Inside Party Headquarters: Organizational Culture and Practice of Rule in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany 9781805390497

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Diagrams, Figures, and Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1. Between the KPD and the CPSU (1945–49)
Chapter 2. The Arduous Road to Power: The Central Committee Apparatus in the Decade of Building Socialism (1950–59)
Chapter 3. The Apparatus as a Communication Space
Chapter 4. A Brake on Reforms? The Apparatus in the Late Ulbricht Era (1960–70)
Chapter 5. “The MfS Only Comes Up to Our Chest”? The Central Committee Apparatus and State Security
Chapter 6. “In the General Staff of the Party”: The Honecker Apparatus (1971–85)
Chapter 7. “Funding Loyalty”?
Chapter 8. Decaying Authority and Self-Dissolution: The Apparatus in the “Final Crisis”
Conclusion. The Assimilated “Superstate”
Interviews Cited
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

INSIDE PARTY HEADQUARTERS

Inside Party Headquarters Organizational Culture and Practice of Rule in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany

Rüdiger Bergien Translated by David Burnett

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2023 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com English-language edition © 2023 Berghahn Books German-language edition © 2017 Christoph Links Verlag GmbH, Berlin Originally published in German as Im “Generalstab der Partei”. Organisationskultur und Herrschaftspraxis in der SED-Zentrale (1946–1989) The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International—Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT, and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers and Booksellers Association). All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bergien, Rüdiger, author. Title: Inside Party Headquarters: Organizational Culture and Practice of Rule in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany / Rüdiger Bergien; translated by David Burnett. Other titles: Im “Generalstab der Partei.” English Description: New York: Berghahn Books, 2023. | Originally published in German as Im “Generalstab der Partei.” Organisationskultur und Herrschaftspraxis in der SED-Zentrale (1946–1989). Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023016593 (print) | LCCN 2023016594 (ebook) | ISBN 9781805390480 (hardback) | ISBN 9781805390497 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands—History. | Political party organization— Germany (East) | Communism—Germany (East) | Germany (East)—Politics and government. Classification: LCC JN3971.5.A98 S65 2023 (print) | LCC JN3971.5.A98 (ebook) | DDC 324.243/075—dc23/eng/20230508 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023016593 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023016594 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80539-048-0 hardback ISBN 978-1-80539-049-7 ebook https://doi.org/10.3167/9781805390480

Contents

List of Diagrams, Figures, and Tables

vi

Acknowledgments

ix

List of Abbreviations

xi

Introduction

1

Chapter 1. Between the KPD and the CPSU (1945–49)

39

Chapter 2. The Arduous Road to Power: The Central Committee Apparatus in the Decade of Building Socialism (1950–59)

76

Chapter 3. The Apparatus as a Communication Space

129

Chapter 4. A Brake on Reforms? The Apparatus in the Late Ulbricht Era (1960–70)

165

Chapter 5. “The MfS Only Comes Up to Our Chest”? The Central Committee Apparatus and State Security

227

Chapter 6. “In the General Staff of the Party”: The Honecker Apparatus (1971–85)

265

Chapter 7. “Funding Loyalty”?

326

Chapter 8. Decaying Authority and Self-Dissolution: The Apparatus in the “Final Crisis”

362

Conclusion. The Assimilated “Superstate”

412

Interviews Cited

425

Bibliography

429

Index

465

Diagrams, Figures, and Tables

Diagrams Diagram 2.1. Party organization of the Central Committee of the SED—recruitment and attrition, 1952–55.

93

Diagram 2.2. Average age of political employees and departmental heads in the Central Committee, 1946–59.

97

Diagram 2.3. Political past of Central Committee employees, 1946–59.

99

Diagram 4.1. Membership development of the Party organization of the Central Committee, 1956–70.

184

Diagram 4.2. Recruitment and attrition in the Central Committee Party organization, 1952–70.

188

Diagram 6.1. Average age of political employees and departmental heads in the Central Committee apparatus, 1946–89.

281

Diagram 6.2. “Political origins” of political employees of the Central Committee, 1979–88.

285

Diagram 7.1. Income development of Central Committee employees, 1950–84.

339

Figures Figure 1.1. Party headquarters from 1946 to 1959: The “House of Unity,” today Torstrasse 1. Source: SAPMO-BArch, Bild Y 1/56/11358.

47

Figure 2.1. Already a minority in the apparatus: “Old Communists” celebrating the fiftieth birthday of Central Committee departmental head Karl Raab (first row, fifth from left), 1956. Source: SAPMO-BArch, Bild Y 10/185800.

98

Figure 4.1. Headquarters of power, symbol of Party rule: As part of the festivities for the twentieth anniversary of the SED on April 19, 1966, Young Pioneers enter the “Big House” for the official congratulations. Source: ddrbildarchiv.de/Heinz Schönfeld.

177

diagrams, figures, and tables

| vii

Figure 5.1. “A genuine Party worker” heading the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues: Wolfgang Herger (left) visits the NVA’s motorized rifle regiment in Stahnsdorf together with the GDR’s minster of national defense, Heinz Kessler, on August 30, 1987. Source: ddrbildarchiv.de.

239

Figure 6.1. A rare photo document of the “general staff of the Party.” On September 29, 1979, the departmental heads of the Central Committee line up before their General Secretary in the meeting room of the Politbüro. The original caption of the unpublished photo reads: “Erich Honecker bestows the 30th Anniversary Medal on the departmental heads of the Central Committee . . . Fritz Müller gives thanks on behalf of the other departmental heads.” Note the almost military posture of Müller and Honecker. Source: SAPMO-BArch, Bild Y 1/1722.

291

Figure 6.2. “You never knew what was up”: Office of Günter Mittag at Central Committee headquarters, photo taken in 1997 in its state as a protected historical monument. Source: ullstein bild 00381252.

297

Figure 7.1. The General Secretary as patron: Gisela Glende, director of the Office of the Politbüro, receives the Karl Marx Medal (1985). Source: BArch, Bild 183/1985–1030–0022.

342

Figure 8.1. Demonstrators outside the Central Committee building, November 7, 1989. Source: BStU, MfS, BV Bln, Fo 1014, Bild 0131.

387

Tables Table 1.1. Age structure of political employees of the Central Secretariat apparatus, 1946 and 1950.

45

Table 1.2. Departments of the Central Secretariat of the SED, May 1946.

50

Table 2.1. Departments of the Central Committee of the SED in early 1953.

82

Table 2.2. Age structure of political employees in the Central Committee, 1950–59.

95

Table 4.1. Employees in Central Committee departments as of April 30, 1968.

186

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| diagrams, figures, and tables

Table 4.2. Age structure of political employees in the Central Committee, 1959–70.

189

Table 6.1. Departments of the Central Committee of the SED in December 1988.

268

Table 6.2. Age structure of political employees in the Central Committee, 1970–89.

283

Table 7.1. Development of the SED’s main revenues in millions of marks, 1959–88.

331

Table 7.2. Development of the SED’s main expenditures in millions of marks, 1959–88.

334

Acknowledgments

This book owes a lot to the ideas, the encouragement, the questions and doubts of others—much more than I could ever hope to give back. At this point I can only point out the intellectual and emotional “debts,” and thereby express my gratitude. My thanks go out first of all to Jens Gieseke, who conceived the framework project of a social history of the SED and who urged me along with my research on the central Party apparatus by posing ever new questions. The author and the present study owe far more to my discussions with him than all the many footnotes could ever reveal. I would also like to thank Martin Sabrow, the director of the Center for Contemporary History (ZZF) in Potsdam, for his manifold support, as well as for enabling me to submit the present study to Humboldt University in Berlin as my postdoctoral thesis. I owe special thanks to him as well as to Thomas Mergel and Ralph Jessen for their expert and thought-provoking evaluation reports, which greatly benefited the final version of this book. I fondly recall the many conversations with my two project colleagues, Andrea Bahr and Sabine Pannen. Without their input, their ideas and the sources they suggested to me, this work would have lacked in depth. But I would also like to thank them both for the friendly solidarity of our “Party group” at the ZZF as well as for their sense of humor—a real asset when it comes to buoying the spirit while sifting through mounds of Party records utterly devoid of content and swallowing yet another rejected interview request. But, of course, many men and women graciously accepted the offer to be interviewed for this study. Without them this book would not exist. It is no mean feat to open up to a young West German—whose aims and intentions may have seemed unclear—about things that happened a quarter of a century or more in the past. Their good will is remarkable. It was important to me to always be respectful of the life experiences and the candor showed by my conversation partners, whatever our differences in historical interpretation. I hope I have succeeded in this aim. The Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship not only supported the printing of this book but also provided me with a three-year scholarship. My cordial thanks to them for this. The prosopographical study underlying the deliberations here on staff development of the Central Committee apparatus relies in large part on the work of my former student assistants, Annette Wolf and Sophia Müller. It was they who spent countless hours researching and compiling more than 1,700 career biographies. The employees at the SAPMO archive and the team at the reading room of the Federal

x

| acknowledgments

Archives in Berlin-Lichterfelde were unflagging in their support. But I also owe a great deal to the commitment of Petra Moritz and Tino Rückheim at the BStU in Berlin. Both of them repeatedly investigated files for me in search of something that initially seemed unlikely to have left any trace in MfS records at all. Armin Wagner generously provided me with his collection of sources on the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues. Martin Lutz gave most of the manuscript a critical and insightful reading. Angela Strauss was a constant presence from the very beginning, through highs and lows, supporting me in every respect. My debt to her is the greatest, and it’s to her that I dedicate this book. The translation of this work, first published in German, was funded by the “Geisteswissenschaften International” program of the Börsenverein des deutschen Buchhandels. I would like to extend my thanks to the Börsenverein for its generous support. But above all I would like to thank my translator, David Burnett, for his outstanding work, combining a unique sensitivity to language with a profound knowledge of the GDR, its historical actors, their particular thought patterns and sometimes peculiar modes of expression. This work could not have found a better translator. I am also extremely grateful to the team at Berghahn for their professionalism and patience. It has been a great pleasure to work with them. Rüdiger Bergien Berlin, June 2023

Abbreviations

ADN

Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst (East German state news agency)

BND

Bundesnachrichtendienst (West German Federal Intelligence Service)

BStU

Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic)

CDU

Christlich Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Union)

CPSU

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

DEFA

Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (East German state-owned film studio)

DHZ

Deutsche Handelszentrale (German Trade Center)

DKP

Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (German Communist Party)

EDP

Electronic data processing

FDGB

Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (Free German Trade Union Federation)

FDJ

Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth)

FRG

Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland)

GDR

German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republic)

Genex

Geschenkdienst- und Kleinexporte GmbH (mail-order service)

GHI

Geheime Hauptinformatoren (secret main informer)

GI

Geheimer Informator (secret informer)

GM

Geheimer Mitarbeiter (secret collaborator)

GmbH

Gesellschaft mit begrenzter Haftung (limited liability company)

xii

| abbreviations

GMS

Gesellschaftlicher Mitarbeiter für Sicherheit (social collaborator for security)

GVS

Geheime Verschlusssache (secret classified document)

HA

Hauptabteilung des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit (Main Department of the Ministry for State Security)

HA PS

Hauptabteilung Personenschutz (Main Department for Personal Security)

HfÖ

Hochschule für Ökonomie (College of Economics)

HV A

Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (Main Directorate for Reconnaissance)

IKW

Inhaber einer für konspirative Zwecke des MfS genutzten Wohnung (owner of an apartment used for conspiratorial purposes of the MfS)

IM

Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter des MfS (unofficial collaborator of the MfS)

IMK

Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter zur Sicherung der Konspiration (unofficial collaborator for securing conspiracy)

IMS

Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter zur Sicherung eines Objekts oder Bereichs (unofficial collaborator for securing a facility or area)

KJVD

Kommunistischer Jugendverband Deutschlands (Young Communist League of Germany)

KoKo

Bereich Kommerzielle Koordinierung (Commercial Coordination Sector)

KSČ

Komunistická strana Československa (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia)

KPD

Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany)

KPÖ

Kommunistische Partei Österreichs (Communist Party of Austria)

LDP

Liberaldemokratische Partei (Liberal Democratic Party)

LHA

Landeshauptarchiv (Central State Archive)

LOPM

Leitende Organe der Partei und der Massenorganisationen (Executive Organs of the Party and Mass Organizations)

abbreviations

| xiii

LPG

Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft (agricultural cooperative, aka collective farm)

MfS

Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Ministry for State Security, aka State Security or the “Stasi”)

NES

New Economic System of Planning and Management (Neues Ökonomisches System der Planung und Leitung)

NKVD

Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennikh del (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs)

NSDAP

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, aka the Nazi Party)

NSW

Nicht-Sozialistisches Wirtschaftsgebiet (Nonsocialist Economic Area)

OibE

Offizier im besonderen Einsatz (officer on special assignment)

OPK

Operative Personenkontrolle (operational identity check)

OV

Operativer Vorgang (operational case)

PDS

Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (Party of Democratic Socialism)

RF

Republikflucht (fleeing from the GDR)

RIAS

Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor (Radio in the American Sector [of West Berlin])

SA

Sturmabteilung (Nazi storm troopers, aka “Brown Shirts”)

SAJ

Sozialistische Arbeiterjugend (Socialist Worker Youth)

SAPMO-BArch

Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (Foundation Archive of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR in the German Federal Archives)

SED

Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, i.e., the ruling communist party of East Germany)

SEW

Sozialistische Einheitspartei Westberlins (Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin)

SMAD

Sowjetische Militäradministration in Deutschland (Soviet Military Administration in Germany)

SOV

Sonderoperativvorgang (special operational case)

xiv

| abbreviations

SPD

Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany)

VEB

Volkseigener Betrieb (People’s Own Enterprise, i.e., state-owned company in the GDR)

VEG

Volkseigenes Gut (People’s Own Farm, i.e., state-owned farm)

VOB

Vereinigung Organisationseigener Betriebe (Association of Organization-Owned Enterprises)

VVB

Vereinigung Volkseigener Betriebe (Association of People’s Own Enterprises)

VVS

Vertrauliche Verschlusssache (confidential classified document)

ZAIG

Zentrale Auswertungs- und Informationsgruppe (Central Evaluation and Information Group)

Zentrag

Zentrale Druckerei-, Einkaufs- und Revisionsgesellschaft mbH (Central Printing, Purchasing and Auditing Company)

ZPKK

Zentrale Parteikontrollkommission (Central Party Control Commission)

ZRK

Zentrale Revisionskommission (Central Auditing Commission)

Introduction Walter Rädel should have chosen another table when he entered Hopfenstube restaurant on Berlin’s Karl-Marx-Allee on the evening of July 5, 1972. At least one of the men at the table where he took a seat in the fully occupied dining area was already very drunk.1 Perhaps this customer felt that Rädel looked too young—he was twentyeight years old—to be wearing a suit with a Party badge pinned to the lapel. At any rate he wouldn’t stop badgering Rädel, calling him a “fish-head” (pejorative slang for a northern German) and saying he couldn’t stand him. Finally he attacked him straight on, pointing to Rädel’s Party badge and claiming that “this fellow earns his money in his sleep, that is to say for eavesdropping on others.” Presumably he even had a tape recorder with him, the man continued. Rädel fired back—and overshot the mark. He whipped out his “ID card identifying him as an employee of the Central Committee of the SED,” and explained that as a departmental head in the Central Committee he earned 2,500 marks a month. That was a lot of money, but “even this much was justified, since his work could never be compared, for example, with the work of the man he was talking to right now.” As an employee of the Central Committee he had to “always be ready for action” and had a lot to do abroad, making clear to anyone listening that Rädel took his adversary for a production worker, whose job was less important. And as if that weren’t enough, Rädel explained to the baffled group of men at the table that there were “surely many big earners [in the GDR] whose high incomes”—unlike in his case!—“weren’t justified, e.g., physicians, artists, and others, who were in for a big surprise, because extensive measures would soon be taken to deal with them.”2 It was Rädel’s misfortune that after this altercation a friendly gentleman asked him where exactly he worked in the Central Committee apparatus. The man turned out to be from State Security, and so a report on Rädel’s “behavior detrimental to the Party” (parteischädigendes Verhalten) and his “misunderstanding the Party’s social policy” landed on the desk of Erich Mielke’s first deputy, Bruno Beater, from which it was passed on to the Central Committee of the SED. It is easy to picture what happened next: self-criticism in the basic organization of his department3 and “severe reprimand” as a disciplinary measure of the Party. And yet Rädel wasn’t fired. He was able to bask in his knowledge of being part of the machinery of state power till the fall of 1989.

2 | inside party headquarters

It is tempting to read this episode as yet another proof of the arrogance of the powerful in the GDR. Presumably this is precisely how a good many customers at Hopfenstube restaurant perceived the scene on that August evening of 1972. But another aspect is even more important. Rädel, in this instance, did not conform to the roles ascribed by contemporaries and historians to the functionaries of a communist state party. He did not present himself as a “hard-bitten ideologue”4—none of the comments he reportedly made that evening made any reference to ideology. He did not turn out be a “cold” and power-hungry “apparatchik,” nor “pig-faced” and “malicious” like the functionary portrayed in a key scene of Eugen Ruge’s successful novel In Times of Fading Light.5 Rather, Rädel allowed himself to be provoked and seemed almost helpless in his efforts to convince the other restaurant-goers of how important he was. Rädel—and this is the hypothesis of this study—revealed certain tendencies that many of his comrades must have shared. He was ambitious, defined himself by his salary, was even proud to have worked his way to the center of power. He also set great store in differentiating himself from those East Germans who in his opinion were beneath him. These attitudes evinced by Rädel were something not only typical of SED functionaries, however. Many East Germans in Rädel’s age group and with his level of education held views like his. A perspective of the Central Committee apparatus that primarily depicts it as a power structure, an “arcnum of power,” can easily blind us to the interfaces between Party headquarters and East German society as well as to the motives, expectations and mentalities of functionaries like Rädel—all factors crucial to an understanding of how Party rule in the GDR worked. This study therefore adopts a different perspective. It offers a history of this organization tracing its embeddedness in East German society and making clear that its structure, inner workings and political power were impacted by developments in society and not just vice versa.

The Myth of the “Power Machine” A social history of the SED power apparatus has yet to be written. In previous research on the GDR, the SED as the state party has either been completely neglected or largely reduced to its role as a power structure. The SED was considered a “transmission belt” that conveyed the will of the Party leadership to the masses “down below.” Rarely did anyone bear in mind that it represented a social space, that it satisfied the need for a meaningful life and served as the employer of thousands of East Germans. In many areas of life, the SED was a part of East German society rather than a distant, higher authority.6 GDR studies has long tended to take at face value the images propagated by the SED itself: its supposedly strict hierarchy, its proclaimed efficiency and the discipline of its organization were presented, sight unseen, as social reality. The tendency of historians to make the self-representation of the SED the basis of their own analyses is particularly evident with regard to three aspects. First, with

introduction

|3

respect to the “mono-organizational design” of the state-socialist institutional order:7 In keeping with its claim to omnipotence and overriding authority, the Party and its apparatus seemed to overarch and permeate state and society; Party and state were virtually one.8 Second, the image of Party apparatuses offered in the literature is marked by the assumption that their employees were largely homogeneous. Even in more recent studies, Party employees mostly appear as an amorphous, anonymous mass rather than as subjects with their own unique experiences, expectations and interests.9 Third, much of the research to date has portrayed the communist Party apparatus as an organ of power that effectively and mechanically transmitted the resolutions of Party leaders, implementing them at the lower levels of society. Particularly in state socialism’s phase of stagnation, it suppressed “with crippling perfection any impulse . . . that opposes or could oppose the prevailing line.”10 Granted, this image of the Party apparatus as a homogeneous power machine was never undisputed in the literature. Anglo-American Sovietology, in particular, depicted a very different reality early on, the Soviet Union of the 1920s and 1930s being rampant with corruption and disorganization11 and the Brezhnev era being marked by ideological depletion of the functionary corps and a kind of gray sector or “shadow politics” operating below the official political process.12 Ever since its early stages, the socialist project was commonly accused of being stuck in bureaucratic routine.13 The accusation was leveled by critics within the Party’s own ranks, sometimes even by Party leaders.14 Trotzky’s allegation that the bureaucratization of the Bolshevik Party (under Stalin’s orders) had betrayed the revolution served as the reference point here for decades.15 Yet even such differentiated, revisionist perspectives are based on a binary interpretation of socialist societies, locating the apparatuses in the “arcanum of power” as opposed to “society.” These works tarnished the notion of the unity and uniformity of communist parties, aiming to expose the truth beneath the surface. They assumed, however, that in the end these apparatuses always succeeded in securing Party rule by repressive means—even if these means became less efficient over time. Thus, they left in the dark the inner workings of these organs of power as well as the everyday enforcement of power and Party rule. To get an understanding of these “basic operations” of apparatus rule and the mentalities of its employees, the abovementioned shift in perspective is required, examining more closely the entanglements of Party apparatus, state and society. This can also help explain how a communist dictatorship functioned beyond its self-representations.

Hypotheses and Key Questions This shift in perspective with a view to the central SED party apparatus will proceed here by way of three guiding questions, each of which begins with a hypothesis. The first hypothesis is that the SED central party apparatus should not be understood as an “arcanum of SED rule” distinct and separate from East German society.16 The apparatus was part of East German society and was impacted by its transformation.

4 | inside party headquarters

This hypothesis does not exclude the possibility that the organizational culture of Party headquarters had elements rooted in Stalinism. Nor does it deny that Central Committee employees such as Walter Rädel, the man who boasted about his salary, tended to be perceived as “bigwigs” rather than as part of “working-class” society. Conversely, however, it does not imply per se that an apparatus culture17 rooted in the Soviet Union of the 1920s had a formative influence on the patterns of behavior in SED headquarters during the 1970s and 1980s. This aspect shall be explored in this study. Likewise, the tensions between “ordinary” East German citizens and employees of Party headquarters do not automatically make the latter members of a “New Class” or, as Stephen Kotkin puts it, an “uncivil society.”18 The tensions might just as well be proof that, despite their belonging to a political elite or “political class,” Central Committee employees were socially embedded enough to be able to have run-ins at restaurants. In the words of one former Central Committee departmental head, “We lived, after all, in prefab housing”—that is to say, like ordinary East Germans.19 Proceeding from this hypothesis, the present study traces the organizational development of the SED’s central apparatus in its social relations. “Organizational development” is understood here in a twofold way. First, the development of the apparatus’s formal structures: its organization into departments, working groups and commissions, its staff numbers, work rules and decision-making processes. Second, the creation of informal social orders and patterns of behavior attendant to this increasing formalization—in other words, the “inner workings” of the Central Committee apparatus, which forms an important part of what is understood here under “organizational culture.”20 The second hypothesis proceeds on the assumption that Central Committee employees tended to reflect the diversity of East German society rather than building a homogeneous New Class.21 This hypothesis too does not rule out that the sociobiographical profiles of Central Committee employees showed indications of “class formation.” It likewise does not contradict the finding that the group known as “Party workers”—people who forged their careers largely within the FDJ and the SED apparatus—had a formative influence on Party headquarters. And yet this is far from being a reason to take the self-image of the Party—the supposed unity and uniformity of its functionaries—at its word, even less so considering that the communist party apparatus followed a basic tendency of organizational behavior in its development: functional differentiation.22 In this respect, the present study will investigate how deep this differentiation went and whether it enhanced or hindered the effectiveness of the Central Committee and its political power. This perspective leads to a third area of investigation which has always played a crucial role in communist and GDR studies: the question of how power and domination are exercised and stabilized under Party dictatorship. How important, in other words, was the Party apparatus in the SED system of rule? The initial hypothesis is that Party rule cannot be perceived as something static, not even after the completion of “building socialism” and/or the construction of the Wall. Rather, Party rule

introduction

|5

is understood here as a dynamic set of relationships between individuals, groups and institutions. A further assumption is that the forms these relationships took continuously transformed depending on the political and social circumstances.23 This understanding of Party rule implies two premises with respect to the question of the Central Committee’s practice of governing. The first is that the formal structures, hierarchies and means of “guidance” were, to begin with, merely the Party’s self-descriptions, which need to be compared and contrasted with the concrete interactions between members of the Party and the state apparatus. Implicit to this question, moreover, is the fact that the “apparatus” metaphor is conceptually analogous to the terms organization (or administration) and machine,24 expressing in official communist discourse a “pronounced technocratic optimism” that cannot be taken at face value.25 In its singular usage the metaphor suggests the image of unity and uniformity, which says a lot about the communist “world of meaning,”26 but little or nothing about the organization it referred to and nothing at all about the self-image of Central Committee employees. The latter, according to Wolfgang Herger, head of the Department of Security Issues in the Central Committee of the SED during the 1980s, had a “downright aversion against the word ‘apparatchik.’”27 That being said, the question arises as to what extent the thirty to forty Central Committee departments and working groups, as of 1953, revealed any uniform patterns at all with regard to their practice of governing. Instead of universally speaking of the apparatus (which will often be the case in this study, following the linguistic habits of the sources), I will distinguish between five different groups of departments in an effort to reflect its multiplicity. These groups include: first, the “ideological departments” (Agitation and Propaganda, Culture, Education, and to a certain extent Science); second, the specialist departments (Agriculture, Health, Economic Policy); and, third, the functional departments (responsible for the overall work of the Party apparatus and for infrastructure: Party Organs, Cadre Issues, Administration of Economic Enterprises, Financial Administration, etc.). The fourth group includes the two international departments (International Relations and Foreign Information), whereas the fifth comprises the departments of the Western apparatus (Western Department, Transportation, Labor Office).28 One disadvantage of this conceptual differentiation is that it suggests a division between technical competence and ideology, whereas in reality, for example, the Central Committee’s economic departments were consistently implicated in “ideological struggle” and the work of the Central Committee’s cultural department could sometimes demand a good deal of expertise. The reasoning behind this differentiation is not, however, a simple juxtaposition of “ideologues” and “pragmatists.” Rather, it is rooted in the assumption that complex social systems (and communist party apparatuses were precisely that) develop in the course of their internal differentiation something referred to in organizational research as “local rationality.”29 The everyday, practical involvement of Central Committee employees in the production of ideology or, say, in foreign trade had a formative influence on their interpretations of

6 | inside party headquarters

reality and patterns of behavior. In the medium term, it could very well lead to varied mental profiles and habits within individual departments or working groups (largely independent of the extent to which their members could be defined as hardliners or pragmatists). Such differences, however, are the prerequisite to understanding the “deeper layers of rule” underneath the monochrome surface of Party headquarters.30

The Current State of Research An investigation of the organizational structure, staff and governing practices of the Central Committee apparatus builds on heterogeneous scholarship. The history of the SED state party is still an overlooked topic in the history of the GDR.31 The verdict pronounced nearly two decades ago that the fulltime SED apparatus, in particular, was essentially a “black box”32 still holds today. This is largely due to the fact that existing studies of the Party apparatus focus on the years of its founding and consolidation and especially on its structures. Insights into the inner life and “underbelly” of the apparatus are the rare exception. Studies on the social background and qualifications of its employees are lacking entirely. It is telling in this regard that the history of the Nazi Party had for decades been investigated only as the history of its organizational structures.33 It is also worth noting that the literature on the apparatuses of the other East-Central European communist state parties is no better in this regard than the literature on the SED.34 In many instances it is even worse. These analogous gaps in research show that dictatorial or state parties generally suffer from a lack of scholarly attention. Overarching or seemingly penetrating the state and society they inhabit, they themselves are often hard to pin down. This is especially true when it comes to their role as mass-membership and functionary parties.

Narrative Patterns in GDR Studies West German GDR studies initially operated under the paradigm of two opposing ideological systems. Its primary aim was to distance itself from developments in the Soviet Occupation Zone with the help of the theory of totalitarianism. Of course there were some attempts as early as the 1950s to investigate the relationship between Party rule and daily life35 and hence the question of how, at the level of practical politics, the SED implemented and consolidated its power. Carola Stern, Joachim Schultz, Hermann Weber and others explained the relative stability of the newly established party dictatorship by asserting, among other things, that the Party’s monopoly on competence was more than rhetorical pretense. This omnicompetence, in their view, had been implemented through organizational measures and cadre politics. And yet this generation of scholars was well aware that the ideological unity of SED functionaries had its limits. Reports in the 1950s from former functionaries such as Hermann Weber, Wolfgang Leonhard and Fritz Schenk, who had fled to the West with inside knowledge about the workings of Soviet-style communism, offered

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a welcome corrective (admittedly subjectively distorted) on the sources produced and published by the SED itself.36 With the erection of the Wall, these windows into the SED largely disappeared. The Party periodicals Einheit (Unity) and Neuer Weg (New Path) were now often the only access Western scholars had to what was happening at Party headquarters. Thus, Peter Christian Ludz’s 1968 study on the transformation of SED elites was largely based on the self-image of certain Party and functional elites in the GDR of the 1960s.37 With a view to Walter Ulbricht’s proclaimed “scientific-technical revolution,” Ludz postulated that a formally well qualified and technocratically minded cohort of Party and state functionaries would be promoted to high leadership positions, helping in the medium term to bring about a convergence of political systems. A new, technocratic, and pragmatically oriented cohort of functionaries did in fact occupy a range of leadership positions, but these individuals never questioned the primacy of Party rule in the GDR or even the primacy of Old Communists in the Politbüro.38 Accordingly, GDR studies in the 1970s and 1980s came to a conclusion that will also be discussed in this study: that the conflict between “ideologues” and “technocrats” was not as clearly pronounced among “second-tier” functionaries.39 With the Peaceful Revolution in the fall of 1989, public and scholarly interest was less focused on these lower-ranking SED functionaries. The spotlight was on the decision-makers and the “perpetrators,” on the Politbüro’s practice of rule40 as well as on the practice of repression and surveillance.41 It was also the first time that the practices of establishing and consolidating power, that the working methods of the Politbüro and the General Secretary could be reconstructed with the help of files. Monika Kaiser, Thomas Ammer and others offered detailed depictions of the organizational history and operating mechanisms of the SED at various levels. It was from this perspective that the Party apparatus was described for the first time in a systematic way.42 In these first attempts at a critical reappraisal of the GDR, interviews with contemporary witnesses were mostly conducted by journalists. The interviews were heavily influenced by the black-and-white perspectives of the early 1990s and generally limited to former members of the Politbüro and/or the Council of Ministers.43 Historians, on the other hand, focused heavily on the written records of the SED and state authorities. This promoted a tendency still evident today: the claims to power of the Party and the state are equated with political reality and the history of the SED with the political system of the GDR. Thus, the ideology of the ruling party forms the narrative core of Klaus Schroeder’s study of the SED state.44 Similarly, Sigrid Meuschel explicitly derives her hypothesis of the “withering away of society” in the GDR from the ideological policies of the SED (though, admittedly, she doesn’t lose sight of the limits of this Entdifferenzierung, or “homogenization” process45). The overview of the SED authored by Andreas Malycha and Peter Jochen Winters is largely just a political history of the GDR. Members and functionaries only make sporadic appearances.46 Malycha’s most recent monograph on the SED in the Honecker era likewise focuses on decision-making processes in the Politbüro. His conclusions with regard to the

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power center of the Party are highly instructive, but they seldom shed much light on the monolithic SED in the title of his book—at least if you understand it to mean more than a “state party with totalitarian claims to power.”47

History of the SED One narrative pattern of historiography of the 1990s was thus to conflate SED and GDR history. A second pattern was the relatively strong focus on the late 1940s and the 1950s. Compared with the latter decades of the GDR, these were considered the more eventful and exciting moments of its history. The political conditions of SED consolidation have therefore been researched rather well for the early postwar years. The aims of the Soviet occupiers are also for the most part well-established. The same goes for the political and economic development of the Soviet Occupation Zone, the social history of East Germany’s “quicksand society,” and not least of all for the process of restructuring state and society that began in 1948.48 Much more hard to grasp are the interactions between what Jan Foitzik has dubbed the “Bermuda Triangle of SED, administration and occupation forces,”49 notwithstanding a range of source editions having considerably improved our knowledge in this area.50 The asymmetric relationship between SED leaders and the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) has also been well described in the scholarship of the past quarter century.51 The role of the central party apparatus of the SED, the apparatus of the Central Secretariat, still remains obscure, however, in this web of relationships. Comparatively well-researched is the organizational history of the central KPD/ SED apparatus. A project of the Forschungsverbund SED-Staat (Research Association on the SED State) investigating the “structures, function and development of the central party apparatus of the KPD/SED” laid the foundations here.52 The work of Michael Kubina, in particular, on the one hand provides a framework from the perspective of organizational history for the apparatus in the years 1945 to 1946.53 On the other hand, it is an informative account of the secret and security apparatus of KPD/SED headquarters. Thomas Klein, too, looks at Party-internal “counterintelligence” between 1946 and 1948 in his monograph on the history of Party regulatory bodies. This refers to the collecting of compromising information about SED and (Western) KPD functionaries organized by the staffing-policy department of the Central Secretariat.54 This so-called counterintelligence was antecedent to and part of the recasting of the SED into a “party of a new type.” Andreas Malycha offers a comprehensive depiction of this reorganization in his seminal study on the “Stalinization” of the SED, with a focus on the regional and local levels.55 The inside reports of “renegades” Wolfgang Leonhard, Erich Gniffke, Hermann Weber and others shed light on how things worked within Party headquarters during the course of its Stalinization.56 An additional perspective is offered, in particular, by Michael F. Scholz’s study on the fate of former KPD émigrés to Scandinavia after their return to the Soviet Occupation Zone and/or the GDR. A whole range of these

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“Scandinavians” was employed in the Central Secretariat, some of them—Richard Gyptner, Paul Verner and Richard Stahlmann—in leadership positions.57 Scholz depicts the lives and experiences of these returning émigrés and, like Thomas Klein and Ulrich Mählert, also takes a closer look at the Party purges of 1950–51. As Western émigrés these “Scandinavians” were hit especially hard. An important foundation of the present study is Heike Amos’s examination of the politics and organization of SED headquarters. Amos focuses on the organizational history of the Politbüro, the Central Committee Secretariat, and the Central Committee apparatus between the years 1949 and 1963, and hence on the succession of newly founded, disbanded and consolidated departments.58 Her study is the first detailed reconstruction of this ostensibly chaotic phase of its history, rendering the “apparatus” more tangible as an organization and power structure. Though actors below the level of the Politbüro—i.e., Central Committee employees—hardly figure into her study and the political practice of Central Committee departments is only briefly discussed, it remains a valuable scholarly contribution. The present book likewise addresses a fundamental account of the 1960s: Monika Kaiser’s analysis of the power transition from Ulbricht to Honecker.59 Kaiser’s explicit aim was to offer a reassessment of the “old Ulbricht.” To this end she consistently interprets him as the pioneer and originator of the cultural, economic and foreignpolicy reforms and/or realignments that lent the GDR a semblance of optimism in the years immediately following the erection of the Wall. Following the investigation of Peter Christian Ludz,60 she distinguishes various groups within the Party leadership and defines them according to their position on Ulbricht’s policy of reform. She sees Erich Honecker at the forefront of the “counterreformers” and largely centers her account around the conflict between Ulbricht and Honecker. Kaiser’s study is notable for its strong hypothesis and clear narrative style. And yet both of these are achieved at the cost of simplifying a complex configuration, sometimes turning the Central Committee apparatus into what appears to be a uniformly operating collective actor that decisively backed Erich Honecker. She seems to agree with the contemporary witnesses she quotes who considered the apparatus—whose almost forty Central Committee departments she usually refers in the singular61—“incapable of thinking strategically or at least beyond its own purview.”62 From this perspective “it” carefully planned the removal of Ulbricht in order to continue governing “in dreary complacency.”63 It is probably asking too much of Kaiser to expect a differentiated analysis of different currents within the apparatus; the Central Committee departments, after all, only play a secondary role in her narrative, as Honecker’s power base. And yet this image of the apparatus as the main obstacle to reform has been readily adopted by a host of other historians.64 The fact that positions within the Central Committee apparatus were in fact vastly more complex is shown by André Steiner in his analysis of East German economic reforms of the 1960s. He contradicts the dictum of Party headquarters being anti-reformist per se, at least with a view to the Central Committee departments steering the economy.65

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The recent, aforementioned study of Andreas Malycha on the SED in the Honecker era is likewise commendable for offering a more nuanced picture of the 1970s and 1980s as opposed to the generally more monolithic image of Party headquarters during the reform decade of the 1960s. Malycha argues that Party leaders openly debated the economic policies of Honecker rather than blindly accepting them. In his view these policies were highly contentious from the 1970s on. In this light he points out the skepticism, critiques and—in the 1980s—out-and-out resignation in the Central Committee’s economic apparatus, singling out in particular the director of the Planning and Finance Department, Günter Ehrensperger. Malycha’s analysis makes plain that economic functionaries in the Central Committee were anything but the hidebound underlings of “economic dictator” Günter Mittag.66

Central Committee Departments as Political Actors One thing is certain: the Central Committee apparatus plays only a minor role in the most authoritative studies on SED history to date. Individual Central Committee departments, on the other hand, have indeed attracted the attention of scholars. The Department of Security Issues, for example, seemed to offer indications of how Party leaders leveraged their influence over the armed forces and the three ministries of security.67 The results were disappointing, however, since it turned out that this department in particular, subordinate as it was to influential Central Committee secretaries or the General Secretary himself, was an exceptionally weak actor, unable to politically steer (by way of the respective Party organizations) the ministries underneath it. This was true of its relationship to the Ministry of National Defense and especially its relationship to the Ministry for State Security (MfS).68 Even in the early 1960s, Minister of State Security Erich Mielke was able to get his way on important cadre issues when conflicts emerged with the Central Committee.69 In the Honecker era, when Mielke was not just a Politbüro member but also had a “hotline” to the General Secretary himself, the Ministry for State Security seemed wholly autonomous from the central Party apparatus. What’s more, there are indications that the Stasi even “skimmed off” the Party’s central apparatus. Andreas Malycha, at any rate, offers evidence that State Security even placed unofficial collaborators (IMs) in SED party headquarters,70 despite the fact that this actually contravened a strict “separation rule” decreed by the Politbüro Security Commission in 1954. But even if the Stasi was in a position to siphon off information from the Central Committee apparatus, it still remains an open question—one that this book will address in more detail—whether this gave it any real leverage. A complex picture of the relationship between State Security and the central Party apparatus is offered by Wilhelm Mensing in his study on the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation.71 The latter was responsible, among other things, for maintaining relations with West German comrades in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the German Communist Party (DKP). To this end it worked in close collaboration with the MFS—to be more precise, with Department II/19 of the MfS. Yet even

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though employees of Main Department II/19 had many serious reservations about leading functionaries in the Department of Transportation and their vulnerability to corruption, the Stasi was powerless against it. This finding is supported by the recent work of Heike Amos on the SED’s German policy.72 Like Jochen Staadt before her in his work on the “SED’s secret policy towards the West,”73 Amos elaborates on the overall “Western apparatus” of SED party headquarters. In addition to the Central Committee Department of Transportation, this included the Western Department, the Western Commission and the KPD Working Office, all organs concerned with influencing the politics and society of West Germany. The overall picture of the Western apparatus offered by Mensing, Staadt and Amos is a contradictory one. In some cases the departments acted as professional political consultants to Party leaders. Herbert Häber, director of the Western Department from 1973 to 1985, is a salient example. But the dominant trend for many years was for department members to view developments in West Germany from a strictly antiimperialist angle. At any rate, the Western Commission and Western Department succeeded in pushing through the relevant Party line in East German media. This was no mean feat if control of the media in the GDR is seen not so much as centrally enforced propaganda but as “political public relations work,” as described by Anke Fiedler.74 Fiedler comes to the conclusion that the Western Commission and Western Department as well as the Agitation Commission and Agitation Department were quite flexible in carrying out “political PR.” They relied more heavily on indirect influence than the image of the doctrinaire “Thursday Argus” from the late phase of the GDR—the respective Central Committee secretary Joachim Herrmann gathering the editors-in-chief of East German media to ensure they follow the latest policy line—would suggest.75 Fiedler’s term “political PR” is debatable, implying as it does that the practice of ideology transfer was comparable to political public relations in liberal democracies. But her study does offer a starting point for a nuanced analysis of political processes in general under state socialism. GDR studies, with its focus on political and cultural history, has likewise examined Central Committee departments from the perspective of cultural politics, a special case of ideological policy. East German cultural policy was by no means a foregone conclusion. Rather, as Siegfried Lokatis has shown in his study on the politics of publishing and literature during the 1950s and 1960s,76 it was the result of often conflict-ridden negotiation processes between the Central Committee departments for agitation and propaganda, central Party institutes, and state “censorship authorities.” Joachim Ackermann, in his study on the influence of the Party apparatus on the fine arts, comes to a similar conclusion for the Honecker era.77 Particularly insightful is American cultural historian Robert Darnton’s investigation of the impact of state censors on literature and society, in which the GDR figures as one of three case studies.78 Though Darnton might be overly general in his description of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture as an “ideological watchdog,” his analysis of the

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interaction between censorship and literary production establishes a range of factors that led to a controversial or “hot” book being printed in some cases and banned in others. This goes to show that political processes in the GDR were marked by a certain openness, at least below the strategic decision-making level of the Politbüro. Darnton’s thought-provoking work invites us to address the role of Central Committee departments as political actors in the political system of the GDR, just as the present volume intends to do.

