ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines the dynamics of intellectuals’ conformity, accommodation, and dissent within the context of socialist East Germany (1949-1990). The conditions offer an ideal laboratory for this analysis, given that the GDR, both geographically and culturally, constituted a major fault-line in the Cold War. While there are various studies on East German dissidents, no detailed analysis of public intellectuals is yet available.
I focus on the role of a few key, middle and upper-middle-class Marxist intellectuals of assimilated Jewish background, belonging to the generation born between 1900 and 1920. They opted for East Germany after World War II, as the "better’ German state – despite misgivings about the gap between the GDR’s humanist ideals and repressive realities. These "bourgeois Marxists" were steeped in both Marxist-Leninist ideology, the cultural traditions of an educated, central-European middle class (the Bildungsbürgertum), as well as the rational universalism of the humanist European Enlightenment.
They struggled to add their unique mixture of utopianism and humanism to East Germany’s socialist project and advocated diverse methodological positions, intellectual independence, and public debate – albeit within the parameters of Marxism. This performance of a, however limited, scholarly and artistic pluralism counteracted conformist pressures in East German society, mediating between what was officially condoned and alternative personal and cultural expressions. None of my dramatis persona became dissidents. Instead, they practised what I term "loyal subversion."
My study concentrates on how the economic historian Jürgen Kuczynski, the writer Stephan Hermlin, and the journalist Hermann Budzislawski "loyally" subverted the regime’s attempts to construct a uniform socialist culture. Belonging to those intellectuals who embraced the Communist movement in the hope that it would defend and build upon the ideals, principles, and values of humanism and social justice, they partly intentionally and partly inadvertently added to the pressures that undermined the rigidity of the Communist regime. The primary responsibility for two World Wars and the horrors of Nazism disqualified traditional German elites from determining the fate of post-war Germany. Thus, Kuczynski, Hermlin, and Budzislawski saw the East German Communist regime as the only way to rebuild society. Yet their strong commitment to the tenets of humanism led them into confrontations with a regime that denied intellectual freedom. While my case studies considered themselves loyal citizens of East Germany and faithful adherents of Marxism-Leninism, their definitions were not always identical with the views of the regime
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract
Chapter 1
Introduction:
East Germany and its Neo-Humanist Marxists Statement of Problem
Thesis
Historiographic Review and Methodology: The GDR, its Public Sphere, and the Role of Intellectuals
Sources
Organization of Chapters
Conclusion
Chapter 2
"Bourgeois Marxists" in a Worker’s State: An Oxymoron?
Introduction
Dual Identities: Features and Contingencies
Jewishness and Bildung
Stalinist and Post-Stalinist Party Discipline
Pre-Modern State and the Public Sphere
The Legacy
Chapter 3
Bürgerlich Marixm Incarnate: Jürgen Kuczynski
Introduction
Background
The Making of a Bildungsbürgerlich Communist
First Confrontations: A Heterodox Believer in an Orthodox Party
Jürgen Kuczynski as a Marxist Scholar: Between Academic Autonomy and Polemics
Large Scale Scholarly Projects
Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte
The Ten Volume History of the Social Sciences and Humanities
Conclusion
Chapter 4
Jürgen Kuczynski: Between Scholarship and Aesthetics
Introduction
Kuczynski’s Vision of the Aesthetic: Between Theoretical Reflection and Practical Application
Between Goethe and Lenin: Jürgen Kuczynski’s Politics of Culture
Dialogical Monologue?
Conclusion
Chapter 5
Stephan Hermlin: the GDR’s spätbürgerlich Writer
Introduction
Background: Searching for the Bridge Between Geist (Intellect) and Macht (Power)
Hermlin’s Literary Works: Fusing the Aesthetic, the Ideological, and the (Auto) Biographic
The Outsider
Catalyst and Mediator
Conclusion
Chapter 6
Hermann Budzislawski and the Weltbühne Circle
Introduction
Hermann Budzislawski: Background and Formative Expriences
Die Weltbühne
The Weltbühne Without Budzislawski
East Germany and the Weltbühne
The GDR’s Weltbühne – New Authors
Wolfgang Harich’s Background and Aesthetic Project
Wolfgang Harich and the Weltbühne
Karl Friedrich Kaul: Background
Kaul and the Weltbühne
Hermann Budzislawski Returns to the Weltbühne
Conclusion: The GDR "Weltbühne:" Between Neo-Humanist Marxism and Loyalty to the SED Regime
Chapter 7
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
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