Blue shirt (FDJ)

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Blue shirt with the collar turned up

The blue shirt (also: FDJ shirt or FDJ blouse ) was the official organizational clothing of the GDR youth organization Free German Youth (FDJ) since 1948 . FDJ members had to wear their blue shirts on official occasions.

Appearance and wearing style

FDJ singing group in blue shirts (1975).

The FDJ shirt - for girls an FDJ blouse - was a long-sleeved shirt of blue color with a flap collar , epaulettes and breast pockets. The FDJ symbol of the rising sun was sewn onto the left sleeve. Until the 1970s, the blue shirts were only made of cotton , later there was a cheaper version made of a polyester blend .

The epaulets of the blue shirt, unlike epaulets on military uniforms, did not serve to make the rank or unit affiliation visible , but were only used to put a beret through . Official functions in the FDJ, for example FDJ secretary of a school or apprentice class, had no badges of rank and could not be read on the FDJ shirt. However, the members of the FDJ order groups officially wore the FDJ shirt together with a red armband during their operations.

From the 1970s onwards, official patches and badges that could be worn on the FDJ shirt were issued for certain events. There was no fixed way of carrying it. The medals and decorations that normal FDJ members received up to the end of their membership at the age of 19 to 24 years - usually the badge for good knowledge - were usually not worn. As a rule, only full-time FDJ members achieved awards on their way to the nomenklatura that were actually worn.

history

Tradition lines and introduction (until 1948)

Two FDJ members hold up Stalin books at a May demonstration (May 1, 1953, a few weeks after Stalin's death).

When the FDJ was founded in 1946, there were no FDJ shirts. During the founding period, the FDJ should win over all young people, not just young communists. In addition to the traditions of the communist youth association KJVD, the traditional lines of other youth associations from the Weimar Republic were also officially referred to , such as the social-democratic socialist workers' youth (SAJ) and the more Christian or reform bourgeois oriented boy scouts and migrant birds . FDJ co-founder (and then wife of Erich Honecker) Edith Baumann formulated the FDJ's goal in 1947 as a combination of “political openness and youthful willingness to fight, which has survived from the fraternities to the communist youth associations, with the love of the nature of the migratory birds and the Christian tolerance of denominational associations ”in order to create a unified free organization for all German youth.

Correspondingly, both historians and contemporary observers note a certain continuity of the FDJ tradition lines with these youth associations and movements from the Weimar Republic: the FDJ shirt is based on the blue shirt of the SAJ, the hiking and the singing come from the Wandervogel, the Whitsun meetings from the Bündischen Jugend and the youth workers' movement, the home evenings of the Bündischen Jugend and the Hitler Youth . But these reminiscences were essentially cosmetics: the real role models for pioneers and FDJ were the Soviet pioneers and Komsomol .

The new FDJ shirts were shown in public for the first time on October 28, 1948, when the Saxon delegation in blue shirts appeared on the occasion of a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Soviet Komsomol . However, this news was not mentioned in the contemporary SBZ press. According to official GDR information from later times, the idea of ​​uniform FDJ clothing came from the first FDJ chairman, Erich Honecker , and was intended to "develop young people's sense of togetherness [...] and promote their combative awareness [...]". The direct reference to the blue shirt of the social democratic SAJ was not mentioned in the GDR; the SPD, with which the KPD (forcibly) unified in 1946 , was persecuted in 1948 and later in East Germany.

In the GDR (1949–1989)

In the background on the right, the FDJ member wears the Order of Labor's banner on his left breast pocket and the SED party badge (1981) on his shirt collar .
The same FDJer as in the picture above (a brigadier in VEB Tiefbaukombinat Berlin). A patch can be seen over the FDJ emblem and blouson band (1981).
FDJ woman in blue shirt with patch (left breast pocket) and badge (right breast pocket) hands over flowers to Honecker (1976).

FDJ members were obliged to wear the FDJ shirt on certain occasions, for example during demonstrations on May 1st or October 7th , during “ flag roll calls ” or when handing over certificates on the last day of school before the summer vacation.