The CPSU as a Comparative Case The abovementioned studies shed light on the activities of various departments—Security Issues, Transportation, Culture—in an isolated manner and in specific political contexts. They are therefore hardly in a position to come to any general conclusions about the thirty or forty some departments, commissions and working groups within the Central Committee. But what about the SED’s “brother parties” in Eastern and East-Central Europe? Has the literature on these parties come to any conclusions that might be applicable to the SED apparatus? Were developments there comparable? Only to a limited degree, unfortunately. The literature on the communist state parties of the other members of the Soviet bloc is generally lagging far behind comparable literature on the SED.79 An interview-based investigation of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) with a special focus on networks, patronage and corruption is one notable exception.80 Likewise informative is the work of Michel Christian, who undertakes a comparison of the membership policies and “Party life” in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) respectively, likewise discussing the activities of their Central Committee departments for “Party organs.”81 But there are no significant studies on the Party apparatuses of the remaining Soviet satellite states. Only the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) has been the subject of enough research to provide any insights for the present volume. Following the boom in Stalinist studies during the 1990s, interest has grown considerably in the two general secretaries Khrushchev and Brezhnev,82 with a focus on their respective political styles, including the mechanisms of exercising power through the central CPSU apparatus.83 Moreover, the Central Committee apparatus of the CPSU was constantly being reorganized in the 1950s, a process every bit as radical as the “organizational chaos” in SED party headquarters. This was due to an internal Party conflict dating back to the 1930s in the case of the CPSU. Some senior cadre in the CPSU saw the Party apparatus as a steering organization above the state and economy. Others wanted an apparatus that would act as a mobilizing organization and not get bogged down in administrative tasks.84 The same conflict was evident in the SED Party leadership. More recent work on the policies of Brezhnev have underscored his role as a “patron”85 who governed the Party apparatus mainly through personal ties and less through decision-making bodies and official channels of communication.86 This begs

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the question in the present study of whether and to what extent the political style of Erich Honecker was comparable to Brezhnev’s. To what degree were SED Party headquarters marked by informal ties and networks? Or is the research to date correct that the political culture of the GDR in this regard was fundamentally different from that of the late Soviet Union?87 Chapter 7 of the present study on the salary development of SED functionaries was largely inspired by the investigations of Eugenia Belova and Valery Lazarev on CPSU finances.88 The authors came to the conclusion that the postwar CPSU was, if nothing else, an economic empire. As such the CPSU was geared to generating funds that could be funneled to its own functionaries in the framework of a material incentive system. An even more important point of reference for the present study, however, is the work of Nikolay Mitrokhin. Mitrokhin is currently conducting an unusually comprehensive project on the Central Committee apparatus of the CPSU in the 1970s and 1980s based on extensive interviews with contemporary witnesses and archival research.89 The present study shares many aspects of his research approach, in particular the focus on personal biographies, career trajectories, and the experiences of apparatus employees. Only the source materials used are considerably different. Mitrokhin, for example, relies more heavily on interviews than the author of the present book. Whereas Mitrokhin managed to interview eighty former employees from all areas of the central CPSU apparatus, my work uses “only” twenty-six such individuals from the corresponding SED apparatus. Mitrokhin, on the other hand, does not have at his disposal any comparable written records like those of the former Stasi in the GDR. It seems that this different source material has led to different assessments of the two apparatuses, with more weight being attached in the present study to corruption and the apparatus’s political influence beyond its purely formal tasks than in Mitrokhin’s case. The former employees of the Central Committee of the SED interviewed in this study belong to a group that has hitherto been sidestepped in much of the research on the GDR to date. With the exception of the secretaries in SED regional and district leaderships, the “irrefutable fact that communist rule was rule by Party elites”90 is not reflected in the research on “socialist elites.”91 Studies on army92 and secret-police93 officers, socialist “management,” university instructors,94 doctors95 and engineers96 have resulted in an eclectic picture of the “socialist service class” including its recruiting mechanisms, its system of perks and, in the words of Peter Hübner, the “peculiar mixture of ideology and pragmatism” in political practice.97 Yet fulltime SED functionaries have scarcely been represented in this picture. The reasons for this blank spot in the research on elites under socialism can only be hinted at here. One factor was probably that fulltime SED employees (unlike, say, MfS employees) were not so easy to pigeonhole as “perpetrators.”98 Furthermore, their seemingly clear-cut role—enforcing the will of the Party in every situation— offered few indications of ambivalence or contradictions and hence little reason for scholars to investigate them. Finally, former senior employees of the SED Party apparatus showed little inclination to publish their memoirs after 1990—unlike those

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above them in the inner circle of power, the Politbüro, and very much in contrast to their counterparts in the CPSU, who published a wealth of autobiographical accounts after the downfall of the Soviet Union.99 Excluding the contributions in the two collections edited by Hans Modrow, Das grosse Haus (The Big House) and Das grosse Haus von aussen (The Big House from Outside)—cautiously self-critical accounts which generally attributed goodwill to the apparatus and its employees while denying that they had any real political influence—there are only three published memoirs by contemporary witnesses covering the decades after the Wall that mainly deal with the Central Committee apparatus. Carl-Heinz Janson, the former director of the Central Committee’s Department of Socialist Economic Management, settled scores with Günter Mittag, the “economic dictator” of the late GDR.100 Erich Fischer, former division head at the Central Committee’s Health Policy Department, took a critical look at corruption, arbitrariness and cronyism in the apparatus overall.101 And, finally, Manfred Uschner offers an unsparing account of the Honecker system in Zweite Etage (Level Two), probably the most well-known publication by a former Central Committee employee.102 Uschner, a former personal aid of Politbüro member Hermann Axen, describes the daily routines and “inner workings” of the Politbüro. All of these memoirs are highly revealing and, with the exception of Fischer’s rather cryptic “confessions,”103 are often cited in the literature. Of course two of these memoirs were written by Central Committee employees who were dismissed prior to 1989 (Uschner and Fischer), and the other by a Central Committee member who considered himself a failure (Janson). The result is a certain lopsidedness which scholars have not always sufficiently acknowledged. The approach of the present volume, creating a picture of Central Committee employees as a social group and a Party elite, can at any rate rely on several studies investigating Party functionaries in the provinces. Heinrich Best and Heinz Mestrup have reconstructed the social profiles and career paths of the first and second regional and district secretaries in the three administrative units of Thuringia. With a view to housing policy in the Leipzig region, Jay Rowell has investigated the significance of horizontal structures surrounding Party and state functionaries.104 Andrea Bahr has recently adopted this approach for her analysis of the practice of governing by the SED district leadership in Brandenburg an der Havel. According to Bahr, first district secretaries had to represent Party rule as well as being a “paternalistic troubleshooter.”105 Our current knowledge of employees in the SED Party apparatus is primarily based on the latter investigations of these regional and district “princes.” And yet these works do not address the “ordinary” political employees, not to mention the technical ones. For this reason, and because of their local- or regional-history perspectives, they offer only limited answers to the question of what to make of the fulltime employees of the SED as a whole. Did they form a collective whose members evinced a certain esprit de corps by dint of having gone through similar processes of socialization and identical educational institutions? Or should “Party workers” be thought of as a conglomerate of disparate subgroups having different influences

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and motivations?106 The assumption of a pronounced esprit de corps among “Party workers” seems to be supported by their homogeneous habitus often described in reminiscences,107 whereas the rapid dissolution of the fulltime SED apparatus in the fall of 1989 would seem to speak against it. It is true that, at first glance, the various heads of the Central Committee departments did nothing to stabilize the political system shortly before and during the crisis in late 1989. There was also no reform wing in the SED’s central Party bureaucracy like the kind that developed elsewhere in the Eastern bloc, most notably the CPSU itself.108 The Central Committee apparatus essentially stayed on the defensive during the peaceful revolution in the fall of 1989. Its members seemed to embody the state of shock that had seemingly gripped the entire party. This political inefficacy of the apparatus needs to be explained. It begs the question of whether in the late 1980s the Party apparatus was simply no longer in a position to manage a crisis or solve problems by repressive means. It would follow that, over the decades, the Party apparatus and its members had abandoned a characteristic feature of communism—the absolute will to power—and switched into “peacetime mode,” as it were. A “hot” organization had seemingly transformed into a “cold” one, whose members were more inclined to look for new jobs than make a “last stand” in November 1989. To what extent this view is accurate will be the focus of chapter 8 of this book.

Theoretical-Methodological Approach In research on the GDR to date, the SED’s Central Committee apparatus has played the role of a “known unknown.”109 Almost every study on the system of rule in the GDR makes reference to this apparatus and a (limited) number of departments, being deemed particularly important, have even been the subject of more detailed investigations, but the overall apparatus has yet to be examined as a political actor and a “social world” of its own. The present study does not aim to offer a comprehensive historical overview of the apparatus across the numerous policy fields in its purview—not just security, agitation and Western policy, but dozens more, from agriculture or “church issues” to its approach to the political opposition of the 1980s. The actions of Central Committee departments in each of these policy fields would all be well worth an investigation. The present study, however, endeavors to do no more than to try to better understand this utterly underexplored center of power which acted as the de facto central government of the German Democratic Republic, to grasp the “social world” of a governing body whose departmental heads (in ministerial positions, no less) are still not entirely known to us by name.110 The key questions outlined above shall serve as a guide in the process. Some additional explanations are due, however, as to how the topic is to be approached. This will be done in the following by outlining the theoreticalmethodological approach to this study.

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The Central Committee Apparatus as an Organization The present study is indebted to modern organizational sociology, whose concepts of power, networks, institutions and social practices111 have been increasingly adopted by historians in the last two decades.112 This can be seen, in particular, in the first of this study’s three guiding questions regarding the transformation of formal and informal structures in the Central Committee apparatus. The question turns upon two fundamental perspectives of research into organizations. The first of these concerns the transformation of organizations. It is an indisputable fact that organizations are designed to perpetuate certain—effective—procedures and behavioral patterns, i.e., to keep their own structures invariant in the face of a changing environment.113 But this changing environment—society, the economy, etc.—demands a certain flexibility from organizations with regard to their problem-solving capabilities; even maintaining the status quo requires internal structural changes. This was true of Communist Party apparatuses as well. That said, this study is not about showing that the apparatus changed over time (no organization can become entirely “sclerotic”). Rather, it intends to show the forms and consequences of this transformation. This means, for example, the changing behavioral patterns in “outposts” of the apparatus, of the instructors and “regional commissioners” whose job it was to represent Party headquarters and its agenda to the outside world but who increasingly showed themselves to be open towards the demands of this environment, e.g., of the territorial Party apparatus.114 It also means addressing the functional differentiation within the Central Committee apparatus, or what the literature often describes as the “chaotic” formation of ever-new specialized departments. The later, on the one hand, did in fact lead to increased efficiency—to offer one conclusion of this study in advance—and ultimately made the apparatus more effective. On the other hand, it naturally resulted in these departments growing ever farther apart in terms of their aims, mentality and habitus—in other words, they developed “local rationalities.” In this respect the key question is to what extent the central Party apparatus was able or forced to change in order to remain stable. Was its “failure” in the fall of 1989 an expression of its inability to learn and transform itself?115 The second perspective is the classic distinction between formal and informal organizations in sociological theory. The term formal organization is closely bound up with Max Weber’s ideal type of bureaucracy or, in the broader sense, to his concept of formal rationality.116 In older organizational research, the formal organization was linked, for example, to the orientation towards a common goal, written rules, and a hierarchical organization of offices based on a division of labor.117 A good deal of historical research is still openly or implicitly based on such an understanding of organizations.118 The “discovery of the informal organization” during the 1930s in the context of corporate studies resulted in the successive erosion of the rational model of organi-

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zation, at least in sociology.119 The countless “deviations from the classic ideal type of the formal organization120—the informal exchange of information (“office grapevine”), unofficial channels, informal hierarchies, expectations regarding the private lives of organization members, networks and routine infringement of the rules121— suddenly became apparent and were subsequently examined more closely by scholars. The present study hinges on Luhmann’s observation that “informal organization” is not an adverse derivative of formal organization. Informal structural formations and behaviors are in his view inevitable consequences of formalization.122 In doing so he frees the formal organization from the “rationality myths” of older organizational research and understands them as the formalization of expectations placed on members of the organization.123 Following this perspective, the present study will do more than merely note that a highly formalized communist-party apparatus is characterized by something like networks, violations of the rules, etc. Rather, it will ask to what extent minor or major infractions of the rules prevented the apparatus—or possibly even enabled it—to attain the objectives set by Party leaders. The aim is thus to show the relationship between the formal and informal “organization of the Central Committee apparatus” as well as how this relationship changed over time as Party rule was consolidated. This interaction between the formal and informal aspects of an organization can be understood in terms of “organizational culture,” because the latter is generally understood to be more than a “set of fundamental, internalized convictions of organization members.” Organizational culture also entails the specific characteristics of a concrete organization that clearly differentiate it from other organizations,124 the relationship, for example, between the organization’s informal and formal structures.125 The question of the transformation of formal and informal structures is therefore also a question of the organizational culture existing in Party headquarters.126

Staff Structure and Membership Motives An investigation of the staff structure of the central Party apparatus can rely on a relatively well-developed theoretical and methodological framework. It can draw on the abovementioned research into East German elites, whose only real weakness is that it has largely ignored one group in particular, fulltime SED functionaries. And yet there are plenty of examples of collective biographies (or prosopographies)127 of these elites, often written by social historians. Suffice it to mention here the studies at the University of Jena based on the central cadre database of the Council of Ministers of the GDR,128 namely the work of Heinrich Best and Heinz Mestrup on the first and second SED regional and district secretaries of Thuringia,129 Jens Gieseke’s analysis of fulltime MfS employees,130 and Stephan Fingerle’s research on officers in the National People’s Army.131 It is true that the biographical data on Central Committee employees compiled in the context of the present study are not representative enough for a collective biogra-

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phy, of which more below. The empirical basis is sufficient, however, to outline and interpret core elements of the social and biographical profile of Central Committee employees in historical transformation. It can thus be shown, for example, how and when new generational cohorts with different kinds of experience came to replace the older ones in the apparatus whose experiences were rooted in the period before 1945. It is also possible to trace the shift in formal educational requirements within the apparatus. This begs the question to what extent we can talk about a “professionalization” of the apparatus. There are also extensive data on the career paths and “social commitment” of Central Committee employees, during and after their time in this organization. These can be consulted to see if they support the image of an organization open to its environment and interconnected with state and society—or, rather, if they indicate that the Central Committee apparatus was a closed or even a “greedy organization” demanding exclusive loyalty and possibly preventing employee transfers to other organizations.132 Ultimately the present empirical basis enables us to reconstruct the changing social profiles among Central Committee employees.133 In this manner I will attempt to establish the position of Central Committee employees in the upper reaches of the sociopolitical hierarchy of the GDR.134 Were they distinct, as a “Party elite,” from the “socialist service class”? Were they a powersecuring elite crucial to the stability of the political system much like the officers of the armed forces? The process of gauging Central Committee employees as political or functional elites has to take into account the motives that prompted these individuals to join Party headquarters (or, to begin with, the territorial Party or FDJ apparatus). Contemporary witnesses are unanimous that their primary motive was ideological conviction, and that money or privileges supposedly played no role.135 There was at least a latent sense of obligation, however—“you didn’t say no,” all of the contemporary witnesses interviewed for this study agreed, if “the Party” selected you for a certain position. The scholarship to date has rarely questioned such testimonies. On the contrary, it has integrated their notions of the Party apparatus as a stronghold of “150-percent” ideologues or of “servile, unconditionally obedient individuals.”136 And this despite the fact that as early as the 1950s insiders like Carola Stern played down the role of ideology as a motive for becoming a fulltime SED functionary. Stern, who defected to the West in 1951, pointed out that “for a considerable number of functionaries the Party was mainly a good institutional provider” and “not an organization whose goals you were willing to make sacrifices for.”137 An important tool for understanding the motives of apparatus employees—and hence the stability and performance of this apparatus—is the distinction between motives and situation-dependent depictions of these motives.138 The distinction can help get a more systematic handle on the differentiation pointed out by Stern. The same goes for theories of action such “rational choice” developed by Chicago sociologist James Coleman.139 Individual actors, according to Coleman, generally choose behaviors that promise the greatest satisfaction of their interests. Rather than follow-

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ing norms, they follow their own intentions. But it is also clear that this instrument of analysis only allows a rough understanding of the motives of Central Committee employees. It cannot offer any definitive answers. This point is an important premise of this study. The motives of those who actively supported Party dictatorship are hard to decipher in retrospect.140 Ideological positions in the self-testimonies or public speeches of individuals can of course tell us something about their inner convictions and beliefs. But ideologically tainted statements can just as well be the expression of a communist “consensual fiction,” i.e., the speaker expressing himself in ideologically “correct” fashion under the assumption that the majority of his comrades in the apparatus were convinced of the premises of Marxism-Leninism, making open dissent seem risky.141 Moreover, ideological positioning can also be an expression of what Alexei Yurchak called the performative dimension of “authoritative discourse” (or, to follow Martin Sabrow, the “discourse of domination”).142 It was less important that those who expressed themselves in accordance with the Party line really “believed” what they said. The important thing was that they did so, confirming Party rule in a performative manner by dint of what they said or their participation in a May Day demonstration.143 Encountering ideological speech in the sources is a sure indication of one thing only: that the speaker was well aware of what the situation demanded. He understood what had to and could be said in this context, as dictated by the current Party line and perhaps the mood of the crowd.144 This is not to question that “ideology” was always an important motive among many Central Committee employees. In the words of one contemporary witness interviewed for this study: “We were all believers.”145 It is just as certain, however, that belief was one of a multitude of motives for serving the Party. The example of Walter Rädel depicted at the start shows that the will to get ahead and material interests were just as important if not more important. Ultimately historians have no reliable instrument to differentiate in hindsight between the “ideologues,” “pragmatists” and “opportunists.” What is certain is that few organizations rely on their organizational goal alone— in our case, the building of socialism or the consolidation of Party rule—to motivate their members.146 Instead, organizations offer their members a range of incentives, including identification with organizational objectives (“building socialism”) but also material incentives and symbolic capital. In this respect, the present study inquires into how the incentives and motivations the Party offered its members changed over the decades in qualitative and quantitative terms. It should become apparent which incentives had the most appeal to them, shedding light on changes in their collective disposition.

Power and Rule under State Socialism The third investigative thread of this study is the role of the Central Committee apparatus as a power organization. The starting point here is Dolores L. Augustine’s call to

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place a renewed emphasis of the themes of power and rule in East German history, in contrast to more recent studies inspired by cultural and social history.147 To this end, more complex concepts of power and domination are needed, Augustine argues, than has been the case in the research inspired by the theory of totalitarianism. This oversight identified by Augustine is particularly egregious with regard to the Central Committee apparatus. No doubt the apparatus wielded power—the literature to date has never seriously questioned that this was one of the Party’s main pillars of rule. And yet this literature has not gone into any real detail about how this exercise of power manifested itself in political practice, how the Central Committee departments “ruled” in concrete terms, how they dealt with opposition, or which instruments of power they employed.148 The image, inspired but the theory of totalitarianism, of the apparatus as an all but omnipotent power machine149 long seemed satisfactory. But even more recent GDR studies with its social- and cultural-history orientation does not have the tools at its disposal to explain the exercise of power by Central Committee departments as a political process in its own right—that is to say, not merely as something derivative of Politbüro resolutions. Of course, representatives of social-history approaches to the GDR such as Alf Lüdtke and Thomas Lindenberger, Sandrine Kott and Dorothee Wierling have an elaborate understanding of the process of rule under party dictatorship. The concepts of “domination as a social practice” and “Eigensinn,” or self-willed behavior mark, a radical change in perspective150—away from an “inside view of SED rule” towards a “hodgepodge of SED claims to power and the social relationships of GDR inhabitants.” But this shift in perspective was also linked to a different social vantage point,151 away from the center of power towards the “lowest level of social relations”: the collective farm, the village community, the work brigade. Communist (or Nazi) power apparatuses, however, became the subject of these perspectives only, for example, when it came to explaining the margins of maneuver and limits or in some cases the non-compliance of individuals. In this regard, the concept of Eigensinn can be applied in a meaningful way to power apparatuses, to the extent that, e.g., the very same clear hierarchies, power relations and antagonisms existed between the “higher” and “lower” levels of the People’s Police or State Security as they did at the “more colorful, lower levels” of East German society. But Eigensinn and the conceptualization of domination as a social practice do not help much when it comes to analyzing the power relations that underlie political processes.152 These approaches are at the very least insufficient for revealing the complexity and dynamics of power when exercised by one organization against another. The concepts of Eigensinn and domination as a social practice at least implicitly assume a dualistic relationship between ruler and ruled. They are geared more towards the internal structures of bureaucracies and administrations than the relationships between different bureaucracies.153 In this sense they are characterized by Max Weber’s sociology of domination, whose deficits with regard to communist dictatorships include the fact that it does not allow for hybrid forms of the various types of rule

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identified by Weber. The definition of hybrids is a necessary requirement, however, for grasping communist Party rule in Weberian terms.154 Excluding traditional rule (which is not relevant in our context), Weber defines domination as being either charismatic or legal (the latter with a bureaucratic staff). Charismatic rule is exercised by a charismatic leader, whereas legal rule is based on official laws. Which form of rule does the SED Party apparatus conform to? Although it was bureaucratically organized to an ever-increasing degree, it also availed itself of the Party’s charisma.155 Written and binding norms such as work regulations and party resolutions played a significant role in day-to-day practice. At the same time, however, its relationship to the state was at least at times characterized by its open breach of norms and even laws, essentially intruding on the state’s business of governing—without the state ever being in a clear-cut, subordinate relationship to the Party. Ministers such as Erich Mielke and Margot Honecker, at any rate, deliberately ignored attempts of the higher-placed Central Committee departments of security issues and education, respectively, to leverage their Party influence and exercise control over them. The memoirs of former employees, furthermore, reveal that the influence Central Committee departmental heads had was greatly varied and even in the case of a single departmental head could considerably fluctuate over the course of time.156 Against the backdrop of these initial findings, the present study draws on more recent approaches from the sociology of rule emphasizing the processual and figurational character of “power” and “rule”157 and interpreting these as social relations that are constantly subject to change. Micropolitical concepts will also be used,158 whose advocates interpret the exercise of power as the absorption of uncertainty. Power, accordingly, does not merely come from the ability to push through certain objectives; it is those who are able to control the zones of uncertainty who ultimately have power.159 The concept of “power figuration,”160 coined by Wolfgang Sofsky and Rainer Paris, can be used in this context as a guiding concept in inquiring into the power of Central Committee departmental heads. The term refers to “a complex network of asymmetric interrelationships in which a number of individuals, groups or parties are linked and in which changes to one relationship have an effect on the others as well.”161 Central Committee employees did in fact often find themselves in asymmetrical “triangular relationships” (e.g., between a ministry, a Central Committee secretary, and the respective Central Committee department), whose configuration depended on each individual actor’s power resources.162 The concept of the power figuration therefore seems more suitable to describing the Central Committee apparatus’s practice of rule than the Weberian approach with its focus on the binary relationships between ruler and ruled. The question of power figurations increases our awareness of the fact that a communist party apparatus could not control “the state” for decades merely by pointing out the ideologically motivated legitimacy of Party rule and that it was ultimately limited in the coercive measures at its disposal, though possible in theory by dint

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of its access to the security apparatus. Even a communist party apparatus employed varied instruments of power and exercised its power in a highly diverse manner, certainly with control and coercion but for the most part in a more discreet way: by using its personal and professional authority, through the power of conviction and motivation.163 A perspective using the concept of power figuration combined with the question of controlling uncertainty can not only help develop a more complex understanding of political processes under state socialism, it can also aid in identifying certain behavioral patterns that make the political practice of the Central Committee apparatus comparable with those of other centralized steering organizations in twentieth-century dictatorships.

Sources and Structure of This Study Any research into the central party apparatus of the SED finds itself confronted with a highly imbalanced body of source materials. While it is true that Central Committee departments and commissions have left behind a massive amount of written materials—all manner of reports, analyses and concepts, not to mention preliminary work for the Politbüro and proposals for the Secretariat of the Central Committee—these materials rarely provide the kind of information historians want. Because, while there are hundreds of files relating to the preparation, implementation and evaluation of Party congresses and Central Committee plenums, the genesis of political decision-making in the Honecker era—the actual political process—has been poorly preserved, if at all, in written form. Conflicts and mental dispositions as well are almost impossible to deduce from the written records of the 1970s and 1980s.164 Written records, in other words, say little about the apparatus. This is partly due to the fact that the GDR had a political culture characterized by highly standardized modes of expression. Functional elites, in particular, had little leeway to make their letters, notes and reports stand out, e.g., in the form of individual feedback, critiques or doubts. This phenomenon was exacerbated by the increasing ritualization of language in written communication in the GDR.165 The more “substantive” (gehaltvoll) exchange of ideas, according to Ralph Jessen, was largely conducted “in informal communication at a day-to-day level,”166 often over the phone. It is precisely this level, however, that scholars have not had access to. The contrast between the mass of Party records and their dearth of content is a notable imbalance; their inconsistency over time is another. Thus, the activities of Central Secretariat departments in the early postwar years are less well-documented than in the 1950s and 1960s.167 As of the mid-1970s, however, the records become more sparse or break off entirely, at least for a number of departments. This is because a range of Central Committee departmental heads were given the opportunity in November 1989 to “purge” their written records stored on site at the respective departments.168 Moreover, the more recent records of several Central Committee departments—among them the departments for cadre issues and youth, as well as for

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trade unions and social policy—must still be regarded as “raw data” three decades after the end of the GDR.169 This is in stark contrast to the fact that all Central Secretriat and Politbüro minutes including their appendices have for years been fully digitalized and made accessible online.

Watched by the Stasi The written records of the Central Committee apparatus alone are not sufficient to reconstruct the latter’s inner workings. Other records need to be consulted, foremost among them the records of the Ministry for State Security. Contrary to initial expectations, these have proved to be a gold mine with regard to the central Party apparatus. Technically the Central Committee was exempted from Stasi surveillance.170 State Security, however, was responsible for safeguarding Party headquarters as well as for “security clearance” of new Central Committee employees. These tasks alone gave rise to numerous activities whose documentation offers us an inside look at Party headquarters. The Party apparatus constantly urged its employees to be “vigilant,” a practice which is commonly described in the literature as “excessive” or even “pathological.” But espionage was a very real threat, and SED headquarters were indeed the focus of Western intelligence services.171 It took State Security almost two decades to ward off major breaches of security. About half a dozen such cases are documented up to the late 1960s, several of them even more serious that the infamous Guillaume affair in West Germany. It was in light of this fact that the Stasi arrested several Central Committee employees on suspicion of spying.172 The records of these interrogations—even considering that these written sources were often “‘self-projections’ of the interrogator”173—are extremely revealing with regard to the inner workings of Party headquarters. They speak volumes on internal conflicts, networks, and corruption, lending ample color to the supposed “gray zone of the arcanum of power.” Equally illuminating are the files on the “operational cases” conducted against senior employees of the Central Committee during the 1970s and 1980s. Yet another source of information on the apparatus’s practice of rule are the reports of senior staff members in ministries and other state bodies who were recruited as unofficial collaborators. They offer at least a selective picture of how Central Committee departments were viewed by the state apparatus. Finally, the Stasi’s contacts to Central Committee employees—sometimes official, sometimes unofficial—also offer information on the inner workings of the “Big House.”174 Of course, MfS sources should not be misconstrued here as a “window on reality” in the Central Committee apparatus. Much of the information compiled by the Stasi is distorted by open or hidden conflicts, making them an unreliable source with regard to the apparatus. At the same time, however, this information is so abundant and varied that consulting it can invariably help us gain a new and more nuanced picture of SED headquarters. Indeed, the present study in its final form would not have been possible without the Stasi files.

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A third empirical cornerstone, apart from the apparatus’s own written records and Stasi files, are the thirty-two in-depth interviews conducted for this study with twenty-six former employees of the Party apparatus of the SED as well as the state apparatus. Just as in the case of the Stasi records, one needs to exercise caution with interviews of contemporary witnesses.175 Harald Welzer, for example, asserts that “the narratives of contemporary witnesses are constructs intended for a certain target group,” their contents and relevance being entirely dependent on the social situation of the interview.176 James Mark points out in a similar vein that communist biographies before and after 1989 were and are still being permanently rewritten in line with political expedience.177 Yet even critics of oral history agree that interviews do in fact offer insights into the lifeworlds of individuals and the retrospective assessment of their experience.178 The prerequisite here is that the interview situation be made transparent. The question also needs to be considered of to what extent the interviewer has influenced the course of the interview and the self-portrayal of the interviewee.179 The following will offer a brief outline of the general context and conditions of the interviews conducted for this study. The interviewees’ attitude toward the interviewer180 covered a spectrum from aloof to well-meaning.181 Most of the interviewees asked to remain anonymous, either before or after the interviews. Only six of the twenty-six interview partners agreed to be mentioned by name in the study; the names of the others were altered or often replaced with fictitious initials in order to prevent them from being identified. And yet most were open and helpful when it came to looking for additional interviewees.182 All of them shared a desire to communicate to the interviewer an in-depth understanding of their “world,” their careers, and the way the Central Committee functioned. At the same time they also wanted to present these things as something completely “normal,” comparable to day-to-day politics in the Federal Republic. One departmental head described the cadre policy of his department as a “completely normal process,”183 and a former employee in this “unit” explained her promotion to division head by the fact that she found it “a bit alluring,” adding: “There’s nothing unusual about it.”184 From the perspective of most of its employees, the apparatus was hardly a dictatorial power machine. It was a “normal” center of power whose tasks seemed similar to those of West German ministries and party headquarters. At least this is what the interviewees claimed in the context of their interviews. Which should raise a red flag in this instance, in line with the concerns voiced by Harald Welzer. These contemporary witnesses were essentially translating their experiences to a younger, West German interlocutor in attempting to explain to him twenty to twenty-five years after the fall of the Wall how the Central Committee of the SED worked in political practice. It is likely that in the context of this effort to translate their experience certain aspects of their “apparatus life” were relegated to the sidelines, being deemed too hard to convey to an outsider.185

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Another conspicuous feature is that the interviewees used different narratives, depending either on their relative positions in the apparatus or on their belonging to a certain generation. Senior Central Committee employees—the departmental and division heads—of the so-called reconstruction generation, born between 1927 and 1932, were fond of using a particular narrative strongly emphasizing the “legality” of their own behavior. They claimed that they didn’t interfere (hineinregieren) in the economy, and that they didn’t give orders to lower-level Party organs. (“We didn’t intervene at the regional level either, they would have rapped us over the knuckles for that.”186) Even in hindsight the members of this group identify with SED policies. They were self-critical in most cases, but did not fail to mention the “fault” of the Soviet Union and the “destabilizing” policies of the Federal Republic. The second narrative was predominantly used by younger employees, born roughly between the late 1930s and the mid-1950s. These contemporary witnesses make a clear “distinction between us and them,” i.e., their own immediate circle and the “older” members of the apparatus, sometimes including departmental heads.187 In general they distanced themselves more strongly from Party headquarters and SED policies.

A Prosopography of Central Committee Employees The written records of the Party are of limited use not only with a view to the inner workings and day-to-day affairs of the apparatus. The “cadre-policy analyses” of the Central Committee’s Cadre Issues Department were likewise insufficient for reconstructing the social and biographical profiles of its employees for the purposes of this study. This is because these cadre analyses were the “fruit of the apparatus’s selfobservation and as such a piece of cadre policy themselves.”188 In effect these analyses were a synthesis of raw data (which has not been preserved) used to find preconceived answers to very specific questions. They wanted to conclude, for instance, that the level of education of its employees was steadily improving, or that these members had a high degree of “Party experience.” The aim was certainly not to prove that the profiles of Central Committee departments varied.189 I have therefore attempted to offer a counterweight to said analyses of the Cadre Issues Department in the form of a prosopography of the politically active employees in the Central Committee apparatus of the SED.190 This was based in part on the Party résumés of Central Committee employees documented sporadically in the records of the Central Committee Secretariat.191 Another useful source, however, were the records of the MfS, which conducted security clearances on most of the political employees and in doing so compiled and archived their résumés.192 In this manner 2,690 political employees were able to be identified by name for the period from 1945 to 1989, about 1,300 of these with résumés at least containing their date of birth and the type of work they did at the apparatus. More or less detailed information on social background (occupation of the employee’s father and mother) as well as professional and political activities both before and after entering the Party apparatus could also be obtained in most cases.

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This data corpus has one shortcoming that needs to be mentioned straight out: the majority of this data was generated by the SED itself, meaning that its categories and focal points had a formative effect on the prosopography compiled here. Nonetheless, the data should be fairly reliable. The pressure to be “honest” with the Party when writing one’s own résumé was extremely high, as evidenced by the many proceedings concerning the “falsification of questionnaires.” The question of representativity is trickier. While the ca. 1,300 résumés are relatively equally distributed over the entire period of investigation, they are not a representative sample of the population of some 4,000 to 5,000 employees presumably working at the Central Committee apparatus between 1945 and 1989. And yet random samplings have shown that the data corpus generated here can be used, for example, to calculate the average age of political employees at a certain point in time and that the results, compared to those of the Cadre Issues Department using a compete set of data, are only off by a couple of tenths.193 In this respect, the data corpus seems sufficient to provide an approximate picture of the political employees in the Central Committee. The study combines a systematic and a chronological structure. The three main chapters, 2, 4 and 6, follow the same pattern. Each of these chapters deals with a classic period of East German history (the “years of building socialism,” the “reform decade,” and the Honecker era). And each of these chapters has subchapters addressing organizational and staff development as well as the governing practices of the Central Committee apparatus. Chapter 1 takes a look at the late 1940s providing a kind of prologue, whereas chapter 8 depicts the final crisis and the fall of 1989 from the perspective of the apparatus. In addition, the study contains three longitudinal analyses, each with a specific focus and covering the entire period of investigation. Each addresses a topic pertaining to the history of the Central Committee apparatus and which is particularly instructive with regard to the study’s guiding questions but not limited to one of the chronological main chapters. Chapter 3, for instance, interprets the Central Committee apparatus as an information-processing system, analyzing its methods of generating information as a basis for the political process beyond its sometimes dysfunctional reporting system. Chapter 5 examines the relationships and interactions between the Central Committee apparatus and East Germany’s Ministry for State Security. It joins the debate over whether and to what extent the MfS in some instances put itself above its “client,” the SED. Finally, chapter 7 focuses on Party finances, inquiring to what extent the significance of “material incentives” increased over the decades for employees of the apparatus. The chapter ends with a section on corruption and abuse of office in the Central Committee apparatus, a topic which briefly seemed to take on a sense of urgency throughout the SED in the late fall of 1989. Such problems were inconceivable in the spring of 1945, the subject of the next chapter.

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Notes 1. The following incident is recorded in Bruno Beater 1. Stellvertreter des Ministers für Staatssicherheit, an Bruno Wansierski, ZK-Abteilung Sicherheitsfragen, betr.: Äußerungen des Mitarbeiters des ZK der SED, Genossen Walter Rädel, 6.9.1972, BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 1092, fol. 27; Peter Raab: Information, 6.7.1972, BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 1092, fols. 28–31. 2. Ibid., fol. 30. 3. To make matters worse, Rädel was actually not a departmental head at all but a “mere” politicalemployee of the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department. 4. As members of the Central Committee’s cultural department were recently portrayed—certainly tongue-in-cheek—by Robert Darnton, Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature (New York, 2009), 158. 5. The scene is excerpted in detail at the start of chapter 4, ”Organizational Development,” of this book. 6. This has been a point of criticism for over two decades, see Hermann Weber, “Zum Stand der Forschung über die DDR-Geschichte,” Deutschland Archiv 31, no. 2 (1998): 249–57, here 256. 7. The term stems from Eugenia Belova and Valery Lazarev, Funding Loyalty: The Economics of the Communist Party (New Haven, 2012), 5–7. 8. Klaus Schroeder, Der SED-Staat. Partei, Staat und Gesellschaft 1949–1990 (Munich, 1998). 9. Monika Kaiser, Machtwechsel von Ulbricht zu Honecker. Funktionsmechanismen der SED-Diktatur in Konfliktsituationen 1962 bis 1972 (Berlin, 1997); most recently Gunnar Decker, 1965. Der kurze Sommer der DDR (Munich, 2015), e.g., 71, 324f. 10. Or so the words of a contemporary witness rather than a historian: Carl-Heinz Janson, Totengräber der DDR. Wie Günter Mittag den SED-Staat ruinierte (Düsseldorf, 1991), 164. On the GDR, see, e.g., Thomas Ammer, “Die Machthierarchie der SED,” in Materialien der Enquete-Kommission “Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland” (12. Wahlperiode des Deutschen Bundestages), vol. 2: Machtstrukturen und Entscheidungsmechanismen im SED-Staat und die Frage der Verantwortung, a publication of the Deutscher Bundestag (Baden-Baden, 1995), 803–67; Monika Kaiser, “Herrschaftsinstrumente und Funktionsmechanismen der SED in Bezirk, Kreis und Kommune,” in Materialien der Enquete-Kommission, ed. Deutscher Bundestag (Baden-Baden, 1995), 1791–1834; Gunter Holzweißig, Zensur ohne Zensor. Die SED-Informationsdiktatur (Bonn, 1997); Schroeder, Der SED-Staat. 11. Merle Fainsod, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule (Boston, 1989). 12. See, e.g., Jan Pakulski, “Bureaucracy and the Soviet System,” Studies in Comparative Communism 19, no. 1 (1986): 3–24; Kenneth Jowitt, “Soviet Neotraditionalism: The Political Corruption of a Leninist Regime,” Soviet Studies XXXV, no. 3 (1983): 275–97; Michael S. Voslensky, Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class (New York, 1984), translated by Eric Mosbacher. A similar view of the SED can be found to a certain extent in Joachim Schultz, Der Funktionär in der Einheitspartei. Kaderpolitik und Bürokratisierg in der SED (Berlin, 1956); Carola Stern, Porträt einer bolschewistischen Partei: Entwicklung, Funktion und Situation der SED (Cologne, 1957). 13. Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (New York, 2014), 431–36. 14. Yoram Gorlizki, “Party Revivalism and the Death of Stalin,” Slavic Review 54, no. 1 (1995): 1–22. 15. Leon Trotzky, The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? trans. Max Eastman (New York, 1937); the accusation is echoed in Rudolf Bahro, Die Alternative. Zur Kritik der real existierenden Sozialismus (Cologne, 1979), 253. 16. This wording is found in Thomas Lindenberger, “Die Diktatur der Grenzen. Zur Einleitung,” in Herrschaftsstrukturen und Erfahrungsdimensionen der DDR-Geschichte, Teil 1: Herrschaft und EigenSinn in der Diktatur: Studien zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR, Zeithistorische Studien 12, ed. Thomas Lindenberger (Cologne, 1999), 13–44, here 32. 17. On this culture of the central apparatus of the Communist Party essentially built up by Stalin, see Kotkin, Stalin: Volume I, 435. 18. Stephen Kotkin and Jan Tomasz Gross, Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment (New York, 2009).

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19. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 27, author’s transcript and audio recording. It is worth noting here parenthetically that an apartment in a prefab panelized block in the 1970s and 1980s undoubtedly represented an element of privilege. 20. On the causal relationship between the formalization of a social system and the creation of informal behaviors, see Niklas Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen formaler Organisation, Mit einem Epilog 1994, 4th ed. (Berlin, 1995), 49. 21. Milovan Djilas, Die neue Klasse. Eine Analyse des kommunistischen Systems (Munich, 1957). 22. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 73–88. 23. It is hardly surprising that such a transformation occurred: “Dictators, if they wanted to achieve long-term stability, had to be able to adapt to changing circumstances.” Stephan Merl, Politische Kommunikation in der Diktatur. Deutschland und die Sowjetunion im Vergleich (Göttingen, 2012), 10. 24. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 33. 25. Christoph Boyer, “Arbeiterkarrieren? Zur sozialen Herkunft der zentralen Staatsbürokratie der SBZ/ DDR, 1945–1961,” in Arbeiter in der SBZ-DDR, ed. Peter Hübner (Essen, 1999), 667–79, here 667, n. 1. 26. On the concept “world of meaning” (Sinnwelt), see Martin Sabrow, “Sozialismus als Sinnwelt. Diktatorische Herrschaft in kulturhistorischer Perspektive,” Potsdamer Bulletin für Zeithistorische Studien no. 40/41 (2007): 9–23. 27. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, December 2, 2010, 22, author’s transcript and audio recording. 28. The existence of a Western apparatus distinguished the SED’s Central Committee from the apparatus structure of its “brother parties” in the Eastern bloc. A similar breakdown of the Central Committee apparatus of the CPSU is found in Nikolay Mitrokhin, “The CPSU Central Committee Apparatus, 1970–85: Personnel and Role in the Soviet Political System,” Russian History 41, no. 3 (2014): 307–28, here 311. 29. Richard M. Cyert and James G. March, A Behavioral Theory of the Firm, 2nd ed. (Malden, 2006). 30. The term (Tiefenschichten der Herrschaft) stems from Ralph Jessen, “DDR-Geschichte und Totalitarismustheorie,” Berliner Debatte Initial 6, no. 4–5 (1995): 17–24, here 22. 31. A still very useful overview is provided by Corey Ross, The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR (London, 2002); Hermann Weber, Die DDR 1945–1990, 5th revised and updated ed., Grundriss der Geschichte 20 (Munich, 2012). 32. Jens Gieseke, “Die Einheit von Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Sicherheitspolitik. Überwachung und Militarisierung als Probleme einer Sozialgeschichte der DDR in der Ära Honecker,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 51, no. 11 (2003): 996–1021, here 1006. Early criticisms of the neglect of SED history can be found in H. Weber, “Zum Stand der Forschung,” 256; and more recently in Jens Gieseke and Hermann Wentker, “Die SED—Umrisse eines Forschungsfeldes,” in SED-Geschichte zwischen Mauerbau und Mauerfall, ed. Jens Gieseke and Hermann Wentker (Berlin, 2011), 7–15; Thomas Lindenberger, “Ist die DDR ausgeforscht? Phasen, Trends und ein optimistischer Ausblick,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 64, no. 24–26 (2014): 27–32. 33. Armin Nolzen, “Charismatic Legitimation and Bureaucratic Rule: The NSDAP in the Third Reich, 1933–1945,” German History 23, no. 4 (2005): 494–518, here 495. Only in the 2000s did the local chapters, district leaders and functionaries of the Nazi Party attract the attention of scholars as social spaces and representatives of power. See, e.g., Carl-Wilhelm Reibel, Das Fundament der Diktatur. Die NSDAP-Ortsgruppen 1932–1945 (Paderborn, 2002); Sebastian Lehmann, Kreisleiter der NSDAP in Schleswig-Holstein. Lebensläufe und Herrschaftspraxis einer regionalen Machtelite (Gütersloh, 2006); Christine Müller-Botsch, “Den richtigen Mann an die richtige Stelle.” Biographien und politisches Handeln von unteren NSDAP-Funktionären (Frankfurt am Main, 2009). 34. Rüdiger Bergien and Jens Gieseke, eds., Communist Parties Revisited: Socio-Cultural Approaches to Party Rule in the Soviet Bloc, 1956–1991 (New York, 2018). 35. Jens Hüttmann, DDR-Geschichte und ihre Forscher. Akteure und Konjunkturen der bundesdeutschen DDR-Forschung (Berlin, 2008), 394. 36. Hermann Weber, Damals, als ich Wunderlich hieß. Vom Parteihochschüler zum kritischen Sozialisten. Die SED-Parteihochschule “Karl Marx” bis 1949 (Berlin, 2002); Wolfgang Leonhard, Die Revolution

introduction

37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44.

45.

46. 47.

48.

49. 50.

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entlässt ihre Kinder, 2nd ed. (Cologne, 1955); Fritz Schenk, Im Vorzimmer der Diktatur. 12 Jahre Pankow (Cologne, 1962). Peter Christian Ludz, Parteielite im Wandel. Funktionsaufbau, Sozialstruktur und Ideologie der SEDFührung. Eine empirisch-systematische Untersuchung (Cologne, 1968). For a historiographical positioning of Ludz, see also Jens Gieseke, “Die SED-Parteielite zwischen Wandel und Erstarrung. Peter Christian Ludz’ Modernisierungstheorie,” in 50 Klassiker der Zeitgeschichte, ed. Jürgen Danyel, Jan-Holger Kirschm, and Martin Sabrow (Göttingen, 2007): 110–13. See, esp. Gerd Meyer, Die DDR-Machtelite in der Ära Honecker (Tübingen, 1991). See esp. Peter Przybylski, Tatort Politbüro. Die Akte Honecker (Berlin, 1991); Günter Schabowski, Der Absturz (Berlin, 1991) and Das Politbüro. Ende eines Mythos. Eine Befragung (Reinbek, 1991). C. Ross, The East German Dictatorship, 1–69. Ammer, “Die Machthierarchie”; Kaiser, “Herrschaftsinstrumente”; Dietmar Keller, “Die Machthierarchie der SED-Diktatur,” in Materialien der Enquete-Kommission, ed. Thomas Ammer (n.p., 1999), 3013–22; see also Monika Kaiser, “Die Zentrale der Diktatur. Organisatorische Weichenstellungen, Strukturen und Kompetenzen der SED-Führung in der SBZ/DDR 1946 bis 1952,” in Historische DDR-Forschung: Aufsätze und Studien, ed. Jürgen Kocka (Berlin, 1993), 57–86; and Andreas Herbst, Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan, and Jürgen Winkler, eds., Die SED. Geschichte—Organisation—Politik. Ein Handbuch (Berlin, 1997). See, e.g., Schabowski, Das Politbüro; Schabowski, Der Absturz; Reinhold Andert and Wolfgang Herzberg, Der Sturz. Erich Honecker im Kreuzverhör (Gütersloh, 1990); Hermann Axen and Harald Neubert, Ich war ein Diener der Partei. Autobiographische Gespräche mit Harald Neubert (Berlin, 1996); Brigitte Zimmermann and Hans-Dieter Schütt, Noch Fragen, Genossen! (Berlin, 1994); Zimmermann and Schütt, eds., ohnMacht. DDR-Funktionäre sagen aus (Berlin, 1992). For an outstanding (counter) example of an early and systematic interviewing of contemporary witnesses guided by historiographical methods, see Theo Pirker, Mario Rainer Lepsius, Rainer Weinert, and Hans-Hermann Hertle, eds., Der Plan als Befehl und Fiktion. Wirtschaftsführung in der DDR. Gespräche und Analysen (Wiesbaden 1995). Schroeder, Der SED-Staat. The SED as a mass-membership party is virtually nonexistent in this work. Schroeder dedicates a mere half a page of his 782-page history to “dissatisfaction in the ranks of the SED” as a contributing factor to the inner erosion of state socialism—a half page mostly filled with a quote from Erich Mielke. Ibid., 78. Particularly with reference to the “fundamental contradiction” between “specialist and ideological bureaucracies” in the GDR, a significant distinction in the present study. Sigrid Meuschel, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft: zum Paradox von Stabilität und Revolution in der DDR 1945–1989 (Frankfurt am Main, 1992), 13; on the controversies unleashed by Meuschel in GDR studies, see Thomas Lindenberger, “In den Grenzen der Diktatur. Die DDR als Gegenstand von ‘Gesellschaftsgeschichte,’” in Bilanz und Perspektiven der DDR-Forschung, ed. Rainer Eppelmann, Bernd Faulenbach, and Ulrich Mählert (Paderborn, 2003), 238–45, here 239f. Andreas Malycha and Peter Jochen Winters, Die SED: Geschichte einer deutschen Partei (Munich, 2009). Andreas Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker (Munich, 2014), 2. Malycha justifies his partial equation of the SED and GDR history with the argument that “a distinction between the state party with its totalitarian claims to power and the real existential conditions of SED dictatorship . . . is well-nigh impossible.” See, e.g., the contributions in Dierk Hoffmann and Hermann Wentker, eds., Das letzte Jahr der SBZ. Politische Weichenstellungen und Kontinuitäten im Prozeß der Gründung der DDR (Munich, 2000); Michael Lemke, ed., Sowjetisierung und Eigenständigkeit in der SBZ/DDR (1945–1953) (Cologne, 1999). Jan Foitzik, “Einführung,” in Sowjetische Kommandanturen und deutsche Verwaltung in der SBZ und frühen DDR: Dokumente, ed. Jan Foitzik (Berlin, 2015), 7–32, here 8. In particular, Jan Foitzik, Sowjetische Interessenpolitik in Deutschland 1944–1954: Dokumente, Texte und Materialien zur Zeitgeschichte 18 (Munich, 2012); Foitzik, ed., Sowjetische Kommandanturen.

