What Remains?

: The Dialectical
Identities of Eastern Germans Joyce
Marie Mushaben
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/what-remains-the-dialectical-identities-of-eastern-ger
mans-joyce-marie-mushaben/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

The Contested Identities of Ulster Catholics 1st ed.

Edition Thomas Paul Burgess

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-contested-identities-of-ulster-
catholics-1st-ed-edition-thomas-paul-burgess/

The Soviet Infantryman on the Eastern Front 1st Edition

Simon Forty

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-soviet-infantryman-on-the-
eastern-front-1st-edition-simon-forty/

Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse 1st ed.

Edition Stephen Joyce

https://ebookmass.com/product/transmedia-storytelling-and-the-
apocalypse-1st-ed-edition-stephen-joyce/

The Oxford Handbook of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy

(Oxford Library of Psychology) – Ebook PDF Version

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-dialectical-
behaviour-therapy-oxford-library-of-psychology-ebook-pdf-version/
Folk Dance and the Creation of National Identities:
Staging the Folk 1st Edition Anthony Shay

https://ebookmass.com/product/folk-dance-and-the-creation-of-
national-identities-staging-the-folk-1st-edition-anthony-shay/

Revenants of the German Empire: Colonial Germans,

Imperialism, and the League of Nations Sean Andrew
Wempe

https://ebookmass.com/product/revenants-of-the-german-empire-
colonial-germans-imperialism-and-the-league-of-nations-sean-
andrew-wempe/

German Infantryman on the Eastern Front 1st Edition

Simon Forty

https://ebookmass.com/product/german-infantryman-on-the-eastern-
front-1st-edition-simon-forty/

Eastern Front 1945: Triumph of the Soviet Air Force 1st

Edition William E. Hiestand

https://ebookmass.com/product/eastern-front-1945-triumph-of-the-
soviet-air-force-1st-edition-william-e-hiestand/

A Study Guide for Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the

Day Cengage Learning Gale

https://ebookmass.com/product/a-study-guide-for-kazuo-ishiguros-
the-remains-of-the-day-cengage-learning-gale/
What Remains?
The Dialectical Identities of
Eastern Germans
Joyce Marie Mushaben
What Remains?
 Joyce Marie Mushaben

What Remains?
The Dialectical Identities of Eastern Germans
Joyce Marie Mushaben
BMW Center for German & European Studies
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C., WA, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-18887-9    ISBN 978-3-031-18888-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18888-6

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

Indirectly occupying my thoughts for thirty years, this book proves that
national identities are rarely de- and reconstructed in the space of a single
generation. While I cannot personally thank the historical muses who put
me “in the right place, at the right time” with regard to this project on
East German identity, I can express my gratitude to many earth-bound
actors who contributed to the production of this book. For starters, I
acknowledge the Ford Foundation which financed my initial Fellowship in
GDR Studies at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies
(AICGS), 1989–1990, then extended my grant for two months commen-
surate with the increasing complexity of the topic. I also recognize the
BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University
which enabled me to start analyzing my data as its first research fellow,
1990–1991. Likewise included in my thanks are the German Marshall
Fund of the United States, the German Academic Exchange Service, the
GDR Studies Association of the United States and the Alexander von
Humboldt Foundation, whose financial support made it possible for me
to travel to the German Dramatic Republic at critical turning points, as
well as to continue my investigation regarding the fates of eastern resi-
dents over the next few decades.
Completion of this book would not have been possible without the
sustained support of multiple colleagues at different stages of my research,
though some of us have drifted apart since the 1990s. My interactions
with “regulars” and visitors at the AICGS ensured access to a broad spec-
trum of political perspectives on the course of unification, a never-ending
flow of newspaper and journal articles, as well as unanticipated

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

opportunities to view the making of history from a front-row seat. I

enjoyed the company and friendly assistance of AICGS “co-workers,”
especially the late Dr. Manfred Stassen (DAAD), well beyond my year in
residence. Co-fellow and subsequent Research Director, Lily Gardner
Feldman, provided detailed readings of my work, countless recommenda-
tion letters and years of Frauensolidarität well beyond the institute walls.
Other intellectual compatriots gratefully discovered by way of my earlier
affiliations included Friederike Eigler, Daniela Dahn, Christiane Lemke,
Jonathan Olsen, Ann Phillips, Helga Welsh, Pastor Bernd Wrede and
Jennifer Yoder. I extend heartfelt thanks to Judith and Reinhard Maiworm
(Goethe Institute), who sustained me for years (actually decades) with
their professional enthusiasm, private hospitality, personal friendship and a
shared belief that it is possible to build a permanently peaceful, democratic
German nation.
Nor could I have completed core components of my fieldwork without
the assistance and candor of several GDR facilitators, especially my 1990
hosts at the former Central Institute for Youth Research in Leipzig,
Wilfried Schubarth, Ulrich Heublein and Rudolf Dennhardt. Siegfried
Sach at the GDR Institute for International Relations helped me to secure
a number of appointments with leading SED officials (rarely granted to
academics from a capitalist-imperialist “enemy state”) during the critical
twelve months preceding the 1989 Wende. Klaus Richter, Marianne
Eschenbach and Herr Viererbe, wherever he may be, arranged invaluable
interviews with parliamentarians from Bundnis ’90, the SPD and the
CDU, in the wake of the first truly democratic Volkskammer elections.
Gisela Richter, Ruth and Hans Misselwitz, Marianne Birthler, Eckhard
Priller, Heinrich Bortfeldt and Detlef Pollack provided updates with
respect to post-unity currents in the East-Länder during my annual sum-
mer sojourns. The University of Missouri-St. Louis accorded me flexible
research leave opportunities, while the late Jan Frantzen, Linda Miller and
Lana Vierdag helped with successive grant deadlines, allowing me to com-
mit many extraordinary experiences to paper while I still remembered
them. My son Joshua provided me with the opportunity to experience the
eastern child-care system first-hand in Erfurt. His time at Zwergenland, in
turn, supplied him with the German language skills that enabled him to
pursue two internships at Schiffshebewerk Niederfinow, as well as a mas-
ter’s degree at the University of Stuttgart. My particular thanks to German
taxpayers for funding not only my research projects but also two years of
my son’s graduate education.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

Marriage, motherhood and four intervening books delayed the com-

pletion of this work, but those years blessed me with new colleague-friends
who urged me to continue with this academic equivalent of a painstaking
archeological dig. Gabriele Abels and Sabine Lang, especially, extended
countless speaking invitations and fantastic hospitality, which kept me
going through good times and bad. The wonderful facilities and cheerful
assistance of my favorite librarians at the Bundestag Bibliothek in Berlin
made sure that the final draft of this book materialized in accordance with
the Humboldtian tradition of Einsamkeit und Freiheit. Strange as it
sounds, I also owe a certain debt to the otherwise devastating COVID
pandemic. The latter kept me seated at my dining room table in front of a
laptop for months on end, pulling together a wide assortment of old and
new books, government reports, journal articles, newspaper clippings,
critical re-reflections and personal memories. This book is dedicated to the
millions of “essential workers,” worldwide, who did not enjoy that luxury
but whose devotion and hard work made it possible for me to emerge
from this difficult time in good health, a little bit older and possibly wiser.
 Contents

1 Introduction:
 Prelude to a German Revolution  1
Methodology   9

Part I Dimensions of the Dialectical Identity  17

2 Exit,
 Voice, and Loyalty: The Theoretical Parameters 21
A Concentric Approach to Identity Theory  27
Circle One: Identity as the Bio-Psychology of the Individual  27
Circle Two: Identity as Social Interaction  31
Circle Three: Identity as National Consciousness  32
The Circles Broken: Exit versus Voice  35
Expanding the Framework: Making the Case for Loyalty  45
Reinterpreting die Wende, 1989–1990  49
Identity from Below: Socialist Subcultures  55

3 Selection
 by Consequences: What Did It Mean to Be
GDR-German? 63
The Parameters of Political Legitimacy  68
A Spectre Haunting …: The Stalinist Legacy  74
Founding Narrative Versus Historical Record  79
The Quest for Socialist Legitimacy  85
Redefining the Significance of State, Nation, Nationality  89

ix
x Contents

“The Problem of Generations”  98

Love of the Socialist Fatherland: Ideal Versus the Real 100
Historicism Versus Materialism 103

Part II The Deconstruction of Official GDR-Identity 113

4 Real-Existing
 Socialism: Consumer Culture and
Vitamin “B”115
The Perils of Planning Under Real-Existing Socialism 118
Collective Reponses to Chronic Scarcities 126
Intershop Socialism and Its Discontents 134
Creating the “Socialist Consumer” 138
The Paradox of Real-Existing Materialism 149

5 “Now
 out of Never”: Exit, Voice, and Riding the
Revolutionary Bandwagon159
Learning to Live with “Arrangements” 161
Protest Currents and the Velvet Revolution 165
Unanticipated Consequences: Freikauf, Expulsions, and Local
Reactions 172
The Dialectical Forces of Exit and Voice 176
Ostalgie: Marketing East German Memories 183
Conclusion: Loyalty, Habitus, and “the Wall in One’s Head” 188

6 Heimatgefühl and the Reconfiguration of Civil Society205

Political “Representation Gaps” in the Eastern Länder 208
Die Grüne Liga (Green League) of Mecklenburg-
Vorpommern 212
Volkssolidarität (People’s Solidarity): Landesverband Berlin 218
Runder Tisch gegen Gewalt (Round Table Against
Violence) in Sachsen-Anhalt 224
Gleichstellungsstelle-Erfurt (Erfurt Office of Equal
Opportunity), Thüringen 229
Forum Ostdeutschland (SPD) and Aufbau Ost (CDU) in
Berlin/Brandenburg and Saxony 234
The PDS as “Comeback Kid” 241
“The End of Apprenticeship” 244
 Contents  xi

Part III Reconstructing East-German Identities: Peer

Cultures 255

7 Conscience
 of the Nation: Writers, Artisans, and
Intellectuals257
Cultural Policies and the Forces of Socialist Realism 260
Anti-fascist Imperatives: Loyalty and the Aufbau Generation 268
“Profiles in Courage”: Christa Wolf and Stefan Heym 272
The Sixty-Eighters and the Dilemmas of Cultural Revolution 281
The Post-Wall Literaturstreit: “The West” Versus Christa Wolf 285
Loyalty, Voice, and the National Question 293

8 From
 Losers to Winners, and Back: The Stasi, Pastors,
and Dissidents303
Shield and Sword of the Party: The Ministry for State Security 306
Opiate of the Masses: The SED and Religion, 1945–1970 316
From Peaceful Coexistence (1971–1979) to Church from
Below (1980–1989) 320
(Re)Marginalized Voices: Pastors and Politics, 1990–1998 324
The Helsinki Factor: Loyalty as Dissent 328
Prosecuting the SED Dictatorship 334
Loyalty, Voice, and Retributive Justice 341

9 From
 State Paternalism to Private Patriarchy: East
German Women355
Gender and Ideology: State Paternalism 357
Equality without Emancipation: Double Burdens and the
“Right to Work” 365
Revenge of the Cradle: Reproductive Rights and Wrongs 377
Private Patriarchy and the Re-domestication of Eastern Women 387
Deutschland einig Mutterland: Gender Policies under Angela
Merkel 393
Winning Women 397
xii Contents

10 The
 Anti-political Identities of East German Youth409
Redefining Class Consciousness: The Uniform Socialist
Education System 413
Not-so-free “Free-time”: FDJ and the Jugendweihe 421
“Leave Us Kids Alone”: Finding Voice Through Music 429
From Voice to Exit: Normalos, Avantis, Gruftis, Punks,
and Skins 435
Writing for the Panzerschrank at the Central Institute for
Youth Research 444
Through the Looking Glass: Unification and Normative Loyalty 451
“Be careful what you pray for …” 462

11 No Country for Old Men: Second-Class Citizenship

and its Discontents475
The Double Bind of Military Machismo 478
The Treuhand Versus the “Heroes of Labor” 485
A Clash of Male Cultures: Eastern Underlings, Western Bosses 492
Backlash: Far-right Populism and the New Misogynists 495
Relative Deprivation: Second-Class Citizenship and the
“Unhappiness Curve” 502
Working-Class Men: Winning the Battle, Losing the War 507

12 The
 Dialectical Identities of Germans United519
Caught in the Middle: Die Wendekinder  525
The Post-Turnaround Generation: Difference Still Matters 529
The Blessings of Late Birth 532

13 Epilogue: October 3, 2021539

Index545
 Abbreviations

AfD Alternative für Deutschland/Alternative for Germany

BEK Bund Evangelische Kirche/Evangelical Church Union
CC Central Committee of the SED
CDU Christian Democratic Party
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CSU Christian Social Union (Bavaria)
DA Demokratischer Aufbruch/Democratic Awakening
DEFA German Film Company
DFD Demokratische Frauenbund Deutschland/Democratic Women’s
League in Germany
EOS Expanded secondary school
FDJ Freie Deutsche Jugend/Free German Youth
FDGB Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund/Free German Trade Union
Federation
GSS Gleichstellungsstelle/Office of Equal Opportunity
IFM Initiative for Peace and Human Rights
KoKo Kommerzielle Koordinierung/Commercial Coordination
KPD Communist Party of Germany
MfS Ministry for State Security
NVA Nationale Volksarmee/National People’s Army
NÖS New Economic System
PDS Party of Democratic Socialists
POS Polytechnical school system
SDP/SPD Social Democratic Party

xiii
xiv ABBREVIATIONS

SED Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands/Socialist Unity Party

of Germany
SMAD Soviet Military Administration (occupation zone)
Stasi State Security Forces
VEBs Volkseigene Betriebe/“people’s own factories”
VK Volkskammer/People’s Chamber
ZIJ Zentralinstitut für Jugendforschung/Central Institute for Youth
Research
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Concentric model of identity 28

