SOCIALIST UNITY

In a laboratory experiment to determine whether capitalism or socialism is the superior social system, the 1974 World cup pitched the socialist DDR against West Germany.

The superiority of socialism is also clear from the rousing music played in this clip from DDR’s TV coverage.

Peter Tatchell is a very admirable man; I don’t agree with all his politics, and I sometimes think he chooses the wrong targets, but he has done a fantastic job at challenging homophobia, often at personal risk; and his inspiring bravery and his preparedness to speak truth to power have helped to change for ever the public perception of gay people.

It would therefore be a shame if Peter Tatchell should be used to eclipse and write out of history the achievements of another brave gay man, Dr. Rudolf Klimmer, who successfully campaigned for anti-gay legislation to be removed from the statutes in East Germany.

We need to understand the historical context. During the 1920s there had been a robust questioning of sexual stereotypes in Weimar Germany, for example through Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld’s “Scientific-Humanitarian Committee” (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee) that campaigned for gay rights. However, Bismark’s Paragraph 175, the Prussian law from 1871 against male homosexuality, was never repealed under the Weimar Republic.

In the Nazi era, gay rights received two catastrophic reverses. Firstly, the law was made much more repressive by clause 175a, that made it a criminal offence for a man to look at another man in a “lewd manner”. This allowed the Nazis to arrest and persecute tens of thousands of people for simply “being gay”. But secondly, the Nazis thoroughly institutionalised their bigoted views in the judicial and criminal justice system, in universities, teaching hospitals and medical organisations. This consolidation of social attitudes meant that in West Germany – where de-Nazification was very shallow – law 175a was in force until 1969.

In contrast, in 1948 the Superior Court in Halle, in the Soviet Occupied Zone, struck down section 175a, removing legal sanction against people for simply being gay, 21 years before this happened in the West

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s West Germany had a conservative social culture, and homosexuals were arrested and incarcerated for breaching this law – simply for being gay. A thought crime, where people could be and were sent to prison simply for their desires and dreams. Indeed, during the 1950s in particular Church and conservative politicians in the West continually contrasted their own family based morality with what they described as sexual licence and debauchery in the East.

This was a particularly important ideological battleground, as sexual conservatism was the mainstay in the West for the state to emphasise its discontinuity with the Nazis. The Nazis had ridiculed Christian prudery, and encouraged pre-marital sex. Precisely because the West German state did not purge out leading Nazis from many government positions, and because it continued with most of the economic structures of the Nazi regime, it played greater emphasis on a return to what they saw as personal morality, and gave a leading voice to the Catholic church. The 1950s and early 1960s saw major state sponsored campaigns from the Catholic Church and CDU party against pre-marital sex, and against sexual experimentation

In the East, the economic and social reorganisation, and the thorough de-Nazification meant that the state had no need to invent differences with the Nazi era. They did however stress the sexual exploration of the Nazi era was often exploitative. In contrast, love and mutual respect were encouraged as a pre-condition for sex: in 1963 the Youth Committee of the SED issued a memorandum, responding to reports of teenagers becoming sexually active younger, in which they praised romantic love as the “path to happiness”, and encouraged parents to respect their teenage children’s rights to have loving relationships that became sexual.

The reform of law towards gay sex was led by Rudolf Klimmer, a gay man and a communist, who kept his head down during the Nazi era, marrying a lesbian for mutual self protection; and who chose to go and live in East Germany after the war. (Many gays did, due to the better legal situation there.)

Klimmer wanted not only section 175a, but also the whole of section 175 repealed. He campaigned tirelessly, gradually winning support for his position in the Party. He re-established the “Scientific-Humanitarian Committee”, and appeared as an expert witness in countless trials against people being prosecuted for consensual gay sex throughout the 1950s. He became director of a sexual counselling and health institute, on a model that was replicated in other towns in East Germany. It became a peculiarity of East German society that issues of sexual politics and relationships were debated and promoted by the medical profession, not because these are actually medical issues, but because the Doctors had the political space to do so.

