The Cult of the Spanish Civil War in East Germany

Author(s): Arnold Krammer

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 39, No. 4, Special Issue: Collective Memory
(Oct., 2004), pp. 531-560
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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Journal of Contemporary History Copyright
@ 2004 SAGE
Publications, London,
Thousand Oaks,
CA and
New
Delhi,
Vol
39(4),
531-560. ISSN 0022-0094.
DOI: 10.1 177/0022009404046753
Arnold Krammer
The Cult of the
Spanish
Civil War in
East
Germany
At Stunde Null
-
1945
-
German intellectuals and writers were at a decisive
crossroads. The
question
was how to
ignore
the chaos and
immediacy
of a
failed
genocidal
war while
building
a
bridge
to a
hopeful
future. For the next
several
years,
West German writers followed two routes:
they
either reached
back before the Third Reich and continued earlier
trends,
or
pronounced
1945
a welcome
starting-point
and endeavoured to create
unique
literature.1
The
story
was
quite
different in the East. In the Soviet
Zone,
after
1949,
the
German Democratic
Republic's
intellectuals and writers
pursued
different
themes
generally concerning
West
Germany's 'imperialist
control'
by
the
USA,
its hollow denazification
programme,
the
war,
the
'worker'
-
and above
all,
anti-fascism.
There was another
problem
which went much
deeper
than
simply
a
question
of
acceptable topics.
East
Germany
needed a historical foundation different
from that of its West German rival. The communist
government
found itself
without historical roots
beyond
the Soviet
occupation
of Eastern
Europe,
the
only point
of
political
and
ideological origin
that East
Germany
could claim.
Writers and intellectuals scrambled to find a
defining
event.
They
looked first
to such
legendary
heroes as the German Protestant reformer Thomas
Miinzer,
who established a communist
theocracy during
the Peasants'
Uprising
of
1524-26. But
Miinzer's religious
fanaticism made him a less-than-ideal choice.
They
then turned to the failed revolution of
1848,
but that was too
closely
linked to the rise of the Kaiserreich. Another
possibility
was
1919,
but Rosa
Luxembourg
and Karl Liebknecht and the
Spartacist League
did not
fight
fascists,
so to
speak,
but rather
monarchists, Freikorps,
nationalists, proto-
fascists and anti-communists. Nor were the leftist movements of the Weimar
years useful,
since
they
more
closely
reflected East
Germany's
banned Social
Democrats than did the Stalinist model which the new communist
government
was anxious to install.
I should like to
acknowledge,
with
gratitude,
the
help
of Michael
Uhl,
a
young
scholar at the
University
of
Tiibingen
and an
expert
on the
Spanish
Civil War. I should also like to thank
Professor
Josie McLellan,
at the
Department
of Historical
Studies, Bristol,
for
sharing
her DPhil
thesis.
Lastly, my
thanks to Professor Robert
Shandley
of Texas
A&M University
for his invalu-
able
insights during
countless hours of intellectual debate.
1
Stephen Brockmann, 'German
Literature, Year Zero: Writers and Politics, 1945-1953' in
Geoffrey J. Giles, Stunde Null: The End and the
Beginning Fifty
Years
Ago.
Occasional
Paper
No.
20
(German Historical
Institute, Washington
DC
1997), 68.
532
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
The
Spanish
Civil War of 1936-39 was
perfect.
Franco's
Spanish military
had declared war on the
newly-elected Popular
Front
government.
The
German and Italian fascists
joined Franco,
and Madrid's
left-wing leadership
turned to the Soviet
Union,
which in turn mobilized true believers all over
Europe.
The
illegal
German Communist
Party actively
recruited volunteers.
On 7
August 1936,
its Central Committee issued a manifesto which
appeared
in all countries where German
6migr6s
lived: 'We call on all German anti-
fascists abroad who have
undergone military training
to
place
themselves at
the
disposal
of the
Spanish People's
Front.'2
Several thousand German com-
munists
living
in
political
exile in
France,
Switzerland and
Spain immediately
responded.
To
put things
in
perspective: approximately
38,000 foreign
volunteers
served in the International
Brigades
-
as
many
as
25,000
were
transported by
the Comintern
-
and of these about 5000 were
Germans.3 Regarding
the
German
Brigaders,
one
knowledgeable participant
recalls that when
they
arrived in
Spain,
an estimated one-third were absolute
communists,
one-third
a mixture of
liberals,
socialists and democratic
anti-nazis,
and one-third
soldiers of fortune and
youths
attracted
by
adventure and
war.4
Additional
research on volunteers from the Saarland indicates that 'almost 100%' were
working-class,
39.8
per
cent of whom had been
unemployed
for
long periods
of time
prior
to
1935.5
For whatever
reason,
a substantial number of volun-
teers
-
perhaps
two-thirds
-
would be committed communists
by
the end of
the war in 1939. It seems
inconsequential
at this
point
to
contemplate
whether
these
Brigaders
were
fighters
in a
spontaneous political army,
an
expansion
of
Stalin's
totalitarianism,
or a
sop
to
unemployment during
the
Depression.
The
result was a source of dedicated future state-builders for the German
Democratic
Republic.
Guns raised in communist hands
against
the combined
fascist
might
of
Hitler,
Mussolini and
Franco,
while the West stood
helplessly
2 Franz
Dahlem,
'The
Military-Political
Work of the Eleventh International
Brigade',
The
Communist International
(May 1938), 446,
and
idem,
Der
Freiheitskampf
des
spanisches
Volkes
(Berlin 1953).
See also Arnold
Krammer,
'Germans
against
Hitler: The Thaelmann
Brigade',
Journal of Contemporary History, 4,
2
(April 1969), 65-84.
3 For
decades,
the GDR
steadfastly
maintained that 5000 Germans had
fought
in the Inter-
national
Brigades, although
the actual number was closer to 3000. A dissertation
by
Roland
Jentsch ('Der
Kampfweg
der XI
Brigade',
Militirakademie
'Friedrich
Engels',
Dresden
1972,
supervised by
Horst
Kiihne)
forced the
government,
in the
mid-1980s,
to
acknowledge
the
smaller number. It was not until the end of December 1988 that a
complete
list of all German
veterans, living
and
dead,
who had lived in the
GDR,
was
published by
the Komitee der anti-
faschistischen
Widerstandskimpfer
der DDR:
Spanienkiimpfer
in der Deutschen Demokratischen
Republik:
Namensverzeichnis
ehemaliger
Teilnehmer
am
Freiheitskrieg gegen
den Faschismus
1936-1939 in
Spanien (Eggersdorf 1988), 36
pages.
4 Tom
Wintringham, English Captain (London 1939), 246.
5 K.-M.
Mallmann, '"Kreuzritter
des antifaschistischen Mysteriums",
Zur
Erfahrungsperspek-
tive des
Spanischen Biirgerkrieges'
in
Helga Grebing
and C. Wickert
(eds),
Das 'andere
Deutschland' im Widerstand
gegen
den
Nationalsozialisnus:
Beitriige zur politischen
Uberwin-
dung
der nationalsozialistischen Diktatur im Exil und im Dritten Reich (Essen 1994), 32-55.
Krammer.
The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil War in East
Germany
533
by,
came to
represent
the ultimate anti-fascist
heroism,
even more so than
underground
resistance or Holocaust survival.
The names of the three battalions in the
predominantly
German XIth
International
Brigade (of
the 17th
[later
the
35th] Division,
Fifth
Army Corps)
left little doubt about the
political complexion
of the anti-fascist volunteers.
The first German communists to trickle into
Spain
in
July
and
August
1936
hastily
formed the Thaelmann Centuria of about 100 men and
fought
in
Aragon
from
August
to October.
Eventually,
in
December,
the
surviving
German volunteers were combined with several thousand new recruits into the
Ernst Thaelmann Battalion.
Thaelmann's name was an icon in German socialist
politics.
In
1903,
at the
age
of
17,
Thaelmann had
joined
the German Socialist
Party (SPD),
served on
the Western Front
during
the first world
war,
and in 1920
joined
the
Communist
Party.
Thaelmann became a member of the
party's
central com-
mittee in 1923 and was
chiefly responsible
for
moulding
the German
Communist
Party.
In 1925 and 1932 he ran for the
presidency
of the Weimar
Republic;
he was beaten both times
by
the candidate of the
right,
Paul von
Hindenburg.
The nazis threw him into a concentration
camp
in March 1933
and murdered him in Buchenwald in 1944. When the German volunteers in
Spain
searched for a unit
name,
Thaelmann became the obvious choice.
The next
group
called itself the
Edgar
Andre Battalion in honour of the well-
known ex-chief of the Roter
Frontkimpfer
Bund,
the Communist
Party's
paramilitary organization
in
Germany (the
Red
equivalent
of the nazi
SA).
News of his execution
by
the
Gestapo
reached
Spain just
as the unit was
forming.
A third unit created in December 1936 commemorated Hans
Beimler,
the
political
chief of all German communists in
Spain. Beimler,
a
lifelong
revolu-
tionary, appeared
in Barcelona in
July
1936 to
help organize
the
arriving
German communists. The
legendary
communist was killed
(under question-
able
circumstances)6 during
a
night
action in Madrid in December
1936,
and
the next
reshuffling
of German volunteers into a new battalion was immedi-
ately
named the Hans Beimler Battalion. His
body
was sent to Moscow for
burial in the Kremlin. Beimler's name would come to be revered in the
GDR,
appearing
on
everything
from street
signs,
state factories and a
medal,
to a
ship
in the East German fleet.
Determined to
stop
in
Spain
what
they
had been unable to in
Germany,
the
Thaelmanns
quickly gained
the
reputation
as the bravest and best-trained
units of all the Internationals. A British
fighter
wrote that
they
exhibited
6 Beimler
may
have been killed
by
a bullet in the
back, perhaps
as a result of his
increasing
protests against
the
growing
influence of the Soviet secret
police
in
Spain.
Terence
Prittie,
Germans
Against
Hitler (London 1964), 209. However, two sources
disagree:
Gustav
Regler,
The
Owl
of
Minerva (London 1959), 286, and
Hugh Thomas,
The
Spanish
Civil War (New York
1961), 345 fn.
According
to a letter
allegedly
sent between Soviet advisers in
Spain ('Gomez' to
'Kleber'), Beimler had no
right
to be involved in
any organizational
matters of the International
Brigades,
170-1.
534
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
'bitter,
terrible
courage
...
they
continued to be shock
troops,
men who did or
tried to do the
impossible
and
paid
for it'.7
Casualties were
very high
indeed -
in the first month of combat the three battalions suffered over 900 killed and
wounded. One month
later,
elements of the Hans Beimler and
Edgar
Andre
spearheaded
a
week-long
battle at Las Rozas-Remisa. Fewer than 50 volun-
teers survived. New reinforcements arrived and were killed or wounded. In
mid-January 1937,
the
Brigades began
a three-week offensive at
Jarama;
of
1000
electives,
750 were casualties.8 Political
training
continued to
intensify
as
the war
progressed.
Defeat followed defeat as the
tragedy
of the
Spanish
Civil War unwound.
Appallingly high
casualties
-
often as
high
as 75
per
cent - resulted as
Franco's Nationalist
Army, supported by
Hitler and
Mussolini, pushed
the
surviving
soldiers of the
dying Republic
toward the Ebro River.
Finally,
on 23
September 1938,
the International
Brigades
withdrew from combat
by
a
plan
negotiated among
the
suddenly-awakened
Great Powers. A
highly
emotional
all-day parade
took
place,
followed
by speeches by
President Azafia and Prime
Minister
Negrin,
and the XIth
Brigade
was
pushed
across the French border
on 21 December 1938 into the
unsympathetic
hands of the French
police.
Some
managed
to
acquire
visas for the USA or Mexico or were 'invited' to the
USSR or
managed
to
join
French resistance
groups,
but most were
ignobly
handed over to the nazis and hundreds
perished
in Mauthausen and Sachsen-
hausen concentration
camps.9
Even before the
Spanish
Civil War
ended, Geoffrey
Cox,
a
perceptive
British
observer,
wrote in his
Defence of
Madrid that
'whether
the
Spanish
Govern-
ment wins or
loses,
the men of the
[International]
column will
provide
a force
of
propagandists
and trained
fighters
who will have a
great
influence on the
future of
Europe'.
This statement
proved
correct. The
Hungarian, Mihaly
Szalvai,
who
fought
in
Spain
under the name
'Major Chapayev',
went on to
become a
general
in
postwar Budapest;
Ferenc
Miinnich
returned to
Hungary
after 1945 to become Prefect of Police in
Budapest
and rose to become a
prominent
member of the
government;
numerous Frenchmen became the
nucleus of the
partisans during
the
war,
and
Franqois
Vittori later
helped orga-
nize the Corsican
uprising
in 1944. In
fact,
commanders of all four armies of
the communist
partisans
in
Yugoslavia
were veterans of the
Spanish
war. The
7 Michael
Koltsov, 'Ispanskii Dnevnik',
serialized in
Novy
Mir
(Moscow), June-September
1938.
