title. Jan cannot accept that Gasko is guilty of his crimes and is himself sentenced to prison. There he meets Gasko and the two are reconciled. Seghers makes clear that Jan’s was the right course of action, and the last sentence of the novella begins: ‘They had remained steadfast for themselves and for everybody, and even if they were not celebrated for it, it remained a victory.’ While it could be argued that Seghers’s fictional characters are made to compensate for their author’s non-fictional shortcomings, it is telling that Seghers chose to respond to the trial in this way. Despite the fact that the novella remained unpublished  

Janka, Spuren eines Lebens , . Cf. J. K. A. Thomaneck, ‘Anna Seghers and the Janka Trial: A Case Study in Intellectual Obfuscation’, German Life and Letters,  (), –.  Janka, Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit, .  A. Seghers, ‘Der gerechte Richter’, Sinn und Form, / (), –.  Ibid. .

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during her and the GDR’s lifetime, it remains an interesting example of a literary response to a highly political matter. Writers and artists occupied a unique position in East German society. Their closeness to the state certainly limited their ability to oppose the regime openly. It is also true that literature and culture were used by the SED as valuable tools of legitimation and propaganda. However, as David Bathrick argues in his ground-breaking study The Powers of Speech, their relationship to the regime gave intellectuals a platform and allowed them to make important and critical contributions to GDR discourses about history and politics. Their ability to add new perspectives to public life was directly related to their cooperation with the regime. While this limited the views they were able to express, it did not necessarily make them any less influential. On the contrary, their privileged position within the state meant that they could influence public discourse in a way which was impossible for isolated members of the opposition, who were unable to make their voices heard. Literature could act as an ersatz source of information. For Whom the Bell Tolls, mentioned above, dealt with political conflict in Spain in a way unthinkable in a historical account, as did Peter Weiss’s Die Ästhetik des Widerstands. Both these books contained information which could not be found elsewhere. The writer Günter Kunert expressed this in  by describing literature as a ‘unique playground for deviant views about the world and the only place where readers find things that move and really affect them. In this way, literature has become in the GDR an ersatz for information: for instance, in literary travel descriptions or even as history lesson.’ But literature was not the only ‘playground’ where deviant views could be expressed.

P U B L I C A N D P R I VAT E S P H E R E S

The existence of a public sphere in the GDR is debatable, certainly in the Habermasian sense of a civil society where citizens can freely debate the issues of the day. Nevertheless, debate and discussion were not impossi 

 Quoted ibid. . Bathrick, Powers of Speech, esp. ch. . On this, cf. ibid. –; S. Barck, C. Classen, and T. Heimann, ‘The Fettered Media: Controlling Public Debate’, in Jarausch (ed.), Dictatorship as Experience, –; Barck, Antifa-Geschichte(n), ; Bathrick, Powers of Speech, –. On Öffentlichkeit and the public sphere, see A. Strum, ‘A Bibliography of the Concept Öffentlichkeit’, New German Critique,  (winter ), –.

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ble. David Bathrick describes the emergence of three major public spheres in the GDR, the first being the official public sphere, controlled by the SED. The second public sphere was created by the constant presence of Western TV and radio. To this could be added, in the specific case of the Spanish Civil War, the Western literature available to academics in the Giftschränke or ‘poison cupboards’ of libraries. The third public sphere was created by the growing number of groups—writers, environmentalists, Church activists, musicians, and so on—who sought to engage in critical dialogue with the regime. East German citizens did discuss and debate important issues, past and present, both with each other and even with the regime, for example in the form of petitions to the government or letters to newspapers and magazines. In the case of Spain, semi-public spheres were an important space for individuals to develop their own interpretations of the Spanish Civil War, as well as providing them with additional information about the war. Such accounts of the war were not necessarily oppositional. Veterans’ memoirs and reminiscences are an example of how unofficial accounts could offer an alternative picture of the war without being intended as a political challenge. Veterans who would not have dreamt of questioning the party’s authority nevertheless described a very different war to that in official histories. Letters between veterans show a strong sense of group identity and comradeship. Within their veteran community, they did not always feel the need to tell heroic tales of war, but often remembered funny, risqué, or grotesque experiences. One veteran wrote about how he and his comrades had requisitioned two pigs, with the intention of fattening them up, but they only had peas to feed them, and eventually had to shoot them when their flatulence became unbearable. Another remembered a twoday journey on a donkey, which left him so saddle-sore that Finnish partisans had to dress his wounds with olive oil, leaving him feeling ‘like a skinned rabbit’. Memories of the privations and hardships of army life symbolized their shared bond of experience: the same veteran recalled how a lack of provisions meant that the soldiers had to eat unripe grapes. This led to what he described as ‘volcanic’ diarrhoea amongst the troops, often resulting in a loss of bowel control. However, despite the misery of the situation, he concluded, ‘we helped each other, often with good humour, to get 

Bathrick, Powers of Speech, . Cf. Leon Quinn, ‘The Politics of Pollution? Environmentalism, Government and Mass Opinion in the GDR’ (Ph.D., University of Bristol, ) on environmental petitions.  SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Richard Stahlmann), p. .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Reinhold Hentschke), pp. –. 

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over these difficulties’. A fellow International Brigader remembered wryly the infestation of lice in their sleeping quarters: ‘The lice in the straw of the leaking stables had changed owners. Had sat on the militia members of the first days, had been members of all different brigades. Even if the character of the army had changed, the lice stayed the same.’ Veterans’ private discourse was often about the everyday, personal aspects of the war, such as women or food, which were considered unsuitable subjects for published accounts of the heroism of the International Brigades (as the fate of Erich Glückauf ’s memoir demonstrated). One Spanienkämpfer sent Franz Dahlem an account of the celebrations in Torija after the battle of Guadalajara. To the accompaniment of an old barrelorgan in the village square, Lise Lindbaek—a Norwegian journalist and writer—tall and strong, a beautiful woman by any standards, asked the smaller, slim Spanish major to dance. Franz Raab, battalion commander, slender and supple, in a clean uniform, bowed down very charmingly to a very fat Spanish peasant woman and asked her to dance too. We couldn’t have wished for a better start—applause and happy faces all round. Torija market became the scene of hundreds of international dancing couples, merry, positive, optimistic, progressive people.

As in this funny and touching scene, contact with women was often among veterans’ fondest and most vivid memories of the war. Richard Stahlmann remembered how partisans would be rewarded for good work with a trip to the nearest town and the chance ‘to be together with a woman’. Even Karl Mewis, Glückauf ’s sternest and most moralistic critic, wrote the following Hemingwayesque passage about his visit to a Spanish bordello: ‘Anis, vermouth, wine: the guests feasted on all the drinks of Spain, including the wonderful manna, which tastes sweet like milk and honey and bitter like the kiss of a woman who fears that she could lose all inhibitions. You just had to let yourself fall into this sea of feeling and not think any more, just swim, leisurely, pleasurably.’ This episode was removed from Mewis’s memoirs before publication. The censorship of memoirs gives a unique insight into the interaction between public and private discourses, exemplified by the publication of Brigada Internacional, a collection of veteran memoirs, in .  

SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Reinhold Hentschke), p. . SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V //, p. : Edy Brendt, Erinnerungen an Max Schmidt.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : letter from Willi Bick to Franz Dahlem.  SAPMO-BArch, SgY /  (Erinnerungen Richard Stahlmann), p. .  SAPMO, B.Arch, SgY //, p. .  Cf. ibid., p.  with Mewis, Im Auftrag der Partei, .

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

In  the history commission of the Sektion Spanienkämpfer sent veterans an appeal for memoirs. The book had originally been Franz Dahlem’s idea; he was so impressed by the reminiscences veterans had sent him as a birthday present in , he decided they should be published. The IML was co-opted to oversee the project, with the Militärverlag as publishers. The raw material for the book comprised Dahlem’s letters, some memoirs in the IML’s archives, and the contributions sent in response to the appeal. Most of this had been written by veterans for veterans and was judged by the IML to be unsuitable for publication. They felt that the veterans had overemphasized individual battles at the expense of the political side of the war. Publication was impossible, as there were not enough contributions from leading party functionaries. Dahlem proved to be the book’s staunchest defender, commenting, ‘one must fight ideologically for the book!’ He wrote to the director of the IML that the memoirs should not lie in the archive ‘like in a coffin’. For Dahlem, the answer lay in a careful editing (Bearbeitung) of the material, despite the fact that the book’s unique selling point was that it was written by veterans and that the memoirs had ‘individual characteristics’.  Accounts which were acceptable for the archive or as a birthday tribute, had to be considerably altered for publication. The writer and Spanienkämpfer Hanns Maaßen was recruited to edit the book. This process affected not just the content of the memoirs, but also their style and even grammar. The veterans had written predominantly in the present tense, which was changed by Maaßen to the past tense, thereby losing much of the direct and urgent nature of the originals. Slang and colloquial expressions were also excised—‘freshly-baked political commissars’ were replaced by ‘newly appointed political commissars’. Maaßen took pains to tone down the colourful and lively language of the originals. In Fritz Rettmann’s article about the battle for Madrid, ‘the dead and wounded are piling up in the rooms’, was changed to the much less vivid 

SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. . SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV A /./: Mammach, ‘Bermerkungen zum vorliegenden Material’,  Jan. .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. .  SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV A /./: Dahlem to Heyden,  Dec. .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p..  Cf. SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//: Willi Busch, ‘Als deutscher Antifascist kämpfte ich in Spanien’ with W. Busch, ‘Von Long Island an die Pintoquebrücke’, in Brigada Internacional, i. –.  Cf. SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V// with Fritz Rettmann, ‘Die Rolle des Politkommissars’, in Brigada Internacional, i. . 

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‘the number of dead and wounded got bigger all the time’. In another chapter, tanks which had ‘come storming along’, ripping ‘huge holes’ in houses, are merely ‘put on standby’ and place houses ‘under fire’. Some of the memoirs, which were written in a very basic, conversational style, were entirely rewritten. The result was a homogenized account, written by a single author, not numerous veterans from different class and educational backgrounds. In additional to such linguistic changes, details were removed which were not considered suitable or did not present a good example for young people, for example the fact that the soldiers had drunk schnapps instead of water during the battles. As an editor, Maaßen was remarkably lax about historical accuracy, later admitting to a fellow veteran that he had written some of the contributions which appeared under other names. He was also prone to removing sections of the memoirs which described military difficulties or problems. Such falsifications and changes serve to demonstrate the delicate nature of the original material and the extent to which the Spanienkämpfer establishment felt the need to protect itself against this challenge. The veterans’ ‘inappropriate’ memories of the immediacy of war, the discomforts of army life, and the solace offered by prostitutes offer an alternative perspective on life in the International Brigades and contest the official picture of brave, immovable, disciplined soldiers. Veterans’ memories were also preserved within the family. One veteran’s wife described how her husband remembered Spain and his life history: ‘Well . . . during the fifty years we have known each other, something comes together over the course of time, doesn’t it? And that often doesn’t have anything to do with party resolutions. And, on the other hand,  Cf. SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//, p.  and Fritz Rettmann, ‘Der Kampf um den Gutshof bei Palacete’, in Brigada Internacional, i. .  Cf. SAPMO-BArch, SgY/ (Erinnerungen Hermann Teichmann), p. , with Brigada Internacional, i. .  Cf. Henry Hadlich, ‘Ein schwere Verlust für das “Beimler”-Bataillon’, in Brigada Internacional, ii. – with his memoir in SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//, p. .  Cf. SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Wilhelm Grunert), p. , with W. Grunert, ‘Der Kampf um das Maschinenhaus’, in Brigada Internactional, i. –.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /K /: Karl Kormes to Karl-Heinz Gittler,  Sept. .  Cf. SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Franz Plura), pp. – with F. Plura, ‘Beim Panzereinsatz vor Penarroya’, in Brigada Internacional, i. –.  On the transmission of history within the family, cf. S. Moller, ‘Erinnerte Geschichten in der Generationenfolge’, Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie, / (), –; id. and K. Tschuggnall, ‘Familienerinnerungen: Kriegserlebnisse in den Geschichten dreier Generationen’, in E. Domansky and H. Welzer (eds.), Eine offene Geschichte: Zum kommunikativen Tradierung der nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit (Tübingen, ), –.