30 | inside party headquarters

51.

52.

53.

54. 55.

56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64.

Still important despite a number of critical objections: Rolf Badstübner, Wilfried Loth, and Wilhelm Pieck, Wilhelm Pieck—Aufzeichnungen zur Deutschlandpolitik 1945–1953 (Berlin, 1994); see also, esp., Jochen P. Laufer and Georgij P. Kynin, eds., Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage 1941–1948, Vols. 1–3 (Berlin, 2004); Gerhard Wettig, Der Tjul’panov-Bericht: Sowjetische Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Göttingen, 2012). See, e.g., Monika Kaiser, “Wechsel von sowjetischer Besatzungspolitik zu sowjetischer Kontrolle? Sowjetische Einflussnahme und ostdeutsche Handlungsspielräume im Übergangsjahr von der SBZ zur DDR,” in Sowjetisierung und Eigenständigkeit, ed. Michael Lemke 187–231; Gerhard Wettig, “Die sowjetische Besatzungsmacht und der politische Handlungsspielraum in der SBZ (1945– 1949),” in Die DDR und der Westen: transnationale Beziehungen 1949–1989, ed. Ulrich Pfeil (Berlin, 2001), 39–62. For an overview, see the contributions in Manfred Wilke, ed., Anatomie der Parteizentrale. Die KPD/ SED auf dem Weg zur Macht (Berlin, 1998); Manfred Wilke and Michael Kubina, “Die Etablierung einer Okkupationspartei. Ergebnisse des Projektes zu Struktur, Funktion und Entwicklung des zentralen Parteiapparates der KPD/SED,” in Der SED-Staat: Geschichte und Nachwirkungen. Gesammelte Schriften von Manfred Wilke. Zu seinem 65. Geburtstag zsgest. und hg. von Hans-Joachim Veen, ed. Manfred Wilke (Cologne, 2006), 133–66. Michael Kubina, “Der Aufbau des zentralen Parteiapparates der KPD 1945–1946,” in Anatomie der Parteizentrale, ed. Manfred Wilke (Berlin, 1998), 49–117; Michael Kubina, “In einer solchen Form, die nicht erkennen lässt, worum es sich handelt . . . ‘Zu den Anfängen der parteieigenen Geheimund Sicherheitsapparate der KPD/SED nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg,’” Internationale Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz (IWK) 32, no. 3 (1996): 340–74. Thomas Klein, “Für die Einheit und Reinheit der Partei.” Die innerparteilichen Kontrollorgane der SED in der Ära Ulbricht (Cologne, 2002). Andreas Malycha, Die SED. Geschichte ihrer Stalinisierung 1946–1953 (Paderborn, 2000); see also Harold Hurwitz in collaboration with Ursula Böhme und Andreas Malycha, Die Stalinisierung der SED. Zum Verlust von Freiräumen und sozialdemokratischer Identität in den Vorständen 1946–1949 (Opladen, 1997). Leonhard, Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder; Erich W. Gniffke, Jahre mit Ulbricht (Cologne, 1966); H. Weber, Damals, als ich Wunderlich hieß. Richard Gyptner headed the Central Secretariat, thus occupying a key position in Party headquarters; Paul Verner began as director of the Youth Department in the Central Secretariat; Richard Stahlmann was the first director of the Department of Transportation. Michael F. Scholz, Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht? Nachexil und Remigration. Die ehemaligen KPD-Emigranten in Skandinavien und ihr weiteres Schicksal in der SBZ/DDR (Stuttgart, 2000). Heike Amos, Politik und Organisation der SED-Zentrale 1949–1963: Struktur und Arbeitsweise von Politbüro, Sekretariat, Zentralkomitee und ZK-Apparat (Münster, 2003). Since the early 1990s, Kaiser has published several organizational histories of SED headquarters. See Kaiser, “Die Zentrale der Diktatur.” Ludz, Parteielite im Wandel. Only when she can clearly demonstrate the function of individual senior Central Committee members, e.g., in connection with the tightening of cultural policy in 1965, does she refer to them by name—in this case Siegfried Wagner and Lothar Oppermann, the respective heads of the Culture and Education departments. Their signatures on secretariat drafts calling for a tightening of policy are hence proof that they must have been dogmatists. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 63. Ibid., 134. See, e.g., Malycha and Winters, Die SED, 164f., 192; and more recently—albeit from a journalistic perspective—Decker, 1965. Decker closely follows Kaiser in consistently viewing “the functionaries” as the decisive force in the dualism between reformers and “dogmatists” or “ideologues,” all the while treating them as an “amorphous, mysterious mass of undetermined size.” See also the review of

introduction

65.

66.

67. 68.

69.

70. 71.

72. 73.

74. 75. 76.

77.

78. 79.

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Günter Agde, “Rezension zu: Decker, Gunnar: 1965. Der kurze Sommer der DDR. München 2015,” H-Soz-Kult, October 20, 2015, http://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-24563 (retrieved on June 3, 2016). André Steiner, Die DDR-Wirtschaftsreform der sechziger Jahre. Konflikt zwischen Effizienz- und Machtkalkül (Berlin, 1999), 73f., 84. The interviews conducted by Theo Pirker, M. Rainer Lepsius, Rainer Weinert and Hans-Hermann Hertle with former leading economic functionaries of the GDR show that the period of reform, rather than uniting the apparatus against Ulbricht, only made it more diverse and divided. Pirker et al., Der Plan als Befehl und Fiktion. And yet even this hefty study offers precious few insights into the specific political practices and inner dynamics of the apparatus. In his introduction on the “structure, development and operation of SED Party headquarters” in the Honecker era, Malycha indicates that there are “still significant research gaps.” Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 2. The Ministry of National Defense (MfNV), the Ministry of the Interior (MdI), and the Ministry for State Security (MfS). Armin Wagner, Walter Ulbricht und die geheime Sicherheitspolitik der SED. Der Nationale Verteidigungsrat der DDR und seine Vorgeschichte (1953 bis 1971), Militärgeschichte der DDR 4, published by the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Berlin, 2002), 236–51; Heiner Bröckermann, Landesverteidigung und Militarisierung: Militär- und Sicherheitspolitik der DDR in der Ära Honecker 1971– 1989, Militärgeschichte der DDR 20, a publication of the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Berlin, 2011), 79–81. Siegfried Suckut, “Generalkontrollbeauftragter der SED oder gewöhnliches Staatsorgan? Probleme der Funktionsbestimmung des MfS in den sechziger Jahren,” in Staatspartei und Staatssicherheit. Zum Verhältnis von SED und MfS, ed. Siegfried Suckut and Walter Süß (Berlin, 1997), 151–66; Silke Schumann, Die Parteiorganisation der SED im MfS, MfS-Handbuch, published by the BStU (Berlin, 2002); Jens Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit. Personalstruktur und Lebenswelt 1950–1989/90 (Berlin, 2000), 229–36. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 259–63. Wilhelm Mensing, SED-Hilfe für West-Genossen. Die Arbeit der Abteilung Verkehr beim Zentralkomitee der SED im Spiegel der Überlieferung des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit der DDR (1946–1976), a publication of the BStU (Berlin, 2010). Heike Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik 1961 bis 1989: Ziele, Aktivitäten und Konflikte (Göttingen, 2015), esp. 50–65. Jochen Staadt, Die geheime Westpolitik der SED 1960–1970: Von der gesamtdeutschen Orientierung zur sozialistischen Nation, Studien des Forschungsverbundes SED-Staat an der Freien Universität Berlin (Berlin, 1993). Anke Fiedler, Medienlenkung in der DDR (Cologne, 2014); Ulrich Bürger, Das sagen wir natürlich so nicht! Donnerstag-Argus bei Herrn Geggel (Berlin, 1990). Bürger, Das sagen wir natürlich so nicht! Siegfried Lokatis, “Verlagspolitik zwischen Plan und Zensur. Das ‘Amt für Literatur und Verlagswesen’ oder die schwere Geburt des Literaturapparates der DDR,” in Historische DDR-Forschung, ed. Jürgen Kocka (Berlin, 1993), 303–25; Siegfried Lokatis, “Dietz. Probleme der Ideologiewirtschaft im zentralen Parteiverlag der SED” in Von der Aufgabe der Freiheit: politische Verantwortung und bürgerliche Gesellschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Festschrift für Hans Mommsen zum 5. November 1995, ed. Christian Jansen (Berlin, 1995), 533–48; Siegfried Lokatis, Der rote Faden. Kommunistische Parteigeschichte und Zensur unter Walter Ulbricht, (Cologne, 2003). Joachim Ackermann, “Der SED-Parteiapparat und die Bildende Kunst,” Eingegrenzt—Ausgegrenzt: Bildende Kunst und Parteiherrschaft in der DDR 1961–1989, ed. Hannelore Offner and Klaus Schroeder (Berlin, 2000), 15–87. Darnton, Censors at Work. For an overview of the state of research, see the editors’ introduction and various contributions in Bergien and Gieseke, Communist Parties Revisited.

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80. Krzysztof Dąbek, PZPR retrospektywny portret własny (Warsaw, 2006); Dąbek, “The Idea of Social Unity and Its Influence on the Mechanisms of a Totalitarian Regime in the Years 1956–1980,” in Communist Parties Revisited, ed. Rüdiger Bergien and Jens Gieseke (New York, 2018). 81. Michel Christian, Camarades ou apparatchiks? Les communistes en RDA et en Tchécoslovaquie (1945– 1989) (Paris, 2016). 82. William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (London, 2003); Melanie Ilic and Jeremy Smith, eds., Soviet State and Society under Nikita Khrushchev (London, 2009); Jeremy Smith and Melanie Ilic, eds., Krushchev in the Kremlin: Policy and Government in the Soviet Union, 1953–1964 (London, 2011); Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle, eds., Brezhnev Reconsidered (Houndmills, 2002). See also Susanne Schattenberg, “Von Chruščev zu Gorbačev—Die Sowjetunion zwischen Reform und Zusammenbruch,” Neue Politische Literatur, 55, no. 2 (2010): 255–84. 83. Thus, for example, Khrushchev’s “Party revival” after the death of Stalin strengthened the role of the central apparatus, which was also the key executive authority in Khrushchev’s various economic reform efforts despite a slew of “anti-bureaucratism” campaigns. On Khrushchev the “Party politician” and “apparatchik” see Gorlizki, “Party Revivalism”; Hans-Henning Schröder, “‘Lebendige Verbindung mit den Massen.’ Sowjetische Gesellschaftspolitik in der Ära Chruščev,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 34, no. 4 (1986): 524–60; Stephan Merl, “Kapitel III: Entstalinisierung, Reformen und Wettlauf der Systeme 1953–1964,” in Handbuch der Geschichte Russlands, Vol. 5: 1945–1991. Vom Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs bis zum Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion, ed. Stefan Plaggenborg (Stuttgart, 2002), 175–318; Alexander Titov, “The Central Committee Apparatus under Khrushchev,” in Khrushchev in the Kremlin: Policy and Government in the Soviet Union, 1953–1964, ed. Jeremy Smith and Melanie Ilic (London, 2011), 41–60. 84. Titov, “The Central Committee Apparatus,” 42. 85. Older Sovietology came to the same conclusion. See, e.g., T. H. Rigby, “The Soviet Regional Leadership: The Brezhnev Generation,” Slavic Review, 37, no. 1 (1978): 1–24. 86. Andreas Oberender, “Die Partei der Patrone und Klienten. Formen personaler Herrschaft unter Leonid Breschnev,” in Vernetzte Improvisationen. Gesellschaftliche Subsysteme in Ostmitteleuropa und in der DDR, ed. Annette Schuhmann (Cologne, 2008), 57–76; Yoram Gorlizki, “Too Much Trust: Regional Party Leaders and Local Political Networks under Brezhnev,” Slavic Review 69, no. 3 (2010): 676–700; Susanne Schattenberg, “Trust, Care, and Familiarity in the Politburo: Brezhnev’s Scenario of Power,” Kritika 16, no. 4 (2015): 835–58. 87. On Honecker’s political style, see most recently Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, esp. 72–75; Martin Sabrow, “Der unterschätzte Diktator. Erich Honecker war kein Apparatschik und auch kein politisches Leichtgewicht: Eine kritische Würdigung zum 100. Geburtstag,” Der Spiegel 34 (2012): 46–48; Sabrow, “Der führende Repräsentant. Erich Honecker in generationsbiographischer Perspektive,” Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History 10, no. 1 (2013): 61–88. 88. Belova and Lazarev, Funding Loyalty. 89. The following have been published to date: Nikolay Mitrokhin, “‘Strange People’ in the Politburo: Institutional Problems and the Human Factor in the Economic Collapse of the Soviet Empire,” Kritika 10, no. 4 (2009): 869–96; Mitrokhin, “The CPSU Central Committee Apparatus.” 90. As succinctly put by Frank Ettrich, Die andere Moderne. Soziologische Nachrufe auf den Staatssozialismus (Berlin, 2005), 142. 91. This branch of research was booming in the second half of the 1990s, see especially the contributions in Peter Hübner, ed., Eliten im Sozialismus. Beiträge zur Sozialgeschichte der DDR, Zeithistorische Studien 15 (Cologne, 1999); Stefan Hornbostel, ed., Sozialistische Eliten: Horizontale und vertikale Differenzierungsmuster in der DDR (Opladen, 1999). 92. Hans Ehlert and Armin Wagner, eds., Genosse General! Die Militärelite der DDR in biografischen Skizzen (Berlin, 2003). 93. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter; more recently on the basis of interviews: Uwe Krähnke et al., eds., Im Dienst der Staatssicherheit. Eine soziologische Studie über die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter des DDR-Geheimdienstes (Frankfurt am Main, 2017).

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94. Ralph Jessen, Akademische Elite und kommunistische Diktatur. Die ostdeutsche Hochschullehrerschaft in der Ulbricht-Ära (Göttingen, 1999). 95. Anna-Sabine Ernst, “Die beste Prophylaxe ist der Sozialismus”: Ärzte und medizinische Hochschullehrer in der SBZ/DDR 1945–1961 (Münster, 1997). 96. Dolores L. Augustine, “Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945– 1990” (Master’s thesis, Cambridge, MA, 2007). 97. Peter Hübner, “Einleitung: Antielitäre Eliten?,” in Eliten im Sozialismus, ed. Peter Hübner (Cologne, 1999), 9–35, here 27. 98. Besides which there were no analogous high-ranking positions or functional elites in West Germany that would have allowed for a comparative analysis as in the case of doctors, university instructors and military officers. 99. Mitrokhin, “The CPSU Central Committee Apparatus,” 311. 100. Janson, Totengräber der DDR. 101. Erich Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse (Schkeuditz, 2002). 102. Manfred Uschner, Die zweite Etage: Funktionsweise eines Machtapparates (Berlin, 1993). 103. Most of the many Central Committee members Fischer discusses are referred to by their initials, though not uniformly, which makes for somewhat laborious reading. 104. Jay Rowell, Le totalitarisme au concret. Les politiques du logement en RDA (Paris, 2006); Rowell, “Der Erste Bezirkssekretär: Zur Scharnierfunktion der ‘Bezirksfürsten’ zwischen Zentrum und Peripherie,” in Länder, Gaue und Bezirke: Mitteldeutschland im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Michael Richter, Thomas Schaarschmidt, and Mike Schmeitzner (Halle, 2007), 213–30. Mario Niemann likewise refers to the importance of informal networks for Party rule at the regional level in his investigation of first and second regional secretaries. Mario Niemann, Die Sekretäre der SED-Bezirksleitungen 1952–1989 (Paderborn, 2007). 105. Andrea Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort. Die SED-Kreisleitung Brandenburg an der Havel 1961–1989, Kommunismus und Gesellschaft 3 (Berlin, 2016). 106. Some initial reflections along these lines: Rüdiger Bergien, “Parteiarbeiter. Die hauptamtlichen Funktionäre der SED,” in SED-Geschichte, ed. Gieseke and Wentker, 164–86. 107. See, e.g., the illuminating memoirs of the first director of the Permanent Representation of the Federal Republic of Germany in the GDR: Günter Gaus, Wo Deutschland liegt. Eine Ortsbestimmung (Hamburg, 1983), esp. 12. 108. See esp. Mitrokhin, “‘Strange People’ in the Politburo.” 109. The term is used in Bernhard R. Kroener, Der starke Mann im Heimatkriegsgebiet. Generaloberst Friedrich Fromm. Eine Biographie (Paderborn, 2005). 110. The relevant overview at Wikipedia is just as incomplete as the available introductions to the finding aids of the existing records of the individual Central Committee departments held at the German Federal Archives. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 84f., offers only an overview of Central Committee departmental heads for the years 1971 to 1989, the period of investigation of his study. 111. On the concept of “power” in organizations, see esp. Erhard Friedberg, Ordnung und Macht. Dnamiken organisierten Handelns (Frankfurt am Main, 1995); on “networks,” see Veronika Tacke, “Netzwerk und Adresse,” Soziale Systeme, Zeitschrift für Soziologische Theorie 6, no. 2 (2000): 291–320; on “social practices,” see Andreas Reckwitz, “Grundelemente einer Theorie sozialer Praktiken,” in Unscharfe Grenzen. Perspektiven der Kultursoziologie, ed. Andreas Reckwitz (Bielefeld, 2008), 97–130. 112. Just a few examples of many: Bernhard Löffler, Soziale Marktwirtschaft und administrative Praxis. Das Bundeswirtschaftsministerium unter Ludwig Erhard (Stuttgart, 2002); Löffler, “Moderne Institutionengeschichte in kulturhistorischer Erweiterung. Thesen und Beispiele aus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Geschichte der Politik. Alte und Neue Wege, ed. Hans-Christof Kraus, Historische Zeitschrift: Beihefte; N.F. 44 (Munich, 2007), 155–80; Armin Nolzen, “ Die Dienststelle des Stellvertreters des Führers/Partei-Kanzlei als Verwaltungsbehörde der NSDAP. Struktur, Organisationskultur und Entscheidungspraxis,” in Im Schatten der Macht. Kommunikationskulturen in Politik und Verwaltung 1600–1950, ed. Stefan Haas and Mark Hengerer (Frankfurt am Main,

34 | inside party headquarters

2008), 221–51; Armin Nolzen, “Moderne Gesellschaft und Organisation. Transformationen der NSDAP nach 1933,” in Interessen, Strukturen und Entscheidungsprozesse! Für eine politische Kontextualisierung des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Manfred Grieger et al. (Essen, 2010), 91–112; Sven Reichardt and Wolfgang Seibel, Der prekäre Staat. Herrschen und Verwalten im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main, 2011); Klaus Weinhauer, Schutzpolizei in der Bundesrepublik. Zwischen Bürgerkrieg und innerer Sicherheit: Die turbulenten sechziger Jahre (Paderborn, 2003); and, furthermore, an example of how a core topic of contemporary history can be reinterpreted through the lens of organizational sociology: Stefan Kühl, Ganz normale Organisationen. Zur Soziologie des Holocaust (Berlin, 2014). 113. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 29. 114. On the term “outposts” (Grenzstellen), see Veronika Tacke, “Formalität und Informalität. Zu einer klassischen Unterscheidung der Organisationssoziologie,” in Formalität und Informalität in Organisationen, ed. Victoria von Groddeck and Sylvia Marlene Wilz (Wiesbaden, 2015), 37–92, here 64. 115. Merl, Politische Kommunikation, 10. 116. Tacke, “Formalität und Informalität,” 38. 117. A critique of this definition can be found in Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 31f. 118. A critique of this “administrative-history understanding of institutions” combined with an appeal to focus instead on “institutional reality” can be found in Löffler, “Moderne Institutionengeschichte,” here 155, 157. See also Philipp Springer, “Die ganz normale Abteilung XII. Archivgeschichte und MfS-Forschung in institutionengeschichtlicher Erweiterung,” in Das Gedächtnis der Staatssicherheit. Die Kartei- und Archivabteilung des MfS,” ed. Karsten Jedlitschka and Philipp Springer (Göttingen, 2015), 17f. 119. See esp. Nils Brunsson, The Irrational Organization: Irrationality as a Basis for Organizational Action and Change (Chichester, 1991). 120. Tacke, “Formalität und Informalität,” 40. 121. More examples in Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 29–39. 122. Tacke, “Formalität und Informalität,” 66. 123. “A social system is formally organized to the degree that its expectations are formalized. . . . [A behavioral expectation is formalized] when it is covered by a membership rule in a social system, i.e., when there is a recognizable consensus that failing to acknowledge or meet this expectation is incompatible with continued membership.” Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 38. 124. Sackmann, Sonja A., “Das Zusammenspiel des Informellen und Formellen aus organisationskultureller Perspektive,” in Formalität und Informalität, ed. Groddeck and Wilz, 123–42, here 126. 125. The classic study here is Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., In Search of Excellence: Lesson’s from America’s Best-Run Companies (New York, 1982). 126. On the concept of organizational culture, see esp. Sonja A. Sackmann, “Cultures and Subcultures: An Analysis of Organizational Knowledge,” Administrative Quarterly 37, no. 1 (March 1992): 140–61; Joanne Martin, Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (New York, 1993). 127. These refer to the study of a historical collective by comparing the lives and careers of the individuals comprising it. Wilhelm Heinz Schröder, “Kollektive Biographien in der historischen Sozialforschung. Eine Einführung,” in Lebenslauf und Gesellschaft. Zum Einsatz von kollektiven Biographien in der historischen Sozialforschung, ed. Wilhelm Heinz Schröder (Stuttgart, 1985), 7–17. 128. Heinrich Best, “Wenn Quantität in Qualität umschlägt: die Prosopographie der DDR-Funktionseliten als ein Beitrag zur Hermeneutik der realsozialistischen Lebenswelt,” Historical Social Research, Supplement 20 (2008): 195–210, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-191780 (retrieved June 23, 2016); Heinrich Best, “Platzierungslogiken und Rekrutierungsregime von DDR-Funktionseliten. Ergebnisse einer Korrespondenzanalyse,” in (Dys)Funktionale Differenzierung? Rekrutierungsmuster und Karriereverläufe der DDR-Funktionseliten, SFB 580 Mitteilungen, Gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen nach dem Systemumbruch, ed. Heinrich Best and Ronald Gebauer (Jena, 2002), 21–32; Stefan Hornbostel, “Die besten Vertreter der Arbeiterklasse. Kaderpolitik und gesellschaftliche Differenzierungsmuster im Spiegel des zentralen Kaderdatenspeichers des Ministerrates der DDR,” in Sozialistische Eliten, ed. Stefan Hornbostel (Opladen, 1999), 177–210.

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129. Heinrich Best and Heinz Mestrup, eds., Die Ersten und Zweiten Sekretäre der SED: Machtstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis in den thüringischen Bezirken der DDR (Weimar, 2003). 130. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter. 131. Stephan Fingerle, Waffen in Arbeiterhand? Die Rekrutierung des Offizierskorps der Nationalen Volksarmee und ihrer Vorläufer, a publication of the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Berlin, 2001). 132. On the concept of “greedy organizations,” see Lewis A. Coser, Greedy Institutions: Patterns of Undivided Commitment (New York, 1974). 133. Heike Solga, Auf dem Weg in eine klassenlose Gesellschaft? Klassenlagen und Mobilität zwischen Generationen in der DDR (Berlin, 1995); Heike Solga, “‘Systemloyalität’ als Bedingung sozialer Mobilität im Staatssozialismus, am Beispiel der DDR,” Berliner Journal für Soziologie 4, no. 4 (1994): 523–42. 134. The same approach was used by Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 28–30. 135. “I was of course a staunch supporter of this project known as the GDR,” is how Peter F. described in retrospect his motives for joining the FDJ apparatus as a fulltime employee, “and so I thought, after giving it some consideration, you have to do this, you’re able to do this.” Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 3, author’s transcript and audio recording. 136. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 38. 137. Stern, Porträt, 159. Admittedly, Stern’s perspective was marked by the conflict between systems, so that she tended to view the SED more as a coercive organization than as one that was able to offer its members a plausible way to give their lives meaning. 138. C. Wright Mills, “Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive,” American Sociological Review 5, no. 6 (1940). It is worth noting in passing that “belief ” or “ideological conviction” is a motive that contemporary witnesses find expedient in the context of interviews. Ideological convictions are hard to second-guess and have a certain legitimacy from the perspective of people with a different political mindset. 139. Heinz Abels, Einführung in die Soziologie, Vol. 2: Die Individuen in ihrer Gesellschaft, 3rd ed. (Wiesbaden, 2007), 166. The main objection to rational choice theory is that actors in modern societies, all the more so in organizations, are not autonomous subjects, that the choices they make depend on social relationships as well as on formal and informal structures. An example of the application of rational choice theory to a communist state party, the CPSU, is the study of Belova and Lazarev, Funding Loyalty. 140. Andrew I. Port, “The Banalities of East German Historiographie,” in Becoming East German: Socialist Structures and Sensibilities After Hitler, ed. Mary Fulbrook and Andrew I. Port (New York, 2013), 1–30, here 8. 141. The term “consensual fiction” (Konsensfiktion) is from Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 68f. 142. Martin Sabrow, “Einleitung: Geschichtsdiskurs und Doktringesellschaft,” in Geschichte als Herrschaftsdiskurs. Der Umgang mit der Vergangenheit in der DDR, ed. Martin Sabrow (Cologne, 2000), 9–35. 143. Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, 2006), 53. 144. When, for example, Ernst Hansch, director of the Central Committee Department of Agriculture, read page after page from the works of Stalin at the public removal of a high-ranking agricultural functionary in late 1949, this might indicate that Hansch was a dyed-in-the-wool Stalinist. All that is certain is that Hansch knew what was expected of a Central Committee departmental head (or knew his best defense against any potential objections from the agricultural functionaries in attendance). Neufassung der Protokoll-Texte über die Fraktionssitzung vom 22. Dezember 1949 im Haus des Deutschen Bauern, 22.12.1949, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/18, fols. 121–26, here 124. 145. Interview with Renate Michalik-Erxleben, January 18, 2016, 31, author’s transcript and audio recording. 146. Kühl, Ganz normale Organisationen, 239f. 147. Dolores L. Augustine, “The Power Question in GDR History,” German Studies Review 34, no. 3 (2011): 634. 148. Ibid.

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149. This is not only the case in parts of the German-language history of the GDR. John Connelly describes East German society as “a society shaped decisively, if not in every last detail, by the centralized party bureaucracy.” John Connelly, “The Paradox of East German Communism: From Non-Stalinism to Neo-Stalinism,” in Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe, ed. Vladimir Tismaneanu (Budapest, 2009), 161–94, here 191; a similar position is found in Peter Grieder, The German Democratic Republic (Basingstoke, 2012). 150. With regard to SED rule, the concepts of “domination as a social practice” and “Eigensinn” can be interpreted to mean that no Party resolution was implemented the way the Politbüro had intended it, that every “Party assignment” and every campaign dictated “from above” first had to be appropriated “from below”—which opened up opportunities for resistance as well as participation. For a detailed discussion, see Alf Lüdtke, ed., Herrschaft als soziale Praxis. Historische und sozial-anthropologische Studien, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 91 (Göttingen, 1991). 151. Thomas Lindenberger, “SED-Herrschaft als soziale Praxis, Herrschaft und ‘Eigen-Sinn’: Problemstellung und Begriffe,” in Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft. Studien zum Herrschaftsalltag in der DDR, Analysen und Dokumente 30, ed. Jens Gieseke (Göttingen, 2007), S. 19. 152. As Gieseke demonstrates in his study on full-time Stasi employees and Lindenberger in his work on the People’s Police: Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter; Thomas Lindenberger, Volkspolizei. Herrschaftspraxis und öffentliche Ordnung im SED-Staat 1952–1968, Zeithistorische Studien 23 (Cologne, 2003). 153. These arguments—in this case with respect to the administration of Nazi Germany—in Frank Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure. Korruption in der NS-Zeit (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), 133f.; Nolzen, “Charismatic Legitimation,” 515. Whether the Central Committee’s cultural department was processing petitions from indignant East Germans or working together with the Ministry of Culture and State Security to crack down on insubordinate artists does not affect its classification as one of Weber’s forms of domination so long as its organizational culture remains intact. 154. With a view to the organization of the Third Reich, see Nolzen, “Charismatic Legitimation,” 514. 155. Ralph Jessen and Jens Gieseke, “Die SED in der staatssozialistischen Gesellschaft,” SED-Geschichte, ed. Gieseke and Wentker, 16–60, here 20f.; Martin Sabrow, “Das Charisma des Kommunismus. Überlegungen zur Anwendung des Weberschen Herrschaftstypus auf die DDR,” in ZeitRäume. Potsdamer Almanach des Zentrums für Zeithistorische Forschung 2006, ed. Martin Sabrow (Berlin, 2007), 162–174. 156. With respect to Werner Hering, the head of the Central Committee’s Health Policy Department, see esp. Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse. 157. Peter Imbusch, “Macht—Herrschaft—Autorität,” in Grundbegriffe der Soziologie, ed. Bernhard Schäfers (Opladen, 2010), 166–73, here 168. 158. Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg, Macht und Organisation: Die Zwänge kollektiven Handelns (Königstein im Taunus, 1979). 159. Ibid., 13; Willi Küpper and Günther Ortmann, Mikropolitik. Rationalität, Macht und Spiele in Organisationen (Opladen, 1992). 160. Wolfgang Sofsky and Rainer Paris, Figurationen sozialer Macht: Autorität, Stellvertretung, Koalition (Opladen, 1991). 161. Ibid., 13f. 162. Crozier and Friedberg, Macht und Organisation, 44–50. 163. On the varied sources and means of power, see Peter Imbusch, “Macht und Herrschaft in der wissenschaftlichen Kontroverse,” in Macht und Herrschaft. Sozialwissenschaftliche Theorien und Konzeptionen, ed. Peter Imbusch (Wiesbaden, 2012), 9–35, here 16. 164. On the challenges associated with the written records of the SED state, see the contributions in Alf Lüdtke and Peter Becker, Akten, Eingaben, Schaufenster. Die DDR und ihre Texte. Erkundungen zu Herrschaft und Alltag (Berlin, 1997), especially Alf Lüdtke, “Sprache und Herrschaft in der DDR. Einleitende Überlegungen,” and Ralph Jessen, “Diktatorische Herrschaft als kommunikative Praxis. Überlegungen zum Zusammenhang von ‘Bürokratie’ und Sprachnormierung in der DDR-Geschichte.” 165. Jessen, “Diktatorische Herrschaft,” 66.

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166. Ibid., 74. 167. Though Monika Kaiser’s observation that “the written records concerning the activities of most departments of the central Party apparatus is only fragmentary until the mid-1950s” is not quite true. In actual fact, the records of the central administrations and the German Economic Commission (DWK) contain many instances of written correspondence between Central Committee departments and secretaries, providing a good picture of the activities of the apparatus. Kaiser, “Die Zentrale der Diktatur,” 65. 168. The records of the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation, for instance, responsible for relations with West German communists, were completely destroyed. See Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik, 13, n. 6. 169. As per the decision of the Foundation Archive of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR (SAPMO) in the German Federal Archives, archive users have no access to these records. 170. See chapter 5, ”Surveillance Development,” of the present work. 171. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, not long after its founding, had a special section in its “procurement” department whose primary task was the investigation of members of the KPD party executive and the Central Committee of the SED. Constantin Goschler and Michael Wala, “Keine neue Gestapo.” Das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz und die NS-Vergangenheit (Reinbek, 2015), 67. 172. Reinhard Borgmann and Jochen Staadt, Deckname Markus. Spionage im ZK. Zwei Top-Agentinnen im Herzen der Macht (Berlin, 1998). 173. Roger Engelmann, “Zum Quellenwert der Unterlagen des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit,” in Aktenlage. Die Bedeutung der Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes für die Zeitgeschichtsforschung, ed. Klaus-Dietmar Henke and Roger Engelmann (Berlin, 1995), 23–39, 35f. 174. See also Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 259f. 175. For a detailed account of the method used and its development, see Herwart Vorländer, ed., Oral History. Mündlich erfragte Geschichte (Göttingen, 1990); Alexander von Plato, “Zeitzeugen und historische Zunft. Erinnerung, kommunikative Tradierung und kollektives Gedächtnis in der qualitativen Geschichtswissenschaft—ein Problemaufriss,” Bios 13, no. 1 (2000): 5–29; Dorothee Wierling, “Oral History,” in Aufriss der historischen Wissenschaften in sieben Bänden, Vol. 7: Neue Themen und Methoden der Geschichtswissenschaft, ed. Michael Maurer (Stuttgart, 2003), 81–151. 176. Harald Welzer, “Das Interview als Artefakt. Zur Kritik der Zeitzeugenforschung,” Bios 13, no. 1 (2000): 51–63. 177. James Mark, “Adjusting Biographies: Explaining Communist Party Membership in Central-Eastern Europe 1944–2004,” in Erinnerungen nach der Wende. Oral History und (post)sozialistische Gesellschaften, ed. Julia Obertreis (Essen, 2009), 109–20. 178. Julia Obertreis and Anke Stephan, “Erinnerung, Identität und ‘Fakten.’ Die Methodik der Oral History und die Erforschung (post)sozialistischer Gesellschaften (Einleitung),” in Erinnerungen nach der Wende, ed. Julia Obertreis (Essen, 2009), 9–36, here 28. 179. Ibid., 33; Welzer, “Das Interview als Artefakt” insists on the same. 180. Three of the interviews used in this study were not conducted by the author himself but rather by Andrea Bahr and Sabine Pannen in the context of their own studies on the SED district leadership of Brandenburg an der Havel and the SED party base, respectively. See Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort; Sabine Pannen, “Wo ein Genosse ist, da ist die Partei!” Der innere Zerfall der SED-Parteibasis 1979–1989 (Berlin, 2019). 181. Generally speaking, there was a noticeable generational and cultural divide between interviewer and interviewee in every instance. The age difference was at least thirty years but usually forty years or more, and the Western socialization of the interviewer made it impossible for the interviewees to build on shared experience and points of reference with regard to life in the GDR. Most of the interviews took place in the private apartments or homes of the interviewees, only four were conducted at cafés and/or at the interviewer’s workplace. 182. This openness is hardly surprising, as without it the interviews would have never occurred in the first place. It is reasonable to assume that those with strong reservations and possibly more dogmatic

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views tended to decline the author’s request for an interview. In this respect, those who were willing to collaborate are not necessarily representative of the potential pool of interviewees. 183. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 44, author’s transcript and audio recording. 184. Interview with Inge H., December 19, 2011, 19, author’s transcript and audio recording. 185. Most of the interviewers had little to say when it came to topics such as “privileges” (the ones they admitted to having were “completely normal”), salaries (“they got a lot more in the state apparatus”) and repression (“we had nothing to do with that”). 186. Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 3, author’s transcript and audio recording. 187. It would be jumping the gun, however, to conclude that these two narratives resulted in a generational conflict in the Big House. Just as important was presumably the fact that the younger employees carried on with their careers after 1989–90, albeit with a loss of social status in many cases. Their years in new organizational contexts most likely have a stronger effect on their perception of the time they spent in the SED apparatus than in the case of their older comrades. 188. Boyer, “Arbeiterkarrieren?” 674. 189. The analyses, for example, do not give any indications if and to what extent the age structure varied between departments. 190. Those employed in more technical jobs had to be excluded entirely here for lack of empirical evidence. 191. There are no comprehensive cadre files on members of the Central Committee with political functions. This is due, on the one hand, to the fact that the cadre file of each respective employee “migrated” with them if they left the apparatus and assumed another function, say, in the state apparatus. On the other hand, following a resolution of the Council of Ministers of February 22, 1990, its “Beschluss zur Verordnung über die Arbeit mit Personalunterlagen,” cadre files could be handed over by the Party apparatus to SED nomenklatura cadre—an opportunity most of them made use of. 192. Researching the records of the Stasi archives requires a last name, first name and date of birth, which limited the results from the very start. Another important research tool were existing biographical reference works on the history of the GDR. 193. See chapter 4, “Staff Development,” of the present work.

Chapter 1

Between the KPD and the CPSU (1945–49) At least in the collective memories of German communists, the weeks and months that followed May 1945 were a time of awakening, of expectations and hopes.1 The provisional KPD party headquarters on Prinzenalle in Berlin were a reunion for many Party members after years of emigration, the underground, or in many cases concentration camps. “Time and again,” recalled Karl Schirdewan, a former Sachsenhausen inmate, “old comrades-in-arms turned up, and each time there was a big hello . . . What bliss!”2 They fought their way to Berlin, sometimes on perilous paths, sometimes in prisoner’s garb—or so the retrospective narrative cultivated by “Party veterans.” Their aim was to once again offer their services to the Party, which now seemed to finally be on the winning side of history. Arriving at Wallstrasse, Schirdewan was told by Franz Dahlem, head of the Cadre Department of the Central Committee of the KPD, that “everything is open to you—in the Party apparatus, the economy, the press!”3 Wolfgang Leonhard, a graduate of the Comintern school in Kushnarenkovo and hence a particularly promising junior cadre, became deputy head of the Central Committee’s Information Department at the age of twenty-six. Even comrades with a somewhat dubious past such as Erich Honecker—who had to answer to the cadre commission in May of 1945 on account of his behavior in Brandenburg penitentiary—were given their chance. In Honecker’s case this meant an appointment in the Youth Secretariat of the Central Committee.4 In their memoirs, the “founding fathers” of the central Party apparatus invoke the activism and euphoria of the immediate postwar period. Wolfgang Leonhard had never seen a happier Wilhelm Pieck than when Party headquarters moved from Prinzenallee to Wallstraße in July of 1945. Pieck, a trained carpenter, had even lent the movers a hand.5 In Leonhard’s own estimation, the fall and winter of 1945 with their constant campaigning—for land reform, the “expropriation of war criminals

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and Nazis”6—were his best days as a KPD functionary. Franz Dahlem, along with Ulbricht (the most well-known and influential German communist of that time second only to Pieck), later recalled how “incredibly demanding” the life of a Party employee was back then. No sooner had they recovered from the camps or imprisonment than they threw themselves into long nights of work. Indeed, the Secretariat of the Central Committee had decreed in July of 1945 that the workday of a fulltime Party functionary was “unlimited.”7 Fritz Selbmann, first secretary of the KPD district leadership of Leipzig, supposedly even forgot his own wedding day in August 1945 on account of his heavy workload.8 Euphoria, optimism and loads of work—these experiences were one reality during the founding phase of the KPD and SED headquarters. The majority of former prisoners and returning émigrés gathered quite different impressions—the lack of inhabitable housing in Berlin, for example, which caused the building on Prinzenallee to be completely overcrowded in June 1945.9 Two KPD functionaries who had just returned from Swedish exile and were being put up in Hotel Adlon had to vacate their rooms in the middle of the night when Soviet officers requested the rooms for themselves and their German girlfriends.10 A sizable group of Scandinavian returnees who arrived at Stettin Station on January 18, 1946, spent their first night back in Berlin at a police station.11 Party headquarters had forgotten to pick them up. And yet those returning from Scandinavian or British exile could count themselves lucky to wind up in Berlin at all. Most of them were held in political quarantine in Schwerin or Dresden, being forced to write reports on their time in exile rather than getting down to work. Only comrades who had been vetted and found to be “germ-free,” in the words of Walter Ulbricht, were to be deployed for Party work.12 Hence the career of every “Party worker” in the ruins of the old imperial capital began with questionnaires, which helped make sure that the shadows of the previous twelve years did not fade away too quickly. Many of the founding fathers and the (very few) founding mothers of the Party apparatus of the KPD/SED were likely plagued by what Svenja Goltermann termed “veiled nightmares” with reference to Germany’s “quicksand society.” The greatest of these was protracted warfare, but in the case of communists it was the memories of Nazi and Stalinist terror in their semior subconscious.13 The following will attempt to describe the Party apparatus of the initial postwar years as an organization under construction whose formalization, i.e., the formation of stable administrative expectations as conditions of membership,14 was stalled by the fact that too many of its members still seemed to live in the past— in the “old” KPD, in their memories of war and terror, in the fear of an “un-Partylike” act, whether in emigration or in a Gestapo prison, one day catching up with them. We will thus begin by outlining more precisely the war experiences of these Party employees, followed by a depiction of how the apparatus was formed in organizational terms, a process that was far from smooth. Then we will discuss the political influence exercised by Central Secretariat departments in the midst of competing actors: the Soviets in Karlshorst, self-willed central administrations, and equally self-

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willed SED state associations. Finally, we will take a look at Stalinization, viewed here as the tentative conclusion of the founding phase of the apparatus.

Heroes and Traitors It is difficult to reconstruct the “veiled nightmares” of German communists in each individual case. Memoirs offer selective insight—for example, when Erich Gniffke, a former Social Democrat in the SED leadership, writes about the evening “fireside chats” among members of the Central Secretariat. Usually, according to Gniffke, these “revolved around experiences during the Nazi era.” Other popular topics were “Moscow, the lifestyles of emigrants, and the Spanish Civil War.”15 In total, biographies of 87 of the 240 political employees working at the apparatus in the summer of 194616 were capable of being reconstructed in the context of the present study, which allowed for more detailed conclusions. These eight-seven employees can be divided into three groups on the basis of their biographies. The first group of seventeen men and women spent most or all of the 1930s and 1940s in the Soviet Union. Among them was Karl Raab, born in 1906, who emigrated to the USSR in 1935, after the suppression of the illegal KPD, and stayed there until 1945 working among other things as deputy editor-in-chief of the German service of Radio Moscow. The second and by far the largest group were the forty-two individuals who mostly stayed in German territory or German-occupied territory between 1933 and 1945, many of whom were active in the resistance; thirtythree of these forty-two people spent up to twelve years in concentration camps and detention centers—Arthur Wyschka,17 for example, who was first arrested in May of 1933 and was held on and off in various concentration camps (Esterwegen, Lichtenburg, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen) until 1945. The third group of apparatus members in the summer of 1946 was made up of Social Democrats who faced occupational discrimination and downward social mobility after 1933 and were loosely affiliated with opposition groups without, however, belonging to the hardcore resistance. Among them was Rudolf Krankemann, who belonged to the SPD since 1928, lost his job at the employment office in East Berlin for political reasons in 1933, but who worked as a master craftsman and manager in the glazing business until 1945.18 Nazi repression was therefore a dominant experience among the first generation of apparatus members. It usually began with an arrest and interrogations and sometimes ended with torture and moral compromising. Having shown a “defeatist attitude” in the hands of the Gestapo was a common reproach in the early postwar years.19 Denunciations of this sort could put an abrupt end to apparatus careers into the mid-1950s. One example is Fritz Ruthenberg, a political employee in the Central Committee’s Agitation Department who oversaw the “very extensive” illegal work of the KPD in Berlin-Zehlendorf up until 1937.20 Upon his arrest in the summer of 1937 “he initially remained steadfast,” but eventually betrayed his comrades under pressure from the Gestapo. Ruthenberg was given “seven years, which he spent in prison and then in the probationary unit in the 999th division of the Todt Organi-

42 | inside party headquarters

zation until the year 1945.” None of this stopped the Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK) from removing him from the Central Party apparatus in 1955. The psychological pressure on Ruthenberg must have been enormous. His only defense was the admission that he had always been “ashamed” of his “poor conduct in the face of the Gestapo.”21 The vast majority of cases of moral “failure” were not even made public after 1945—either because of a lack of witnesses or because no one had an interest in compromising a given functionary. This was the case with Hermann Axen, who as of 1946 served as secretary of the Central Council of the FDJ and as of 1949 as head of the Central Committee’s Agitation Department. Gestapo and court files suggest that upon his arrest by Leipzig police in 1934 he provided a detailed account of the formation of an illegal youth group as well as revealing the identities, i.e., the real or code names, of five individuals.22 Axen, a Politbüro member in the Honecker era, was never confronted with these facts during his lifetime. The files in question were held by the MfS in a special storage area until 1990. And yet he was always in danger—a fact he could not have completely repressed23—of losing his reputation as a model antifascist. A group that was under particular psychological pressure after 1945 comprised those Social Democrats and Communists who, out of a mixture of “tactical calculation and a mood of resignation,” had cozied up to or joined the Nazi Party after 193324 and then tried to conceal this chapter of their lives after 1945. One example is Günther Scheele, a former Social Democrat, teacher and, as of 1946, personal aide of Max Fechner, secretary of the Central Secretariat. Scheele had joined the Nazi storm troopers in 1933 and the Nazi Party in 1937,25 undoubtedly to advance his career. Most importantly, however, was that Scheele covered up his shifting loyalties when he rejoined the SPD in 1945. Erich Paterna, employed as of August 1945 in the Central Committee’s Agitation and Propaganda Department, did the same with his storm trooper membership from 1933 to 1936. He later headed the Institute for German History at Humboldt University in Berlin and numbered among the interpretive elite of the SED state. As a member of the KPD, Paterna had been asked by party leaders in 1933 to join the Nazi storm troopers in order to better support the illegal activities of the Communist Party. Yet Paterna, who earned his money as a teacher like Scheele, stayed in the SA longer than the party asked him to. After 1945, he tried to “dodge this somehow embarrassing question.” He “feared that [my] comrades wouldn’t understand me or that . . . the veneration many of my students . . . showed me would be destroyed” if they knew.26

Apparatus of Survivors The postwar biographies of many Communists and Social Democrats were strained enough as it is without having been compromised by the Gestapo or having had formal ties to the Nazis. It is worth repeating here that more than a third of the sam-

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ple group of apparatus members employed in 1946 had been held in concentration camps, for years in most cases. Most of them likely walked away with psychological damage. Nervousness, sudden fits of excitement or anxiety, “survivor’s guilt” and diminished working capacity were common long-term, stress-induced responses to prison camp, and surely must have been the case for some of the individuals in question here.27 The explicit aim of concentration camps and detention centers was to physically and psychologically destroy those being held there.28 All the same, as political prisoners in concentration camps the Communists often occupied a relatively strong position in prisoner self-administration. The SS, according to Horst Sindermann with reference to Sachsenhausen, could “not do without our exemplary work in the administrative apparatus of the camp.”29 This is why Communists, Sindermann went on in his memoirs written in June of 1945, could sometimes save their comrades by sending them to the infirmary or a less murderous work crew. And of course they made sure that “antifascists were not sent to worse camps,” but falsified the transport lists whenever possible—admittedly at the expense of other prisoner groups, a typical aspect of classic antifascist narratives.30 Solidarity in camp society was indeed ambivalent, to such an extent that the Communist camp network in Buchenwald was actively implicated in Nazi crimes.31 But even those Communists in positions of influence within camp society were at the mercy of an arbitrary and inhumane system. “No one,” wrote Sindermann in 1945, “can avoid the beatings, no one can avoid the hours of standing at attention at the camp gate.”32 Anyone who wanted to survive had to subordinate himself. This included the theatrics of Schirdewan, who supposedly received groups of visitors to the Sachsenhausen library with a firm Prussian salute.33 It included Erich Honecker’s serving as an odd-job man to the prison physician at Brandenburg-Görden, and didn’t stop at singing the praises of Nazism in written requests for a pardon.34 A whole range of subsequent employees at SED party headquarters had had to serve in Penal Battalion 999,35 others, like Central Secretariat employee Karl Kampfert, in the notorious Dirlewanger Brigade, a terror unit of the SS whose criminal style of warfare meant that its members were almost inevitably perpetrators. All of which is just to suggest that the distinction between “heroes” and “traitors” which dominated the postwar discourse of rule in the Soviet Occupation Zone and later in the GDR did not do justice to the personal experiences of most employees at Party headquarters. The personal memories of Karl Schirdewan, Karl Kampfert or Hermann Axen could not be inferred from public memory. The majority of apparatus members presumably had rather ambivalent, if not to say “disturbing and terrifying”36 memories of the years before 1945. In short, the mood of euphoria and hope had its dark sides as well. This meant that the future “center of power of dictatorship” was not, or not exclusively, a stronghold of “history’s victors” in its early years; it was also an “apparatus of survivors.” The latter subjugated themselves unconditionally to the expectations of this increasingly “greedy” Party organization, one that made ever more exclusive

44 | inside party headquarters

demands on its members,37 if only because it offered them security and a way to move on from an unsettling past. The exceptional “comradery”38 among employees of the “first hour,” confirmed by contemporary witnesses such as Wolfgang Leonhard, a man beyond suspicion, most likely had its roots in this shared experience of life-threatening extremes.

