Hitler’s Rival: Ernst Thälmann in Myth and Memory

8. "Not All Who Have Died Are Dead"

311 8 “Not All Who Have Died Are Dead” In hindsight, it is clear that by end of the 1970s the German Democratic Republic was in a state of decline. The heady, idealistic days of the regime ’s first decade were long gone, and the Berlin Wall remained a blight on the landscape of the East German capital and an embarrassment to the SED. The East German leadership had long recognized that the country faced serious problems. Indeed, the failure of the Ulbricht government’s economic policies was integral to the decision to replace him at the SED’s helm. The new leadership sought to address the deteriorating situation both by pursuing new avenues in foreign policy and confronting the looming economic crisis. Upon assuming power in 1971, new party chief Erich Honecker promised his Soviet allies that he would pursue a rapprochement with the Federal Republic and assured the East German people that he would improve economic conditions under what came to be called “real, existing socialism.”1 Honecker’s predecessor, Walter Ulbricht, had insisted that the GDR could and must catch up with the West economically by 1980. Only then, when socialism had demonstrated that it could provide a standard of living comparable to the FRG, could the SED hope to unify Germany under a socialist system—a goal that the aging party chief refused to abandon. In order to achieve this end, the Ulbricht government maintained that the GDR had to invest as much as 30 percent of the country’s gross domestic product into long-term projects such as the development of advanced technology. Under his New Economic System, Ulbricht envisioned a not-too-distant future in which East Germany would be exporting computers to capitalist countries. The SED chief’s plan necessitated a massive investment in economic infrastructure , and average East Germans would have to tighten their belts as a result. Not only would there be a decrease in the production of hard-to- 312 HITLER’S RIVAL get consumer goods, but East Germans would be expected to pay higher prices for basic necessities such as housing and transportation.2 As a result, the regime became increasingly unpopular among the East German population. To add insult to injury, Ulbricht’s stock with his Soviet allies also began to decline because he maintained that the SED did not have to toe the Soviet line in the area of economic policy. Indeed, believing that having personally met Lenin gave his views a legitimacy unmatched even by the Soviet leadership, Ulbricht insisted that the SED’s approach should become the model for the socialist world, including the Soviet Union. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev found such hubris disconcerting, and Ulbricht’s perceived arrogance did not win him any friends in Moscow.3 For these and other reasons, Ulbricht was forced to step down in 1971, after twenty-one years in office. Upon assuming power, Honecker sought to pursue more modest goals. First of all, the new party chief de facto abandoned the goal of German unification, openly embracing West German chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. On 21 December 1972, the GDR and the FRG signed the Basic Treaty, and the two Germanys finally exchanged “emissaries” (but not ambassadors) and joined the United Nations.4 The following year Honecker conceded, in a dramatic reversal of East German policy, that “[t]he GDR is not part of the FRG and the FRG is not part of the GDR.”5 In 1974, the SED chief even went so far as to have the clauses calling for a single socialist Germany removed from the GDR’s Constitution , a move that the FRG leadership refused to reciprocate.6 At least in the short run, Honecker’s change in course proved beneficial for the people of the GDR. With Brandt’s renunciation of the Hallstein Doctrine—under which the FRG would not have official diplomatic relations with any country that had exchanged ambassadors with the GDR—East Germany’s international isolation came to an end. Honecker could legitimately claim to have made socialist Germany into an actor on the international stage. With the GDR’s admission to the United Nations, the world recognized the SED regime’s legitimacy. West Germany had not only accepted the GDR’s right to exist but also, in effect, recognized the permanence of Germany’s division.Atwo-state solution to the German question had become an important component of the European status quo, and the leaders of East Germany could...