Solidarity Committee of the GDR

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Logo of the Solidarity Committee of the GDR

The GDR Solidarity Committee was a social organization in the GDR that coordinated the various development aid activities in the GDR. Their work served the economic development of the countries of the Third World and the implementation of the GDR foreign policy. The committee was directly dependent on the Central Committee of the SED , but was a legally independent organization within the League for Friendship of Nations of the GDR and was not subject to the government's right to issue instructions. It coordinated actions by other social organizations.

aims

The Solidarity Committee helped peoples in their struggle against imperialism , colonialism and neo-colonialism . The Cold War was about supporting pro- socialist and anti- western people, movements and states.

organization

Since there was no ministry for development aid in the GDR, state aid measures were initiated by resolutions of the Council of Ministers and the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the SED. The help and support was provided by the mass organizations and increasingly by the Solidarity Committee of the GDR. It was founded on July 22nd, 1960 in East Berlin as a solidarity committee for Africa . From 1964 to 1973 it expanded its sphere of activity as the Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee . The GDR Solidarity Committee included a. an Africa / Asia division, a Vietnam Committee since 1965 and a Chile Center since 1973 . On October 6, 1990, Solidarity Service International e. V. founded. The largest solidarity projects in the GDR were taken over by the Federal Republic after reunification and gradually transferred to the respective states in the course of the 1990s. The legal successor to the Solidarity Committee was the Solidaritätsdienst International e. V. (SODI).

working area

The activities of the Solidarity Committee focused on the coordination and financing of development cooperation measures with countries and movements in the Third World , for example through the construction of vocational training centers, water supply systems or the coordination of donation campaigns by the GDR population. Were supported liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, political prisoners as Luis Corvalan , Angela Davis and Nelson Mandela and persecuted by the Pinochet -Regimes in Chile as well as the Victims of Apartheid -Regimes in southern Africa.

Between 1950 (before the founding of the committee) and 1990, 200,000 citizens from developing countries were also staying in the GDR for vocational training or further education - financed by the Solidarity Committee since 1960. The committee also covered the costs of hospital stays for wounded fighters from the liberation movements in the GDR.

Finances

The Solidarity Committee of the GDR was financed by donations from the population, which came together on a voluntary basis and collected in a solidarity fund through collective donation campaigns in companies, from which no one could escape without sanctions. Between 1970 and 1978, the GDR raised 1.4 billion marks . In 1980 more than 300 million marks were acquired. The main source of income was the collections of the FDGB . The members of the FDGB pay a solidarity contribution in addition to their contribution. If you wanted to refuse these officially voluntary contributions, you had to reckon with professional disadvantages.

Offices

Memberships

  • 1974 Associate Member of the Organization for Afro-Asiatic People's Solidarity (AAPSO)

literature

  • Achim Reichardt : Never forget. Practice solidarity! Berlin: Kai Homilius Verlag, 2006. (autobiographical)
  • André Albrecht: The institutional legacy of GDR development policy. What remained of the solidarity committee and the international educational institutions, in: Thomas Kunze and Thomas Vogel (eds.): Ostalgie international. Memories of the GDR from Nicaragua to Vietnam , Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2010, pp. 166–177.
  • Torben Gülstorff: Trade follows Hallstein? German activities in the Central African region of the Second Scramble . Berlin 2016.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Answer of the Federal Government to the small question of the MP Konrad Weiß (Berlin) and the group BÜNDNIS 90 / DIE GRÜNEN. Printed matter 12/649, June 17, 1991, p. 1, accessed on February 5, 2014.
  2. ↑ Peter Stobinski: Nicaragua was important to us. On the history of the solidarity of the GDR population, in: Erika Harzer and Willi Volks (eds.), Aufbruch nach Nicaragua. German-German solidarity in system competition , Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag, 2008, pp. 62–68, here: 64.
  3. ^ A b c d Achim Reichardt: The international solidarity work of the GDR. Lecture at an event of the magazine for socialism and peace "open-siv" on October 10, 2009, accessed on February 5, 2014.
  4. ^ André Albrecht: The institutional legacy of the GDR development policy. What remained of the solidarity committee and the international educational institutions in: Thomas Kunze and Thomas Vogel (eds.): Ostalgie international. Memories of the GDR from Nicaragua to Vietnam , Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2010, pp. 166–177, here: 166.
  5. ^ Meyers Universallexikon, Volume 4, VEB Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1980, 1st edition, p. 118
  6. ↑ Thomas Kunze and Thomas Vogel (eds.): Ostalgie international. Memories of the GDR from Nicaragua to Vietnam , Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2010.
  7. ^ André Albrecht: The institutional legacy of the GDR development policy. What remained of the solidarity committee and the international educational institutions, in: Thomas Kunze and Thomas Vogel (eds.): Ostalgie international. Memories of the GDR from Nicaragua to Vietnam , Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2010, pp. 166–177, here: 167.
  8. ↑ Georg Brunner (Ed.): The inner and outer situation of the GDR, 1982, ISBN 3-428-05283-8 , online
  9. ↑ Too much heart. The state alone determines who is allowed to go abroad as a GDR development worker - private actions are not permitted. In: Der Spiegel of September 26, 1977, accessed on February 5, 2014.