Culture and information center

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A culture and information center (KIZ) (often called: House of Friendship of the GDR ) was a means of foreign policy for the German Democratic Republic to strengthen the position of the GDR internationally through cultural and educational work and to find allies. They were only subordinate to the Society for Cultural Connections with Foreign Countries , which was incorporated into the League for Friendship of Nations (LfV) from 1961 . The KIZ can be compared with the Goethe Institutes in the Federal Republic (since 1952).

Socialist states

Polish Information and Culture Center in Leipzig (1969)

The first KIZ in the 1950s were intended to counter the weakening of the Eastern Bloc . The first opened in 1956 in Prague , a year later the second in Warsaw , in Hungary and Bulgaria , as early as 1963 on the Black Sea coast. The break with fascism in the GDR was pointed out so that Bonn could be charged . There was hardly any other contact with the population. One means were always larger “complex actions” on important anniversaries. The work of the KIZ was reported on Czechoslovak television. The KIZ offered quizzes, essay and knowledge competitions, joint appearances by artists from both countries, and a DEFA film week.

Conversely, KIZs of these countries were also opened in the GDR, by Poland in 1969 in Leipzig. The text on the photo at the time read: “The friendly People's Republic of Poland in Leipzig has an attractive information and cultural center. This house of Polish culture, which was opened to the public on February 5, 1969, will attract visitors and guests, especially during the time of the trade fair. ”After 1980, it unintentionally became the carrier of the ideas of Solidarnosc . The CSSR's cultural center was only located at the Friedrichstrasse train station before it moved to the newly built CSSR embassy in East Berlin in 1979 . Wolf Biermann performed there in 1968 and a German-language newspaper sympathizing with the Prague Spring was available. Bulgaria was also represented in Berlin from 1962 (until today); Hungary's cultural center had a new house at Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 9 since 1973, where a travel agency for Hungary was also based. A House of Soviet Science and Culture did not follow until 1984.

The Kafka conference in Liblice in 1963 worried the cultural-political functionaries of the GDR as to whether the ostracism of this author could continue. When the troops marched into Prague to crush the Prague Spring in 1968, the KIZ there met the open discontent in the environment, the partners no longer showed a Marxist-Leninist stand, the deputy reported. Ladder. But a year later the KIZ were made into the “main instruments of foreign information work” in the socialist countries, and in 1969 another one opened in Krakow . In the course of West German Ostpolitik at the beginning of the 1970s, the focus was more on the GDR's propagated "peace policy".

Scandinavia

Postage stamp for the Baltic Sea Week 1962

In 1960, a “GDR cultural center” was opened in Helsinki , followed by a KIZ in Stockholm in 1967. Beethoven concerts or readings on Heinrich Mann were combined with political lectures. “It has to be shown how the classic legacy of German culture is cultivated in the GDR - in contrast to West Germany.” The successes were considered modest in Finland and better in Sweden. In the early 1970s, the KIZ carried out the work of left-wing "recognition committees" in the northern states with the slogan "Baltic Sea - Sea of ​​Peace". Peace propaganda was considered the best means of soliciting recognition in the capitalist states. Paul Wandel , chairman of the League for Friendship of Peoples , said at the opening in Stockholm in 1967: “With the existence of the GDR cultural center in Stockholm, [the] task of unifying peoples and serving peace is to be continued. We believe that there will also be other profitable opportunities for connection that are important for maintaining a lasting peace in the Baltic Sea area in terms of working together. ”The friendship society Sweden-GDR played an important role in this .

Africa and Middle East

In relation to the young non-aligned states in Africa and the Middle East, the GDR relied on the GDR's " anti-imperialist solidarity". Basically, the Eastern bloc followed a uniform line there, to promote socialism and the planned economy , the GDR tried on top of that to establish diplomatic relations, which in the 1960s led to the breakdown of relations with Bonn. In 1965 Walter Ulbricht was received in Cairo and in the same year the KIZ opened in Cairo as the House of Friendship of the GDR , two years later a branch in Alexandria . The opening of the KIZ in Damascus took place in 1966, and Baghdad followed in 1968 . There was also a KIZ in Khartoum , Ghana and Tanzania , first in Zanzibar and later in Dar es Salaam . There were offers with information on the education system or the "multi-party system" of the GDR, in order to target the military and other government executives. Most of all it was successful on Zanzibar, which was looking for proximity to the Soviet Union . The KIZ trained party, trade union, youth and women officials. DEFA films such as “For the right of peoples to self-determination” supplemented lectures and discussions. The target groups were "trained and trained in order to gain mass influence in their countries in the first phase of development, to build up mass organizations and to take on the leading role in a second phase". Peter Sebald , honorary delegate of the German-African Society in Tanzania since 1961 and later director of the KIZ there, described this in retrospect in 1993. The way was also sought through German lessons through a lecturer , which was often the door opener in the States.