Gradually, he won the party around, and in 1957, the police and prosecutors were told that there should be no more prosecutions for any consensual sexual activity between adults. Furthermore, in 1968 Statute 175 was removed completely from the statute book – meaning there was no legal prohibition against gay sex (though both gay and straight people needed to be carefully of the strictly enforced Article 151, that prohibited intergenerational sex, between someone over 18 with someone under 18). It is interesting that one of the factors which inhibited faster progress in the East was the homophobic campaigning from West Germany, depicting the DDR as immoral.

Two further issues need to be explored. Decriminalisation and legalisation did not end discrimination; and the official attitude to sexual experimentation. The question of homosexuality was part and parcel of the government’s overall attitude to all sexual activity.

These are complex areas. The SED party as a whole did not take an attitude on social and personal sexual issues. However, the leadership were themselves personally socially conservative, older men; and what is more they were very sensitive to negative international opinion about the DDR. The fact that the USSR persecuted gays to the bitter end, and that West Germany was, until perhaps the early 1970s, a conservative and sexually repressive society provided an inhibiting context.

But the party were also not opposed to sexual liberalism; which created enormous space for policy to be shaped by specialist groups, like the SED’s youth committee; by debate in the medical profession; and also just by what ordinary people did.

This last factor was very important, as we can see from one of the most characteristic aspects of East German life was nudity (Freikorpskultur (FKK)) ; with absolutely no official encouragement, from the 1960s onwards public nudity, and very commonly nudity in the home, became normal; and early municipal attempts to stop it were simply overwhelmed by the public mood. Research has shown that these second generation DDR families practising FKK had very liberal attitudes about sex.

Over issues of abortion, teen marriages and divorce, the party increasingly liberalised the law following evolution in social practice. Throughout the 1960s, medical professionals used evidence of what people actually did as a wedge to drive SED policy in a progressive direction. The push from informed expert opinion is what decided public policy.

Society was torn in two directions, and liberalism was winning, so that while Volkmar Sigush reported a puritanical attitude among party members in the 1950s, and Wolfgang Bretschneider was fighting a losing battle in the medical profession against condoning pre-martial sex; at the same time a number of guides to sex and relationships were published that encouraged people to take a relaxed and permissive attitude to sex, for example Rudolf Neubert’s “Das Neue Ehebuch” in the 1950s or the best selling book by the Weber’s “Du und Ich” in the 1960s.

Admitedly, gay sex was completely absent from the official guides and discourse (despite one mention in “Du und Ich” recommending that heterosexual women avoid marrying gay men. Which in its own terms is perhaps not bad advice). But simply ignoring the gay expereince in offical discussion of sex and relationships is not unusual even today in the West.

The official position was therefore to remove legal discrimination, but not to otherwise acknowledge that gay relationships existed. This evolved so that by the 1980s, gay social groups and clubs were able to openly organise, as long as they took the precaution of making some tenuous linkage with the Protestant churches. (Gay groups that sought to link with West German gays could expect repression, for different reasons). All the evidence is that ordinary people took a permissive view that it was a private matter between consenting adults. Towards the end of the 1980s the East German government opened a state-owned gay disco in Berlin; and in 1987 the East German Supreme Court affirmed that “homosexuality, just like heterosexuality, represents a variant of sexual behavior. Homosexual people do therefore not stand outside socialist society, and the civil rights are warranted to them exactly as to all other citizens.”

The difficulty in making comparisons is that this is all more than twenty years ago. The social attitudes in Britain and Germany have also moved in a long way since then. But generally the DDR was more progressive on liberalising attitudes to gays earlier than other European countries. The medical profession continued to promote gay rights to the very end, and indeed a happy postscript is the progressive influence of doctors from the former DDR in shifting social attitudes in Cuba.