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a lot to do with them.’ Clearly, remembering within the family was a much more private and daily process than public speeches or commemorations. The daughter of a Jewish International Brigade veteran remembered how, when she sat on her father’s knee, instead of playing horses like other children, she would sing Spanish Civil War songs with him. As she put it: ‘I knew the melodies better than any children’s song. They were the history of my father.’ For this woman, the history of resistance was part of the daily fabric of family life. But it was also a weighty topic which hung over the history of her family—she remembered relatives with concentration camp tattoos on their arms and her realization at a young age that if she had been born twenty years earlier, she probably would have been killed in Auschwitz. Bodo Uhse’s son remembered his father’s Spanienkämpfer friend, Kurt Vogel, telling seemingly fantastic tales of the war, one of which, ‘the Beer March to San Mateo’ is worth quoting at length to give a flavour of these informal memories: Because the field hospital was overcrowded and in danger of being shelled, several hundred of the most severely wounded, Kurt among them, were carted by freight train toward Madrid. The train was attacked by Stuka fighters—the locomotive smashed, more than half the men killed . . . A long, tortuous trek then across the Sierra, under the burning sun, ‘the half dead supporting the half alive’, the onearmed leading the one-legged, the blind hanging on to the lame, everyone dragging crutches and splints and bloody bandages, and also a few guns . . . At long last, a village emerged on the horizon, quavering like a mirage. But it was real . . . what I’m not likely to ever forget is Kurt’s account of the beer battle itself. It began with the discovery of a keg of unpolluted, indeed excellent, beer in the village tavern. Since just a few mugs could be found, a trough was hauled in and the tap was opened over it, and then the wounded men crouched and lay down and ducked and slurped and all but drowned themselves in the good beer until their thirst was slaked and, needless to say, they were drunk. Shortly after, a truck came rolling into town and pulled up right in front of the tavern. Inside the truck were four casually chatting Fascist soldiers—just for a moment. The next moment they were dead. Even drunk amputees can shoot an enemy at close range, particularly when he is too surprised to reach for his gun. In the back of the truck were two machine guns and a number of submachine guns, rifles, hand grenades, what have you . . . That danger was approaching was written plainly on a sheet of paper found on one of the dead Fascists. Troops were scheduled to arrive at this and that time. Herculean labor of hauling the machine guns into position, of dragging furniture, boxes, mattresses, barrels, and the Fascists’ truck into the semblance of a barricade. (Note that the truck wasn’t used to escape.) The Fascists came, a slow convoy of trucks, jeeps, and  

Interview with Ilse Rubenstein,  Jan. . Von Wroblewsky, Zwischen Thora und Trabant, p. . Interview with Sonja Beckmann.

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motorcycles down the long, curving road. The machine guns opened fire. Kurt shoved glasses, matchboxes, ashtrays about: this is where we were, here was the road, here was where they tried to encircle us . . . and so forth. The Fascists were put to rout.

Like the stories that veterans told each other, this tale is extraordinarily vivid and full of humour. The image of the wounded veterans slurping at a trough of beer was one which sat uneasily with the party’s image of the Brigades as a disciplined modern army and would not have made its way into an official account, but it had a huge impact on Vogel’s audience of family and friends. Sometimes, the children of veterans picked up on sensitive aspects of their family histories. This was particularly true for the children of Jewish veterans, who parents were often reticent about their religious background. Sonja Beckmann, the daughter of a Jewish Spanish Civil War veteran, remembered: As a child, I wanted my mother to tell me why she had emigrated to England with her parents. Because the grandparents were communists—and after a little pause: and Jews. It wasn’t because they were Jews and communists, the first reason was always, because they were communists. I therefore grew up conscious of the fact that I came from a communist family, the Jewishness remained unspoken, but it was somehow present.

This awareness of Jewishness was despite the fact that the family did not have a specifically religious identity and did not celebrate Jewish festivals. ‘We didn’t have a menorah on the shelf, we had a white plaster relief of Lenin hanging above it, and inside [on the shelf] were his and Stalin’s collected works—bound in brown.’ Frank Stern has described how antifascism became a political religion for many Jewish returnees to the GDR. Not only did it offer the means to rebuild Germany along communist and humanitarian lines, but it also provided a identity which was shared with other, non-Jewish, Germans. This was a way of overcoming the alienation felt by many in the wake of the Holocaust. Identifying themselves as resistance veterans allowed them to assimilate into East German society. Interestingly, it was often the children of Jewish veterans who rediscovered their religious identity. For Sonja Beckmann antifascism was also a part of a secular Jewish identity. ‘For me,  

.



Agee, Twelve Years, –. Interview with Sonja Beckmann in von Wroblewsky (ed.), Zwischen Thora und Trabant, Stern, ‘Return to the Disowned Home’, .

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being Jewish was connected—in relation to my family—always only with resistance, never with religion or tradition.’ Even though she described her Jewish identity as ‘really diffuse . . . I would never have said, I am a Jew, that came later’, Beckmann’s willingness to engage with the issue of her religious background is indicative of a generational divide in attitudes to Judaism. Discourse about Jewish identity changed considerably during the lifespan of the GDR, moving from the virulent anti-Semitism of the early s to the relaxation of taboos in the Honecker era. Partly influenced by West German attempts to ‘come to terms with the past’ and in particular the Holocaust, discussion of Judaism and Jewish identity became more acceptable, at least in intellectual circles. One indication of this was the rediscovery of Judaism by the children of veterans. These second-generation antifascists began to see themselves as Jews, sometimes to the dismay of their parents. Communists who had spent their lives downplaying their Jewish identity (often out of a sense of self-preservation) could not understand their offspring’s sudden interest in the subject, dismissing it as ‘fashionable’ and trivial. This is evident in interviews carried out in  with Ursula and Alfred Katzenstein. The Katzensteins had suffered anti-Semitism at the hands of the SED on their return to the GDR in , and the message that Judaism and communism were mutually exclusive seems to have been one that they had internalized. Alfred Katzenstein told the interviewer that his two daughters were  or  before they realized they were Jewish: ‘it never played any special role for us’. Later in the interview, Ursula Katzenstein admitted that their children had started to take some interest in their Jewishness because ‘it’s “in” right now . . . it’s very fashionable to play that up’. However, her husband was keen to emphasize that their interest was ‘not very serious’ and assured the interviewer that ‘our children are not members of the Jewish community’. Their daughter, Kate Leiterer, however, was happy to describe herself (in an interview carried out in the early s) as ‘a convinced communist of Jewish origins’ and said that in countries such as the Soviet Union and Poland she would always say ‘ “I am not a German”, meaning that I am a Jew’.  

AdK.   

Von Wroblewsky, Zwischen Thora und Trabant, . Cf. Fulbrook, German National Identity after the Holocaust, p.  on debates within the

Ostow, Jews in Contemporary East Germany, . Ibid. . J. Borneman and J. M. Peck, Sojourners: The Return of German Jews and the Question of Identity (London and Lincoln, Nebr. ), .

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This is not to say that religious identities disappeared completely in first generation Jewish returnees. When Ursula Katzenstein was asked whether her daughters had married non-Jews, although she answered ‘yes, of course’, she described the way in which one daughter had met her husband in terms of religious traditions and rituals: the other husband is the son of an anti-Fascist resistance fighter, also a member of the International Brigade, like Alfred is. Alfred and the father knew each other already in Spain . . . one day he said to Alfred: ‘Well, you know, my son needs a wife; he needs a girlfriend, and I like your daughters very much.’ . . . We knew the parents; she knew the parents too, and we were all members of the Socialist Unity Party. So we invited them . . . They came; the father sat here, and the mother sat there, and the son sat there, and we sat on this side of the coffee table. It was just like in the old Jewish families with the schadchen (matchmaker). And it worked.

Although the bonds of shared exile experience and party membership had replaced those of religion, Ursula Katzenstein still drew the comparison with Jewish tradition. The kinship between Spanienkämpfer may have been different to that of a shared religion, but Katzenstein sees them in similar terms, demonstrating the sometimes unconscious interplay of different identities. In some families, private memories replaced public memories altogether. Walter Janka was effectively banned from public life after his release from prison. Despite this, he wrote a lengthy memoir, covering both his time in the International Brigades and his time in prison. Obviously, there was no prospect of publication, and, given that the Janka family was under constant secret police surveillance, this was a risky activity. There would have been severe repercussions had the manuscript been discovered. Janka’s wife typed three copies of the manuscript and gave one each to their daughter and son, symbolically entrusting them with their father’s history and also spreading the burden of concealing the manuscript. None of the copies were ever discovered and Janka’s memoirs were published in full in , after the collapse of the GDR. Like Janka, other veterans wrote memoirs they thought they would never see in print. Rudolf Michaelis, a former anarchist volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, had his memoirs published in West Germany and gave private talks in East Berlin. This kind of activity became increasingly  

Ostow, Jews in Contemporary East Germany, .  Janka, Spuren eines Lebens. Interview with Charlotte Janka,  Apr. .  H. J. Degen, ‘ “Die Anarchie ist möglich . . .” Zum Tode von Rudolph “Michel” Michaelis’, direkte aktion,  (Mar./Apr. ), –.

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

common in the late s and s as more semi-public, non-official spaces for debate began to appear. While the songs of Wolf Biermann or the samizdat produced under the umbrella of the church could not hope to match the distribution of SED-sponsored accounts, they nevertheless offered an alternative reading of the war. Biermann’s records only appeared in West Germany, but copies of the songs and their lyrics were passed from hand to hand in the GDR. Samizdat were virtually the only forums where pro-anarchist, anticommunist views of the war could be expressed openly. Under the terms of the Church–State agreement of March , the Church was allowed to produce these papers on the understanding that they were for circulation within the Church only. However, not all the members of the GDR opposition who wrote for these papers were members of the Church, and there was no means to guarantee that the samizdat, passed hand to hand, would stay within Church circles (the Umweltblätter had a circulation of about ,, Kopfsprung a more modest ).

C O N C LU S I O N

For an East German audience skilled in the art of reading between the lines and seeking out alternative sources of information, a footnote or an allusion in a poem were as important as a headline in Neues Deutschland. These contestations of the official narrative performed an important function in challenging the party’s control of information and its attempts to project a unified positive image of the war. The memories of the veterans, with their emphasis on everyday events, also provided another perspective on the experience of war—the view from below—and acted as a corrective to the heroization and idealization of the international volunteers. The fact that the loudest objections to the publication of ‘inappropriate’ memoirs often came from the veterans themselves demonstrates the extent to which they had invested in this idealized picture of the war. While the memories they shared with each other or wrote for the archive often dwelled on the personal aspects of the conflict, many felt that for the war to have any educational or propaganda value, it had to be presented from the ‘objective’ viewpoint of the party. However, memoirs written for the ‘desk drawer’ and memories rehearsed within the family or the Spanienkämpfer community show the desire on the part of some veterans to preserve their experiences 

Cf. E. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR – (Bonn, ), ch. .



Censoring Spain

despite prevailing control and censorship. While no account could entirely escape the ‘little green man’ of self-censorship, private reminiscences allowed even those like Janka and Michaelis, who were excluded from public discourse, to remember the war. Equally, those accounts which did make it past the publisher were often the result of negotiation and compromise. Authors, publishers, and functionaries who were prepared to push the limits of acceptability were able to expand the boundaries within which the war could be discussed. Nevertheless, there were certain topics which remained almost completely taboo, chief amongst them the knotty issue of Stalinism.