Staff and Organizational Development The prewar and wartime experiences of early Central Committee and Central Secretariat employees cannot be reduced to a common denominator. Their experiences were extremely varied, depending on whether they were émigrés in Moscow or the West, resistance fighters or Wehrmacht soldiers. These disparate experiences indicate an extremely heterogeneous staff profile in the apparatus’s founding years, also reflected in age structure. Employees were equally distributed among age groups. Those 30 and under formed the smallest group at just over 10 percent, mainly due to the fact that twelve years of Nazi rule left few young, untainted Communists or Social Democrats to choose from. The largest groups comprised the 31- to 40-year-olds and the 41- to 50-year-olds, with 35 and 37 percent, respectively. At 14 percent the group of 51- to 65-year-olds is smaller than one might expect. With an average age of 42.5 years in 1946, Party headquarters at any rate was not an apparatus of “old men.” It is notable that, despite the number of employees doubling (to 320) by the summer of 1950, this age structure changed only slightly. This implies a consistent recruiting pattern in which political reliability and Party experience were rated more highly than youth and professional skills. The share of those thirty and under did increase somewhat, not least due to the recruitment of Antifa students released from Soviet captivity starting in 1948.39 And the share of 31- to 40-year-olds declined a bit, many of them being put into administrative positions or delegated to local Party apparatuses. The average age went down only slightly, to 42.1 years. The apparatus of the late 1940s was undeniably a male stronghold. In 1946, 14.9 percent of its employees were women, and by 1950 their share had dropped to 13.4 percent.40 Moreover, women rarely occupied leadership positions, Margarete Keilson being the exception as joint head of the Staffing Policy Department on the basis of the parity principle. It was typical for women to enter the central SED apparatus as secretaries and then, should the occasion arise, be promoted to the position of political employees. Even Johanna Sandtner, a former KPD Reichstag deputy and graduate of the Lenin School in Moscow, was merely hired as an aide in the Labor and Social Welfare Department. Her salary of six hundred reichsmarks a month was only one hundred marks more than a secretary.41 Evidence is scant about the social backgrounds of Party employees. By the late 1940s, most of them are liable to have adapted their particulars—their own social origins and the occupations of their parents—to meet the Party’s expectations. Such

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Table 1.1. Age structure of political employees of the Central Secretariat apparatus, 1946 and 1950. 1946 (N = 85) Age 30 and under

absolute

1950 (N = 116)

in percent

absolute

in percent

9

10.6

17

14.7

31–40

30

35.3

33

28.5

41–50

32

37.6

45

38.8

51–65

12

14.1

17

14.7

over 65

2

2.4

4

3.3

was the case with Walter Borning, the subsequent head of the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues. Since joining the SED in 1946, he indicated in every résumé and questionnaire that he was the son of a “working-class family” when in fact he came from the conservative-nationalist milieu of the lower middle classes.42 But even biographical “adjustments” like these cannot conceal the fact that the social spectrum of the apparatus in the early postwar years was broader than a communist center of power would have suggested. At least a quarter of the sample from the summer of 1946 was solidly middle class—Alexander Lösche, for example, who had joined the SPD in 1930. The son of a senior bank employee from Hanover, Lösche attended an academic high school before studying law at the universities in Freiburg, Munich, Kiel and Berlin in the early 1930s.43 Another member of the middle classes was Kurt Zweiling, born in 1900 to an engineer who worked at the Reich patent office,44 and even the former Communists in the apparatus included some representatives of the “intelligentsia” that had broadened the social spectrum of the Weimar KPD: Karl Polak, a doctor of law from a Jewish family who as of 1933 was active in Moscow as secretary of the committee in defense of Ernst Thälmann,45 and Heinz Stern, the son of prominent intellectual and journalist Viktor Stern.46

The Limits of Parity Even if social differences did not necessarily overlap with previous membership in the KPD and SPD, having belonged to one of these major workers’ parties prior to 1945 and/or 1933 was an important dividing line and source of conflict within the apparatus. Former Social Democrats were in the minority right from the very start, contrary to the much-invoked parity principle when it came to filling in leadership positions after the fusion of the KPD and the SPD, according to which “[e]very Party function now had to be filled twice: by a former KPD and a former SPD functionary,” as Wolfgang Leonhard bemoaned in retrospect, as in his view it made the apparatus considerably more “sluggish.”47 In reality this parity was a myth, and was not

46 | inside party headquarters

even fully achieved in the case of departmental heads. The joint head on the “parity” principle was often not an equal but a—lower-paid—deputy head.48 An evaluation of the biographies of 145 political employees working at Party headquarters from 1945 to 194949 likewise indicates that former Communists made up a solid majority. Of these 145 individuals, eighty-five had belonged to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) or Austria (KPÖ) before 1945 or 1933, whereas only thirty-three had belonged to the SPD or the Socialist Worker Youth (SAJ). It would certainly be shortsighted to blame this imbalance on the Communists’ will to power alone. Erich Gniffke, a former Social Democrat, confesses in his memoirs that the “filling of every post on a parity basis [was] a Sisyphean task.” It was certainly due partly to mutual mistrust, but also to the fact that former Social Democrats had less “apparatus experience” and did not have any suitable employees, not to mention that the SMAD often thwarted their staffing policy.50 The perception of former Social Democrats as tolerated outsiders in their own Party headquarters was certainly due in part to the fact that they were outnumbered. Both sides felt like strangers “in the new, gigantic Party building . . . on Lothringer Strasse 1” in the first weeks and months after the fusion of the KPD and SPD.51 Former Social Democrats were annoyed by the Communists, who seemed to have “an appropriate Lenin or Stalin quote for every occasion.”52 Former Communists grumbled that everything now went at a “much more leisurely pace than at the former KPD.”53 Old-guard Communist Waldemar Schmidt, head of the Organization Department of the Berlin SED leadership, even called the Unity Party “a limp mass.”54 Social relationships within the central apparatus were often sorted along former party membership lines. The distinctions were never absolute, as seen in the relationship between the two youth functionaries Erich Honecker and Edith Baumann, the latter a former Social Democrat and Reich head of the Socialist Worker Youth.55 More common were horizontal cliques56 sometimes based on old friendships, e.g., between former Social Democrats Fritz Schreiber, Alexander Lösche and Rudolf Krankemann.57 None of these men had private contact with former Communists. This undoubtedly made it easier for Party leaders to defame them as a “faction” a few years later.58 This mutual distancing is evident in internal correspondence too. Former Communist Rudolf Reutter, for example, criticized a circular by his superior, Social Democrat Helmut Lehmann, with the disparaging remark that the “method of using kid gloves practiced [nowadays] sometimes goes too far,”59—he was irritated by Lehmann’s being too lenient when it came to cadre issues. And when senior Central Secretariat employees made public appearances outside Party headquarters, they often met with resistance from the other side. This happened, for instance, to Fred Oelssner, head of the Central Secretariat’s Recruitment and Training Department, when in the summer of 1946 before a meeting of SED functionaries in the district of Prenzlauer Berg he defended Germany’s new eastern borders as a prerequisite for the security of the Soviet Union. His comments gave rise to “a storm of indignation among many of those in attendance, especially among Social Democrats.”60 Experi-

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Figure 1.1. Party headquarters from 1946 to 1959: The “House of Unity,” today Torstrasse 1. Source: SAPMO-BArch, Bild Y 1/56/11358. ences like these were surely not conducive to bolstering internal cohesion, much less a sense of shared identity among employees at Party headquarters.

Structures of Transition One thing is certain: not even in its formative years did the central apparatus attain the inner and outer homogeneity of a “Red Cloister.” This was due to the heterogeneity of experiences, but also to a functional differentiation that set in almost immediately, creating inner, structural conflicts inside the apparatus,61 and that was directly reminiscent of the formal structure of KPD headquarters in existence till 1933—a telling detail about the organizational structure of the early apparatus. Following Comintern guidelines,62 the KPD apparatus of the 1920s and early 1930s had consisted of an Organization Department, an Agitprop Department, an Information Department, a State Department and a Communal Department. There were also a Business Department and a Department of Women’s Affairs.63 This structure made the “old” KPD apparatus rather large. In 1926, there were thirty functionaries

48 | inside party headquarters

working in the trade union department alone, and twelve in the organization department.64 All in all there were likely more than a hundred fulltime employees working at Karl Liebknecht House, including sports experts and specially trained agitation speakers. Given this level of specialization, it is no wonder that there were criticisms of bureaucratic idleness, “paper warfare” and inflexible methods of management in the apparatus65—all derided as “Social Democratic.”66 In the spring and summer of 1945, almost all the departments of the Weimar-era Central Committee apparatus were reestablished in the “new” KPD Central Committee apparatus.67 The newly established apparatus grew quickly. By March 1946, KPD headquarters had as many as ninety fulltime employees. This growth was initially driven by the need to transform small rump departments into efficient units. No sooner had this been achieved than the expansion of Party headquarters continued into its next phase with a wave of new departments being established. The adaptation of Party headquarters to its “environment”—a rather diverse Central Germany, even under occupation—gathered speed. In January 1946, a range of new departments were established: Culture, Education,68 Economics, Labor, Social Welfare,69 State Policy,70 and Liaisons as well as the Legal Department. Fusion with the SPD and the perspective of gaining power in the Soviet Occupation Zone were in the offing. April 1946, in the course of the fusion of the KPD and SPD, saw the addition of the Cooperatives Department, the General Department, the Health Services Department and the Youth Secretariat. By May 1946, the original eight departments had expanded into twenty, each of which had subdivisions and needed to be staffed. An important factor in this process of growth and differentiation was the tendency of many departments to “wrench” as many competencies as they could from the state, which in the tradition of the Weimar-era KPD was still seen as hostile.71 Thus, Bruno Köhler, head of the Press, Radio and Information Department, concluded in the summer of 1946 that the news service of his department could not adequately inform the Central Secretariat without an additional “foreign subdivision.” And of course, Köhler maintained, this subdivision would require more staff—specialists for the “Soviet press,” the “English-American press,” the “French press,” and the “Slavic press.” The actual result of this expansionary push was a departmental structure clearly revealing that the apparatus had outgrown its functions as a Party apparatus in the narrow sense. Its departments of Justice, Health Policy and Economics revealed in no uncertain terms that it endeavored to influence state and society. At the same time it becomes apparent that the “classic” tasks of agitation and propaganda were still the focus of apparatus work. The Press, Radio and Information Department alone, at any rate, boasted thirty-five political employees, as opposed to the forty-five in all nine “specialist departments” comprising the organizational units here. And yet this expansion and differentiation at Party headquarters into numerous specialist departments—which, more than just a throwback to the pre-1933 KPD apparatus, could potentially increase the efficiency of the apparatus72—was contentious from the start.

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Party leaders saw in this the main cause of the staff “bloating” evident in the apparatus, at the expense, so it seemed, of its political clout. As early as the summer of 1946 the Central Secretariat set up a “Consulting Commission on the Structure of the Party Apparatus.” The commission came to the conclusion that the “disproportionately large expansion of the Party apparatuses does not guarantee an improvement in their work,”73 which is why it suggested extensive cutbacks. It suggested, among other things, dissolving the departments for zone management, cooperatives and health services,74 which Richard Gyptner, director of the Office of the Central Secretariat, endorsed (“it is possible to economize on staff and funding here”). He also agreed to the insistence to “do away with the staffing of each department with two departmental heads.”75 In August of 1948—by which point around six hundred political and technical employees were working at SED headquarters76—another attempt was made to limit staff growth. “As the monthly statistics on the number of Central Secretariat employees indicate a constant increase,” the minutes of the Secretariat meeting of August 21, 1948 noted, “there will be a general review of . . . the makeup of the departments.”77 The attempts to contain the “excessive bloating” of the apparatus are noteworthy because they contradict the image that the expansive organizational development of Party headquarters was the unanimous objective of its members and particularly its senior cadre. In actual fact, many Old Communists thought the new Party had lost a good deal of its clout compared to the KPD, a fact they attributed to the evergrowing central apparatus. The idea of establishing a “superstate” (Überstaat), as Rudolf Bahro would call it more than three decades later,78 in the form of a central Party apparatus must not have seemed appealing to them. On the other hand, SED party headquarters could not develop fast enough as far as their Soviet “friends” were concerned. Colonel Tyulpanov, for instance, complained in March 1948 that the Central Secretariat’s Organization Department had “only” eight staff members who limited themselves to “sending directives without even monitoring their implementation.”79 It is worth noting that there was no master plan for the establishment of a communist dictatorship underlying the growth of the apparatus in the late 1940s. The latter followed the logic of functional differentiation. Hence the shortage of cadre was considered the main problem in every part of the apparatus. Bruno Köhler, whose Press, Radio and Information Department was the largest in the entire apparatus with twenty-six employees, complained, for example, that he had only half of the technical staff he needed and that the work in his department was more than he could physically handle.80 And in October 1948, by which point in time the number of employees had doubled in comparison to 1946, Paul Merker claimed that the Labor and Social Welfare Department was “unable to carry out its tasks” on account of being understaffed. It was imperative, he said, that it be reinforced by three employees from the FDGB (Free German Trade Union Federation).81 It is obvious that the apparatus could not be downsized if even Central Secretariat secretaries the likes of Merker were giving ultimatums demanding more staff.

50 | inside party headquarters

Table 1.2. Departments of the Central Secretariat of the SED, May 1946.i Group Functional departments

Specialist departments

Ideological departments

Political employees

Technical employees

Total

General Department

1

1

2

Library

2

7

9

Office of the Central Secretariatii

5

13

18

Delivery

–

9

9

Business Department

5

3

8

Organization Department

7

2

9

Staffing Policy

15

10

25

Subtotal

35

45

80

Labor and Social Welfare

8

3

11

Cooperatives

1

1

2

Health Services

1

–

1

Justice

3

2

5

Communal Policy

7

5

12

State and Provincial Policy

3

3

6

Agriculture

5

3

8

Economics and Finance

10

6

16

Zone Management

7

2

9

Subtotal

45

25

70

Women’s Secretariat

6

5

11

Youth

3

2

5

Department

between the kpd and the cpsu (1945–49)

Culture and Education

14

5

19

Press, Radio and Information

17

9

26

Einheit editorial office

2

1

3

Neuer Weg editorial office

2

1

3

Recruitment and Training

18

6

24

Subtotal

62

29

91

Total

142

99

241

| 51

Notes i. Not included here are the secretariats of the Central Secretariat secretaries (filled on a parity basis: Pieck-Grotewohl, Ulbricht-Fechner, Dahlem-Gniffke, Ackermann-Meier, Lehmann-Merker, each of which had two political and two technical employees, as well as the secretariat of Karsten, with one political and one technical employee). All figures taken from SAPMO-BArch, NY 4036/661, fols. 50–74. ii. Including newspaper-clipping archive and copy service.

Workflow at Party headquarters was primarily determined by the working rhythm of the Central Secretariat. The latter convened each Monday—always, according to Erich Gniffke, in a “very businesslike” manner and “following a strict agenda.”82 It dealt with various draft proposals submitted by Central Secretariat departments concerning anything from the staffing of state leadership positions83 to the problem of the agriculture department not having any staff cars—“unlike every other department,” as departmental head Rudolf Reutter lamented.84 Proposals had previously been signed by the respective Secretariat member responsible for the department and submitted to the Office of the Central Secretariat. Often too late, however. A perennial problem was that these proposals were “only submitted right before . . . the start” of a meeting or even “distributed there during the meeting” itself.85 The discussions at the meetings, as Gniffke recalled them, were mostly “very free and open.”86 But they were often disrupted “by the constant coming and going of secretaries,” as noted in 1948.87 Certain issues repeatedly gave rise to disputes between former Communists and Social Democrats. These included the raping of German women by Red Army soldiers, the dismantling of German industry by the Soviets, and discrimination against former Social Democrats,88 although it is safe to assume that these issues were a similar point of contention among apparatus members. The day after the meeting, each member of the Central Secretariat gave “his” departmental heads work orders which, at least for some of these individuals, among them Bruno Köhler, gave them

52 | inside party headquarters

the feeling of being overwhelmed. This basic mode of operation followed the practices of the Weimar-era KPD89 as well as of the CPSU.90 It formed the hard core, as it were, of the formal structure of Party headquarters. Only slight modifications had been made by the fall of 1989.

Establishing a Hierarchy Beyond this basic mode of operation, however, its formal structure was only vaguely discernible—which for its employees meant heightened stress, as the main function of explicit, formal structures in an organization is to relieve its members of the burden of decision-making. Only in March 1947 did the Central Secretariat issue a set of “work regulations” (Arbeitsordnung) for the central apparatus,91 albeit a mere two pages long and essentially amounting to the stipulation that “every employee” was obliged to “carry out his assigned tasks to the best of his abilities” and, most importantly, to observe a policy of “strict silence.” Communication channels and hierarchies, responsibilities, even working hours—the regulations said nothing about any of these, and therefore failed to offer any form of relief to employees. When Bruno Köhler described the apparatus as “an untenable act of improvisation” in 1946,92 he was referring to precisely this problem: a lack of formal structure leading to a high level of uncertainty which stood in marked contrast to the image of a “strictly hierarchical,” “Stalinist” Party headquarters.93 One example is “Zentrag,” the printing press formed in October 1945 through the merger of the KPD and SPD presses. Zentrag had the status of a Central Committee department until 1949.94 According to a report of the Central Auditing Commission from the early 1960s, the director of Zentrag, Paul Hockarth, had created “a system of favoritism and corruption” as early as the late 1940s. Hockarth provided management positions at printing presses to personal friends from his home state of Thuringia.95 At one Zentrag establishment, Druckbedarf GmbH, he set up a store “where linens, fabric, foods and luxury foods” could be purchased by “select comrades in the central apparatus.”96 Bruno Köhler, head of the Press, Radio and Information Department, might have complained about the apparatus being “an untenable act of improvisation,” but in fact his political influence rested to a considerable degree on this very lack of structure. Thus, Köhler bypassed the Central Secretariat secretary assigned to him, Anton Ackermann, and negotiated press policy directly with Ulbricht’s wife Lotte Kühn, effectively becoming the temporary “press czar” of the Soviet Occupation Zone, a position of influence wholly unrelated to his office.97 The informal hierarchy between Central Secretariat secretaries and departmental heads was likewise only reflected to a limited degree in political practice. In early 1947, Central Secretariat secretary Helmut Lehmann sent out a modified version of a circular originally written by departmental head Rudolf Reutter. Reutter promptly protested. For one thing, he complained, Lehmann’s version of the circular was no better than his. For another, “it would considerably facilitate and especially speed up

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our work” if the department—that is to say, Reutter—would “draw up and send the circular” itself in the future.98 Reutter, an Old Communist, antifascist and one of the “fathers” of agrarian reform,99 surely had a degree of symbolic capital at Party headquarters. But Lehmann, too, was conscious of his status, as he proved in December 1947 when he complained to Anton Ackermann about Fred Oelssner, the head of the Party Training, Culture and Education Department. Oelssner, Lehmann claimed, had sent him “an in-house memorandum with a lengthy essay . . . on the significance of cooperatives” containing “all kinds of good advice . . . about what I should do with this material.”100 Lehmann wouldn’t hear of it. He considered it “inexpedient when individual departments bypass the Secretariat member responsible for them and correspond with other members of the Central Secretariat. (I therefore won’t be answering Comrade Oelssner.)”101 What might at first glance seem brusque was essentially Lehmann’s effort to give the apparatus a formal structure. He had no choice but to put a stop to the allchannel communication102 Oelssner was using if he didn’t want to be flooded with information.103 Implementing this hierarchy was a long-term process, however. Thus, the fact that Lehmann was safe from Oelssner’s “good advice” by the end of 1947 by no means meant that other departmental heads were abiding by the rules. The questions of who was allowed to communicate with whom, which channels of communication were legitimate and which needed to be blocked were also relevant to the relations between Party headquarters and the outside world. Hence, as of 1947–48 Party leaders grew suspicious of the direct channels that had previously been established between the Central Secretariat departments and their “partner” departments in the SED’s state executive committees. Central Secretariat departmental heads apparently made excessive use of these channels, as seen in the complaint of the Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania state association in the summer of 1946 that they were not getting around to their actual work because the Central Secretariat’s Department of Agriculture kept demanding new reports.104 More importantly, however, Party leaders believed that Central Secretariat departments were “increasingly . . . sending letters and directives to the state executive committees . . . in some cases containing views that did not correspond to those of the Central Secretariat.”105 And so in February 1948 the Party leadership obligated all Central Secretariat departmental heads to “submit to the relevant members of the Central Secretariat . . . all letters and directives . . . to the state executive committees of the Party.” Of course this resolution did not mean that the practice immediately changed. Records from the early 1950s indicate that a Central Committee departmental head was still giving direct orders to an SED district leadership, prompting the apparatus to once again tighten its work regulations in January 1953.106 But it was also evident that Party leaders did not want an apparatus that arbitrarily intervened in the affairs of subordinate Party leaderships. Subsequent generations of apparatus members internalized the rule of thumb that they would have “immediately rapped us over the knuckles”

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for interfering at the regional level.107 Thus, the course was set early on for power developments in the central apparatus, closely linking these powers to the respective Central Secretariat or Central Committee secretaries. The apparatus never became an authority with power resources directly and exclusively at the disposal of its departmental heads. Any political leeway enjoyed by the latter had to pass through the unlimited powers of Party leaders. In the early postwar years, the apparatus earned the reputation of being a task force of “leading representatives”—a reputation it would never quite manage to rid itself of even as a more differentiated “superstate” during the Honecker era.

Power and Authority It was only gradually, in other words, that an internal hierarchy developed at SED party headquarters. This shows that the central Party apparatus by no means from the outset followed a linear path of development towards becoming a power center. In fact, the Central Secretariat departments were very limited in their political effectiveness in the summer of 1946. As Wolfgang Leonhard pointed out in retrospect, they were “almost exclusively preoccupied with themselves,”108 especially tackling the fusion of the KPD and SPD. For months the Party leadership was busy just filling Party posts following the parity principle. It did not even manage by the fall of 1946 to settle on uniform membership dues, so that its state- and district-level organizations had to make their own provisions.109 A supposed triumph of the early SED was the referendum in Saxony on the “expropriation of war and Nazi criminals” of June 30, 1946. And yet it almost failed, since the Party apparatus had considerable difficulty even mobilizing parts of its own grassroots network.110 At times the Central Secretariat had trouble even gaining an audience at SED state executive committees. Helmut Lehmann, for instance, instructed the latter on May 22, 1946, to set up “nonpartisan control committees” to assess whether land reform had been implemented properly.111 Six months later, in December 1946, Rudolf Reutter, head of the Central Secretariat’s Department of Agriculture, admitted in a letter to the state executive committees that “we are not aware to what extent this directive of the Central Secretariat was implemented.” The state executive committees were to report immediately on whether this mission had been accomplished.112 But the employees there ignored this request, as well as a subsequent circular113 from January 23, 1947.114 Central Secretariat employees were evidently still far from having the social and symbolic capital of their successors, who, according to one employee of the Central Secretariat’s Science Department, were basically sacrosanct, because “whatever I said,” he openly admitted, “that was the Party line.”115 The Central Secretariat employees of the late 1940s tended to be viewed critically by those at the grassroots. One reason was the opinion shared by Old Communists that the Party leadership in the Central Secretariat apparatus had been unilaterally filled with Moscow émigrés.

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The “KPD functionaries . . . who . . . engaged in illegal Party work and ended up in concentration camps” were thereby being slighted,116 they argued—which wasn’t true, however, at least with regard to the apparatus in 1946, as shown above. Another reason for this criticism from the grassroots was “the issue of growing corruption in the Party apparatus,” which “extremely irritates Party members,” according to one Soviet officer of the SMAD in October 1946.117 One cause of discontent was word that Central Secretariat departmental head Anton Plenikowski,118 who had spent the years 1937 to 1946 in relative safety in Swedish emigration, had now “secured a villa for his own personal use in the Bohnsdorf district of Berlin.”119 The same went for the fact that there were different quality dining facilities for Party leaders, political and technical employees.120 A former concentration-camp inmate working under extremely difficult conditions as an SED district secretary must have perceived this as a glaring injustice. It is not surprising, then, that Central Secretariat employees were often deliberately brushed aside in the provinces. This was the experience of Rudolf Belke, who in August of 1947 attended in a guest capacity a training course of the state executive committee of Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania. The organizers did not give him any sort of welcome, and he found himself confronted with some “very undisciplined”121 participants. But it was not just at the grassroots level that the influence of Party headquarters was limited in the early postwar years; the same applied in its relations to the central administrations—that is to say, the state organs of the Soviet Occupation Zone. It is true that Central Secretariat secretaries had talks with the central administrations as early as 1946–47 with the aim of asserting the new Party line. Helmut Lehmann, for instance, pushed for the expansion of polyclinics in his discussions with the head of the Central Administration for Health Services.122 But not much resulted from this. Lehmann complained to the vice president of the Central Administration, Maxim Zetkin, that “for some time now” there had been “no cooperation of any sort” between the Central Administration and the Party apparatus.123 But Zetkin, the son of Clara Zetkin, a KPD member since 1919 and a surgeon in Moscow since 1920, was not put out by the accusation. “We are all so overburdened with work,” he notified Lehmann, “that it is hard for us to find the time required for closer cooperation.”124 The majority of presidents and vice presidents of the central administrations were in fact Old Communists and “antifascist fighters” who saw themselves as being on an equal footing with Central Secretariat secretaries. Gustav Brack, for example, president of the Central Administration for Labor and Social Welfare, turned directly to Pieck and Grotewohl when he had a conflict with Paul Merker.125 Edwin Hoernle, too, president of the Central Administration for Agriculture and Forestry, was “under no circumstances willing to accept” the staffing recommendations of Party headquarters.126 The self-confident attitude of many top state functionaries usually rested on direct channels of communication with “friends” in the SMAD,127 a situation the central SED apparatus had no influence over. It thus happened that in the early years

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a Central Secretariat department had to ask a central administration to use its influence in “Karlshorst” and not vice versa.128 At the same time, these “friends” in Karlshorst usually gave direct instructions to the central administrations without even informing the Central Secretariat beforehand, demonstrating to the latter its political impotence. Cases such as the following were typical. In August 1947, the Price Department of the SMAD’s Finance Administration ordered the Central Administration for Labor and Social Welfare to conduct “an immediate mass audit of wage-rate compliance.”129 But SED leaders feared this measure would end up lowering wages, since many special rates were above the set pay rate. It was “liable . . . to exacerbate the current state of unrest in factories.” “Unfortunately,” in the words of Wilhelm Pieck, “no one consulted us beforehand about this plan.”130

The “Russian Party” In terms of organizational theory, the SED apparatus of the late 1940s could best be described as a mandate or transitional organization.131 This becomes apparent with a view to its complete dependence on the SMAD. The extent of this dependence on “Karlshorst” went well beyond what contemporaries would have likely thought possible. In September 1946, one Major Nazarov, a deputy of Tyulpanov, explained that Tyulanov’s agency prepared “practically all” the documents the SED later passed into law. All resolutions and statements drawn up by the SED apparatus were checked by the SMAD Administration for Propaganda. According to Nazarov, there were “no [such] documents that we didn’t ourselves draw up and fully endorse.”132 Nothing about this relationship fundamentally changed in the coming years. Even in the early 1950s, Ulbricht was having Politbüro resolutions and even Party congress reports approved in advance by the political advisor of the Chairman of the Soviet Control Commission, Semyonov.133 Important staffing decisions were only to be made in consultation with the SMAD. Central Secretariat secretaries did well to always keep the “responsible authority in Karlshorst” up to date, even while the process was underway, to avoid ending up on the defensive later.134 Just how powerful the occupiers were in precisely this area is illustrated by the fact that in May 1949 a head of department in the SMAD had only to call Paul Merker on the telephone to nullify a staffing decision of Walter Ulbricht—without even having to give a reason.135 Even in late 1953, the Soviet Control Commission’s influence over the cadre policy in the GDR was so extensive that two Soviet officers gave the Central Committee’s Construction Department detailed instructions on how to fill several management positions in the Ministry of Construction—right down to the head of the Main Administration.136 For all their emotional ties to the “motherland of the working classes” and the Red Army soldiers who liberated them from concentration camps, frustration with their Russian “friends” was palpable at SED headquarters. Semyonov’s lament that SED “party members in high positions only inform the Soviet organs about trifles and not about important questions” is one expression of this.137 The misgivings of some SED

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functionaries towards their “liberators” were certainly reinforced by the undeniable reality of a capricious occupying power. In November 1946, Max Fechner, deputy chairman of the Central Secretariat of the SED, was held up on the Berlin–Dresden autobahn by Red Army soldiers who robbed him not only of his Opel Super 6 automobile but of his watch and money too.138 Central Secretariat instructor Bruno Fuhrmann,139 visiting the small town of Weferlingen in January 1946, encountered farmers who “gleefully recounted . . . how a few days earlier ca. nine Russians had drunk themselves to death with liquor.” Fuhrmann, moreover, witnessed an agitated KPD secretary whose sister-in-law and seventeen-year-old niece had been raped “in front of a . . . child” by three drunken soldiers.140 Delegates from SED headquarters were often asked on their visits for help regarding citizens who had been arrested by “the Russians.”141 Added to this were the piles of mail from 1945–46 in which comrades depicted their ordeals under Soviet occupation.142 Former Social Democrat Otto Meier, now in the Central Secretariat, commented on one occasion that it was time “for ‘liberation’ to finally come to an end.”143 Perhaps even more aggravating for the SED as a workers’ party was a series of protest letters decrying the ruinous dismantling of factories by the Soviets. The latter caused the SED to lose face in society and hence a good part of its usefulness for the SMAD.144 Even the Old Communists in the apparatus reacted bitterly to economic exploitation by the Soviet Union. Emil Scheweleit, a Central Committee departmental head, went down on record for making an “acrimonious” comment to Karl Mewis as late as 1955, saying that “he simply doesn’t understand that the ships [built in the GDR] all have to go to the Soviet Union.”145 But as frustrating as this bond or “bondage” to the SMAD may have been from the perspective of many Central Secretariat employees, it put the central Party apparatus in a singular position within the political system of the Soviet Occupation Zone, at least in the medium term if not from the very beginning. The executive organ of the occupiers, it is evident at second glance, at least had a certain autonomy and was therefore not a mere suborganization of Karlshorst.

Gatekeeper Over the years, the Central Secretariat apparatus was able to acquire considerable influence by acting as a bridge between the state executive committees and central administrations and the SMAD. While it is true, as mentioned above, that the central administrations were often initially on better terms with the Soviets in Karlshorst on account of their closer working relationship, SED party headquarters soon followed suit. It was chiefly these headquarters that received the hundreds of petitions and complaints about state and society, interceding on behalf of the aggrieved and forwarding them to Karlshorst or possibly rejecting them. Whether the SMAD had unlawfully expelled a fisher from his property on Schadow lake,146 or whether an oxygen plant in Fürstenwalde “urgently needed . . . for setting up a steel and rolling mill in Henningsdorf ” was threatening to be dismantled147—it was usually the

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members of Party headquarters who decided if an appeal would be lodged with their Russian “friends.” It was these contacts in particular that helped form a solid working relationship between the central Party apparatus and the SMAD in the years leading up to 1949, added to which many Central Secretariat departmental heads had connections with the heads of SMAD technical administrations.148 Increasingly, these connections between the SED and the SMAD preceded working contacts between the SMAD and central administrations and/or the German Economic Commission. This resulted in leading Party functionaries gradually adopting a gatekeeper function.149 This role, being able to decide at least in a given sector which information reached the SMAD and which didn’t, gave rise to political power.This was true especially in the area of staffing policy. Here the Party had the power to define whether to exclude a candidate on account of his formal Nazi ties or to ignore this biographical detail. Maxim Zetkin, for example, asked the Central Secretariat’s Cadre Department to protect Leipzig professor of medicine Max Bürger from the detractors in his faculty. The latter wanted to see Bürger removed from his position on account of his having joined the Nazi Party in 1937 (“I would ask the Central Committee . . . to exercise its authority and put an end to this partisan business in Leipzig.”)150 But its proximity to the occupying powers also enabled the Central Secretariat to push through its political objectives with threats and sometimes with coercive means. This was the case in the fall of 1947 when the Central Administration for Education issued a decree about establishing youth welfare offices and failed to mention the “People’s Solidarity” welfare organization. That was a problem for the Central Secretariat, having envisioned a prominent role for the organization. After an exchange of letters, Helmut Lehmann finally threatened to “get the SMAD to accept our recommendation”151—as a result of which, the central administration modified its decree. In September 1948, Paul Merker saw reason to point out the “leading role” of the SED to Gustav Brack, director of the Main Administration for Labor and Social Welfare. Brack had disobeyed an SMAD order regulating the structure of the regional administrations for labor and social welfare. Instead he put forward his own structural proposal at the FDGB and his own main administration. This, in Merker’s view, was “inadmissible . . . . It was utterly impossible to put forward some project or other that had not been . . . authorized by the Central Secretariat, thereby creating confusion.”152 Here we see an early manifestation of the Party leadership’s claim to control, presaging the SED’s gradual transformation into a state party. Compared to the conflicts between Party and state that erupted in the 1950s, the clashes of the late 1940s were manageable. But the tone between Party and state functionaries became more strained in the course of 1948. This was the case in the fall of 1948 when Main Administration head Gustav Brack came to Central Secretariat secretary Paul Merker with a complaint. His deputy, Comrade Jenny Matern, had dismissed three senior employees of the Main Administration—a Social Democrat and two from the CDU—during his absence. But Merker ignored the issue of hier-

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archy brought up by Brack. Drily, he referred to the “change in circumstances due to the intensification of class struggle.” “These days,” Merker commented, “it is no longer possible to employ members of the Neumann party or the reactionary groups of the CDU and the LDP” in the main administrations.153

An Apparatus of the New Type The catchphrase “intensification of class struggle” in Merker’s reproof points to a development in the founding years of the SED that has been much discussed in the literature: its “Stalinization,” its adaption of the Leninist criteria of a “party of a new type.” These criteria include extreme centralism and an “iron discipline” in implementing Party resolutions. Added to this was the branding of enemies—former Social Democrats—a signature element of Stalinization.154 In the course of its Stalinization, the Central Secretariat apparatus transformed from being a transitional or mandate organization into a power organization.155 The process of Stalinization took place incrementally. It was probably only gradually perceived as a “new course” in the Central Secretariat apparatus. Some comrades may have taken Hermann Matern’s proclamation at the Second Party Congress in September 1947—“Long live the Communist Party of the Soviet Union! . . . Long live its leader Stalin!”156—as a sign of things to come. Others may have taken notice only when a new guiding concept began to dominate official discourse, the term “people’s democracy,” which no Party-internal document of any significance seemed to be lacking as of the spring of 1948. Finally, the leadership of the German Economic Commission, newly founded in February/March 1948, was conspicuous in its lack of parity.157 Meanwhile the clashes between Old Communists and old-guard Social Democrats were escalating in the Central Secretariat. Former Social Democrat Fritz Schreiber reports, for example, that at a birthday celebration for Richard Stahlmann—head of the conspiratorial “Stahlmann Department” in the Central Secretariat—Ulbricht was even threatened with a gun.158 In May 1948 there was a separate consultation among former Social Democrats in the Central Secretariat—with the exception of Otto Grotewohl—at Max Fechner’s private home in Fichtenau.159 This “caucus” came to the conclusion that the fusion of the KPD and the SPD had been a failure. Fechner and Gniffke were each subsequently summoned to a private conversation with Colonel Tyulpanov. Tyulpanov demanded “loyalty” to Walter Ulbricht and pointed out to Gniffke that he, the Colonel, was a “Bolshevik” and a “revolutionary, or so Gniffke later recollected.160 Gniffke, Fechner, and even Alexander Lösche, who headed the staffing department on a parity basis with Margarete Keilson, increasingly felt passed over when it came to decisionmaking.161 But only in the summer of 1948 did the change of course gather speed. The Twelfth Congress of the Party Executive on July 28 and 29, 1948 was mainly concerned with “purging” the Party of “hostile and degenerate elements.” On September 16, the Central Secretariat decided to set up party control commissions

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following the Soviet model. The Central Control Commission was to be headed by Hermann Matern, who would play a prominent role in the future inner-party “purges,” in which Sepp Miller also played a crucial part within the Central Secretariat/Central Committee apparatus as deputy head of the Staffing Policy Department of the Central Secretariat. Miller’s “lectures at training sessions of the . . . staffingpolicy departments at the regional level were full of talk about ‘eradication’ and ‘Party cleansing,’ about ‘subversion and sabotage by fascist elements.’”162 As a former émigré in Scandinavia, Miller himself carried a cadre-policy stigma that subsequently, a couple of “purges” later, would end his career at Party headquarters. But the first wave of purges took aim at former Social Democrats. Miller was eagerly involved in “cleansing” the apparatus of these unwanted “elements.”