8 Louis
Fischer,
Men and Politics: An
Autobiography (London 1941), 393,
and Robert
Colodny,
The
Struggle for
Madrid: The Central
Epic of
the
Spanish Conflict (1936-1937) (New
York
1958),
318.
9 Michel
Fabreguet,
'Les
"Espagnols Rouges"
'i
Mauthausen
(1940-1945)',
Revue
d'Histoire,
162
(April 1991), 77-98;
Monika
Knop, 'SpanienkAmpfer
im
Widerstandskampf
im KZ Sachsen-
hausen', Beitriige
zur Geschichte der
Arbeiterbewegung (BZG),
5 (1988), 715; and 'Statistische
Angaben iiber ehemalige
Spanienkaimpfer
in der DDR.
Jan. 1987',
vorl. DY
57/K86/3, p. 6,
in the
Bundesarchiv, Berlin:
Stiftung
Archiv der
Parteien
und
Massenorganisationen
der DDR (hereafter
SAPMO-B-Archiv). The SAPMO archives in Berlin are rich in material on former
Spanish
Brigaders living
in East
Germany,
with individual dossiers on those of
importance.
Krammer
The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil War in East
Germany
535
General Staff of the
'People's
Liberation
Army
of Slovenia' was headed
by
a
veteran of the International
Brigades,
Franc Rozman. In no
country, however,
would the veterans of the
Brigades
be as welcome or exert as much influence
after the second world war as in East
Germany.10 Many
of East
Germany's
future
leaders, bureaucrats, generals
and writers had been Thaelmanns.
Eventually,
East
Germany
itself
officially acknowledged
that 'the German-
speaking
units of the International
Brigades represented
the nucleus of the
armed forces of the future GDR'.1'
Ludwig
Renn had been the first commander of the German volunteers in
Spain.
A former aristocrat
(his original
name was Arnold Vieth von
Golf3enau),
first world war front-line officer turned committed
communist,
and well-known
author,
Renn's communist
activity
landed him in a nazi
prison
from 1933 to 1934. Exile
followed,
after which he moved to
Spain
where he
eventually
rose to command the entire XIth
Brigade.
At the end of
the
Spanish
Civil
War,
Renn
emigrated
to Santo
Domingo.
After the second
world war he returned to his home town of Dresden where he
wrote,
lectured
and
taught
at the
university
of Dresden.12 His books on the first world war
(Krieg [1928])
and the International
Brigades (Der Spanische Krieg [1955])~3
were standard works. He became East
Germany's living symbol
of the
Spanish
Civil
War,
and was trotted out at
every
veterans' reunion and monument
dedication.
Another former commander was Wilhelm
Zaisser,
a
longtime
Comintern
functionary
known in
Spain
as 'General Gomez'. Zaisser's
revolutionary poli-
tics
began
in 1917 when he was a German officer stationed on the Russian
front. He
joined
the Bolshevik
Party,
became a Soviet
citizen,
and for the next
two decades functioned as a Soviet
military intelligence agent
in
Germany,
with stints in China and Manchuria. He
reappeared
in
Germany
in
July
1948
when the Russians ordered the
raising
of
paramilitary Bereitschaften
in the
10
Only
Poland comes close in its adulation of former
Spanish
veterans.
See,
for
example,
the
conference held in Warsaw on 13
April 1962,
entitled
'Polacy
w
wojnie hiszpanskiej,
1936-1939'
('Poles in the
Spanish
Civil
War, 1936-1939'),
headed
by Henryk Torunczyk,
former commander
of the Polish Dombrowski
Battalion,
and attended
by representatives
of the Central Committee of
the
PZPR, among
numerous other
government
and
foreign dignitaries.
The
Proceedings,
with the
same
title,
edited
by
former veteran Michal
Bron,
contain 28 articles as well as a
complete
list of
surviving
former
veterans,
and were
published by
the
Publishing
House of the
Ministry
of
National Defence
(Wydawnictwo
Ministerstwa
Obrony Narodowej, 1967).
As in the
GDR,
Spanish
veterans were elevated to
many government positions;
see Tadeusz
Moldawa,
Ludzie
Wladzy
1944-1991
(People
in
Power, 1944-1991) (Warsaw 1991). My special
thanks to
Alicja
Witalisz at the
Jagiellonian University,
Cracow.
11 Peter
Joachim Lapp, Traditionspflege
in der DDR (West
Berlin 1988), 74-5.
12 See Arnold Vieth von
Golfienau,
File (2 September 1949), SAPMO-B-Archiv, RY 1/12/3/87,
BI.
23.
13 Later editions of Renn's Der
Spanische Krieg (East Berlin 1955), identical in text, were
published
under the title Im
Spanischen Krieg (e.g.
Berlin-Weimar 1971).
536
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
five districts of the Soviet Zone. These
alert-squads, eventually
called the
Kasernierte
Volkspolizei,
or
People's
Police in
Barracks,
numbered
48,000
men when he took command. In 1950 he became Minister of State
Security,
one of the most
powerful positions
in the GDR.
Zaisser was assisted
by
another
Spanish
Civil War
veteran,
Karl Heinz
Hoffmann
(known
in
Spain
as Heinz
Roth),
former
political
commissar of the
XIth
Brigade,
with whose
help
he was soon able to
forge
the East German
People's
Police into a formidable
army
of
110,000.
In 1954 Hoffmann was
elected to the Central Committee of the
SED,
and in 1960 became the Minister
for National Defence until his death in 1985. From 1973 he was a Politburo
member. 14
Another German communist whose
participation
in
Spain
led to a
high posi-
tion in the future East German
government
was Franz
Dahlem,
chief
political
commissar for all the International
Brigades
in
Spain.
Between 1939 and 1942
he led the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the KPD in
Paris,
until the
Gestapo caught up
with him.
Dahlem,
liberated from Mauthausen concentra-
tion
camp by
the Red
Army
in
1945,
rose in the
powerful
Secretariat of the
Central Committee of the SED to rival Walter Ulbricht
himself."'
Alfred
Neumann,
a
Brigader
in the Hans Beimler and 12th of
February
Battalions,
was also liberated from Mauthausen
by
the Red
Army.
He
joined
the East German
government
and
by
1954 was
serving
on the Central Com-
mittee of the SED. From 1957 to 1961 he
joined
Dahlem
in the Secretariat of
the Central
Committee,
and
by
1968 was the
powerful
head of the Ministerial
Council for Basic
Industry.
Even the most
cursory
look at the
political
and bureaucratic
leadership
reveals a
long
list of former
Spanish fighters.16
For
example,
Anton Ackermann
directed a
political
school for the German
Brigaders
in
Spain,
and
eventually
rose to head the SED
Ministry
for Political
Education, Culture,
Adult
Education,
Trade
Schools,
Press and
Broadcasting.17
Kurt
Biirger
worked for the Comintern and
fought
in
Spain
with the XIth
Brigade.
In December of 1945 he returned to
Germany
and in 1951 was
elected the Minister-President of
Mecklenburg.
He was aided in
Mecklenburg
by
Hans
Kahle,
a
longtime
communist and first commander of the
Edgar
14 Heinz
Priess, Spaniens
Himmel und keine Sterne.
Ein
deutsches Geschichtsbuch.
Erinnerungen
an
ein
Leben und
ein
Jahrhundert (Berlin 1996),
135. Karl Heinz
Hoffmann,
Erinnerungen
von Karl Heinz
Hoffmann
-
Mannheim-Madrid-Moscow
-
Erlebtes aus drei
Jahrzehnten (East
Berlin
1981, 1982),
317-83. See also A.
Herbst,
W.
Ranke, J. Winkler,
So
funk-
tionierte die DDR. Band 3. Lexikon der Funktiondre
(Berlin 1994).
15
Jochen Cerny (ed.),
Wer war wer in der DDR:
Ein
biographisches
Lexikon
(Berlin 1992),
137-8.
16 'Deutsche
Freiwillige
im
Republikanischen Spanien (1936-1939)', SAPMO-B-Archiv, RY1/
12/3/85. Bl. 11.
17 Wer war wer in der DDR, op. cit., 13; Brigada
Internacional ist unser
Ehrenname.
Erleb-
nisse
ehemaliger
deutscher
Spanienkdmpfer,
collected and introduced
by
Hanns Maassen, vol. I
(East Berlin 1974), 469-73.
Krammer. The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil
War
in
East
Germany
537
Andre
Battalion,
who
joined
the British
army during
the second world war
and returned to East
Germany
to become the Chief of Police in
Mecklenburg.
Friedrich
Dickel,
a
platoon
leader in
Spain,
later
taught
at the General Staff
Academy
of the USSR. After 1950 he commanded the Officers' School for
Political Work in East
Berlin,
advanced to
Major-General
in
1956,
First
Deputy
of the
Ministry
for National Defence in
1957,
and in 1963 became the
GDR's Minister of the Interior.
The list of veterans from the
Spanish
Civil War who rose to the
highest
ranks in the East German
government
runs into the hundreds. For
example,
Paul
Verner,
a lieutenant in the International
Brigades,
became a member of
the Central Committee of the SED and President of the National Council of
the National Front from 1969 until his
promotion
in 1984 to
Deputy
Chairman of the Council of State. From 1971 to
1983,
Verner was also the
Secretary
in
charge
of all armed-forces
political organizations.18
Richard
Staimer,
commander of the Thaelmann and later of the XIth
Brigade,
became Chief of the State Police in
Brandenburg.
He rose to
Major-
General in 1953 and ended his
long
career in the
Ministry
of National
Defence. An Air Force
fighter squadron
was named after
him.19
General
Staimer was still at his
post
in November 1989 when the state
collapsed
under
him.
Indeed,
17 of the
leading generals,
46
colonels,
and a substantial number
of
lower-ranking
officers in the NVA
(Nationale Volksarmee,
the National
People's Army)
had served with the
Brigades during
the
Spanish
Civil
War.20
Heinrich Rau served in
Spain
as the XIth
Brigade
Commissar,
and in 1939
was arrested in Paris. After the war he went to East
Germany,
first as the head
of the Deutsche Wirtschaftskommission
(DWK),
the
powerful
German Eco-
nomic
Commission,
and then as Minister of Economics in 1949. In 1950 he
rose to become a member of the
Politburo,
and from 1955 to 1961 he served
as Minister of
Foreign
Trade.21
Fritz
K6hn
was a
life-long
communist who
fought
in the
Brigades
in
Spain.
In 1943 he was arrested and thrown into a concentration
camp.
After the war
he
reorganized
the KPD in Berlin. He
ultimately
attained the rank of
Major-
General in the
NVA,
in which he served until his death in
1981.22
Georg
Stibi
fought
in
Spain
until the
very
end in
1939,
then
emigrated
to
Mexico.
Returning
to East
Germany
in
1946,
he became the chief editor of
18 Helmut
Miiller-Enberg,
Jan Wielgohs
and Dieter Hoffmann
(eds),
Wer war wer in der DDR?
Ein
biographisches
Lexikon
(Berlin 2000), 873-4;
Paul Verner Folder
(4
March
1940),
SAPMO-
B-Archiv, RY1/12/3/91,
Bl.
22;
Solidaritditskomitee
fiir
das
spanische
Volk in der DDR
(ed.),
Broschiire
Solidaritdit
mit dem
spanischen
Volk
(East
Berlin
1963),
29.
19 Heinz
Hoffmann,
'Die Nationale Volksarmee
-
eine moderne sozialistische
Verteidigungs-
macht', Einheit,
36
(February 1981),
144.
20 Zeittafel zur Militiirgeschichte der DDR, 1949 bis 1988 (East
Berlin 1989), Anhang:
'Ehrennamen'; and
SAPMO-B-Archiv, vorl. DY 57/K86/3, p.
8. Statistische
Angaben iiber
ehema-
lige
Spanienkimpfer
in der DDR.
21 Florian
Ring,
Die
Darstellung
des Widerstandes
gegen
Hitler in der SBZ/DDR
-
in
Bezug
auf
die
Schulbiicher
sowie in der Publizistik der NVA (Sinzheim 1996), 150.
22
Ibid., 157.
538
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
the Berliner
Zeitung,
then of the
Leipziger Volkszeitung,
and then of Neues
Deutschland. In 1957 Stibi was
appointed
East
Germany's
ambassador to
Romania,
and in 1958 ambassador to Czechoslovakia. Between 1961 and
1974,
he served as East
Germany's Deputy Foreign
Minister.
Spanish
veterans rose to
every
level in the East German
government.
Herbert
Griinstein
became the
Deputy
Minister of the
Interior;
Karl Mewis
was
appointed
District
Secretary
of the
SED;23
Ewald Munschke became a
Major-General
and Chief of Administration in the National
Volksarmee,24
and
Alfred
Neumann,25
Kurt
Hager
and Paul Verner were all members of the
Secretariat of the Central Committee and reached the
pinnacle
of
power:
the
Politburo.