Fig. 2.2 Forms of exit, voice, and loyalty 47
Fig. 8.1 Vladimir Putin’s Stasi identification 308
Fig. 8.2 My personal Stasi file: Department XX excerpt 312
Fig. 10.1 Wende attitudes, unemployment and GDR affinity 460
Fig. 10.2 Achieving economic parity and internal unity 462
Fig. 11.1 Number and rate of unemployed workers in Germany,
1980–2019 (in %) 493
Fig. 11.2 West/East vote shares in the Bundestag elections,
1990–2017 (in %) 496
Fig. 11.3 Non-voters and AfD voters, Bundestag Elections
2009 and 2017 499

xv
 List of Tables

Table 4.1 Average gross wages (east marks), according to labor sector,
1955–1988139
Table 4.2 Annual food/nutritional consumption, 1955–1989 142
Table 4.3 Possession of major household appliances (in %), 1955–1985 147
Table 5.1 Out-migration from the SMAD/GDR to the Federal
Republic, 1950–1961 167
Table 5.2 Physical exits, 1961–1989 (including transfers from East to
West Berlin) 174
Table 5.3 “Resettlers” from East to West Germany, 1989 179
Table 6.1 New entries in selected registers of associations, 1990–1996 211
Table 6.2 Projected life expectancy in East Germany 219
Table 9.1 Women’s employment across major economic sectors
(as a proportion of total employment), 1970–1985 372
Table 9.2 GDR women in political leadership positions, 1971–1985 374
Table 9.3 Number of live births per woman, 1955–1989 380
Table 9.4 Divorces initiated by women and men, 1960–1989 384
Table 9.5 Children born to unwed mothers (% of all live births) 385
Table 9.6 East-West unemployment rates, 1990–1996 (socially
insured workers) 389
Table 9.7 Women in state parliaments, 2012 (pre-AfD), and 2022
(with AfD presence) 396
Table 10.1 Class backgrounds of students in higher education,
1960–1966419
Table 10.2 Trust in the SED (in %) 447
Table 10.3 Identification with the SED (in %) 448
Table 10.4 Identification with Marxism-Leninism 450
Table 10.5 Identification with the goals of the FDJ 451

xvii
xviii List of Tables

Table 10.6 Political orientations of youth, 1987–1989 458

Table 10.7 Dimensions of personal identity (in %) 460
Table 10.8 Attitudes reflecting systemic versus normative loyalty;
systemic, policy-oriented loyalty elements 463
Table 11.1 Perceptions of the Bundeswehr and willingness to defend
the GDR (in %) 483
 List of Boxes

Box 1.1 On the Perils of “Collecting Qualitative Data”: Holcolm’s

Evaluation Laws 10
Box 3.1 National Anthem of the German Democratic Republic 65
Box 4.1 Understanding “The Plan” 121
Box 5.1 “Die Lösung”/ “The Solution” (Bertolt Brecht) 166
Box 10.1 The Ten Commandments of Socialist Morals and Ethics 425
Box 10.2 The Jugendweihe Oath (February 17, 1955) 426
Box 10.3 Typical Responses: ZIJ Surveys, 1989 453
Box 11.1 “Eigentum”/“Property” (Volker Braun) 490

xix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Prelude to a German

Revolution

The date was May 10, 1989, the place was St. Louis, Missouri. In less than
two weeks, I would be moving to Washington, D.C., where I planned to
investigate GDR-identity as it had crystallized across a span of four decades
since its founding in 1949. I had already spent four years exploring the
contours of postwar German identity as it had evolved among the cohorts
born into the Western state, 1949–1989.1 I secured funding and outlined
a research agenda in late 1988, uncertain at the time what barriers I would
encounter in trying to unearth the official and unofficial dimensions of
GDR state-consciousness in a closed socialist society, the German
Democratic Republic. As one of my last formal duties in St. Louis, I
attended a dinner hosted by the Goethe Institute featuring the prominent
if querulous West German author, Günther Grass. Seated next to the guest
of honor, I briefly described my upcoming project, to which Grass imme-
diately responded: “Identity? Homeland? I believe that a homeland is
something one can only define as that which one has lost.”2 Our casual
dinner-party exchange came back to haunt me six months later. On
November 9, 1989—that chaotic, champagne-drenched night during
which the Berlin Wall suddenly came tumbling down—Grass’s definition of
identity wedded to homeland assumed the status of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Nearly twenty years of living and researching abroad have confirmed
my belief that the concepts of Heimat and Identität are most easily defined
from a distance. The pressures and distractions of day-to-day living at
close range tend to obscure the contours of the larger picture. By contrast,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
J. M. Mushaben, What Remains?,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18888-6_1
2 J. M. MUSHABEN

the ability to look back on past relationships and dependencies helps an

individual to accord new weights to the influence each has exercised on
her personal development. The opportunity to return to a place of origin,
and possibly reminisce with those who stayed behind, yields a sense of the
permanent and the transitional, the core and the peripheral elements of
one’s personal identity. Time, distance, and lapses of memory usually ren-
der one critical of certain aspects and laudatory toward others, although
the truth usually lies somewhere in between. Homeland is, more often
than not, a place one “comes from.”
Serving as Berlin’s Reigning Mayor, Willy Brandt sustained the moral
courage of his people when the Wall suddenly went up in August 1961. As
Germany’s first social-democratic Chancellor, he just as courageously
dared to pursue East-West rapprochement under the rubric of Ostpolitik.
The day after the Wall fell in 1989, he eloquently summarized the hopes
of millions of postwar European citizens with the words, “Now that which
belongs together can grow together.” My initial aim in writing this book
was to challenge that proposition, to persuade the reader that the search
for “German identity” did not end with unification. I argued back then
that while the former SPD Chancellor had been a brilliant statesman, he
was not an expert demographer: Had he reflected on generational change,
his prognosis would have been a lot more pessimistic. By 1989, two-thirds
of Westerners and three-fourths of Easterners had been born after World
War II, meaning that most had never experienced a whole nation.
Once the Wall fell, 16.4 million GDR citizens were expected to jettison
the lives they had known, and to reassess how they had “arranged” them-
selves with the SED regime, how they may have suffered as its victims, and
how they might best adapt to a new world. Over 61 million FRG citizens
were ostensibly free to pursue business and politics as usual. My earlier
study of generational differences in the old Federal Republic of Germany
had nonetheless persuaded me that rather than ending a search for shared
feelings of national belonging, the formal merger of two ideologically
opposed states marked only the beginning of a new quest for deutsche
Identität.
This story of East German identity before and after the opening of the
Wall is a study of identity lost, found, and reconfigured. But history is not
a soliloquy. Any national narrative involves characters, places, events, mul-
tiple plot twists, a climax, and sometimes a denouement. The German
Democratic Republic had all of these, but “the rest of the story” cannot
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 3

be told unless and/or until Western Germans come to recognize that their
own past and future is intricately connected to the experiences of the
other side.
Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of what used to be GDR-­
identity has been rendered no easier by the curious nature of my discipline:
political science pits the scientific against the political, the normative
against the empirical, and institutional imperatives against human compo-
nents. In 1906 Arthur L. Bowley at the Royal Statistical Society (London)
prescribed the first rules for determining a “representative sample,” a
mechanism that has become the lifeline of political behaviorists every-
where. German identity nonetheless predates the existence of survey
research techniques by a few hundred years, its core elements having been
established by countless wars and regime changes. The relatively closed
nature of GDR society made it virtually impossible for scholars to employ
standard methodologies used to test the attitudinal waters in the West.
This does not mean that East German officials prohibited any and all
forms of public opinion data; it does imply, however, that one cannot take
the existing data at face value.
I was the first US-American to be accorded unlimited access to archival
materials at the GDR’s Central Institute for Youth Research (ZIJ) in
Leipzig. Prior to the so-called Turn-around (Wende) of 1989, the survey
data generated there could only be accessed by SED Politburo members,
select Central Committee departments, the Office for Youth Affairs in the
Council of Ministers, and top officials of the Free German Youth League
(FDJ). For better or worse (given the outdated copying facilities I encoun-
tered during my first two-week stay), I was also the last American to enjoy
this privilege as a formal guest “during GDR times.” In accordance with
provisions appended to the Unity Treaty, the ZIJ was abgewickelt, “wound
down” and dissolved in December 1990. Several works drawing on the
Leipzig data have been published since 1991, usually by former ZIJ
researchers, but most texts have appeared only in German. This book
attempts, inter alia, to provide a broader picture of the Institute’s longitu-
dinal findings than is usually accessible to English-speaking readers.
The experience of having both one’s “target-group” and “data base”
officially cease to exist halfway through a research project is but one of the
occupational hazards which have tested the mettle of East European ana-
lysts since 1990. Feeling quite blessed not by my “late birth” but rather by
my good fortune at landing in the GDR when I did, mine was a very mov-
ing but also an extraordinarily chaotic research experience from the start.
4 J. M. MUSHABEN

I had expected to encounter much distrust, if not outright official hostility

toward a project as controversial as mine. Since its inception, GDR leaders
had viewed the constructs of nation and nationality as very touchy issues,
subjecting them to many ideological revisions. My contacts quickly trained
me to employ the term DDR-Staatsbewußtsein [GDR state-consciousness]
in all “identity” discussions with public officials.
I arrived in East Berlin for preliminary talks the very week that hun-
dreds of vacationing GDR citizens began to seek refuge at West German
embassies in Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw, August 5–12, 1989. To my
great surprise, office doors opened, prominent SED officials offered to
supply me with critical background materials and a few of them even
treated me to lunch. The conditions I experienced during the exhilarating
yet chaotic months of August 1989 through December 1990 have been
replaced by routine archival visits on the part of younger scholars inter-
ested in GDR life. Though over thirty years have passed, I find it useful,
on occasion, to remind ourselves just how fundamentally German condi-
tions and life-styles have changed—not only in the eastern Länder but also
in the “old” federal states. With amazing speed, an overwhelming major-
ity of Eastern Germans embraced democratic processes as natural and
good, despite forty years of socialization under an authoritarian regime.
This book gives them long-overdue credit for this achievement.
I can best illustrate these points by recounting my initial experiences in
the field. On November 26, 1989, two weeks after the Wall had opened,
I was escorted along the labyrinthine hallways of the building housing the
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party. I passed by numerous
uniformed armed guards en route to a prescheduled interview with Klaus
Hoepcke, the then-Minister for Cultural Affairs serving the Politburo.
Promised only half an hour to discuss the historical evolution and contem-
porary significance of “GDR state-consciousness,” I took the risk of
addressing the obvious collective-identity crisis highlighted by the crowded
embassy compounds. To my astonishment, Hoepke responded in a very
personal manner to my questions about identity, extending the interview
to an hour. Seven months later, as a PDS delegate in the first democrati-
cally elected parliament (Volkskammer, VK), he invited me to visit him at
home in order to continue our discussion along with his wife and daugh-
ter. I did not receive his letter (which he had hand-delivered to the
Academy for Social Sciences where I was occupying a dorm room) until
four days after the proposed meeting. This was but the first of many “com-
munication breakdowns” impeding my plan to conduct over sixty official
discussions in the still-existing GDR.
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 5

My efforts to secure interviews with members of the new parliament

were Kafkaesque at best. Anticipating a dearth of xeroxing facilities at the
Academy, I had brought along a hundred copies of a letter explaining my
project and requesting interviews with VK delegates. Supported by the
German Marshall Fund, I had been able to observe the elections first-hand
in March 1990, but no comprehensive list of the new parliamentarians had
been published prior to my April return. To compile a somewhat represen-
tative sample of prospective interviewees, I needed the names and addresses
of all the new legislators.
Landing in East Berlin on Tuesday, April 24, 1990, I headed for “the
Palace of the Republic” on Wednesday, certain that such a list would be
available six weeks after the election. Notified that the Volkskammer would
convene at the end of the week (April 26), I hoped to post my letters
before the legislators left the capital-city for a long holiday break. The
uniformed men at the reception desk were unable to offer direct assis-
tance, but they indicated that the delegates’ offices were located in the
former Central Committee building.
I rushed over to that once-intimidating complex that had been rechris-
tened the House of Parliamentarians. Three uniformed men at the recep-
tion desk immediately demanded my “identification.” I handed over my
passport, explaining in German who I was (a university professor from the
USA, officially invited by the Academy of Social Sciences) and what I
needed (a list of the new VK representatives and their contact addresses).
They told me that the entire building was undergoing renovation; few
MPs had moved into the offices, hence no such list was available. They
urged me to return to the Volkskammer, housed in the (asbestos-­
permeated) “Palace,” colloquially known as the Ballast of the Republic.
The guards there were surprised to see me back. Having “no informa-
tion,” they felt no further obligation toward me and resumed their own
conversation, though I did not leave. My outsider status afforded me a
degree of courage: I insisted that someone in the building had to have some
way of informing the people’s democratically elected representatives about
upcoming committee meetings and plenary sessions. All I wanted was
access to that person. They rang up a press liaison who agreed to meet me
in the cloakroom. After twenty minutes, the young man consented to
share his own list which classified the MPs by party only. Lacking access to
a xerox machine himself, he graciously allowed me to hand-copy all 400+
names into my notebook. Two hours later I reappeared at the Palace
reception desk with forty letters in care of selected members. Lacking
6 J. M. MUSHABEN

specific addresses, I requested that they be placed in the parliamentarians’

mailboxes prior to the next plenum, set to convene a day later. One func-
tionary accepted the letters, though the in-house mailroom was closed for
the afternoon. It had been, I thought, a very productive day.
The next morning I registered with the city police for my temporary
residency permit, exchanged D-Marks for East Marks at the official 1-to-1
rate, and returned to the People’s Chamber. Given my need to track down
each letter-recipient to set up individual meeting dates, I reiterated my
request for phone numbers and contact addresses. The VK guards sent me
back to the House of Parliamentarians, where that crew was likewise sur-
prised to see me again. I re-explained the situation at length. Insisting they
had no such list, they advised me to check with die Fraktionen [caucuses]
at the headquarters of the individual parties. I spent all day Thursday
being shunted back and forth from one site to another under the follow-
ing refrains:

★★★ At the central CDU office: “You want addresses and phone
numbers of our VK members? We’d like to have them ourselves!
Try the House of Parliamentarians.”
★★★ Back at the HoP reception desk: “We don’t have ‘em. You have
to go back to the party caucuses.”
★★★ At the now smaller, back-door office of the SED-turned-PDS:
“As you can see, they made us move. Maybe Herr-So-und-So
can help you.” Herr-So-und-So found my project very interest-
ing and told me he hoped to receive a copy of my book when it
came out. Regretfully he had no addresses and phone numbers
for his party’s VK delegates.
★★★ Back at the People’s Chamber: “No, [they] didn’t know where
the Liberal Party had moved to. Maybe the SPD could help.”
★★★ Returning to the SPD headquarters: I had a long conversation
with an amiable office worker, Marianne Eschenbach who, in
addition to offering me coffee, cookies and a place to stay, prom-
ised to arrange an interview with “her” MP, Angelika Barbe,
confirmed the next day.