The Hunt for Old-Guard Social Democrats Ulbricht had attacked the parity principle as early as July 1948 at a conference of the state executive committee of the SED in Halle. He suggested the SED follow the Czechoslovakian model of “parity” with seven Communists for every two Social Democrats.163 In late October, Erich Gniffke—the most prominent Social Democrat in the Party leadership after Grotewohl—was expelled from the SED for “party fraud.”164 Fritz Schreiber, a former Social Democrat and joint director of the Office of the Central Secretariat on a parity basis, thereupon turned his back on the Party, stayed in West Berlin, and formally declared his resignation from the SED in mid-November 1948.165 The concurrence of his resignation and Gniffke’s expulsion gave the Party occasion for its first campaign against former Social Democrats. The witch hunt against the Gniffke/Schreiber “spy ring” was only the beginning, however. In early 1949, Alexander Lösche, a former aide of Gniffke, was removed from the apparatus. Richard Weimann, an SPD member since 1908 and joint head of the Central Secretariat’s Department of Culture, asked to be relieved of his duties in January 1949, having found himself unable to cope with the doctrinaire culturalpolicy line there. Of course, he was dismissed rather than “released” in response to this request. The next high-level functionary to be dismissed from the apparatus was Josef König. König had joined the SPD in 1909 and been departmental head in the Reich Ministry of the Interior in the early 1920s. The alleged reason for his dismissal was that his stepson had been arrested as a Western spy. On November 27, 1950, Willi Hockenholz—befriended with Fritz Schreiber and most recently joint head of the Central Committee’s Department of Economics together with Willi Stoph—was arrested for supposed economic crimes. Hockenholz committed suicide while in custody.166 Probably one of the last victims of this “hunt for old-guard Social Democrats,”167 was Rudolf Krankemann, since 1946 head of the administrative office of the Central Secretariat. He was likewise befriended with Fritz Schreiber and was therefore suspected by Party leaders of engaging in parliamentarianism. According to a wiretap transcript of State Security from the spring of 1955, Krankemann was deeply frustrated by SED policies. He was doubtful that “our brutal methods and inner men-

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dacity . . . will enable us to hold on in the long run.”168 At the end of June 1955, with the assistance of his Central Committee departmental head Emil Scheweleit, he was arrested by the MfS for supposed contacts to the Eastern office of the SPD. He was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for “agitation against the Soviet Union” and against leading Party and state functionaries, and was only released in 1960. The Krankemann affair attracted considerable attention in the Central Committee apparatus and put the remaining former Social Democrats under even greater pressure to conform. By mid-1954, only 3.9 percent of all political employees in the Central Committee had been members of the SPD before 1946 or 1933. The share of Old Communists, by contrast, was 26.4 percent,169 whereas former Nazi Party members—dealt with in the next chapter—was between 8 and 10 percent. Former Social Democrats were thus under universal suspicion as of 1948. The “purges” motivated by possible Western contacts independent of any former ties to the Social Democratic Party took place in several waves, which eventually receded in each case. The first wave was triggered by a resolution of the Small Secretariat on October 17, 1949. Former Western émigrés and individuals “who were in English, American, French or Yugoslavian [war] captivity for more than three months” were to be systematically vetted.170 But these screenings were harmless for most of the Western émigrés in the Central Committee apparatus. Those who had spent the war years in Scandinavia, like Josef (Sepp) Miller, Richard Stahlmann, Paul Verner and Rudi Wetzel, were almost uniformly given a clean bill of “Party loyalty” by the Central Party Control Commission.171 The Soviet Control Commission, which had replaced the SMAD upon the founding of the GDR, unleashed several subsequent waves in July of 1950, giving the SED leadership directives to carry out “investigations of elements hostile to the Party” with reference to the supposed agent network of American Noel Field.172 The Soviets were particularly keen on vetting the SED party apparatus.173 Through a combination of intrigues and slander a range of senior Central Committee employees (with Communist pasts) were removed from Party headquarters. Richard Gyptner, director of the Office of the Central Secretariat until 1949 and one of the most powerful men at Party headquarters, was axed in May 1950.174 Alexander Abusch, a member of the Central Committee Secretariat, no less, assigned to cultural affairs, was dismissed from this body in July of 1950 under suspicion of having had ties to Noel Field and was likewise relieved of his post at the secretariat of the Cultural Association (Kulturbund) of the GDR. Abusch desperately appealed to Ulbricht for an “immediate face-to-face with those making false allegations about me. Otherwise I’m politically ruined.”175 In late 1951, early 1952, Sepp Miller, a Scandinavian émigré and deputy head of the Staffing Policy Department, was forced “for health reasons” to transfer to the Museum of German History. An obvious victim of intrigue was Hans Holm, a leading functionary at Zentrag, the Party printing press formally belonging to the Central Committee apparatus at that time. Holm was accused of supporting private booksellers. The ensuing investigations of the Central Party Control Commission

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revealed that Holm had had contacts to Bukharin sympathizers after 1933. He was henceforth relieved of his position and expelled from the SED.176 The theoretical monthly Einheit (Unity), an organ of the Central Committee apparatus, summed up in its June 1953 edition why the “path of purging” pursued since 1950 was necessary: “A great party” strengthened itself “by purifying itself.”177

Stalinization as Formal Structuring The effects of Stalinization in the SED have been embedded by the literature in a narrative of loss, emphasizing that Stalinization abolished the Party-internal democracy that had at least existed at the local and regional level in 1946–47.178 This is undoubtedly true. From a perspective focused on organizational development, though, it’s important to also point out that Stalinization had a number of functional effects on the Party apparatus. Stalinization was accompanied by the absorption of uncertainty: the possibility of unexpected events and developments occurring was drastically reduced inside the apparatus. Norms and expectations were made explicit—certainly through repressive means—while a certain degree of orientation and “reliability of expectations” took the place of contingency.179 Stalinization essentially resulted in the apparatus gaining organizational stability.180 It was a precondition for its becoming the decisive power and steering organ of the late GDR. According to Luhmann, a social system is “formally organized to the degree that its expectations are formalized.”181 That means that the more clearly an organization formulates what it expects from its members—which roles they have to play, which behavioral requirements they have to meet—the more it differentiates itself from its surroundings as well as from other organizations, the more it constitutes a system of expectation and action of its own order.182 The work regulations of March 1947, a mere two pages, demanding the confidentiality and loyalty of employees at Party headquarters, might serve as an illustration of this broader understanding of Stalinization as the introduction of a formal structure. By the summer of 1948, the “campaign against opportunism, dividers and Schuhmacher lackeys in the ranks of the Party”183 had tightened the conditions of membership and put employees under a considerably greater pressure to conform. This pressure toward conformity initially found expression in “self-criticism” being practiced by some entire departments in the fall of 1948. The employees of the Press, Radio and Information Department, for example, in their “resolution” of November 15, 1948, admitted to having shown too little “consideration for the problems of Marxism-Leninism . . . and the developmental problems of people’s democracies” in their work.184 The employees in the Organization Department likewise acknowledged a “criticism of Comrade Grotewohl” during an all-day meeting on September 20, 1948. The department, they said, had “not thoroughly talked through” the organizational resolutions of July 28–29 and the “theoretical material” provided by the Party. They would “learn a lesson” from this, however.185 Positionings like this were reactions to the expectations of Party leaders being formulated more clearly and stri-

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dently than before. The narrower limits on what could be said, the harsher sanctions, the Party’s establishing its own jurisdiction and a de facto ban on resigning from one’s position resulted in a much clearer definition of the role of an apparatus member than was the case in 1946–47. Organizational objectives were also formulated more clearly than before. In the first postwar years these were rather fuzzy or, to put it another way: the Party leadership was willing to put up with a certain spectrum of conflicting aims. As of 1948, the dominant objective of the apparatus was to be the driving force behind the project of social reconstruction.186 The first indication that the resolutions of the Twelfth Congress of the Party Executive (with its stated aims to promote the “struggle against opportunism” and “ideological consolidation”) would have palpable consequences for Central Secretariat departments was a meeting between Walter Ulbricht and the Central Secretariat departmental heads on August 24, 1948. Ulbricht rebuked the latter for allowing the ideological struggle to be “left to the publicity department” rather than becoming a cause taken up by all departments.187 And so, in a matter of weeks, “ideological struggle” became the focus of political practice in the “House of Unity.” On September 8, 1948, the Organization Department, for example, held a meeting with the organizational heads of the SED state executive committees. The meeting was essentially a reproof. Franz Dahlem concluded that the state executive committees “sometimes implemented the resolutions of the Party executive schematically without any ideological clarification.” It was time to “place great emphasis . . . on the ideological consolidation of the Party. We must at all costs smash the Schumacher organization, that Western center of espionage. Other groups and sentiments hostile to the Party must likewise be eliminated.”188 A workshop organized by the Central Committee’s Agricultural Department in late October 1948 with representatives of the agricultural departments of the state leaderships proceeded in a similar vein. The introductory talk by Paul Merker centered on the “deepening class divisions” in the countryside. The small farmer, Merker said in a style unusual for him, was being “crushed economically by the big farmer . . . like a little cart being crushed by a locomotive.”189 Hence they had to “put an end” to “big farmers” still belonging to the SED. “We are not a party of the propertied class, we are a party of the working masses. . . . Big farmers are elements alien to our class” and the SED needed to be “purged” of them, said Merker. In the months to follow, “class struggle in the countryside” was the primary concern of the Central Secretariat Department of Agriculture. It received a bevy of reports from regional and district leaderships into the spring of 1949, detailing the alleged transgressions of “village lords” and “agrarian capitalists” as well as how many of them had finally caved in to the pressure and fled to the West. Departmental employees, moreover, applied Stalinist methods to their own policy fields, e.g., by unmasking state functionaries with the “wrong” opinions as enemies. Otto Körting became one such newfound enemy in late 1949. Körtig was a member of the SED, chairman of the Peasants Mutual Aid Association (VdgB) and

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vice-president of the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt. He had protested the rigorous expropriation and deportation of “big farmers” which Paul Merker had declared a policy measure in October 1948. After a number of attempts to clarify the situation, SED headquarters decided to remove Körting from his office. The decision was carried out on December 22, 1949—at the so-called House of the German Peasant in Berlin. Ernst Hansch, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Agriculture, acted as executor. Hansch declared at the beginning of the meeting his “need to take a stand on a number of political confusions on the part of Comrade Körting.”190 The next step of these ritualized proceedings was to isolate the “accused.” “[C]omrades at the FDGB, [and] the Industrial Union of Agricultural and Forestry Workers” had also come out against Körting, Hansch claimed. Then Hansch “refuted” a number of statements by Körting. His assertion that “we”—the SED—had to “take into account the interests of working peasants as well” was sufficient illustration to Hansch of “the full extent of confusion and error” on the part of Körting. Where’s the contradiction between the interests of the Party and those of working peasants? . . . The measures taken by the Party serve the purpose of freeing working peasants from the fetters of capitalism. This is the Party’s very aim. Whether or not the working classes understand this at the moment is not decisive. Comrades who lack the necessary rigor are bound to fail.191 This went on for a while, judging by the minutes of the meeting at any rate, and at some point Hansch even began to read “out loud from a work of Stalin.” At length Hansch gave Körting the opportunity to engage in self-criticism. Körtig adhered to correct form and accused himself of “not properly discerning” the “Marxist-Leninist line,” his “excessive workload” having prevented him from “seriously engaging with the scientific literature.” All the same he fell from grace, professionally and socially. Körting was let go in March 1950 on account of his “uncomprehending attitude toward the question of democratizing the village.” He was expelled from the SED in July of that year, and eventually arrested in 1952.192

Conclusion Compared to the difficulties experienced later in getting subordinate Party organs to implement the central line, the Party apparatus of the SED in its Stalinist phase of 1948–49 operated in a downright “machine-like” way. This was due partly, and paradoxically, to the fact that the formal structure of Party headquarters was not very well developed at first. There were only limited informal structures that could have prevented the Party leadership’s attempts to crack down. In the immediate aftermath of the war, it was the relationships between “old comrades,” often extending back to before 1933, that were most capable of doing this. And yet, embedded as they were in a Party culture that could reformulate on a daily basis which behaviors were considered “deviations,” these connections were always conditional and hardly took a load

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off employees. The apparatus surely functioned relatively well in these years because many functionaries identified with the objectives of Party leaders, however vague these may have been. “Professional revolutionaries” such as Richard Stahlmann and Hermann Matern must have been pleased that the political course taken in 1948 was finally going the way they wanted. Those who had hoped for a different “path to socialism” were left with two options: fleeing—a path that a wide range of former Social Democrats in the Party apparatus chose—or conformity. Conformity in a Stalinist party apparatus often meant little more than not being conspicuous. But it could also mean that you had to take part in the hunt for internal “enemies.”193 The dualism of “believers” and “opportunists” is still a common interpretive pattern among historians writing about socialist societies, especially with regard to their formative years. There is good reason for this. But the assumption here is that “belief ” in itself does not explain actions and that in retrospect it can be hard to distinguish between “ideologues” and (well-adapted) conformists. In this regard, it is useful to point out that the apparatus of the postwar years was first and foremost a “zone of uncertainty.”194 Ignorance about how political developments would continue, about which resolutions the Party leadership would come to and if one’s own divisional head would even be in office the next morning—all of these were important motives for the “self ”-Stalinization of many SED functionaries and probably did more than any disciplining “from above” to effectively mold the apparatus after the Moscow model.195 The role played here by “belief ” is therefore hard to gauge. This sense of uncertainty—understood here in the broad sense as the uncertainty about future developments196—was further enhanced by internal conflicts, namely those between Old Communists and former Social Democrats, but also between “Moscow cadre” and the comrades who had stuck it out in Germany until 1945. But uncertainty also resulted from the sometimes rapid yet undirected growth of the apparatus, from undefined tasks and responsibilities. The SED’s status was made even more precarious by its role as the “Russian party,” which was scarcely offset by its role as a gatekeeper vis-á-vis the Soviets Karlshorst—especially considering how gradually this role evolved. In this context, the Stalinization of the Party and its apparatus meant a reduction of uncertainty. Proponents of micropolitical approaches point out that power in organizations is based on the ability to control uncertainty.197 Those who gained influence in the central Party apparatus of the SED in the late 1940s were in fact the ones who were capable of transforming “ambivalence into clarity,”198 who responded to ambiguities and doubts by quoting Stalin, as Central Committee departmental head Hansch did in late 1949 when dealing with agricultural policymaker Körting. This coupling of political-ideological habitus and organizational power was characteristic of the organizational culture of the early Central Committee apparatus. It acted as a kind of apparatus “memory” that proved extremely resistant to change,199 which explains why the habitus was still detectable decades later, at a point in time when the Central Committee apparatus had begun to resemble a “normal organization” under state socialism.

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Notes 1. Catherine Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 109. 2. Karl Schirdewan, Ein Jahrhundert Leben. Erinnerungen und Visionen, Autobiographie (Berlin, 1998), 206. 3. Ibid. 4. Martin Sabrow, Erich Honecker. Das Leben davor, 1912–1945 (Munich, 2016), 442–44; Wolfgang Leonhard, Spurensuche: 40 Jahre nach “Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder,” Aktuelle Fotos von Gerhard Weber (Cologne, 1992), 115–17. 5. Leonhard, Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder, 415f. 6. H. Weber, Die DDR, 13f. 7. Quoted in Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries, 110. 8. Ibid. 9. Leonhard, Spurensuche, 117. 10. M. Scholz, Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht?, 66. 11. Ibid., 65. 12. Ibid. 13. Svenja Goltermann, Die Gesellschaft der Überlebenden: Deutsche Kriegsheimkehrer und ihre Gewalterfahrungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg, 2nd ed. (Munich, 2009), 17. 14. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 23–28. 15. Gniffke, Jahre mit Ulbricht, 183. 16. It is worth noting that the eighty-seven biographies investigated here, as explained already in the introduction, were researched rather pragmatically using biographical reference works and the written records of the SED and/or any accessible information in the holdings of the BStU. A certain degree of distortion is inevitable. Former communists were on the whole more likely than former Social Democrats to have had a successful career in the SED apparatus and the GDR in general. It is therefore possible that the lives of Social Democrats were not as well documented. On the other hand, the literature has taken pains to document the lives of Social Democrats who were expelled from the Party apparatus in the course of its Stalinization in 1948–49 and eventually fled to the West, thus minimizing said distortions. 17. Arthur Wyschka, born in 1894, served from 1946 to 1949 as director of the Central Secretariat’s Communal Policy Department. 18. The remaining individuals cannot be classified in any of these three groups and served for lengthy periods in the Wehrmacht. 19. Accordingly, one of the key functions of the Central Secretariat’s Staffing Policy Department was the “study of illegal Party history.” Schirdewan, Ein Jahrhundert Leben, 218f. 20. The case is recorded in Beschluss der ZPKK vom 20.4.1955 betr. Fritz Ruthenberg, geb. am 20.1.1903, 16.4.1955, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/460, fol. 210. 21. Ibid. 22. Christian Booß and Susan Pethe, “Der Vorgang ‘Rote Nelke.’ Geheimakten des MfS zu hohen SED-Funktionären,” in Die indiskrete Gesellschaft. Studien zum Denunziationskomplex und zu inoffiziellen Mitarbeitern, ed. Christian Booß and Helmut Müller-Enbergs (Frankfurt am Main, 2014), 49–69. 23. Admittedly, Axen stated in an interview in 1990 that he had been “beaten senseless three times” when he failed to make a confession while in Gestapo custody in 1934. Axen and Neubert, Ich war ein Diener, 31. 24. For a detailed discussion of this topic, see Udo Grashoff, “Erst rot, dann braun? Überläufer von der KPD zu NS-Organisationen im Jahr 1933,” in Sachsen und der Nationalsozialismus, ed. Günther Heydemann, Jan-Erik Schulte, and Francesca Weil (Göttingen, 2014), 215–36, quote on 220. 25. See “Günter Scheele” file card, born on October 22, 1905, joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1937, membership no. 7,721,870, in BArch R 1, NSDAP-Ortsgruppen- bzw. Gaukartei, Film-Nr. 3200/

between the kpd and the cpsu (1945–49)

26.

27.

28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

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T0023, fol. 71. Scheele left the central executive committee of the SED in 1948 and became a professor of Marxism-Leninism at Humboldt University in Berlin. From 1949 to 1953 he acted as the personal assistant of Minister of Justice Max Fechner and, following several other university appointments, served as rector of the Potsdam Teacher Training College from 1957 to 1965. Erich Franz Paterna, Nachtrag zur Erklärung vom 9.3.1963, 12.3.1963, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/11/v. 2766, fols. 66 f., here fol. 66. See also Rüdiger Bergien, “Das Schweigen der Kader. Ehemalige Nationalsozialisten im zentralen SED-Parteiapparat—eine Erkundung,” in Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten. Der Nationalsozialismus in der Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Birthe Kundrus and Sybille Steinbacher (Göttingen, 2013), 134–53. Eitinger reports that almost all of the 226 Norwegian survivors of a Nazi concentration camp exhibited psychiatric disorders even years after their return to normal life. Leo Eitinger, “KZ-Haft und psychische Traumatisierung,” Psyche 44, no. 2 (1990): 118–32. These findings are relativized by Zev Harel, Boaz Kahana, and Eva Kahana, “Social Resources and the Mental Health of Aging Nazi Holocaust Survivors and Immigrants,” in International Handbook of Traumatic Stress Syndromes, ed. John P. Wilson and Beverly Raphael (New York, 1993), 241–52. Carola Tischler, Flucht in die Verfolgung. Deutsche Emigranten im sowjetischen Exil, 1933 bis 1945 (Münster, 1996); Reinhard Müller, “‘Wir kommen alle dran.’ ‘Säuberungen’ unter den deutschen Politemigranten in der Sowjetunion (1934–1938),” Mittelweg 36, no. 6 (1997/98): 6, S. 20–45. Bericht des Genossen Horst Sindermann über das Konzentrationslager Sachsenhausen, Juni 1945, SAPMO-BArch, SgY 30/1254, 6f. Sindermann joined the Central Committee apparatus in 1954 and served as head of the Agitation Department from 1957 to 1960. Ibid., 4. Lutz Niethammer, ed., in collaboration with Karin Hartewig, Der “gesäuberte” Antifaschismus. Die SED und die roten Kapos von Buchenwald, Dokumente (Berlin, 1994). Bericht des Genossen Horst Sindermann über das Konzentrationslager Sachsenhausen, Juni 1945, SAPMO-BArch, SgY 30/1254, 1f. Ibid., 169. The future first district secretary of the SED in Zeitz wrote such a letter while incarcerated in 1934, see Frank Hirschinger, “Gestapoagenten, Trotzkisten, Verräter.” Kommunistische Parteisäuberungen in Sachsen-Anhalt 1918–1953 (Göttingen, 2005), 256. Among them Ernst Hoffmann, as of 1946 acting director of the Youth Secretariat in the Central Secretariat, and Emil Paffrath, head of the Central Secretariat’s Labor and Social Welfare Department. Goltermann, Die Gesellschaft der Überlebenden, 95. On this concept, see Coser, Greedy Institutions. This comradery differed from mere collegiality in that a member of the organization was not merely perceived in connection with his role in the organization as such but as an individual with a multitude of roles—in this case, not just as an employee of this or that Central Secretariat department but as a comrade who had been in the camps before 1945 and had joined a workers’ party before 1933. See Kühl, Ganz normale Organisationen, 152f. On patterns of recruiting junior functionaries in the late 1940s, see Ulrich Mählert, “‘Die Partei hat immer recht!’ Parteisäuberungen als Kaderpolitik in der SED (1948–1953),” in Terror. Stalinistische Parteisäuberungen 1936–1953, ed. Hermann Weber and Ulrich Mählert (Paderborn, 2001), 351–457, here 366f. Based on the 87 (1946) and 119 (1950) reconstructed biographies of political employees used in this study. M. Scholz, Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht?, 80. Walter Borning, Lebenslauf, 7.3.1950, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/11/v. 2998, fols. 11–13. His SPD membership did, however, prevent him from taking his first state examination in 1933, effectively blocking his career. Zweiling, a member of the SPD, had earned his PhD in mathematics from the University of Göttingen in 1922 before becoming a full-time editor at various workers’ newspapers. From 1946 to 1950, he was the first editor-in-chief of the Party newspaper Einheit, published by the central apparatus.

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45. Polak headed the Central Committee’s legal department from 1946 to 1948. 46. As of 1946, Heinz Stern headed the press-monitoring service of the Press, Radio and Information Department in the Central Committee. 47. Leonhard, Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder, 444. 48. True parity in leadership positions—also with respect to pay—only existed in the Office of the Central Secretariat (Richard Gyptner and Fritz Schreiber), the Organization Department (Walter Beling and Josef König) and the Staffing Policy Department (Margarete Keilson and Alexander Lösche). All other departments were headed by a—not exactly equal—team of departmental heads and deputies; the Press, Radio and Information Department only by former KSČ functionary Bruno Köhler; and the Youth Department by Paul Verner. Gehaltsübersicht der Mitarbeiter des Zentralsekretariats der SED, Mai 1946, SAPMO-Barch, NY 4036/661, fols. 50–74. 49. The total number of political employees working at headquarters during this period was probably around 400 to 500. Once staff expansion was complete in early 1947, about 300 political employees worked in the central apparatus at a given time until 1949. Fluctuation was high, the approximate time spent in a given position being estimated at three to four years. Thus, a total of about 350 employees worked in the apparatus from early 1947 to late 1949. Prior to 1947 the number of employees was much lower, averaging about 60 between the summer of 1945 and late 1946. With a fluctuation of 30 percent, this means that a total of about 90 political employees worked at Party headquarters during this period. 50. Gniffke, Jahre mit Ulbricht, 177. Complaints from departmental heads with a Communist background such as Bruno Köhler would seem to indicate that there was no systematic discrimination against former Social Democrats. In the summer of 1946, Köhler bemoaned that the position of the (Social Democratic) department co-chair had still not been filled—and this even though his workload surpassed his “physical strength.” Bruno Köhler, ZS-Abteilung Presse, Rundfunk und Information, an das Zentralsekretariat der SED, 21.6.1946, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/9.02/2, fols. 1f. 51. Ibid. 52. Gniffke, Jahre mit Ulbricht, 176. 53. The new “leisurely pace” (Gemächlichkeit) was largely due to the fact that the ten-hour workday of the KPD apparatus had been abolished after the fusion. Leonhard, Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder, 444. 54. Gennadij Bordjugow, “Das ZK der KpdSU (B), die Sowjetische Militäradministration in Deutschland und die SED (1945–1951),” in Terror, ed. Weber and Mählert, 283–321, here 317. 55. Sabrow, Honecker, 446. 56. The term is taken from Melville Dalton, Men Who Manage: Fusions of Feeling and Theory in Administration (New York, 1987). For Dalton, “horizontal cliques” are groups in organizational management that operate on the same hierarchical level, share common interests, and support each other through the exchange of information. 57. Fritz Schreiber headed the Office of the Central Secretariat on a parity basis with Richard Gyptner, and Alexander Lösche headed the Staffing Policy Department with the Communist Keilson. Rudolf Krankemann had been brought to headquarters by Otto Grotewohl to head the administrative office. For more on this “clique,” see Lutz Heuer, Fritz Schreiber: Einblicke in ein bewegtes Leben (Berlin, 2008), 105–7. 58. Former Communists, for their part, preferred to keep to themselves as well. In a report on the state of the SED in October 1946, the deputy head of the Political Department under I. F. Filippov, a political advisor working for the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, mentioned that the birthday party of Hermann Matern at which only two of twenty invited guests were former Social Democrats. Bordjugow, “Das ZK der KpdSU (B),” doc. 2, 320. 59. Reutter’s annoyance had to do more specifically with what he considered Lehmann’s overly “soft” wording in his directive to state executive committees to staff their agriculture departments with suitable comrades, which he appended with the note that it ultimately depended “on the general and organizational framework” whether “all of these departments can be staffed with one comrade each.” Rudolf Reutter, ZS-Abteilung Landwirtschaft, an die Gen. Merker/Lehmann, betr.: Stellungnahme

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60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71.

72.

73.

74.

75. 76. 77.

78. 79.

80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

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zu den Entwürfen zweier Rundschreiben des Genossen Lehmann an die Parteivorstände, 21.1.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/55, fols. 50f., here fol. 51. Bordjugow, “Das ZK der KpdSU (B),” doc. 2, 315. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 79. Hermann Weber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus. Die Stalinisierung der KPD in der Weimarer Republik, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), vol. 1, 263. Ibid., vol. 2, 14f. The figures are from H. Weber, Die Wandlungen, vol. 1, 263. A[lbert] Bewer, ABC der Org-arbeit [ca. 1930], 17. H. Weber, Die Wandlung, vol. 1, 292. The only new one was the Cadre Department, whose employees were less concerned with selecting new cadre than they were with illegal Party history and the pasts of leading functionaries. The trade union department was initially not reestablished after 1945. See Kubina, “Der Aufbau,” 109–14. This department was responsible for primary schools, “stage, cinema, literature,” churches and sports. This was run exclusively by Rudolf Belke and Emil Paffrath to begin with. Its only employee at first was Anton Plenikowski. A critique of the persistent tendency to view even the “new” state as “hostile and to divest it of its tasks can be found in Paul Merker, Aktennotiz, betr.: Behandlung der zwischen den Genossen Brack, Matern und Herm bestehenden Differenzen, 29.9.1948, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/18, fols. 69 f. From the perspective of organizational research, the differentiation of the organization into subunits was indeed a functional tendency of organizational behavior which in itself cannot be deemed “bureaucratization.” It had the positive effect that subsystems—in this case, subdivisions—relieved the overall system of special tasks and in turn were relieved of other tasks themselves. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 76. It cited a report from Saxony as a negative example where at every level the Party was spending twice as much on its apparatus as it was receiving in membership dues. Vorschläge der Kommission zur Beratung des Aufbaus des Parteiapparates, 29.8.1946, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/5/229, fols. 285–288, here fol. 285. These units would then be attached to the Organization, Economic, and Labor and Social Welfare departments, respectively. Moreover, the Recruitment and Training and the Culture and Education departments were to be combined into a larger department. [Vorschläge für den Aufbau des zentralen Parteiapparats], 14.11.1946, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/5/229, fols. 287f. Ibid., fol. 288. [Mitarbeiter des Zentralsekretariats], Geheim, SAPMO-Barch, NY 4036/661, fols. 77–97. Auszug aus dem Protokoll Nr. 105 (II) der Sitzung des ZS vom 31.8.1948, betr.: Überprüfung des gesamten Personalbestandes im Apparat des Zentralsekretariats, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/11/120, fols. 49f. The Central Secretariat appointed a commission to make “specific suggestions for minimizing the central apparatus.” To what extent this initiative can be seen as a preliminary step to subsequent Party purges is just as unclear as the commission’s specific findings. Bahro, Die Alternative, 283. Bordjugow, “Das ZK der KpdSU (B),” doc. 5, 333. Colonel Sergei Tyulpanov was head of the Soviet Military Administration’s Propaganda and Information Department from October 1945 to September 1949. Bruno Köhler an das Zentralsekretariat der SED, 21.6.1946, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/9.02, 2, fols. 1f. Paul Merker, Vorlage an das Zentralsekretariat, 25.10.1948, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/16, fol. 309. Gniffke, Jahre mit Ulbricht, 188. Helmut Lehmann, betr.: Besetzung der Stelle des Präsidenten der Zentralverwaltung für Gesundheitswesen, 22.5.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.027/6, fol. 25. Helmut Lehmann, Vorlage an das Zentralsekretariat, betr.: Beschaffung eines Wagens für die Abteilung Landwirtschaft, 28.11.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/16, fol. 225.

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85. [Verbesserung des Ablaufs der Sitzungen des Zentralsekretariats], undated [1948], SAPMO-Barch, NY 4036/659, fols. 99–101, here 100. 86. Gniffke, Jahre mit Ulbricht, 180. 87. [Verbesserung des Ablaufs der Sitzungen des Zentralsekretariats], undated [1948], SAPMO-Barch, NY 4036/659, fols. 99–101. 88. Gniffke recounts that these issues led to regular outbursts among members of the Central Secretariat, but admits that he was “not aware of any case . . . where the Communists had refused to discuss a thorny topic.” Gniffke, Jahre mit Ulbricht, 180. 89. H. Weber, Die Wandlung, vol. 1, 262–82. 90. Oleg V. Chlevnjuk, Das Politbüro. Mechanismen der politischen Macht in der Sowjetunion der dreißiger Jahre (Hamburg, 1998), 94–103. 91. Arbeitsordnung für die Angestellten und Arbeiter des Zentralsekretariats der SED, 24.3.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/9159, fols. 2f.; Amos, Politik und Organisation, 89, maintains, on the other hand, that its “rules of procedure” (Geschäftsordnung) were only elaborated in December of 1950. 92. Bruno Köhler an das Zentralsekretariat der SED, 21.6.1946, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/9.02/2, fols. 1f. 93. Most recently Fiedler, Medienlenkung in der DDR, 58f. 94. Wilhelm Kirschey, Zu einigen Fragen der Geschichte der Zentrag, undated [1977], SAPMO-Barch, DY 63/3608, unpaginated. 95. Einige Bemerkungen zur Kaderpolitik der Abteilung Finanzverwaltung und Parteibetriebe, 21.2. 1962, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/J IV 2/3J/233, fols. 1–13. 96. Ibid., 4. 97. Gniffke, Jahre mit Ulbricht, 188f. 98. Rudolf Reutter an Gen. Merker/Lehmann, betr. Entwurf “Kontrollausschüsse der Bodenreform,” 21.1.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/52, fol. 75. 99. Elke Scherstjanoi, SED-Agrarpolitik unter sowjetischer Kontrolle 1949–1953, Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte 70 (Munich, 2007), 58. 100. Helmut Lehmann an Anton Ackermann, 5.12.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/30, fols. 23f. 101. Ibid. 102. The term comes from Gerald A. Cole, Management: Theory and Practice, 5th ed. (London, 1996). Cole describes the various forms of communication in groups and organizations, distinguishing between “all-channel,” “wheel,” “circle,” and “chain” communication. 103. On the establishment of communication channels in organizations, see Stefan Kühl, “Die formale Seite der Organisation. Überlegungen zum Konzept der entschiedenen Entscheidungsprämissen,” working paper, 2/2010, http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/soz/forschung/orgsoz/Stefan_Kuehl/pdf/For male-Seite-Workingpaper-1-25052010-endgultig.pdf, 9f. (retrieved on June 23, 2016). 104. Schreiben von Rudolf Reutter an den SED-Landesvorstand Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, betr.: Bericht der Abt. Landwirtschaft der SED Mecklenburg-Vorpommern vom 6.6.1946, 28.6.1946, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022, 55, fol. 17. 105. Schreiber, Büro des Zentralsekretariats, betr.: Richtlinien für den Rundschreibenversand. 11.02.1948, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/5/193, fol. 15. Here it is plain to see that the differentiation of the central apparatus brought about the need to draw clear boundaries between this and other organizations. The increasing number of tasks at Party headquarters increased its points of contact with the outside world. For the sake of maintaining boundaries, it became necessary on the one hand to channel external communication and on the other hand to entrust this communication to specialized units (addressed in more detail in chapter 3) that Luhmann referred to as “outposts” (Grenzstellen) in his theory of organizations (Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 220–39) and which offer a multitude of illustrative material for the history of Party headquarters. 106. The new rules stated that “first secretaries of the regional and district leaderships . . . are to address important documents, information and inquiries directly to the Secretariat of the Central Committee” and not “indirectly” via a Central Committee department. Arbeitsordnung des Apparates des Zentralkomitees der SED, 29.1.1953, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/3/358, fols. 25–34, here fol. 34.

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107. Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 3, author’s transcript and audio recording. 108. Leonhard, Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder, 444. 109. Malycha, Die SED, 141. 110. Leonhard, Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder, 456. 111. One thing that needed to be verified was that land actually went to individuals with no Nazi past. 112. Rudolf Reutter, ZS-Abteilung Landwirtschaft, an SED-Landesvorstand Sachsen: Bildung von Kontroll-Kommissionen zur Festigung der Bodenreform, 13.12.1946, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/ IV 2/2.022/52, fols. 69–71, here fols. 69. 113. Zentralsekretariat der SED an alle Landes- bezw. Provinzialvorstände der SED: Rundschreiben! Kontrollausschüsse der Bodenreform, 23.1.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/52, fol. 75. 114. By the end of March 1947 only the state executive committee of Thuringia had bothered to answer. Reutter an Lehmann/Merker, betr.: Rundschreiben vom 23.1.47, 2.4.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/ IV 2/2.022/52, fol. 80. 115. Interview with Gerhard U., February 5, 2010, 7, author’s transcript and audio recording. 116. Bordjugow, “Das ZK der KpdSU (B),” doc. 2, 322f. 117. Ibid., 323f. 118. Anton Plenikowski, Jahrgang 1899, 1946–1950 Leiter der ZS- bzw. ZK-Abteilung Landespolitik. 119. M. Scholz, Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht?, 66. 120. Leonhard, Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder, 505f. 121. Rudolf Belke, ZS-Abteilung Arbeit und Sozialfürsorge, an Paul Merker, betr.: Sozialpolitischer Lehrgang des Landesvorstandes Mecklenburg-Vorpommern vom 2.–12.8.1947 in Schwerin, 12.8.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/26, fols. 10f. The participants “simply skipped the training course” if they “had personal or other business to attend to.” 122. Zentralverwaltung für das Gesundheitswesen, Abt. II, Dr. K./Wg. An Maxim Zetkin, Aktennotiz über eine Besprechung bei Herrn Lehmann, Zentralsekretariat der SED, 19.5.1947, Barch, DQ 1/20167, unpaginated. 123. “A whole range of issues that we worked through during the last big round of talks and which I was supposed to receive drafts of have not been taken care of as per our discussion.” Helmut Lehmann an Maxim Zetkin, 6.1.1948, Barch, DQ 1/20167, unpaginated. 124. Maxim Zetkin an Helmut Lehmann, 9.1.1948, Barch, DQ 1/20167, unpaginated. 125. Rudolf Weck, ZS-Abteilung Arbeit und Sozialfürsorge, Bericht über die Besprechung des Genossen Lehmann mit den Genossen Brack, Matern und Litke am 1.4.1949, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/ IV 2/2.027/5, fols. 285–288. 126. Edwin Hoernle an Paul Merker, 5.5.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.02/6, fol. 128. 127. Jan Foitzik, “Sowjetische Ordnungspolitik und deutsche Ordnungsambition,” in Sowjetische Kommandanturen, ed. Foitzik, 99–254, here 102f. 128. In the summer of 1947 the Thuringian minister of the interior (SED) appealed to the Central Secretariat’s Health Policy Department to obtain a permit for setting up a nursing school in Nordhausen. Hugo Gräf, an employee at the Central Secretariat department, did not in turn appeal to the Soviet Military Administration in person—apparently he had no suitable contacts there—but told Maxim Zetkin that he would “gratefully appreciate if the C[entral] A[dministration] in Karlshorst would endeavor to support the matter in the interests of the state of Thuringia.” Hugo Gräf an Maxim Zetkin, 22.7.1947, Barch, DQ 1/20167, unpaginated. 129. Wilhelm Pieck, Zentralsekretariat der SED, an Oberst Tjulpanov, SMAD, 16.8.1947, SAPMOBarch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/27, fol. 5. 130. Ibid. 131. See also Maja Apelt and Veronika Tacke, “Einleitung,” in Handbuch Organisationstypen, ed. Apelt and Tacke (Wiesbaden, 2012), 7–20. 132. Although we should take into account that Nazarov was eager to convey the impression to his comrades in Moscow that his occupation authority had everything under control. Wettig, “Die sowjetische Besatzungsmacht,” 42. 133. Foitzik, “Sowjetische Ordnungspolitik,” 104.

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134. See, e.g., Helmut Lehmann an die SMAD, Abteilung Gesundheitswesen, betr.: Präsident der Deutschen Verwaltung für Gesundheitswesen, 6.3.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.027/6, fol. 13. 135. On May 6, 1949, Paul Merker wrote an in-house memorandum to Walter Ulbricht noting that “Comrade Morenov”—the director of the SMAD’s Workforce Department—had informed him “that he was very much interested in Comrade Lange staying in the Main Directorate for Labor and Social Welfare. A resolution of the Small Secretariat supposedly decreed otherwise.” Paul Merker an Walter Ulbricht, 6.5.1949, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.027/5, fol. 289. 136. Betr.: Ministerium für Maschinenbau, undated [November 1953], SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/6.04/49, fols. 71f. 137. Quoted in Kaiser, “Wechsel von sowjetischer Besatzungspolitik zu sowjetischer Kontrolle?,” S. 221. 138. Henrik Eberle, ed., Mit sozialistischem Gruß! Parteiinterne Hausmitteilungen, Briefe, Akten und Intrigen aus der Ulbricht-Zeit (Berlin, 1998), 27. 139. Fuhrmann, born in 1907, was an instructor at the Central Committee’s “Reich District Department” as of October 1945. 140. Quoted in Eberle, Mit sozialistischem Gruß, 19f. 141. Helmut Lehmann, for example, on a visit to Sangerhausen in November 1946, was asked to step in on behalf of the local high-school principal who had failed to immediately remove a plaque in the auditorium listing the names of alumni who had fallen in World War I. Helmut Lehmann, Vorlage an das Zentralsekretariat, betr.: Eingriff des politischen Offiziers des Kreises Sangerhausen, Entlassung des Oberstudiendirektors Lauche, des Leiters des Gymnasiums in Sangerhausen, 4.11.1946, SAPMOBarch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/16, fol. 33. 142. One example among many: in the summer of 1946 a certain Karl S. from Weidenhain by Torgau reported that between May 1945 and January 1946 his family had been “visited” no less than thirty times by Russians “with anything but peaceful intentions.” The “visits” included looting, rapes, all manner of humiliations, and random shots being fired into Karl S.’s home from outside. Eberle, Mit sozialistischem Gruß, 23f. 143. Gniffke, Jahre mit Ulbricht, 191. As late as November 1947, Party headquarters received “appalling news of stabbings” in Halle committed by “members of the Soviet occupying forces” and claiming a number of lives from among the civilian population. Aktenvermerk, 15.11.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/18, fol. 46. 144. Wettig, “Die sowjetische Besatzungsmacht,” 43. The strain on the SED’s reputation among the general population became apparent in its defeat at the polls in Berlin on October 20, 1946, where the SPD, still legal in Berlin, received an unexpected 48.7 percent of the vote as opposed to a mere 19.8 percent for the SED. 145. This is at least the account given by Scheweleit’s division head Rudolf Krankemann. To be sure, Krankemann made the statement during interrogation while in the custody of State Security, meaning it’s possible that Krankemann, himself accused of “conduct hostile to the Party,” wanted to exonerate himself by shifting the blame to Scheweleit. Vernehmungsprotokoll des Beschuldigten Krankemann, Rudolf [...], 22.9.1955, BstU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146/56, Bd. 1, fols. 237–41, here fol. 238. 146. Paul Merker an die SMAD, Abteilung Landwirtschaft, betr.: Ausweisung des Fischers Wilhelm Hoffmann in Alt-Schadow, Krs. Beeskow, 7.1.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/27, fol. 19. The fisher was a fellow comrade and former SED member. 147. H. Pfeiffer, SED-Landesvorstand Brandenburg, Abteilung Wirtschaft, an ZS-Abteilung Wirtschaft, Antrag auf Übergabe der Sauerstoffanlage bei der ehemaligen Firma Julius Pintsch, Fürstenwalde/ Spree, die sich noch in Besitz der Trophäen-Abteilung befindet, 3.1.1948, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/ IV 2/2.022/4, fol. 56. 148. Foitzik, “Sowjetische Ordnungspolitik,” 103. 149. The term gatekeeper comes from the field of communications, referring to how the mass media determines what information gets disseminated. More broadly, it refers to the individuals and organizations that are able to channel or prohibit the flow of information. Michael Kunczik and Astrid Zipfel, Publizistik. Ein Studienhandbuch (Cologne, 2005), 243f.

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150. Maxim Zetkin an die Kaderabteilung des ZR [sic] der SED, 20.11.1946, Barch, DQ 1/20167, unpaginated. To what extent it used its authority is not entirely clear. What is certain is that Bürger remained a full professor of internal medicine and director of the Leipzig University Hospital until 1957. 151. The conflict arose around the Party leadership’s desire to give “social organizations” like the People’s Solidarity the opportunity to run orphanages. In the final version of its decree, however, the German Administration for Education had only granted local communities this opportunity. Helmut Lehmann, Zentralsekretariat der SED, an die Deutsche Verwaltung für Volksbildung, 21.11.1947, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.025/9, fol. 185. 152. Paul Merker, Aktennotiz, betr.: Struktur der Verwaltung Arbeit und Sozialfürsorge, 30.9.1948, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.027/5, fol. 236. 153. Paul Merker, Aktennotiz, betr.: Behandlung der zwischen den Genossen Brack, Matern und Herm bestehenden Differenzen, 29.9.1948, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/18, fols. 69f. 154. Dietrich Beyrau interprets the ever new branding of enemies as a genuinely Stalinist instrument of mobilization. Dietrich Beyrau, Das bolschewistische Projekt als Entwurf und als soziale Praxis (Constance, 2002), 14. 155. For a detailed discussion of the SED’s Stalinization, see Malycha, Die SED; see also Hurwitz, Die Stalinisierung; Beatrix Bouvier, Ausgeschaltet! Sozialdemokraten in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone und in der DDR, 1945–1953 (Bonn, 1996); at the regional level: Mike Schmeitzner and Stefan Donth, Die Partei der Diktaturdurchsetzung: KPD/SED in Sachsen, 1945–1952 (Cologne, 2002). 156. Leonhard, Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder, 482. 157. Heinrich Rau was named chairman, with Bruno Leuschner and Fritz Selbmann as his deputies—all three being former Communists. 158. Heuer, Fritz Schreiber, 147. 159. Gniffke, Jahre mit Ulbricht, 306–8. 160. Ibid., 310. 161. Ibid., 327. 162. M. Scholz, Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht?, 95. 163. Gniffke, Jahre mit Ulbricht, 328. 164. Ibid., 356f. 165. Heuer, Fritz Schreiber, 150. 166. Ibid., 166f. The case of Hockenholz is particularly tragic, but the other dimissals as well were usually accompanied by downward social mobility. König became a common employee at the German Trade Center (DHZ) for coal in Potsdam, Lösche worked for the Progress film distributor, and Weimann at least managed to become branch manager of DEFA film distribution in Saxony-Anhalt. In 1952, Weiman quit the SED, moved to West Berlin and rejoined the SPD. 167. Betr.: Bericht zur Person Krankemann, 26.1.1961, BstU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 12485, fols. 32–38, here fol. 35. 168. SfS, HA S: Auftrag B/267/318 [Abhörprotokoll eines Gesprächs zwischen Rudolf Krankemann und Hans Schoof am 28.3.1955], 30.3.1955, BstU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146/56, Bd. 1, fols. 121–146, here fol. 127. 169. Statistik über die Gesamtzusammensetzung des Apparates des ZK, der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen, 30.6.1954, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/5/1667, fols. 47–66, here fol. 51. 170. M. Scholz, Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht?, 105. 171. Ibid., 108f. 172. Ibid., 115. 173. Ibid., 156. 174. Gyptner’s past as a Comintern veteran had possibly caught up to him. Ibid., 138. 175. Quoted in Karin Hartewig, Zurückgekehrt. Die Geschichte der jüdischen Kommunisten in der DDR (Cologne, 2000), 164. Abusch was one of the few top functionaries to survive unscathed the serious accusation of having had contact to Field. In the summer of 1951, the Central Party Control Commission chairman Hermann Matern informed him that there was “nothing” on him and that

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he would be welcomed back into the “fold of the Party.” Abusch once again became a member of the Presidential Council of the Cultural Association, and in 1953, as division head of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture, was given oversight of the entire publishing industry. Ibid., 171. 176. M. Scholz, Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht?, 157. 177. Anonymous, “Die Partei wird stärker, wenn sie ihre Reihen säubert!” Einheit 6 (1953), 761–69, here 768, quoted in M. Scholz, Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht?, 168. 178. See, among others, Bouvier, Ausgeschaltet!; Andreas Malycha, Auf dem Weg zur SED: Die Sozialdemokratie und die Bildung einer Einheitspartei in den Ländern der SBZ, eine Quellenedition (Bonn, 1995); Hurwitz, Die Stalinisierung. 179. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 26, 59–73. 180. This was in fact an explicit aim of the Party leadership. The Twelfth Congress of the Party Executive in late July 1948 not only concerned itself with the problem of “internal enemies” but—naturally inconjunction with this—also with measures to “consolidate” the Party apparatus. 181. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 38. 182. Tacke, “Formalität und Informalität,” 58. 183. Sergej Tjul’panov, “Drei Jahre Arbeitserfahrung der Informationsverwaltung der SMAD (Oktober 1945–Oktober 1948),” in Der Tjul’panov-Bericht, ed. Gerhard Wettig (Göttingen, 2012), 139–401, here 208. 184. The “political weaknesses” they identified in themselves included “extremely poor cooperation . . . with [the Party newspaper] Neues Deutschland” which could only “grow and improve from these humble beginnings and initial attempts.” ZS-Abteilung Werbung, Presse, Rundfunk, Resolution, 15.11.1948, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/9.02/2, fols. 68–77, here fol. 68. 185. Stellungnahme der Org.-Abteilung des ZS zu ihrer Arbeit, undated [September/October 1948], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/55, fols. 7–11, here fol. 7. 186. Organizational research has long been dominated by the notion that organizations are solely concerned with their purpose, that they are nothing more than social units “constructed and reconstructed to seek specific goals,” Amitai Etzioni, Modern Organisations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1964), 3; Kühl, Ganz normale Organisationen, 57f. Here we follow the view that organizations can indeed exist with no concrete, or merely vague, objectives—as illustrated by the apparatus in the years 1946–47—and that they are constituted less by a central aim wholly determining them than by an opportunism of purpose, i.e., that the objectives being pursued at any given moment are adjusted to existing possibilities and constraints, Niklas Luhmann, Politische Soziologie, ed. André Kieserling (Berlin, 2015), 226f. In this respect, the orientation of the apparatus towards a “revolutionary center” is an expression of the possibilities opened up by the SMAD and the CPSU. 187. He also bemoaned that the present work plans of the departments did “not make sufficiently apparent how the ideological struggle is being carried out in individual areas.” Ulbricht’s comments were recorded in the minutes taken by Rudolf Weck, head of the Central Secretariat’s Labor and Social Welfare Department: SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.027/2, fols. 47–49, here fol. 47. 188. Bericht über die Teilnahme an der Sitzung der Org.-Abteilung mit den Org.-Leitern der Landesvorstände am 8.9.1948, 10.9.1948, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/29, fols. 62–64, here fol. 64. 189. Stenografische Niederschrift über die Arbeitstagung der Abt. Landwirtschaft des Zentralsekretariats am Dienstag, dem 26. Oktober 1948 im Zentralhaus der Einheit, 26.10.1948, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/17, fols. 2–75, here fol. 3f. 190. Neufassung der Protokoll-Texte über die Fraktionssitzung vom 22. Dezember 1949 im Haus des Deutschen Bauern, 22.12.1949, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/18, fols. 121–26. 191. Ibid., fol. 123. 192. Körting was released after a year of being held in custody but did not resume his political career. 193. Matthäus Klein, for example, a student at the Party School, supposedly exclaimed in private to Wolfgang Leonhard in the fall of 1948, “I hate Stalin!” and yet still remained loyal to the Party the rest of his life. In the decades that followed Klein become an editor at Einheit and deputy director of the

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Central Institute for Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. Leonhard, Spurensuche, 224. 194. The term is found in Crozier and Friedberg, Macht und Organisation. 195. The hypothesis that subjects in organzations are more self-disciplining than disciplined from above is taken from Stefan Kühl, “Gesellschaft der Organisationen, organisierte Gesellschaft, Organisationsgesellschaft. Zu den Grenzen einer an Organisationen ansetzenden Zeitdiagnose,” in Zur Zukunft der Organisationssoziologie, ed. Maja Apelt and Uwe Wilkesmann (Wiesbaden, 2015), 78n5. 196. Maja Apelt and Konstanze Senge, eds., Organisation und Unsicherheit (Wiesbaden, 2015), 1f. 197. Ibid. 198. Jörg Baberowski, Der rote Terror: Die Geschichte des Stalinismus (Frankfurt am Main, 2008), 156. 199. Sonja A. Sackmann, “Organisationskultur: Die unsichtbare Einflussgröße,” Gruppendynamik 14, no. 4 (1983): 395– 406, here 395f., 402–4.