FDJ shirts were manufactured in the VEB Eichsfelder Bekleidungswerke Heiligenstadt and in the VEB Pirnetta ( Pirna ) , among others , and could be purchased at subsidized prices through the textile trade ("Organizational Requirements Division"). Entry into the FDJ usually took place at the age of 14, and the FDJ shirt was often presented in a solemn ceremony. Sometimes the handover also took place during the youth consecration .

In the early years of the GDR, joining the FDJ was often a voluntary decision, but from the end of the 1960s at the latest, membership of the FDJ became practically compulsory, at least if you were aiming for an educational career. The meaning of the blue shirt symbol changed accordingly. As evidence of a common conviction and voluntary commitment to a cause, the blue shirt was sometimes used in FDJ missions in the early GDR period (e.g. " Max needs water ") or combat clothes (e.g. " Aktion Ochsenkopf ").

At Pentecost 1950, the SED leadership organized, with intensive propaganda support, the Germany meeting of young people in East Berlin, at which more than 500,000 young people from all over the GDR were brought to Berlin, where they demonstrated and marched in FDJ shirts. The originally aggressive gesture was softened in the preparation, from the slogan “FDJ storms Berlin” became “FDJ greets Berlin”, but the Allies perceived the event as a threat to the status of Berlin . The LIFE Magazine compared the FDJ staging the Pentecost meeting in a photo spread with the marches of the Hitler Youth , and found despite differences - the "HJ is tighter and uniform uniformed as the FDJ and the Red roared wore blue instead of brown shirts, and friendship instead of victory salvation ”- similarities firmly.

After the wall was built in August 1961, there was growing resistance among the FDJ members to mobilize more and more members' meetings, demonstrations, combat missions and "voluntary" reports to the NVA . This resistance manifested itself, among other things, in the refusal to wear the blue shirt in public, which was repeatedly demanded, as the "visible symbol of loyalty to the SED regime". As a reason for not wearing it, FDJ members raised fashionable and hygienic objections during discussions, stating that the blue shirt was no longer modern and one could not put it on repeatedly in the summer heat. Also, by constantly wearing blue shirts, the reputation of friends and colleagues is in danger.

At the 1973 World Festival , which the party leadership around Honecker used to display superficial liberalization, the FDJ shirt with jeans and buttons of western origin could also be worn, which would have led to debates or official reprimands a few years earlier.

In the 1980s, especially in the wake of economic stagnation and the rejection of glasnost and perestroika by the party leadership, disillusionment set in. As a sign of conformity or simply as unfashionable or "uncool", the regular wearing of the FDJ shirt was particularly unpopular with many older FDJ members and was avoided if possible. A common minimum compromise instead of the required all-day wear was to take the FDJ shirt with you to the place of the official occasion in order to put it on for the ceremony and then take it off again as soon as possible. Sweaters were also worn over the FDJ shirt, and on the official occasion the blue collar could be shown over the neckline.

The last major public event with blue shirts was the FDJ's torchlight procession on the 40th anniversary of the GDR in Berlin on Friday, October 6, 1989.

In West Germany (1948–1989)

In connection with a referendum prepared by the FDJ in West Germany against Adenauer's rearmament , which was banned as unconstitutional by the federal government on April 24, 1951 , the state of North Rhine-Westphalia issued a ban on the West German FDJ on the same day. On June 26, 1951, the FDJ was completely banned throughout the Federal Republic . According to the leading StGB commentary by Tröndle / Fischer, "the use of the so-called FDJ shirt with a badge, i.e. the uniform shirt of the 'Free German Youth' banned in West Germany" - which looked like that in the GDR - fell under the ban the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations according to § 86a StGB , and its public wearing could and can be punished with imprisonment or a fine.

Even after German reunification, this ban still exists today. According to the Ministry of the Interior , however, it relates exclusively to the then independent FDJ in West Germany .

Time of transition and reunified Germany (since 1990)

In the course of the peaceful revolution and the end of the GDR , the FDJ practically dissolved: from more than two million members before 1989 to a few hundred members after 1990. The FDJ shirt was only visible to the public again in the wake of the Ostalgiewelle Katarina Witt 2003 in a blue shirt advertising for the RTL program she moderated “Die DDR-Show”, which led to a debate about downplaying tendencies of Ostalgie; Among other things, the CDU politician Günter Nooke called for legal action against the display of GDR symbols in the Ostalgie shows. In the 1980s, Witt had given several speeches in a blue shirt in the Volkskammer plenary hall in the Palace of the Republic , including one in 1985 at the XII. Parliament of the FDJ.