Utterly frustrated, I returned to the House of Parliamentarians on

Friday morning prior to appointments with Michael Brie (Humboldt
University), the Wiens (two dissident film-makers from Pankow who were
sheltering a Romanian refugee family in their three-room apartment), and
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 7

Jens Reich, a cofounder of New Forum. Adopting a more Teutonic tone,

I demanded access to MP addresses/phone numbers and remained at the
reception desk for forty-five minutes. Now constituting something of a
security risk, I was assured that an official responsible for “international
relations” was on his way to appease (and/or dismiss) me. After another
forty-five minutes of circular arguments, I squeezed out one name and
(wonder of wonders) the room number for the managing officer of the
CDU-caucus, Herr Viererber.
I thanked the guards for their “assistance,” noting that I would return
on Monday to contact the CDU. “You can’t do that,” they responded;
“the holiday is coming up.” Yes, I noted, “May First (International
Workers’ Day) falls on Tuesday, but I’ll be back on Monday.” They
repeated: “You can’t do that. We will be closed. Wir haben vorgearbeitet”
[“We’ve worked our hours ahead of time”]. Two and a half months after
the elections, parliamentarians had no offices, no phones, no contact
addresses. The building itself was a hazardous construction site, with old
bugging devices openly visible in the walls—yet the “workers” would take
an extra day off because they had built up “compensatory” time! It is easy
to see why the interim government of Lothar de Maizière did not occupy
a particularly strong bargaining position vis-à-vis FRG officials in Bonn
during the critical phase of negotiations over the conditions for accession.
When I reappeared at the reception desk at 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday
after the holiday, I announced (disingenuously) that I had an appointment
with Herr Viererber, located in Room 4135. Not knowing his actual
whereabouts and having no phone contact, the guards presumed that I
did have an officially scheduled meeting and allowed me to ascend in the
pater-noster unaccompanied. I spent the next two hours roaming the halls
of the former Central Committee, encountering huge piles of plaster and
scaffolding materials but nary a worker. I eventually discovered not only
the “real-existing” Herr Viererber but also Klaus Richter, Managing
Officer for Bündnis’ 90, who immediately agreed to locate prospective
interview partners in his party. Another chance discovery, a kindly secre-
tary for the FDP, Frau Wagner, agreed to schedule interviews with three
of “her” parliamentarians, after disclosing many of her own economic
fears and identity concerns linked to the so-called Wende. A few days later,
a CDU parliamentarian already back home in Dresden called to say he had
seen his name atop a large stack of envelopes left in a reception room after
the Friday VK plenum. My letters had not been distributed, much less on
8 J. M. MUSHABEN

time, to legislative delegates; those who eventually did respond to my

interview request would not reach me until weeks later.
In short, each interview referenced in this book usually entailed serious
detective work, as well as many hours underway with the decrepit DDR
Reichsbahn. Colleagues who established their own scientific reputations in
the field of GDR Studies prior to 1989 will appreciate the valiance of my
struggle as well as the numerous historical and psychological ironies
depicted herein. The need to “read between the lines” prior to 1989
infused all GDR-analyses with a higher degree of subjectivity than Western
number-crunching analysts are inclined to tolerate. That special breed
known as “GDR researchers” had to seek confirmation for their hypoth-
eses across many sub-fields ranging from literature and history to social-­
psychology, organizational theory, and even psycho-therapy, resulting in a
kind of multi-dimensional “validation” not enjoyed by those committed
to quantitative analyses.
Many survey experts unfamiliar with GDR history and culture none-
theless headed eastwards during the final months of the regime, hoping to
ply their trade. Armed with batteries of questionnaires—a real improve-
ment over the tanks and missiles of old—they sought to record the histori-
cal moment, to compare the identities of Western and Eastern Germans at
their respective peaks, and to capture the essence of DDR-Identität before
it assumed its proper place (as Friedrich Engels opined) in the “museum
of human history, next to the bronze ax and the spinning wheel.” Having
found what they deemed to be “statistically significant” political similari-
ties (e.g., electoral preferences), too many underestimated the long-term
impact of other socio-psychological variables. Their methodologies often
precluded them from looking in the “right places” for deep-seated differ-
ences between the Germans of East and West, analogous to the proverbial
town drunk looking for his wristwatch under the streetlamp, not because
that is where he lost it but because that is where the light happens to be.
My investigations over the last three decades began with a single, albeit
complex question: Had forty years of division resulted in the formation of
separate identities for the Germans of East and West, or was it possible that
the historical bonds of “national consciousness” had transcended the horrors of
war, the ignominy of defeat and the imposition of diametrically opposed socio-­
economic systems? This is the second of two books focusing on that ques-
tion, based on my belief that separate identities had indeed emerged in the
two Germanys as early as 1972. I remain convinced that one must first
comprehend how far the peoples of a divided nation had grown apart
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 9

between 1949 and 1989, before one can begin to figure out (with all due
respect to Humpty-Dumpty) how to put them back together again.
This book is divided into three parts. The first part (Chaps. 2 and 3)
explores the historical and “national” components of GDR-Identity as it
was officially defined and propagated over a span of forty years. The second
part (Chaps. 4, 5, and 6) analyzes major factors that contributed to a
growing gap between the national consciousness espoused by the Socialist
leadership and average citizens’ willingness to embrace the official version
prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It explores the transformation of iden-
tity among former GDR state officials, party functionaries and “true-­
believers.” Fired or forced into early retirement, many came to perceive
themselves as outright “losers” following unification, though a few became
surprisingly successful capitalists.
The third part (Chaps. 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11) investigates the unofficial
dimensions of East German identity which imprinted themselves on the per-
sonal consciousness of specific subsets of citizens, as a key to understanding,
in the words of Christa Wolf, what remains.3 It explores an array of often
erroneously conflated subcultures—writers, intellectuals, pastors, dissi-
dents, women and youth—along with working-class men, whose identities
have been marked by alienation and hostility since the political implosion
of 1989, attracting them to the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany
party.4 The concluding chapter is devoted to speculations about the orien-
tations and identities of post-Wall youth (Third Generation East), and the
curious failure of West Germans to recognize the extent to which their own
identities have been reconfigured in the wake of unification.

Methodology
Although my Ford Foundation grant had been approved in mid-1988, I
was unable to commence work on this project exploring DDR-Identität
until June 1989. My initial experiences in the field provided many impor-
tant lessons about the lives and mind-sets of citizens made-in-the-GDR, a
number of which can be used retrospectively to “defend” the eclectic
methodological approach adopted here (see Box 1.1). For younger schol-
ars whose curiosity has been piqued by the collapse of the GDR, my
account will call forth the image of an academic stone-age or, at a mini-
mum, tales of a Great Depression they did not personally witness. They
may find it hard to imagine an industrialized country unable to provide
visiting professors with the names of elected officials, much less to supply
10 J. M. MUSHABEN

its citizens adequately with women’s underwear and other personal

hygiene articles as late as the 1970s. As Holcolm noted in reference to
“the perils of qualitative research,” the nine-to-five set need not have
applied for an adventure such as this.

Box 1.1 On the Perils of “Collecting Qualitative Data”: Holcolm’s

Evaluation Laws
☺ Always be suspicious of data collection that goes according
to plan.
☺ Research subjects have also been known to be people.
☺ The evaluator’s scientific observation is some person’s real life
experience. Respect for the latter must precede respect for
the former.
☺ Total trust and complete skepticism are twin losers in the field.
All things in moderation, especially trust and skepticism.
☺ Evaluators are presumed guilty until proven innocent.
☺ Make sure when you yield to temptation in the field that it
appears to have something to do with what you are studying.
☺ A fieldworker should be able to sweep the floor, carry out the
garbage, carry in the laundry, cook for large groups, go without
food and sleep, read and write by candlelight, see in the dark,
see in the light, cooperate without offending, suppress sarcastic
remarks, smile to express both pain and hurt, experience both
pain and hurt, spend time alone, respond to orders, take sides,
stay neutral, take risks, avoid harm, be confused, seem con-
fused, care terribly, become attached to nothing… The nine-to-
five set need not apply.
☺ Always carry extra batteries and getaway money.

Scholars who study authoritarian regimes recognize the methodologi-

cal limitations inherent in the conduct of empirical research, irrespective of
its specific ideological orientation. It is difficult to accumulate quantifiable
data in countries which regularly prohibit opinion polls, falsify govern-
mental statistics to glorify their own achievements, bar foreign researchers
from their territory, and utilize secret police or criminal statutes to intimi-
date prospective interview partners. Scholars compelled by circumstances
to rely upon qualitative methods are frequently called upon to “defend”
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 11

their sources and strategies by quantitative experts whose objects of study

are open, liberal-democratic systems.
Decades after unification, I still view the findings of Western pollsters
who “discovered” the East European states in 1989/1990 with skepti-
cism. Individuals continuously socialized into hiding their real feelings
about leaders and policies will not automatically shift to candid expres-
sions of political self-interest, no matter how delighted they are to be
asked, at long last, about their personal preferences. Recently liberated
citizens usually have too much at stake to reveal their innermost political
feelings, seeking to avoid charges of complicity with the old regimes or
due to their collective need to please would-be foreign investors.
My pre-1989 experiences in the realm of GDR research taught me to
integrate many kinds of data, ranging from official parade slogans to anti-­
state jokes circulated among members of the underground. This study
draws on books, newspapers, radio broadcasts, official documents, opposi-
tion leaflets, campaign materials, hand-copied surveys from the ZIJ, and
on-site observations. My findings also derive from an exhausting yet exhil-
arating array of personal discussions, including 50+ in-depth interviews
(lasting one to three hours each), executed at five key points throughout
the transformational process. They included: the period of mass emigra-
tion in August 1989; the opening of the Wall, November 1989; the first
free elections in March 1990; communal elections and preparations for
the arrival of the D-Mark, April-June 1990; and the first all-German elec-
tions of December 1990.
I completed roughly thirty interviews with members of the first demo-
cratically elected Volkskammer, two of whom subsequently became
Ministers in the first all-German government under Chancellor Helmut
Kohl: Rainer Ortlebb (Education), and Claudia Nolta (Women and
Family). De Maizière’s Deputy Press-speaker, Angela Merkel, became
Minister for Women and Youth, later responsible for the Environment and
Nuclear Safety. Merkel then moved on to become Germany’s first woman
Chancellor (2005–2021), while another interviewee, Joachim Gauck,
subsequently served as Federal-President (2012–2017), after directing the
agency responsible for processing Stasi files for ten years. More than half
of my VK sample moved on to seats in the all-German Bundestag or
assumed positions in the new Länder governments after 1990, though
several then left the political arena to pursue other careers.
The realization that all investigators respond to political phenomena on
the basis of their own values and interests is not a barrier to solid empirical
12 J. M. MUSHABEN

research. The questions I judge most essential to an understanding of

GDR-identity cannot, for the most part, be answered on a quantitative
basis. But hard data do have their place in a longitudinal study of this sort;
this text utilizes insights compiled by Eastern experts of a quantitative
bent, formerly employed by the Zentralinstitut für Jugendforschung in
Leipzig. The Central Institute for Youth Research was created in 1966
under the direction of psychology professor Dr. Walter Friedrich, who
remained at the helm until its December 1990 dissolution.
Subordinated to the Office for Youth Questions in the GDR Council of
Ministers, the ZIJ’s tasks and structure were defined by way of the
Ministerial Resolution of 26 February 1968. The Socialist Unity Party
(SED), in cooperation with the Free German Youth (FDJ), retained for
itself the power to approve the development of research emphases, the
formulation of research plans, as well as the establishment of contacts
between commissioned researchers and participating institutions. Scholars
sought to influence the choice of methodologies by way of a limited num-
ber of seats on the Scientific Council. The latter consisted of delegates
from the ZIJ, the communist youth league and the SED, named by the
Director of the Office for Youth Questions.
Resident scholars conducted over 400 investigations from the time of
the Institute’s inception until its dissolution, including a battery of studies
which sampled the mood of youth throughout the critical periods of
1989/1990.5 Administrators at both the Academy in Berlin and the Central
Institute in Leipzig had learned one thing about the “free market econ-
omy” immediately prior to the arrival of the western D-Mark under the
Currency Union (scheduled to take effect on July 1, 1990). They informed
me that I would have to pay an “organizational use fee,” but neither was
willing to accept the still-valid coin of the realm, the East-­Mark. My costs
ranged from $100 for “tuition,” plus DM50 per night for lodgings at the
desolate-looking Academy, to a charge of DM60 per week at the ZIJ. Never
mind the fact that I had to cross paths with Academy employees to get to
the restroom/shower at 6:30 a.m., and that all the lights in the building
were shut off on weekends. When the concierge took a break, or left his/
her post for unexplained reasons, the overnight “house-guests” found
themselves locked in for lengthier periods. This also happened to two of my
very surprised West Berlin friends who had come to meet me there.
I had neither a typewriter nor a xerox machine at my disposal during
my initial stay in Leipzig, meaning that I had to copy most of statistical
tables by hand—even though the ZIJ, according to official reports, met
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 13