Hager,
well into the
1980s,
was known as the 'Chief of
Ideology'.26
A last
example
from this
lengthy
list is Erich Mielke. An officer in the
International
Brigades,
Mielke
spent
the war
years
in Russia and returned to
East
Germany
in 1946. From 1950
onward,
he was a member of the Central
Committee of the
SED,
and in November 1957 became Minister of State
Security,
head of the dreaded Stasi. In
1976,
at the SED Ninth
Congress,
he
became a full member of the Politburo. He also rose to the rank of General of
the
Army.
Like General
Staimer,
he remained
faithfully
at his
post
until
November 1989 when the State he served
evaporated.27
In
short,
the holders of
the three most
important military posts
in East
Germany
- General of the
Army
Heinz
Hoffmann,
head of the
NVA;
Erich
Mielke,
head of the
Ministry
for
Security
and its armed
units;
and Colonel-General Friedrich
Dickel,
head
of the
Ministry
of the Interior and its armed units
-
all
fought
in the
International
Brigades
in
Spain.
The
Spanish fighters
who rose to
positions
of
leadership
in the East German
SED are shown in Table
1.28
Specifically,
110
Party apparatchiks
were veterans
of the International
Brigades,
79
government
officials had
fought
in
Spain,
as
had 106
high-ranking
members of the
police,
34 became
powerful army
officials,
13 rose to
leadership
in the
Stasi,
29 were well-known
journalists,
10
23 Karl Mewis
appeared
in
Spain
under the cover name Fritz Arndt. See Wer war wer in der
DDR?, op. cit., 575,
and Karl
Mewis,
Im
Auftrag
der Partei. Erlebnisse im
Kampf gegen
die
faschistische Diktatur,
2nd edn
(East
Berlin
1972).
24
Ring, op. cit.,
136.
25 Wer war wer in der
DDR?, op. cit., 620;
Carola
Stern,
Portrdt
einer
bolshewistischen Partei,
Entwicklung,
Funktion und Situation der SED
(Cologne 1957), 212-14;
Alfred Neumann Folder
(19 February 1940), SAPMO-B-Archiv, RY1 12/3/88,
Bl.
166;
Walter
Janka, Spuren
eines Lebens
(Berlin 1991),
181.
26 Kurt
Hager, Erinnerungen (Leipzig 1996), 55-69;
Kurt
Hager
File
(9 February 1940),
SAPMO-B-Archiv, RY1/12/3/87,
Bl.
46;
Patrik v. zur
Miihlen,
Spanien
war ihre
Hoffnung.
Die
deutsche Linke im
Spanischen
Biirgerkrieg
1936
bis
1939
(Bonn 1983),
158.
27 Wilfriede
Otto,
Erich Mielke
-
Biographie. Aufstieg
und Fall eines Tschekisten
(Berlin
2000), 62-80. See also 'ZK begliickwiinscht Genossen Erich Mielke' and
'Zentralkomitee grat-
uliert Genossen Erich
Mielke', Neues
Deutschland,
28 December 1967 and 28 December 1987.
28
Courtesy
of Michael Uhl, Tiibingen, Germany.
See his article, 'Die internationalen
Brigaden
im
Spiegel
neuer
Dokumente'
in Internationale
wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz
zur Geschichte
der deutschen
Arbeiterbewegung (IWK) (Berlin),
December 1999, 488-518; and idem, Mythos
Spanien:
Das Erbe der internationalen
Brigaden
in der DDR (Bonn 2004).
Krammer
The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil War in East
Germany
539
TABLE 1
Spanish fighters
who rose to
positions
of
leadership
in the East German SED
Central Committee Politburo Secretariat
A. Ackermann
(1950-54)
A. Ackermann
(1949-50)
F. Dahlem
(1950-53)
F.
Dahlem
(1949-53)
F. Dahlem
(1949-53)
K.
Hager (1954-89)
K.
Hager (1963-89)
H. Hoffmann
(1952-85)
H. Hoffmann
(1973-85)
K. Mewis
(1950-89)
E. Mielke
(1950-89)
E. Mielke
(1976-89)
A. Neumann
(1950-89)
A. Neumann
(1958-89)
A. Neumann
(1957-61)
H. Rau
(1949-61)
H. Rau
(1950-61)
P. Verner
(1950-86)
P. Verner
(1963-86)
P. Verner
(1958-84)
W. Zaisser
(1950-53)
W. Zaisser
(1950-53)
W. Bredel
(1954-64)
W. Bredel
(1954-64)
F. Dickel
(1967-89)
E. Kramer
(1954-70)
were leaders in
government
health
services,
and 14 were leaders in economic
planning.29
Each administrator recruited other
Spanish
veterans to serve on his
staff.
Not all former
Spanish
veterans became leaders. An unknown number were
passed
over
despite
their
life-long
dedication to the Communist
Party,
service
in
Spain,
and wartime incarceration in nazi
camps.
Often the
Spanish
veterans
were older than other workers and in
poorer
health due to
years
of
foreign
exile or nazi
brutality; they usually
returned to East
Germany
late and found
themselves in
competition
with
large
numbers of
younger, unemployed
workers,
as well as 'rehabilitated' former nazis. This
subject
calls out for
further research.
Astonishingly, many
of the bureaus administered
by
former
Brigaders
con-
tained former
nazis,
some of whom had even
fought
with the Condor
Legion
in
Spain!
In 1949 Walter
Ulbricht,
soon to be named General
Secretary
of the
SED Central
Committee,
declared that
'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'.30
Consequently,
anti-fascist veterans were
29 'Statistische Obersicht uber die in der Kartei
erfaifter
ehemaligen
Spanienkimpfer
-
1945-1981',
Dokumentationsarchiv des
6sterreichischen
Widerstandes,
Wien
(hereafter
cited as
DOW),
Sammlung
Interessenverband der
Verfolgten
des
Naziregimes (Slg. IVVdN),
Ordner
'Namenslisten nach 1945'.
Following
the
collapse
of the
GDR,
and the death of the former
archivist,
Karl Kormes
(and
a lack of available
funds),
these archives were transferred to the DOW
and the
capable
hands of
ex-Brigader
Hans Landauer. The
Sammlung IVVdN
contains dossiers on
more than 1000 German
Brigaders.
30
Quoted
in
Jeffrey Herf,
Divided
Memory:
The Nazi Past in the Two Germanies
(Cambridge,
MA
1997),
110.
540
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
often forced to
place party loyalty
above
personal
revulsion and turn a blind
eye
to their subordinates'
past
histories.31
A few
prominent
Spanienkdmpfer
objected strenuously
and
quietly
ran foul of the
authorities,
and
despite
their
near-sacred
status, became,
in totalitarian
parlance, 'non-persons'.
Moreover, despite
the
dizzying heights
which former International
Brigaders managed
to
reach,
service in
Spain
did not
protect
a number of them
from the
political purges
of the 1950s. As
early
as
August 1950,
Politburo
member Paul
Merker,
and
others,
were demoted from the
ruling
circle and
inexplicably expelled
from the
party.
Merker ended
up
as a restaurant waiter.
In 1950 came the sudden arrest of
life-long
communist and former
Brigader
Willi
Kreikemeyer,
the
powerful
Director-General of the East German
Railways.
His French-born wife
spent
the next four
years pleading
for infor-
mation about his
whereabouts, appealing
to former
Spanish
veterans as
high
in the
government
as Central Committee member and future Stasi
head,
Erich
Mielke.
Finally,
in October 1954 she was
officially
informed that her husband
had committed suicide in his cell in
August
1950,
six
days
after his arrest.
Despite appeals
which continued until her death in
1986,
she never learned
the
truth,
but
accepted
the
logical
conclusion that the order to murder her
husband could
only
have come from
Moscow.32
In
1953,
Franz
Dahlem,
a
signatory
of the first SED Central Secretariat in
April
1946 and the
very
symbol
of the International
Brigades (and perhaps
Ulbricht's most
dangerous
rival),
was
purged
for
'political blindness',
and after three
years
as a 'non-
person'
was
cautiously
rehabilitated in 1956 and
eventually re-appointed
to
the Central
Committee.33
Anton Ackermann was
purged
from the Secretariat
of the Central Committee in
June 1953, quickly
lost
influence,
and was
stripped
of his offices.
Although he, too,
was rehabilitated in
1956,
he never
attained the same level of
importance.34
Another dramatic fall from
grace
concerned the removal in 1953 of Wilhelm
Zaisser,
Minister of State
Security,
for 'activities
against
the
Party'. Despite
a
lifetime of total
dedication,
he was
actually
drummed out of the
Party
and dis-
appeared
into the
political
wilderness. His few
remaining years
were
spent
in
31 Olaf
Kappelt,
Braunbuch DDR. Nazis in der DDR
(Berlin 1981), 190-1,
310-11.
32
Wolfgang Kiessling,
Willi
Kreikemeyer.
Der verschwundene
Reichsbahnchef (Forscher-
und
Diskussionskreis DDR
-
Geschichte,
Hefte zur DDR-Geschichte Nr.
42)(Berlin:
Gesellschaft-
liches
Forum;
Berlin: 'Helle
Panke', 1992), 41, 53; idem,
Leistner ist Mielke. Schatten einer
gefiilschten
Biographie (Berlin 1998); Jeffrey Herf,
'East German Communists and the
Jewish
Question:
The Case of Paul
Merker', Journal of Contemporary History, 29,
4
(October 1994),
627-61,
and
Josie McLellan, 'Remembering Spain:
The Contested
History
of the International
Brigades
in the German Democratic
Republic' (unpublished
PhD
diss.,
Mansfield
College,
Uni-
versity
of Oxford
2001),
114-21.
33 For the inner machinations of Dahlem's fall and rehabilitation, see Stern, Portriit einer
bolschewistischen Partei, op. cit., 56, and Hermann Weber,
'Schauprozeflvorbereitung
in der
DDR' in Ulrich
Miihlert (ed.), Terror: Stalinistische
Parteisauberungen
1936-1953 (Paderborn,
Vienna, Munich and Zurich
1998), 459-85.
34 Hermann
Weber,
DDR:
Grundrif/
der Geschichte, 1945-1990 (Hanover 1991),
262.
Krammer.
The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil War in East
Germany
541
obscurity, eking
out a
meagre living
as a translator until his death in
1958."3
A
final
example
of a former
Spanish fighter
and devoted communist who was
unable to bend to the
changing
needs of the
post-Stalinist
Cold War was
Walter
Janka. Janka spent
the war
years
in Mexico and returned to East
Germany
where he became head of the DEFA film studios. He later became a
successful
publisher
and head of the
leading
East German
publishing
house,
Aufbau
Verlag. Suddenly
he was arrested for
'counter-revolutionary'
activities
and,
after a show trial in 1957
during
which he
protested
his
innocence,
was
imprisoned
for three
years,
after which he was
stripped
of all official status
and
languished
in
obscurity
for
decades.36
Given its foundation of former
Brigaders
from
Spain,
the new GDR turned
their heroic actions into the
myths
that became the intellectual basis of the
German Democratic
Republic.
'In
short',
notes the
distinguished
historian of
the
GDR,
Peter
Monteath,
'the East Germans have used the
Spanish experi-
ence to
legitimate
the existence of their own state and to establish an
identity
quite
distinct from that of the other German
state.'37
But
myths
cannot
simply
be
legislated. 'Myths
must be
built', says
historian
Alan
Nothnagle,
'one stone on
top
of the
other, through
national
monuments,
school
texts,
festivals and
holidays,
and a
variety
of other media.' This is not
to
imply
that the GDR was the
only
state to create national
myths,
since
every
country
recreates or modifies its historical
past.
For the
GDR, however,
it was
critical. Its boundaries were
artificial;
its citizens
required
models of socialist
behaviour,
and its cultural
history
was
vague
-
the latter
being particularly
important
since
history,
in the Marxist
sense,
was
supposed
to move in-
exorably
in the direction of socialism and
ultimately,
communism. The SED
needed an intricate web of
myths
to define itself and to set the standards of
party discipline, loyalty
and sacrifice
required
of its followers and future
recruits.
The
myth began
with
ideological cleansing. Clearly,
the
symbolic
lifeblood
of the new East German
Republic
was
anti-fascism,
and from
February 1947,
Germans who had
opposed
fascism were
represented by
the Association of
Those Persecuted
by
the Nazi
Regime (Vereinigung
der
Verfolgten
des Nazi-
regimes [VVN]).
The
organization sought
to secure
reparations
for victims of
fascist
oppression.
It
quickly
became
clear, however,
that the communists were
determined to
separate
active
resisters,
such as those in
Spain,
from the victims
35
Priess, Spaniens
Himmel und keine
Sterne, op. cit.,
198.
36 See
Brigitte
Hoeft
(ed.),
Der Prozess
gegen
Walter
Janka
und andere. Eine Dokumentation
(Reinbek
bei
Hamburg 1990);
Walter
Janka, Schwierigkeiten
mit der
Wahrheit (Berlin
and
Weimar
1990); idem, Die
Unterwerfung:
Eine
Kriminalgeschichte
der
Nachkriegszeit (Munich
1994), and idem, Bis zur
Verhaftung. Erinnerungen
eines deutschen
Verlegers (Berlin and Weimar
1993).
