East Germany and the Frontiers of Power

Introduction 11contradiction in terms.⁵² It is also a conscious move away from the top-downCold War histories which have dominated this topic, certainly until recently.⁵³But everyday Cold War history does not have to be about inconsequentialities.National division was felt very deeply, as the rupture of emotional ties to family,neighbourhood, and Heimat. These issues mattered intensely to contemporariesin the Cold War, and they should matter to historians. Moreover, people powerwas crucial in bringing down the Wall in 1989 and, as I shall argue, in forcingits erection in 1961.UNDER EASTERN EYES: POPULAR OPINIONIN A CLOSED SOCIETYWedon’tknowmuchabouttheEastGermansreally,youknow.Wegetodd bits here and there, but on the whole they’re something of a mystery.John le Carré, Call for the Dead (1961)This more inclusive view of Cold War history necessarily raises its own methodologicalproblems. In 1989 it was easy to read the demonstrators’ banners, aswas fleetingly possible during the insurrection of 1953, when GDR politics tookto the streets. During the long interim, however, East Germans engaged in thevenerable practice of Maul halten or ‘keeping stumm’, for fear of being ‘put onthe black list’ as one student put it.⁵⁴ What is more, as with the Third Reich,the historian of East Germany is faced with a regime consciously attempting tofabricate and manipulate public opinion. There were none of the conventionaloutlets of a ‘public sphere’—a free press, associational autonomy, or intellectualdebate—through which an alternative to the official voice could be heard, at leastnot until the final months. This is, undoubtedly, a problem, but as Ian Kershawhas shown for Nazi Germany, it is possible to reconstitute some of the ‘popularopinion’ which persisted beyond the regime’s official rhetoric, however impressionisticthis might be.⁵⁵ It is now almost de rigueur to write about ‘ordinaryGermans’ in the Third Reich.⁵⁶ Cold War historiography has been generally slow⁵² Alf Lüdtke (ed.), The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Waysof Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1995).⁵³ See the following chapter for an overview.⁵⁴ SED-ZK (PO), ‘Information’ Nr. 29, 10 Mar. 1961, SAPMO-BArch, DY30/IV2/5/294,fo. 227.⁵⁵ Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933–1945(Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 4–10.⁵⁶ Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust(London: Little, Brown & Co., 1996); Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion inNazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).