“all the requirements of modern social research.” Institute researchers

relied on a typing-pool, allowing the government to control the dispersal
of a potentially controversial document. I was never treated to a tour of
the “computer facilities,” but it was easy to conjure up the image of “Hal”
from the classic film, 2001, sitting in a basement next to the winter supply
of coal brickets. The Institute’s unisex water-closet on our floor, always to
be locked after use, afforded interesting insights into pre-war German
plumbing techniques.
Most of the materials placed at my disposal were in the process of being
declassified, though they still bore the labels “Confidential Document,”
“Confidential-Classified” or “Top-Secret Document.” Unfortunately, ZIJ
co-workers had not yet completed the task of re-cataloguing newly declas-
sified documents during my May 1990 visit. It was therefore difficult to
locate many of the “top secret” documents, based on the registry of titles
I was given. By the time I returned in November, the Institute’s dissolu-
tion was already imminent under the Unity Treaty. Realizing that they
would be unemployed by mid-December, some 90% of the support staff
no longer subscribed to the principle of a full working day. Only once did
I succeed in locating the librarian at her designated workspace (7:30 to
11:30 a.m. on Wednesdays); when I requested access to the top-secret
documents from the basement archives, she expressed surprise regarding
my interest in “that old stuff.” I had less than twenty-four hours to exam-
ine several “historical” studies, uncovered two weeks before the Central
Institute officially ceased to exist. Its data were transferred to the Deutsches
Jugendforschungsinstitut (German Institute for Youth Research) in Munich
and the Central Archive for Empirical Social Research in Cologne. The
services of some eighteen former institute members were retained only
through 1994.
The perils of relying on official GDR-data, in general, and ZIJ data, in
particular, are self-evident. First, there is the “non-representative” nature
of earlier GDR-youth surveys. To some degree, this deficit reflects the
state-of-the-art problems confronting behavioralists of decades past. For
the most part, the ZIJ evaluators included an appropriate caveat regarding
problems of statistical sampling in the introductory sections of their stud-
ies. Second, there is the politically “loaded” nature of the questions
researchers were expected to pose (see Chap. 10). In addition to facing
questions heavy with official terminology—as opposed to colloquial for-
mulations which might have more clearly reflected their real feelings—
young participants were limited to SED-sanctioned response options.
14 J. M. MUSHABEN

Another qualification regarding ZIJ data stems from the fact that
responses were solicited under a command system rather than on the basis
of voluntary participation. Though researchers sought to guarantee ano-
nymity by collecting classroom surveys into a large pile, it was always dif-
ficult to assess the sincerity of the answers provided, the contents of which
may have been motivated by fear, by a concern for one’s university or
career prospects, by a sense of duty-consciousness, or by direct teacher
supervision. Attempts to verify individual responses with follow-up inter-
views would have resulted in further distrust, multiplying the number of
disingenuous replies, although this method was used on occasion. Added
to this dilemma is the fact that most GDR-youth would have been well-­
versed in “double-speak” by the time they were teenagers.
Last but not least, there were the formidable problems of interpreta-
tion, replication, publication, and, ultimately, open discussion of the
results. Consistent with its general self-glorification tendencies, the regime
tolerated only those interpretations of data stressing that “the glass was
almost full,” as ominous as the signs of youth discontent had become by
the early 1980s. Though regularly denied permission to publish any data
suggesting an erosion of systemic support, Institute members could, on
occasion, lecture on their findings among “selected” publics permitted to
discuss them, for example, FDJ functionaries. By the summer of 1989, a
direct order from the Chief of the Office for Youth Affairs in the Council
of Ministers barred all ZIJ analysts from discussing the deteriorating polit-
ical climate publicly. That muzzle was only removed in the wake of the
dramatic events of October/November, by which point it had already
become impossible to reverse the course of GDR history.
These serious qualifications notwithstanding, the Leipzig data do tell a
rather astounding story. More important than the extent to which young
survey participants protected themselves by voicing the party-line is the
degree to which they did not, despite the negative repercussions most real-
ized they might face. Surveys of the late 1970s testify to a consciously
articulated loss of faith in the system, especially among young members of
the working class. A comparable decline in support would not be observed
among university students and party-political youth until the mid-1980s.
Educational Minister Margot Honecker, along with the Politburo mem-
bers who were privy to these data, might have undertaken policy changes
at the onset of the decade to ensure the system’s survival, yet they refused
to see the handwriting on the Wall, real and proverbial. Thus, the
 1 INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO A GERMAN REVOLUTION 15

beginning of the end of the German Democratic Republic was rooted in

the hearts and minds of East German youth almost a decade prior to the
Party’s “great fall.”
This book is, to a large extent, an effort to tell youth’s side of the story
(citizens now in their 40s and 50s), as well as to assess the role of genera-
tional change in precipitating the system’s collapse. My work challenges
many Western publications which “explain” the GDR’s demise solely in
terms of dictatorship and command-economy rationalizations. Drawing
on Hirschman’s oft-cited framework of exit, voice, and loyalty, I attempt to
determine which elements of East German identity have persisted under
unification as a function of GDR-specific socialization mechanisms, the
critical dimension of loyalty having been ignored by most authors explor-
ing the exit-voice dynamics of the short-lived Wende phase. My analysis is
grounded in the belief that residents of the young Länder need not aban-
don “East German” identity in its entirety in order to embrace new demo-
cratic institutions and values cultivated under the Western-dominated
Federal Republic.
I contend that the rediscovery of personal East German identities, a
process mockingly referred to as Ostalgie [East-nostalgia], should not be
viewed as an attempt to paint the GDR past as a golden one, nor as an
attempt by former citizens to exonerate themselves from complicity with
what was admittedly an authoritarian regime. As my earlier study of West
German identity attested, residents of the old Länder have cultivated a
Nestalgie of their own, that is, a yearning for the well-feathered western
nest in the “unsullied” economic-miracle state they used to know. I see the
rediscovery of differences among German citizens today as fulfilling a fun-
damentally necessary purpose: the renewed search for an East-identity is one
phase of a process of taking pieces of the old-life—a multitude of familiar
cultural norms, practices, behaviors, and tastes (their habitus, as Bourdieu
would say)—and reassembling or reconfiguring them into new networks. In
other words, it is a search for mixed modes of social capital—another way
of describing one’s “loyalty” to old norms, behaviors, interpersonal rela-
tionships, and even tastes—that lend themselves to more effective use
under new institutional conditions and new socio-psychological
imperatives.
As was true throughout the socialist bloc, the slightest changes in offi-
cial terminology oftentimes signaled fundamental shifts in doctrine.
Certain German terms are so fraught with historical significance that an
English translation may render them trivial, however. The German term
16 J. M. MUSHABEN

das Volk, for example, bears “organic” connotations ideologically at odds

with its American equivalent “the people,” just as Heimat is culturally
more significant than “home” as understood by geographically mobile
Americans. Terms like this have been left as is, with profound apologies to
non-German readers. I otherwise provide original East German terms,
accompanied by an English equivalent; all translations, unless otherwise
noted, are my own. It is to the official, historical, and ideological dimen-
sions of DDR-Identität, propagated by the Socialist Unity Party across a
span of four decades, that we now turn.

Notes
1. Joyce Marie Mushaben, From Post-War to Post-Wall Generations. Changing
Attitudes towards the National Question and NATO in the Federal Republic
of Germany (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998).
2. In his own words: “Identität? Heimat? Ich glaube Heimat ist das was man
nur definieren kann, als was man verloren hat.”
3. This is the title of a literary treatment of Wolf’s own encounters with the
Secret Police or Stasi in the late 1970s. The author’s decision to publish her
account after the Wall fell led to charges of “opportunism,” followed by a
sustained public assault on her literary accomplishments, led by conservative
western male critics. See Chap. 7 for details.
4. Umbruch or implosion is the term some GDR experts prefer to use over the
term “revolution” to describe the peaceful dynamics of democratic awaken-
ing and regime collapse between August 1989 and October 1990.
5. Among its more “historically” valuable survey holdings are a number of
interval/panel studies initiated in 1969, under the titles STUDENT ’69,
STUDENT ’79, and STUDENT ’89, the eastern equivalent of the West
German Shell Studies.
 PART I

Dimensions of the Dialectical Identity

Once upon a time, there was a country about which most people knew and
probably cared so little that they only referred to it by its initials. It was the
“so-called DDR.” Like other countries throughout history and across the
globe, this one was created to pursue a specific set of ideals, derived from the
not-so-happy history of the big and powerful country that had preceded it,
which had also been German. It wanted to guarantee that this horrible his-
tory would never be repeated, so it adopted a new model for a perfect, peaceful
society—and for a brief period it showed the promise of becoming die deutsche
(anti-faschistische) demokratische Republik, 1945–1948.
But human leaders aren’t perfect and, like so many countries, this one had
a hard time living up to its ideals. Step by step, the theory became alienated
from the praxis so, like many other governments, this one tried to win the
hearts and minds of its citizens by using ever more boasting, propaganda and
even coercion. Its rulers wanted the country to give birth to millions of “social-
ist personalities” in their own image and likeness. But the message became
stale, the schools became authoritarian and the goods were not always deliv-
ered, during this phase of die deutsche demagogische Republik, 1949–1970.
As a result, the people became more apolitical, as they pulled into their
private niches; the state grew ever more distant, but they found a quiet middle
ground. They invented an historical compromise they called an “arrange-
ment.” The people would go to May Day and Founders’ Day parades (most
big governments love parades on their birthdays) and the state would leave
them more or less alone to struggle through the periods of scarce consumer
goods, albeit with lots of subsidies. Contradictions were, after all, just part of
18 Dimensions of the Dialectical Identity

the process of growing up to be real-existing socialists, and this was clearly the
phase of die deutsche dialektische Republik, 1971–1987.
The contradictions worsened, however, when the people in the Land of
Resistance Fighters woke up one day, turned on their televisions to watch the
evening news, on West-TV, and discovered that other countries were changing
all around them, opening their borders, even printing real-news in their
newspapers. DDR citizens wanted to know why they couldn’t at least be as
free as the Hungarians if they couldn’t be as rich as “the other” Germans.
So they headed out, in many new places, for a different kind of parade with
lots of candles; with lots of candles; only this time their children—actually the
children of the children of the comrades who had built the country in the first
place—pointed their fingers and called out loud that the emperor was wear-
ing no clothes. Their parents were a little ashamed, not of their leaders’
nakedness (after all, they had fought for nudist beaches) but of their own
silence all those years, and suddenly they became “the people” in die deutsche
dramatische Republik, 1988–1990.
Now some people wanted to ask important, theoretical questions, after
their own local parades, to talk about rebuilding their country based on a
new set of ideals. Most of their neighbors didn’t want to wait around for the
answers, however. Instead they packed their camping gear, got into their
funny little cars called Trabis (for Traurige Arbeiter und Bauern Initiative/
The Sad Initiative of Workers and Peasants), and following the wisdom of a
famous cigarette commercial, they shouted “Let’s go West.” Though our story
does not end here, this phase could be labeled die deutsche demolierte
Republik, which dominated the headlines from March 18 to October 3, 1990.
Not too long after the Wall came tumbling down, some people who looked
into their academic crystal balls and psychology textbooks predicted it would
take at least a decade for our sheroes and heroes to learn how to live happily
ever after in their glittery new republic. Five years into the internationally
celebrated marriage of the richly attired Western King and the somewhat
haggard-looking Eastern princess, the new people living in the Bigger (though
not totally Better) Kingdom started to ask, in the words of their own
Cassandra, “What remains?” They started to wonder ostagically, so to speak,
why they were being treated like strangers in a strange land. Too many had
lost their jobs, their benefits, their Heimat and often, quite literally, “a home
of their own,” in this new, deutsche däprimierte Republik, 1991–1998.
Now Old King Kohl was not such a merry, bold soul by the end of his reign,
so he and his minions hardly noticed that something amazing was taking
place in the far-away parts of his kingdom. The people started talking out
 Dimensions of the Dialectical Identity 19

loud, or talking to each other, while thinking about tactics and tricks they had
used to make their homeland better “in GDR times,” as they were wont to say.
Remembering their clubs, their grill- and other kinds of parties, their Handys,
their days and (k)nights of the Round Table, they took one last look in the
Spiegel (surveys); although the photo still wasn’t very flattering, they suddenly
realized that they had lost their ugly Duckmäuser demeanor and were anx-
ious to become a deutsche dynamische Region, 1999–2007.1
That would have been a happy ending, but the dark clouds of an EU
financial “shit-storm” (as the Germans say) spread across the land. Shortly
thereafter many new people from foreign lands began pouring into the
Kingdom in search of peace and freedom, just like these Germans had done
many years ago. But some of the citizens grew afraid and resentful, so they
took to the streets once again, chanting “we are the people.” But this time they
started voting for angry, taboo-breaking politicians who reminded too many
others at home and abroad of the deutsches dämonisches Reich that had
caused them to be divided in the first place. Unlike most fairy tales, this is not
the end of his- or her-story, so let us continue the tale.

Note
1. An earlier version of this tale appears in Joyce Marie Mushaben. 2010.
“Unification and the Law of Unanticipated Consequences,” German Studies
Review 33 (3): 483–488.
 CHAPTER 2

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: The Theoretical

Parameters

Im traurigen Monat November war’s,        It was in November, that dreary month;
Die Tage wurden trüber,           The days were growing shorter;
Der Wind riss von den Bäumen das Laub     The winds ripped all the leaves from the trees;
Da reist’ ich nach Deutschland hinüber.     And I came to the German border.

Und als ich an die Grenze kam,       And as I reached the borderline
Da fühlt’ ich ein stärkeres Klopfen     A stronger pulse began
In meiner Brust, ich glaube sogar       To throb within me; down my cheeks
Die Augen begunnen zu tropfen…     I think some teardrops ran.