37 Peter
Monteath, 'German
Historiography
and the
Spanish
Civil War: A Critical
Survey',
European History Quarterly,
20
(London 1990), 260.
542
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
of the Holocaust. Whatever the
ideological intent,
the shadow of antisemitism
hovered over the
process,
since the Holocaust victims were
generally Jews. By
1950,
most of the non-communist anti-fascists and Holocaust survivors were
pushed
out of the
organization,
some
violently.38
Predictably,
in
February
1953,
the VVN was dissolved and
replaced by
the Committee of Anti-Fascist
Resistance
Fighters (Komitee
der Antifaschistischen
Widerstandkimpfer
[KdAW]),
which
carefully
omitted to
acknowledge
Holocaust victims and
non-communist resisters.
Henceforth,
the 'honoured title of "Resistance
Fighter"
was
only
to be earned
by
those who
today recognize
the
leadership
of
the
Party
of the
Working Class;
who
protect
and defend the
Party;
and who do
everything
to further Socialism'." Poets and writers
sang
their
praise.40
The
Party
had
purged
the anti-fascist movement of resistance
workers,
concentra-
tion
camp
survivors and anti-nazi
spies
-
leaving only
active
fighters,
and
only
committed
Party
members at that. What remained was to
bring
the
story
of the anti-fascist
fighters,
a common
euphemism
for the International
Brigades,
into
ideological alignment.
From the
beginning,
the
developing myth
of the
Spanish
Civil War was
harnessed to Marxism-Leninism.
During
the Stalinist
years
of
1949-55,
the
Spanish
conflict was
interpreted
as a
conspiracy
between the fascists of
Spain
and
Germany. According
to the Leninist definition of state
monopolistic
capitalism, Germany
intervened in
Spain
to
exploit
raw
materials,
and the
'militarists'
and
imperialists
of both countries colluded to test
Germany's
newest
weapons. Thus,
in the
parlance
of GDR
textbooks,
...
the definition of
fascism,
with its
ruling relationship
to extreme
monopoly capitalism,
remained until the end the Marxist
understanding
of fascism. This was the reason
why
the
members of the International
Brigades
in the
Spanish
Civil War were counted
among
the
resistance
fighters: they fought according
to communist doctrine
against capitalism
and
imperialism."'
The
comparison
with
contemporary post-second
world war
Germany
was
clear: the GDR had inherited the democratic traditions of the
opponents
of
this
global-grasping scenario,
traditions which were embodied in the Inter-
38
Priess, Spaniens
Himmel und keine
Sterne, op. cit.,
198. See also Elke Reuter and Detlef
Hansel,
Das kurze Leben der VVN von 1947 bis 1953: Die Geschichte der
Vereinigung
der
Verfolgten
des
Naziregimes
in der
sowjetischen
Besatzungszone
und in der DDR
(Berlin 1997).
An incisive
analysis
of the
early struggles by Jews
for
recognition
as anti-fascists in East Berlin can
be found in
Herf,
Divided
Memory, op. cit., especially
69-105. For the antisemitic
purges
which
followed in the
1950s,
see
106-61;
see also
idem,
'East German Communists and the
Jewish
Question', op.
cit.
39 Hartmut Zimmermann
(ed.), DDR Handbuch,
Band 1, A-L,
3rd edn (Bundesministerium
fur
innerdeutsche
Beziehungen, Cologne 1985),
734.
40 Erich Weinert (ed.), Die Fahne der Solidaritiit. Deutsche Schriftsteller
in der
spanischen
Freiheitsarmee 1936-1939 (East Berlin 1953).
41 Klaus-Peter Meissner, 'Mehr
Fragen
als
Antworten.
Nachdenken
uiber
die
Militirgeschichte
der
DDR', Militdirgeschichte,
4
(Berlin 1990),
324.
Krammer
The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil
War
in
East
Germany
543
national
Brigades. By claiming
to be heir to the soul of the
Brigade,
East
Germany
invented a moral foundation while
casting
its
nearby
West German
nemesis as heir to Hitler's
reactionary
Condor
Legion.
The
military
role of the
Soviet Union was denied
-
all credit was due the communist
Brigaders.
Until
1956,
this was a view
generally accepted by
the
public.
'1956',
in the words of historian Peter
Monteath, signalled
'a
turning-point
in Eastern block
historiography'.42
Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin at
the Twentieth
Party Congress
in Moscow allowed Soviet
participants
in the
Spanish
Civil
War, many
of whom had been
purged,
to
step
out of the
shadows. Additional Soviet revelations
periodically appeared
in memoirs and
documents.
However,
East
Germany
was slow to
change;
even a
year
after the
momentous Twentieth
Party Congress,
East German historian Vera
Koller
continued to
deny
Soviet
involvement.43 By
the
early 1960s,
Soviet involve-
ment in
Spain
was
being openly
discussed in Eastern
Europe,
and
by
1975 the
Soviet Union was
startlingly
blatant about its
participation
in
Spain, listing
pages
of the names of the Russian volunteers and
pilots, type
and amount
of
guns
and
equipment transported
to
Spain,
and names of
ships involved.44 In
1975,
Moscow
actually
corrected the official and
nearly-sacred History of
the
Great Patriotic War
of
the Soviet Union
1941-1945 (Moscow 1960),
which
listed an incorrect low number of Soviet volunteers in
Spain.45 History
became
ideology;
the official line now declared that 'the Great Patriotic War was a
continuation of the
struggle against
fascism
begun
on the soil and in the
sky
of
Spain'.46
Literature about
Spain increasingly
reflected the Cold
War,
with the USA
and its
surrogate,
West
Germany, representing
fascism and
imperialism.47
A
perfect example
is Die XI.
Brigade:.
Gewehre in
Arbeiterhand,
written
by
one-
time commander of the
Edgar
Andre
Battalion,
Gustav
Szinda,
in 1956. The
last seven
pages
of Szinda's
history
are a diatribe
against
American
imperial-
ism in
Korea,
the
military aggression
of West
Germany
and the fascist officers
who continued to serve
it,
and a renewed call to arms to socialist comrades the
42
Monteath,
'German
Historiography', op. cit.,
261.
43 Vera
Koller,
'Die Hilfe der
Sowjetunion fiir
das
republikanische Spanien.
Ein
leuchtendes
Beispiel
des
proletarischen Internationalismus', Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift
der Humboldt-
Universitdt zu Berlin,
Gesellschafts
und
sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe,
7
(1957-8), 99-103,
cited
by Monteath, op. cit.,
279.
44 Soviet War Veterans'
Committee, Academy
of Sciences of the
USSR,
International
Solidarity
with the
Spanish Republic (Moscow 1975),
313-31.
45 The
History of
the Great Patriotic War
of
the Soviet Union 1941-1945
(Moscow 1960),
113,
corrected in International
Solidarity
with the
Spanish Republic, op. cit.,
329.
46 International
Solidarity
with the
Spanish Republic, op. cit.,
331.
47 Referat Walter Ulbricht, BZG, 3, 1962, 547-610; Klaus Mammach, 'Griindung
der Sektion
bei der Deutschen Akademie der
Wissenschaften', BZG, 2, 1964, 330-1; Albert Norden, Die
spanische Drama, 2nd edn
(East Berlin
1961); also see Horst
Kiihne,
Revolutioniire Militiirpolitik
1936-1939.
Militdirpolitische Aspekte
des
national-revolutioniiren Krieges
in
Spanien (East Berlin
1969) and 'The
Image
of America as the
Enemy
in the Former GDR', Deutsches Historisches
Museum
Magazin, 7/3, 1993, 11.
544
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
world
over.48
Within five
years,
America's
growing
involvement in Vietnam
provided
an
opportunity
to
equate
the USA with fascist
Germany,
a
large
military-industrial complex attacking
a small distant
country
embroiled in a
civil war.
Opposition
to American
imperialism
in South-east Asia was in the
finest tradition of the International
Brigades."49
Suddenly,
it became fashionable to have
fought
the fascists in
Spain.
Politi-
cians and writers who had not been to
Spain
often invented service in the
International
Brigades.so
Even GDR leader and founder of the Socialist
Unity
Party (SED),
Walter
Ulbricht,
basked in
public praise
for his
alleged
combat in
Spain" when,
in
fact,
he
actually only spent
a few weeks there in December
1936,
and those as a communist
ideological
hatchet
man.S2
To further cloak
himself in the
myth
of
Spain,
Ulbricht maintained a close association with real
German
Brigaders
and
championed
his wife Lotte's
brother,
who
fought
and
died in
Spain.
Now that the
purges appeared
to be
declining following
Khruschev's Twentieth
Party Congress speech
in
1956, participation
in
Spain
was
again becoming
the coveted
proof
of commitment to anti-fascism and
socialist heroism.
In
July 1956,
a
special
Memorial Week was called to celebrate the twentieth
anniversary
of the
beginning
of the
Spanish
Civil War. Old
fighters
were
located and awarded a Hans Beimler
Medal,
and the
government
identified the
modern GDR
institutions,
such as
youth groups
and
Volkspolizei units,
with
the anti-fascist
fighters
of the
Brigades, although
no mention was made of the
fate which had befallen
many Spanienkdmpfer
since 1949. Former veterans
saw the celebration as their rehabilitation until the same Hans Beimler Medal
was
quietly
awarded to the likes of Walter
Ulbricht,
whose claim to be a
Spanienkiimpfer
was dubious at best.
Curiously,
the event saw the
very
term
'Spanish
Civil War' come under
attack. The first issue concerned the word
'Spanish'.
In the GDR's
view, Spain
was
merely
the battlefield. The
conflict,
the inevitable outcome of a historic
48 Gustav
Szinda,
Die XI.
Brigade:
Gewehre
in Arbeiterhand
(East
Berlin
1956);
see also Horst
Lothar Teweleit
(ed.),
No
pasaran!
Romanzen aus dem
Spanienkrieg
1936-1939
(East
Berlin
1986).
49 Waldemar
Verner,
'Die
NVA-Hiiterin
der Tradition des bewaffneten
Kampfes
deutscher
Antifaschisten in
Spanien'
in
Interbrigadisten:
Der
Kampf
deutscher Kommunisten
und
anderer
Antifaschisten
im national-revolutiondren
Krieg
des
spanischen
Volkes 1936 bis 1939: Protokoll
einer
wissenschaftlichen Konferenz
an der Militarakademie 'Friedrich
Engels' (East
Berlin
1966),
22.
50
Perhaps
the most
striking example
of a writer who created a fictitious
Spanish
Civil War
past
was
Stephen Hermlin,
whose close association with Honecker benefited them both. For a
scathing
expose
of Hermlin's
biography,
see Karl
Corino,
Aussen Marmor,
innen
Gips:
Die
Legenden
des
Stephen
Hermlin
(Diisseldorf 1996), esp.
94-106.
51
During
the celebration of Ulbricht's sixtieth
birthday,
official reference was made to his
service in the International
Brigades (Einheit, 7, 1953), although
the well-known
Spanish
veteran
Alfred Kantorowicz
reported
that Ulbricht
spent only
a few weeks in
Spain
in December 1936,
'to
check
up
on the
political
structure of the International
Brigades' (Die Welt,
2 March 1963).
52 Die Welt, 2 March 1963; Carola Stern, Ulbricht: A Political
Biography (London 1965),
71-2.
Krammer The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil War in East
Germany
545
clash between fascism and
communism,
could have
happened anywhere.
Then
came the
problem
of the words 'civil
war', since,
in the socialist
view,
the war
was not between
Spaniards,
but between outside forces. Fascists were un-
welcome
invaders,
while other
foreigners
-
hence the name 'International'
Brigaders
-
defended
Spanish democracy. Any question
that the Soviet
Union's interference in
Spain
also constituted intervention was a closed
issue.53
For more than two decades after the end of the second world
war,
the
Comintern called the conflict the 'National
Revolutionary
War of the
Spanish
People',
or more
often, simply
'The War of Fascist Intervention'.
As late as
1972,
the East German
author,
Otfried
Dankelmann,
endured
government
criticism for
using
the name
'Spanish
Civil War' in Franco
zwischen
Hitler und
den
Westmiichten,
instead of a
politically-correct
term.54
Finally,
in 1986 -
three
years
before the
collapse
of the East German state - a
special
collo-
quium
was held in
Leipzig
on the fiftieth
anniversary
of the
Spanish
war to
determine the
proper
name for the conflict. The decision announced in
the
government journal, Beitriige
zur Geschichte
der
deutschen
Arbeiterbewegung
(BZG),
was that the
Spanish
Civil War would hereafter be known as 'Der
Spanische
Biirgerkrieg'.ss
The creation of the
Spanish fighters myth
was
intentional,
and was created not
by
the SED but
by
the
Spanish
veterans themselves. Former
Brigaders began
meeting
in
Berlin,
as
elsewhere,
as
early
as 29
September 1945,
when 35
people
attended. From
mid-1946,
commemoration of the
Spanish
war increas-
ingly
took the form of
public events,
rallies to mark the outbreak of the war
became annual
gatherings.
