RIP to the German Democratic Republic
In my opinion it was a People’s Democracy, not perfect or “the best” I think but it was a socialist state first and foremost with its benefits and yet it still suffered from Soviet rigidity and hegemonism but I think each of the people’s democracies in Eastern Europe could’ve been better yet I think it had many validity and should not be pushed as “evil communist dictatorship” nor a “socialist paradise” there’s a lot of nuance that’s missing. It really did “rise from the ruins” despite its troubles.
true Germany
Best attempt at Germany so far.
The only German state deserved its existence. It should’ve annexed its American puppet counterpart instead.
The only good Germany ever
It wasn’t perfect but the best Germany to date.
An incredible project which came to an end far too soon.
There are so many better holidays we could have here but of course annexation day has to be the “national holiday”.
It has the best German anthem.
If someone ever asks me to sing the German anthem, I’ll just sing that one.
AUFERSTANDEN AUS RUINEN
Certified banger.
Anyone know why they chose a compass and wheat? Were they trying to be distinct from the Soviet Union?
Wheat = farmers
Hammer = workers
Compass = intelligentsia
It’s a funny story actually. At first the DDR had no official symbol and just used the tricolour German flag in use today. At first they just used Red Army seals for documents, since the administration was overseen by the Red Army. Then they hastily made seals for IDs and passports, which futured just the hammer in a circle, and then later added the wheat, but no one really liked it, as it looked very unofficial. In 1953, as they started establishing a real government autonomous from the Soviet occupation force, they needed to use seals to sign new laws. So someone modified the existing seal and added the compass, to make it more official-looking. In 1955, they needed to make more seals for signing government documents, so they used the one from 1953 as a blueprint. And eventually in 1960 they decided it was actually a pretty good emblem, so they put it on the flag. Which made West Germany immediately pass laws banning its display anywhere.
The wheat is a near-universal element of socialist state seals. As for the compass, I would like to know as well.
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East germans used to work in West Germany and get social benefits in the east- that was a major reason for the wall to the be built as well.
There was a ridiculous low number of deaths due to trying to jump the wall so to say- especially compared to the border walls of the west nowdays.
Your first paragraph is mostly myth. I know enough East Germans who told me that the Stasi never bothered them and they never knew anybody personally who was bothered by the Stasi. Travelling to Western countries was a pain, but it wasn’t impossible at all. Many people would go on vacations from East to West Germany.
As far as repression, even liberal estimates guess that the number of “victims” was around 300 000 in a country with a population of 20 million. That’s 1 in 1000 people. And what qualifies as a “victim” usually ranges from being questioned to being imprisoned wrongfully. There’s very few documented cases of torture and execution (about 5000) for holding the wrong opinions, and all of these are in the early years of the state (1950-1960), at the onset of the Cold War and the paranoia that it involved. In a country that still had Nazis in hiding and heavy presence of Western spies, I’d say that’s a pretty good outcome.
The label of being an “authoritarian/totalitarian regime” mostly stems from having a one-party rule. But that’s a very simplistic and very liberal view of the DDR. In many ways it was a lot more democratic than most countries today. People had a lot of say in the governance of the country.
As an example: in the 1970s, the DDR established a system where any citizen could write a letter to any government official (all the way to the top) stating a complaint, request or suggestion. The office it was addressed to was required by law to a) do their outmost to fulfill the request, fix the complaint or examine the suggestion, and b) respond back within 4 weeks with a detailed report on what steps they took, what the outcome would be and if the answer was negative why exactly they failed or couldn’t complete the desired outcome. Then a committee would collect all the data from these letters and make them public (how many were sent, how many were fulfilled and to what degree). This wasn’t just a theoretical system. It is estimated that 2/3 of all DDR households had sent such a letter and about 70% of them received a positive outcome.
was very repressive and used torture to crush dissent.
To expand on this, the post unification West German government ran a politically motivated enquiry into the crimes of the SED, criminally charged 30,000 former employees, and found no evidence of torture being used by the Stasi.
From Stasi State or Socialist Paradise by de la Motte and Green, page 111.
very repressive and used torture to crush dissent.
I thought that was the BND? It’s also crazy how many West Germans have Stasi trauma without ever having set foot in the East.
And were people actually shot for trying to leave or is that another reactionary myth?
East Germany suffered a lot of emigration due to economic sanctions (they couldn’t trade with most of the world due to west germany’s lobbying and many of the people leaving where formerly expelled people from east and central Europe and therefore had no roots in the east, where housing was very much in shortage.)
So if everyone who wanted to leave got shot, then there would be millions of dead germans recorded. Of course crossing a militarized border as a propaganda act to receive a more cushy life in the west (West Germany exalted defectors like South Korea today) would result in oneself getting shot.
I would like to know as well. I haven’t read it yet, so I wonder if the answer is in “Stasi State or Socialist Paradise?”
A quick skim of the relevant sections doesn’t talk about border guards, but does note that hundreds of thousands of DD citizens were permitted to emigrate to the west after the construction of the wall, and hundreds of thousands more travelled as tourists in the west every year. Border restrictions were also maintained on the part of western countries vis a vis the socialist nations, with the immigration authorities of West Germany taking special pride in picking and choosing which entry visa applications to approve and which to deny.