                   Heinrich Heine,

                   Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen1

More than three decades have passed since the two parts of a long-­divided
German nation became one, but even thirty years may not be sufficient to
make or break an identity, be it personal or national. Generational studies
suggest that it takes at least twenty years for people to sort through a
myriad of attitudes and behaviors in a conscious effort to determine which
identity traits are worth preserving, and which ones are best pitched into
the recycling bin of historical memory.2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 21

Switzerland AG 2023
J. M. Mushaben, What Remains?,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18888-6_2
22 J. M. MUSHABEN

This book began as a narrowly defined effort, prior to the fall of the
Berlin Wall, to pinpoint the quintessential components of a divided
national identity that rendered the German Democratic Republic a sepa-
rate state across a span of four decades. Its initial purpose was to determine
the extent to which specific elements of that identity contributed to, or
worked against, the leadership’s efforts to legitimize the GDR’s existence
in the eyes of its own citizens between its founding in 1949 and the 1989
Wende [Turn-around]. In the mid-1990s, I expanded my framework to
investigate not only the officially mandated “GDR-identity” but also key
features of a little studied, unofficial “eastern” (ostdeutsche) identity likely
to shape the formation of a new all-German identity following unification,
a topic I have followed for three decades.
While the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist as a political
entity on October 3, 1990, a de facto merging of the Eastern and Western
cultures had yet to occur by the time of the 2017 national elections.
Ironically, it took the rise of a rightwing populist party, the Alternative for
Germany (AfD), to force prominent elites in the “old” Federal Republic
to recognize the import of psychological factors in the unification process.
The potential sources of ongoing division I had emphasized in 1990–1991
resurfaced in public debates around 2014, following the rise of the
PEGIDA movement (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the
Occident) in Dresden.3 The fact that the official GDR-identity lacked deep
roots among average citizens no doubt contributed to the state’s rapid
demise after the dramatic opening of the Wall on November 9, 1989. The
extraordinary pace of unification denied Easterners a chance to assess their
attachment to familiar elements of everyday GDR culture and values,
however, undercutting their ability to voice mounting dissatisfaction with
the path that “unity” had taken.
The GDR’s forty-year history embodies a complex interplay of conti-
nuity and change, successes and failures. Like every society, this one was
fraught with contradictions and conflicts, both class- and gender-based.
But eastern political culture also evinced its own forms of accommodation,
bargaining, and social solidarity. Its dissolution was simplistically charac-
terized in many quarters as the triumph of capitalism over communism,
and/or freedom over dictatorship. But identities do not die as a conse-
quence of new borders and a new currency alone. Were this the case, there
would have been no rational basis, and certainly no socio-cultural founda-
tion for a “reaffirmation” of national unity after forty years of German
division.
 2 EXIT, VOICE, AND LOYALTY: THE THEORETICAL PARAMETERS 23

At issue in this work is the staying-power of political culture. In his clas-

sic exploration of the Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy,
Barrington Moore Jr. ascertained that human beings have frequently been
“punched, bullied, sent to jail, thrown into concentration camps, cajoled,
bribed, made into heroes, encouraged to read newspapers, stood up
against a wall and shot, and sometimes even taught sociology,” under
many types of regimes seeking to preserve or transmit a particular value
system.4 This eclectic array of socialization methods, some more coercive
than others, implies that the goal of any state is not only to promote its
official political culture but also to have it internalized at the level of indi-
vidual consciousness. Political culture and national identity are synergisti-
cally linked, but the de jure elimination of the former does not produce
the immediate disappearance of the latter. Indeed, the difficulties inherent
in the inculcation of a new identity tell us how hard it must be to wipe out
old ones propagated by regimes of some duration.
The significance of political culture has been emphasized by political
theorists and would-be social engineers of many ideological persuasions,
ranging from Vladimir Lenin, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Margarete
Mead, and Ruth Benedict, to Max Weber, Karl Mannheim, Talcott
Parsons, Gabriel Almond, and Sydney Verba. This is not to imply that
analysts share a consensus as to its content and role in processes of societal
change. At a minimum, a country’s political culture can be understood as
the cumulative impact of identities developed at multiple levels of “citizen
consciousness.” Devoting significant energy to the study of communist
states, Archie Brown defined political culture as “the subjective perception
of history and politics, the fundamental beliefs and values, the foci of iden-
tification and loyalty, and the political knowledge and expectations which
are the product of the specific historical experience of nations and groups.”5
Created after 1945 as a consequence of World War II, the socialist
states of Eastern Europe were extremely ambitious in their efforts to rede-
fine political culture “from above.” Seeking the total transformation of
political, economic, and cultural values, the fledgling regimes faced the
awesome task of introducing new historical-cultural traditions and “per-
sonalities” consonant with their own ideologies, in hopes of securing pop-
ular recognition of their new borders and institutions. The extent to which
they were successful remains an open question, given the electoral come-
backs of “reformed” socialist parties across Central/East Europe through
the 1990s, followed by shifts to the radical right over the last decade. As
one skeptical observer cautioned decades ago,
24 J. M. MUSHABEN

what the scholarship of comparative communism has been telling us is that

the political cultures are not easily transformed. A sophisticated political
movement ready to manipulate, penetrate, organize, indoctrinate, and
coerce and given an opportunity to do so for a generation or longer ends up
as much or more transformed than transforming.6

While efforts to induce political-cultural change from above often fall

short of the founders’ ideals, this does not preclude the possibility of fun-
damental, albeit incremental changes entrenching themselves from below
over a period of many decades.
Focusing on post-war Eastern Europe, Frank Parkin emphasized the
transformation of values as a function of institutional power: “Values are
much more likely to flow in a ‘downward’ than an ‘upward’ direction;
consequently moral assumptions which originate within the subordinate
class tend to win little acceptance among the dominant class.”7 Moore
disputed this claim, maintaining that a complete set of values does “not
descend from heaven to influence the course of history.” Political culture
never serves as “more than an intervening variable’ [operating as a filter]
between people and an ‘objective’ situation’, made up of all sorts of wants,
expectations, and other ideas derived from the past.”8 It does so in ways
that emphasize certain aspects of the objective situation by screening out
others, a process involving selective memory. Alternatively, Brown posited
that the ostensible (in)effectiveness of measures to secure political-cultural
change may not be a question of an upward/downward flow but rather
the result of minimal interaction between one (official) value system and
another dominant or “peer” culture.
New values, particularly those conducive to official aims, may be fused
with old ones, while old ones might be reinterpreted and renamed. One
should not presume that all cases of ostensible continuity involve processes
of direct transmission. Indeed,

revolutionary change in the political system opens up the possibility of dis-

sonance between the political culture and the political system… That is to
say, there may be a prolonged failure on the part of the controllers of insti-
tutional power to socialise the population into acceptance of the official
political culture. In such a case, a crisis triggered off by other stimuli
­(frequently but by no means always economic) may produce a more open
political situation in which the strength and direction of political change
may be strongly influenced by the dominant—and no longer dormant—
political culture.9
 2 EXIT, VOICE, AND LOYALTY: THE THEORETICAL PARAMETERS 25

The speed of “acceptance” and the degree to which the parameters of

a new political culture will be internalized depends, in part, on the nature
of citizens’ historical break with the pre-existing culture. Mary McAuley
stresses the interactive patterns between “past” and “present” factors,
including but not limited to “the speed of economic change, the type of
economic change, the role of the state, the relationship with other states,
intellectual movements within and outside the country, historical memo-
ries,” as well as collective religious orientations.10 A third variable influenc-
ing this process derives from the forces of demography, that is, the
proportion of a population that has reached political consciousness before,
during and after transformative events have occurred. Last but not least,
widespread absorption of a new paradigm of values, expectations, and
behaviors may well depend upon the methods of inculcation employed in
political (re)socialization.
This study is rooted in a concept of identity that is explicitly multi-­
dimensional in character, incorporating objective as well as subjective fea-
tures of East German political culture. It does not equate identity with the
sentimentally driven “love it or leave it” mentality (alias patriotism) that
typifies many US-American discussions of this topic. The construct uti-
lized here covers a much wider range of behaviors and attitudes, some
more inwardly directed than others.
Like political socialization, identity-formation is an ongoing process,
subject to many agents and environmental influences. Although this pro-
cess takes place at many levels simultaneously, two are particularly impor-
tant for the purposes of this study. The first entails official, collective culture
which determines that dimension of identity best understood as “state
consciousness.” This is the meaning ascribed to the term GDR-identity
throughout this book. Secondly, identity is shaped at the unofficial, indi-
vidual or personal level, in the realm Christiane Lemke and others have
labeled “peer culture.”11 In this context, I apply the label East German
identity. Both identity types usually encompass a spectrum of distinctive or
competing sub-identities (women vs. men), ranging from an “all-German
identity” or a specific “GDR-consciousness,” to regional and/or local
micro-identities (e.g., as Saxonians or Berliners). The identity traits
acquired at each level are interactive as well as cumulative; while distin-
guishable in theory, they are much harder to disaggregate in practice.
This investigation nonetheless rests on these analytical distinctions,
highlighting the key components of GDR-identity as it was officially
defined, collectively cultivated and individually experienced throughout the
26 J. M. MUSHABEN

course of East German history. Although I do not posit a perfect corre-

spondence between identity variables mandated at the political-systemic
level and those observed at the level of human psychology, I believe that it
is only by establishing linkages between the two that one can understand
persistent tensions between Eastern and Western Germans, which is essen-
tial to facilitating their alleviation.
Identity paradigms developed by social-psychologists can serve as effec-
tive heuristic devices in untangling the processes of national identity-­
formation.12 Observing in 1935 “how often in the last few years has one
heard… that it is quite inexplicable how the Germans could have changed
so completely in so short a time,” Karl Mannheim noted that an analyst

misinterprets psychological trends when he (sic) speaks of a sudden change

in national character… The most serious mistake… is to select a single man
as his criterion, and then to regard him as the incarnation of all the changes
that have taken place. If the different phases of the psychological changes
that have been diffused throughout a large community are projected onto a
single individual, one has only to multiply this figure a millionfold in order
to pride oneself on being a social psychologist. In this case it is clear that the
cardinal mistake was in creating the fiction of a uniform change passing
steadily over an entire nation, instead of making a concrete analysis of social
mechanisms. If we are to avoid mistakes of this kind we must divide this
complex transformation into its successive phases, with a different social mecha-
nism at work in each. [my emphasis]13

Mannheim’s caveat remains relevant for any scholar seeking to capture the
essence of German national character in the post-war and post-Wall eras.
We cannot assume that the GDR’s past efforts to instill a new “national”
identity by fiat were uniformly effective among various segments of its
population. Nor can we presume, as many post-unity prognoses did, that
market forces will move Eastern Germans in equal measure to embrace the
prevailing western or FRG-identity as their own.
This chapter begins by outlining a concentric model of identity devel-
oped in conjunction with my earlier work on West German identity, before
and after the fall of the Wall.14 Building on developmental and “operant
conditioning” theories advanced by Abraham Maslow and B. F. Skinner, I
explore key dimensions of individual-psychological, social-interactive and
national-collective identity. I then consider the ways in which the abrupt
demise of an official GDR-identity—but not its day-to-day counterpart,
East German identity—has redefined the significance assigned to each
dimension over the last three decades.
 2 EXIT, VOICE, AND LOYALTY: THE THEORETICAL PARAMETERS 27

I then revisit the exit/voice/loyalty paradigm first espoused by Albert

O. Hirschman in 1970 and revived after 1989/1990 to explain the sud-
den collapse of the GDR. I argue that Hirschman’s analytical framework,
rooted in Western, market-oriented and liberal-democratic assumptions,
overlooks critical forms of social communication stressed by Karl Deutsch,
that is, other types of exit and voice which evolved in response to the
GDR’s one-party dominant, command-economy system.15 I contend fur-
ther that Western bias led many post-Wall analysts, including Hirschman,
to neglect the paradigm’s critical third dimension, loyalty. As a result,
many scholars and political officials seriously underestimated the “staying
power” of eastern identities at the level of peer culture. I attempt to rem-
edy that miscalculation by linking loyalty to the concept of social capital,
an ingredient I view as absolutely essential to the internalization of democ-
racy among East German citizens in the nation united.

A Concentric Approach to Identity Theory

Identity begins with the individual, adding “layers” as it moves into the
larger communities of family, neighborhood, city, state, and nation. To
grasp the phenomenon of national identity in its entirety, it is helpful to
imagine it as concentric in nature (Fig. 2.1). The innermost circle encom-
passes the psychological needs of the individual. The second circle involving
specific patterns of social interaction may impose external limits on indi-
vidual identity but can also provide alternate sources of self-worth. The
outer circle finds identity moving beyond a personalized “community” to
a legal or historical collectivity known as the nation-state. Academic schol-
arship often construes the forces operating within each of these circles as
the province of a particular social science. There is nonetheless much to be
gained by exploring competing or complementary frameworks for “iden-
tity” borrowed from more than one field. My search for East German
identity therefore builds upon the works of political scientists, literary crit-
ics, social-psychologists, psycho-historians, and even psycho-therapists.

Circle One: Identity as the Bio-Psychology of the Individual

The acquisition of cognitive and affective orientations toward the self has
long occupied the attention of psychologists and psycho-analysts ranging
from Piaget to Freud. Theories regarding the contextual and interactional
components of self-identity are less well-developed yet all the more
28 J. M. MUSHABEN

