East Germany: Peking-Pankow Axis?

1960 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 85-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Esslin
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Great Weight ◽  
The West ◽  
Sun Tzu ◽  
Art Of War ◽  
The World ◽  
Communist China ◽  
East German ◽  
National Defence

To the ordinary man in the drab East German street Communist China is a bore: it strikes him that the main use of this remote and shadowy ally is to help inflate the numerical strength of the “socialist camp” by a few useful hundreds of million souls. He realises that this is meant to overcome his feeling of isolation, to convince him that he is allied not only with a collection of uncouth Balkan tribes and formidable but unloved Russians, but also with a nation that can be claimed to be among the oldest civilised countries of the world, that had invented gunpowder long before even a German monk, Berthold Schwarz, invented it for the West. But on the whole the exploitation of the cultural prestige of the Chinese ally is poverty stricken and inept. Reprints of pre-war editions of a few Chinese novels like The Dream of the Red Chamber, an occasional art book of Chinese paintings or an edition by the publishing house of the Ministry of National Defence of an old Chinese Treatise on the Art of War by Sun Tzu, translated from the Russian, hardly carry great weight or conviction.

The Western Connection: Western Support for the East German Opposition

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Financial Support ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
The West ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
East German ◽  
Environmental Network ◽  
The Relationship

Without help from the west, the small East German opposition,such as it was, never would have achieved as much as it did. Themoney, moral support, media attention, and protection provided bywestern supporters may have made as much of a difference to theopposition as West German financial support made to the East Germanstate. Yet this help was often resented and rarely acknowledgedby eastern activists. Between 1988 and 1990, I worked withArche, an environmental network created in 1988 by East Germandissidents. During that time, the assistance provided by West Germans,émigré East Germans, and foreigners met with a level of distrustthat cannot entirely be blamed on secret police intrigue.Outsiders who tried to help faced a barrage of allegations and criticismof their work and motives. Dissidents who elected to remain inEast Germany distrusted those who emigrated, and vice versa,reflecting an unfortunate tendency, even among dissidents, to internalizeelements of East German propaganda. Yet neither the helpand support the East German opposition received from outside northe mentalities that stood in its way have been much discussed. Thisessay offers a description and analysis of the relationship betweenthe opposition and its outside supporters, based largely on one person’sfirst-hand experience.

The Neue Marx-Lektüre and the ‘Monetary Theory of Value’ in the East German Labour-Value Measurement Debate

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-60
Author(s):  
Paula Maria Rauhala
Keyword(s):  
Social Relation ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Monetary Theory ◽  
Measurable Quantity ◽  
The West ◽  
East German ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
Value Measurement ◽  
Labour Time

Abstract Proponents of a monetary interpretation of Marx’s theory of value (monetäre Werttheorie) argue that one cannot estimate the amounts of socially necessary labour time that lie behind the prices, an interpretation usually ascribed to the West German Neue Marx‑Lektüre. As Hans-Georg Backhaus began fleshing out his monetary interpretation in the early 1970s, he referred explicitly to debate among economists in early‑1960s East Germany about the possibility of estimating quantities of labour value in terms of commodities’ labour content. In fact, scholars who articulated a powerful position in the latter discussion closely approximated the Neue Marx-Lektüre’s ‘monetary interpretation’. They held that expressing labour value in terms of labour time is impossible: the substance of value is not a measurable quantity of labour time but, rather, a social relation. Hence, it is problematic that Neue Marx-Lektüre adherents today should maintain an inaccurate contrast between their reading of Capital and that of ‘traditional Marxism’.

Moving against Disappearance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Richard Giersdorf
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The West ◽  
Pedestrian Movement ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Social ◽  
East German

Nearly a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany was subsumed into the West German national structure. As a result, the distinct political systems, institutions, and cultures that characterized East Germany have nearly completely vanished. In some instances, this history was actively—and physically—eradicated by the unified Germany. This chapter works against the disappearance of East German culture by reconstructing the physicality of the walk across the border on the day of the opening of the Berlin Wall and two choreographic works depicting East German identities on stage. The initial re-creation of the choreography of a pedestrian movement provides a social, political, and methodological context that relates the two dance productions to the social movement of East German citizens. Both works take stances on the political situation in East Germany during and after the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989, although one is by a West German artist, Sasha Waltz, and the other by East German choreographer Jo Fabian.