At a
meeting
of the VVN on 13
September
1948 at
an East Berlin bar called the Alt
Bayern,
a
group
of 70 former
Brigaders
and
friends
gathered
to discuss their status and value to the
developing
socialist
government. According
to a
transcript,
the conversation turned to the
question
of whether
they
should consider
-
and
portray
-themselves as heroes.
Some said that
they
were not
heroes, opting
instead to view the
proletariat
as
a collective. Former
Brigader
Karl Mewis said that if
they
did not construct a
heroic
myth,
the
enemy
in West
Germany
would
surely
take on the mantle.
The
transcript
then continued:
'Regarding
the
question
of heroes?
They [the
Brigaders]
were our comrades.
They
are heroes of the
People
and of the
working class,
and we would be idiots if we
deny
these facts. We cannot leave
53 Such a
suggestion
was made
by
Reiner Tosstorff in his
book,
Die POUM im
spanischen
Biirgerkrieg
(Frankfurt/M 1987),
and
sharply
criticized
by
the writer and former International
Brigader,
Walter
Janka,
in
Beitriige
zu Geschichte
der
deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (BZG),
6
(1988), 842-3. After 1962 BZG was shortened to
Beitriige zur Geschichte der
Arbeiterbewegung.
It was
published by
the Institut
fiir Marxismus-Leninismus beim Zentralkomitee der SED, and
throughout
its
existence, until
1989, served to
express
the
dogmatic
aims of all historical research
in the GDR.
54
ZfG,
5
(1972), 618.
55
BZG,
2
(1987), 261-2.
546
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
it to the
others.'56
The cult of
Spanish
heroism was formalized
nearly
20
years
later,
on 13
May 1965,
with the
founding
of the
'Sektion
der
ehemaligen
Spanienkimpfer'
within the Committee of Anti-Fascist Resistance
Fighters
(KdAW).
The
'Sektion' was
originally
directed
by
Franz
Dahlem,
Heinrich Wieland
and Kurt
Schwotzer,
until
February 1974,
when the
leadership
fell to Walter
Vesper
and Kurt
H6fer.
The
membership
numbered 27 former
Spanish
vet-
erans,
most of whom were SED functionaries.
Analogous
to its
parent organi-
zation,
the
KdAW,
the 'Sektion' took on three tasks. The first
group,
led
by
Hans
Teubner,
Albert Schreiner and
later,
Artur
Dorf,
concerned itself with
collecting
the
history
of the International
Brigades through
documents and
oral histories. Its task was to create a model for East German
youth
and the
military,
with the
greater goal
of
providing
an alternative to the West German
history
of the conflict. The second
commission,
directed first
by
Kurt
Schwotzer and later
by
Werner
Schwartze,
busied itself with social work and
the health issues faced
by aging
former veterans. The third
subgroup
of the
'Sektion',
controlled
by
Herbert
Griinstein,
was committed to
maintaining
international
co-operation
with other veterans'
groups, although
the contra-
dictory goals
of
establishing
close ties with other veteran
groups
while
creating
a
separate
East German model would soon lead to the demise of the third
commission. The
'Sektion',
dominated
largely by
the Berlin
veterans,
would
continue until the end of the State in 1989.57
From the earliest
years,
the
Spanish
conflict was evident in all areas of East
German
culture.58
Thaelmann,
not
surprisingly,
rose to
mythic proportions
in
East
Germany
as the founder of the KPD
martyred by
the nazis and also as the
namesake of the German
brigade
in
Spain.
He became East
Germany's Lenin,
the source of
ideological slogans
whose
spirit
called for sacrifice and blind
loyalty."9 According
to an official
compilation,
'Ernst Thaelmann' was the fifth
most common name
-
behind Karl
Marx,
Friedrich
Engels,
Karl Liebknecht
and Rosa
Luxemburg
-
and was found in
military
schools
(including
the
Army Infantry
Officers'
Training School),
in construction
companies,
on
heavy
machinery
and
ships (including
the
Flagship
of the East German
Navy).60
The
56 'Zur
Frage
der Helden? Unsere Kamaraden waren es. Das sind Helden des
Volks
und der
Arbeiterklasse,
und wir wdren
Dummk6pfe,
wenn wir uns dieser Tatsache
verschlieflen wiirden.
Wir
konnen
es nicht den Anderen
iiberlassen.'
'Niederschrift
uiber
die
Arbeitstagung
der
Spanienkampfer
am 13.
September
1948 im Lokal Alt
Bayern,
Friedrichstr', SAPMO-B-Archiv,
DY 55N278/2/25
[Bestand:VVN]
'Protokolle u.
Materialien, 1948-1951', BI.
5.
57
'Appell
an alle
ehemaligen
Spanienkimpfer
in der DDR' der Geschichtskommission der
Sektion,
Februar
1968, SAPMO-B-Archiv,
NY4198/129.
BI.
43-44;
'Internes Informations-
material' des
Solidarititskomitees,
Februar
1974, SAPMO-B-Archiv, NY4198/129,
BI.
58.
58 Peter
Monteath
(ed.),
The
Spanish
Civil War in
Literature,
Film and Art: An International
Bibliography of Secondary Literature
(Westport,
CT 1994) and Martin Franzbach, Geschichte der
spanischen Literatur in
Oberblick
(Stuttgart 1993).
59 Alan
Nothnagle, Building
the East German
Myth:
Historical
Mythology
and Youth
Propaganda
in the German Democratic
Republic,
1945-1989 (Ann Arbor,
MI
1999), 115-27.
60
Lapp, Traditionspflege
in der DDR, op. cit.,
163.
Krammer The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil
War
in East
Germany
547
Young
Pioneers were
officially
renamed the Ernst Thaelmann Pioneer
Organization
in
1952,
and the KPD was
routinely
referred to as 'Thaelmann's
Party'.
A dozen
medals, sports
awards and
youth prizes
took his name. His face
appears
on the 1953
80pf stamp
and 1971 20 Mark
(East German)
coin. In
1986,
a Thaelmann monument was unveiled in
Berlin, adjacent
to a new
'Thdilmannpark',
a combination
apartment, shopping
and recreational com-
plex.
To
only
a
slightly
lesser
degree,
the names of Hans Beimler61 and other
heroes from
Spain appeared
as models of socialist sacrifice. East
Germany's
youth organization
Freie Deutsche
Jugend (FDJ)
awarded
outstanding
achievers the Hans Beimler Awards
(in
10
classes),
as well as the Artur Becker
Medal,
named after the
party secretary
of the Thaelmann Battalion in
Spain.
Military
choirs
regularly sang
The
Solidarity Song (das Solidaritiitslied),
the
Song
of the International
Brigades (Interbrigaden)
and the
Song
of the
Thilmann
Battalion.
Particularly popular
was the Hans Beimler
Song,
which
became a
staple
of
Spanish
Civil War
gatherings
and student
sing-alongs.
A
film,
'Hans
Beimler, Kamerad',
won the National Prize
(First Class)
in 1969.62
Factories, bridges
and town
squares
bore the names of
Spanish
Civil War
heroes. A
shipyard
in
Magdeburg
was named
'Edgar
Andre'. The National
Volksarmee named
many
of its barracks after fallen
Brigade fighters,
such as
'Bruno
Kiihn' (brother
of Walter Ulbricht's
wife, Lotte),
'Hans Marchwitza'
and 'Karol
Swierczewski',
and a tank barracks was named 'Artur Becker'. An
Air Force
fighter squadron
was named 'Heinrich
Rau',
and the East German
navy
had a
mine-sweeper
named 'Hans
Beimler'.63
In
1971,
a tank unit
(PR-8
in
Goldberg)
was named after Artur
Becker.64
Also in
1971,
the Technical
School of the
Ministry
of the Interior in
Dresden,
an Officers'
Training School,
was named after
Becker.65 The first
regiment
of the NVA was the Hans-
Beimler
Regiment (MSR-1
in
Oranienburg)
whose soldiers
nearly worshiped
Beimler,
were shown movies about him and honoured him on the
anniversary
of his
death.66
The
army's
musical ensemble was named after former
Brigader
and
author,
Erich
Weinert.67 Paul Hornick's name was
given
to a Panzer
regi-
ment in
Cottbus;68
Fritz Perlitz's name was
given
to Border
Regiment
42 in
61 Maoz
Azaryahu,
Von
Wilhelmplatz
zu
Thiilmannplatz:
Politische Symbole
im
bffentlichen
Leben der DDR
(Schriftenreihe
des Instituts
fiir
Deutsche Geschichte
-
Universitit
Tel
Aviv),
13
(Gerlingen 1991),
187-8.
62 The
prize-winning script
was
published;
see Rudi
Kurz,
Hans
Beimler,
Kamerad
(East
Berlin
1970).
63
Hans-Joerg Ruhl,
'Die Internationalen
Brigaden
im
Spanischen
Biirgerkrieg
1936-1939',
Militiirgeschichtliche Mitteilungen,
17
(Potsdam 1975),
223.
64
Wolfgang
Eisert et
al., Zeittafel
zur
Militiirgeschichte
der
DDR,
2nd edn
(Berlin 1989),
288.
Hereafter cited as
Eisert, Zeittafel.
65
Eisert, Zeittafel, op. cit., 293.
66
Ibid., 213.
67 Deutsches Institut fur
Zeitgeschichte (ed.), Jahrbuch
der Deutschen Demokratischen
Republik
1958 (East Berlin
1958), 276.
68
Eisert, Zeittafel, op. cit., 299.
548
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
FIGURE la
SOIIDARI[Af
HELDEN
DES
ANTIFASCHISTISCHEN
FREINEITSKAMPFES
Blankenfelde;69
and
Willi
Schr6der's
name was
given
to the GDR National
Holiday
for Landforce FRR-8 in Sternbuchholz.70
Altogether,
more than 40
troop units, military bases,
and
large
and small
ships
were named after
Spanish
anti-fascist
fighters,71
and
according
to the detailed calculations of
Michael
Uhl,
the number of
namings
continued to increase well into the
1980s.
In
1966,
a series of attractive
postage stamps commemorating
the 'Heroes
of the Anti-fascist Freedom
Struggle' appeared
on the thirtieth
anniversary
of
the creation of the International
Brigades.
Portraits of Hans
Beimler,
Hans
Kahle,
Artur
Becker,
Hans
Marchwitza,
Heinrich Rau and Willi Bredel were
shown
against backdrops
of combat scenes from the war in
Spain.72
Another
stamp appeared
in 1986 to commemorate the fiftieth
anniversary
of the
formation of the International
Brigades (as opposed
to the
beginning
of
the
Spanish
Civil
War), together
with a frank
showing
a clenched fist on the
envelopes.
Films about
Spain appeared
with
increasing regularity,
the best-known of
69
Ibid.,
327.
70
Ibid.,
383.
71 Prof. Hans
Teubner,
'Wir kommen
durch!',
Neues
Deutschland,
4
August 1966,
4.
72
Interestingly,
each
stamp
has in the
background
a
large
red
flag, supposedly
the
flag
of the
XIth
Brigade, when,
in
fact,
the
open display
of communist
symbols
was
officially
forbidden. The
banner of the XIth
Brigade
was the
flag
of the
Spanish Republic.
Krammer The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil
War
in
East
Germany
549
FIGURE lb
SOIIARITAT
UELDEN
DES
ANTIFASCH ISTISCHEN
FREINEITSKAMPFES$
them
perhaps
the acclaimed
'Fiinf
Patronenhiilsen'
(Five Cartridges),
a tense
1960
study
about an international
group
of five heroic
Brigaders
who
fight
their
way through
several battles to
keep
their
dying
commander's last mes-
sage
from
falling
into
enemy
hands.
The
July
1966 thirtieth
anniversary
celebration was the culmination of the
government's myth
of the
Spanish
Civil War. Former International
Brigaders
were invited from all over the
world,
lauded for their
bravery
and awarded
the Hans Beimler Medal. Soviet advisers in
Spain, previously
hidden behind
pseudonyms, stepped
into the
light
to receive
public
accolades. Western
researchers in the audience learned which of Stalin's
generals
had earned their
early stripes
in
Spain.
On
Friday,
15
July 1966,
Berlin
Oberbiirgermeister
Friedrich Ebert announced to a
rally
of thousands that the former Neue
Konigstrasse,
a
major
boulevard in Berlin which intersects the near-sacred
Karl-Marx-Allee,
would henceforth be renamed 'Hans-Beimler-Strasse'.
Government Minister Erwin
Kramer,
himself an officer in the International
Brigades,
laid the cornerstone of a
huge
memorial in Berlin's Friedrichshain
section to the 3000 fallen Germans of the Thaelmann Battalion
-
an over-
sized
figure
of an International
Brigader rising
from a trench with a sword in
his
hand.73
One of the most
prominent sculptors
in the
GDR,
Professor Fritz
73 Hanns
Maassen, Solidaritatskomitee fur das
spanische
Volk in der
DDR,
Gedenkstiitte
der
deutschen
Interbrigadisten
im
Friedrichshain,
Berlin
(Leipzig 1968),
27
pages.