Fig. 2.1 Concentric model of identity

interesting because of their inherently dynamic character. A broader inter-

disciplinary perspective helps to bridge the gap between individual and
collective identification processes.
An individual’s search for identity involves questions of personal as well
as political motivation. In his classical work on motivational theory,
Abraham Maslow posited five categories of human needs comprising a
“hierarchy of relative prepotency.” Once each class of needs is satisfied,
new and higher needs are expected to emerge which then come to domi-
nate the individual [or collective] organism.16 In ascending order, the scale
consists of basic physiological or sustenance needs, safety or security needs,
belonging and love needs, esteem or status and independence needs and,
finally, the need for self-actualization.
Implicit in Maslow’s theory is the notion that neither woman nor man
can be satisfied “by bread alone.” Humankind possesses an innate desire
to advance from one level of the scale to another, but the quest for a sense
of belonging is not inherently at odds with a striving for greater indepen-
dence; the former serves as a precondition for the latter. Maslow antici-
pated the rise of a “new discontent and restlessness” in the face of a
 2 EXIT, VOICE, AND LOYALTY: THE THEORETICAL PARAMETERS 29

repressed “desire to become more and more what one is, to become
everything that one is capable of becoming.”17 A fundamental thwarting
of these needs would “give rise to either basic discouragement or else
compensatory or neurotic needs,” and possibly to severe traumatic neuro-
sis.18 The latter is reflected in certain psychological “deformations” affect-
ing particularly sensitive or politically persecuted individuals (but certainly
not all citizens) under the old GDR regime.19
Desire alone will not enable an individual to attain a state of physical
and psychological well-being. Each person must discover and engage in
“functions furthering the interchange between organism and environ-
ment,” known as behavior.20 Not all behaviors move people toward their
desired end of self-actualization; some can even prove counter-productive,
causing humans to pursue a strategy B. F. Skinner characterized as “selec-
tion by consequences.”
Drawing on patterns of biological evolution, Skinner traced persistent
modes of human behavior back to the first molecule that managed to
reproduce itself and prevail against the rest. Other organisms followed,
whose reproduction occurred under ever more diverse and, in part, adverse
conditions. The environment played a determining role in the genetic
endowment of biological functions, rendering an organism most likely to
survive/thrive under conditions equivalent to those underlying its selec-
tion. Hence, “the definition or identity of a species, person, or culture” is
transmitted from one generation to the next to the degree that select
behaviors are reproduced as part of an individual’s repertoire.21
Skinner held that successful reproduction over time depends on two
processes enabling organisms to acquire behaviors appropriate to subse-
quent changes in the environment. The first is known as respondent
(Pavlovian) conditioning, whereby responses pre-programmed by natural
selection can be redirected and controlled by new stimuli. The second
process is operant conditioning, whereby events immediately following
new stimuli serve to strengthen or reinforce new responses. This method
amounts to “selection in progress, resembling a hundred million years of
natural selection or a thousand years of the evolution of a culture com-
pressed into a very short period of time.”22
To the extent that human behavior is primarily social in nature, other
members of the species provide one of the most stable fixtures within a
given environment. “Imitation” of others is critical to reinforcement and
thus to the perpetuation of a behavioral repertoire; contingencies induc-
ing one “organism” to perform in a certain way will generally impel others
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 9. Unsere Definition des Sadismus.
Wir fassen den Begriff „Sadismus“ bedeutend weiter, als dies
bisher geschehen ist. Sehen wir uns also zunächst die Definitionen
desselben bei anderen Autoren an.
Lacassagne erklärt den Sadismus für einen „Geisteszustand“, bei
welchem der Sexualtrieb erregt oder befriedigt wird unter dem
Einflusse des Zerstörungstriebes.[623]
Nach R. v. Krafft-Ebing ist der Sadismus jene Form der
Perversion der Vita sexualis, bei welcher die Person einen sexuellen
Genuss darin findet, Anderen Schmerz zuzufügen und auf Andere
Gewalt auszuüben. Er stellt dem Sadismus den Masochismus (nach
dem Schriftsteller Sacher-Masoch) gegenüber, die mit Wollust
betonte Vorstellung, von einem Anderen herrisch behandelt,
gedemütigt und misshandelt zu werden.[624] Er betrachtet
Masochismus und Sadismus als die „Grundformen psychosexualer
Perversion, die auf dem ganzen Gebiete der Verirrungen des
Geschlechtstriebes an den verschiedensten Stellen zu Tage treten
können.“[625]
Demgegenüber macht v. Schrenck-Notzing geltend, dass
zunächst der Unterschied der aktiven und passiven Rolle in den
Romanen des Marquis de Sade und von Sacher-Masoch nicht so
scharf durchgeführt sei, wie dies v. Krafft-Ebing annimmt. Zudem
kämen beide Formen der Perversion oft bei demselben Individuum
vor. Er ordnete also beide Begriffe einem einzigen höheren Begriffe,
der Algolagnie (von ἄλγος = Schmerz und λάγνος = geschlechtlich
erregt) und bezeichnet den Sadismus als aktive Algolagnie, den
Masochismus als passive Algolagnie. Es giebt aber nach diesem
Autor noch andere Formen der Algolagnie: die onanistische
Algolagnie (Selbstverstümmelung, Autoflagellantismus), die visuelle
Algolagnie (geschlechtliche Erregung beim Anblick von
Prügelszenen), zoophile und bestiale Algolagnie, nekrophile
Algolagnie, endlich die ideelle oder symbolische Algolagnie, bei
welcher „der Schmerz ohne jede Nebenbedeutung und
phantastische Ausschmückung um seiner selbst willen eine Rolle
spielt, ohne Rücksicht auf aktive oder passive Bethätigung.“[626]
Thoinot giebt folgende Definition des Sadismus: „Sadismus ist
die Perversion des Sexuallebens, bei welcher der Betreffende
sexuellen Genuss darin findet, Schmerzen von sehr verschiedenen
Graden einem Anderen zuzufügen, sei es, dass er selbst sie zufügt,
oder zufügen lässt oder, ohne dass er der Urheber derselben ist,
dabei zuschaut. Diese leidende Person muss immer ein
menschliches Wesen sein.“[627]
Thoinot und von Schrenck-Notzing stimmen darin überein, dass
die Verbindung von Grausamkeit und Wollust der höhere Begriff ist,
dem die anderen untergeordnet werden müssen, dass also der
Masochismus nicht etwas Besonderes neben dem Sadismus
darstellt, sondern wie dieser eine Form der Algolagnie ist.
Unzweifelhaft hat aber Thoinot Unrecht, dass er den Begriff
Sadismus (welches Wort er für Algolagnie setzt) nur menschlichen
Wesen gegenüber angewendet wissen will.
A. Eulenburg hat wohl noch vor von Schrenck-Notzing darauf
aufmerksam gemacht, dass der Begriff der Algolagnie, den er durch
die Worte Lagnänomanie (= Sadismus) und Machlänomanie (=
Masochismus) ersetzt, sehr viele Ab- und Unterarten umfasst. Auch
er betont, dass „sich das nämliche Individuum abwechselnd aktiv
und passiv verhalten, und aus Beidem geschlechtliche Erregung und
Befriedigung schöpfen kann.“ Ferner erinnert Eulenburg an die
Mittelformen, wobei „das Individuum zum Behufe geschlechtlicher
Erregung weder selbst gewaltsame Handlungen vornimmt noch
solche erduldet — wohl aber dergleichen von Anderen provociert,
sie mit ansieht und durch den Anblick, oder unter Umständen schon
durch die blosse Vorstellung des Anblicks in die gewünschte
Befriedigung versetzt wird.“ Also eine Art von ideeller oder
illusionärer Lagnänomanie und Machlänomanie. Ferner ist die
Begehung grausamer Akte gegen Tiere in Betracht zu ziehen.
Schliesslich erklärt Eulenburg das Beobachtungsmaterial für „noch
bei Weitem nicht abgeschlossen“.[628]
 Es handelt sich nun unseres Erachtens darum, eine allgemeine
und für alle Fälle zutreffende Definition des Sadismus zu finden, die
kurz und prägnant den Grundton der Sade’schen Werke ausdrückt
und unter die sich alle Formen der passiven und aktiven Algolagnie
der Zoo- und Nekrophilie, der symbolischen Algolagnie u. s. w.
unterordnen lassen. Bedenkt man, dass in den Werken des Marquis
de Sade auch alle wirklichen und ideellen destruktiven Vorgänge in
der lebenden und toten Natur als Ursachen sexueller Erregung und
Befriedigung betrachtet werden, wie Mord, Folter, Nekrophilie,
Zoophilie, aber auch Ausbrüche von Vulkanen, Schiffbrüche,
Feuersbrünste, Diebstähle u. s. w., so wird man den typischen
Sadismus folgendermassen definieren:
Der Sadismus ist die absichtlich gesuchte oder zufällig
dargebotene Verbindung der geschlechtlichen Erregung und des
Geschlechtsgenusses mit dem wirklichen oder auch nur
symbolischen (ideellen, illusionären) Eintreten furchtbarer und
erschreckender Ereignisse, destruktiver Vorgänge und Handlungen,
welche Leben, Gesundheit und Eigentum des Menschen und der
übrigen lebenden Wesen bedrohen oder vernichten und die
Continuität toter Gegenstände bedrohen und aufheben, wobei der
aus diesen Vorgängen einen geschlechtlichen Genuss schöpfende
Mensch selbst ihr direkter Urheber sein kann, oder sie durch Andere
herbeiführen lässt, oder blosser Zuschauer bei denselben ist, oder
endlich freiwillig oder unfreiwillig ein Angriffsobjekt dieser Vorgänge
ist.
Uns scheint, dass diese Definition dem Wortsadismus ebenso
gerecht wird wie dem Lustmorde, der Folter und der Freude an
zerstörenden Ereignissen.
 10. Beurteilung des Menschen Sade nach seinem
Leben und seinen Schriften.
Die wichtigste Frage ist die: War der Marquis de Sade
geisteskrank oder nicht?
Heute, wo die hereditäre und krankhafte Natur der sogenannten
conträren Sexualempfindung so sehr betont und energisch die
Aufhebung des § 175 des deutschen Strafgesetzbuches verlangt
wird, ist man nur zu leicht geneigt, jede schwerere sexuelle
Perversion als Zeichen einer Geisteskrankheit zu deuten.
Demgegenüber betonen wir als unsere feste, aus kulturhistorischen
Studien und Erfahrungen des modernen Lebens geschöpfte
Ueberzeugung, dass wir die Mehrzahl der sexuellen perversen
Personen für geistig gesund halten und ihre Perversion auf
Verführung und geschlechtliche Ueberreizung zurückführen. Die
Anschauungen v. Krafft-Ebing’s, der die hereditäre Natur vieler
sexueller Perversionen vertritt, werden gegenüber den durchaus
berechtigten Ausführungen v. Schrenck-Notzing’s, der die
Erziehung, occasionelle Momente, wie Verführung u. dgl. m.
verantwortlich macht, immer mehr an Boden verlieren, wie weitere
Studien erweisen werden. Selbst von Krafft-Ebing sagt einmal (Arch.
f. Psychiatrie Bd. VII, S. 304): „Wer Tardieus bekannte Studie,
Caspers gerichtsärztliche Werke, Legrand du Saulles Mitteilungen in
den Annales médico-psychologiques, März 1876, gelesen hat, wird
zugeben müssen, dass die greulichsten geschlechtlichen
Verirrungen mit geistiger Gesundheit verträglich sind.“ Es geht
daraus, wie Moll richtig bemerkt, hervor, dass Krafft-Ebing selbst die
greulichsten geschlechtlichen Perversitäten an sich nicht als Beweis
einer Geisteskrankheit ansieht.[629]
Was speziell den Sadismus betrifft, so bemerkt auch Eulenburg,
ein Anhänger der Aufhebung des § 175, dass „bei weitem nicht alle,
namentlich aktiven Algolagnisten als geisteskrank im engeren Sinne
zu betrachten seien. Gewiss sind es die ‚schweren‘ und ‚schwersten‘
unter ihnen, die eigentlichen sexualen Verbrecher, Lustmörder
u. s. w. wohl ausnahmslos, obgleich man auch von ihnen mehrere
als geistesgesund hingerichtet hat (was ich übrigens nicht als ein
Unglück, noch weniger als einen Justizmord ansehen möchte).“[630]
Ueber den Geisteszustand des Marquis de Sade, der bekanntlich
von Royer-Collard für gesund erklärt wurde, haben sich in diesem
Jahre zwei Aerzte geäussert, Dr. Marciat in Lyon und Professor A.
Eulenburg in Berlin. Der letztere hervorragende Neurologe hat ohne
Zweifel das eingehendere und scharfsinnigere Gutachten über Sade
geliefert. Er kommt zu dem Schlusse, dass „auch die Irrenärzte
unserer Zeit der Mehrzahl nach sich kaum in der Lage befunden
haben würden, de Sade vor dem Strafrichter für geisteskrank und
‚der freien Willensbestimmung beraubt‘ zu erklären und ihn der
unzweifelhaften gerichtlichen Verurteilung damit zu entziehen.“[631]
Marciat kommt zu einem ähnlichen Resultat. Der Marquis de Sade
war „nicht geisteskrank im genauen Sinne des Wortes“. Höchstens
könnte man an moral insanity denken, aber nur im Hinblick auf die
Hauptwerke. Aber „man muss sich erinnern, dass Mirabeau, Musset
und viele Andere auch sehr schlüpfrige Bücher veröffentlicht
haben.“[632]
Die Annahme einer „moral insanity“ (folie morale), die Marciat
eventuell zulassen würde, hat Eulenburg (a. a. O. S. 514) bereits
zurückgewiesen, da es eine Form der Seelenstörung, die sich
„lediglich durch eine krankhafte Umwandlung, eine Perversion der
natürlichen sittlichen Antriebe und Gefühle und durch eine daraus
entspringende Neigung zu unsittlichen Handlungen, ohne sonstige
Störungen der Intelligenz charakterisierte“, nicht giebt, vielmehr
„immer und überall die auf angeborener Anlage beruhende
Abschwächung der Intelligenz neben der Gefühlsstörung hervortritt
und dass es sich demnach um Fälle angeborenen Schwachsinns,
meist auf degenerativer Grundlage handelt“ (a. a. O. S. 514).
Wir glauben, dass speziell bei Sade jene Form der Entartung in
Betracht kommen könnte, welche Kraepelin als „impulsives Irresein“
bezeichnet. Es sind „alle jene Formen des Entartungsirreseins,
denen die Entwickelung krankhafter Neigungen und Triebe
eigentümlich ist.“ Dieselben können entweder dauernd den Willen
beherrschen oder nur zeitweise, in einzelnen Anwandlungen,
hervortreten. Der Kranke handelt dabei ohne klaren Beweggrund. So
tragen seine Willensäusserungen vielfach den Stempel des
Unvorbedachten und Zwecklosen, Widersinnigen. Gerade auf dem
Gebiete des impulsiven Irreseins „tritt uns am deutlichsten die
häufige Verbindung krankhafter Antriebe mit dem Geschlechtstriebe
entgegen.“ Die geistige Begabung braucht keine schärfer
hervortretenden Störungen aufzuweisen. Doch ist in schweren
Fällen meist Schwachsinn vorhanden. In allen Fällen findet sich eine
gewisse Beschränktheit, Zerfahrenheit, Verschwommenheit, eine
haltlose Schwäche des Charakters, kindischer Eigensinn,
Menschenscheu, Roheit. Das impulsive Irresein tritt besonders in
den Entwickelungsjahren hervor und zeitigt auch später meist
periodische Krankheitserscheinungen. Man soll aber nach Kraepelin
das Bestehen des impulsiven Irreseins nur dort annehmen, wo
wirklich der triebartige Ursprung des Handelns ohne klares
vernünftiges Ziel hervortritt und wo auch im übrigen Bereiche des
Seelenlebens die Anzeichen einer krankhaften Veranlagung
erkennbar sind. Kraepelin lässt die Möglichkeit zu, dass plötzliche
Antriebe von unbezwinglicher Stärke im Zustande geistiger
Gesundheit bei den „heissblütigen Völkern des Südens“ häufiger
sind als bei uns, und daher die „forza irresistibile“ des italienischen
und spanischen Gesetzbuches vielleicht eine Berechtigung habe.
[633]