With the Six-Day War in 1967 there was the chance to show the solidarity of the GDR towards the Arab states by "exposing" the alleged neocolonialism of the Federal Republic. The wages for the “diplomatic fireworks for the Arab states” had already been reached in 1969 when ten Arab and African states diplomatically recognized the GDR .

Even after the wave of recognition in 1972/73, the KIZ continued to exist in order to support the propaganda work. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Ministry for State Security abused the staff of many GDR cultural centers as unofficial employees who “were supposed to monitor the GDR collective abroad or collect information about the host country”.

France

Cultural center of the GDR in Paris until 1990 (Photo: 2010)

The GDR cultural center Paris had existed in the French capital since 1983 .

The French cultural center in Berlin, Unter den Linden 37, also called Center culturel français , opened on January 27, 1984. It was a concession by the GDR to the French demands for the 1980 cultural agreement . The main task was to provide information about France and the West. Attempts to restrict free access to newspapers and magazines in the library have failed.

literature

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ^ Hermann Wentker : Foreign policy within narrow limits: The GDR in the international system 1949-1989. Publications on SBZ / GDR research in the Institute for Contemporary History . Walter de Gruyter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-70738-0 ( google.de [accessed on July 27, 2020]).
  2. ^ Josephine Evens: The image cultivation of the culture and information centers of the GDR abroad until international recognition 1972/73 | bpb. bpb, April 13, 2015, accessed on July 27, 2020 .
  3. ^ Daniel Logemann: An island? The Polish Information and Culture Center in Leipzig (1969-1989) Daniel Logemann . In: Journal of Modern European History . tape 8 , no. 2 , 2010, p. 243-265 , doi : 10.17104 / 1611-8944_2010_2_243 .
  4. ^ "Bazillus" Solidarność: Solidarity with Poland. Retrieved July 28, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Stefan Wolle: The Missed Revolt: The GDR and the Year 1968 | bpb. Retrieved July 29, 2020 .
  6. ↑ About us - Bulgarian Cultural Institute - Berlin. Retrieved on July 29, 2020 (German).
  7. ↑ Berlin: Entrance from the House of Hungarian Culture / IBUSZ travel agency in Berlin, the former capital of the GDR, German Democratic Republic. Retrieved July 29, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Jan Gerber : Class and Ethnicity. Franz Kafka's return to Prague . In: Arndt Engelhardt, Susanne Zepp (Hrsg.): Language, knowledge and meaning. German in the Jewish culture of knowledge . Leipzig 2015, ISBN 978-3-86583-830-8 , pp. 221-243 .
  9. ^ Josephine Evens: The image cultivation of the culture and information centers . In: Heiner Timmermann (Ed.): A memory for memory: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and its relevance for future generations . LIT Verlag Münster, 2016, ISBN 978-3-643-13054-9 , pp. 207 ( google.de [accessed on July 29, 2020]).
  10. ↑ Plan to strengthen the political, cultural and international information work of the GDR in the people's democratic countries in Europe, League for Friendship between Nations, Protocol No. 7 of the Politburo meeting at the Central Committee of the SED on February 25, 1964
  11. ↑ Olivia Griese: Foreign cultural policy and the Cold War: the competition between the Federal Republic and GDR in Finland 1949-1973 . Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-447-05365-5 ( google.de [accessed on July 28, 2020]).
  12. ↑ Speech by Dr. Paul Wandel on the opening of the GDR cultural center in Stockholm, quoted from note 2
  13. ^ * Nils Abraham: The political foreign work of the GDR in Sweden . LIT, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-0268-4 , pp. 554 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  14. ^ Sibylle Reime: The activity of the GDR in the non-communist countries, VIII .: Black Africa . Bonn 1972, p. 112 .
  15. ↑ Peter Sebald: Friendship between nations or foreign information. Impressions of the work of the German-African Society . In: Ulrich van der Heyden / Ilona and Hans-Georg Schleicher (eds.): The GDR and Africa. Between class struggle and new thinking . LIT, Münster 1993, p. 79-94, 84 .
  16. ^ The GDR and Africa: Between Class Struggle and New Thinking . In: Ulrich van der Heyden, Ilona Schleicher, Hans-Georg Schleicher (eds.): The International Journal of African Historical Studies . tape 28 , no. 1 , 1995, ISSN  0361-7882 , p. 209 , doi : 10.2307 / 221339 .
  17. ↑ Alexander Troche: Ulbricht and the Third World, East Berlin's "struggle" against the Bonn "sole agency presumption" . Palm and Enke, Erlangen and Jena 1996, ISBN 978-3-7896-0352-5 .
  18. ↑ https://www.dsvm.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/Schweden__die_Stasi_und_die_DDR.pdf