550
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
Cremer,
linked his Thaelmann memorial with a statue
honouring
the fiftieth
anniversary
of the October
Revolution,
with a third monument commemorat-
ing
those still
fighting
for their freedom. The combined work was to
represent
a
picture
of the times: socialism
triumphant,
socialists
temporarily
defeated
and socialism still in flux.
Every newspaper trumpeted
the events. Most had a
single
theme:
Spain
and
Vietnam were
interchangeable.
Heroic communist
fighters repelled
fascist
intervention,
then and
now,
and the
culprits
of western
imperialism
were
just
as clear. The front
page
of the East German Berliner
Zeitung
of
Saturday,
16
July 1966,
described a
large
demonstration
'by
International
Brigaders
from
23 lands to
support
the
solidarity
between the
Spanish working
class and the
people
of Vietnam'. Other
front-page
articles shamed American
aggression
in
Vietnam,
and an entire inner
page applauded
the International
Brigades.
The
following day,
the BZ carried a
full-page
article
by
former
IB
Commander
Ludwig Renn,
with additional
pages
about the enlistment of the
Brigade spirit
in the
struggle
for freedom of the Vietnamese
people (BZ,
17
July 1966, pp. 1,
3, 3a, 5).
The official
Party newspaper
Neues Deutschland of
Saturday,
16
July
1966 devoted several
pages
to the
Spanish
conflict,
the continuation of
the
struggle against
western
imperialism
and endless
analogies
to Vietnam.
That the cult of
Spain
was
reaching
its
apex
is not
surprising.
The
public
now received a
steady
diet of adoration for the
Brigaders
and the heroic model
of socialist sacrifice
they
had come to
represent.
Indeed,
International
Brigade
veterans headed the four
largest
official
government newspapers.
Max Kahane
was a founder and editor of the
powerful
news service
Allgemeiner
Deutscher
Nachrichtendienst
(ADN, 1965-68).
He was also the chief commentator of
Neues
Deutschland,
and
Georg
Stibi was the chief editor of the Berliner
Zeitung,
of the
Leipziger Volkszeitung,
and
finally
of Neues Deutschland.
Freida
Kantorowicz,
wife of author and
Brigade
veteran Alfred
Kantorowicz,
and herself a staff administrator of the
brigades
in
Spain,
had a
high
adminis-
trative
position
with ADN. Erich Henschke was the editor-in-chief of the
Berliner
Zeitung
and Kurt
Julius
Goldstein the editor-in-chief of the
major
radio station Deutschlandsender 'Stimme der DDR'
(1971-78).
He was also a
member of the Rundfunkkomitee of the Ministerrat der
JDDR.74
In
fact,
Spanish
veterans
occupied
various other
positions
on all
major newspapers
and at the official radio station.75
Days later,
on 21
July 1966,
Neues Deutschland devoted a full
page
to the
streets renamed after
Spanish fighters
in other cities: the Heinrich-Rau-Allee in
Potsdam,
the Hans-Kahle-Strasse in
Schwerin,
the
Paul-Hornick-Strasse,
after
another commander of the Thaelmann
Battalion,
and
yet
another Hans-
Beimler-Strasse,
this one in Dresden. On 4
August 1966,
ND waxed
lyrical
74 Friedrich-Martin
Balzer (ed.), Wir sind die letzten
-
Frag
uns. Kurt Goldstein:
Spanien-
kiimpfer,
Auschwitz- und
Buchenwaldhiftling.
Reden und
Schriften (Bonn 1999). From 1980 to
1991, Goldstein was the
secretary
of the
F~deration Internationale
des
R6sistances
in Vienna.
Today
he is President of the International Auschwitz-Komitee.
75
Miiller-Enberg
et al., Wer war wer in der DDR?, op.
cit.
Krammer The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil War in East
Germany
55
1
about a new
published
collection of
personal
histories
by
former
Brigaders,
entitled Pasaremos: Deutsche
Antifaschisten
im
National-Revolutioniiren
Krieg
des
Spanischen
Volkes
(Deutscher
Militirverlag
1966).
The review
spelled
out the
government's
official view of the
Spanish
Civil
War,
and the
role of the conflict in the formation of the GDR.
In
Spain,
a united front
developed
between German
communists,
Social
Democrats,
Christians, political independents
and intellectuals. This volume illustrates how the German
volunteers in
Spain prepared
for the unification of the two workers'
parties [KPD
and
SPD]
into one
party
of
Germany [SED],
and
helped
to
bring
about the
greatest
German revolution.76
Ludwig
Renn summed
up
the
myth
of the
Spanish
Civil War:
Of the more than 5000 German
fighters
in the International
Brigades, barely
400 are alive
today.
The best and most
capable
of them hold
responsible positions
in our German
Democratic
Republic; many
are officers of our national Volksarmee and the German
Volkspolizei.
There
they
continue the traditions which mark
every respectable
soldier and
officer:
courage, discipline,
clear convictions and
personal
and
political purity.77
Books,
no less than
postage stamps,
music or
any
other vehicle of
culture,
had
to
play
a didactic role in the GDR. Each had to have a moral lesson to
impart,
and in
fact,
one of the
very
first
Spanish
novels
published
in the Soviet Zone in
1946, by
former International
Brigader
Walter
Gorrish,
was
Um
Spaniens
Freiheit (About
the Freedom
of Spain),
followed
by Spanienkiimpfer
Eduard
Claudius'
[Eduard Schmidt] autobiographical Griine
Oliven und nackte
Berge
(Green
Olives and Bare
Mountains)
and Bodo Uhse's Leutnant Bertam. The
following year
saw the
publication
of two books
by
Alfred
Kantorowicz,
Spanisches Tagebuch (Spanish Diary)
and
Tschapajew,
and one
by
Willi
Bredel,
Begegnung
am Ebro
(Encounter
at the
Ebro),
and the
stage
was set.
Well-known German authors and
journalists
who had
fought
with the
Brigades
were elevated to
positions
of
literary influence, especially Ludwig
Renn,
of
course,
and another officer from the Thaelmann
Battalion,
Alfred
Kantorowicz. Kantorowicz went from
Spain
into French
internment,
but
managed
to
emigrate
to the USA for the duration of the war. In 1947 he was
welcomed to East
Germany,
where he
managed
the
journal
Ost und
West,
designed
to
'promote understanding
between the American and Soviet Zones'.
In
1950,
Kantorowicz was
appointed professor
of New German Historical
Literature at Humboldt
University.
He also founded and directed the Heinrich
Mann Archives at the
Academy
of Science in East Berlin. His books
Spanisches
Tagebuch
and
Tschapajew
became student texts which were
published
in a
new
(1953) government magazine
called
Geschichte
in der
Schule.78
Kantoro-
76 Lapp, Traditionspflege in der DDR, op. cit., 74.
77
Ludwig Renn, Egbert
von
Frankenberg
and Hermann Lawrenez, 'Vom
Freiheitskampf
des
spanischen Volkes der
Jahre 1936-1939', Mitteilungsblatt
der
Arbeitsgemeinschaft ehemaliger
Offiziere, 7
July
1966 (East Berlin
1966), 10.
78
Georg Pichler, Der
spanische Biirgerkrieg (1936-1939) im
deutschsprachigen
Roman. Eine
Darstellung (Frankfurt/M, Bern, New York and Paris 1991), 42, 160,
369.
552
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
wicz ran foul of the
government
when he refused to
sign
a
pledge
of GDR
solidarity
with the Red
Army's suppression
of the
Hungarian uprising
in 1956.
After the official harassment which
followed, Kantorowicz,
alone
among
the
many Brigaders
who rose to
power
in East
Germany,
bolted to the West in
1957. He died in March 1979.
Spanish
War veteran Willi Bredel rose to become the President of the
Academy
of Art in the
GDR;
fellow veteran Bodo Uhse was made the
Permanent
Secretary
of the
Academy's
Writers' Section.
Others,
like
Stephen
Hermlin79 and Erich Weinert wrote stories of socialist heroism and
encouraged
other former
Brigaders
to
publish
their
autobiographies.
When the Central Committee of the SED commissioned the
building
of the
Museum of
(East)
German
History
in
1951,
it chose Albert
Schreiner,
one-
time chief of staff of the International
Brigades,
to
supervise
the critical
period
1918-45. As a
result,
the war in
Spain
was a
prominent part
of the official
ideological panorama
which thousands of
museum-goers
viewed for decades.
It became a
mythic portrait against
which East Germans could measure them-
selves:
courage,
blind
loyalty,
devotion to
socialism,
and
perhaps
most
impor-
tant,
the
ability
to sacrifice oneself.
Interestingly,
the theme of the
Spanish
Civil War did not
appear
in art works
until the late 1950s. In the
early years
of the GDR the art
community
was
busy
memorializing
the victims of
fascism, honouring
the
resisters,
and
solidifying
the idea of
pacifism, despite
the simultaneous efforts of the VVN and the
KdAW to
downgrade
those
very categories.
Artists felt that there was
nothing
more to learn from distant
Spain except proletarian
internationalism as defined
by
German-Soviet
friendship.
Their interest in
Spain
was awakened
by
the
twentieth
anniversary
in 1956 and
again
at each
10-year period
thereafter. Art
about
Spain,
best
represented by Leipzig
artists Bernhard
Heisig,
Werner
Tibke
and Willi
Sitte,
lionized anti-fascist
resistance,
dwelt on fears of residual
fascism in West
Germany
and
protested against
the realities of the Cold War.
At the
30-year anniversary,
the theme of the
Spanish
Civil War was used to
transmit a different set of
messages.
Fritz
Cremer,
as noted
earlier, sculpted
an
enormous
Brigader
memorial in
Berlin,
as
part
of a dialectic: socialism
created,
defeated and in flux. Nuria
Quevedo,
on the other
hand,
who
emigrated
from
Spain
to the GDR in
1952, spent
six
years (1965-71) producing
a
painting
called
'Thirty
Years in
Exile', regarded
as a milestone in the
development
of
socialist realism. Not heroism but
tragedy,
her
painting
illustrated the cata-
strophic
effects of war and
displacement
on
ordinary people through
the
melancholy
faces in an
anonymous family portrait.
In 1976 and
1986,
artists
were
again
mobilized to
promote
socialist
messages
of sacrifice and
discipline.80
79 As noted
earlier, Stephen
Hermlin had never been in
Spain. Perhaps
he created the
legend
about his
participation
to increase his
readership
or to
curry
favour with the
sympathetic
authori-
ties. See the
scathing biography by Corino, Aussen
Marmor,
innen
Gips, op.
cit.
80 Peter
Feist, 'Der
Spanische Biirgerkrieg
in der Kunst der DDR' in
Jutta
Held (ed.),
Der
Spanische Biirgerkrieg
und die bildenden Kiinste
(Hamburg 1989),
212-13.
Krarnmer
The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil War in East
Germany
553
School was the obvious
place
to
propagate
the
myth
of
Spain.
The
Teachers'
Handbook
(for 1961) urged
that
Spain
'be
presented
in a
way
that the students
will hate the fascists and their
helpers,
and see the heroes of the antifascist
struggle
as
examples'.81
One of the most
important history
texts
-
a collection
of
contemporary documents, speeches
and
telegrams
-
covered the
period
1918-39. Much of the textbook focused on the war in
Spain, including
a
dramatic
speech by
the communist
firebrand,
Dolores
Ibarruri,
a
copy
of the
Land Reform Decree of
1936,
and worldwide news
clippings
and
telegrams
of
support
for the
Spanish
people.82
The Central Institute for
Teaching Supplies
also
provided
teachers with classroom
films,
one of the most
popular (for
High
School Grades 9 and
10) during
the 1960s was the 22-minute movie 'On
the Heroism of the Anti-Fascist Resistance
Fighters,
1933-1941'. The film and
the
accompanying
brochure
(to
be read to the
class), glorified
Thaelmann and
dwelt on the
bravery
of his namesake battalion in
Spain.83
School was reinforced
(or perhaps
vice
versa) by
the
huge
national
youth
organization,
Freie Deutsche
Jugend,
or
FDJ,
to which two-thirds of the
population
in the GDR between the
ages
of 14 and 25
belonged.
The
FDJ
was
involved in
every
facet of East German
life, participating
in
sporting events,
party meetings,
union and
youth assemblies,
and celebrations of socialist holi-
days
and heroic
figures.
On
any
annual
holiday, FDJ groups throughout
the
GDR,
when
ordered,
could
easily
mobilize a march of
100,000 chanting
young boys
and
girls
behind their famous blue
flag.
Like
every
other
organiza-
tion in the
GDR,
veterans of the International
Brigades
were at the forefront.
What Thaelmann was to the
Young Pioneers,
Artur Becker was to the
FDJ.
Anniversaries of his death
regularly
witnessed a flood of
lectures, plaque
installations, newspaper
and
magazine articles, demonstrations,
and the
naming
of
streets, factories,
and NVA units and
military bases.84
The Central
Council of the
FDJ
named its
highest
award the 'Artur-Becker-Medaille'.
The intense
partnership
between the
FDJ
and the East German school
system, especially
in the
eighth grade
when students became
eligible
to
join,
is
81 Fritz
Klein,
Drinnen und Draussen:
Ein
Historiker in der DDR.