Nach diesen orientierenden Vorbemerkungen gehen wir daran,

das Leben und die Werke des Marquis de Sade mit der Absicht zu
untersuchen, daraus Schlüsse auf seinen Geisteszustand zu ziehen.
Wir können nur wenige sichere Anhaltspunkte aus seinem Leben
verwerten.
1. Sade war ein Provenzale und besass als solcher das südlich
heisse Blut und die Leidenschaftlichkeit seiner Landsleute.
2. In Beziehung auf die Heredität ist wenig nachweisbar. Doch ist
wahrscheinlich, dass Sade die Neigung zum galanten Leben und zur
Schriftstellerei von seinem Oheim geerbt hat. Wie wir jetzt wissen,
schrieb de Sade schon mit 23 Jahren ein obscönes Buch. Es
geschah dies nach der Rückkehr aus dem Kriege.
 3. Ueber Sade’s Leben in der Kindheit liegen keine verlässlichen
Beobachtungen vor.
4. Bemerkenswert ist, dass Sade mit 17 Jahren, also im Beginn
der Pubertät, in den Krieg zog und sechs Jahre lang fern von Haus
und Familie weilte. Es ist mit Sicherheit festgestellt, dass während
der Kriegszeit unter dem Einflusse der unerhörten sittlichen
Corruption in der französischen Armee auch die Ausschweifungen
des Marquis de Sade ihren Anfang nahmen.
5. Die unglückliche Ehe spielt nicht die Rolle im Leben Sade’s,
welche Marciat ihr zuschreibt.
6. Es ist jetzt genau festgestellt, dass der Marquis de Sade bei
den beiden grossen Skandalaffären seine Opfer nicht erheblich
verletzt oder gar getötet hat.
7. Es ist sicher, dass der langjährige Aufenthalt im Gefängnisse
eine körperliche und psychische Schädigung auf Sade ausgeübt hat.
(S. oben S. 324.)
8. Dass Sade eine starke geschlechtliche Erregbarkeit besass,
geht aus der Beobachtung des Freundes von Brierre de Boismont
hervor.
9. Sehr bemerkenswert erscheinen einige geistige
Eigentümlichkeiten, die während des Gefängnislebens Sades’s
hervortreten: das Misstrauen, die Lügenhaftigkeit, die wilden
Zornesausbrüche bei den Besuchen seiner Frau.
10. Nach dem Austritt aus dem Gefängnisse scheint der Marquis
de Sade solche Eigenschaften weniger gezeigt zu haben und sogar
durch die Rettung seiner Schwiegereltern zu bekunden, dass sein
sittliches Gefühl nicht ganz erstorben war.
Betrachten wir nunmehr die Werke des Marquis de Sade, so
ergiebt sich Folgendes:
11. Erstaunlich und schon von Eulenburg hervorgehoben ist der
blosse Umfang der Hauptwerke und das „Mass der damit geleisteten
geistigen und der rein mechanischen Arbeit.“
 12. Die überaus zahlreichen, geschickt aneinander geknüpften
Details, die raffiniert durchgeführte allmähliche Steigerung und fast
nie versagende Treue der Erinnerung und Rückbeziehung zeugen
von einer grossen geistigen Kraft.
13. Die Verschiedenheit der Schriften lässt deutlich den Einfluss
der Zeit und des Milieu erkennen.
14. Mit Recht haben Michelet und nach ihm Taine („Les origines
de la France contemporaine“, Paris 1885, Bd. III, S. 307) den
Marquis de Sade als den „Professeur du crime“ bezeichnet. Er ist
der Theoretiker des Lasters, insofern er nach eigener Lektüre und
Beobachtung alle geschichtlich nachweisbaren und zu seiner Zeit
sich ereignenden Anomalien des Geschlechtslebens in seinen
Hauptwerken mit unleugbarem Scharfsinn beschrieben und
zusammengestellt hat. Was R. v. Krafft-Ebing in Form einer
wissenschaftlichen Monographie gethan hat, das hat schon hundert
Jahre früher der Marquis de Sade in Form eines Romans geleistet.
15. Hierdurch gewinnen seine Hauptwerke einen
kulturhistorischen und zeitgeschichtlichen Wert, indem sie alle
Phasen, Nüancen und Eigentümlichkeiten des französischen
Geschlechtslebens im Frankreich des ancien régime und der
grossen Revolution, erkennen lassen, wie wir im ersten Teile dieses
Werkes nachgewiesen haben.
16. Die von Sade vorgetragene Theorie des Lasters ist ein
Produkt der Revolution und findet in dieser zahlreiche Analogien.
17. In Werken, die früher und später fallen als „Justine et Juliette“
und die „Philosophie dans le Boudoir“, hat Sade durchaus
moralische Ansichten entwickelt.
18. Auch in den berüchtigten Hauptwerken finden sich zahlreiche
Andeutungen, dass Sade in ihnen vorzüglich Tendenzschriften
gegen das ancien régime erblickte.
19. Es darf daher nicht ohne weiteres aus dem Inhalt dieser
Schriften auf den Charakter des Verfassers geschlossen werden,
zumal da häufig genug das Verbrechen als Laster gebrandmarkt
wird und auch andere scheinbare Inkonsequenzen — beruhigende
Wirkung des Gebets (Justine I, 141 ff.), Glaube an Unsterblichkeit
(Juliette II, 287), Ueberdruss an Ausschweifungen (Juliette III, 283–
284) — vorkommen.
20. Sade zeigt in allen Werken eine ausgebreitete Belesenheit in
der zeitgenössischen philosophischen und wissenschaftlichen
Litteratur.
21. Als philosophischer Denker ist er jedoch mehr als
mittelmässig. Seine Philosophie ist eklektischer Mischmasch. Seine
Beweisführung besteht aus sinnlosen Tautologien und noch
sinnloseren Anticipationen.
Nach diesen Ausführungen lautet unser Urteil: Der Marquis de
Sade war nicht geisteskrank. Er war eine vielleicht durch Heredität
neuropathische Persönlichkeit, die, inmitten eines verhängnisvollen
Milieu, frühzeitig auf die Bahn des Lasters geriet und wie so viele
Zeitgenossen durch Verführung und Gewöhnung sexuell pervers
wurde, deren hohe geistige Begabung zweifellos durch eine
langjährige Gefängnishaft eminent geschädigt wurde, so dass
besonders in den philosophischen Deduktionen seiner Hauptwerke
ein gewisser Grad von geistiger Schwäche deutlich hervortritt,
während dies in den realen Schilderungen, die mit unleugbarer
Beobachtungsgabe ein Gemälde der Zeit entwerfen, viel weniger
sichtbar ist. Wir haben im ersten Teile den engen Zusammenhang
des Inhalts von Sade’s berüchtigten Hauptwerken mit der Kultur
seines Zeitalters zur Genüge nachgewiesen. Die grosse Kluft, die
zwischen Sade als Persönlichkeit und Sade als Schriftsteller liegt,
wird dadurch zum Teil überbrückt. Um die Brücke ganz herzustellen,
genügt es, daran zu erinnern, dass die Einbildungskraft sexuell
perverser Personen fast stets ungeheuerliche Blüten treibt.
„Zahlreiche Patienten dieser Art, Conträrsexuale, Masturbanten und
besonders Algolagnisten wurden enttäuscht, sobald sie die Produkte
ihrer Einbildungskraft zu realisieren versuchten. Sie erleben
sozusagen in ihren traumhaften Schwärmereien sexuelle Orgien,
und werden durch die Wirklichkeit ernüchtert.“[634] Da es nicht
erwiesen ist, dass der Marquis de Sade die Thaten eines Gilles de
Retz, mit dem wir ihn als Menschen nicht so ohne weiteres
vergleichen möchten, wie Eulenburg dies thut, oder diejenigen eines
Charolais ausgeführt hat, so muss vorläufig die hier gegebene
Erklärung des geistigen Zustandes Sade’s, die sich im ganzen mit
der Eulenburg’schen deckt, als die einzige mögliche angesehen
werden, da wir die allerdings verdächtigen plötzlichen
Zornesausbrüche als Ausfluss jener oben erwähnten „forza
irresistibile“ betrachten, und die Periodicität der Erscheinungen, die
an das wirkliche Vorhandensein eines impulsiven Irreseins denken
lassen könnte, doch zu wenig ausgesprochen ist.[635]
 V.
Geschichte des Sadismus im 18.
und 19. Jahrhundert.
1. Verbreitung und Wirkung der Schriften des
Marquis de Sade.
Wir haben, schon erwähnt (S. 336 ff.), dass die
pornographischen Schriften des Marquis de Sade wenigstens unter
dem Direktorium öffentlich verkauft wurden, bei allen Buchhändlern
zu haben waren und in den Katalogen aufgeführt wurden. Ein
grosser Kapitalist unterstützte den Vertrieb, der sich über das In- und
Ausland erstreckte. Daher nimmt es nicht Wunder, dass trotz der
Konfiskation und Vernichtung der Werke unter Napoleon I. (1801)
die Verbreitung derselben durch häufige Nachdrucke sich zu einer
geradezu ungeheueren gestaltete. Auch neue Konfiskationen vom
19. Mai 1815, vom Jahre 1825[636], vom 15. Dezember 1843[637]
trugen nur dazu bei, die Begierde nach der Lektüre und dem Besitze
dieser berüchtigten Bücher zu steigern. Im vorigen Jahrhundert
suchten sogar die Verleger das Verbot eines Buches direkt zu
erlangen, weil sie dann sicher waren, viele Abnehmer für dasselbe
zu finden. Lalanne erzählt davon ein ergötzliches Beispiel.[638] Unser
Goethe sah auf dem Frankfurter Marktplatz einen verbotenen
französischen Roman verbrannt werden, und ruhte nicht eher, als bis
er ein Exemplar erlangt hatte. Dabei war nach seiner Erzählung
dieses Exemplar durchaus nicht das einzige, welches nach dieser
Exekution gekauft wurde.[639]
 Bereits im Jahre 1797 schreibt Villers über die Verbreitung der
„Justine“: „Jedermann will wissen, was dies für ein Buch ist; man
verlangt es, man sucht es, es wird verbreitet, die Ausgaben werden
vergriffen, neu aufgelegt, und so zirkuliert das greulichste Gift, in
verhängnisvollstem Ueberfluss.“[640] Auch in Deutschland waren die
Schriften de Sade’s verbreitet. Villers sah in Lübeck bei einem
Buchhändler „noch drei Exemplare“. Hamburg, wo Villers seine
Abhandlung für den dort erscheinenden „Spectateur du Nord“
schrieb, war der hauptsächlichste Ort für den Druck und Nachdruck
der französischen erotischen und pornographischen Autoren. Janin
schildert im Jahre 1834 in anschaulicher Weise, welch eine beliebte
Lektüre die Schriften des Marquis de Sade unter dem ersten
Kaiserreich und unter der Restauration waren. Und er wagt auch nur
von ihnen zu sprechen, weil er weiss, dass seine Leser diese Werke
längst kennen. „Denn, man täusche sich nicht darüber, der Marquis
de Sade ist überall; er ist in allen Bibliotheken, wo er allerdings sich
versteckt hinter anderen unschuldigen Werken. Man frage jeden
Auktionator, ob sie nicht bei der Inventarisation fast jeden
Nachlasses die Bücher des Marquis de Sade gefunden haben. Ja,
durch die Polizei werden sie am meisten verbreitet.“[641]
Was die gegenwärtige Verbreitung der Hauptwerke des Marquis
de Sade betrifft, so sind die ersten Auflagen der „Justine“ und
„Juliette“ aus den Jahren 1791–1796 äusserst selten und kosten
wenigstens 600 bis 800 Francs.[642] Herr Joachim Gomez de la
Cortina in Madrid bezahlte nach der Angabe in dem Kataloge seiner
Bibliothek (1855 No. 3908) die 10 Bände der Original-Ausgabe von
1897 mit 750 Francs! Dieselbe Ausgabe findet sich im Katalog einer
Büchersammlung, die der Pariser Buchhändler Techener im Jahre
1865 nach London schickte.[643] Ein Pariser Antiquar bot kürzlich ein
„exemplaire délicieux, reliure de Petit“ dieser Ausgabe für 1200 Fr.
an. (Zeitschr. f. Bücherfr. Mai/Juni 1900 S. 123.) In der Neuzeit
wurden besonders von der Firma Gay und Doucé in Brüssel
Neudrucke veranstaltet, von denen nach ihrem Kataloge die
„Justine“ mit 150 Francs, die „Juliette“ mit 200 Francs berechnet
werden. In einem deutschen Kataloge vom Jahre 1899 finden wir die
„Justine“ zum Preise von 120 Mark, die „Philosophie dans le
Boudoir“ für 25 Mark und „Aline et Valcour“ für 45 Mark angeboten.
Die Werke sind auch heute noch trotz ihres hohen Preises in allen
Ländern des europäischen Westens verbreitet und fehlen selten in
den Bibliotheken (sit venia verbo) geheimer Bordelle und vornehmer
Absteigequartiere. So fand der frühere Chef der Pariser Sittenpolizei,
Macé, in einer „maison de rendez-vous“ einer Wittwe F.... in der
pornographischen Bücher- und Bildersammlung auch die „Justine“
des Marquis de Sade.[644]
Es ist eine alte Thatsache, dass alle Obscönitäten und unreinen
Schilderungen im Druck ungleich verderblicher wirken als das
gesprochene Wort. Der „Zauber des Wortes“ wirkt im Druck
gewissermassen auf zwei Sinne, auf das Gehör und Gesicht, im
Sprechen nur auf das Gehör. Lino Ferriani hat in einer wertvollen
Schrift[645] sich eingehend mit dem namenlosen Schaden
beschäftigt, den die pornographischen Schriften und Bilder in jungen
Seelen anstiften.
Wir behaupten, dass die pornographischen Schriften — ein
Uebel, das fortzeugend Böses gebärt — zu einem grossen Teile die
mannigfaltigsten sexuellen Perversionen miterzeugen helfen. Schon
der heilige Basilius sagte in seiner herrlichen Rede an die Jünglinge:
„Wer sich an schlechte Lektüre gewöhnt, ist bereits auf dem Wege
zur bösen That.“ Höchst bemerkenswert ist das Geständnis des
berüchtigten Marschalls Gilles de Rais, der erzählt, dass er in der
Bibliothek seines Grossvaters einen Sueton gefunden und darin
gelesen habe, wie Tiberius, Caracalla und andere Caesaren Kinder
gemartert hätten. „Sur quoi je voulus imiter les dits Césars, et le
même soir me mit à le faire en suivant les images de la leçon et du
livre“[646]. Ein Masochist erklärt in seiner von von Krafft-Ebing
mitgeteilten Autobiographie „Ueberhaupt scheint mir, dass die
Schriften des Sacher-Masoch viel zur Entwickelung dieser
Perversion bei Disponierten beigetragen haben“[647]. Auch
Eulenburg warnt davor, den „vergiftenden Einfluss der
überhandnehmenden pornographischen Litteratur und einer
gewissen Presse, die mit Vorliebe über jedes sensationelle
Verbrechen, zumal über Unzuchtdelicte, Lustmorde u. dgl. berichtet,
zu unterschätzen.“[648]
 Es ist sicher, dass die Schriften des Marquis de Sade noch heute
auf schwache und geistig wenig widerstandsfähige Personen
denselben vernichtenden, depravierenden Einfluss ausüben, den
einst Janin so dramatisch geschildert hat.[649] Wenn es auch
unwahrscheinlich ist, dass Saint-Just sich von den Szenen der
„Justine“ zu seinen Grausamkeiten hat inspirieren lassen, und dass
Napoléon I. die Lektüre der Sade’schen Werke seinen Soldaten
verboten hat[650], so kann nicht bezweifelt werden, dass die Schriften
praktische Nachahmer ihres Inhalts gefunden haben und noch fort
und fort die in ihnen geschilderten sonderbaren sexuellen
Perversionen bei gewissen Lesern hervorrufen. Was Sade für das
vornehme Wüstlingstum ist, das sind manche entsetzlichen
Hintertreppenromane, die die schauerlichsten Einzelheiten von
Lustmorden, Hinrichtungen, Foltern u. s. w. mit wonnigem Behagen
ausmalen, für die Lustmörder und Sittlichkeitsverbrecher aus dem
Volke. Man forsche nur nach, und man wird mehr als einmal den
unheilvollen Einfluss derartiger Lektüre auch auf die Seele des
niederen Volkes bestätigt finden und sich Manches erklären können,
was sonst unerklärlich sein würde.
 2. Rétif de la Bretonne’s „Anti-Justine“.
Zwei bedeutende französische Schriftsteller, Rétif de la Bretonne
und Charles Villers eröffnen fast zu gleicher Zeit die „Sadelitteratur“.
Zunächst beschäftigen wir uns mit Rétif’s „L’Anti-Justine, ou les
délices de l’amour. Par M. Linguet, av. au et en Parlem. etc.“ Au
Palais-Royal 1798, chez feue la veuve Girouard, très-connue. (2
Bände in 12o.) Auf dem Titel werden 60 Bilder angegeben, die aber
nie erschienen sind. Von den 8 Teilen, die Rétif in der Vorrede
ankündigt, ist nur der erste veröffentlicht worden. Monselet glaubte,
dass nur ein einziges Exemplar dieses ersten Teiles gedruckt
worden sei, nach dem Bibliophilen Jacob giebt es aber sechs
bekannte Exemplare dieses Werkes, das Rétif in seiner kleinen
Druckerei fertigstellte. Drei zum Teil unvollständige von diesen sechs
Exemplaren besitzt die Geheimabteilung (L’enfer) der Pariser
Nationalbibliothek, welche aus der grossen Confiscation stammen,
die der erste Consul im Jahre 1803 bei den Buchhändlern des
Palais-Royal und in den Bordellen vornehmen liess, wobei bestimmt
wurde, dass zwei Exemplare jedes pornographischen Werkes auf
der Nationalbibliothek secretiert werden sollten; die übrigen wurden
vernichtet.[651] Eins von den wenigen ersten Exemplaren kaufte ein
reicher englischer Bücherliebhaber. Es befand Sich später in der
Bibliothek des Herrn Cigongne und kam dann in den Besitz des
Herzogs von Aumale. Heute ist das Werk durch zahlreiche
Neudrucke, die in Belgien veranstaltet wurden, (2 Bände in 18o mit
schlechten kolorierten Lithographien; die anderen Ausgaben
sorgfältiger, in 12o mit Gravuren) sehr verbreitet[652]. Rétif
veröffentlichte das Werk unter dem Namen des bekannten
Advokaten Linguet, den er als Jean Pierre Linguet die Erklärung
abgeben lässt, dass er dieses „schlechte Buch“ in guter Absicht
verfasst habe. Nun hiess aber der Verfasser der „Cacomonade“ nicht
Jean Pierre, sondern Simon Nicolas Henri Linguet.
Nach Monselet enthält die „Anti-Justine“ obscöne Schilderungen
aus dem eignen Leben Rétifs und bildet ein Supplément zum
„Monsieur Nicolas“[653]. Das Werk ist in 48 Kapitel eingeteilt, von
denen bei einigen die Titel angegeben sind: „Du bon Mari spartiate“
— „Des Conditions du Mariage“ — „Du Dédommagement“ — „Du
chef-d’œuvre de tendresse paternelle“ — „D’une nouvelle Actrice“.
— Das Buch strotzt von Obscönitäten, die aber nach Rétif einen
moralischen Zweck verfolgen und eine „Art von Gegengift“ gegen die
„infame Justine“ bilden sollten. „Il est destiné à ramener les maris
blases auxquels les femmes n’inspirent plus rien. Tel est le but de
cette étonnante production que le nom de Linguet rendra
immortelle.“ Er will die Frauen vor der Grausamkeit bewahren. Die
„Anti-Justine“ ist deswegen ebenso obscön wie die „Justine“, damit
die Männer für diese einen Ersatz ohne die Grausamkeiten des
Sade’schen Werkes haben. Er hält die Publikation dieses „Antidots“
für dringend notwendig (urgente). Es muss also damals wohl die
Verbreitung der „Justine“ eine ausserordentliche gewesen sein. Rétif
erklärt endlich noch in der cynischsten Weise die Darstellungen auf
den Bildern, die dem Werk beigegeben werden sollten.[654]
 3. Charles de Villers.[655]
Unter den zahlreichen französischen Emigranten, welche die
grosse Revolution nach Deutschland führte und welche hier
zwischen französischem und deutschem Geistesleben vermittelten,
nimmt der edle Karl von Villers, der wie Adalbert von Chamisso der
Unsrige geworden ist, eine ganz hervorragende Stelle ein. Charles
François Dominique de Villers, geboren den 4. November 1765 in
dem lothringischen Städtchen Bolchen von französischen Eltern aus
dem Languedoc, war anfangs Offizier, ging nach Deutschland, wo er
in Lübeck von seiner Freundin Dorothea Schlözer, der Tochter des
berühmten Göttinger Historikers und der ersten deutschen Frau, die
(am 17. September 1787) in Göttingen den Grad eines Doktors (der
Philosophie) erlangte, in den geist- und lebensvollen Kreis eingeführt
wurde, dessen Mittelpunkt das Haus ihres Gatten, des Lübeckischen
Senators Rodde war. Diese Frau erschloss unserem Villers das
Verständnis für deutsches Geistesleben und machte ihn zu einem
begeisterten Apostel des Deutschtumes in Frankreich. Er wurde
später Professor der Philologie in Göttingen und starb dort am 26.
Februar 1815. Um die Bedeutung dieses Mannes, der für die
direkten geistigen Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und
Frankreich durch seine vortrefflichen Schriften über Luther, Kant und
über die Provinz Westfalen sicher mehr gethan hat als Chamisso,
ins rechte Licht zu setzen, genügt es, daran zu erinnern, dass
Goethe von Villers in einem Brief an Reinhard sagt, dass er „wie
eine Art von Janus bifrons herüber und hinüber sieht“ und selbst an
ihn schrieb: „Sie haben mich im ästhetischen Sinne bei Ihren
Landsleuten eingeführt.“[656] Viller’s Beispiel hat bekanntlich
Benjamin Constant und Frau von Staël zu gleichen teutophilen
Bestrebungen ermuntert.
Es wurden in Deutschland von den Emigranten verschiedene
französische Zeitschriften herausgegeben, deren eifriger Mitarbeiter
Villers war, hauptsächlich im Sinne der Propaganda für deutsches
Wesen und deutsche Litteratur, aber auch um die Deutschen mit den
französischen Erscheinungen auf dem Gebiete der Litteratur, Kunst
und Wissenschaft bekannt zu machen. Besonders war Hamburg
auch schon vor der Revolution ein Centrum für solche Bestrebungen
gewesen, sowohl im guten wie im schlimmen Sinne. Denn in
Hamburg wurden viele französische Erotica zum ersten Male
veröffentlicht oder nachgedruckt.[657] Hier gaben Bandus (Marie
Jean Louis Amable de Bandus, lebte von 1791 bis 1802 in
Hamburg), Boudens de Vanderbourg und Villers vom Januar 1797
bis zum Dezember 1802 den „Spectateur du Nord“, ein „journal
politique, littéraire et moral“ heraus, welches es in diesen 6 Jahren
auf 24 Bände brachte. Die Zeitschrift wurde in Frankreich verboten.
[658]