How Udo Wanted to Save the World in ‘Erich's Lamp Shop’: Lindenberg's Concert in Honecker's East Berlin, the NATO Double-Track Decision and Communist Economic Woes

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
LORENZ M. LÜTHI
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
East Germany ◽  
West Germany ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
East German ◽  
Peace Activist ◽  
Nuclear Missiles ◽  
Double Track

AbstractThe concert given by the West German rock star Udo Lindenberg in East Berlin on 25 October 1983 links cultural, political, diplomatic and economic history. The East German regime had banned performances by the anti-nuclear peace activist and musician since the 1970s, but eventually allowed a concert, hoping to prevent the deployment of American nuclear missiles in West Germany. In allowing this event, however, East Germany neither prevented the implementation of the NATO double-track decision of 1979 nor succeeded in controlling the political messages of the impertinent musician. Desperate for economic aid from the West, East Germany decided to cancel a promised Lindenberg tour in 1984, causing widespread disillusionment among his fans in the country.

scholarly journals East German writers and the state

1982 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-35
Author(s):  
Boria Sax
Keyword(s):  
Publishing House ◽  
The State ◽  
The West ◽  
East European ◽  
East German ◽  
The Government

Lutz Rathenow has the dubious distinction of being the first East German writer to have been arrested for the crime of publishing a book abroad. His brief imprisonment in December 1980, under the laws enacted that same year, was based on his publishing a group of stories, Mit dem Schlimmsten wurde schon gerechnet (‘Prepared for the Worst’) with the West German publishing house Ullstein Verlag. The case established a potentially important precedent for the use of the 1980 laws on relations with foreigners, and more generally showed the lengths to which the government would go to harass a single, somewhat troublesome, citizen. In recent years, East European regimes have tended to replace exile and long-term imprisonment with subtler forms of punishment that are more difficult to document or protest against. Dissidents are likely to be imprisoned repeatedly for brief periods, deprived of work, interrogated and followed by government agents. The intent is to gradually wear down resistance by creating a feeling of insecurity, while at the same time avoiding direct confrontations. Although life is made difficult for him, an individual is, so far as possible, deprived of the opportunity to make symbolically meaningful gestures of protest.

scholarly journals Out of Sight: Industrial Espionage, Ocular Authority and East German Communism, 1965–1989

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN R. ZATLIN
Keyword(s):  
Navigation System ◽  
Operational Performance ◽  
Considerable Time ◽  
The West ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
Technological Gap ◽  
Industrial Espionage ◽  
The World ◽  
East German ◽  
Foreign Intelligence

AbstractThe Stasi continues to enjoy a reputation as one of the most effective espionage agencies in the world, especially in the area of foreign intelligence gathering. This article employs the case of Gerhardt Ronneberger, one of East Germany's most capable spies, to challenge assumptions about the Stasi's operational successes, economic relevance and methodological proficiency. In particular, it argues that East German intelligence gathering was undermined by an institutionalisd distinction between sight, or the work of observation, and vision, or the process of signification. In Ronneberger's case, the spy agency wasted considerable time and resources trying to make sense of his operational performance and political reliability. In the end, however, even his most spectacular successes, which included smuggling a laser-guided navigation system into the GDR and acquiring proscribed computer chip and microprocessor designs from Toshiba, did not matter, since they did not change East Germany's inability to narrow the technological gap with the West.

Ausgabenpolitik

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-180
Author(s):  
Anke Jaspers
Keyword(s):  
Publishing House ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
The West ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Production Processes ◽  
Concrete Production ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
East German ◽  
Angela Krauss

AbstractFrom a publishing perspective, a literary work is always manifested in a variety of issues. The article reconstructs the production history of the early editions of the East German author Angela Krauß in the West German Verlag at the time of the German division. It illustrates how the publishing house is involved in the configuration of a work in its processuality and unity. The article then explains the historical significance of West German issues for East German authors as means of extending their scope of action in the GDR. The focus on issues allows insights into concrete production processes of literature and their historical reception to be gained.

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