Stalinism and Silence Thanks to eyewitness accounts such as Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and an extensive historiography of political repression in Spain, Western readers have come to see Stalinism as a central part of the Spanish Civil War. The East German reading public, however, was presented with a negative of Western historiography. The phenomenon of Stalinism was almost entirely absent in GDR accounts, and the word itself was almost totally taboo. If the problem was referred to at all, it was under the guise of ‘the cult of personality’, referring specifically to Stalin himself. Political repression in the GDR was also a no-go area, and the victims of the political purges of the s and s remained unmourned. The dual taboo of Stalinism went well beyond the bounds of the Spanish Civil War to cover virtually any negative aspects of the communist movement, before and after the founding of the GDR. The ‘Stalinism’ in question in this chapter refers to certain elements of communist political culture. At the heart of this phenomenon was a conviction that, as the GDR national anthem put it, ‘the party is always right’. This allergy to criticism and debate went beyond Marxist historical determinism to produce an often fanatical anti-factionalism, where anyone who criticized the party, whether from within or without, had to be silenced or discredited. The resultant siege mentality, where ‘he who is not with us is against us’, led to an almost pathological fear of infiltration from the enemy camp, with an unending search for agents and saboteurs. This Stalinist mentality enjoyed a remarkable longevity in the German communist movement, its continuity stretching from the Weimar-era KPD to the SED of the s. While the worst excesses of Stalinism took place in the period  On political purges in Spain cf. von zur Mühlen, ‘Säuberungen unter deutschen Spanienkämpfer’; Richardson, Comintern Army, ch. ; S. Courtois and J.-L. Panné, ‘L’Ombre portée du NKWD en Espagne’, in S. Courtois et al., Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression (Paris, ), –. These accounts are necessarily limited by their lack of archival material. Huber and Uhl, ‘Politische Überwachung und Repressionen in den Internationalen Brigaden’; Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire, ch. ; and Skoutelsky, L’Espoir guidait leurs pas, ch.  demonstrate how use of the Moscow archives can produce a more detailed and nuanced view of this topic, although Huber and Uhl stress that even these new sources cannot give the final word on repression within the Brigades.

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Stalinism and Silence

between  and the death of Stalin in , the SED’s attitude towards political debate within its ranks remained, demonstrated by the fate of dissidents such as Wolf Biermann. Communist behaviour in Spain was directly linked to the treatment of party members in the GDR and historiographical intolerance towards those who disagreed with the communist party. Ultimately, neither East German society nor communist historiography was sufficiently de-Stalinized to allow a thorough examination of the phenomenon of Stalinism.

S OV I E T I N T E RV E N T I O N A N D P O L I T I C A L D I S C I P L I N E

The issue of Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War was an area where East German historians adhered particularly closely to the line taken by their colleagues in the USSR. Until Stalin’s death, the USSR denied any military involvement in Spain. After the end of the Spanish Civil War in , and particularly after its entry into the Second World War in , the Soviet Union was anxious to counter any suggestions that it might have played an active role in the Spanish Civil War, preferring instead to present itself as a genuine adherent to the Non-Intervention Pact. Many GDR accounts followed this line to the letter: Walter Ulbricht‘s collected speeches and essays, published in  and crucial to the establishment of East Geman historiographical norms, totally denied Soviet intervention in Spain. In fact the picture of the war that emerges from Ulbricht‘s speeches is very different to later GDR accounts: the war is presented as a national, internal matter and the International Brigades are not mentioned at all. The failure to mention the International Brigades may, of course, have been related to the political climate of the early s and the fact that the Spanienkämpfer had fallen into disrepute. Be that as it may, denial of Soviet military aid to Spain and a focus on the national, rather than international, aspects of the war were common in early GDR accounts. Some historians attempted to emphasize the humanitarian aid sent by the USSR, while avoiding the implication that the Soviet Union had helped the Republic more than other countries had. One book of documents, edited by the IML and published in , goes to great lengths to equate Soviet aid with that  W. Ulbricht, ‘Gendarm Europas’, in id., Zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung: Aus Reden und Aufsätzen, ii. – (Berlin, ), .  Id., ‘Wofür kämpft das spanische Volk?’ in id., Zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, .

Stalinism and Silence



sent by other countries, juxtaposing a photograph of a Soviet steamer delivering food with a picture of an ambulance donated by American workers. However, the taboo of Soviet military intervention was hard to enforce, particularly in accounts which were subject to less stringent control. A speech prepared in  by a regional branch of the VVN for use in schools asserted that the Soviet Union was the only country to help the Spanish Republic, sending ‘help and weapons and other war materials’. Similarly, an information pack produced by the VVN in  refers to the Soviet Union sending ‘all kinds of the most modern weapons’. That gaffes of this sort could take place indicates the threat posed by the VVN to a homogenous account of antifascism and may have contributed to its dissolution in early . However, references to Soviet military aid sometimes even slipped through the censor’s net: some mentions of ‘Soviet military advisers’ remain in Ludwig Renn’s heavily censored memoir of the war. (However, many references to Soviet ‘advisers’ had been removed, and at one point two advisers, Generals Pavlov and Petrovich, are conflated into the single figure of ‘General Ivanov’.) Such dilemmas dissipated after Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ at the  Twentieth Party Congress in the Soviet Union, when former Soviet officers and diplomats who had been in Spain but had fallen victim to Stalin’s purges were rehabilitated and allowed to publish their memoirs. The impact of this was gradually felt in the GDR, and the Soviet Union eventually came to be portrayed as Spain’s ‘only true friend’. ‘The homeland of October, supported by the unconquerable power of proletarian solidarity, born of class battles high in sacrifice, always stayed true to the noble principle of revolutionary internationalism.’ The anthology Pasaremos, first published in , included memoirs written by Soviet officers, although many continued to take a cautious approach to such a sensitive topic. In an interview published in the s, General Nesterenko, a former Soviet military adviser in Spain, claimed that there had only been fifteen 

Der Freiheitskampf des spanischen Volkes und der internationale Solidarität, –. SAPMO-BArch, DY /SgY /V//, p. : Referat für die Schulfeiern und Feieren der Freien deutschen Jugend.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /V//: ‘Ergänzungsmaterial zur Rededisposition für den . Juli’.  AAV, M, p. .  Ibid. .  P. Monteach, ‘German Historiography and the Spanish Civil War: A Critical Survey’, European History Quarterly,  (), .  H. Kühne, Spanien –: Proletarischer Internationalismus im national-revolutionären Krieg des spanischen Volkes (Berlin, ), .  Ibid. .  Pasaremos, –. 



Stalinism and Silence

such advisers in Spain during the course of the war. Soviet aid was seen above all as crucial for the morale of the beleaguered republic. As one historian put it: ‘For the Spanish masses the slogans “No pasárán!” and “Viva Rusia!” became inseparable.’ East German historians liked to emphasize the popular support enjoyed by the Soviets in Spain. The Soviet Union had legitimately helped a democratically elected government and this should not be confused with the illegitimate and aggressive intervention of the fascist states. The emphasis on military, diplomatic, and humanitarian aid was designed to draw attention away from the Soviet Union’s political role in Spain. Central to this was the conflict within the Republican camp, the ‘civil war within the civil war’ so familiar to Western readers. While GDR accounts did not deny that conflict had existed within the Popular Front, such conflict was virtually always presented from a communist perspective. The purges and repression that took place in Spain were portrayed as legitimate tools in the fight against fascist agents and counter-revolutionary forces. There is evidence to show that this was a line shared by the rank and file. The first line of the ‘Song of the International Brigades’ was ‘No mercy to the dog who betrays us!, and veteran memoirs suggest a widespread preoccupation with the danger posed by agents in the ranks. In some cases, this seems to have crossed the line into paranoia: Fritz Kahmann, a former political commissar, described how he and his colleagues saw fights and drunkenness in the Brigades as proof of the Fifth Column at work. Later, he found the records of an international emigrants’ boarding house and systematically worked his way through them, putting any potential agents behind ‘lock and key’. Finally, he became a prison warder at a military prison near Barcelona. (In a bizarre coda, he added that the commander of this prison was subsequently put before a military court for mistreatment of the prisoners and membership of the POUM.) His experience was by no means unique: several accounts in the memoir archive detail their authors’ membership of the military

 

Schumann, Spaniens Himmel und Deusche Geschichte, . Schlenstedt, ‘Exil und antifaschistischer Kampf in Spanien’, .  M. Hahn, ‘Nachwort’, in W. Bredel, Spanienkrieg,  vols. (Berlin, ), ii. .  H. Kühne, ‘Ziele und Ausmaß der militärischen Intervention des deutschen Faschismus in Spanien (–)’, Zeitschrift für Militärgeschichte, / (), .  E. Weinert, Cameradas: Ein Spanienbuch (Berlin, ).  Cf. SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V //, pp.  ff: Oskar Brandschädel.  SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Fritz Kahmann), pp. –.  Ibid., p. .

Stalinism and Silence



police in Spain, and while this was not something which was discussed in public, veterans seem to have seen it as a matter-of-course wartime occupation. One veteran wrote to the Sektion Spanienkämpfer in , describing how he had been recruited by Franz Dahlem for work with the SIM (military police). German anarcho-syndicalists had been arrested in the aftermath of the May events in Barcelona and, according to Dahlem, ‘reliable comrades were needed to ensure that the investigations made progress’. What exactly this entailed is left to the reader’s imagination, but the veteran in question clearly saw it as a positive experience, adding ‘I learnt a lot from this work, which I was able to make good use of in the construction of our republic [the GDR]’. Similar sentiments were expressed by Kurt Hager in a speech to Stasi employees in , when he emphasized that the lessons learnt during struggle against the Fifth Column in Spain were of utmost importance for the ‘offensive battle’ against ‘West German imperialists and militarists’. While German involvement in political discipline in Spain may not have been discussed in public, it was seen within SED circles as important party work, which had yielded vital lessons for fighting the enemy within after . When non-communists were arrested, they were automatically seen as anti-Republican agents who deserved their punishment. Relations between communists and groups of other political persuasions were marked by misunderstanding, distrust, and even enmity, and arrests were not greeted with particular surprise by either side, even when they affected close colleagues. Gustav Gundelach, a KPD functionary in Spain, described in his memoirs how his translator, a half-Jewish former film-director, was suddenly arrested one day as they sat eating their lunch. He never heard from him again. He reported this without any comment or emotion, although the two men seem to have got on well. Given the political background of the Moscow Trials and the purges in the Soviet Union, it is unsurprising that communists became used to seemingly arbitrary arrests. While soldiers at the front may have been unaware of events in the USSR, functionaries and artists seem to have been relatively well informed. Bodo Uhse’s Spanish diary details discussions of ‘the arrests over there [drüben]’ with ‘Maria’, probably Maria Osten, who was herself to fall victim to the

 

E.g. SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V //, pp.  ff: Stefan Walke. SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. . SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV A /./, p. : ‘ Jahre spanischer Freiheitskampf ’,  July .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. . 



Stalinism and Silence

purges on her return to the Soviet Union. Alfred Kantorowicz, who visited the USSR shortly before his departure for Spain, described ‘the trial here against the terrorists’, a reference to Zinoviev and Kamenev, who were executed during his stay. Like Kantorowicz, many felt that it was safest to presume guilt if a friend or colleague was arrested. Writing to his wife about the arrest of Heinrich Rau (see below), Willi Bredel commented, ‘the business with Heiner is a complete mystery to me, but it won’t have happened without a reason’. But whatever presumptions were made at the time, communist volunteers who fell victim to political justice in this way were seen in retrospect as innocent victims of intra-party power struggles, particularly if they were well known or well liked. Chief villain of these stories was the French communist André Marty, commander of the International Brigade base at Albacete. Described by one veteran as ‘a Stalinist par excellence’, Marty was extremely unpopular with German communists in Spain. According to Franz Dahlem, ‘numerous comrades . . . were suddenly wrongly and arbitrarily denounced, this was followed by demotions on a massive scale’. Dahlem said that at the time he had explained Marty’s behaviour as a result of his nationalism and animosity towards the German volunteers, but later became convinced that Marty had been a tool of the French secret service. Ludwig Renn, who described fighting ‘a secret battle’ against Marty, judged him to have been either insane, a military illiterate, or politically deviant. Marty’s most prominent victim was Heinrich Rau, chief of staff of the Eleventh Brigade. He was arrested, seemingly on Marty’s orders, and a report written in Moscow in  describes him as a ‘political criminal’, who had had contact to anarchists and members of the POUM. Rau emerged from this incident unscathed, both personally and politically, and went on to become a member of the East German Politburo. Needless to say, the Marty incident did not form a part of his official biography. What is interesting about the German communists’ troubled relationship with Marty is their willingness to see him purely as a bad apple: mad, bad, and dangerous to know, but of no wider political significance. They could see that the arrests of Rau and many other German communists were unjust 

SAdK, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, a, p. : diary entry,  Sept. . A. Kantorowicz, Nachtbücher, : diary entry, Moscow,  Aug.  SAdK, Willi Bredel Archiv, , p. : Willi Bredel to Lisa Bredel,  Oct. . Interview with Roman Rubinstein,  Jan. .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : F. Dahlem to H. Matern, .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : L. Renn to F. Dahlem,  June .  SAPMO-BArch, RY/I //, p. : Cf. SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : F. Dahlem to H. Matern, .   