Chapter 2

The Arduous Road to Power The Central Committee Apparatus in the Decade of Building Socialism (1950–59)

In December of 1954 a delegation of the Central Committee apparatus of the SED comprising almost thirty individuals traveled to Moscow. Their agenda was intimidating. In one week’s time the visiting functionaries were expected to attend no less than seventy-two lectures and tours in central and regional organs of the CPSU.1 These organs included “sister departments”—the Central Committee departments of the CPSU—as well as the Party Library of the City of Moscow and the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Most of these appointments took several hours, not to mention the written evaluations prepared in the evening by these visiting comrades from the GDR. There is no record of any cultural or recreational program having taken place—a visit, say, to the Bolshoi Theater or at least a stroll down Nevsky Prospect. The verbatim transcripts of the talks and question-and-answer sessions make clear that the SED delegation took its compulsory schedule of events quite seriously. They had come to Moscow with a lot of questions about the details of Party life in the CPSU and the relationship between Party and state. The delegation was led by Karl Schirdewan, a member of the SED Politbüro responsible for Party development and organization in his capacity as a Central Committee secretary. At the time he was seen as the second man in the SED after Ulbricht. His questions and those of his comrades make plain the kind of things that were preoccupying these East German functionaries. Does a CPSU member, Schirdewan asked, at all times have to carry his membership document on him? Does the Party always take disciplinary action if he loses his Party membership book?2 Peter Pries, the twenty-five-year-old head of the Central Committee’s Agitation and Propaganda

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Department, wanted to know if the Central Committee of the CPSU gave “many specific instructions about the topics to be dealt with in general meetings,” since he wondered if members of the CPSU had “more freedoms than we do.”3 Comrade Kuzmin, head of the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, was drilled with questions on December 25th.4 How does your department work with the Party organizations of the ministries of industry? And in particular, “Does a Central Committee departmental head have the authority to issue directives to his minister?” The latter question seemed to deeply preoccupy these SED delegates in December 1954, since they posed the question repeatedly in the many talks they attended. The questions SED functionaries had brought with them to Moscow in late 1954 reveal one thing: even five years after the SED was effectively elevated to the status of a dictatorial party, there was considerable uncertainty within the central SED apparatus stemming in equal measure from internal “zones of uncertainty” and from the persistent difficulty of impacting its “environment”—the state, economy and society—so as to achieve the desired effect. This uncertainty found expression in the core question animating delegation members: Should the Central Committee apparatus be a strong and omnicompetent power center elaborately intervening in the economy and giving directives to ministers? Or was it not more important to have an apparatus that focused solely on political mobilization? Both opposing views had influenced the development of the central CPSU apparatus in the Soviet Union.5 But which was the most appropriate for SED party headquarters, and this in the “complicated situation” of 1954 when the Stalinist concept of revolution with its heavy industrialization and the war on internal “enemies” had for all intents and purposes failed, with alternatives slow in coming against the backdrop of the “thaw”?6 Schirdewan and his comrades were given answers to their questions—but not ones that could have solved the problems SED party headquarters was facing. The situation of the CPSU Central Committee apparatus was just too different from that of its East German counterpart. The former had more than three decades of governing practice and commanded authority even when its first secretary was crusading against “bureaucratism” and urging the apparatus to reconnect with the “masses.” The Central Committee apparatus of the SED, on the other hand, faced a dual pressure: Party leaders accused it of lacking assertiveness whereas ministers and economic functionaries criticized it for its “patronizing” attitude and incompetence. Extensive criticism of the apparatus was in fact one continuity of the semi-public discourse during the decade of building socialism in the GDR, a discourse generally limited, however, to Party and functional elites. Given the seemingly chaotic organizational development of the Central Committee apparatus in the 1950s, these critiques of the apparatus might give the impression that the SED seized and secured its power not through7 but despite its apparatus.8 Yet this impression—and with the uncertainty expressed in the questions posed by the SED’s Moscow delegation—does not fit the picture of an apparatus bent on rigidly asserting its power, if need be with force.

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These contrary perspectives on the SED apparatus in the 1950s can be better understood with the help of an interpretive framework developed with regard to the special administrations and parastatal party organs in Nazi Germany: the precarious organization.9 Precarious organizations are decoupled from organizational “normality.” Their relationships to “normal organizations” are latently unstable and their practices contradict contemporary standards of professionality. At the same time, however, precarious organizations are by no means “weak” and ineffectual. They can have considerable political influence, at least in a given sector. And they don’t necessarily have to follow a suicidal path like the special authorities under Nazism did. In the medium term they may very well develop like a “normal organization” by adopting the latter’s routine practices or imitating their structures—a common mechanism for reducing uncertainty in organizational development10 and one that can be seen in the case of the Central Committee apparatus as well.

Organizational Development The most visible distinction between normal and precarious organizations is the stability or instability of their formal structure. The organizational structure of SED headquarters was relatively stable as of May 1946. The interim expansion of its staff had been completed by 1947. As of the fall of 1949, however, with the founding of the GDR, the staff and formal structure of the Central Secretariat apparatus (as of the summer of 1950, the Central Committee apparatus) were once again in flux. In barely a decade the number of political employees had tripled from around three hundred to almost nine hundred. In analogous fashion, the number of independent organizational units—departments, working groups and commissions—had risen from fifteen to thirty-nine.11 At first glance this seems to be a continuation of the systemic differentiation that began in 1945–46 and that served as a precondition for the apparatus having any influence at all in a variety of policy and social fields as well as for its being able to process information coming from these.12 But just as this early differentiation of the apparatus was promptly accompanied by the criticism that a bloated bureaucracy was emerging here, the differentiation of the apparatus in the 1950s was repeatedly curbed or rolled back by crosscurrents. Newly founded departments soon merged with others, only to be split up again before long. When Eberhard Arlt, head of the Department of Industry, complained about the “hysterical bustle” prevailing in the apparatus in the summer of 1953,13 he was referring in particular to its organizational instability. From the perspective of organizational sociology, the rapid transformation of a formal structure has one main reason: the organization in question is not in a position to attain its objectives and therefore looks for new structures and procedures.14 Historians have at least implicitly adopted this perspective by interpreting the permanent restructuring of the SED’s Central Committee apparatus—whose “constant

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experimentation”15 led to a “downright chaotic state of affairs”16—as the expression of a latent crisis at Party headquarters. The following will show that many Central Committee employees shared this mounting sense of crisis in the 1950s. It is worth pointing out, however, that not only the Party apparatus made an unstable and deficient impression on those outside of it. The Politbüro noted in March 1952 that the MfS needed to “significantly elevate the level” of its work politically and professionally.17 The work of line ministries and the State Planning Commission was likewise characterized by a serious shortage of specialists into the late 1950s.18 On the other hand, this ostensible chaos did not prevent Central Committee departments from successively expanding their influence on state and society, even if real apparatus rule did not emerge until the late 1950s, as will be shown below. Finally, certain patterns are evident even in the “chaotic” organizational development of the Central Committee apparatus. The most important of these was emulation of the Soviet model: the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Between General Departments and the Parallel Principle The founding of the GDR in October 1949 did not initially affect the structure of the Central Committee apparatus. An exception was the establishment of the International Relations Department, responsible among other things for “guiding” the newly founded Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Only in the run-up to the Third Party Congress of the SED from July 20 to 24, 1950 did the Party leadership decide on a new structure for the Central Committee apparatus, replacing the one from May 1946.19 This new structure entailed a convergence with the Soviet model. That meant, first of all, the terminology used. The Party Executive became the Central Committee, the Central Secretariat was replaced by a Politbüro and a Small Secretariat, and the jobs of Referent and Referatsleiter—roughly aide and head of division—were now called Instrukteur and Sektorenleiter.20 Department names now also mimicked the Soviet terminology. The Staffing Policy Department became the Cadre Department, the Training Department was now the Propaganda Department, etc. This effectively erased all linguistic traces of the Social Democratic legacy. A closer look at the departments indicates considerable deviations from the Soviet model. After restructuring in the summer of 1950, only three of thirteen SED Central Committee departments directly corresponded to one of the ten Central Committee departments of the CPSU.21 The remaining ten SED departments either had no equivalent22 at Party headquarters in Moscow or took a totally different form.23 And yet it would be a misunderstanding to conclude from these differences that SED leaders were able to build up their central apparatus according to their own lights as of 1949. Their “friends” in Moscow had a particular interest in structural and organizational questions. There is no question they gave SED leaders “recommendations” for the restructuring of their headquarters. The result was that it strongly resembled the central apparatus of the CPSU until 1948: a few large general departments in contrast to the current division of the CPSU apparatus into numerous smaller spe-

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cialist departments. From the Soviet standpoint, larger and supposedly more flexible general departments were better suited to promote the reorganization of society. The smaller specialist departments, by contrast, were adapted to a developed socialist society.24 Hence in the summer of 1950 the three previously independent Central Committee departments of Economics, Labor and Social Policy, and Health Policy at SED headquarters were subsumed into a larger Department of Economic Policy headed by Ernst Scholz, a former Social Democrat who more than likely got the position thanks to his close contacts with Heinrich Rau, chairman of the State Planning Commission.25 The departments of State and Provincial Policy, Communal Policy, and Justice were consolidated into the new State Administration Department under Anton Plenikowski while the Main Treasury and the Party Enterprises Department became the Financial Administration and Party Enterprises Department under Karl Raab.26 In the new apparatus structure of autumn 1950 there were only thirteen departments as opposed to the previous twenty. Only the field of ideological policy developed contrary to this trend of integration. In this instance the Recruitment and Training Department under former KSČ functionary Robert Korb became two independent units, an Agitation Department (still under Korb) and another for Propaganda under a then thirty-eight-year-old Kurt Hager.27 As in the late 1940s, the Agitation and Propaganda departments played a key role after 1950 as well. This is evident even in their staffing. In the fall of 1950, the Agitation Department alone had ninety-nine political and technical employees on the books, almost twice as many as the Department of Economics. All the ideological departments combined had 129 political employees after restructuring in the summer of 1950, or 32 percent of all political employees in the Central Committee. The specialist departments—Economics, State Administration and Agriculture—comprised 23 percent of the political employees, and the functional departments 32 percent. The latter of course included a whopping 70 political employees in the Cadre Department charged with vetting the pasts of Party and state functionaries in the course of ongoing “purges.” It is therefore clear that the focus of restructuring the SED’s Central Committee apparatus in the summer of 1950 was still very much on ideological policy, a reflection of the “old” KPD apparatus. This wasn’t enough, however, for the apparatus of a state party, or so the critique leveled by their “friends” in the Soviet Control Commission. In March of 1950, the latter found fault with the “branch departments of the Party Executive of the SED [not having] enough employees to secure . . . the leadership of all Party organizations in the ministries and government departments.”28 In other words the specialist departments, in their view, were not in a position to control “the state.” Apart from the insufficient staffing of Central Committee departments they pointed out other weaknesses ranging from unqualified cadre to a conspicuous lack of leadership skills among departmental heads. These deficiencies became in-

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creasingly apparent in 1951 and 1952, of which more below. For now the key question is to what extent Party leaders continued to change the formal structure of the apparatus in the early 1950s in order to turn it into a capable executive. One change was to merge the Cadre and the Organizational Instructor departments. Following the lead of the central CPSU apparatus, they were combined into the larger Executive Organs of the Party and Mass Organizations (LOPM) Department.29 The latter was to guarantee better communications between headquarters and the territorial Party apparatus and/or the Party base than had been the case under its two predecessors. Improvements were indeed badly needed. A third of the 125 district leaderships in existence at that time regularly “forgot” to submit their monthly reports. And, anyway, who in the Central Committee apparatus—asked a mock-naïve Karl Mewis, first secretary of the SED regional leadership in Schwerin, at the Eighth Plenary Session of the Central Committee in February 1952—who is actually going to read all these reports being handed in by the regional leaderships? He for his part had never received any feedback, he said.30 The Second Party Conference of July 1952 brought with it, among other things, an orchestrated “intensification of class struggle” and the objective of laying the “foundations of socialism” at an accelerated pace. In political practice, this meant that the SED leadership and its apparatus were engaged in a struggle against the “old society.”31 It was against this backdrop that SED leaders abandoned the structural principle of general departments instituted just two years earlier. They now adopted the “parallel principle” in use in the Central Committee of the CPSU since 1948.32 This basically meant that the Party apparatus was structurally aligned with the state apparatus. Every ministry and every state governing body had a parallel department in the Central Committee in order to increase Party control over the state and economy. The introduction of the parallel principle meant the speedy end of the general departments in existence since 1950.33 A Politbüro resolution of November 1952 broke up these bigger departments; the Agitation Department was divided into two departments, one for agitation and one for press and radio, whereas the Department of Culture was divided into three: Science and Higher Education, General Education, and Belles Lettres and Art. The economic apparatus in particular, however, was subdivided by the parallel principle. Already in late 1951 the larger Department of Economics under Ernst Scholz was broken up into three independent departments (Planning and Finances, Industry, and Trade and Transport). Now, in late 1952, Party leaders went one step further and divided the Department of Industry into three further departments: Construction, Basic Industry, and Machine Building.34 The introduction of the parallel principle was a big step towards making Party headquarters more functionally differentiated. The Central Committee apparatus was consequently comprised of twenty-four departments in early 1953—eight more than in the summer of 1952.35 Its expansion by about three hundred political em-

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Table 2.1. Departments of the Central Committee of the SED in early 1953.i Group

Functional departments

Ideological departments

Department

Technical employees

Total

Office of the Politbüro

36

77

113

Financial Administration and Party Enterprises

13

n.s.

13

2

436

438

Leading Organs of the Party and Mass Organizations

108

19

127

Subtotal

159

532

691

Agitation

43

12

55

General Education

24

7

31

Press and Radio (with Studies subdivision)

79

40

119

Propaganda

58

11

69

Belles Lettres and Art

27

8

35

Science and Higher Education

43

8

51

274

86

360

Labor Reserves, Social Insurance, Health Services

18

5

23

Construction

11

2

13

Basic Industry

21

4

25

Trade, Supply and Light Industry

25

6

31

Agriculture

45

7

52

Machine-building

24

4

28

Military-Political

n.s.

n.s.

n.s.

Planning and Finance

22

6

28

State Administration

30

6

36

Transport and Communication

n.s.

n.s.

n.s.

Subtotal

196

40

236

Business Department

Subtotal

Specialist departments

Political employees

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KPD Working Office Western apparatus

International departments

9

6

15

n.s.

n.s.

n.s.

Western Department

35

n.s.

35

Subtotal

44

6

50

Foreign-Policy Issues

23

6

29

696

670

1366

Transportationii

Total

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Notes i. All figures taken from Amos, Politik und Organisation, 169–76, with detailed sources. All figures are target figures. The actual number of employees in the 1950s was often up to a quarter less. Not included here are the personal aides and secretaries of Central Committee secretaries as well as the editorial offices of the Party journals Einheit and Neuer Weg. Departments with no existing data on employee numbers (e.g., Transport and Communication) were not included in the totals. ii. In 1950, the Department of Transportation had 6 political and 31 technical employees (ibid.). The number of employees was probably no less in 1953.

ployees between the summer of 1950 and January of 1953 resulted in a quantitative shift within the individual parts of the apparatus. All departments saw their staffs grow, but the ideological departments grew disproportionately. Comprising only 32 percent of all political employees in the summer of 1950, by early 1953 they made up a good 37 percent. But the specialist departments, too, increased their share of employees from 23 to 26.7 percent. By contrast, the share of political employees in the functional departments decreased from 32 to 21.2 percent. The ratio is reversed, however, if the number of technical employees is taken into consideration. Out of the 1,366 political and technical employees in total, the functional departments made up 49 percent in early 1953. The Business Department alone—responsible for chauffeur services, property management, apartments and Party homes, as well as procurement—had almost quadrupled the number of its technical employees from 111 to 446 between August 1950 and early 1953. This was a direct result of the SED being transformed into a state party, one which could justify the construction of relatively fancy Central Committee guesthouses, for example, with the argument that the Central Committee performed representative functions for state and society. The massive expansion of staff was a signal that the Party leadership was serious about building up the central apparatus into the central executive of the GDR. Yet even after the renewed restructuring in the second half of 1952 the apparatus had not become the powerful executive the Politbüro had wished. Why this was the case becomes clear when we shift perspective from the formal to the informal structures of

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the apparatus: the routines and practices not derived from the records and resolutions of the Central Committee Secretariat. The reports of the Central Auditing Commission, for one, shed light on these inner workings.

The Inner Workings of a Precarious Organization The Central Auditing Commission (ZRK) was founded in the summer of 1950. Its first director was Alfred Oelssner—the father of Fred Oelssner, who later became a leading Party ideologue—who had joined the SPD in 1902 (and was reprimanded in 1904 for acting as a strike leader for the Leipzig bookbinders). The ZRK’s only task at first was to assess Party finances. But then in early 1953 SED leaders issued their first concrete work regulations for the Central Committee apparatus detailing for the very first time its four core tasks: “preparing resolutions for the Party leadership,” “supervising the implementation of these resolutions,” “developing cadre,” and procuring information (“speedy, truthful information for the Party leadership”).36 Now SED leaders needed an organ to monitor the Central Committee departments’ compliance with these work regulations, so—following the model of the CPSU—it made the ZRK responsible for this task. In the 1950s in particular, the ZRK reported thoroughly on all manner of grievances and problems. Even if these can’t always be taken at face value—criticism of the apparatus could very well have had an exonerating function for the Party leadership, allowing them to shift responsibility to the apparatus for its own political failures—ZRK reports are nevertheless an incomparable source for this particular period, offering insights into the inner workings, routines and informality of the apparatus. A key finding of ZRK audits, and one made over and over again, was that Central Committee employees lacked even basic skills and bureaucratic experience. In the early 1950s, employees at Dietz publishing house had to teach the staff of the Central Committee’s Marx Engels Lenin Stalin Institute how to use footnotes.37 ZRK auditors inspecting the Labor, Unions and Health System Department under Fritz Schellhorn in 1956 found neither a register of incoming mail nor a cadre register,38 both of which were mandated by the work regulations of 1953. In November 1956, the ZRK observed that the Financial Administration and Party Enterprises Department had not submitted to the Central Committee Secretariat any account of the Party’s overall expenditures in 1954 and 1955. They deemed this to be a “serious mistake” that, remarkably, no one had noticed till then.39 And if that weren’t enough, in 1956 the Department of Security Issues was “unfamiliar with the work regulations passed by the Secretariat in January 1953.” This was why, according to one ZRK auditor, there was “no rigid discipline in the department either.” In the security department, of all places, “every employee [acted] individually.”40 Though the ZRK reports on individual departments are obviously not valid for the entire apparatus, there is still no doubt that the latter was far removed from the purposeful order, clear hierarchical bureaucratic order and rule-bound behavior envisioned by Max Weber in his ideal type of bureaucracy. “A large part of working hours,” the ZRK auditor concluded

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about the Agitation Department in 1952, was “poorly utilized and hence lost.”41 Workdays were not well planned and there were constant and unexpected “discussions with . . . comrades from other departments.” The situation was only made worse by a shortage of typists. This forced many comrades to “perform purely technical tasks: typing (up to 15 hours a week, assembling packets of literature, etc.)”—instead of elaborating concepts or writing analyses.42 To be sure, the problems faced by the Central Committee apparatus were not unique. Audits of the state apparatus from around the same time came to similar conclusions. The overall output of the state’s administrative activities, it was claimed at a conference of the Central Committee and the State Planning Commission in 1955, was “very minimal in relation to the working hours and effort put into them.”43 But in the view of SED leaders the state administration was subordinate to the Central Committee apparatus; the latter was to guide the former, not share in its problems. But this is precisely what was happening, presumably even in ideological matters—at least judging by the reading habits of apparatus members as recorded in the ZRK audits of the Central Committee library: specialist literature was rarely checked out, Russian-language monographs and magazines almost never, whereas fiction was extremely popular. More than anything, however, the employees at SED headquarters were avid newspaper readers. An audit by the Office of the Politbüro in February 1957 revealed that the approximately seven hundred political employees working at the Central Committee apparatus at that time had “more than a thousand daily [subscriptions] to newspapers of the [German Democratic] Republic as well as to a considerable number of Western newspapers.” The “number of magazines from Berlin, of Eulenspiegel, of sports betting sheets and similar newspapers or periodicals ordered through the departments” was “conspicuously high.”44 Many an employee understandably preferred to leaf through the satirical Eulenspiegel magazine than the latest edition of Sowjetische Neuerermethoden (Soviet Innovator Methods). The ZRK itself attributed these infractions primarily to a lack of “Party experience” among these employees, to their low level of education and a lack of professional practice. They also saw these problems as resulting from a recruiting policy that for years had relied too heavily on quantity—and that could ultimately be overcome by exhibiting more diligence in the selection of cadre. But they can also be interpreted differently: as an expression of the rapid formalization of the Central Committee apparatus during the 1950s in the form of ever greater demands on its members. These included guidelines from the work regulations of early 1953, e.g., with regard to reporting duties, adhering to “official channels,” etc., but also bureaucratic procedures such as the use of attendance lists and registers of incoming mail. They also included a sixty-hour work week, the strict “Party-like” behavior of employees in their dealings with the outside world, and their working as “agitators” in campaigns such as collectivization. And yet elaborate codes of conduct in organizations are always accompanied by “the tendency to dissociate formal and informal behaviors,”45 meaning in this case that the informality of the Central Committee apparatus only

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began to flourish under the pressures of formalization during the 1950s. The reports, accordingly, began to describe the effects of an organizational transformation that the ZRK owed its very existence to. By the same token it was not a lack of Party experience that made Central Committee employees prefer to assemble packets of literature rather than elaborating concepts; it was because this offered them a way to evade the pressures exerted on them by the Party leadership. The development of the Central Committee apparatus into an “informal organization” from the early 1950s on is likewise illustrated by another phenomenon referred to in organizational research as “useful illegality.”46 In every reasonably complex organization behaviors arise that, while solving problems in the system, “effectively contradict its formal expectations.”47 This structural problem is in itself nothing unusual. What is striking is that in the case of the Central Committee apparatus of the 1950s this—from the perspective of Party leaders—“useful” illegality took on considerable dimensions, in some areas even becoming the prerequisite of Party headquarters being able to assert its power at all. An example is Central Committee departmental head Ernst Scholz, whom State Security blamed for “the poor organization of our state-owned construction companies,” Scholz having secured management positions for his “friends” and the “friends of friends.”48 Scholz, by way of these friends, had an enormous influence on the construction industry in the GDR—certainly in the interests of the Party, which could better achieve its aims thanks to Scholz’s friends. Central Committee departmental head Karl Raab and his deputy Paul Hockarth likewise engaged in a “policy of favoritism” in appointing the directors of Zentrag plants. “Illegal,” but from the Party’s perspective quite sensible, was Hockarth’s method of disciplining recalcitrant directors at Zentrag printing presses by restricting their paper supplies.49 On the other hand, the “wild cadre policy” of the Party apparatus gave Party leaders an extralegal instrument of power of considerable strategic importance: in the early 1950s the Central Committee’s Cadre Department carried out so-called fish hauls in the state apparatus, recruiting on the spot the most promising employees for the Party apparatus.50 One example is Johannes Streubel, departmental head in the Ministry of the Interior, who in 1953 found himself “promoted to a position in the Central Committee without the slightest administrative effort.” A Central Committee employee he knew, Walter Borning, had invited him over the phone to an interview at the House of Unity. The head of the Military Department there, Gustav Röbelen (in Streubel’s opinion the “most charismatic veteran of the Spanish Civil War), managed to extract a confession from him that he was not entirely satisfied with his situation at the Ministry of the Interior. “If that’s the case,” said Röbelen, “then Comrade Streubel should start working for us in the coming days.”51 The head of his main department at the Ministry of the Interior, Klaus Sorgenicht, did not agree to Streubel’s leaving, and naturally Röbelen hadn’t asked him. And yet the practices of the Central Committee apparatus seem tame compared with those of the territorial Party apparatus. In June of 1952, for Instance, State Sec-

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retary Meyer complained to an employee of the Central Committee’s Construction Department about the SED district leadership in Nauen. He said that members of the district leadership had paid a visit to the state-owned VEB Baumechanik NiederNeuendorf, demanding that “the non-Party factory manager working there be immediately replaced by a [Party] comrade”—which, according to Meyer, caused an uproar at the plant.52 In October 1952, Meyer had to call the attention of Adalbert Hengst, head of the Central Committee’s Planning and Finance Department, “to a currently . . . dangerous situation.” In the factories under his supervision there were rather frequent visits of late by . . . representatives of the police, State Security and the Party, too, who demand access to personnel files and [have taken] these without receipt or confirmation. I know of one instance where they threatened to beat up the head of the Personnel Department and lock him up with the others.53 In East German society of the early 1950s, marked as it was by a “cold civil war,” practices like these were often blamed wholesale on “the apparatus.” They fueled massive doubts, even among loyal state functionaries and citizens, about the legitimacy of Party rule and made it harder in the ensuing years for Central Committee departments to enforce their “claim to obedience” in state and society. Even the occasional senior Central Committee employee developed what in the official discourse was dubbed an “ideological confusion.” Adalbert Hengst, the Central Committee departmental head Meyer wrote to, is one example. In October 1952 he’d been coopted into the Central Committee Secretariat as a secretary for economic issues. Yet on June 17, 1953, he appeared before the striking workers at Rostock’s Warnow shipyard and putatively agreed to their demands that the government step down.54 Hengst, an Old Communist and longtime concentration-camp inmate, was expelled from the Party by a Politbüro resolution and henceforth moved down the social ladder. In the early 1960s he was working as a photo retoucher at Tribüne newspaper.

“Simplification of Party Work” The popular uprising of June 17, 1953 was also an uprising against the forms of apparatus rule that had taken root in the course of the cold civil war. In this regard, Hanna Wolf—the dogmatic director of the Karl Marx Party School—warned Ulbricht’s adversary Rudolf Herrnstadt not to be “pressured into a position that, given the enemies’ tremendous rabble-rousing . . . , might look something like this: on one side the lifeless, bureaucratic [apparatus members] . . . and on the other the ‘oppressed masses’ suffering under this apparatus!”55 Ulbricht’s opponents did in fact openly question the size and function of the apparatus in the weeks following the events of June 17th.56 For Herrnstadt there was no question that the central apparatus had to be reduced to the “role of a servant” again. At one of the Politbüro’s late-night meetings in early July 1953, another adversary of Ulbricht, Anton Ackermann, was reported to have said that “the apparatus is a disaster in Walter Ulbricht’s hands.”

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On July 3, 1953, nine of the thirteen members and candidates attending a Politbüro meeting voted for Ulbricht’s removal. It was only Lavrentiy Beria’s fall from the CPSU Politbüro, news of which reached SED leaders the following day, that saved the beleaguered Party leader. The central apparatus was spared further criticism for the time being57 and avoided any further restructuring. In response to the “lesson” of June 17th several commissions were founded whose members included both Party and state functionaries and whose purpose was to discuss strategic issues in the areas of security and ideological policy.58 The organizational development of the Central Committee apparatus was subsequently fairly stable in 1954 and 1955. While the departments endeavored in their respective areas of responsibility to sort out the chaos unleashed throughout the country by the attempt to force the pace of building socialism, at Party headquarters itself there were only minor structural changes.59 It is clear in this situation that extensive restructuring of the Central Committee apparatus was always an expression of wide-ranging strategic objectives. When it came to fighting for its own survival, as was the case after June 17th, its structure was largely left intact. Only starting in December 1955 did the process of organizational development pick up speed again. The new guiding principle was the “simplification of Party work.” The aim was to reduce bureaucratic routines, though it might be noted in passing here that the development of routines can actually take the pressure off complex systems like a party apparatus rather than encumbering it, as they minimize the number of case-by-case directives needed.60 The SED Politbüro endeavored with several “simplification” resolutions to toe the line of its big-brother party the CPSU and its first secretary Khrushchev, who had taken up the fight against “bureaucratism” as early as 1953. Critiques of bureaucracy and the rhetoric of simplification was a feature of all communist state parties in the Soviet bloc in the mid-1950s. The backdrop to this was the tentative attempt to offer some alternatives to fill the gaping “hole” left behind by the delegitimization of Stalin’s revolutionary policy. The political rhetoric was full of moralizing laments about “pencil-pushing heroes” who tended towards “craven irresponsibility.”61 At the same time, state and Party leaders were advocating for the streamlining and decentralization of state and Party apparatuses. The “Measures for Simplifying the Party Apparatus” adopted by the Politbüro on December 6, 1955, were an effort to take this rhetoric seriously.62 Analogous to Soviet resolutions, these “measures” aimed to give the Central Committee apparatus a more regional focus. Thus, sixteen “regional commissioners” (Bezirksbeauftragten) from the LOPM Department were now permanently assigned to a region rather than being a kind of task force ready for deployment throughout the entire republic.63 The aim here was to help stabilize the relationship between Party headquarters and regional Party organizations. “Decentralization” included the decision to make SED regional leaderships responsible for directing university Party organizations, whereas previously the Central Committee’s Science and Propaganda Department had been directly responsible for this.64 Moreover, the Politbüro called

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on Central Committee departmental heads to transfer any available apparatus employees to regional or district leaderships.65 This part of the “simplification” resolution fulfilled the imperative to “streamline structures.” It is hard to assess if this resolution was prompted by a genuine concern or if it was merely an instance of paying lip service to Moscow and Khrushchev’s current line. Because only weeks after it was passed the situation changed dramatically with Khrushchev’s Secret Speech at the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU in February 1956. While the de-Stalinization of the preceding years had only been a halfhearted affair in the GDR, it now seemed to be gathering speed.66 At the Twenty-Sixth and Twenty-Seventh Plenary of the Central Committee in late March 1956 Ulbricht had still maintained that there was no “cult of personality” in the GDR like that in the Soviet Union. This provoked considerable irritation among Central Committee employees as well as at the Party base. In April and May of 1956, the Central Committee apparatus received a flurry of critical responses from entire Party organizations. These included a declaration from the Maxim Gorky Theater in Berlin which angrily concluded that, while “Comrade General Secretary” was “absolutely justified in criticizing various institutions,” he failed to target “the working methods of the Central Committee” as well.67 Though imperceptible in the public sphere of the Party, there had in fact, in light of these pressures, been a discussion at Party headquarters about the “working methods” and hence the formal structure of the Central Committee apparatus. In April 1956 the Central Committee Secretariat invited the Central Committee departments to make their own suggestions for “improving Party work.” The response was harsh. The apparatus, even senior Central Committee employees claimed, was “rather cumbersome,” and one department knew nothing about the work of another. There was unanimous consensus that the Central Committee secretaries did not pass down information, and in many cases did not even hold meetings with their departments. “It must be possible,” said departmental head Fritz Schellhorn, “for Comrade Secretary to take part in a departmental meeting of his departments at least once a year.”68 The “arrogant behavior” of many Central Committee secretaries was openly addressed for the very first time as well as their habit of “shouting and giving orders.” The “thaw,” it seemed, was even spreading to the “gray” center of SED rule. The Central Auditing Commission, too, an old hand at criticizing the state of affairs within the apparatus, likewise launched an all-out attack. Under the heading “Some Questions for the Apparatus of the Central Committee,” it formulated a kind of fundamental critique of Party headquarters in June of 1956 that would remain unparalleled until October 1989. It spoke of “the worst kind of departmentalism” in the apparatus, and of the extremely “patronizing” attitude of the ministries. To what extent the ZRK was presenting its own findings or simply reflecting the expectations of Party leaders—who, as was often the case, were on the lookout for scapegoats to blame for their lack of success—will have to remain unanswered here. But—returning to the topic of this chapter—ZRK members also attacked the structure of the

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apparatus. This was not only feckless, it also leaned too much on the structure of the ministries. According to the ZRK, the question was “if the time hadn’t come to combine departments and thereby reduce their number.”69 The possibility of curbing the influence of the Central Committee apparatus had never before been expressed so clearly by a leading Party organ. Since the founding of the GDR, Party leaders had repeatedly argued that the apparatus had to “help” “the state,” as the latter did not have the necessary political caliber. The policy line of “simplification” advocated here by the ZRK proceeded from the opposite assumption: the “present qualitative state of the apparatus of the ministries,” it said in its “Questions for the Apparatus,” no longer by any means necessitated such “tutelage.” On January 26, 1957, the Politbüro passed another resolution on the “simplification of Party work.” Its members now toed the line of Khrushchev even more explicitly than had been the case in the resolution from the previous year. The new resolution can be interpreted as a profession of loyalty to CPSU leaders, who were covering Ulbricht’s back in these weeks against his detractors Schirdewan and Oelssner.70 The core message of this second “simplification” resolution was that the central apparatus should in future refrain from the “operational” steering of the economy and state. This took into account—at least verbally—the most important demand of all “critics of the apparatus.” The staff at headquarters were to be reduced by a quarter, departments were to be merged, and young employees were to go back to working “on the ground.” In the end about ninety political employees left the Central Committee apparatus by the end of 1958—not a quarter, or 180, but nonetheless a fair number. Most of these were indeed quite young employees who lacked any practical work experience and were now expected to make up for this.71 But just as the simultaneous “simplification” of the state apparatus did not lead to its shrinking,72 there was no long-term decrease in size of the Central Committee apparatus either. On the contrary, by late 1958 the Central Committee Department of Cadre Issues once again declared a staffing emergency. It called for “fully staffing the central apparatus, which at 79.9 percent is the least staffed [of all parts of the Party apparatus], . . . by inducing the regional leaderships to provide capable comrades for work in the central apparatus.”73 This was not only an about-face in terms of staff reduction but also contradicted the objective of bolstering regional secretariats. The organizational “streamlining” of the Central Committee apparatus was also short-lived. While the General Schools Department was merged with the Department of Culture, Literature and Cultural Work with the Masses into the newly formed Department of Education and Culture in the spring of 1957, by October of that same year the latter was split into two departments again, one for culture and one for education.74 In 1957, the final attempt in the history of the SED Central Committee apparatus to establish a general department for economic policy likewise failed. A Department of Industry, which was meant to absorb the departments of Basic Industry, Machine Building and Construction, was either never established or dissolved after only a few months.75 Perhaps the employees in

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these departments had resisted the new wave of mergers. Though maybe Party leaders already had in mind that the Fifth Party Congress, slated for July of 1958, would be initiating the accelerated continuation of socialist transformation, making any cutbacks in the influence of the apparatus seem unreasonable. Or maybe experience had simply proven that functional differentiation was accompanied by improved performance even in a communist party apparatus, so that the return to larger departments was no longer an option in the late 1950s.76 Yet the simplification resolution of January 26, 1957 did at least grant one wish to the critics of apparatus rule: it stipulated that draft proposals had to be signed by the respective line minister before going to the Politbüro, whereas previously it had been customary for the Politbüro to likewise deal with proposals signed only by the respective Central Committee departmental head.77 In addition, Central Committee departmental heads or their colleagues, who had hitherto routinely taken part in the advisory-committee meetings (Kollegiumssitzungen) of the ministries—and subsequently evaluated them in the Central Committee78—were henceforth excluded from these meetings.79 This at least potentially gave the heads of ministries the possibility to develop their own positions without having to accommodate these from the outset to the expectations of the Central Committee representatives in attendance. The total fusion of Party and state was therefore limited in this instance.80 Which patterns in the organizational development of the Central Committee apparatus have become apparent thus far? One is its alignment with developments in the CPSU apparatus. Of course this was not a one-to-one and especially not a synchronized development. It took several years in both cases for the parallel principle, introduced at CPSU headquarters in 1948, and the “simplification” of apparatus structures, a gradual process which began under Khrushchev in 1953, to leave any trace at the SED’s House of Unity. But, as shown by the delegation visit to Moscow in late 1954 described at the start of this chapter, the CPSU was and remained a key benchmark; what the SED’s “friends” in Moscow said was tantamount to the law. The SED’s Central Committee apparatus cannot be properly understood without some knowledge of the organizational history of the CPSU apparatus. A second pattern is that the organizational development of the SED apparatus was always characterized by two opposing conceptions of what the apparatus should be, which tasks and roles it should assume. These two concepts can each be captured by a catchphrase: the “superstate”—as Rudolf Bahro would later call it81—and the “mobilizing organization.” The superstate model is based on the principle of functional differentiation, the mobilizing organization on the principle of integration and/or “homogenization” (Entdifferenzierung). In this respect the two concepts correspond to the two basic underlying tendencies of organizational behavior. In the CPSU, Khrushchev championed the mobilization approach whereas the ever-dominant superstate concept finally prevailed in the Brezhnev era. In the SED, the two concepts cannot be clearly attributed to certain Party leaders or a specific time period. But they were always present as possibilities and ultimately represented

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two poles of an oscillating discourse when it came to defining the purpose of the apparatus, right down to the fall of 1989. Certainly the brute facts had a determining force in organization development. In the case of the SED Central Committee apparatus, this was the steady stream of new employees counteracting the image of a “lean,” mobilizing organization.

Staff Development The quantitative development of the central Party apparatus is particularly impressive in the early 1950s. The actual number of political employees in the Central Committee increased from 320 in the spring of 1950 to 844 in early 1960, a 163 percent increase.82 From the summer of 1950 to December 1953 alone, the apparatus gained 340 political and about the same number of technical employees. This meant 100 percent growth in just over three years. True, the central state apparatus grew at about the same rate during those years. The number of employees at the ministries of industry, for example, grew 22 percent from March to October 1950 alone.83 But the expansion of the Central Committee apparatus had greater significance. Not only did it fulfil administrative tasks, it also had the potential to actively wield political power. Its expansion unmistakably illustrates the Party leadership’s claim to power. This expansion, of course, was anything but a smooth and linear process. Staff turnover was very high. According to Soviet sources from March 1, 1953, 28.5 percent of Central Committee employees had not been working in the apparatus for longer than a year. Only slightly less than 22 percent of all Central Committee employees had been “Party workers” for more than five years (meaning they may have worked in district or regional leaderships for some of this time).84 Analyses carried out by the Central Committee’s Department of Cadre Issues, as well, do not shed a positive light on staff stability in the formative years of the apparatus. For the years 1955 and 1958 they refer to a yearly turnover in the Central Committee apparatus of 20 to 25 percent, whereby this was considered an improvement compared to the years before.85 Finally, the turnover in the Party organization of the Central Committee of the SED is likewise revealing. The organization included all political employees at the Central Committee (Party members without exception) and those technical employees who were in the Party.86 The Party organization’s rate of attrition—due to retirement or transfers to territorial Party or state apparatuses— was massive: between 29.6 percent (360 employees) in 1952 and 22.8 percent (398 employees) in 1955.87 Although these figures refer to the turnover for different time periods and workplaces, on the whole we can assume a frictional staff shortage of two hundred to three hundred political employees for the years 1950 to 1953. That means that two hundred to three hundred political employees had to be hired annually in addition to the 340 new hires that joined the apparatus between 1950 and 1953. Hence about six hundred new employees in total came to work at Party headquarters during these

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Diagram 2.1. Party organization of the Central Committee of the SED—recruitment and attrition, 1952–55. years. Just how massive the influx and outflow of staff was at Party headquarters in the first half of the 1950s is illustrated once again by the figures for the Central Committee Party organization. Between early 1952 and early 1955, 2,513 people were hired at the Central Committee apparatus or an affiliated institute, whereas 1,381 left during the same period. The effect of these staff numbers on the Central Committee apparatus as an organization was ambivalent at any rate. Of course, the influx of new employees was the precondition for the apparatus to develop into a viable executive of the Party leadership at all. Yet “the constant replacement of staff in the apparatus,” wrote one analyst of the Central Committee’s Department of Cadre Issues in December 1958, meant a “loss of valuable experience for the Party, inhibiting its political work.”88 Moreover, the employees who remained in the apparatus were faced with the problem that the structure of their own departments was constantly changing. Every new structure in the apparatus destroyed existing communication processes and workflows, so that these employees barely had a chance to acquire the qualities that, according to Max Weber, account for the superiority of bureaucratic rule: routine, professionalism, practical knowledge and channels of communication. Added to this was the fact that into the 1960s staffing levels were consistently below target. In early 1953 only 62.3 percent of the positions for political employees were filled, and one year later only 74.1 percent, or 580 employees for 783 openings.89 According to statistics from the

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Department of Cadre Issues, by January 1, 1957 only 78.5 percent of all positions for political employees had been filled. Only 53.8 percent were filled in the Department of Transportation and 57.9 percent in the Department of Agriculture, and this before the second Politbüro resolution on the “simplification of Party work” which pruned away another ninety political employees.90 Not even the positions of departmental head could be filled at any given time—a disastrous situation in the view of cadre specialists. In the summer of 1958, four posts for departmental heads were vacant.91 Between February and August 1958 four Central Committee departmental heads, five deputy heads, and eleven division heads were let go. These included Franz Mellentin, head of the Department of Agriculture, who seemed to lack the “necessary rigor” for the renewed intensification of collectivization campaigns, and Fritz Kleinert, head of the Party Organs Department and Karl Schirdewan’s supposed henchman, who was branded a “factionist” on account of his opposition to Ulbricht and subsequently removed from his office in early 1958 as well as being ostracized at a Central Committee meeting.92 Many management positions were only filled temporarily, and entire divisions were left to their own devices at times. This lack of guidance and appreciation for their work may have been the reason a range of Central Committee employees exhibited “signs of resignation, exhaustion and defeatism,” at least according to reports from the ZRK. Staff expansion and high staff turnover contributed to the “precarity” of Party headquarters as well as to the fact that it long lacked the stability needed for genuine “rule.” At the same time, the employee profiles of new recruits changed the staff structure of the apparatus. The extent of this becomes evident in comparing the social and biographical profiles of Central Committee employees on a given day in three different years: July 1st of 1950, 1955 and 1959.

