Bitterfeld way
The Bitterfelder Weg was intended to usher in a new programmatic development of socialist cultural policy in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and point the way to an independent “socialist national culture ”. This should meet the “growing artistic and aesthetic needs of the working people”.
history
It was named after an authors' conference organized by the Mitteldeutscher Verlag on April 24, 1959 in the Bitterfeld electrochemical combine , later the VEB Chemical Combine Bitterfeld .
It should be clarified how the working people can be given active access to art and culture. The “existing separation of art and life” and the “alienation between artist and people” should be overcome, and the working class should be more fully involved in building socialism. To do this, u. a. Artists and writers work in the factories and support workers in their own artistic activities ( movement of writing workers ). The directives mainly issued by Walter Ulbricht were under the motto Pick up your pen, mate, the socialist German national culture needs you! . The motto was a copy of similar Russian projects, with Mayakovsky's demand “Freshly set up the writing instrument” (“Letter to the proletarian poets”, 1926) in particular serving as a model here. At the fifth party congress of the SED in 1958, Ulbricht made the demand: “In the state and in the economy, the working class in the GDR is already in control. Now it must also storm the heights of culture and take possession of them. "
In fact, there was an upswing in amateur art, for example through the regularly organized workers' festival . However, the conference participant commented and courted poet KuBa to the SED functionary and secretary for culture of the SED district leadership Halle Hans Bentzien on the possibilities of such a controlled cultural policy already at the conference: "It will be a bitter dirt road."
At that time the saying was popular: "The positive hero sighs - because the path is often bitter!".
The second Bitterfeld Conference on April 24th and 25th, 1964 set the cultural workers the task of promoting in particular the “formation of socialist consciousness” and the “ socialist personality ”. As early as December 1965, the Bitterfelder Weg was de facto abandoned - the concept of binding artists to the party and working people through their use in production did not work. Once again, in April 1967, the seventh party congress of the SED wanted to revive the Bitterfelder Weg as part of the official party program.
It was not until after 1970 that talented amateur artists were promoted in all districts of the GDR. For this purpose, mainly circle leaders in various artistic directions were trained by professional artists at the newly founded district culture academies.
The intended abolition of the separation of professional and amateur art subsequently led to increasing differences with prominent authors such as Christa Wolf , Stefan Heym and Peter Hacks about the critical function and social tasks of art. In particular, instrumentalization and regulation for the purposes of party propaganda and increasing paternalism were feared. Cooperation between writers and businesses was limited even in the first half of the 1960s; Most of the artists in the GDR were also unwilling to expand their real-world experience through permanent collaboration in production. Alternative galleries were founded at an early stage to offer a forum for artists who did not want to follow the party line - for example, in 1960 the “ Galerie Konkret ” in Berlin.
See also
- Culture in the GDR
- District culture academy, educational institutions for amateur artists
- Circle of writing workers
- Socialist realism
- GDR literature
- Cultural policy
literature
- IM Lange / Joachim Schreck (eds.): The certainty of victory. A people's book on the construction of the German Democratic Republic . Berlin 1959.
- Second Bitterfeld Conference 1964. Minutes of the conference held by the Ideological Commission at the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED and the Ministry of Culture on April 24th and 25th in the Kulturpalast of the Electrochemical Combine Bitterfeld . Berlin 1964.
- Ingeborg Gerlach: Bitterfeld. Workers' literature and literature from the world of work , Kronberg (Scriptor), 1974.
- "Bitterfeld Conferences". In: Cultural Policy Dictionary . 2nd edition Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1978.
- Gottfried Pareigis: Critical analysis of the representation of reality in selected works of the "Bitterfeld Weg" . Scriptor-Verlag, Kronberg 1974. ISBN 3-589-20043-X (Dissertation, University of Hamburg, 1973)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Carsten Gansel, Matthias Braun: It's about Erwin Strittmatter or From the dispute about memory . V & R unipress, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-89971-997-0 , p. 117 .
- ^ Francis Nenik: Journey through a tragicomic century. Hasso Grabner's crazy life . Voland & Quist, Dresden 2018, ISBN 978-3-86391-198-0 , pp. 140-141 .
- ↑ http://www.mz-web.de/kultur/bitterfelder-konferenz-ein-dichter-sAGEN--das-wird-ein-bitterer-feldweg- Werden, 20642198,18126636.html