Im vierten Bande dieses „Spectateur du Nord“ erschien nun im

Jahre 1797 die „Lettre sur le Roman intitulé Justine ou les Malheurs
de la Vertu“, welche M. L. Hoffmann mit Recht dem Charles de
Villers zuschreibt. Eine Neuausgabe dieser interessanten Notiz über
den Roman des Marquis de Sade wurde im Jahre 1877 von A. P.
Malassis veranstaltet, der wir in der Analyse folgen.[659]
Villers erklärt in der Vorrede, dass das berüchtigte Buch „Justine“
viel verlangt werde, in immer neuen Auflagen erscheine und so,
damit den Lesern des „Spectateur“ die Lektüre des schrecklichen
Buches erspart werde, eine kurze Inhaltsangabe gerechtfertigt
erscheine. Speziell ist er von einer Dame zur Lektüre des Buches
und zum Bericht über dasselbe aufgefordert worden (S. 13). Zwar
haben ihm „zwanzig Mal Ekel und Entrüstung das Buch aus der
Hand fallen lassen“, aber die „grosse Berühmtheit“ desselben habe
ihn bewogen, dasselbe bis zu Ende durchzulesen. Dann „habe ich
es denen zurückgegeben, von denen ich es bekommen hatte, froh,
das geistige Spiessrutenlaufen überstanden zu haben und das
abscheuliche Buch nicht mehr unter den Augen zu haben. Es war
ohne Zweifel unserem Jahrhundert vorbehalten, es hervorzubringen.
Denn dies Buch konnte nur inmitten der Barbareien und der blutigen
Erschütterungen concipiert werden, die Frankreich heimgesucht
haben. Es ist eine der widerlichsten Früchte der revolutionären
Krisis, eines der stärksten Argumente gegen die Freiheit der Presse“
(S. 14). In der That ist das Werk „ausserordentlich“ in Beziehung auf
die bizarrsten und grausamsten Ausschweifungen und eine
raffinierte Grausamkeit. Es giebt Werke, die von den Grazien
inspiriert zu sein scheinen. Dieses haben die Furien inspiriert. „Es ist
mit Blut geschrieben. Es ist unter den Büchern, was Robespierre
unter den Menschen war. Man erzählt, dass, als dieser Tyrann, als
Couthon, Saint-Just, Collot, seine Minister, der Mordthaten und
Verurteilungen müde waren und diese steinernen Herzen etwas wie
Gewissensbisse empfanden und die Feder ihnen angesichts der
zahlreichen, noch zu unterzeichnenden Urteile aus den Händen glitt,
sie nur einige Seiten der ‚Justine‘ zu lesen brauchten, um wieder
schreiben zu können. Man erzählt diese Anekdote in Frankreich und
glaubt an sie.“ (S. 16.)
Villers setzt dann in Kürze die uns bekannten philosophischen
Theorien des Marquis de Sade auseinander und sagt, dass dieses
Buch „alle pornographischen Werke, die seit der Regentschaft
Frankreich überschwemmt haben“, hinter sich lässt. (S. 18.) Er
schildert dann den Gang der Handlung in der „Justine“. Er hält zwar
den Roman, der nur auf Scheusale wie Robespierre und Couthon
Eindruck machen könne, nicht für gefährlich, fordert aber doch zu
einer „Verschwörung“ aller anständigen Menschen, die noch Moral
auf der Erde haben wollen, auf, damit alle noch vorhandenen
Exemplare dieses Romans vernichtet werden. „Ich werde drei
Exemplare kaufen, die noch bei meinem Buchhändler sind, und sie
ins Feuer werfen.“ Er hofft, dass in drei Jahren die Exemplare nur
noch in Bibliotheken zu finden sein werden. (S. 21.) Trügerische
Hoffnung!
Villers kommt zu dem Schlusse, dass die „Justine“ in gleicher
Weise die Wahrscheinlichkeit, den gesunden Menschenverstand und
das Zartgefühl „selbst der Wüstlinge“ verletzt, dass dieses Buch platt
und dumm sei, lächerliche Uebertreibungen und widernatürliche
Dinge enthalte, und dass es sogar das Theorem in Boileau’s „Art
poétique“ verleugne:
Il n’est point de serpent, ni de monstre odieux,
Qui par l’art imité ne puisse plaire aux yeux.
 Denn diese Monstra sind sehr „odieux“, gefallen aber weder dem
Auge noch dem Geiste. Indessen „was werden Sie dazu sagen,
dass wenig Werke so viele Auflagen erlebt haben, wie die elende
‚Justine‘? Was soll man von einer Zeit denken, in der sich ein
Schriftsteller zur Abfassung eines solchen Romans fand,
Buchhändler, um ihn zu verkaufen und ein Publikum, um ihn zu
kaufen?“ (S. 22–23.)
Das Gift war ein Contagium animatum, das sich trotz des
ehrlichen Villers ins Ungemessene vermehrte. Es lebt noch heute.