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

and mistaken; what they were never able to do was to apply this insight to other groups who fell victim to Marty and his ilk. Their failure to recognize that there was not just something wrong with the imprisonment of communists, but with that of anarchists and members of the POUM too, is indicative of their inability to see such behaviour as the arbitrary injustice it was, regardless of the victims’ political affiliations. This was partly a result of long-standing tensions within the political spectrum of the Left: two groups which were to bear the brunt of communist prejudice in Spain were the anarchist movement and the ‘Trotskyist’ POUM.

A NA RC H I S M

Veteran memoirs make clear that relations between German communists and Spanish anarchists during the war were, to say the least, strained. The most charitable accounts describe the anarchists as brave, but foolhardy, and fatally lacking in any kind of military discipline. According to Erich Glückauf, they refused to take cover or dig trenches, and mocked the International Brigades for marching in formation. Glückauf ’s impressions of Barcelona in December  also demonstrate the gulf of misunderstanding which separated anarchists and communists. He compared the atmosphere to a May Day celebration, but felt this to be unsuitable for a country at war. ‘I experienced Barcelona at this time as a city full of contradictions. On one hand much revolutionary élan, courage, and readiness to sacrifice, on the other an incomparable muddle.’ Glückauf bemoaned the drop in industrial productivity, commenting: ‘one thought about today’s freedom, not tomorrow’s difficulties’. This tension between anarchist enthusiasm for social revolution and communist insistence on the need for wartime discipline was to mark relations between the two groups decisively. This was in many ways a clash of national political cultures: anarchism was historically far more popular amongst the Spanish left than communism,  The jury is still out on Marty’s role in Spain. Despite the allegations of numerous survivors of the war (e.g. Regler, Owl of Minerva, , ), no archival evidence has yet been found to justify his title as ‘the butcher of Albacete’. Remi Skoutelsky’s research indicates nine men may have been executed on suspicion of spying for the Nazis. These orders were not given by Marty alone and would have been countersigned by Wilhelm Zaisser. Skoutelsky, L’Espoir guidait leurs pas, . See also Huber and Uhl, ‘Politische Überwachung in den Internationalen Brigaden’, –. However, even if Marty was not responsible for the executions of scores of volunteers, he was still, on the evidence of the German volunteers at any rate, responsible for considerable political repression.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. .  Erich Glückauf, Begegnungen und Signale, .  Ibid.



Stalinism and Silence

and German anarchism remained a relatively small phenomenon. In addition to this, the anarchists’ ‘revolutionary élan’ and spontaneity was a far cry from the discipline and obedience which had been drilled into members of the KPD. Many German volunteers were simply unable to grasp the appeal of anarchism, one writing, ‘I was sometimes amazed, how deeply some honest, brave, and upright people had had their brains fogged up with anarchism’. This interpretation of anarchists as well-meaning, but misled, is echoed in another memoir, which describes how an Aragonese farmer, ‘a taciturn, quiet comrade, with a hard, lined face’, ‘developed’ from ‘the rebel, the naive anarchist to a conscious revolutionary, a communist’, eventually becoming a member of the party leadership. For this veteran, communism was the final stage of political development, with anarchism merely a dead end along the way. However, this interpretation appears positively glowing in comparison to other, more hostile, accounts of Spanish anarchism. Many veterans were extremely bitter about what they felt to be anarchist incompetence and irresponsibility. One wrote of how anarchist troops refused to relieve the International Brigades and defend their hard-won position on the grounds that it was too close to the enemy’s lines. Their cowardice meant the loss of ‘the earth soaked with the blood of our comrades, the fortifications constructed with hard, strenuous work throughout the day and night’. Anarchists were seen as half-hearted soldiers, who left the front at evenings and weekends; one particularly common allegation was that anarchists would declare a ceasefire with the Nationalist troops in order to play football with them. Germans also commented on the anarchists’ unkempt appearance; one writer was shocked that an anarchist lieutenant had fixed his officers’ badge on with a safety pin. It was not uncommon for communist writers to describe anarchists in terms worthy of fascist propaganda: ‘criminal elements [Gaunerzeug]’, ‘rogues [Lumpen]’, or ‘muddle-heads [Wirrköpfe]’. Ludwig Renn described German and Polish anarchist volunteers who had been imprisoned after the events in Barcelona as ‘lousy 

SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Herbert Grünstein), p. . SAPMO-BArch, DY /SgY /V //, pp. –: anon., ‘Bei der Kommission Medicale’.  SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Ewald Munschke), p. .  Repeated in numerous GDR publications, e.g. K. Vogel, ‘. Februar sichert die Straße Belchite-Mediana’, in Brigada Internacional, ii. ; K. Mewis, Im Auftrag der Partei, .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY / V//, p. : K. Vogel.  SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Heinrich Fomferra), p. .  Ibid.  SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//, p. : Herbert Jander. 

Stalinism and Silence



bastards [miese Säcke]’, and ‘criminal riff-raff [Lumpen-Gesindel]’. Anarchists were commonly portrayed as Fifth Columnists, controlled by ‘imperialist men behind the scenes’. These exceedingly negative attitudes were no doubt linked to the fact that the International Brigades were, at times, used to put down anarchist unrest. One Dutch veteran described how, shortly after its foundation, the Edgar André Battalion was recalled to Albacete. The troops were told by André Marty that they were required to put down an anarchist uprising in Valencia. The Dutch volunteer, a former anarchist himself, was unwilling to fight against fellow Popular Front members, but, luckily for him, the uprising did not take place and the battalion was free to leave for the front. His moral scruples appear to have been shared by other soldiers: a similar incident in the early days of the war was described by Albert Schreiner as the ‘most difficult crisis’ of the Centuria Thälmann. Ordered by Schreiner to prepare to combat an ‘anarchist putsch’, all but one of the group and platoon leaders—communists to a man—asserted that they would remain passive in the event of an anarchist attack, arguing that they had not come to Spain to fight workers. Neither Schreiner nor Hans Beimler were able to persuade them that they were wrong, but once again, the putschists failed to appear and the troops were sent to the front. Although there was a high degree of official intolerance towards anarchists during and immediately after the war, those who settled in the GDR after  were partially tolerated. The records of a veterans’ meeting which took place in  show that it was attended by three former members of the Durruti column. In the case of one of these veterans, his local SED organization had taken the precaution of enquiring in advance whether he was allowed to attend. The reply from Berlin answered in the affirmative, referring to the fact that the veteran in question was now a trainee policeman. ‘All Spanienkämpfer who fulfilled their duty in Spain as well as today, should take part in the meeting.’ Participation in veteran meetings was therefore reliant on alignment with, and probably membership of, the SED. (The fact that this veteran was in the process of joining

  

 Ibid, p. . AAV (Dep. ), M, p. . SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V//, p. : Herbert Jander. SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Erinnerungen Heinrich Fomferra), p. .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY / (Erinnerungen Petros Laros), p. .  SAPMO BArch, SgY /V//, p. : A. Schreiner, ‘Hans Beimler’.  SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V //, p. : Schwotzer to SED Landesvorstand Sachsen,  July .



Stalinism and Silence

the police force suggests that he may have been one of the many non-anarchist Germans who joined anarchist militia.) However, this political acceptance was temporary and conditional on the political climate. Rudolf Michaelis, for example, had been the only German political delegate in an anarcho-syndicalist militia in Spain and had been arrested by the secret police in Barcelona in October . Despite this brush with Stalinism, he chose to return to the Soviet Zone after the end of the war and was made managing director of the museum where he had worked prior to . He also joined the SED soon after his return. His difficulties began when he was expelled from the SED in August  for former membership of the (anarcho-syndicalist) Free German Workers’ Union and for having ‘anarcho-syndicalist tendencies’. Michaelis then worked as a teacher until his retirement, but was only allowed to teach young children in case he began to influence them politically. He gave lectures about his experiences in Spain under a false name in West Berlin and to small private groups in the East and published his memories of Spain under a pseudonym in . Despite their bad experiences with the communist movement, both in Spain and in the GDR, some anarchist veterans took up contact with the party Spanienkämpfer networks in the later years of the GDR. As early as , Michaelis was corresponding with Franz Dahlem, and in , Karl Brauner, a former member of the Durruti Column and the Battalion de la Muerte, wrote to the Sektion Spanienkämpfer, asking for recognition as a Spanish Civil War veteran. The Sektion, seemingly unaware of the political background, expressed surprise that he had not contacted them sooner, but foresaw no problems with officially recognizing Brauner as a veteran and awarding him the Hans Beimler medal. Brauner duly appears on a list of recipients of the Hans Beimler medal published in , along with Michaelis and fellow former members of anarchist militia, Paul Hellberg, Wilhelm Winkelmann, Oskar Heinz, Wilhelm Borostowski, Alfred Berger, and Manuel Fischer. Despite this official gesture, they remained marginal to veteran life and to public consciousness of the war. Needless to say, the fact that some, like Michaelis, had been in communist  

On Michaelis see Degen, ‘ “Die Anarchie ist möglich . . .” ’, pp. –. See Ch. , above.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /: Michaelis to Dahlem,  Jan. .  SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K /: Brauner to ‘Werte Kameraden!’,  Apr. .  SAPMO-BArch, vorl. DY /K /: Gartmann to Krumme,  May .  Komitee der Antifaschistischen Widerstandskämpfer der DDR, Spanienkämpfer in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (n.p., ).

Stalinism and Silence



captivity in Spain remained taboo. This raises the question of why anarchist veterans sought such partial and belated recognition of their status. Financial concerns undoubtedly played a role here: recognition as an antifascist resistance fighter brought with it a substantial pension, as well as health and housing benefits. But it may also have been the expression of a need to remember the war in some sort of collective context. Veterans such as Michaelis, whose anarchist comrades in the West had cut off all contact after he joined the SED, found themselves in an extremely isolated position in the GDR. Spanienkämpfer status not only offered them financial compensation on a par with their communist colleagues, it was also the only way in which they could publicly remember the war, albeit within strict limits.

THE POUM

While German communists regarded anarchist volunteers, both Spanish and German, with a certain limited tolerance, their attitude towards those associated with the POUM was uncompromising. The POUM and its supporters were seen as an actively hostile, Trotskyist, counter-revolutionary group. The most obvious result of this was the fact that events in Barcelona in May  were depicted as an attempted putsch against the Popular Front. According to this version of events, the POUM had cooperated with the Gestapo, as well as the Italian, French, and British secret services, in order to overthrow the government. The POUM were generally portrayed as a violent, destabilizing force: Karl Mewis referred to their ‘orgies of destruction’, claiming, ‘there are places where they have slaughtered all nuns and priests, all small property owners’. Another common theme was tales of forced collectivization against the will of the local peasantry, usually involving violence. The myth of the POUM putsch was remarkably durable and was perpetuated even by those such as Walter Janka, who had themselves experienced communist repression at first hand. In a review of a history of the POUM published in , Janka repeated the allegations that the POUM had worked together with the



F. Dahlem, Der Freiheitskampf des spanisches Volkes (Berlin, ), . SAPMO-BArch, SgY // (Karl Mewis Erinnerungen), p. . These remarks were excised from the published version of Mewis’ memoirs.  SAPMO-BArch, DY /SgY /V //, p. : ‘Bei der Kommission Medicale’. 