I know enough people who experienced it. Thank god it no longer exists anymore. The present state isn’t great, but it’s much better than what they went through.
I also know a lot of people who experienced it and they are mostly positive about it. Most of them born between 1940-1960, so they experienced its entire existence.
How much property do they own now? Germans I’ve spoken to in real life all prefer the GDR to today’s Germany. Oh, and were they by chance even from East Germany?
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I mean OK, some do, but those are also often those aligned with fascism
lol
Citation needed.
Tell me you don’t understand the rise of fascism in (especially east) Germany without telling me you don’t understand it. Look at the AfD demonstrations, and all the DDR-paraphernalia people bring there. Look at the interviews with the people there, what a number of them say. Yes, there are plenty of people there who are against the DDR as well, but an astonishing number of them want it back. Hell, AfD leaders have been leading chants of the DDR anthem recently.
No. I barely have the emotional bandwidth for this and I’m on the wrong device for a long form comment but let’s give it a try.
East Germans got fucked by annexation. For a long time PDS/Die Linke did well in the former DDR states, but they never stood a chance at national power since capitalist West Germany cannot tolerate socialism. And why would you vote for the same party for over a generation when they never get into power and nothing improves for you anyway? The “mainstream” parties were the people who looted the East and ignore their material struggles while being very condescending, so they have almost no support. Then come the AfD, an opportunist party of fascist grifters no doubt, but one which saw the struggles and frustration of East Germans and spoke to them. Not at them, not down to them, but to them. They don’t have solutions but they at least speak to the situation of the East, and thus they have developed a base of support.
So yes, the AfD grifters pretend to have Natalie and wave DDR flags to get votes, and many people who really have Ostalgie and may have voted Left ten or twenty years ago now vote AfD, because their material conditions have put them in a really shitty place.
If you’re interested in learning more about the DDR and the fall of socialism in Europe I can recommend the books “Stasi State or Socialist Paradise” and “Blackshirts and Reds”.
In general equating the DDR with fascism and the Nazi state is a tired old capitalist propaganda trope which unfortunately far too many people still believe even though it is a complete logical fallacy. There are plenty of resources on Lemmygrad to completely annihilate that concept.
East Germans got fucked by annexation.
Not quite that one-sided. Yes there were plenty of cases where the west had their noses in the air. At the same time, for example, the west poured a large amount of money into rebuilding and bringing the east back up to the modern standards - see the Solidaritätszuschlag.
Also, interesting how you first try to discredit the idea that there is any overlap between people wanting the DDR back and fascist supporters, and then suddenly have a whole bunch of excuses as to why those people there support fascists.
Not the person you responded to but:
At the same time, for example, the west poured a large amount of money into rebuilding and bringing the east back up to the modern standards - see the Solidaritätszuschlag.
Rebuilding what? West Germans poured money into making banks. That’s it. They closed down or sold off (and then mostly closed down or downscaled) all publicly owned industry. East German unemployment is double that of the West German unemployment. They privatized state-owned homes, then let them dilapitate or raised the rents to extraordinary levels. The life of the average East German was much better in 1988 than it is now, by any metric: access to services (education, healthcare, etc), buying power, coloric intake, life expectancy, employment, happiness, housing, vacation time, etc.
They didn’t pour money to “modernize” East Germany. They gave money to industrialists, bankers and politicians to perform capitalist shock therapy on the East Germans. The results were massive profits for a few West German and the impoverisation of the entirety of East Germany
suddenly have a whole bunch of excuses as to why those people there support fascists.
Those are not excuses. Those are reasons. I don’t like them either, but doesn’t make it less true.
but they usually don’t want the GDR back as a whole because of all the negative aspects.
Negative aspects like?
Negative aspects were basically not enough treats. Thats what everyone mentioned. Or like Sparkasse employees (german bank) not getting enough respect lol
It was the upper section of the Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs pyramid that the GDR failed at.
Also what fascism?
Liberal education blames communism for not “educating” East Germans in the practices of democracy and insinuates they instinctively seek out strongman populist leaders because its familiar to them. Nowadays a pinch of orientalism is added and states that since unlike the West where “Americans taught Germans Democracy” the East under evvul ruzzians never managed to ingratiate “democratic values” in their society.
They’re saying that AfD support in the East today means the DDR was fascist. Obviously this is an absurd suggestion.
Exactly
Uh, that’s quite the misrepresentation of what I wrote.
know enough people? what were the conditions? You’re bullshitting.
Lol I’m not bullshitting. Poverty. Restrictions on freedom of expression that make Germany’s current problems in that department look like nothing. Didn’t even have enough access to toilet paper at times, and we’re not talking about a pandemic or anything like that.
how old are these people you know?
Ya know, there’s a saying in Russia: “the younger is the blogger, the harsher was their life in USSR”, I think the same may go for DDR as well
The most aggressively anti-communist people from formerly socialist countries whom I know or am familiar with were all born in the 1990s.
boris borisov, b. 1950: i loved the ussr it was amazing
vladimir vladimirov, b. 1987: i hate the ussr it was the worst time in my life