So what about the absence of openly gay German role-models, and people in higher positions? Well, we need to acknowledge that 20 years ago these were very rare in Britain as well ; but the biggest problem was that the SED leadership were completely ossified as a bizarre club for old men. There were not even any women (except Honneker’s wife) at the top table, let alone gays. There was only one person under 40 years old in a senior leadership position in the SED, and he was only a candidate member of the politburo, in charge of the youth section!

So gays were not being discriminated by not raising to the top. No-one rose to the top. The party was a completely dysfunctional and failed institution, with no social mobility; where the senior leadership lived all together in a bizarre little village and never met anyone socially, they even had their lunchtime sandwiches together every single day. They might as well have been on the moon.

Generally, we have to say that in the area of personal sexual relationships, and respect for women as being the equals of men, then the DDR was a surprisingly innovative and successful society. It also provided both a relatively liberal attitude and legal permissiveness towards gays and lesbians at the grassroots level, but advance towards gay rights were compromised and thwarted by the general perception of any social non-conformity as political opposition. Given that the DDR collapsed in 1989 our comparators need to be with other societies in 1989 and earlier, and it is a correct judgement that the DDR was progressive in this area.

This is worth commemorating especially because the advances in gay rights were not handed down by the party leadership, but campaigned for and bravely fought for by  gay activists like Rudolf Klimmer, who used the space open for medical professionals to change public attitudes and party policy; and by thousands of gay men and lesbians who simply persevered in demanding to be treated with respect and dignity.

by John Green

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/features/Looking-back-at-life-in-the-GDR  

Sixty years ago the German Democratic Republic was created out of the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany in response to the introduction of a separate currency in the Western sectors and the go-it-alone creation of the Federal Republic in September 1949.

It lasted until 1990 when the people voted to accede to the Federal Republic.

The first GDR government was composed of individuals with a track record of active opposition to the nazi regime. Many had spent years in concentration camps, prison and exile.

They returned determined to build a democratic, anti-fascist Germany. It began life at a great disadvantage compared with West Germany. It comprised only a third of German territory with a population of 17 million, as against 63 million in the west, and was considerably poorer, having little heavy industry and few mineral resources.

One of the GDR’s greatest achievements was the creation of a more egalitarian society. Measures were introduced to counter class and gender privilege and increase the educational and career prospects of working-class children.

As a result, the GDR became probably the most egalitarian society in Europe. Full gender equality and equal pay were also enshrined in legislation.

Pay differentials between different groups of employees were minimal so that even top managers or government ministers were hardly wealthy in Western terms.

Even in terms of housing, economic and class difference played little role. All areas contained a mix of professional and working-class people.

This lack of large wealth differentials and class privilege made for a more cohesive and balanced society. For some such egalitarianism was not amenable and the lure of higher salaries and business opportunities in the West remained strong. This led to a steady haemorrhaging of skilled workers and professionals before the wall was built in 1961.

The GDR was a society largely free of existential fears. Everyone had a right to education, a job and a roof over their head. Emphasis was placed on society not on individualism, and on co-operation and solidarity.

This process of socialisation began with nursery children and continued through school and into the workplace and housing estates.

The government argued that the workers who produced the commodities that society needed should be placed at the forefront of society.

Those who did heavy manual work, such as miners or steel workers, enjoyed certain privileges - better wages and health care than those in less strenuous or dangerous professions such as office work or teaching.

There were workplace clinics, doctors and dentists attached to large factories and institutions.

The workplace and trade union were largely responsible for ensuring medical care, the provision of leisure and holiday facilities and childcare, even down to the most personal issues of finding accommodation.

The trade union owned and ran a whole number of rest homes, sanatoriums and holiday accommodation used by the workforce and their families for nominal prices.

This system helped to solve working parents’ problems of caring for their children during school holidays.

By the 1980s around 80 per cent of the population was able to go on some form of holiday, although most of these would be taken in the GDR itself, many in one of such centres at very low prices.

No worker could be sacked, unless for serious misconduct or incompetence. However, even in such cases, other alternative work would be offered.

The other side of the coin was that there was also a social obligation to work - the GDR had no system of unemployment benefit because the concept of unemployment did not exist.