Stalinism and Silence

‘Fifth Column’ in Spain ‘to provoke an uprising’. He then went on to justify the repression of the POUM in much the same way as many had justified his imprisonment for ‘counter-revolutionary’ activities: ‘He who stabs the Republic in the back by force of arms, should not be surprised that he is called to account.’ It seemingly did not occur to Janka to query whether the POUM did indeed betray the Republic. A sole alternative interpretation of events was offered by Silvia Schlenstedt’s cultural history of the war, published in the early s. Schlenstedt summarized various theories about the May events, including the communist position that the POUM had attempted a putsch against the Republic and the ‘Radical Left’ view that it was an ‘uprising’ against communist Gleichschaltung, and mentioned that the events caused a number of revolutionary-minded intellectuals to break with the communist movement. She then went on to say the POUM did attempt an armed takeover, but continued, in a nuanced piece of writing: Those engaged in the struggle against the putschists were unable to recognize the tragic aspects of the suppression. Instead, they experienced the putsch—which included many forces which were actually needed for the struggle against the fascists—as treason, as open support for the fascist opponent (who welcomed the clashes), even as a sign of direct collaboration with Hitler.

This analysis subtly questions the idea that the POUM were fascist collaborators and even suggests that they belonged in the Republican camp. Schlenstedt’s suggestion that participants might not have been able to grasp the full breadth and implications of events was quietly radical. The question remains of why German volunteers (along with volunteers of other nationalities) were so violently opposed to the POUM. Communist propaganda played an important role here: records of the political work carried out within the Eleventh Brigade after the battle of Guadalajara stressed that all members of the brigade were clear that the POUM is ‘an agency of Franco’, and went on to quote a resolution passed by the brigade’s companies and battalions: We ask the government to take severe measures against the traitors of Barcelona. No mercy to those who dared to rise up against the people with a weapon in their hands. An end to the Trotskyist traitors! No punishment is high enough for Franco’s Fifth Column.   W. Janka, ‘Reiner Tosstorff: Die POUM im spanischen Bürgerkrieg’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, / (), .  Ibid.  Schlenstedt, ‘Exil und antifaschistischer Kampf ’, .  SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V //, p. .  Ibid, p. .

Stalinism and Silence



There was, however, another factor which affected the German volunteers’ feelings towards the POUM. In their minds, the POUM was closely associated with the splinter parties of the German left, chiefly the SAP founded in  by left-leaning social democrats, and the KPO, founded in  by the right wing of the KPD. Despite the small size and political insignificance of these groups, they were viewed with great suspicion by the KPD during the late s and early s. Members of the SAP and KPO who travelled to Spain tended to align themselves with the POUM, some working in the party’s office in Barcelona, others joining POUM militia. In the eyes of German communists, therefore, the POUM had become a refuge for the traitors of the late Weimar period. If they could betray the party in Germany, they could do the same in Spain. One account refers to ‘the traitors of the Trotsky supporters, Pumists [sic], Sapists [sic], fascist anarchists, who organized the uprising in May  in Barcelona’. Here, members of the SAP join the POUM, anarchists, Trotskyists, and their fascist helpers as the alleged initiators of a counter-revolutionary coup. This German involvement in events in Barcelona came to be embodied by Willy Brandt. Brandt, as the SPD mayor of West Berlin and later chancellor of West Germany, was a particularly convenient hate figure for East German writers. He had in fact been a member of the SAP and was in Barcelona during May , although evidence suggests that he had already broken his links with the POUM at this stage of the war. However, this did not prevent some veterans and party propagandists alleging that he had been one of the main initiators in this attempt to overthrow the democratically elected Spanish government. As one account produced in  put it: His behaviour . . . on the side of the imperialist powers of the West and to the benefit of the Franco-fascists was even then in keeping with his present role as the accomplice of the militaristic-clerical Bonn regime and the aggressive policy of NATO. He was and is in the truest sense of the word a dangerous fire-starter [Brandstifter—a pun on Brandt’s name].

Maxim Zetkin, the son of Klara Zetkin, reportedly went so far as to say that it was a pity they had not arrested and shot Brandt while they had the 

Von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, ch. . SAPMO-BArch, SgY /V //, p. . Von zur Mühlen, Spanien war ihre Hoffnung, . For Brandt’s own account of his experiences in Spain cf. W. Brandt, Erinnerungen (Frankfurt am Main, ), –.  e.g. SgY / (Erinnerungen Erich Liesegang), p. .  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : Informationsmaterial zum . Jahrestag.  



Stalinism and Silence

chance. It should be said that the rumours of Brandt’s involvement with the ‘putsch’ were mostly confined to veteran memoirs and propaganda accounts. Professional historians recognized that such tales were based more on wishful thinking than fact, and tried to avoid reproducing them in official accounts. Karl Mewis’s memoirs, for example, were riddled with references to Brandt, all of which were removed before publication. The case of Brandt illustrates the desperate state of relations between German communists and other members of the Left. These feelings of mistrust and downright enmity had their roots in the bitter struggles of the Weimar Republic, and political intolerance reached new lows in the political conflicts of the Spanish Civil War. The fact that anarchists and members of the POUM continued to be maligned and slandered by East German writers and historians demonstrates the SED’s inability to shake off the Stalinist traditions of the KPD. This was to have profound consequences for political and cultural life in the GDR.

T H E FA I LU R E O F D E - S TA L I N I S AT I O N

The Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU in  created a great sense of hope and expectation amongst East German party members and intellectuals. Bodo Uhse’s diary records his and others’ feelings of relief that ‘the past is clearing off ’. Those who were active in cultural and historical circles felt that Khrushchev’s speech marked a deep-seated and permanent change for the better. Hans Mayer remembered Franz Dahlem saying to him: ‘Everything must be said and explained now. Nothing more can happen now.’ A letter written by Dahlem to Walter Ulbricht in March  demanded justice and full rehabilitation not just for himself, but for all the victims of the purges of –. Sadly for Dahlem, this was not to be, as the thaw of spring and summer  was overshadowed by the repression of that autumn and the Janka trial in early . While de-Stalinization was limited in the political arena, it often took on an unthinkingly literal aspect in the field of historiography. Just as the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute was renamed the Institute for     

.

SAMPO BArch, NY /, p. : M. and W. Pfoh to Dahlem, Jan. . Cf. SAPMO-BArch, SgY // and K. Mewis, Im Auftrag der Partei. SAdK, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, b, p. : diary entry  Sept. . Mayer, Der Turm von Babel, . SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //v/, pp. –: Dahlem to Ulbricht,  Mar.

Stalinism and Silence



Marxism-Leninism, historians seemed to feel that it was sufficient to purge historical accounts of references to Stalin himself. While pre- accounts of the Spanish Civil War frequently mentioned Stalin or were illustrated with pictures of him, he was largely absent from subsequent accounts. Writers were often made to feel that their former devotion to the Soviet leader was no longer seemly. Erich Arendt was informed by his publishers that the remaining copies of his  collection of poetry about the war would be pulped, due to the ‘excesses of the cult of personality’. Arendt was by no means the only poet to suffer in this regard; Bodo Uhse recorded the following conversation with Stephan Hermlin: ‘But—said Hermlin—and leafed through his poems, of which there aren’t too many— and amongst which many, or at least numerous ones, are hymns to Stalin— what have I let myself in for? What kind of literature am I actually writing, when it only counts from one party conference to the next?’ 

. 

e.g. A. Kantorowicz, ‘Die Weihnachtsfeier der Internationalen in Madrid’, ND,  Dec.

SAdK, Erich-Arendt-Archiv, : letter from Schälike, Verlagsleiter, Dietz Verlag,  Jan. .  SAdK, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, b, p. : diary entry,  Feb. . Hermlin’s involvement or otherwise with the International Brigades remains the subject of speculation. He alludes repeatedly to the war in his semi-autobiographical prose piece Abendlicht (Evening Light) published in . In an impressionistic stream of consciousness he describes ‘a slanting light lying on El Gesira’, a Pablo Casals concert in a hall full of wounded men, and meeting a man with his lower jaw missing on the road to Corbera (Abendlicht (Berlin, ), ). He also relates the story of Albert H. [Hößler], from Hermlin’s home town Chemnitz, who was shot in Spain and died on a partisan mission in Germany during the Second World War (Abendlicht, p. ). Hermlin’s own role in Spain, however, remains a mystery. A recent book by Karl Corino documents five versions of events, all related by Hermlin at different stages. These vary from spending a year as an International Brigade officer (as Hermlin claimed in a CV written in ) to being rejected as unfit for service on medical grounds (as told to an interviewer in ) (K. Corino, ‘Aussen Marmor, Innen Gips’: Die Legenden des Stephan Hermlin (Düsseldorf, ), –, –; the tone of Corino’s investigation is overly hostile in places, but he does uncover major discrepancies in Hermlin’s accounts of his life). Alfred Kantorowicz asserted vehemently that Hermlin was never in Spain, but Hermlin himself remained evasive on the matter (Kantorowicz, Deutsches Tagebuch, ii. –). He must have been regarded as a Spanienkämpfer in the early years of the GDR, as he was approached by Erich Weinert in  to contribute to a literary anthology about the war. Hermlin replied: ‘when I was in Spain I was a very young lad (it was ) and not a writer yet, i.e. certainly I wrote poems for myself now and then, but showed them to no-one and that was right. What I wrote then is unusable, subjective stuff ’ (SAdK, Berlin, Erich-Weinert-Archiv, Nr. /: S. Hermlin to E. Weinert,  Sept. ). He half-heartedly suggested that he might be able to produce a few ‘useable’ poems on the subject, but declared himself unoptimistic. Although he was equivocal about his war poetry, Hermlin did clearly state that he was in Spain. But Hermlin’s name rarely appears in official lists of war veterans, and literary histories were vague on the nature of his involvement with Spain, using non-committal formulae like ‘supported the antifascist struggle of the Spanish Republic’ (S. Schlenstedt, Schriftsteller der Gegenwart: Stephan Hermlin (Berlin, ), ). It seems unlikely that Hermlin, one of the



Stalinism and Silence

Renaming institutes and scanning texts for references to Stalin alone were never going to be a satisfactory way of coming to terms with the mistakes of the past. As can be seen from the treatment of anarchists and the POUM in GDR historiography, any attempts to discuss Stalinism were sabotaged by a failure to link the persecution of communists and noncommunists. The treatment of victims and opponents of Stalinism in GDR historiography demonstrates the limits of the de-Stalinization of GDR historiography. Despite the hopes awakened by Khrushchev’s secret speech in , silence continued to surround the fate of those loyal communists who had fallen victims to the purges of the s and s. Those who were perceived to have broken with or opposed communism were subject to even worse treatment. The post- crystallization of this unofficial hierarchy of victimhood had lasting implications for East German communist political culture. Most likely to regain their place in the party and the history books were the victims of the purges which had taken place in the GDR. This had much to do with the fact that many of them, like Dahlem, were still alive and sustained a steady campaign for their rehabilitation. Even those who had died in the interim often had left widows or family members who agitated on their behalf. Those who had been well situated in the party before their fall from grace also had friends in high places who could be persuaded to put pressure on the responsible authorities. Rehabilitation was particularly frequent after Ulbricht’s replacement by Erich Honecker in . Eduard Claudius wrote to Dahlem in early  that ‘some warmth seems to be coming back’, and indeed Dahlem’s eightieth birthday on  January  was used as an opportunity to honour him with a front-page photo and article in Neues Deutschland, signed by Honecker in the name of the Central Committee. This was interpreted by Dahlem, his friends, and the party as a full rehabilitation. Even Walter Janka was eventually allowed to travel to Spain, and published part of his memoirs in  in a film magazine. Such ‘rehabilitation’ had its limits: former victims of SED purges rarely regained their status and party functions, and writing about their experileading literary figures of the GDR, spent any significant period of time in Spain. Had he actually fought in the war, it is unthinkable that his participation would have been neglected to this extent.  SAPMO-BArch, NY /, p. : Claudius to Dahlem,  Jan. .  ND,  Jan. , pp. , .  W. Janka, ‘Auf dem Hügel vor Gandesa: Erinnerungen eines Interbrigadisten’, Film und Fernsehen,  (), –.

