Conscience in turmoil (book)
Gewissen in Aufruhr is an autobiographical book written by Rudolf Petershagen and published in the GDR in 1957, covering the years 1942 to 1955. It served as a template for the GDR television series of the same name from 1961.
content
The report begins in 1942 with the events of the Battle of Stalingrad , in which the then 41-year-old Rudolf Petershagen took part as colonel and commander of Greifswald's 92nd Panzer Grenadier Regiment. This is followed by a detailed description of the handover of Greifswald without a fight by Petershagen, who has meanwhile been appointed as the site elder, to the Red Army and the subsequent 3-year Soviet captivity. Most of the space is taken up by Petershagen's 4-year prison term in Munich , Landsberg and Straubing . The report ends with Peterhagen's appointment as an honorary citizen the city of Greifswald on October 19, 1955.
pads
It was first published in 1957 by Verlag der Nation (VdN for short). This was the party publisher of the National Democratic Party of Germany , founded in East Berlin in 1948 , whose district chairman was Petershagen. For the next three decades, a new edition was published almost every year, the last 23rd edition being published in 1988.
Appreciation
From the 12th edition (1966), the book and the convictions of Rudolf Petershagen were honored with an appended afterword by Joachim Mai from the Historical Institute of the University of Greifswald :
"R. Petershagen has consistently continued on the path that his conscience dictated. He remained indomitable during the four years imprisonment in West Germany, testifying that he had become a patriot of the new Germany, the German Democratic Republic.
In contrast, the former high officers of the Hitler Army who were imprisoned as war criminals in Landsberg proved incapable of learning from the past; they oriented themselves towards the imperialism that had resurrected in the West German Federal Republic. Their experiences and conclusions are reflected in that flood of memoirs, which amount to a glorification of the fascist war campaigns and the rehabilitation of the Hitler generality.
In contrast to this, R. Petershagen explains in detail, vividly and openly the difficulties under which he freed himself from the fetters of his imperialist environment; As a man from the bourgeoisie, he is an excellent example of coming to terms with the past. “Conscience in turmoil” makes the complicated process of rethinking many Germans who are involved in the construction of socialism in the German Democratic Republic understandable. Thus Rudolf Petershagen's "Conscience in Turmoil" is a valuable source of German history. "
filming
Conscience in Riot was filmed as a five-part miniseries by DEFA for GDR television in 1961 with Erwin Geschonneck in the lead role. For their participation in this film, Rudolf Petershagen and his wife Angelika Petershagen were awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver in 1961.
literature
- Conscience in turmoil . Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1957, 23rd edition 1988, ISBN 3-373-00221-4 .
- Matthias Schubert: The surrender of Greifswald without a fight on April 30, 1945, pp. 69–80: Memories of and by Paul Grams; in: Contemporary History Regional, Volume 19, Issue 2, December 2015, editor Geschichtswerkstatt Rostock eV