Erinnerungen (Frankfurt
a/M
2000),
159-60.
82 Friedrich Weitendorf et
al.,
Der
Geschichtsunterricht: methodisches Handbuch
fiir
den
Lehrer
(East
Berlin
1961),
283. For an
outstanding
examination of educational material see
Jana
Wilstenhagen,
Der
spanische Biirgerkrieg
in
Historiographie
und
Schulbiichern
der DDR
(1953-1989)
(Hamburg 1997).
83 Walter Gebhardt
(ed.),
Beiheft zum
Unterrichtstonfilm, 'Vom
Heldentum antifaschistischer
Widerstandkdimpfer I:
1933-1941'. T-F 758
(Berlin 1961). Lehrbuch
fair
Geschichte
9.
Klasse
Oberschule
und Erweiterte
Oberschule (Berlin 1966);
Geschichte Lehrbuch
fir
Klasse
9.
(Berlin
1970, 1984, 1988).
See also Hans Piazza
(ed.),
Zur
Allgemeinen
Geschichte
der
Neuesten
Zeit
(1918-1939) (Dokumente
und
Materialien) (East
Berlin
1962), esp.
129-36.
84 Klaus Cober,
'Wir
erziehen die Jugend nach dem Vorbild Artur Becker!' in Wenn wir
gemeinsam kiimpfen,
sind wir
uniaberwindlich:
Protokoll der
wissenschaftlichen Konferenz
'Erfidllt
das
VermLichtnis
der Helden des
antifaschistischen Widerstandkampfes
-
Kiimpft
fiir
die
(iberwindung
des westdeutschen
Imperialismus
und Militarismus!' Veranstaltet vom Historischen
Institut der Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universitiit
Greifswald
am 24. und 25.
Januar
1962 (Berlin
1962), cited in
Nothnagle, Building
the East German
Myth, op. cit.,
n. 102.
554
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
exemplified by
the
FDJ's
nationwide 'Hans Beimler Contest'.
Compulsory
for
all
eighth-grade students,
the contest first
required
a
thorough knowledge
of
class consciousness and the life of Hans Beimler. For the next full
year,
all
eighth-grade boys
and
girls competed
in
'military sport' (strength contests,
long-distance running,
obstacle
courses, hand-grenade throwing,
air-rifle
shooting, climbing, jumping
and
callisthenics),
and
military policy (presenta-
tions on various
themes,
round-table
discussions, production
of
posters,
and
tracking
the careers of former
FDJ
members now in the
military).
Points were
carefully
tallied and each
eighth-grade
class in the nation
eventually produced
one
boy
and one
girl
to win the coveted Artur Becker
medal,
a
diploma
of
achievement and the adoration of their classmates. Their success
placed
them
on the fast-track to
promotion
within the
FDJ.85
Teachers instilled in the entire
class the
principles
of socialist
discipline
as
represented by
the heroes of the
Spanish
Civil War.
Of
course,
there was music.
During
the 1960s and
1970s, every
schoolchild
in East
Germany
learned to
sing
the
stirring
lines made famous
by
Ernst Busch:
'Spaniens
Himmel breitet seine Sterne'
('Spanish
heavens
spread
their brilliant
starlight'),
which closed with the emotional chorus:
Die Heimat ist weit
Doch wir sind bereit
Wir
kiimpfen
und
siegen fiir dich;
Freiheit!
The homeland is far
But we are
prepared
We will
fight
and win for
you:
Freedom!
By
the
1960s,
East
Germany's concept
of the
Spanish
Civil War was
firmly
set. Its view of the conflict was formed
early,
of
course,
in
compliance
with the
accepted
tenets of Stalinist and
post-Stalinist ideology.
And the authorities
tolerated little deviation.
Indeed,
the
government
forbade the
publication
in
the GDR of
Hemingway's
classic
novel,
For Whom the Bell
Tolls,
first
pub-
lished in the USA in
1940,
until
1967,
10
years
after the book
appeared
in
West
Germany.
The novel's
chapter
10 discusses the torture of communist
Brigaders,
not
by
the
fascists,
but
by
other communist
hardliners, giving
ample
reason for
censorship.
In the
ideological
world of the
GDR,
communist
fighters
could not be seen
suffering
at the hands of Stalinist
agents;
it clashed
with the
accepted
view of the conflict in the GDR.
What was left for historians to do?
According
to the first issue of the
government-controlled history journal ZfG (Zeitschrift fiir
Geschichtswissen-
schaft),
the task of historians was to
support
the
goals
of the
GDR,
one of
which was to establish the Communist
Party
as the
century's leading
anti-
fascist force.
Showing
that
Germany's
Communist
Party
took a
commanding
role in the creation of the International
Brigades
was critical. Government-
approved
historians
quickly
combed the archives and
published
an article in
85 Instruction booklet of the
Hans-Beimler-Wettkampf
der
FDJ (Zentralrat
der
Freien
Deutschen
Jugend, Abteilung
Bewaffnete
Krafte, iiber Verlag Junge Welt, [204] Ag 209/441/80),
SAPMO-B-Archiv, FDJ/4709.
Krammer: The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil War in East
Germany
555
the
government journal
BZG which
proved
that the KPD had been the first to
raise a volunteer
army
in
Spain
in 1936. In another
article,
author-historian
Heinz Vosske revealed that not
only
had the KPD been the first to send
fighters
to
Spain,
but that it created a German
People's
Front to send food and
aid to the
Spanish Republic
in
1936.86
Marion Einhorn's 1962 volume Die
6konomischen
Hintergriinde
der
faschistischen
deutschen
Intervention in
Spanien
1936-1939 summarized East
Germany's
basic view. Einhorn stated
that
Germany's
motives for its intervention in
Spain
were
entirely economic;
nazi
Germany sought
a market for German
goods
and a source of raw mat-
erials.
Moreover,
she drew a
straight ideological
line from the fascist interven-
tion in 1936 to its heir in West German
monopoly capitalism
and western
imperialism,8"
as well as to the 1961
Katanga Separatist regime
in the
Congo
and the
appearance
of West German soldiers as
part
of a
peace-keeping
force
in
Algeria.
The Vietnam War would soon fit in
nicely.
In
1969,
Einhorn's
thesis was
expanded by
a second East German
historian,
Horst
Kiihne,
whose
study
included the more
specific goals
of nazi
Germany's plans
for a
major
European war.88
With so much invested in the Marxist
model,
East German
scholars
carefully ignored any ideological aspect
of the conflict which
might
contradict the Einhorn-Kiihne model.
An ominous addition to the
myth
was
presented
in 1964
by
Edith
Zorn,
a
leading
historian with the
government's
Institut
fiir
Gesellschaftswissen-
schaften.
Moving past
the conflict in
Spain,
she
praised
the heroic under-
ground support
shared
by
German communists in the French internment
camp
at
Gurs,
and rather
chillingly
lauded their efforts to root out traitors and
'counter-revolutionaries'.89
A second article
by
Zorn entered the world of
'socialist-speak'
and revealed that the real
struggle
within the
Republican
forces was between the communists and the anarchists.90 The
presence
of
traitors and
conspiracies
in the
Spanish
conflict was not a
point
to be missed
by
East
Germany's ever-frightened public
-
and
might
well have reflected the
86 Heinz
Vosske,
'Einmiitiges
Bekenntnis deutscher Antifaschisten in
Spanien
1938 zur
Einheits- und
Volksfront', BZG,
2
(1963),
284-9.
87 See also Einhorn's review of Manfred
Merkes,
Die deutsche Politik dem
spanischen
Biirgerkrieg
1936-1939
(Bonn 1961), ZfG,
4
(1962),
957. Einhorn's
supervisors,
Teubner and
Schreiner,
were both former
Spanish
veterans. For an excellent overview see Eberhard Nowack
and Hans
Richter,
'Die
reaktionare Tradition der faschistischen Intervention in
Spanien
als
Bestandteil
der
psychologischen Kriegsfiihrung
des deutschen
Imperialismus' (Diplom-Arbeit,
Dresden
1964).
88 Horst
Kiihne,
'Der
Kampf
deutscher Kommunisten und anderer Antifaschisten im national-
revolutioniren
Krieg'
in
Interbrigadisten.
Der
Kampf
deutscher
Kommunisten und anderer
Antifaschisten
im
national-revolutioniiren Kreig
des
spanischen
Volkes 1936-1939. Protokoll
einer
wissenschaftlichen Konferenz
an der
Militiirakademie
'Friedrich
Engels', 20./21.
Januar
1966
(Berlin 1966), 12-41; idem,
'Ziele und Ausmass der militarischen Intervention
des deutschen
Faschismus in
Spanien (1936-1939)', Zeitschrift fiir Militiirgeschichte,
8 (3) (1969),
273-87.
89 Edith
Zorn, 'Wie die in Frankreich internierten deutschen
Spanienkiimpfer
die Berner
Beschliisse
studierten und anwandten
(Februar-August 1939)', BZG, 2, (1964),
298-306.
90 Edith Zorn (with Walter
Wimmer), 'Der
Kampf
deutscher Kommunisten und anderer
Antifaschisten im
national-revolutionairen Krieg
des
spanischen Volkes', BZG, 3 (1966),
512-16.
556
Joumal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
regime's growing
intolerance with
dissidents,
a
point
which Erich Honecker
himself made to the Eleventh SED Central Committee Plenum in December
1965 several months before
publication
of the Zorn article.
Thus,
while western
historiography
continued to alter its view of the
Spanish
Civil War as new
findings, biographies
and
previously
unknown
archives came to
light,
the view of the war remained static in the East. The
only responses
to the West were barbed reviews of western histories and
sharp
criticism of
any
article on the
Spanish
Civil War which did not
sufficiently
recognize
the
leading
role
played by
the Communist
Party."9
After the removal of Ulbricht in
May 1971,
Honecker turned to more
flexible
leadership
and tried to free East
Germany's history
from the uncritical
acceptance
of the Soviet model. An
opportunity
did not
present
itself until
1983 when a
particularly provocative, although
flawed,
West German
study
by
Patrik v. zur
Miihlen
(Spanien
war ihre
Hoffnung.
Die deutsche Linke im
Spanischen Biurgerkrieg
1936 bis
1939) challenged
the
very
foundation of East
Germany's
socialist model of
revolutionary solidarity
in
Spain.
Five
years
later,
in
1988,
the
outspoken
anti-communist
historian,
Peter
Joachim Lapp,
was even more direct:
Communists
loyal
to
Stalin,
directed
by
Soviet advisers and secret
police,
killed
many
liberal
socialist elements who remained at the side of the
Spanish
Communist
Party. Shootings
behind the front
were, unfortunately,
not unknown. The Left democratic forces in
Spain
had
to arm themselves
against
two
opponents:
the fascists and the communists directed
by
Moscow.... The decline of the
Spanish Republic,
therefore,
is not
only
due to the Franco
fascists,
but also lies at the door of Stalin's
messengers
and those communists
loyal
to
him,
including
the KPD.92
Nevertheless,
the socialist view of the conflict remained
relatively unchanged.
As if to maintain
ideological discipline,
in 1977 East
Germany promoted
the
publication
of a three-volume
history
of the
Spanish
conflict. Written 40
years
earlier
by
Willi
Bredel, Spanienkrieg
was an
unimaginative military-political
account of the
war,
almost a throwback to the
ideological straitjacket
of the
Stalinist
period:
the war was a
struggle
of national
liberation,
the result of a
conspiracy
between the fascists and the
Spanish military,
in which the Soviet
Union
only played
a humanitarian
role.93
East
Germany
was hide-bound.
91
Among
the few
examples
of
early
efforts to
engage
the West are Marion Einhorn's review of
Gabriel
Jackson,
The
Spanish Republic
and the Civil War 1936-1939
(Princeton, NJ 1965)
in
ZfG,
10
(1968), 1368-9;
Einhorn's review of G.T.
Harper,
German Economic
Policy
in
Spain
during
the
Spanish
Civil
War,
1936-1939
(The Hague 1967)
in
Zeitschrift fuir Militiirgeschichte,
3
(1972), 361-4,
and Erhard Moritz's review of Klaus A.
Maier, Guernica,
26.4.1937. Die
deutsche Intervention in
Spanien
und der 'Fall Guernica' (Freiburg 1975) in
Zeitschrift fiir
Militiirgeschichte,
3 (1976), 378.
92
Lapp, Traditionspflege
in der DDR, op. cit.,
75. The facts are
widely
confirmed
including
a
letter from the former I.B.
commander, Ludwig Renn, to the
present writer,
20
January
1965.
93 Willi Bredel, Spanienkrieg,
vol. I: Zur Geschichte der 11. Internationalen
Brigade,
ed. M.
Hahn
(East Berlin and Weimar
1977).
Krammer
The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil War in East
Germany
557
The first cracks in the
government's unyielding ideological interpretation
of
the
Spanish
conflict
appeared spontaneously
around 1979 from the
pens
of
novelists. One book in
particular
was
significant
because it confronted the
myth
of
Spain directly.