Stalinism and Silence



ences of party discipline remained taboo. If the events of the early s were mentioned in official party histories, it was always in euphemistic terms. The official explanation, as put forward by the eight-volume History of the German Labour Movement, was that the trials and purges in Eastern Europe had stemmed from ‘the disgraceful activities of L. P. Beria’s political venture’. According to this interpretation, the SED leadership, backed up by the Soviet occupation forces, had successfully resisted Beria’s pressure to put on a show trial in the Soviet Union, refusing even to let his representatives enter the country. In fact, the GDR authorities had willingly deported prisoners to the USSR, and preparations for a show trial had been under way. But despite the fact that their rehabilitation was partial and based on a fundamental distortion of the historical record, victims of SED purges still achieved a greater visibility and prestige than those who had fallen victim to communist purges in the s. Even in the heady summer of , the terror of Soviet exile remained a little-mentioned topic. Leo Stern, a Spanienkämpfer and professor of history, mentioned the Twentieth Party Congress in a speech about the war on  July , but remained silent on the subject of his own brother, Manfred Stern, better known in Spain as General Kleber, who had died as a victim of the purges in the USSR. Discussion of the terror would have involved direct criticism of the Soviet Union, which sat uncomfortably alongside the narrative of heroic resistance which dominated the period –. The fact, for example, that Hans Beimler’s son was arrested shortly after his father’s death and accused of plotting to poison Stalin was something that would have been difficult to tally with the picture of Beimler the heroic and exemplary communist. Such experiences were of course exemplary in their own way, being part and parcel of the communist exile experience in the s, but those who had been killed or imprisoned tended to remain in obscurity. One such woman was Maria Osten, a German writer who had spent time in Spain during the war, but disappeared in  after  Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, vii. . Cf. SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV A /./, pp. –, which contains the editorial committee’s discussion of this issue.  Geschichte der Deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, vii. .  See Ch. , above.  L. Stern, Der Freiheitskampf des spanischen Volkes – (Berlin, ).  H. Weber, ‘Weiße Flecken’ in der Geschichte: Die KPD Opfer der Stalinschen [sic] Säuberungen und ihre Rehabilitierung (Berlin, ), . See also ‘Brief von der Front an Hans und Rosel Beimler’, in Brigada Internacional, ii. – in which the soldiers of the Hans Beimler Bataillon write to Beimler’s children on the first anniversary of his death, asking for descriptions of ‘how you live, how you learn, how you help build socialism’. It is unlikely that this letter would ever have reached Beimler’s son.



Stalinism and Silence

her return to the USSR. Ernst Busch, like many of the Germans in Spain, had been close to Osten and her partner, the Soviet writer Mikhail Kolzov, who also died in the purges. When Busch dedicated a s recording of his Spanish Civil War songs to the couple, Osten’s niece wrote to thank him for ‘bringing [Maria] into the public eye’. She added that ‘the memory of Maria still makes us proud, but unfortunately also painfully sad’, as they had never discovered the exact circumstances of her death. Further research on Osten was carried out by the literary historian Silvia Schlenstedt, who included in her literary history of the war a photograph of Osten and numerous references to her activities in Spain. Schlenstedt’s openness about Osten’s and Kolzov’s deaths in the purges was unusual and can be attributed to the late date of publication () and her position as a literary historian. Kolzov’s memoirs, published in , fail to mention the circumstances of his death. Those who had managed to survive the Gulags and return to the GDR tended to remain invisible, unable to discuss their past. They were fated to be what Bodo Uhse described as the ‘silent guest’ who started appearing at parties in the course of , ‘a warning from a past which doesn’t want to go away’. One International Brigade veteran deftly liberated himself from this social handicap by completely rewriting his past. Hermann Schnelle, who had spent the war years in the Soviet Union, had been about to return to Germany in early , when he was arrested, accused of being a Western agent, and sentenced to fifteen years in a labour camp. Released in , he made his way back to the GDR and was admitted into the SED. Despite his original claim that he had worked in a factory throughout his time in the Soviet Union, he gradually embellished his CV with claims to have taken part in partisan activity in Germany and marched into Berlin with the Red Army. Schnelle’s self-reinvention was only discovered when it was planned to name an NVA unit after him. However, despite the difficulties faced by the communist victims of the purges, the chief taboo was reserved for those, such as the POUM, who had actively opposed communism, or those, such as ‘renegade’ communists, who had broken with it. In order to be rehabilitated, you had to have  

AdK, Ernst-Busch-Archiv, : letter from Dorothea Meyer,  Apr. . S. Schlenstedt, ‘Exil und antifaschistischer Kampf in Spanien’, , , , , –.  M. Kolzov, Die Rote Schlacht.  SAdK, Bodo-Uhse-Archiv, b, p. : diary entry  Feb. .  The following is based on Schnelle’s cadre file, SAPMO-BArch, DY /IV //v..

Stalinism and Silence



remained loyal to the party, whatever the cost. As Franz Dahlem put it (in an extract from his memoirs only published posthumously in ): ‘As a communist I had to endure all this silently . . . in order that I would not give the class enemy even the slightest reason to strengthen his propaganda which was raging against our party at this time.’ For Dahlem and many of his comrades, loyalty to the communist cause was what mattered, ‘one’s own fate is subordinated to this great struggle’. The corollary of this was loyalty to the Soviet Union: ‘For a communist, there is and will never be anything but unshakeable loyalty to the Soviet Union and the CPSU in the struggle for the fulfilment of the aims of communism.’ Unquestioning loyalty to the Soviet Union also meant automatic rejection of its critics; Dahlem’s reflections on his own suffering and that of the victims of the Moscow Trials are punctuated by a denunciation of the POUM as fascist collaborators. Like Janka, he was unable to make the connection between the injustice he had endured and that meted out to the anti-Stalinist Left. In fact, for those who had suffered greatly under communism, Spain remained an idealized period in their lives, a touchstone which symbolized the reasons for their loyalty to the communist cause. Janka passed the time during his years of solitary imprisonment by drawing maps of the Republican military campaigns on the walls of his cell with soap. When challenged by the prison director, he replied: ‘you wouldn’t understand’. Seen in this light, Janka’s and Dahlem’s condemnations of the POUM represent an attempt to preserve their black-and-white picture of both the war and the communist movement without which their silent loyalty would have been impossible. Labelling non-communist victims of Stalinism ‘traitors’ was a way of proving their unquestioning faith in the party and distancing themselves from any accusations of disloyalty. Those who had broken with the communist movement, the so-called ‘renegades’, such as Gustav Regler and Alfred Kantorowicz, were, if anything, treated with even greater distaste than those who had always been anticommunist. Both had been writers, members of the KPD, and officers in the International Brigades. Regler had been an extremely popular and well-respected man, but when he broke with the party after the  F. Dahlem, ‘Nachgelassenes, Ausgelassenes: Über einen Prozeß und die Schwierigkeiten seiner richtigen Beurteilung’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung,  (), .  Ibid.  Ibid. .  Ibid.  Janka, Spuren eines Lebens, .  On the phenomenon of the ‘renegades’ see H. Kühn, Bruch mit dem Kommunismus: Über autobiographische Schriften von Ex-Kommunisten im geteilten Deutschland (Münster, ) and Rohrwasser’s excellent Der Stalinismus und die Renegaten.



Stalinism and Silence

Nazi–Soviet Pact he was accused of being a traitor and fascist collaborator, even by his former friends. Anna Seghers is alleged to have explained it to him as follows: ‘Whether the accusations against you are true or not is irrelevant. You are far too well known as a Spanienkämpfer and after your break with the party we have the duty to morally destroy you with all possible means.’ Similarly, after Kantorowicz fled to the West in , following ever-worsening conflict with the party, he was immediately dubbed ‘the renegade Kantorowicz’ and former colleagues and friends were forced to write articles against him and sign statements in the press. One wrote: ‘Once, in Spain, you knew what solidarity is. In those days you were on the right side. What would you have thought, said, and done then, if somebody had gone over to Franco and said that he had done it because of his solidarity with the workers?’ This vilification of Kantorowicz and Regler meant that they were rarely mentioned in connection with the International Brigades. As late as the s, Kantorowicz’s name had to be removed from a book of memoirs about the war. Only in the sphere of literary history did they achieve any sort of recognition: Schlenstedt refers repeatedly to both Kantorowicz and Regler in her work (although not in glowing terms), and Dieter Schiller, a literary critic, published an article on Regler’s early, communist, novels in . Essentially, the hard-line attitude adopted by most commentators towards the renegades was indicative of the communist movement’s failure to take on board criticism. This defensiveness was exacerbated by the Cold War’s division of the world into two opposing camps. This attitude proved particularly long-lasting in the GDR, whose leaders showed considerable resistance to the Soviet Union’s glasnost policies in the s, banning an edition of the Soviet periodical Sputnik which contained articles on the Nazi–Soviet Pact, and generally discouraging East Germans from following the lead set by their comrades in the USSR. In June , Kurt Hager wrote in Neues Deutschland that there was no reason for East German  

‘Anna Seghers über G. Regler’, europäische ideen,  (), . For a fuller account of Kantorowicz’s experiences in Spain and post-war Germany see J. McLellan, ‘The Politics of Communist Biography: Alfred Kantorowicz and the Spanish Civil War’, German History (forthcoming).  Eduard von Schnitzler, ‘Es ist vorbei’, Sonntag,  Sept. , p. .  SAPMO-BArch., NY /, p. : Hans Teubner Gutachten for Brigada Internacional, vol. ii.  Dec. .  D. Schiller, ‘ “Gläubig an unsere Idee”. Die letzten Jahre des revolutionären Schriftstellers Regler (–)’, Weimarer Beiträge, / (), –.  P. Herminghouse, ‘Confronting the “Blank Spots of History”: GDR Culture and the Legacy of “Stalinism” ’, German Studies Review, / (), .

Stalinism and Silence



historians to ‘start a search for “blank spots” ’. Had they nevertheless begun such a search, they would not have had to look very far. In the case of the Spanish Civil War, the memories of those who had been victims of political discipline in Spain formed a counter-memory, which actively challenged and undermined the official view of the war. It was therefore of the utmost importance that they be silenced. This was done very effectively: those victims who had remained loyal to communism felt bound by the ties of party loyalty and feared the damage that any criticism might bring to the communist movement. Those who might have been tempted to break their silence must have been chastened by the fate of those who had dared to criticize the party. Whether in Spain or later, conscious opposition to the party inevitably resulted in a label as traitor and counter-revolutionary, and ultimately banishment to the opposing camp. As can be seen from the case of those former anarchist volunteers who chose to settle in the GDR, political acceptance was fragile and dependent on conformity and the ideological conditions of the time. Anarchists could be integrated into socialist society only on the condition that they were no longer anarchists. The very fact that they were considered capable of political ‘salvation’ was a mark of the fact that anarchism was not considered to be a proper political ideology.

C O N C LU S I O N

De-Stalinization was successful only in building a taboo around Stalin and his victims. Perhaps it was hoped that sweeping both villain and victims under history’s carpet would remove both the problem and the need to write about it. However, as the Janka trial demonstrated, Stalinism outlasted Stalin. Its victims were the greatest threat not just to the SED’s antifascist narrative, but also to the foundations of political and social life in the GDR. State socialism was based on the infallibility of the party, but the Stalinist phenomenon demonstrated that the party was well equipped to make mistakes. The intolerance towards others demonstrated by the fate of non-communists during the Spanish Civil War and the negative depiction of these groups in veteran memoirs demonstrates how deeply entwined communist antifascism and Stalinism were. Those who had worked in the SIM during the war and then joined the Stasi on their return to Germany were a direct link between Stalinism in Spain and in the GDR. But the 

Weber, ‘Weiße Flecken’ in der Geschichte, .



