Die demokratische Revolution 1989 in der DDR (review)

Each year, German reunification and the events of 1989–1990 move more and more away from the realm of current events and journalism and into the jurisdiction of the historian. Questions of continuity and contingency, as well as the search for deeper structures, have begun to take shape in scholarly discussion. The work reviewed here—partly personal reflection, partly an attempt to integrate the period into larger historical themes—is a collection of presentations from a seminar offered by the University of Marburg in 2008 and 2009.

All of the contributions emphasize the processes of justice and the development of civil society as they relate to the events of 1989. In a historiographical essay, Konrad Jarausch asks whether we should best understand 1989 as a successful revolution or as a societal collapse, a question implicitly related to how much the growth of a civil society had shaped events that year (or vice versa). The editors have arranged the remaining contributions around three subthemes: the human-rights situation in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) before the revolution, 1989 as a peaceful revolution, and finally the placement of the GDR in a more general historical context.

The first section contains essays on Amnesty International’s campaigns for GDR dissidents and the government’s responses to these campaigns, an account of West German “purchasing” of political prisoners, and East German techniques of political and psychological torture. These three articles provide a salutary reminder of the GDR’s often-used tools of repression.

This repressive context makes the essays in the second section more remarkable. Here the contributors’ focus is on the dissident movement networks and the developments of late 1989 and early 1990. This section also contains the widest range of material, from first-hand accounts by Wilhelm Thiese on the dissidents and Joachim Gauck on these networks and the Stasi, to comparisons with 1968 in West Germany, discussions of the evolution of the Round Table’s function in the GDR’s democratic transition—beginning as a powerful and symbolic forum for dialogue, but ultimately atrophying as other more formal institutions democratized—and finally discussions of East German constitutional issues in the transitional year. These essays contribute to a better understanding of the processes of democratization and of the successful revolution that occurred during these months. The final section, which deals with attempts to come to terms with the GDR’s past, addresses three issues: legal proceedings against members of the SED regime, a contrast of the South African and GDR experiences with regard to reconciliation, and the presence of the GDR in German historical consciousness.

Each of the essays makes a useful contribution to understanding the events leading up to and following the 1989–1990 revolution. That said, the topics of the essays are too disparate to give rise to new, comprehensive perspectives on the various themes into which they are grouped; neither do they lead to a new perspective on the volume’s overall question of civil society and revolution. Even if whole is not greater than the sum of the parts, the sum of the parts is still worthwhile.