Loss of the Traditional Core First let us look at the gender distribution among the political employees. The staff expansion from 1950 to 1953 seemed to be a step towards gender parity: if the share of women in the spring of 1950 was a mere 14 percent, by February 1, 1953 the cadre experts in the LOPM Department tallied 120 female political employees in the apparatus, or 24.8 percent.93 This was a remarkable development, considering that in the early days of the apparatus women had mainly been employed as secretaries and switchboard operators. But this not quite 25 percent would be the highest share that women would achieve within this Party elite, and was probably explained by the massive cadre shortage in the early 1950s. By early February, at any rate—after the turnover caused by the June 17th uprising—the share of women was only 21.2 percent,94 and in 1958 a mere 16.9 percent.95 Even the Central Committee’s Department of Cadre Issues found this figure “too low,” its goal being not a 50 percent quota but the share of female members in the SED overall. In 1953 this was 23.5 percent.96 It should also be added that women in the Central Committee apparatus tended to be grouped into a few, generally less influential departments. The ZRK, comprised

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Table 2.2. Age structure of political employees in the Central Committee, 1950–59.i 1950 (N =116)

1955 (N = 267)

1959 (N = 350)

Age

absolute

in percent

absolute

in percent

absolute

in percent

30 and under

17

14.7

77

28.9

45

12.9

31–40

33

28.5

92

34.5

175

50

41–50

45

38.8

71

26.6

66

18.9

51–65

17

14.7

26

9.6

63

18

over 65

4

3.3

1

0.4

1

0.2

Note i. Here, too, it bears keeping in mind that the underlying data—116 employees for 1950, 267 for 1955, and 350 for 1959—are not representative samples. Rather, they represent the totality of the political employees analyzed in the context of a pragmatic research strategy. The fact that the data corpus is nonetheless valid is backed up by (occasional) bits of information offered by the cadre division of the LOPM Department with regard to the age structure of all political employees. In May of 1954, it came to the conclusion that the share of employees under 30 in the Central Committee apparatus, 28.3 percent, was too high—whereas the share calculated here (for mid-1955) was 28.9 percent. LOPM, Analyse der Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter der Abteilungen des ZK, der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen und ihrer politischen und fachlichen Qualifikation, undated [5/1954], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/1667, fols. 41–46, here fol. 42.

of 60 percent women, was a notable exception. Other exceptions confirming the rule were the Department of Women’s Affairs (not surprisingly made up exclusively of women), the Department of Education with 38 percent, and the Neuer Weg Department (responsible for the newspaper Neuer Weg) with 35 percent females.97 At the same time, there were no women at all in ten Central Committee departments or working groups, including the Department of Security Issues and the Department of Transportation. There were likewise no or only occasional women working as political employees in most of the departments dealing with economic policy—a situation that would remain unchanged all the way to 1989. The staff expansion of the 1950s had greater repercussions on the age structure of Central Committee employees. As elaborated in chapter 1, the age structure between 1946 and the spring of 1950 remained relatively stable, with an average age of 42.5 and 42.1, respectively. In the spring of 1950, 66 percent of all 119 political employees in the Central Committee had been born before World War I and hence politically socialized before the Nazi seizure of power. Just under 15 percent were

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younger than 30 in 1950, meaning they had spent their formative years as children and young men in the Nazi state. In 1955—after the de facto doubling of the apparatus through the hiring of several hundred new, mostly young employees—the age structure had indeed changed, the average age now being 37.5. Only 10 percent of political employees were now older than 50, just under a third had been born before World War I. By contrast, more than 63 percent of all employees were now younger than 40.98 In some departments the average age was even considerably lower. In the Science and Higher Education Department, for example, 66 percent of employees in 1954 were under 30.99 The average age gradually rose in the years that followed, reaching 40.2 years by 1959. An important reason for the renewed age increase was most likely a lower turnover rate. Attrition rates in the Party organization of the Central Committee had gone down to 12.6 percent in 1959 (252 individuals out of a total of 2,229 members).100 But the resolution on the “simplification of Party work” of January 1957, which resulted in 90 especially young political employees of the Central Committee apparatus leaving the organization, surely did its part. Whatever the cause, the share of employees 30 and under was more than cut in half from 1955 to 1959, from 28.9 percent to just under 13 percent, whereas the share of 31- to 40-year-olds increased from 34.5 to 50 percent. Which still means that by the end of 1959 a good 62 percent of all employees at the apparatus were 40 or under. In 1950 it had only been 43.2 percent. The share of those over 50 also increased considerably, from 10 percent in 1955 to 18.2 percent in 1959, thus approaching the figures from 1950. The average age of departmental heads developed almost identically. On the whole they were several years older, however. In 1946 and 1950 the leading cadre were on average 45.5 and 46 years old respectively. Yet many of the departments founded after 1950 were headed by very young employees. Günter Mittag, for example, was a mere 27 when he became head of the Railroad, Transport and Communication Department in 1953. Hence the average age of Central Committee departmental heads dropped to 40 in 1955. By 1959 it had risen again to 44.8. Only at first glance does this change in age structure seem moderate. In fact it represents an exceptionally rapid generational and sociobiographical upheaval. This becomes evident by focusing on the biographical category of “political past prior to 1945.” As late as 1950, about 73 percent of the 300 or so political employees in the apparatus had been active in the organized labor movement prior to 1945—that is to say, had been members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), the Young Communist League of Germany (KJVD), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) or the Socialist Worker Youth (SAJ) prior to 1933. Four years later, in an apparatus comprising about 580 political employees, their share had dwindled to around 30 percent.101 The “disappearance” of Old Communists was even more severe in the case of Central Committee departmental heads. In 1950, 90 percent of these—27 out of 30—had belonged

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Diagram 2.2. Average age of political employees and departmental heads in the Central Committee, 1946–59. to the old-guard of Communists or Social Democrats. Just as many had been in the resistance before 1945, had been held in concentration camps or imprisoned, or had had to eke out an existence as émigrés. By 1955 the share of Old Communists among departmental heads was only 52 percent, and by 1959 only 45 percent. This was a problem from the point of view of Party leaders, who legitimized themselves not least of all through this line of continuity to the German labor movement prior to 1945. Thus, on September 25, 1957, the Central Committee Secretariat passed a resolution to employ more “comrades with life and Party experience” in the apparatus, which is to say: specifically hire more Old Communists. The strategy did help curb this tendency. In 1958 they still made up 28.3 percent of all political employees in the Central Committee apparatus.102 But the situation remained alarming for the Central Committee’s Cadre Department. The latter seemed content that in 1958 there were “comrades who were organized prior to 1933 and 1945, respectively, in all departments of the central apparatus . . . except the two working groups for youth and sports.” It then qualified that a number of departments had “only one such comrade each.”103 The Cadre Department would have surely been even more alarmed if it had known that a considerably greater number of former Nazi Party members were working in the Central Committee apparatus than its statistics suggested. Using 352 biographies of political employees working at the Central Committee apparatus in 1959, the present study has established through research at the Berlin Document Center that 9

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Figure 2.1. Already a minority in the apparatus: “Old Communists” celebrating the fiftieth birthday of Central Committee departmental head Karl Raab (first row, fifth from left), 1956. Source: SAPMO-BArch, Bild Y 10/185800. percent of these employees had been former Nazi Party members.104 Furthermore, 14 percent of the Central Committee employees at this point in time had—according to their Party résumés—had a leadership function in the Hitler Youth or the League of German Girls. Finally, nearly 40 percent of all Central Committee employees in the late 1950s had served in the Wehrmacht. These figures are hardly surprising, the same being true of almost half of all MfS employees in 1953.105 What they do make plain is that by 1950 at the latest the Central Committee apparatus was no longer a stronghold of Old Communists. Rather, in the course of staff expansion it gradually became a part of post-fascist East German society and began to resemble the general state apparatus. This is also evident with regard to the social profile of Central Committee employees. On February 1, 1954, 85.5 percent of all political employees of the Central Committee had described their “social background” as “working-class.”106 As problematic as these semi-official declarations can be,107 this still suggests that the majority of employees came from traditionally underprivileged social and cultural strata.108 But when asked which “social position” they had been in when they joined the Party—which usually happened at an early age, around eighteen or twenty—38.1 percent of Central Committee employees indicated “white-collar” or “intelligentsia” (the corresponding figures for members of regional and district apparatuses were 30.8 and 24.4 percent, respectively).109 These numbers were compatible with the infor-

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Diagram 2.3. Political past of Central Committee employees, 1946–59. mation provided by political employees with regard to their formal education: 30.4 percent of the employees working in the apparatus in early 1954 had at least attended middle school (6.3 percent had attended high school, and 12.3 percent had a college degree).110 With just under 40 percent being white-collar or intellectual and 30.4 percent having completed junior high—which in those days was usually followed by vocational training—one cannot really speak of a purely class-based process of selection. The opposite would actually seem to be true: the share of “socially alien” employees or those whose only connection to the working class was through some family relation was vastly greater than the category of “social background” would suggest. Thus, the social origins of the Central Committee apparatus likely approached those of the general administration by the early 1950s, marked by a good many social climbers but also by “specialists” with a lower-middle-class or middle-class background.111 The “dovetailing” or “interlocking of specialist and ideological bureaucrats”112 that will become more apparent as the present study progresses did not only begin early on; its sociobiographical foundations were there at an early stage as well. The process continued throughout the 1950s. Admittedly, as of 1954 employees of the cadre division in the LOPM Department no longer noted in their statistics the “social background” or “social position upon joining the Party” of individual Central Committee apparatus members, limiting themselves to generalizations about the overall Party apparatus. But in early 1958 the Department of Cadre Issues did conclude that the share of workers—as defined by the statistic “social position upon joining the Party”—was disturbingly low in some Central Committee departments: only 20 percent in the ZRK, 21.4 percent in the Financial Administration and Party

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Enterprises Department, 23 percent in the Science Department. As far as their own department was concerned, they could have a clear conscience, as 95 percent of the employees in the Department of Cadre Issues were “working-class” in their origins.113

“Ideological Wavering” In 1954, 12.3 percent of political employees in the Central Committee had a university degree. This was twice as many, at any rate, as in 1946, meaning education had grown in significance as a factor in recruiting Party elites.114 But the Party leadership, which prided itself in its scientific approach and ultimately needed experts if it wanted to influence the economy and the academy, long put much too little stock in formal education as opposed to “Party experience.” The cadre analyses of the Central Committee during the entire 1950s revolved around the unfortunate fact that most employees were unqualified for their positions. In particular, the share of graduates from universities or technical colleges did not increase for the time being despite a massive push in this direction. On January 31, 1958, only 77 out of 580 political employees, or 13.2 percent, had a college degree,115 barely a percent higher than four years prior. Party leaders faced a dilemma. On the one hand they wanted more college-educated cadre. On the other hand, as mentioned above, they had given priority to a competing cadre-policy principle in 1957: the recruitment of “comrades with life and Party experience.” Similar to the situation with female employees, the actual situation was distorted by the fact that exiting college graduates in the Central Committee apparatus were distributed very unevenly across departments. Thus, in early 1958, 69.2 percent of the political employees in the Department of Education and 62 percent in the Science Department had a university degree, whereas ten Central Committee departments had no college graduates at all in their cadre.116 The situation was particularly bad regarding the education of cadre in management positions. Of the twenty-eight Central Committee departmental heads working in the apparatus in 1955 not one of them had graduated from college before entering the employ of Party headquarters—though, given the “cult of education” among SED leaders, many of them took correspondence courses towards a degree after entering the apparatus. One of these was Klaus Sorgenicht, head of the Central Committee’s Department of State and Legal Affairs as of 1954, though he certainly had no lack of experience, having worked since 1946 as head of an administrative district and later as head of a main department at the Ministry of the Interior.117 Other departmental heads, however, were clearly overwhelmed by their tasks, as these demanded special skills. Karl Hengst, for example, was removed from his post as head of the Planning and Finance Department in 1969 after three years on the job because he lacked the necessary economic expertise. His highest educational qualification was a degree as a certified agronomist, which in the era of the New Economic System was apparently not sufficient to head the most important economic-policy department at Party headquarters.

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In addition to a lack of professional skills, many employees had weak leadership abilities. Old Communist departmental heads such as Eberhard Arlt, born in 1905, head of the Department of Industry in the early 1950s, often had an authoritarian style of leadership. According to Hans Zimmermann, a thirty-two-year-old division head in Arlt’s department, Arlt evinced a “bad attitude” and “arrogant behavior” towards the employees in his department (most of whom were from a younger generation).118 By the same token, Emil Scheweleit, born in 1912, head of the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department, was said to be poorly organized and generally unapproachable. Gerhard Eichler, too, born in 1910, head of the Central Committee’s personnel office, supposedly created “a bad atmosphere,” prompting the Central Party Control Commission to take disciplinary action. The “bossy behavior of Comrade Eichler,” so the reasoning of the Central Party Control Commission went, resulted in “comrades not saying their real opinion,” “females comrades” in particular being “fearful of Comrade Eichler.”119 The “generational symbiosis” identified by Lutz Niethammer still plays an outsized role in GDR studies. Niethammer argues that those members of the reconstruction generation who were socialized under Nazism showed a particular loyalty towards the Old Communist founding fathers, out of a sense of admiration and gratitude for the opportunity to free themselves from the shadow of the Nazi past by participating in the socialist project.120 And yet this symbiosis is reflected only to a certain degree in the inner workings of the Central Committee apparatus. In reality, more than a few of the new, younger Central Committee employees were skeptical of “the old comrades who harped on about their traditions”121 and who, as young division head Zimmermann put it once again, “undoubtedly have valuable political experience” but are “poor or basically nonexistent guides when it comes to leading their comrades.”122 Conversely, many Old Communists found it challenging to work with former Wehrmacht officers. Adolf Baier, head of the Department of Transportation, card-carrying KPD member since 1929 and a former volunteer in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, is a case in point. In 1964 he complained to a Stasi officer that “it was hardly a good decision that two sergeants from the fascist Wehrmacht were chosen as [his] current deputies”123; having only “joined our movement” as prisoners of war, they lacked the “necessary political insight.” As late as 1981, Karl Mewis, an Old Communist, referred to Erich Apel—a Politbüro member and, until his suicide in 1965, chairman of the State Planning Commission—as an “old Nazi” because of his work as a rocket engineer at the Army Research Center in Peenemünde. Admittedly, this statement reflects less a generational conflict than one man’s attempt to distance himself from a member of the “old” bourgeois functional elite. Apel had never joined the Nazi Party.124 Such “hidden” and less than tangible fault lines between generations, or rather between Old Communists and those who “stumbled into the movement” later, were just one effect of the rapid sociobiographical shift among Central Committee

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employees during the 1950s. Another was that employees brought their oftentimes conflicting experiences of 1945 with them to Party headquarters, sometimes openly communicating these to others, sometimes using them as a guide to action. Hence even in the late 1950s Old Communist departmental heads declared conspiracy to be the governing principle of their work. Karl Raab, for instance, head of the Finance Department, refused to share staffing and work-allocation plans with his employees, explaining to baffled ZRK auditors that it wouldn’t be appropriate for his employees to be briefed about the activities of other employees.125 Günter Glende, born in 1918, expressed anti-Polish sentiments while serving as head of the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department in the mid-1960s, an attitude directly linked to his experience as an ethnic-German evacuee from Pomerania. It was a mistake, he explained to the fellow employees in his department after a trip to Poland, to “cede Silesia and Pomerania to Poland. We would be a lot farther nowadays if these territories had stayed with us.”126 Old Communists who would have objected to statements of this sort, if only for reasons of Party discipline, were no longer working in Glende’s department at that point in time. It is evident here that in protected communicative spaces positions could indeed be articulated that clearly ran counter to the official and legitimatory discourse. The same went for open criticism of the Party leadership. There are a range of cases indicating that critical—from the Party’s perspective, “false” or “hostile”—views were rather widespread among Party employees in the 1950s. The case of economic secretary Adalbert Hengst, who was even expelled from the SED on account of his alleged “defeatism” on June 17, 1953, was alluded to above. Kurt Rätz, too, division head in the Science Department until 1955, then personal aide of Kurt Hager until 1962, was “repeatedly” susceptible to “severe ideological wavering”—if we can believe the statement made by a division head in the State Secretariat for Higher Education while being held in custody by the Stasi. Rätz engaged in vehement discussions before June 17, 1953 about the supposed detrimental mistakes of the SED, accused Comrade Stalin of being a criminal, and agreed with renegade Leonhard’s defamatory assessment of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED contained in his smear pamphlet.127 It is worth noting that Rätz had joined the Nazi Party in 1942, which he of course never mentioned in his Party résumés after 1945. As mentioned above, a Stasi wiretap transcript from 1955 of division head Rudolf Krankemann recorded him as saying that “our brutal methods and inner mendacity” made it “hard to imagine” how the Party would “hold on in the long run.”128 Krankemann wasn’t alone with his unequivocal rejection of Ulbricht’s leadership, as indicated by his intended defense strategy after being arrested by State Security on charges of “agitation against . . . leading members of the Central Committee of the SED.” According to the state prosecutor from the region of Halle assigned to the case, Kranke-

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mann was planning to defend himself in court by “naming about 40 witnesses . . . who had made statements similar to his.”129 It was only with difficulty that the prosecutor could dissuade him from “this tactic” by explaining to him that the hearing of this evidence would “not exonerate him from the agitation [he] committed.” Still, Krankemann could have probably assembled these forty Central Committee employees. Whether they would have testified in court is another question. Professionally out of their depth and weak in leadership skills, heterogeneous in terms of their sociobiographical profile, and faced with unstable formal structures— the ZRK auditing reports and other sources into the late 1950s paint a picture of employees at Party headquarters that does not correspond with the expectations placed on them as “Party workers” and “professional revolutionaries.” Beyond the question of how valuable ZRK reports are as sources, it is worth keeping the following in mind. The Central Committee apparatus was a power organization that expanded into the existing institutional order of the GDR in the early 1950s. It inevitably encountered resistance in the process. Thus, a good part of the criticism directed at the apparatus was an expression of the debate over the legitimate form of Party rule rather than a reference to the actual state of affairs within the apparatus. And yet the shortcomings pointed out did not just exist in the eyes of detractors of the apparatus. They were characteristic of day-to-day affairs in the House of Unity. The key question, therefore, is to what extent the precarity of the Central Committee apparatus curtailed the power of Central Committee departments or stood in the way of an expansion of their power.

Power and Authority Regarding the question of the Central Committee apparatus’s political power, the following will distinguish between two levels of power. First there is the formal position of the apparatus in the political system of the Soviet Occupation Zone, in other words the structure of authority. Second, there is the specific power figuration, i.e., the “complex network of asymmetric interrelationships” between actors in a political field,130 manifest in the practice of rule by Central Committee departments. This means their ability to influence Party organs in the provinces and in factories or the state and administration. The situation is rather clear with regard to the structure of authority: the central Party apparatus occupied a key position in the political system since the founding of the state, at the latest. The apparatus’s sphere of responsibility was no longer limited to the Party but now included the state and society. Proposals of October 6, 11 and 17, 1949 resulted in resolutions of the SED Central Committee Secretariat that created the fabled interlocking of the Party and state apparatuses, a situation that held until October 1989. This interlinkage rested on two pillars. First there were the Party organizations of the SED that were built up in ministries, universities and certain large factories. As of the fall of 1949 the Central Commit-

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tee specialist departments were explicitly responsible for their “guidance.” Historians have generally understood the latter as the practice of directly issuing instructions, sometimes resorting to coercion and threats. Second, the central state organs had to submit any “substantial laws and provisions” to the Politbüro before they were passed by the Volkskammer or the government. The Politbüro claimed the authority to approve or reject laws—a form of self-authorization that effectively laid the foundation for four decades of Party dictatorship. But before these laws and provisions reached it, they had to be reviewed by the departmental heads of the Central Secretariat and later the Central Committee. A state initiative could very well fail at this point.131 In this manner the Central Committee apparatus formally adopted the role of a gatekeeper. Its departmental heads could at least theoretically promote or obstruct initiatives of the state apparatus. Moreover, the Central Committee departments could influence a state organ from within or “from below” by way of the Party organizations. On the surface of things, this double line of attack guaranteed the total control of “the state” by “the Party.” In political practice, however, the relationship between Party and state apparatuses in the early GDR—the focus in the following—appears first and foremost to be a huge “gap of indeterminacy.”132 The term “guidance” (Anleitung) could perfectly well refer to direct authoritarian control. But it could also mean that a Central Committee employee did nothing more than occasionally drop by at the Party secretary of “his” ministry and hand the latter a pile of circulars and Secretariat resolutions without in any way influencing the minister’s actions. The “review” (Prüfung) of proposals by Central Committee departments could also be a varied affair. The departmental head might skim through the proposal and sign it. Or he might have his staff scrutinize it line by line and send it back to the ministry with detailed “recommendations” for revision. The manner in which this “gap of indeterminacy” between Party and state apparatus was filled in a given situation, however, was in fact primarily dependent upon the respective power figuration—on the relationship or various positions and resources of the actors in a policy field at a particular point in time.

Power Figurations under “Stalinist Construction” In the first months and years after the founding of the GDR, the old and new elites oriented themselves towards Party headquarters as the new center of power—which could also mean they sought to change it. Ernst Scholz, born in 1913, had fought in the French resistance during the war and worked as of 1945 as a departmental head in the state government of Brandenburg. In late 1949, however, he wrote to the Party leadership that his “greatest wish” was to “leave the administration and work in the Party.”133 In most ministries—including those headed by a minister belonging to one of the bloc parties134—it became the norm for senior state functionaries to coordinate with the staff of their respective Central Committee department. In 1947, Maxim Zetkin, main departmental head in the Ministry of Health, had not had the time to consult with the SED Central Secretariat. This situation was soon to change, as he

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came to carefully note the opinions of “Comr. Holze from the Central Committee” at meetings—on March 29, 1951, for example, that there was no problem accepting Red Cross blood donations “if there are no strings attached,” that the German Hygiene Museum could “of course . . . make international loans,” and that she “agreed with our views on the question of medical publishers.”135 Additionally, state organs turned to the Central Committee apparatus whenever they had problems getting their way with another ministry—or when an objective could only be achieved with the intervention of the Party. In the summer of 1953, for instance, Jenny Matern, state secretary at the Ministry of Health, listed medical instruments and supplies that were “needed for our scientists to move ahead” but that couldn’t be obtained through the state foreign-trade organization. Matern requested, among other things, an “Atlas audiometer,” a device for measuring hearing, and a range of fine chemicals. Central Committee departmental head Ernst Lange, whom she’d presented with the list, made the half-hearted objection that such things “can’t be the Party’s responsibility” but procured the items on her wish list anyway.136 In March of 1954, state secretary in the Ministry of Reconstruction Josef Hafrang asked Central Committee departmental head Schwanz for help against the minister of heavy industry, Fritz Selbmann. The latter, according to Hafrang, was putting him under “massive pressure.” Selbmann had gotten worked up about the fact that “an institution subordinate to the Ministry [of Reconstruction] . . . dare[d] to give orders to an enterprise under my ministry”137—though Selbmann’s severity of tone (“Outrageous!”) was presumably due in part to minister of reconstruction Heinz Winkler’s belonging to the CDU. At any rate, state secretary in the Ministry of Reconstruction Hafrang asked Central Committee departmental head Schwanz to “urgently . . . hold a discussion at the Party level” to deescalate the dispute.138 The Party thus exercised a kind of clearing function, wholly independent of its expertise and authority. This meant that the permanent crises of the reconstruction years, or the “gaps of indeterminacy” in the new institutional order, could shift the Party-state power figuration to the apparatus’s favor. The inclination of state functionaries to bring the Party apparatus itself under their sway was surely limited in the early years by the latter’s Stalinist style of politics. A Stalinist apparatchik in its purest form was Otto Schön, for example, who headed the Office of the Politbüro from 1950 to 1968. Schön was something of a gray eminence in the apparatus of the Ulbricht era. He not only used the meetings of Party activist groups in the Party organization of the Central Committee apparatus to denounce the “shoddy work” of individual departments,139 he also attacked state functionaries. He smugly informed Jenny Matern in the spring of 1953 that he had published some “short pieces” in Neues Deutschland, the Party newspaper, one of them “about the Ministry of Health’s inadequate cadre work,” causing “quite a stir.” A range of comrades had written to him, he said, “complaining about their requests and messages to the Ministry of Health not being dealt with or answered. . . . I . . . assume I will probably follow up in the coming days with even more material.”140

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Also characteristic for the relationship between Party and state apparatus in these years is the fact that Matern did not respond to Schön’s reproaches with servile obsequiousness but rather with a measure of self-confidence. She briefly informed Schön that every inquiry at her ministry was diligently answered, especially when it came to cadre affairs.141 The political practice of the apparatus in the early 1950s was also “Stalinist” in its “instructor” principle, which the SED introduced in the second half of 1949 following the Soviet model and viewed as a cure-all for every and any organizational problem of the young state party.142 The instructors forged a link between Party apparatuses at the central, regional and district levels and the basic organizations.143 From the perspective of organizational theory, they were “outposts” that served on the one hand to represent the system, i.e., Party headquarters, and its policy program while on the other hand acting as “antennas” to the outside world—that is to say, as a direct information channel to the Party’s base.144 Certainly Party leaders saw the instructors first and foremost as an opportunity to implement their policy line on the ground. It was with this in mind that in September 1950 Ulbricht proudly informed the political advisor in the Soviet Control Commission that the Politbüro had “decided a Central Committee instructor will be sent to every district” in preparation for the Volkskammer and Landtag elections. This, according to Ulbricht, was the “best guarantee” that the election campaign would gain momentum.145 Hence, in October 1952, when the district leadership of Stendal had supposedly “gone to seed”—its secretaries having “deeply lapsed into immorality,” meaning problems with alcohol and extramarital affairs—the Central Committee and the regional leadership of Magdeburg sent veritable “hordes of instructors” to Stendal to “fundamentally transform” their work.146 The specific activism exhibited by Central Committee departments in the early 1950s also comes across as “Stalinist.” Georg Misterfeld, technical employee at the film office of the Central Committee, was “almost always . . . on the road” at the time, driving “a loudspeaker van to a great number of villages.” “We announced meetings . . . and showed movies” about life in the Soviet Union and collectivization.147 Every Central Committee department produced a remarkable quantity of plans of action and initiatives which they passed on to subordinate Party organs, always with a tone of the utmost urgency. These Party organs, of course, at some point began to ignore the flood of resolutions. “One cannot keep up with reading [them], let alone putting them into practice,”148 was a frequent complaint heard by departmental head Arlt, as he noted in the summer of 1952, indicating that this style of politics had its limits. But especially after the Second Party Conference in July 1952 and the declared intention to lay the “foundations of socialism,” permanent activism seemed to be the order of the day in the eyes of Party leaders. Even more so considering that the state apparatus seemed to lack this activism in their view and hence wasn’t up to the tasks at hand. One of these tasks, and a key one, was collectivization. As of July 1952, big and middle farmers were fined if they failed to meet their quotas. As of February 1952,

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moreover, district authorities had been given the option of prohibiting farmers from cultivating their land for the flimsiest of reasons.149 And yet the establishment of agricultural cooperatives was going far too slow, as far as Walter Ulbricht was concerned. “The agricultural revolution,” he explained to a group of “Central Committee special agents” in April 1953, “cannot be achieved with the state apparatus alone; the Party has to take matters into its own hands.”150 How he envisioned this and what he expected from his “special agents,” or Sonderbevollmächtigten, was evident in his chosen motto “special circumstances require special measures”: “Crack down on big farmers . . . If [a] mayor helps [a] big farmer, immediately have him removed. His secretary should do his work for the first eight days until a new mayor arrives.”151 There were in fact cases of mayors being removed by members of the Party apparatus. It was here at the latest that the latter became active “combatants” in the “cold civil war” being waged by the SED against its own people. According to reports from the spring of 1953, apparatus members in the Hagenow/Ludwigslust area “took part in arrests and house searches, . . . assumed the tasks of the police,” and concentrated in their own purview “all the work . . . that would have been tasks of the [state] administration.” In doing so “the employees” had “earned respect,” according to an evaluation of the relevant Central Committee department. They did concede, however, that this hadn’t “won the confidence of the working people in every instance.”152 But only in July of 1953 did it occur to the Central Committee that it might have been wrong to not obey the imperative of enlisting support for LPGs on a “strictly voluntary” basis.153

Iron Bars against the People’s Revolt The working people’s lack of “confidence” would have still been tolerable to Party leaders during this phase of consolidating their power. Their main problem was not the rejection instructors might encounter on the ground—like the employees of the Organizational Instructor Department who were “downright bombarded with negative questions and incriminations against the Party and the government” when they visited Berlin construction sites in May 1951.154 The main problem was that Central Committee departments were in many instances unable to impose their will in the face of opposition in the state, economy and society.155 In short, they were often powerless against the state. From the point of view of one Central Committee departmental head in the early 1950s, it was one thing of course to serve as a contact person for state secretaries such as Jenny Matern from the Ministry of Health and try to solve their problems. It was another thing altogether to bring a ministry in line with a certain policy, since Central Committee employees were still lacking in authority.156 Agricultural minister Scholz demonstrated this to the thirty-year-old head of the Central Committee’s Department of Agriculture, Walter Krebaum, in June 1950. Scholz tersely informed Krebaum that “unfortunately” it wasn’t possible to consider his “suggestions for the . . . preparation of the harvest and the fall cultivation of 1950”157—Krebaum should have submitted these earlier. In February 1951 no less than Central Committee secretary Hermann Axen was thoroughly lambasted

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by minister Fritz Selbmann. Selbmann had taken umbrage at an “unqualified and factually incorrect article” about his Ministry of Heavy Industry in the SED’s press service.158 Not even in the SED party organizations in the ministries and organs of the state did Central Committee employees necessarily have any authority. Kurt Hager, head of the Central Committee’s Science and Higher Education Department, admitted in December 1952 that his staff159 had “no real relationship” to the Party organization of the State Secretariat. There was therefore a tendency among some leading functionaries . . . of the State Secretariat . . . to not see the Party organ responsible for their guidance in the higher education sector. There are many examples which illustrate that leading functionaries in the State Secretariat, in their cooperation with . . . the higher-education division, are guided by their personal viewpoints rather than the Party functions of these organs.160 Put plainly, this meant that Central Committee employees were not accepted in the State Secretariat or its Party organizations—which might have had something to do with the fact that, with a sole exception, none of the staff members in this division had a college degree. In other words, they lacked the expertise to have any authority in the matter. But even when contacts to the Party organization of a ministry were good, this still didn’t mean the Central Committee department had any political influence over it in the early 1950s. This is because the Party organizations themselves only played a subordinate role in the ministries. The Ministry of General Machine Building is a case in point. Here, according to an unhappy Central Committee departmental head, Hermann Pöschel, in August 1953, the first secretary of the basic organization had proudly declared that he was summoned to Minister Wunderlich once every six weeks. This attitude, in Pöschel’s view, shows the Party organization’s “utter helplessness” in this ministry, the minister for all intents and purposes ignoring it.161 The takeaway is that the Central Committee apparatus of the early 1950s had only very limited political power over the state. But this was not uniformly so. There were indeed some departments that were able to have a strong influence on their respective policy fields—the Agitation Department, for instance, which treated the state news agency ADN like a subordinate.162 But with antifascists like Robert Korb and later Horst Sindermann, the Agitation Department had heads of department whose biographies alone lent them personal authority, making them much less dependent on their still relatively undeveloped functional authority in these years. The existing power figuration did not yet per se guarantee Central Committee employees’ dominance and influence. June 17, 1953, if anything, even stripped the apparatus of some of its power. The events of June 17th came as a shock to the staff at Party headquarters. In early June an SED delegation led by Walter Ulbricht had just returned from Moscow, where Beria had raked them over the coals and ordered them to stop the “construction of socialism.” Since then the “atmosphere at the House of the Central Commit-

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tee was oppressive.”163 Uncertainty about the New Course was considerable, and in the hallways and behind closed doors rumors were circulating about the possibility of Ulbricht being deposed. It was in this situation, on June 15, during a meeting of the Central Committee Secretariat, that Central Committee instructors relayed the information that Berlin workers were on the verge of a strike and were planning to protest for lower work norms. Ulbricht, in Schirdewan’s recollection, flew into a rage (“We won’t back down!”)164 On their way home from work on the evening of June 16th, many Central Committee employees must have seen portents of the coming insurrection: “Smaller and larger groups of workers . . . chanting for a general strike,” workers and young people tearing down Party slogans from walls or scrawling graffiti slogans over them such as “freedom” and “free elections.”165 The next morning only some Central Committee employees had access to the House of Unity, located close to Alexanderplatz. The streets were blocked by protestors and by around 10 a.m. a crowd had formed outside Party headquarters as well as the House of Ministries.166 Rudolf Krankemann, division head in the Central Committee’s Administration of Economic Enterprises Department, reported in retrospect that he had arrived somewhat late to the House of Unity on the morning of June 17th. He discovered that they had battered down the doors in the corridor of his department. “Then I went to my office and found intruders there. At this point I was handed an iron rod.”167 In his own recollection, Central Committee secretary Karl Schirdewan was the man of the hour on this day, June 17th. The remaining Politbüro members had been brought to Karlshorst by their Russian “friends” and Berlin SED regional secretary Hans Jendretzky called on all comrades in Berlin to stage a counter-demonstration on Leipziger Strasse, which was soon deemed a huge mistake.168 Schirdewan held the fort at the House of Unity and had several hundred Central Committee employees build a human chain in front of the entrances. When the number of demonstrators had grown to more than three thousand, however, and they began to throw stones at the windows, these employees had to withdraw. Division head Krankemann, on the other hand, had nothing to say in retrospect about a human chain, nor did he mention Schirdewan’s efforts. As he recalled, the “defense effort” was led by Gustav Röbelen,169 head of the Central Committee’s Security Department, a claim which would certainly seem to fit the man’s temperament, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War whom his colleagues referred to as Iron Gustav.170 Röbelen’s colleagues had handed out the iron bars—including one for Krankemann—and “on the ground floor,” according to Krankemann, every room was occupied. We went to eat upstairs. There were twenty men to a room. They each had an iron rod, then they had pistols and some had rifles. They [the protesters] would have made mincemeat out of us. If some idiot among them [the Central Committee employees] had fired, they would have killed us all. . . . At 4 p.m. the women were allowed go home.

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But only, according to Schirdewan, after Soviet soldiers had arrived and scattered the “insurgents.”171 What is certain is that Schirdewan sent every halfway suitable Central Committee employee to the factories of Berlin in an effort to discourage the workers there from taking part in the demonstrations. Gerhard Schürer, for example, who’d been working for the Planning and Finance Department for only a couple of months, was sent to the electronics plant in Treptow,172 while Gustav Just, division head in the Department of Culture, went to the Oberspree cable works. There was little these instructors could do, however. Most of them found the factories empty, the workers were already “on the streets.”173 The next day, in the afternoon, several hundred Central Committee employees were called upon by Party leaders to attend a “confidence rally” outside the House of Ministries. In the course of this rally, Otto Grotewohl interpreted the uprising as an “attempted fascist putsch.”174 The participants—state and Party employees—were in a dejected mood, or so Fritz Schenk of the State Planning Commission recalled. While old-guard Communists in the Central Committee were reveling in the outcome of June 17th in the days that followed—“Iron” Gustav Röbelen, for his part, reported anecdotally in private about a Soviet officer who supposedly threatened to have a hundred East German citizens in Görlitz shot175—several dozen other Central Committee employees and members of the Party leadership were on the ground, endeavoring to “win back the trust of workers.” Among them was Gustav Just, who supported Central Committee secretary Kurt Vieweg at several agitation efforts in factories—“mostly unsuccessful,” as Just later wrote.176 Fred Oelssner’s appearance at the Buna works in late June even “ended with an unbridled provocation,” according to the Stasi report. The workers there confronted Oelssner, demanding that those arrested be freed and that their pay be raised without delay.177 The deployment of agitators in factories was followed by heightened surveillance. On September 10, 1953, the Central Secretariat decided to appoint Party organizers in eighty-two “priority factories,” as extensions, eyes and ears so to speak, of Party headquarters. In twenty-one additional large factories SED secretariats were formed to implement the Party line under the direct supervision of the Central Committee.178 Moreover, there was a thorough vetting of all functionaries and Party leadership that had negotiated or even so much as communicated with the insurgents. Central Committee “brigades” were effectively on constant assignment until the spring of 1954, trying to weed out the causes of possible “defeatist attitudes.” And, sure enough, they found what they were looking for. At the Ernst Thälmann Works in Magdeburg a Central Committee brigade discovered that “all key positions are occupied by former members of the NSDAP,”179 whereas a deep-seated “Social Democratism” was found in several district secretariats in Thuringia.180 At VEB Einheit Mühlhausen, a state-owned textile factory, they even uncovered a supposed plot against an old antifascist. Managing members of the factory’s Party organization had expelled Ramm, an Old Communist, from the Party in October 1953 and worked

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towards his dismissal from the plant.181 The “spurious” reasoning behind these machinations, from the Central Committee brigade’s perspective, was that Ramm had violated animal protection laws in killing a stray dog on factory grounds. By “purging” the functionary corps in this manner the central apparatus exhibited its repressive side. Central Committee regional commissioners had State Security arrest Party functionaries who seemed to represent the “internal enemy”—instructor F. from the district leadership of Altenburg, for instance, who “not only spread RIAS [Radio in the American Sector] slogans but worked according to them.”182 A range of Party secretaries were removed from office whose biographies were tainted by formal Nazi ties that no longer seemed acceptable in light of the “attempted fascist putsch.” Party leaders also used the central apparatus to take aim at the regional secretaries who had failed to prevent the events of June 17th. Even an Old Communist the likes of Karl Mewis, first secretary of the regional leadership in Rostock, was accused of allowing “confusion [Unklarheit] about the nature of Social Democratism” in his regional secretariat.183 More than 70 percent of the first district secretaries elected in 1953 had to step down in 1954. And no less than four first regional secretaries were dismissed in connection with June 17th.184 But the “weakness” of territorial organs and Party organizations in factories brought to light by the deployment of Central Committee brigades had yet another effect on the central apparatus: a whole slew of Central Committee employees soon found themselves back in the provinces. As early as July 18, 1953, Party leaders declared that the districts and factories whose “leaderships retreated or capitulated on June 17th” were to promptly be “reinforced by battle-hardened cadre with Party experience.”185 These included several dozen highly efficient Central Committee employees such as Egon Rentzsch, head of the Department of Culture, who was assigned to the recently reprimanded Karl Mewis as a second secretary. Moreover, Central Committee employees were delegated as “permanent advisors” to local Party organizations in at least twenty-three large factories.186 Thus, the iconic date of June 17th not only symbolizes the failed political style of the apparatus in its early years and the subsequent attempts of the Party leadership to overcome the difficulties of “building socialism” by resorting to the repressive use of power. The workers’ rebellion meant that Party headquarters would retain its precarious character for the time being, the resulting increase in staff turnover once again limiting its stabilization.

The Resistant State The relationship between Party and state apparatuses was therefore far more complex in the early years of the GDR than the image of a Diktaturdurchsetzung, an “enforcement of dictatorship,” would suggest. The power of the central apparatus was still narrowly circumscribed. Central Committee employees were not in a position to give direct orders. They could only have an influence on the state apparatus when they were able to draw on a certain authority.

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In the years of “Stalinist construction” this authority was largely tied to the “charisma of the Party,” to its utopian promise of salvation through the establishment of a classless society.187 This charisma could sometimes be used quite effectively on the ground. The problem was that individual members of the Central Committee apparatus were not always able to translate the Party’s charisma into personal authority. This was even more so the case since many of their counterparts, i.e., leading state functionaries, wielded considerable authority of their own as a consequence of their antifascist past. Thus, power figurations between the Party and state apparatuses were balanced, at best, in the early years. In the course of the 1950s, however, these power figurations shifted, at least at the sector level—in policy fields of particular importance or where the failure of the Party line was particularly evident in the context of “building socialism.” The Central Secretaries in charge here were engaged in an increasingly personal capacity, which changed their power relations accordingly. A shared basic belief among Central Committee employees, one that guided their behavior down to 1989, became firmly established in these policy fields as well: “If things don’t move forward, the Party must guide the state and economy.”188 One such policy field was foreign and intra-German trade. The more the latter lagged behind the figures of the Five-Year Plan (1953–57), the more caustic the tone between the responsible Central Committee secretary and minister of foreign trade, Gerhart Ziller and Kurt Gregor, respectively. This is even more remarkable considering that both Gregor and Ziller were Old Communists and former Sachsenhausen camp inmates. But shared experiences of this sort played no role under the pressures of plan fulfillment during the years of building socialism. “Your apparatus isn’t capable of drawing up an exact export plan,” Ziller accused Gregor in the spring of 1954. Gregor, according to Ziller, did not have his ministry under control and his employees lacked “any clarity” about the extent of “the chaos in foreign trade.”189 The Party leadership overall considered foreign trade a serious problem area from the mid1950s on. As a result, and with Ziller’s backing, the Central Committee’s Trade and Transport Department under Ernst Lange gained more leeway. In the early 1950s its employees had remained in the role of observers, occasionally visiting the Party organization of the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Now they directly intervened in foreign trade, repealing measures introduced by Gregor’s ministry.190 In the summer of 1955, employees of the Central Committee department saw themselves “forced, . . . on account of the insufficient and oftentimes callous and bureaucratic work of members of the state and commercial apparatus, . . . to sort out [on its own] the supply of potatoes, meat, cigarettes and [other] foodstuffs to the population.” This should “not be the task of comrades in the Central Committee but that of functionaries in the state apparatus,” as employees in the department put it rhetorically in a “disposition” on their own role.191 The image of a “callous,” bureaucratic and often incompetent state apparatus was an integral part of how the SED apparatuses perceived and interpreted reality. It was

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an important way for Party workers in the 1950s to legitimize the “spoon-feeding” (Gängelei) and “interventionism” (Hineinregieren) decried by state and economic functionaries. The resultant was that the central apparatus’s power tended to increase at first in those areas where the Party could credibly argue that the state had failed. It made no difference if the problems “the state” was expected to deal with had been caused by Party policies in the first place. This was certainly the case in agriculture, perhaps the single biggest “problem area” or at least the most conflict-ridden policy field in the building of socialism. Indeed, the situation in the countryside worsened rather than improving during the 1950s.192 Collectivization forced more and more people to move to cities. Criticisms of SED policies were expressed much more openly in rural than in urban areas after June 17th.193 With State Security likewise less well-established in the countryside than in cities,194 these rural areas, from the perspective of Party leaders, were a “zone of uncertainty” that urgently seemed to need the activities of the Party. For the Central Committee’s Department of Agriculture this meant greater power. Overshadowed as it was in the early 1950s by the Ministry of Agriculture, headed by Old Communist Paul Scholz, as of 1953 it finally became a political actor in its own right under Central Committee secretary Erich Mückenberger. It bombarded the Ministry of Agriculture with constant “recommendations” that were hard for its leading functionaries to ignore, having passed through the hands of Mückenberger and received his stamp of approval. With the legwork having been done by his department, Mückenberger gave detailed individual instructions in March of 1954 on how the ministry should react to losses of winter grains caused by severe frost.195 His tone was consistently confrontational,196 and in August of 1955 he cautioned the state secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Wilke, not to “underestimate the Central Committee of the Party or its apparatus.”197 Mückenberger’s style obviously served as a model for the Central Committee’s Department of Agriculture under his command. In late 1957, at any rate, Central Committee departmental head Mellentin lectured state secretary Wilke on the significance of the “competition in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution,” harshly rebuking him for having “no concept of how the competition should be carried forward.”198 The much-criticized Gängelei—the patronizing attitude of the Central Committee apparatus towards the state—during these years is illustrated by a conflict between Mellentin and Wilke in late 1955. The conflict revolved around a proposal by the ministry: the “draft of the resolution on training mid-level cadre for agriculture in the second Five-Year Plan.” The ministry employees assigned to the task had to come up with no less than five draft versions, each of which was rejected in turn by state secretary Wilke or Central Committee departmental head Mellentin. After the fourth draft, Mellentin communicated to Wilke that he found it “incomprehensible that even the written assistance [of the Central Committee department] has been insufficiently taken into consideration by the respective comrades [in the ministry].”199

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Perhaps Fred Oelssner had agricultural policy in mind when at the Twenty-Eight Plenary of the Central Committee in the summer of 1956 he criticized the Party apparatus’s “encroachment” (Übergriffigkeit). “The situation is actually such,” said Oelssner, “that employees of the Party apparatus . . . are giving direct and blind instructions . . . to employees of the state apparatus.”200 Nothing of the sort had occurred three or four years earlier.