Stalinism and Silence

problem went much deeper than that: the repressive elements of German communism formed a thread that ran from the political battles of the Weimar years, through the Nazi period, and into the power structures of the GDR. These continuities meant that a thorough dissection of these repressive practices was impossible. It was simply inconceivable for the SED to initiate a debate on the links between Stalinism in the s and the s, or the shared experience of communist and non-communist victims. It was not the case, as Patricia Herminghouse argues, that the SED ‘opportunistically employed a rhetoric of antifascism in order to avoid the opprobrium of identification with Stalinism’. The SED did not choose antifascism as a convenient fig leaf to mask their Stalinist nature. The German communist experience was a tight weave of antifascism and Stalinism; a close examination of Stalinism would have necessarily involved a fundamental reassessment of the antifascist project. This was something the SED was not prepared to do. 

Herminghouse, ‘Confronting the “Blank Spots of History” ’, .

Conclusion ‘We cannot get away from our preconceived opinions; it is like trying to swim in trousers and a jacket, the clothes become saturated and pull you down.’ In East Germany, remembering the past could seem like a matter of life and death. Stefan Heym’s novel Collin, published in West Germany in , takes as its subject Hans Collin, a writer and Spanienkampfer who decides to write his memoirs. Initially attracted by the project, he is struck down, first with writer’s block, and eventually with a heart complaint. In hospital he meets Urack, the Minister for State Security, who is also suffering from heart trouble. In their own way, both men are physically oppressed by the ‘unanswered questions’ of the past. For Collin, memoir writing is fascinating and terrifying in equal measure. Potentially, he has the power to portray the past in whatever way he wishes; however, to do this would involve facing past mistakes, in particular his failure to speak up for his friend Havelka, who had been unjustly sent to prison after a show trial in the s. Collin also fears isolation—telling the truth would mean banishment from the comfort and security that membership of the state’s elite confers. Urack, on the other hand, has no doubts or scruples about his own past actions: he simply fears the traces left behind by the victims of political injustice, ‘in filing cabinets, desk drawers, memoirs’. Collin’s autobiography threatens to reveal the inner workings of the party apparatus, and the repressive tendencies at the heart of the state. As they struggle with their demons, both men become convinced that the death of the other will mean their own survival. Finally, it is Collin who dies, his memoirs unfinished and unpublished. Heym paints an uncompromising portrait of a generation of ‘psychological cripples’, preoccupied by questions of guilt and innocence, and dwarfed by their own past, which ‘never buried, rises like an nightmare above everything in this country [wie ein Alp hocht auf allem Geschehen im Lande]’. Meanwhile, the younger generation either disappears over the Berlin Wall, like Urack’s grandson, or has simply lost interest. While Collin finds the idea of revealing all in his memoirs both seductive and redemptive, he recognizes that such a project would find no audience in the GDR.   

Heym, Collin, . Ibid. , . Ibid. .

 

Ibid. . Ibid. .

 

Ibid. . Ibid. .



Conclusion

Worse still, it would only serve to undermine the certainties on which the state was built. It is not just the old antifascists who are haunted by the mistakes of the past—the entire body politic of the GDR is being poisoned by its Stalinist origins. Heym based his novel on the story of an East German Spanienkämpfer and writer who, it was rumoured, had tried and failed to write his memoirs, and was eventually found dead with a pen still in his hand. Many of the characters were modelled on Heym’s acquaintances, and the central incident around which the book revolves, the trial and imprisonment of Havelka, was based on the Janka trial. Heym intended the novel to be ‘the great social novel [Gesellschaftsroman] of that third of Germany . . . where real existing socialism is practised’, and Collin demonstrates just how important the GDR’s prehistory really was, and the influence it continued to exert throughout the state’s forty-year lifespan. More than just legitimation for an undemocratic state, it was instrumental in the formation of East German political culture. For the ruling SED, antifascism fulfilled a number of important functions. As an explanatory discourse for fascism and a powerful unifying factor, it exculpated the East German population from their responsibility for the events of the Nazi period, thereby avoiding a painful confrontation with the past. Antifascism was also useful as a means of control. The old communists’ moral imperative justified their leading role in society and ensured that a large section of the intelligentsia remained loyal to what they considered to be an antifascist state. In addition, antifascism was an important educational and motivational tool for use with work with young people. Finally, the events of the Nazi period could profitably be used as a disciplinary tool against the antifascist veterans themselves. Arbitrary party screenings helped to reinforce discipline and secure the positions of those at the top of the party. They were also most effective in silencing particular groups within the party: by continually questioning the motives and loyalty of communist intellectuals, the party neutralized an otherwise potentially dangerous source of criticism. The Spanienkämpfer, along with the other antifascist veterans, were the founding cadres of the GDR. Not only did they occupy important positions in the state and party hierarchy, they were also the living guardians of the legacy of antifascism. They played a central part in the commemoration of the war and in the education of the younger generation, through talks in schools, memoirs, and public appearances. But these ‘tribal elders’ 

Heym, Collin, .



Id., Nachruf, .



Ibid. .

Conclusion



also had a somewhat uneasy relationship with the state. Their formative years, politically and personally, pre-dated , as the continuing significance of Spain in their lives demonstrated. However, the political certainties which had moulded them in the s and s did not always keep their currency in the post-war years. The reintegration of former Nazis into the political and social structures of the Soviet Zone of Occupation was a test of their loyalty to the party. A much greater challenge was posed by the political purges of the s. What is striking is their willingness to readjust and accept the new political realities, confining their discontent to private grumbling. The informal networks of community and kinship which existed amongst the Spanienkämpfer undoubtedly helped them to come to terms with their new situation, and many such as Franz Dahlem redirected their energy into veteran-related activities like commemoration or campaigning for collective rehabilitation. Perhaps the most important lesson that these ‘old communists’ had learnt in Weimar, in Spain, and during the Nazi period was the importance of loyalty to the party. The fact that so few Spanienkämpfer broke with the party after  suggests a remarkable acceptance of party discipline; the importance of veterans in the censorship process certainly indicates their willingness to impose it on others. While the veterans formed a living thread joining Spain and the GDR, important elements of communist political culture also survived the transition from KPD to SED. The purges of the early s echoed those of the s in both their form and in the content of their accusations. The Stalinist legacy of political intolerance towards others on the Left was extremely long lasting, indeed permanent. Contempt for groups like the anarchists and the POUM was widespread amongst the German International Brigade volunteers—this was reflected not only in their memoirs, but also in the work of East German historians. The antifascism that formed the foundational myth of the East German state was therefore remarkably narrowly defined. Not only did it ignore most non-communist experiences of antifascism, it also effectively excluded the realm of personal experience. Its heroes, men like Hans Beimler and Artur Becker, were the product of historiographical amnesia, their biographies carefully manipulated and massaged into a suitable shape. The omission of any signs of human weakness was designed to produce exemplary models of behaviour: in fact, these heroes seemed likely to leave their audience cold. In the words of Hans Collin: ‘What does such a hero do outside the cover of the book?—he demonstrates our inferiority to the rest of us’. The SED’s 

Id., Collin, .



Conclusion

idealized concept of heroism alienated not only the younger generation, but also some veterans, particularly those, such as women and homosexuals, who were furthest removed from the male soldier hero of legend. Jewish Spanienkämpfer were constrained by the communist movement’s focus on political identity as an individual’s defining characteristic, as well as their experiences of anti-Semitism within the communist movement. The censorship of veterans’ memoirs to tally with the party line demonstrates the tension between supposed Marxist-Leninist objectivity and the subjectivity of personal experience which lay at the heart of the negotiations over the meaning of the war. However, this is not to say that antifascism was simply a state ideology. Despite the SED’s best attempts to dominate history, multiple interpretations did exist, which overlapped and competed with the party’s account. The views of the war put forward by groups other than the SED demonstrate that Spain was of significance to many within East German society, even to marginalized groups. Veterans’ unpublished memories, in the party archive, in letters or diaries, or preserved privately within the family, show the durability and longevity of their subjective view of the war. Despite the uninspiring nature of SED accounts of the war, artists, writers, and dissidents remained interested in Spain both in its own right and also because of its symbolic value. Many admired the idealism and self-sacrifice of the volunteers; for writers like Steffen Mensching and Ulrich Plenzdorf, the Spanienkämpfer acted as antifascist parental figures. Others, such as the contributors to the Church samizdat, identified with the persecuted groups of the non-communist Left and saw the Spanish social revolution as a blueprint for non-Stalinist socialism. Generational factors were an important factor in this process: second-generation writers were more likely to turn to literary or Western accounts for information and inspiration. Similarly, the children of Jewish veterans, who had not shared their parents’ traumatic experiences, were able to see identity as a more fluid construct, which could encompass national, religious, and political aspects. This also reflected the changing nature of East German discourses about the past and the relaxation of norms which took place in the s and s. In the spaces provided by the literary sphere, Church circles, groups of family and friends, a civic debate did take place within the GDR. For veterans and writers, it was even possible to enter into dialogue with the regime, through mechanisms such as the censorship process. The problem was that, having appropriated history as part of the ‘disciplinary grid’ they had constructed for the East German population, the SED aspired to have the final say. Once they had tried to impose their master narrative, anything that

Conclusion



contradicted it undermined their authority. Ultimately the party’s attempts to impose a uniform version of events proved counterproductive. The SED felt that outlawing internal dissent was the best way to protect the GDR against criticism from its enemies. However, the ‘tactical, dulled, talkative silence’ described by Steffen Mensching was to prove untenable. Those topics they deemed taboo continued to haunt the political stage. As the young doctor in Collin asks: ‘And will it go on like this for ever, today’s questions pushed to the side and swept under the carpet, to continue in their turn to breed coronaries in ten, twenty, thirty years?’ Those East German citizens who reacted so strongly to Walter Janka’s memoirs in the autumn of  wanted to end this process. They saw an ongoing discussion of Stalinism as a way to reclaim socialism from the SED. They were often the same people who supported the idea of a middle road between state socialism and capitalism and greeted the end of the GDR with sadness and regret. However, their efforts came too late to prompt reforms. By the s idealism was in short supply in East Germany. With German reunification in October , a specifically East German memorial culture became a thing of the past. Trapped by its denial of the subjective and its refusal to accept multiple interpretations of the events, German communism was never able to come to terms with its history. By the time Walter Janka took to the stage of the Deutsches Theater in November , it was simply too little, too late. 

Ibid. .

BIBLIOGRAPHY M A N U S C R I P T A N D A RC H I VA L S O U RC E S

Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Künste (SAdK), Berlin Erich-Arendt-Archiv. Ruth-Berlau-Archiv. Willi-Bredel-Archiv. Ernst-Busch-Archiv. Eduard-Claudius-Archiv. Anna-Seghers-Archiv. Bodo-Uhse-Archiv. Erich-Weinert-Archiv. Bildsammlung. Bundesarchiv, Berlin (BArch) DR /

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UNPUBLISHED THESES

Bridge, H., ‘Transforming History: Women’s Prose Writing and Historiography in the GDR’ (Oxford D.Phil. thesis, ). Bolzen, S., ‘Die Spanienkämpfer von / in der DDR’ (Magisterarbeit, Cologne, ). Epstein, C., ‘The Last Revolutionaries: The Old Communists of East Germany’ (Harvard D.Phil. thesis, ). Goppel, A., ‘Fighting Fascism: German and Austrian Women in the Spanish Civil War –’ (LSE Masters Thesis, ) McLellan, J., ‘Remembering Spain: The Contested History of the International Brigades in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), –’ (Oxford D.Phil thesis, ). Quinn, L., ‘The Politics of Pollution? Environmentalism, Government and Mass Opinion in the GDR’ (Bristol Ph.D. thesis, ). Schütze, F., ‘Die Rolle der kommunistischen Spanienkämpfer in der Führungsspitze der SED (–)’ (Magisterarbeit, Frankfurt am Main, ).