Entitled
Collin,
the novel was written in 1979
by
Stefan
Heym,
one of East
Germany's
most famous dissidents.94
Heym's literary target
in 1979 was
censorship and, through
his novel
Collin,
the
government's
use of the
Spanish
Civil
War.9s
Heym
told an interviewer
from Der
Spiegel
on 12
February
1979 that his new book was written to
stop
'beating
about the bush'
('der Randlauf um
den
heissen Brei') regarding
the
way history
had been treated
by
the GDR. 'The
pilgrimage
to the Truth
reaches back to the
Spanish
Civil
War',
noted Der
Spiegel.96
The
plot
is
vintage
East German: the hero is Hans
Collin,
a celebrated GDR
writer,
whose
anguish
about enforced
personal self-censorship
has weakened his heart and
landed him in an elite clinic. There he meets a fellow cardiac
patient,
a former
Brigade comrade,
now chief of the East German secret
police.
A debate ensues
about various
aspects
of the
Spanish war,
with a
young
doctor,
Christine
Roth, listening
and
pondering.
Enter
yet
a third old comrade who visits his
wife in the clinic. The new
participant
survived a recent
government
show
trial,
and the debate takes a
contemporary
turn. Events are remembered
differently
and the discussion
eventually
drifts to the role of the writer in
society,
the evils of
censorship,
and the misuse of
history
to
justify government
repression.
Dr Roth's faith in historical truth is
rattled, and, reflecting
a
grow-
ing
section of the East German
population,
her
opinion
of official
myths
is
shaken.
Clearly,
the GDR had built its intellectual foundation on
shifting
sand.
As one of the
younger
characters
says:
'Sometimes I
think,
it's not our world
anymore.'97 Finally,
it is Collin who
dies,
his memoirs unfinished. Needless to
add, Heym published
the book outside East
Germany
and was
publicly
denounced
by
the Honecker
regime;
he had defied
authority,
denounced
censorship,
and had turned a
spotlight
on the
myth
of the
Spanish
Civil War.
94 East German/American
Jewish
writer Stefan
Heym
was born in Chemnitz in
1913,
and was
in 1933
Germany's youngest literary
exile. In
1935,
he settled in America. As an American soldier
during
the second world war he was at the
spearhead
of the
Normandy
invasion and wrote broad-
casts for Radio
Luxembourg
and
newspapers
in 1945 for the German civilian
population. During
the
McCarthy purges, Heym
returned to East Berlin in 1953. There his
writings
were
influential,
but at a cost: his
open
criticism of 'real
existing
socialism'
brought
him into conflict with the
authorities;
he had the
largest
secret
police
file in East
Germany.
His archives were
acquired by
the
University Library
of
Cambridge, England
in
1992,
and con-
tain
approximately
300 boxes and volumes of
manuscripts, including plot
outlines and source
studies,
and some
unpublished literary
works. There are also 75 boxes of
correspondence,
some
40 boxes and volumes of
press clippings,
400 audio cassettes and 70 video
cassettes,
as well as
miscellaneous material such as
photographs
and wartime
pamphlets.
95
Censorship
in the GDR, while
officially
banned under the constitution,
was
ubiquitous,
capricious,
and
especially
concerned with the
Spanish
Civil War. See McLellan, Remembering
Spain, op. cit., 167-201,
223-5.
96 'Erstickender
Ring',
Der
Spiegel,
12
February 1979, 181-2.
97 Stefan
Heym,
Collin: Roman (Munich 1998),
8.
558
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
Der
Spiegel's
review of the
popular
West German TV-film version of Collin
was entitled
'Endlich die Wahrheit'
('At
Last the
Truth').98
For the last 10
years
of East
Germany's existence,
there was a
steady
trickle
of books and articles about
Spain
and the International
Brigades.
Most were
reprints
of old memoirs
(e.g. Ludwig Renn,
Im
Spanischen Krieg), anthologies
(e.g.
G.
Caspar [ed.], Carmen,
Prosa
iiber
den
Spanienkrieg
1936-1939,
Eine
Anthologie),
or anniversaries of battles
(e.g.
Horst
Kiihne,
'Vor 50
Jahren:
Die
Schlacht am
Jarama',
'Vor 50
Jahren:
Die
Verteidigung Madrids',
'Vor 50
Jahren:
Die Schlacht
bei
Guadalajara',
'Vor 50
Jahren:
Die Schlacht bei
Brunete',
Roland
Jintsch,
'Vor 50
Jahren:
Die Schlacht von Teruel' and 'Der
Kampfweg
der XI.
Brigade'
or
Edgar
Doehler,
'50
Jahre
Schlacht am Ebro'
-
all
appearing
in
Militiirgeschichte).
All also conformed to the standard view of
the
conflict,
with little or no deviation.
In
1986,
the fiftieth
anniversary
of the
beginning
of the
Spanish
Civil War
saw
another,
though subdued, outpouring
of
praise
for the
Brigaders
and the
socialist values
they represented.
A
special postage stamp
was issued to commemorate the event. In addition
to the usual news articles and
public speeches by politicians
and anti-fascist
organizations,
a
documentary
film was released with
great
fanfare. The
gala
premier night
of
'Spanien
im Herzen' was attended
by
veterans Kurt
Hager,
now
Secretary
of the Central
Committee,
First
Deputy
Alfred
Neumann,
Heinz
Priess,
director of the Sektion
ehemaliger
Spanienkimpfer,
as well as the
entire
aging leadership
of the
important
Komitee der Antifaschistischen
Widerstandkimpfer
der DDR. The dramatic
show-stopper
was the entrance of
Hans
Beimler's widow and
daughter,
Centa Herker-Beimler and Rosemarie
Schober-Beimler.99
The
public
was
again
reminded about the
paramount
importance
of the
Spanish
Civil War and its contribution to the foundation of
the GDR. No evaluations about the
quality
of the film
appeared.
Meanwhile,
military
units continued to take on the names and heroic
mantles of
long-forgotten Brigade
heroes. In
1985,
an NVA battalion
(IB-8
in
Karow)
was named after
Brigader
Wilhelm Bick.1oo In
1987,
the
military
hos-
pital
in
Ueckermiinde
was named after Giinther Bodeck.'o" Also in
1987,
a
Flugplatz-Pionierbatallion (FlugplBauPiB-14
in
Potsdam)
was established in
the name of Franz
Dahlem,102
and in 1988 a Border
Brigade
in Frankfurt/Oder
98
Rolf Becker,
'Endlich die
Wahrheit',
Der
Spiegel,
30 November
1981,
247. See also Malcolm
Pender,
'Popularizing
Socialism: The Case of Stefan
Heym'
in Martin Kane
(ed.),
Socialism and
the
Literary Imagination: Essays
on East German Writers
(New
York and Oxford
1989),
68-9.
99
'Urauffiihrung
des Films
"Spanien
im Herzen
-
Hans Beimler und
andere"',
Neues
Deutschland,
13/14
September
1986. For the film-maker's evaluation of his
movie,
see Karlheinz
Mund, 'Spurensuche
nach 50
Jahren. Anmerkungen
zum Film
"Spanien
im Herzen
-
Hans
Beimler und andere"' in
Spanien
1936-1939.
Dokumentarfilme (East
Berlin
1986), 127;
also
Giinter Wisotzki, 'Spanien
im
Gesprich
mit Karlheinz Mund und Klaus Wischnewski
iiber
ihren
Film', Sonntag,
38
(1986), 5.
100
Eisert, Zeittafel, op. cit., 539.
101
Ibid., 592.
102 Ibid.
Krammer The Cult
of
the
Spanish
Civil War in East
Germany
559
was named after Hermann Gartmann.103 An Institute of
Military
Medicine in
Greifswald was named after Maxim Zetkin in 1988.104 As late as
1989,
when
Reconnaisance Battalion 11 in Bad Frankenhausen was named after Heinrich
Brandes,
the
near-mythic legends
of the veterans of
Spain
were still used to
transfer their heroism to the men of the NVA.
Despite
the
spate
of
naming
NVA units and
anniversary
celebrations of the
International
Brigades throughout
the last decade of the GDR's
existence,
however,
the cult of
Spain
was
clearly
on the wane. The
generation
of
Brigade
veterans and anti-fascist
fighters
had dwindled to a
handful; published
memoirs were
becoming pedestrian,
no western views of the
struggle
were
available,
and the
system permitted
no
ideological
deviation.
Only pressure
in
the classrooms never let
up.
While the time allotted to
Spain
decreased,
it was
in
proportion
to other
major
events in
twentieth-century
socialist
history.
In
1984 a new textbook was introduced for the ninth
grade
with
particular
emphasis
on historical
examples
of communist resistance
against
fascism. An
entire
chapter
lauded the International
Brigades
in
Spain, singling
out such
perennials
as Kurt
Hager,
Artur
Becker,
Hans
Beimler,
Franz
Dahlem,
Heinz
Hoffmann and Erwin
Kramer.10os
Five
years
later in
1989,
on the eve of East
Germany's disintegration,
a new official Teachers' Handbook
(Eighth Grade)
stated
that,
'One of the
objectives necessary
for the
completion
of the
eighth
grade
is to be able to
recognize
and
explain
the events
leading up
to the
Spanish
Civil
War.'106
Up
to the
very
last
year
of the East German state's
existence,
no
eighth grader graduated
without a
thorough knowledge
of the
Spanish
Civil War.
In
1988,
GDR head Erich Honecker
began
a
diplomatic
visit to
Spain
with a
highly-publicized
visit to the
grave
of Hans Beimler and other anti-fascists
buried at Barcelona's
cemetery
on Mount
Montjuic. Accompanied by Spanish
politicians,
Thaelmann veterans and former soldiers of the
Spanish Republican
Army,
Honecker knelt at Beimler's
grave
and laid a wreath at the monument
to the victims of fascism from
Barcelona,
followed
by
an emotional
speech
about East
Germany's
anti-fascist foundation.
107
Only
four
days
before the fall of the Berlin
Wall,
on the
evening
of
5
November
1989,
the
aging Brigader
Walter
Janka appeared
at a
public reading
of his memoirs to an overflow crowd at the Deutsches Theater in East Berlin.
The event was broadcast live on East German state radio and later on East
German state
television,
and
Janka apparently
received hundreds of letters of
support.108
The
myth
of
Spain,
however
shopworn,
remained intact to the end.
103
Ibid.,
617.
104
Ibid.,
603.
105
Geschichte, Lehrbuch fiir die 9. Klasse (East Berlin 1984), 140,
cited
in
Ring, op. cit.,
46.
106
Unterrichtshilfen Staatsbiirgerkunde: Berufsausbildung fiir Lehrlinge,
die nach Abschluss
der
Klasse
8 eine
Facharbeiterausbildung
erhalten (East
Berlin 1989),
80-1.
107 'Erich Honecker ehrte die deutschen
Spanienkuimpfer
und die
Widerstandkampfer
aus der
ganzen Welt', Neues
Deutschland,
6 October 1988,
1.
108
McLellan, Remembering Spain, op. cit., 9.
560
Journal
of
Contemporary History
Vol 39 No 4
The GDR lasted
exactly
40
years.
The
Spanish
Civil War
provided
material
for the
great myth
of East
Germany
from its earliest
days.
From the ranks of
the International
Brigades
came trusted and
proven ideologues,
and from the
stories of its heroics came models of socialist sacrifice. In the cult of anti-
fascism,
victims of both National Socialism/fascism and Stalinism were linked
together
and became
posthumous
victors.
They
were raised to the rank of
immortality,
but the
symbolic
use of their names
diverged completely
from the
historical
persons: they
became a
type,
a collective
identity.
It lent historical
legitimacy
to a
society
whose
foundations were, by 1989, rapidly eroding
as
we now know. However
useful,
the
myth
was
costly
to its
creators,
for the
inescapable
and
exaggerated
commitment to an enforced diet of anti-fascist
and
Spanish
Civil War rhetoric was
certainly
a
major
factor
contributing
to
the
stagnation
of the GDR. From that
stagnation
comes frustration and disen-
chantment -
catalysts, perhaps,
for far more dramatic
changes
ahead. In the
words of Stefan
Schitz,
an East German author who left the GDR
during
the1980s:
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.'09
Arnold Krammer
is Professor of
History
at Texas
A&M University.
He is the author of
numerous articles and
books, including
The
Forgotten Friendship
(Urbana,
IL
1974),
Nazi Prisoners
of
War in America
(Lanham,
MD
1979, 1991, 1996)
and Undue Process: The Untold
Story of
America's German Alien Internees
(London,
Boulder
(CO),
New
York
1997).
He is
currently editing
a book
entitled
Intolerance in
America
during
World War Two.
109 Stefan
Schiitz,
'Kekse und
Totenschiidel: Ein Gesprich
mit Stefan
Schiitz
von Axel Schnell',
Die
Zeit,
13
April 1990, 26.
Quoted
in
Julia Hell, Post-Fascist Fantasies:
Psychoanalysis, History,
and the Literature
of
East
Germany (Post-Contemporary Interventions) (Durham, NC and
London 1997),
63.