Historical myth-building and youth propaganda in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and the German Democratic Republic, 1945-1989

This study examines how the Socialist Unity Party of the GDR developed a political and historical mythology and endeavored to transmit this mythology to young people organized in the Party's youth organizations, according to the principle "who has youth has the future." The author argues that Cold War prejudices and the fashionable methods of the "symbolic politics" approach to social analysis have distorted Western perceptions of the GDR. The term "myth" is carefully chosen. Myth is defined not as fiction, but as lived reality, an ideology in miniature, which is both deeply felt and manipulable. This transmission principally occurred through direct indoctrination, rhetoric, rituals, symbols, pseudo-religious imagery, and mass youth events. The first chapter examines in depth the special parameters of GDR myth-building: The Cold War background, Marxist-Leninist ideology, the Parteilichkeit principle, language, the Party's reliance on mass events, and the ideal of the "Socialist-Communist personality." The study then concentrates on four major myth complexes representing key aspects of the Party's self-perception: the "myth of youth unity," which the Party adopted from the German Youth Movement in order to create and consolidate the FDJ; the myth of a unique German "Kulturerbe" (cultural heritage), which under Ulbricht was used as an ideological tool and an anti-imperialist weapon, and under Honecker as a symbol of national pride; the anti-Fascist myth, which ensured the Party's legitimacy and was used as an educational tool; and the pseudo-religious myth of the Great Socialist Soviet Union, which was the guarantor of the GDR's stability and of ultimate Socialist victory. The Soviet myth also includes the myth of the "Socialist fatherland," which coopted traditional German nationalist imagery in order to create a new Socialist German nation. The author places particular emphasis on the period between 1945 and 1961, when the foundations of this myth-building were laid and when GDR youth propaganda was also aimed at West German youth.; The study examines both the mythic origins of these notions and their propagandistic applications. It evaluates the relative success and failure of this myth-building and speculates on its long-term effects in the new united Germany.