Pay levels in general were not high compared with Western standards. But everyone knew that the profits they created would go into the “social pot” and used to make life better for everyone, not just for a few owners or shareholders who would pocket the surplus.

Most people recognised that the surplus they created helped increase what was called the “social wage” - subsidised food, clothing and rent, cheap public transport and inexpensive tickets for cultural, sporting and leisure activities.

The idea of a social wage is a vital concept for any society purporting to be egalitarian. It was instrumental in ensuring the implementation of greater social equality, undermining privilege and class hegemony.

Although most people lived in rented accommodation at controlled and affordable rents, a considerable minority owned their own houses and some built their own privately owned houses.

Rents remained virtually unchanged over the life of the GDR and no-one could be evicted from their home. There was therefore no homelessness or fear of becoming homeless.

From a country with few raw materials and an underdeveloped industry devastated by the second world war, the GDR rose to become the fifth strongest economy in Europe and among the 10 strongest in the world.

The economy was characterised by central planning. This enabled the government to plan growth, set priorities and determine where to invest, but there was the downside that such centralised planning on such a scale could be inflexible and cumbersome.

However, a vital factor holding back the GDR economy was a strict boycott by Western governments, preventing the export of advanced technology.

Over 90 per cent of all assets in the GDR were owned by the people in the form of “publicly owned enterprises” (VEBs).

By contrast, in the Federal Republic a mere 10 per cent of households owned 42 per cent of all private wealth and 50 per cent of households owned only 4.5 per cent.

After the war, large estates owned by the former landed aristocracy, the Junkers, were broken up. Five hundred estates were expropriated and converted into co-operatives or state farms and thousands of acres distributed among 500,000 peasant farmers, agricultural labourers and refugees.

Later the government encouraged, sometimes cajoled and pressured farmers to join co-operative farms, but farmers retained ownership rights to their land.

By 1960 nearly 85 per cent of all arable land was incorporated into agricultural co-operatives.

In 1989 there were 3,844 agricultural co-ops and these were one of the big achievements of the GDR, proving to be efficient and better for the workforce.

For the first time in history, agricultural workers were freed from round-the-clock work just to make a living.

With agricultural co-operatives run on an industrial scale, workers enjoyed fixed-hours working and shift systems, had regular holidays, childcare, training opportunities and workplace canteens. All this certainly helped stem the flight from the countryside to the towns.

For the first time in Germany, women enjoyed completely equal rights with men, both in their personal sphere and the workplace.

They were provided with the means and opportunities of developing their careers and personalities beyond or instead of their traditional roles in the home, as wives, mothers and daughters.

Some 91 per cent of women between the ages of 16 and 60 were in work. Most women viewed success in their careers as a main source of fulfilment - this is about the same percentage as for men.

Some 88 per cent of all adult women worked and a further 8.5 per cent were in full-time education.

Most women were also highly skilled. Only 6 per cent had no qualification at all, whereas in the Federal Republic 24 per cent had none.

Despite these figures, in the top echelons of government and party male patriarchy still persisted.

The country’s record on internationalism was exemplary. It took the idea of solidarity with other, struggling nations seriously.

It sent doctors and other medical staff to the front line in Vietnam, Mozambique and Angola. It gave engineering, educational and military support to many countries.

It also gave numerous foreign students from countries struggling to free themselves from the legacy of colonialism free training and education in the GDR.

Of course the GDR had a whole number of serious shortcomings and in terms of individual rights and democracy left a lot to be desired.

But to dwell only on these aspects as the mainstream media in the West has done, is to ignore its genuine achievements.

Since its demise, many have come to recognise and regret that the genuine “social achievements” they enjoyed have now been dismantled.

Unfortunately, the collapse of the GDR and “state socialism” in 1989 came just before the collapse of the highly lauded “free market” system in the West.

John Green and Bruni de la Motte have just written a new booklet, Stasi Hell Or Workers’ Paradise? Socialism In The German Democratic Republic - What Can We Learn From It? Available from the Morning Star