History of the SED (outline)

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History of the SED, demolition cover, from 1978

The book History of the SED (Abriß) is a book about the history of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany , published in 1978 by the SED's own Dietz publishing house in Berlin . The book was written by a collective of authors, Gerhard Roßmann as director, as well as Ernst Diehl , Wolfgang Arlt, Günter Benser , Helene Fiedler, Heinz Gambke, Heinz Heitzer , Frank-Joachim Herrmann , Helga Kanzig, Hans-Joachim Krusch , Günter Möschner, Wilfriede Otto , Karl Reißig, Rolf Stöckigt, Eckhard Trümpler and Walter Wimmer belonged. The demolition was confirmed by a commission from the Politburo of the SED Central Committee , which consisted of Erich Honecker (chairman), Hermann Axen , Friedrich Ebert , Gerhard Grüneberg , Kurt Hager , Werner Jarowinsky , Werner Lamberz , Günter Mittag , Albert Norden and Paul Verner . The book was used for a time in history and civics classes at schools in the GDR .

content

In the history of the SED (demolition) the development of the German labor movement from the first workers' associations in the 19th century to the IX. SED party congress 1976 traced from the perspective of the party. A lot of space is given to the development from the formation of the party in 1945/46. The book begins when the labor movement began to gain strength under the ideological leadership of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the middle of the 19th century , and the first chapter goes about the split from the SPD to the founding of the KPD. The second chapter begins in 1945 and is primarily devoted to the establishment of the SED . The other chapters deal with the initial phase of "building socialist society" in the GDR . Only the last two chapters assume a “developed socialist society” from 1971 and are devoted, for example, to the “struggle for greater efficiency in the national economy” and the “transition to socialist economic integration”.

The title component "Abriss" referred to the fact that the volume was understood as an anticipated short version of the history of the SED in four volumes to be worked out by a similarly composed collective of authors . Of this major project, however, only the first volume appeared ( Von den Anfang bis 1917 , Dietz Verlag 1988).

construction

The book is divided into twelve chapters with several small sub-chapters.

  • Chapter 1: The Socialist Unity Party of Germany - emerged from the struggle of the revolutionary German workers' movement
  • Chapter 2: The unification of KPD and SPD to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. The beginning of the anti-fascist-democratic upheaval (1945/1946)
  • Chapter 3: The SED - the leading force in the anti-fascist-democratic reconstruction (1946-1948)
  • Chapter 4: The SED and the continuation of the anti-fascist-democratic upheaval (1948/1949)
  • Chapter 5: The establishment of the German Democratic Republic. The beginning of the socialist transformation under the leadership of the SED (1949-1952)
  • Chapter 6: The SED - Organizer of Building the Foundations of Socialism (1952-1955)
  • Chapter 7: The SED and the Further Building of the Foundations of Socialism (1955-1958)
  • Chapter 8: The SED's Struggle for the Victory of Socialist Production Relations in the GDR (1958-1961)
  • Chapter 9: The SED and the Comprehensive Building of Socialism (1961-1965)
  • Chapter 10: The SED and the Further Establishment of Socialist Society (1966-1970)
  • Chapter 11: The Struggle of the SED to Shape the Developed Socialist Society in the GDR (1971-1975)
  • Chapter 12: The IX. Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany

Critical rating

The book presents the story from a very one-sided point of view. Current politics of the GDR was projected into the story in order to present this politics to the population as necessary and meaningful. The propagated historical image of the SED, the historical science controlled by the party, as well as the historical culture officially represented by the SED are part of the legitimizing interpretation of history customary in the GDR. The SED secretly formulated desired research results. Then the “facts were straightened out, the sources selected” in order to make the “given goal appear as the result of the research”. Weber qualifies the demolition as "unspeakable". In some passages, the outline “fell short of the standard” of the eight-volume history of the German workers' movement , the last volumes of which were published in 1966 with the collaboration of Walter Ulbricht . While this one read of “mass reprisals” under Stalin, the outline only mentioned a hidden personality cult, the Stalinist crimes were not mentioned. The establishment of the SED and the role of Stalin were presented in a distorted manner. There was hardly anything to be read about Stalin. Thus reported on the statute of the SED from 1950 without mentioning the sentence contained therein that the SED “let itself be guided in its activities by the theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin”. Walter Ulbricht was mentioned in the outline for the first time since he "disappeared from the party history of the SED" in 1971. However, its importance for the SED was insufficiently presented.

expenditure

  • History of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (outline). Dietz Verlag Berlin 1978.
Licensed edition for the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin: Verlag Marxistische Blätter, Frankfurt am Main 1978. ISBN 3-88012-529-5

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Hermann Weber : The GDR 1945-1990. P. 171 in the Google book search, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2006, ISBN 3-4865-7928-2
  2. ^ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: Between Pros and Cons: The history of the division of Germany in the current judgment of former SED historians. , Review of H-Soz-u-Kult from the Humboldt University of Berlin , 2000
  3. ^ History of the German Labor Movement, Vol. 6-8 (May 1945 to early 1963). Edited by Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED , Berlin (East) 1966.

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