In 1998 the Public Prosecutor General of the Free State of Saxony instructed the Saxon State Criminal Police Office that police investigations must be carried out in any case of public use of the FDJ symbol, whereby the principle of proportionality must be observed. The license plates of the FDJ in West Germany, banned in 1951, and the GDR-FDJ are confusingly similar, and the ban on the FDJ in West Germany continues to apply. In 2010 a preliminary investigation was initiated against six participants in an Easter march in Leipzig who wore FDJ shirts for using symbols of unconstitutional organizations. All investigations were dropped because of the minor guilt and a lack of public interest in the persecution.

literature

  • Adelhaid Brandt: Lust or Frustration? 15 years of German unity. In: Dirk Fischer (Ed.): Transformation of the law in East and West. Festschrift for Prof. Dr. Herwig Roggemann on his 70th birthday. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-8305-1197-7 , pp. 371–384. (On the question of the continued ban on FDJ symbols after reunification)
  • Alan McDougall: Youth politics in East Germany. The Free German Youth Movement 1946–1968. Clarendon Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-927627-7 .
  • Alan L. Nothnagle: Building the East German myth. Historical mythology and youth propaganda in the German Democratic Republic, 1945–1989. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1999, ISBN 0-472-10946-4 .
  • Stefan Wolle : The FDJ's blue shirt. In: Martin Sabrow (Ed.): Memories of the GDR. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59045-0 , pp. 229-240.

Web links

Commons : FDJ shirts  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edith Baumann: History of the German youth movement. A presentation. Berlin 1947. (Quoted from: Alan L. Nothnagle: Building the East German myth. Ann Arbor 1999, p. 13.)
  2. ↑ a b Alan L. Nothnagle: Building the East German myth. Ann Arbor 1999, pp. 13-15.
  3. ↑ Stefan Wolle: The blue shirt of the FDJ . In: Memories of the GDR . Munich 2009, p. 233.
  4. ↑ Birgit Wolf: Language in the GDR. A dictionary. De Gruyter, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-11-016427-2 , p. 62.
  5. ↑ Stefan Wolle: The blue shirt of the FDJ . In: Memories of the GDR . Munich 2009, p. 231.
  6. ↑ Michael Lemke: The counter games World Youth Festival and FDJ Germany meeting in the system competition . In: Heiner Timmermann (Ed.): The GDR in Europe: between isolation and opening . LIT Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8884-3 , pp. 452-505.
  7. ^ Reds in Berlin Do Not Choose to Fight. In: LIFE of June 12, 1950, pp. 29-31.
  8. ^ Alan McDougall: Youth politics in East Germany. Oxford 2004, pp. 143-144.
  9. ↑ Thomas Fischer (Ed.): Criminal Code and Ancillary Laws , 50th edition. Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47121-8 , § 86a, Rn. 3. (StGB commentary by Tröndle / Fischer)
  10. ↑ Adelhaid Brandt: Lust or Frustration? 15 years of German unity. In: Dirk Fischer (Ed.): Transformation of the law in East and West. Berlin 2006, pp. 379-382.
  11. ^ Anthony Enns: The politics of Ostalgie: post-socialist nostalgia in recent German film. In: Screen , Vol. 48, No. 4 (2007), pp. 475-491, doi : 10.1093 / screen / hjm049 .
  12. ↑ Ralph Kotsch: Katarina and the FDJ. In: Berliner Zeitung . September 26, 2003, accessed July 10, 2015 .
  13. ^ Correction . In: taz of March 12, 2011.
  14. ↑ Katharina Witt in a blue shirt at the XII. Parliament of the FDJ (TV recording from 1985)
  15. ↑ request of the PDS Group, printed matter no 3/1598. In the Saxon State Parliament, April 14, 2000.
  16. ↑ Small question by Member of Parliament Klaus Bartl, printed matter No. 5/2501 in the Saxon State Parliament, May 19, 2010.