Contesting the 'other Germany': Politics and cultural renewal from antifascism to Cold War, 1935--1953

This dissertation examines the efforts of German communist and liberal intellectuals to renew German culture after 1945 on the basis of antifascist coalition politics and the ideal of a "humanist" German tradition that the NS regime had either distorted or suppressed. The author argues that the concept of the humanist "other Germany" underwent multiple evolutions and created complex intellectual frontlines, first between antifascist German and Allied interpreters of German history, then, after 1945, between German former exiles and "inner emigres," and, ultimately, between German intellectuals in the East and those in the West. As a result, a movement aimed at restoring cultural unity among German intellectuals developed into a discourse that entrenched the German political division.;The Kulturbund, which combined Stalinist "front tactics" with multiple strands of early-twentieth-century German cultural movements and traditions, initially embodied a non-partisan and pluralist approach to the denazification and cultural reeducation of Germany. As the analysis of the Kulturbund board meeting minutes demonstrates, the concept of cultural renewal led not only Communists but also liberals to advocate increased centralization and political mobilization, demands which made the project susceptible to renewed authoritarianism. After the failure of the First German Writers' Congress of 1947 to restore antifascist unity, the project of cultural renewal lost most of its political relevance in the two German states, even though it can be seen as a necessary early impulse for Germany's Vergangenheitsbewaltigung , the nation's postwar effort at critically examining its own history.;With the defeat of antifascist popular-front politics in the Saar referendum of 1935, German anti-NS activities shifted to the numerous "cultural leagues" in German exile communities from Great Britain to Mexico. After 1945, these exile cultural leagues provided the foundation for the early postwar public sphere of political-cultural discussion circles and journals in all four occupation zones. The exile leagues' ideal of cultural renewal based on the traditions of the "other Germany" and on the concept of a socialist humanism continued especially in the Communist-initiated Kulturbund zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands (Cultural League for the Democratic Renewal of Germany) in the Soviet Occupation Zone.