INDEX Ackermann, Anton , –, ,  Agee, Joel , , – see also Uhse, Bodo anarchism , , – Durutti Column , , – and German volunteers –, , – in Spain –,  antifascism: and Cold War , ,  as disciplinary tool  in early years of GDR  importance of International Brigades –, – influence on historiography – interpretations of –,  as state ideology of GDR –, , , – as topic of debate  reception –,  support for ,  and the young –, –, ; see also Stalinism archives – Arendt, Erich , ,  in Spain – on return to Germany  and SED purges  Art and Literature in Antifascist Exile  Artur Becker Medal  Arzt, Minna ,  Aufbau Verlag –,  see also Janka, Walter Bahnik, Wilhelm  n. Becker, Artur – see also Artur Becker Medal Beckmann, Sonja ,  Beimler, Centa Herker – Beimler, Hans , , , , , –, ,  as heroic antifascist figure , –, , – death –; see also Hans Beimler competition; Hans Beimler Straße, Hans Beimler medal Berger, Alfred ,  Berger, Götz  Berlau, Ruth ,  Berlin Wall , , 

Bick, Willi  Biermann, Wolf , –, ,  Borostowski, Wilhem  Brandt, Willy – Braun, Volker  Brauner, Karl  Brecht, Bertold ,  Bredel, Lisa –, ,  Bredel, Willi  in Spain , –, , , ,  in GDR , , , –,  Begegnung am Ebro –, , – Brendt, Edy  Brigada Internacional , , – Brunner, Otto  Brussig, Thomas  Bunge, Hans  Busch, Ernst , , –, , , , ,  Busch, Willi  Caspar, Günther  censorship , , –,  Ministry of Culture censorship – publishing house censorship – self-censorship – civil society , , – Claudius, Eduard , , , , ,  Ruhelose Jahre – Comintern , ,  reaction to Spanish Civil War  commemoration of International Brigades in GDR: early ceremonies –,  in  – in  , , –,  aimed at young people –, , – and defeat of Spanish Republic –,  as legitimation for armed forces –, , , –, , , ,  as legitimation for land reform  popular reaction to – veteran influence on –,  communism  and anarchism , –,  and anti-Semitism  as political identity –, , –, 

Index and the POUM – and social democracy , , –; see also KPD, SED, Stalinism concentration camps , , , , , , , ,  Condor Legion, , , ,  Cornford, John  Cremer, Fritz – Czechoslovakia  see also Slansky Trial; London, Arthur Dahlem, Franz: in Spain , ,  in GDR , , ,  Field affair –, –,  rehabilitation –, , ,  involvement in censorship –,  as focal point for commemoration of International Brigades , , , , , ,  as point of contact for Spanienkämpfer , , –, , , , ,  Dahlem, Käthe , ,  de-Stalinization –, , – Deutscher, Karl  Dickel, Karl  Dietz Verlag ,  Dimitrov, Georgi  Dorf, Artur  Drawert, Kurt  Drumm, Marta  Ebert, Friedrich  Einhorn, Marion – Einstein, Carl –,  Eisler, Hanns  Eisler, Hilde  Elsner, Georg  n. Engel, Rudi  Enzensberger, Hans Magnus  FDJ , , , , , , ,  Fechner, Herbert  Feuchtwanger, Leon  Field affair –,  Field, Noel – Fischer, Manuel  Fomferra, Heinrich –, –, ,  Franco: anti-Franco activity in GDR  end of regime , ,  see also Spanish Civil War Frank, Adolf  Frankenberg und Proschlitz, Egbert von 



Friedemann, Golda , , – Friedemann, Max ,  FRG , , , , ,  Gartmann, Hermann – gender , – in childrens’ books  German International Brigade volunteers: arrests of ,  arrival in Spain –, –,  background  casualties  Centuria Thälmann , , ,  Chapiev Battalion ,  Edgar André Battalion , , ,  Eleventh Brigade , , , , , , ,  Ernst Thälmann Battalion , , , , , – exile experiences pre- –,  exile experiences post- – female volunteers , – Grupo Thälmann  Hans Beimler Battalion ,  historiography – intellectuals – involvement in fighting – Jewish volunteers –,  KPD assessments of – legacy of Spanish Civil War , , – motivation –,  nostalgia for Spain – political sympathies ,  numbers  social democrats  Thirteenth Brigade , ,  Twelfth of February Battalion  see also anarchism Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, see History of the German Labour Movement glasnost , – Glückauf, Erich , , –,  Goldhammer, Bruno  Gomez, General, see Zaisser, Wilhem Green, Nan ,  Grunert, Willy  Grünstein, Herbert  GST , ,  Gundelach, Gustav  Hadlich, Henry  Hager, Kurt , , , – Haid, Bruno 



Index

Hans Beimler Medal, see Spanienkämpfer Hans Beimler competition , ,  Hans Beimler Strasse ,  Harich, Wolfgang  Heinz, Oscar –,  Hellberg, Paul  Hemingway, Ernest –, , , ,  Hempel, Käthe  Hentschke, Reinhold – Hermlin, Stephan  heroism , , – Heym, Stefan , – Hildebrand, Gerold  Hirnstoff Verlag  History of the German Labour Movement , , , ,  Hoffmann, Heinz , ,  homosexuality , ,  Honecker, Erich , , , ,  Hößler, Albert ,  n IML , , , –, , –, –, –,  intellectuals: in GDR , –,  see also German International Brigade volunteers International Brigades: formation – headquarters and leadership,   historiography  place in GDR memorial culture  see also German International Brigade volunteers Jander, Herbert ,  Janka, Charlotte – Janka, Walter –, , , –, , , , , –,  career in GDR , , – arrest and imprisonment –, –,  and Erich Mielke ,  memoirs –, ,  Judaism in GDR , , , – see also German International Brigade volunteers Jugendweihe  Kahane, Annette ,  Kahane, Max , , , ,  Kahle, Hans , –, –, , –, , , , 

Kahmann, Fritz  Kantorowicz, Alfred , , , , , ,  n, – Karls Enkel – Katzenstein, Alfred , , , , –, ,  Katzenstein, Ursula – KdAW ,  Sektion Spanienkämpfer, see Spanienkämpfer Solidaritätskomitee für das spanische Volk – Kießling, Wolfgang –,  Kisch, Egon Erwin  Kleber, General  see also Manfred Stern Klein, Alfred  Klemperer, Victor  Kliche, Dieter  Koestler, Arthur  Kolzov, Mikhail ,  Kopfsprung –,  Körbel, Stefan  Kormes, Karl ,  n, ,  KPD: and intellectuals – reaction to Spanish Civil War , – see also communism KPO  Kriekemeyer, Willi  Kugler, Norbert  Kühne, Horst  Kunert, Günter  Kunst und Literatur im antifaschistischen Exil see Art and Literature in Antifascist Exile Laros, Petros ,  n,  Last, Jef  Leiterer, Kate  Lemke, Adolf  Leonhard, Rudolf  Liesegang, Erich – Lindbaek, Lisa , ,  literary historians – literature  childrens’ – as substitute for public sphere – Loest, Erich ,  Lohberger, Kurt ,  London, Artur –,  Longo, Luigi  Maaßen, Hanns , –

Index Mann, Erika , – Mann, Heinrich  Mann, Thomas  Marty, André , , , –,  Marx, Auguste  Marx, Karl  masculinity  Matern, Hermann  Melis, Ernst  MELS, see IML memory: historiography  and identity  as negotiation  ‘social agency’ approach to  within the family , – memoir writing –, ,  Mensching, Steffen –,  Mergen, Fritz  Merker, Paul , ,  Mewis, Karl , ,  n, –, –, , , ,  Michaelis, Rudolf –, – Mielke, Erich , , ,  Militärverlag , ,  Ministry of Culture , –,  see also censorship Mitteldeutscher Verlag  Mittenzwei, Werner ,  Mund, Karlheinz – Munschke, Ewald ,  Münzenberg, Willi ,  Müller, Albert  Müller, Fred  Müller, Heiner ,  narratives: of antifascism ,  autobiographical , –,  counter-narratives ,  Nazi–Soviet Pact , ,  Neumann, Albert  Neues Leben Verlag  Ney, Herbert  oral history , ,  Osten, Maria , , – Perlitz, Fritz  Pieck, Wilhem  Pioch, Karl  Plenzdorf, Ulrich – Plura, Franz  police , 



Popular Front , , ,  POUM –, , , –, – Priess, Heinz  Raab, Franz  Rajk trial – Rau, Heinrich , , , , , , ,  Regler, Gustav , , , – Renn, Ludwig: in Spain , –, –, , – in GDR ,  Der spanische Krieg –,  Rettmann, Fritz  n, – Richter, Alfred  Romily, Esmond  Rubinstein, Ilse , – Rubinstein, Roman , , –,  n,  n, ,  samizdat , –,  Santiago, Gertrud – SAP  Schaul, Hans  Schiller, Dieter  Schindler, Albert, see Schreiner, Albert Schirdewan, Karl  Schlenstedt, Silvia , , , –, , ,  Schmidt , Eberhard , , – Schmidt, Eduard, see Claudius, Eduard Schnelle, Hermann  Scholz, Ernst , , ,  Schreiner, Albert , , –, ,  Schroeder, Max  Schubert, Hans  Schuster, Louis  Schütz, Stefan  SED: attitude towards political debate – and former Nazis –,  foundation ,  purges in s –,  relationship to population  Stalinization – see also antifascism; communism; deStalinization; Stalinism Seghers, Anna , , , –,  Seipel, Anni  Seipel, Richard , – Sektion Spanienkämpfer, see Spanienkämpfer Semprun, Jorge  sexuality , ,  Siemsen, Anna  SIM 



Index

Slansky trial , ,  Solidaritätskomitee für das Spanische Volk, see KdAW songs of International Brigades , , , , ,  see also Busch, Ernst Spanienkämpfer: anarchist – in armed forces – as censors  children of , , – and commemoration of war –, –,  early meetings , – as father figures – female – and former Nazis – Jewish , –, – Hans Beimler Medal –, ,  occupations –, – party purges of s –,  relationship to own biographies , –, –,  return to Germany – Sektion Spanienkämpfer –, –, –,  veteran communities –, , –, – Spanienkämpfer memorial statue – laying of foundation stone ,  unveiling ,  veteran reactions to – Spanish Civil War: origins and outbreak – international reaction  the fall of the Republic –,  East German historiography – Soviet Union  purges , , , , –, – reaction to Spanish Civil War  in East German historiography , , – Stahlmann, Richard , ,  Staimer, Richard –, ,  Stalinism , , , – and antifascism , – purges in Spain – see also Soviet Union Stank, Otto – Stern, Antonia  Stern, Kurt  Stern, Leo ,  Stern, Manfred , , 

Stern, Wolf  Strasde, Maria  Szinda, Gustav –, , , –,  Taro, Gerta ,  Teichmann, Hermann  Teubner, Hans , , , , –, , , ,  Thälmannpioniere  Trotskyism , ,  see also POUM Uhse, Bodo  in GDR –, , , –, , , , ,  in Spain , , ,  war diaries ,  see also Agee, Joel Ulbricht, Walter , , , , , ,  Umweltblätter, –,  Verner, Paul ,  veterans of International Brigades in GDR, see Spanienkämpfer Vogel, Kurt –,  VVN ,  dissolution ,  and former Nazis  role in commemoration of International Brigades , ,  Wende – Wehner, Herbert  Weinert, Erich , ,  n Weiss, Peter –, ,  Wendt, Erich ,  Wenzel, Hans-Eckardt  West Germany, see FRG Winkelmann, Wilhem  Winzer, Otto  Wischnewski, Klaus – Wohlrat, Gerhart  Wolf, Christa , , ,  Wolf, Ilse  Wolf, Konrad  Workers’ Olympiad ,  Workers’ Uprising ( June )  Zaisser, Wilhem: in GDR , ,  in Spain ,  Zetkin, Maxim – ZPKK , , 