Expertise as a Source of Power A Central Committee department’s political influence on a given policy field in the mid- and late 1950s primarily depended on whether or not the respective Central Committee secretary gave his full support. Central Committee departmental heads generally still did not have the authority to face off with a minister or even a state secretary and deal with them on an equal footing. This was especially true when the respective state sub-bureaucracy, supported by resourceful ministers like Heinrich Rau or Bruno Leuschner, purposefully worked towards asserting their particular interests against the policy line of the Party.201 The state apparatus for economic management was particularly good at this until the late 1950s. “We were able,” said Fritz Schenk, personal aide of the head of the State Planning Commission Bruno Leuschner, “to prevent quite a few resolutions from being adopted in the interest of the Party.” As long as [our] policy briefs sounded convincing and were rooted in official propaganda theories it was the Party apparatus that usually got the short end of the stick, since we for our part were able to work with a lot of numbers, specialist jargon and fancily-worded technical and economic minutiae.202 Actual economic control in the GDR during the 1950s was exercised by the departments of the State Planning Commission, the line ministries and, depending on the area in question, Central Committee secretary Ziller. The norm established in the fall of 1949 that bills put forth by the ministries had to be coordinated with the respective Central Committee departments apparently had little validity in the field of economic policy. It still happened, wrote the Central Auditing Commission in November 1958, “that [Central Committee] departments were not being involved in the preparation of legislative measures despite the considerable economic impact” of this.203 Hence employees in the Central Committee’s economic-policy departments long remained in the role of propagandists and agitators. This was true, for instance, of the Central Committee’s Department of Machine Building and Metallurgy, whose employees’ main task in 1959 was making good on the production slogan “More steel for our Republic!” Even in its brigade deployments, the Machine Building Department largely acted as a “guardian” of the Party line. Such was the case with two deployments carried out by the metallurgy division at the Brandenburg Steel and Rolling Mill in April and

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December of 1957, occasioned by a plan deficit of fifteen thousand tons of steel in the first half of 1957. Employees of the Central Committee spent several weeks at the factory in each instance, inspecting documents and conducting dozens of discussions in which they hoped to find out “how the [mill] would feel if another June 17th were to come.”204 Each of the two deployments ended with a debriefing session with Party and factory managers.205 It is noteworthy to what extent employees of the Machine Building Department ignored the economic challenges faced by the mill. They showed no interest whatsoever in the explosion of a blast furnace in December 1956 or the shortage of scrap metal in early 1957 that resulted in some employees being laid off. Instead they entirely focused on the current topics of Party work: collectivity in management and the implementation of Party resolutions. Factory managers were reprimanded for concentrating “too much on objective questions and not enough on political-ideological work” at the mill. The Construction Department was also conspicuous for its mainly political function in the second half of the 1950s. It claimed to defend the interests of working people against a construction bureaucracy that was supposedly out of touch with reality.206 In another instance it intervened against the “poor cadre policy” of the Ministry of Reconstruction. In August 1956, Central Committee departmental head Schwanz responded to the ministry’s plan to let go of thirty employees by asking what was “actually going on in the Ministry of Reconstruction,” adding that he wouldn’t put up with their “jumping the gun” like this.207 State secretary Hafrang, however, who just two years earlier had pleaded with Schwanz for help against then minister of heavy industry Selbmann, was less impressed this time. Hafrang took his time with a report about his “poor cadre work” that Schwanz had requested from him in August, only submitting it in mid-October despite repeated inquiries. There is reason to believe that the change of leadership in the Ministry of Reconstruction—from Winkler, a CDU man, to the Old Communist Heinrich Rau—may have encouraged Hafrang’s casual approach. In this case the power figuration in the construction industry shifted in favor of state secretary Hafrang due to the change of ministers. In the policy field of higher education, by contrast, the power figuration remained stable throughout the 1950s. In 1952, the Central Committee’s Science Department had had “no real relationship” to the Party organization of the State Secretariat for Higher Education. Even in 1956–57, Kurt Hager, now a Central Committee secretary, and his “right-hand man” Johannes Hörnig, director of the Central Committee’s Science Department, had only limited political influence on the State Secretariat. An open conflict in the spring of 1956 gives some indication of this. Unrest had broken out at East German universities, with students protesting against the required courses in Marxism-Leninism and compulsory Russian lessons. In April the head of state Walter Ulbricht was met with heckling and “hostile remarks” during a lecture at Karl Marx University in Leipzig208 and in May about a thousand students at the Technical University in Dresden demonstrated against a decree prohibiting them, as

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students, from traveling to the West.209 In light of this situation, Hager and Hörnig requested a “contact meeting” with state secretary Gerhard Harig and his main departmental head Franz Dahlem. Two Party functionaries spoke at the meeting about the “gravity of the situation at the universities and criticized the work of the State Secretariat for Higher and Technical Education, citing concrete examples.” But state secretary Harig objected vehemently, and “even Franz Dahlem responded to this assessment with the view that the situation was not that grave. Hager then explained . . . that a critical mood like the one right now had never been the case at the universities before,” which Harig and Dahlem again denied. They parted without having reached an agreement.210 What’s more, the two state functionaries ignored Hager’s urgent request to evaluate “the Party’s” assessment of the situation at a management meeting of the State Secretariat.211 This should come as no surprise, since state secretary Harig—who was held at Buchenwald from 1938 to 1945—apparently had a downright aversion to the employees of the Central Committee’s Science Department. As one departmental head under Harig recalled, he often [made] disparaging remarks about the work of employees at the Central Committee apparatus . . . by strongly emphasizing—when he was told: this or that had been discussed with the Central Committee, meaning, e.g., with the Science Department of the Central Committee— that this was not the Central Committee but this or that employee of the apparatus.212 Harig, an old-guard Communist, seemed willing to concede authority to the Central Committee as the Party’s highest executive body but did not extend the same privilege to its employees. The latter, he felt, had neither any authority nor resources the State Secretariat needed. Being unable to coerce the Harig/Dahlem duo, employees at the Central Committee Science Department ultimately had no means at their disposal to control higher education policy via the State Secretariat. The only option left to them was “direct action.” And so they used university Party organizations to organize campaigns, discussion events and suchlike at a local level. Thus, in the second half of the 1950s the department was still a long way from being the kind of political actor it would later become.

Conclusion The establishment of SED dictatorship was not a foregone conclusion—at least not from the perspective of Party headquarters. The backing of their Soviet “friends” and the almost unlimited authority resulting from their license to completely restructure society did not mean that the entire political system automatically geared itself towards the Central Committee apparatus as the center of power. The Cen-

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tral Committee asserted its power considerably more slowly than “the Party” as a whole, whose status as a “guiding force” was evident already in the late 1940s. This asynchronicity resulted on the one hand from Old Communists in ministerial and managerial positions claiming to represent the Party in state and industry, from the clear definition of tasks in the case of state actors (unlike the Party apparatus), and from Party leaders long being uncertain about the specific role the apparatus should play. The habit of taking the cue from Moscow only increased the level of confusion, because Khrushchev, too, in the 1950s tended to define the role of the CPSU Central Committee apparatus on a case-by-case basis rather than strategically. But the SED Central Committee apparatus also expanded its grip on power so sluggishly because its members first had to acquire the necessary skills for generating information and exercising political influence in a contingent environment. At the same time they still had to cope with a great deal of insecurity, just like the first cohorts of apparatus employees in the late 1940s. The sources of this insecurity were varied: generational conflict, power struggles in the upper echelons of the Party, a popular uprising, and not least of all the tendency of the Politbüro to periodically join in the “critiquing” of the apparatus, a widespread practice in the state and the economy. To be sure, the benefits gained by SED leaders in opening up the Party’s own executive to general criticism must have been limited. The debate about the “apparatus intervening in state affairs” at times developed into a kind of proxy war over the “Ulbricht system.” Yet all these limitations and conflicts, the organizational “precarity” and massive insecurity notwithstanding, the apparatus did indeed expand its power and political influence over the political system of the GDR. To be sure, this power expansion was still heavily dependent on situational and staff-related factors in the framework of changing power figurations. In the field of cadre policy, however, this expansion became systematic. The same went for information policy and information generation. The assumption here is that the consolidation of Party-internal and -external channels of communication and the intensified efforts to procure information were among the preconditions for the Central Committee apparatus to develop from being a precarious organization into the de facto central government of the GDR. The literature to date has predominantly adopted a different view, the transformation of Party-internal communication and/or information procurement often being reduced to the fact that the number of written reports were multiplying while simultaneously being “depleted” of their content. This view fits nicely in the narrative of decline and stagnation that is well established in communism studies. In the present study it offers an occasion to interrupt the chronological historical narrative of the Central Committee apparatus. Before tracing the developments of the 1960s and the reform policies of Ulbricht from the perspective of the apparatus, the subject of chapter 4, the following, chapter 3, will take a look at the Party apparatus as a “communication space,” going well beyond the framework of the 1950s.

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Notes 1. See the transcripts of the speeches and talks translated into German in SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/5/158, fols. 1–437. 2. Protokoll der Aussprache mit dem Abteilungsleiter und den Sektorenleitern der Abteilung Parteiorgane im ZK der KPdSU, 22.12.1954, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/158, fols. 3–122, here fol. 45. 3. Ibid., fol. 73. 4. Vortrag des Genossen Kusmin, Leiter der Abteilung Maschinenbau im ZK der KPdSU, 25.12.1954, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/158, fols. 400–23, here fols. 413–15. 5. Titov, “The Central Comittee Apparatus,” 42. 6. Dietrich Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, new expanded edition (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), 142f. 7. A position adopted among others by Mählert, who writes, “The apparatus had assumed power in the Party.” “‘Die Partei hat immer recht!’” in Terror, ed. Weber and Mählert, 355. 8. The disorganization of SED party headquarters has been emphasized by Amos, Politik und Organisation; Malycha and Winters, Die SED. 9. Sven Reichardt and Wolfgang Seibel, “Radikalität und Stabilität. Herrschen und Verwalten im Nationalsozialismus,” Der prekäre Staat: Herrschen und Verwalten im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Sven Reichardt and Wolfgang Seibel (Frankfurt am Main, 2011), 7–27. On the special authorities under Nazism, see, e.g., the contributions in Rüdiger Hachtmann and Winfried Süß, eds., Hitlers Kommissare. Sondergewalten in der nationalsozialistischen Diktatur (Göttingen, 2006). 10. Apelt and Senge, Organisation und Unsicherheit, 8. 11. See the organigrams in Amos, Politik und Organisation, 93 and 568. 12. On the prerequisites and ramifications of systemic differentiations, see Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 76. 13. Eberhard Arlt, Vorschläge für die Verbesserung der Arbeit des Politbüros und des Sekretariats des ZK in wirtschaftlichen Fragen, 19.6.1952, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9159, fols. 10–24, here fol. 10. 14. Chris Argyris and Donald A. Schön, Die lernende Organisation: Grundlagen, Methode, Praxis, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart, 2006); for an overview, see Bernhard Miebach, Organisationstheorie. Problemstellung— Modelle—Entwicklung, 2nd. expanded ed. (Wiesbaden, 2012), 153–94. 15. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 144. 16. Malycha and Winters, Die SED, 159. 17. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 132. 18. Christoph Boyer, “Wirtschaftsfunktionäre. Das Personal der wirtschaftslenkenden Apparate in der formativen Phase der SBZ/DDR (1945–1961),” in Vom Funktionieren der Funktionäre, ed. Till Kössler (Essen, 2004), 109–25. 19. Entschließung des Parteivorstands vom 3.6.1950, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/1/61, fols. 17–21; see also Amos, Politik und Organisation, 76. 20. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 85. 21. These were the International Relations, Agriculture, and State Administration departments. 22. E.g., the departments of Culture, Women’s Affairs, or Financial Administration and Party Enterprises. 23. E.g., the two independent departments for Agitation and Propaganda, respectively, as opposed to one single Agitation and Propaganda Department in the Central Committee of the CPSU. 24. This functional differentiation of CPSU headquarters became particularly apparent in 1948 with the founding of four departments for managing the economy (Heavy Industry, Light Industry, Machine Building and Transportation). The backdrop to this development was a greater appreciation of economic and technical criteria as opposed to political-ideological ones. The latter had been decisive in the preceding phase following the Eighteenth Party Congress of the CPSU in 1939. In organizational terms, this found expression in the entire apparatus being split into two big general divisions: a “directorate” for cadre and one for propaganda. Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg V. Chlevnjuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (Oxford, 2004), 58; Gorlizki, “Party Revivalism,” 15; Titov, “The Central Comittee Apparatus,” 43. 25. BStU, MfS, AOP, Nr. 438/56, Bd. 1, fols. 14–17.

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26. See the overview in Kaiser, “Die Zentrale der Diktatur,” 83–85; Amos, Politik und Organisation, 77–81. 27. Hager had previously headed the Party Training and Propaganda Department. 28. [Bericht der SKK], 15.3.1950, SAPMO-BArch, NY 4036/736a, fols. 85 f. 29. Beschluss des Politbüros vom 15.1.1952, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/19, fols. 46–54. 30. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 151. The Nach dem Stellenplan vom 5.1.1953 hatte sie ein Personalsoll von 108 politischen und 19 technischen Mitarbeitern. Ebd., S. 170. 31. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 99. 32. The term is taken from Gorlizki and Chlevnjuk, Cold Peace. 33. Über die Verbesserung der Arbeit der leitenden Organe und des Apparates des Zentralkomitees der SED, Beschluss des Politbüros vom 11.11.1952. 12.11.1952, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/11/120, fols. 178–87. 34. The part of the SED’s Central Committee apparatus responsible for economic management had thus come to mirror the development of the GDR’s state apparatus. Here, too, by the summer of 1951, the existing General Ministry of Industry under Heinrich Rau had been split up into seven independent ministries of industry. 35. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 178. 36. Arbeitsordnung des Apparates des Zentralkomitees der SED, 29.1.1953, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/3/358, fols. 25–34. 37. Lokatis, “Dietz,” 540. 38. It is little wonder that employees of this department were “unclear about where [their] tasks ended and those of the [other] specialist departments began.” Bericht der Überprüfung der Abteilung Arbeit, Sozial- und Gesundheitswesen beim ZK, 29.3.1955, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 3/57, unpaginated. 39. ZRK, Bericht der Überprüfung des Büros des Politbüros beim ZK, 8.11.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 3/56, unpaginated. 40. ZRK, Bericht über die Überprüfung der Abteilung S.[icherheitsfragen] vom 22. bis 26.5.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 3/56, unpaginated. 41. The following is contained in Bericht über die Ergebnisse der kritischen und selbstkritischen Überprüfung der Arbeitsweise der Abteilung Agitation, 2.5.1952, SAPMO-BArch, NY 4036/659, fols. 86–98, here fol. 95. 42. “Some comrades,” the report goes on, “help themselves by borrowing cars and typists from friendly organizations or using other personal connections. This is inadmissible and undermines the authority of Central Committee staff.” 43. Quoted in Boyer, “Wirtschaftsfunktionäre,” 119. 44. Fritz Gäbler, Bericht über die Überprüfung des technischen Apparats beim Büro des Politbüros, 12.2.1957, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 3/58, unpaginated. 45. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 49. 46. Ibid., 304f.; Tacke, “Formalität und Informalität,” 65. 47. Ibid. 48. This was a reference to “former longtime employees of the Dyckerhoff & Widmann company,” which Scholz himself had belonged to. The charge of cronyism leveled by the Stasi was supported by a wide range of sources. Yet Scholz’s position was strong enough, thanks to his close ties to Heinrich Rau, that the investigations left him unscathed. He would later rise to the position of state secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ambassador of the GDR in France. SfS, HA III, Referat III, Zwischenbericht, 24.11.1953, BStU, MfS, AOP, Nr. 438/56, Bd. 1, fols. 67–70, here fol. 67. 49. ZRK, Einige Bemerkungen zur Kaderpolitik der Abteilung Finanzverwaltung und Parteibetriebe, 21.2.1962, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3J/233, fols. 1–13, here fol. 2. 50. The practice was feared by the state functionaries responsible for human resources. Josef Hafrang, for instance, as head of the Main Administration for Construction in the Ministry of Heavy Industry, gave instructions to his department to only “report [to the Central Committee] the comrades not needed at the Main Administration.” Abschrift von Bericht Abt. IX, Berlin, betr. Hafrang, Josef, geb. 1.1.1911 [. . .], 1.12.1952, BStU, MfS, AOP, Nr. 438/56, Bd. 2, fols. 13f., here fol. 13.

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51. Arbeitsgruppe Befragungen/Erinnerungen, Befragungsprotokolle des MGI [Militärgeschichtliches Institut] der DDR: Befragungsprotokoll Konteradmiral a.D. Johannes Streubel (1986/87), in ZMSBw/ Archiv des Militärgeschichtlichen Instituts der DDR. 52. The “measure,” according to Meyer’s complaint, was seen as “justified by the political situation—peripheral zone of [West] Berlin.” Willi Meyer: Staatssekretariat für Bauwirtschaft, an Herbert Spalteholz, ZK-Abteilung Bauwesen, 24.7.1952, BArch, DH 1/6323, unpaginated. 53. Willi Meyer, Ministerium für Aufbau, an Adalbert Hengst, ZK-Abteilung Wirtschaftspolitik, Abschrift, 6.10.1952, BArch, DH 1/6323, unpaginated. 54. In fact he had only read out the workers’ demands on the Warnow shipyard’s workplace radio, but such subtleties no longer interested the Politbüro. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 130f. 55. Hanna Wolf an Rudolf Herrnstadt, 7.7.1953, BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 2377, fol. 91f. 56. The summary minutes of the first meeting of the Organization Commission of June 25 or 26, for example, noted under item 5: “The apparatus of the Central Committee will be reorganized and downsized.” Quoted in Amos, Politik und Organisation, 244. 57. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 125. 58. The newly founded commissions were the Security Commission in the Politbüro, the Commission for Cultural Issues, Press and Radio, and finally the Agitation Commission. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 300, 323. The Committee for German Unity founded at the same time simply carried on the work of the previously existing Commission for Work on West Germany. 59. There were additional mergers—e.g., between the Department of Science and Education and the Propaganda Department—but also the establishment of new micro-departments, with the LOPM Department, for instance, spinning off its friendly organizations and women’s affairs divisions. The friendly organizations division became an “independent working group” and the women’s affairs division a department of its own. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 323. 60. Niklas Luhmann, “Lob der Routine,” in Politische Planung. Aufsätze zur Soziologie von Politik und Verwaltgung, ed. Niklas Luhmann (Opladen, 1971), 113–42, here 130. 61. Quoted in Boyer, “Wirtschaftsfunktionäre,” 102. 62. LOPM: Vorlage an das Politbüro des ZK betr. Beschluss über Maßnahmen zur Vereinfachung des Parteiapparats, 3.12.1955, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/21, fols. 272–77; Amos, Politik und Organisation, S. 327. 63. This group of so-called instructors (Instrukteure) from the Central Committee had existed since 1950 in the “organizational instructor department” and its successor, the LOPM Department. They were mobilized for local assignments by Walter Ulbricht in person, but did not have a specific regional jurisdiction. The permanent assignment of “commissioners” to a respective region was to help stabilize the relationship between the center of power and outlying territories. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 336. 64. From this point on—and until 1989—the Science and Propaganda Department was to be limited to a specialist role in its guidance of university Party organizations, its tasks not clearly defined vis-à-vis those of the regional leadership. 65. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 336. 66. On the following, see Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 152–60. 67. Quoted in ibid., 155. 68. Fritz Schellhorn an das Sekretariat des ZK, betr.: Durchführung der Beschlüsse der 3. Parteikonferenz, 12.4.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.01/2, fols. 160–69, here fol. 162. 69. Einige Fragen zum Apparat des ZK, 14.6.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 3/56, unpaginated. 70. Only one year later, in February 1958, were Schirdewan, Oelssner and Minister of State Security Wollweber unmasked as a “faction” and removed from their posts. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 162–69. 71. On the reduction of staff, see also Stern, Porträt, 275f. One example is thirty-one-year-old Theo Weckend, who was employed at the Department of Basic Industry since 1956 and transferred to the Office of Nuclear Research and Nuclear Technology in February 1957 (where he was recruited

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72. 73.

74. 75. 76.

77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

86.

87. 88.

89. 90.

91.

92. 93. 94.

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as an unofficial collaborator of the Stasi in 1958). Lebenslauf vom 2.10.1958 in BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1282/71, fols. 12f., here fol. 12. Boyer, “Wirtschaftsfunktionäre,” 120f. Analyse über die kadermäßige Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des ZK, in den Apparaten der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen für den Berichtszeitraum vom 1.2.1958 bis 31.8.1958, 19.12.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/643, fols. 12–24, here fol. 15. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 380f. Ibid., 393. This enhanced performance usually comes from the fact that subsystems—e.g., the individual departments of an organization—can “go about their special tasks” without being burdened by what’s happening in the overall system. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 76. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 490. E.g., Aktennotiz über die Teilnahme an der Kollegiumssitzung des Ministeriums für Allgemeinen Maschinenbau am 25.4.1953, 27.4.1953, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.04, 50, fols. 9–11: “The advisory-committee meeting [Kollegiumssitzung] was firmly and unerringly presided over by Comrade State Secretary Schneider. There was little deviation from the items on the agenda. . . . Only the wording of the resolutions needs to be more clear and sharply defined in the future.” The exception here was the three “security ministries”: the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry for State Security, and the Ministry of National Defense. Amos, Politik und Organisation, S. 490. The fact that the Central Committee’s specialist departments nevertheless massively expanded their powers vis-à-vis “the state” as of the late 1950s is another story. Bahro, Die Alternative, 283. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 87, 567, n. 96. Boyer, “Wirtschaftsfunktionäre,” 120. Foitzik, “Sowjetische Ordnungspolitik,” 227. Analyse über die Fluktuation der politischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des ZK für den Berichtszeitraum vom 1.11.55–1.6.56, 9.8.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/1667, fols. 353f., here fol. 353; Analyse über die kadermäßige Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des ZK, in den Apparaten der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen für den Berichtszeitraum vom 1.2.1958 bis 31.8.1958, 19.12.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/643, fols. 12–24, here fols. 13. Here it is important to keep in mind that in the 1950s the Party organization of the Central Committee included the basic organizations of establishments such Dietz publishing house and the Karl Marx Party School, which as of the late 1970s belonged to the regional Party organization of Berlin. SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/28558, fols. 10, 12, 18, 25, 31, 44, 52, 60, 68, 76, 86, 94, 96, 98. Analyse über die kadermäßige Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des ZK, in den Apparaten der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen für den Berichtszeitraum vom 1.2.1958 bis 31.8.1958, 19.12.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/643, fols. 12–24, here fol. 13. Statistik über die Gesamtzusammensetzung des Apparates des ZK, der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen, 30.6.1954, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/1667, fols. 47–66, here fol. 47. Analyse und Statistik über die kaderpolitische Zusammensetzung sowie die politische und fachliche Qualifikation des Parteiapparats [Entwurf ], 30.8.1957, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/583, fols. 50–56, here fol. 50. The respective departments were: Construction, Cadre Issues, Agriculture and Security Issues. Analyse über die kadermäßige Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des ZK, in den Apparaten der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen für den Berichtszeitraum vom 1.2.1958 bis 31.8.1958, 19.12.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/643, fols. 12–24, here fol. 15. The reasons for these staff replacements are not always explicitly stated, but range from a general lack of qualifications to sickness or retirement due to old age. Ibid., fol. 24. Statistik über die Gesamtzusammensetzung des Apparates des ZK, der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen, 30.6.1954, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/1667, fols. 47–66, here fol. 47. Ibid.

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95. Analyse über die kadermäßige Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des ZK, in den Apparaten der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen für den Berichtszeitraum vom 1.2.1958 bis 31.8.1958, 19.12.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/643, fols. 12–24, here fol. 16. A similar development in the MfS is pointed out by Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 267. The share of women there shrank from 25 percent (1954) to 16.3 percent (1965). 96. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 267. 97. Vorlage für das ZK-Sekretariat, betr.: Analyse zur Statistik über die kaderpolitische Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter des Parteiapparates nach dem Stand vom 31.1.1958, 1.7.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/625, fols. 72–94, here fol. 75. 98. The parallel hiring sprees in the state and security apparatuses led to comparable changes in age structure there. In the MfS, for example, about half of employees were under 30 in 1953 following the recruitment drive of 1952. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 111. 99. Analyse der Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter der Abteilungen des ZK, der Bezirksund Kreisleitungen und ihrer politischen und fachlichen Qualifikation, undated [5/1954], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/1667, fols. 41–46, here fol. 42. 100. SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/28558, fols. 133, 141, 145f. 101. Statistik über die Gesamtzusammensetzung des Apparats des ZK, der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen, 30.6.1954, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/1667, fols. 47–66, here fol. 51. In the MfS—whose employees, on average, were considerably younger than at SED headquarters—the share of comrades who had been in a communist organization prior to 1933 was only 16.9 percent in 1953. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 121. 102. Analyse über die kadermäßige Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des ZK, in den Apparaten der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen für den Berichtszeitraum vom 1.2.1958 bis 31.8.1958, 19.12.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/643, fols. 12–24, here fol. 19. 103. The departments with only a single Old Communist in the first half of 1958 were: Culture, Machine Building, Transport and Communication, and Education. Analyse über die kadermäßige Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des ZK, in den Apparaten der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen für den Berichtszeitraum vom 1.2.1958 bis 31.8.1958, 19.12.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/643, fols. 12–24, here fols. 19. 104. Only four of the thirty-two political employees in the Central Committee apparatus who had belonged to the Nazi Party prior to 1945 indicated this in their résumés. Given that the Nazi Party membership files at the Berlin Document Center are incomplete, the actual number of former party members in the Central Committee apparatus was probably higher. See also Bergien, “Das Schweigen der Kader.” 105. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 123. 106. Statistik über die Gesamtzusammensetzung des Apparates des ZK, der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen, 30.6.1954, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/1667, fols. 47–66, here fol. 47. 107. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 113; Peter Hübner, “Die Zukunft war gestern: Soziale und mentale Trends in der DDR-Industriearbeiterschaft,” in Sozialgeschichte der DDR, ed. Hartmut Kaelble (Stuttgart, 1994), 171–87, here 171f. 108. Heinrich Best and Heinz Mestrup determined that, in the early 1950s, 80 percent of first and second district and regional secretaries in the three regions of Thuringia did in fact have genuinely workingclass roots. Best and Mestrup, eds., Die Ersten und Zweiten Sekretäre, 498–503; see also Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort, 119f. 109. Statistik über die Gesamtzusammensetzung des Apparates des ZK, der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen, 30.6.1954, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/1667, fols. 47–66. 110. Ibid., fol. 57. 111. Foitzik, “Sowjetische Ordnungspolitik,” 227; Boyer, “Arbeiterkarrieren?” 112. Meuschel, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft, 13. 113. Vorlage für das ZK-Sekretariat, betr.: Analyse zur Statistik über die kaderpolitische Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter des Parteiapparates nach dem Stand vom 31.1.1958, 1.7.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/625, fols. 72–94, here fol. 78.

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114. On the relationship between qualifications and system loyalty in the process of recruiting elites in communist states, see also Ettrich, Die andere Moderne, 136f. 115. Vorlage für das ZK-Sekretariat, betr.: Analyse zur Statistik über die kaderpolitische Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter des Parteiapparats nach dem Stand vom 31.1.1958, 1.7.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/625, fols. 72–94, here fol. 82f. 116. Ibid. 117. Sorgenicht began correspondence courses at the German Academy of State and Legal Sciences in 1955, completing his degree in 1959. In 1968 he earned the academic title of doctor rerum politicarum. 118. If “we [as a department] are not a stronger and more aggressive collective,” Zimmermann maintained, then “this is because we have appeasingly followed the path of least resistance despite sometimes hard discussions with Eberhard . . . , excusing his bad attitude and arrogant behavior . . . on account of his illness and his apparently dwindling physical strength.” Hans Zimmermann, ZK-Abteilung Industrie, an Otto Schön, Leiter des Büros des Politbüros, o. D. [Sommer 1952], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9228, fols. 1–3, here fol. 2. 119. Herta Geffke (ZPKK): Parteistrafe für den Genossen Gerhard Eichler, geb. 3.9.1910, Leiter des Personalbüros beim ZK der SED, 20.1.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/500, fols. 118f. 120. Lutz Niethammer, “Volkspartei neuen Typs? Sozialbiografische Voraussetzungen der SED in der Industrieprovinz,” Prokla [Probleme des Klassenkampfs]. Zeitschrift für politische Ökonomie und sozialistische Politik 20, no. 3 (1990): 61f. See also Mary Fulbrook, “Generationen und Kohorten in der DDR: Protagonisten und Widersacher des DDR-Systems aus der Perspektive biografischer Daten,” in Die DDR aus generationengeschichtlicher Perspektive. Eine Inventur, ed. Annegret Schüle, Thomas Ahbe, and Rainer Gries (Leipzig, 2006), 113–30. 121. Versammlung mit Heimkehrern (Zentralschülern) am 24.2.50 im KV [Kreisvorstand] Dresden, 24.2.1950, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/11/204, fols. 38–55, here fol. 39. 122. Hans Zimmermann, ZK-Abteilung Industrie, an Otto Schön, Leiter des Büros des Politbüros, o. D. [summer 1952], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9228, fols. 1–3, here fol. 2. 123. Aktennotiz, Absprache bei der Abteilung Verkehr, 7.2.1964, BStU, MfS, HA II/19, Nr. 14192, fols. 289–94, here fol. 289 f. Siehe auch Amos: Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik, S. 115, Anm. 439. 124. Mewis made the remark in the early 1980s in an interview with historian Monika Kaiser. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 67. 125. ZRK, Protokoll über die Prüfung der Hauptkasse des ZK, 5.12.1957, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/56, unpaginated. 126. Vernehmungsprotokoll des Beschuldigten Heine, Arno, 15.8.1972, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15110, fols. 448–75, here fol. 472. To be sure, Arno Heine, who worked in Glende’s department and was later exposed by the MfS as an agent of the CIA, added that this attitude of Glende had “to my mind changed in 1968.” “At least I never noticed any similar comments from Glende after that.” 127. Bericht betr. Aussagen inhaftierter Personen, o. D. [1960], BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 21699, fols. 73– 92, here fol. 74. 128. SfS, HA S: Auftrag B/267/318 [Abhörprotokoll eines Gesprächs zwischen Rudolf Krankemann und Hans Schoof am 28.3.1955], 30.3.1955, BStU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146/ 56, Bd. 1, fols. 121–46, here fols. 127f. 129. Der Staatsanwalt des Bezirks Halle (Saale) an die Oberste Staatsanwaltschaft der DDR betr. Strafsache gegen Rudolf Krankemann und 3 andere, 2.6.1956, BStU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146/56, Bd. 12, fol. 26. 130. Sofsky and Paris, Figurationen, 13f.; see also Imbusch, “Macht und Herrschaft in der wissenschaftlichen Kontroverse,” 13f. 131. Richtlinien über die Fertigstellung von Vorlagen und wichtigen Materialien für die Regierung und Regierungsstellen zur Entscheidung durch die zuständigen Organe des Parteivorstandes sowie über die Kontrolle der Durchführung dieser Entscheidungen, Sitzung des Sekretariats des ZK am 10.10.1949, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3/57, excerpts published in Matthias Judt, ed., DDR-Geschichte in Dokumenten. Beschlüsse, Berichte, interne Materialien und Alltagszeugnisse (Berlin, 1997), 77f. See also Kaiser, “Die Zentrale der Diktatur,” 78–80; Amos, Politik und Organisation, 109f.

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132. Andrea Maurer, Herrschaftssoziologie. Eine Einführung (Frankfurt am Main, 2004), 21. 133. Ernst Scholz an Willi Stoph, 12.1.1950, BStU, MfS AOP, Nr. 438/56, Bd. 1, fols. 29–31. 134. Eight of the fourteen line ministers belonged to a bloc party to begin with. The SED, however, kept the crucial departments for itself: Internal Affairs, Planning, Justice, Education, Industry. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 44. 135. Prof. Zetkin: Aktennotiz, betr.: Besprechung mit Genn. Holze vom ZK am 29.3.51, 30.3.1951, BArch, DQ 1/20167, no folio numbers. 136. Jenny Matern an Ernst Lange (ZK-Abteilung Handel, Versorgung und Außenhandel), 22.7.1953, BArch, DQ 1, 3156, fol. 171. 137. Fritz Selbmann an Heinz Winkler, 3.3.1954, BArch, DH 1/6323, unpaginated. The issue behind the quarrel was whether large enterprises in Selbmann’s portfolio should be allowed to have their own construction departments and, if so, to what extent these should be subordinate to the Ministry of Reconstruction. 138. Josef Hafrang, Ministerium für Aufbau, an Alfred Schwanz, ZK-Abteilung Bauwesen, 13.3.1954, BArch, DH 1/6323, unpaginated. 139. Hans Zimmermann, ZK-Abteilung Industrie, an Otto Schön, Büro des Politbüros, undated [summer 1952], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9228, fols. 1–3. 140. Schön went on: “Given your consent, I will verify in person in the coming days on the basis of these written complaints how letters addressed to the ministry are handled and find out why they were not taken care of in these instances. I am sure I will make some interesting discoveries relevant to the future work of the ministry.” Otto Schön an Jenny Matern, 22.4.1953, BArch, DQ 1/3156, fol. 307. 141. Jenny Matern an Otto Schön, 12.5.1953, BArch, DQ 1/3156, fol. 308. 142. “What we need,” explained Ulbricht in June 1949, “is a truly capable Secretariat, aided by several departments, and a strong Org[anizational]-Instructor Department. The emphasis here is on the instructors.” Quoted in Schultz, Der Funktionär, 196. 143. Über die Verbesserung der Organisationsarbeit der Partei, Entschließung des Parteivorstands der SED vom 21.7.1949, in Dokumente der SED, ed. Zentralkomitee der SED, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1952), 264. See also Schultz, Der Funktionär, 191–97. 144. The term “outposts” (Grenzstellen) is taken from Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 221f.; see also Tacke, “Formalität und Informalität,” 64. 145. Ulbricht was reacting to massive criticism from various regional representatives of the Soviet Control Commission about a lack of preparations for the elections. A number of these representatives had denounced the SED’s supposed failure to send Central Committee employees to the provinces. Walter Ulbricht an Wladimir S. Semjonow, 6.9.1950, SAPMO-BArch, NY 4036/736b, fols. 196–98. 146. Karl-Ernst Reuter, “Wie die Abteilung Leitende Organe der Partei und Massenorganisationen beim ZK ihre Arbeit verbessert,” Neuer Weg 7, no. 19 (1952): 9. 147. At least this is what Misterfeld said in 1967 while in Stasi custody under suspicion of espionage. BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24434, fol. 101f. 148. Eberhard Arlt, Vorschläge für die Verbesserung der Arbeit des Politbüros und des Sekretariats in wirtschaftlichen Fragen, SAPMO-BArch, 19.6.1962, DY 30/9159, fols. 10–14, here fol. 12. 149. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 102f. 150. Ibid. 151. And yet distinctions needed to be made in the “resettlement of big farmers,” he went on. The “strictest measures” should not be applied to all of them; those who willingly give up their farms should be treated more “gently.” 152. Bericht über die Arbeit der hauptamtlichen Sekretäre in den Orten der D-Linie, in den Kreisen Hagenow und Ludwigslust, 20.4.1953, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/42, fols. 40–46, here fols. 41–43. 153. Quoted in Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 103. 154. Organisations-Instrukteur-Abteilung und Abteilung Wirtschaftspolitik, Bericht zur Überprüfung der Parteiarbeit und wirtschaftlichen Probleme in der volkseigenen Bauindustrie Berlins, 30.7.1951, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.06/3, fols. 33–46, here fol. 35. “We,” the report said, were attacked

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among other things for taking away from East German citizens “the blueberries they want to sell in West Berlin.” 155. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, in Schriften zur Soziologie (Stuttgart, 1995), 28. Weber defines power as “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance.” English translation: Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Claus Wittich and Guenther Roth (Berkeley, 1978), 53. 156. Authority is understood here as personal recognition expressed as the ability to influence other people. Imbusch, “Macht—Herrschaft—Autorität,” 170. 157. Heinz Scholz an Walter Krebaum, ZS-Abteilung Landwirtschaft, 10.6.1950, BArch, DK 1/1407, fol. 221. 158. As a Central Committee secretary, Axen was responsible for the Party press service where the article appeared. Fritz Selbmann an Hermann Axen, 20.2.1951, BArch, DG 2/2, unpaginated. 159. ZK-Abteilung Wissenschaft und Hochschulen, betr. Bericht über die gegenwärtige Lage im Hochschulwesen, Vertraulich, 5.12.1952, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/11/126, fols. 150–71, here fol. 170. 160. Ibid., fol. 171. 161. Hermann Pöschel, Bericht über die Situation im Ministerium für Allgem. Maschinenbau (v. 20. u. 21.8.53), 26.8.1953, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.04/49, fols. 58–61, here fol. 59. 162. Fiedler, Medienlenkung, 112. 163. Karl Schirdewan, Aufstand gegen Ulbricht. Im Kampf um politische Kurskorrektur, gegen stalinistische, dogmatische Politik (Berlin, 1994), 49. 164. Ibid., 51. 165. This is how Schenk depicted it, whose way home from the House of Ministries took him to Pankow. Schenk, Im Vorzimmer der Diktatur, 199. 166. Ibid., 200–7; Schirdewan, Aufstand, 52f. 167. SfS, HA S, Auftrag B/267/318 [Abhörprotokoll eines Gesprächs zwischen Rudolf Krankemann und Hans Schoof am 28.3.1955], 30.3.1955, BStU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146/56, Bd. 1, fols. 121–46, here fol. 144. 168. Schenk, Im Vorzimmer der Diktatur, 204. It was senseless from the perspective of the government employees who were supposed to take part in this demonstration because it would weaken the state apparatus in a critical situation. 169. Vernehmungsprotokoll des Beschuldigten K., Rudolf [...], 19.8.1955, BStU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146, 56, Bd. 1, fols. 184–87, here fol. 186. 170. Vernehmungsprotokoll der Beschuldigten Liebing, Gertrud, 28.11.1966, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24130, fols. 316–26, here fol. 320. 171. Their officer allegedly offered to open fire on the crowd, a suggestion Schirdewan says he firmly rejected. Schirdewan, Aufstand, 52f. 172. Gerhard Schürer, Gewagt und verloren. Eine deutsche Biographie, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt an der Oder, 1996), 44. 173. Ibid., 44f. 174. Schenk, Im Vorzimmer der Diktatur, 208–12. 175. Streng geheim, 22.6.1953, BStU, MfS, AP, Nr. 4698/60, fol. 153. One MfS employee gave a verbatim account of Röbelen’s comments as follows: “On Sunday, June 21, 1953, at 7:30 in the morning, a number of people were gathered at the waterside property of Comrade Röbelen, discussing the recent events. Comrade Röbelen, a generally extremely garrulous individual who can’t keep anything to himself, related the following: The City of Görlitz was taken twice by the rebels and reconquered twice by the Red Army. After the second recapture by the Red Army, the commander of the city put 100 prisoners on the market square and announced that, if the populace did not immediately resume their work, he would have these 100 prisoners publicly shot on the square. The rumor spread like wildfire . . .” 176. Gustav Just, Deutsch, Jahrgang 1921. Ein Lebensbericht (Potsdam, 2001), 72f.

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177. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 129. 178. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, “‘Wir werden siegen, weil uns der große Stalin führt!’ Die SED zwischen Zwangsvereinigung und IV. Parteitag,” in Der Tag X – 17. Juni 1953. Die “innere Staatsgründung” der DDR als Ergebnis der Krise 1952/54, ed. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, Armin Mitter, and Stefan Wolle (Berlin, 1995), 171–242, here 222. 179. LOPM, Analyse über das Ergebnis der Überprüfung der Zusammensetzung der PO des “Ernst-Thälmann-Werkes” in Magdeburg, 22.7.1953, DY 30/IV 2/5/1664, fol. 15, quoted in Kowalczuk: “‘Wir werden siegen . . . ,’” 236. 180. Ibid. 181. LOPM, Vorlage an das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Beschluss des Sekretariats des Zentralkomitees zu den Vorgängen im Kreis Mühlhausen, 20.3.1954, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/4, fols. 124–35, esp fol. 126. My thanks to Michel Christian for pointing out this document to me. 182. LOPM, Situationsbericht über die Lage im Kreissekretariat und im Apparat der Kreisleitung im Kreis Altenburg, nach einem kurzen Informationseinsatz am 31.12.1953, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/5/92, fol. 154–60, here fols. 156. 183. LOPM, Informatorischer Bericht zur Berichterstattung der Bezirksleitung Rostock vor dem Politbüro am 16.2.54, 13.2.1954, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/54, fols. 27–36. 184. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 130. 185. Aufgaben zur weiteren Festigung und Entwicklung der Partei, 18.7.1953, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/5/42, fols. 94–98. 186. Kowalczuk, “‘Wir werden siegen . . . ,’” 222. 187. Sabrow, “Das Charisma des Kommunismus.” 188. These words are from a resolution passed in 1960 by the employees of the Central Committee’s Department of Trade, Supply and Foreign Trade: Maßnahmen zur weiteren Verbesserung der Arbeit der Abteilungen des ZK, undated [March/April 1960], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.10/4, fols. 131–39, here fol. 132. 189. Gerhart Ziller an Kurt Gregor, Ministerium für Außen- und innerdeutschen Handel, persönlich, 14.5.1954, BStU, MfS, AKK, Nr. 9210, fols. 27–34, here fol. 32f. 190. This happened, for example, in May of 1954 when employees at Gregor’s ministry cancelled a large order of lathes from VEB Berliner Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik after a West German client had bailed. Employees at the Central Committee’s Department of Commerce “immediately rescind[ed]” the cancellation without consulting with Gregor’s ministry first. It was ultimately “untenable,” Ziller wrote to Gregor, “that any aide in your ministry can heedlessly cause insecurity and chaos in factories by way of cancellations.” Ibid., fol. 33. 191. Disposition über die Rolle und Aufgaben der Abteilung Binnen- und Außenhandel im Apparat des ZK, 8.10.1955, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.10/4, fols. 38–48, here fols. 47f. 192. Ulrich Scholz, Die DDR. Sozialismus, friedliche Revolution und deutsche Einheit (Braunschweig, 2010), 308. 193. “Ferment and enemy agitation in the countryside” is how diarist Victor Klemperer described the situation soon after June 17th. See Jens Schöne, Frühling auf dem Lande? Die Kollektivierung der DDR-Landwirtschaft (Berlin, 2005), 168f. 194. Ibid., 215f. 195. Minister Scholz, for example, was to make sure that seed was promptly requested for recultivation and determine “to what extent . . . additional fertilizer is required.” Erich Mückenberger an Paul Scholz, 4.3.1954, BArch, DK 1/1413, fol. 100. 196. State secretary for construction Josef Hafrang, for example, was accused by Mückenberger in June 1954 of making the “gross mistake” of not ensuring that prefabricated concrete components for agricultural structures were manufactured in good time. Erich Mückenberger an Josef Hafrang, 4.6.1954, BArch, DH 1/6323, unpaginated. 197. Wilke, wrote Mückenberger, should see to it that not any random ministry employee should be able to write to the Central Committee, “because in my opinion things will get totally out of control in your apparatus if that’s the case.” The warning was prompted by an allegedly anonymous letter that

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Mückenberger received from an employee at the Ministry of Agriculture: “Various documents . . . have been sent to me in a sealed envelope with no address or cover letter . . . . These include a file memo on removing structural defects in the pig-feeding systems of state-owned farms [VEGs]. Page three of this proposal—of which a duplicate has been delivered—has the following typewritten on it: Korkus, Engineer-Architect, Chief Administrator.” Erich Mückenberger an Walter Wilke, in Abschrift an den Genossen Brosselt, 11.8.1955, BArch, DK 1/1414, fol. 215. 198. Franz Mellentin an Walter Wilke, betr. Weiterführung des Wettbewerbs zur Ehren des 40. Jahrestags der Großen Sozialistischen Oktoberrevolution, 6.12.1957, BArch, DK 1/1416, fol. 39. 199. The draft, he wrote, showed an “irresponsible superficiality” and it was imperative that the ministry heads had a “serious” discussion with the employees in question. Franz Mellentin, ZK-Abteilung Landwirtschaft, an Walter Wilke, Ministerium für Land- und Forstwirtschaft, betrifft: Entwurf des Beschlusses zur Ausbildung mittlerer Kader für die Landwirtschaft im zweiten Fünfjahrplan, 19.11.1955, BArch, DK 1/1414, fols. 67f. 200. The full quote of Oelssner in the discussion between Central Committee employees on July 28 and 29, 1956, regarding the Politbüro report runs as follows: “Comrades . . . , the situation is actually such that employees of the Party apparatus—division heads, [Central Committee] instructors—are giving direct and blind instructions . . . to employees of the state apparatus, instructions the responsible minister knows nothing about. That won’t do. We’ll have two people governing alongside each other. How is the minister supposed to be accountable for his work when below him a departmental head says to him: I’ve got orders from the Central Committee that I have to carry out.” 28. Tagung des ZK, zweiter Verhandlungstag: Sonnabend, 28.7.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/1/162, fol. 124. See also Amos, Politik und Organisation, 443. 201. On this “contradictory feature” of “mono-organizational” state-socialist societies, see Ettrich, Die andere Moderne, esp. 145–49. 202. Schenk, Im Vorzimmer der Diktatur, 219. 203. Gäbler cited as an example the Department of Light Industry, which found out by way of the newspaper that the State Planning Commission and the ministry had reduced the price of shoes. Fritz Gäbler, Zentrale Revisionskommission an die Sekretäre des ZK, 13.11.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 3/58, unpaginated. 204. Protokoll der Leitungssitzung vom 27.12.1957 (Auswertung des Instrukteureinsatzes der Brigade des ZK), 28.12.1957, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.04/128, fols. 80–91, here fol. 81. 205. Ibid.; Abschlussberatung Stahl- und Walzwerk Brandenburg [Vortrag des Leiters der Arbeitsgruppe], undated [April 1957], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.04/128, fols. 16–32. 206. Alfred Schwanz, ZK-Abteilung Bauwesen, an Josef Hafrang, Staatssekretär im Ministerium für Aufbau, 27.9.1956, BArch, DH 1/6322, unpaginated. 207. Alfred Schwanz an Josef Hafrang, 23.8.1956, BArch, DH 1/6322, unpaginated. 208. Günther Heydemann and Heidi Roth, “Systembedingte Konfliktpotentiale in der DDR der fünfziger Jahre. Die Leipziger Universität in den Jahren 1953, 1956 und 1961,” in Vor dem Mauerbau. Politik und Gesellschaft in der DDR der fünfziger Jahre, ed. Dierk Hoffmann et al. (Munich, 2003), 205–34, here 215. 209. Ehrhart Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR 1949–1989 (Berlin, 1997), 129. 210. The meeting is depicted in Karl Faber, Über meine opportunistische Konzeption und meine partei- und staatsfeindliche Verbindung mit dem “Ostbüro der SPD,” 14.1.1960, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 21699, fols. 2–51, here fol. 7. It must be kept in mind here that Faber may have attempted to relativize his “hostile attitude” by blaming his superiors in the State Secretary for Higher Education. 211. As state secretary Karl Faber remembered it, “the management of the SfH [State Secretariat for Higher and Technical Education] . . . conducted no evaluation of the contact meeting of May 9, 1956 at which Hörnig and Prof. Hager explained the gravity of the situation. . . . According to my notes, the next management meeting of the SfH after May 9th . . . took place on May 11, 1956, but there was no discussion whatsoever about the [Party’s] assessment of the situation.” Ibid., fol. 31. 212. Karl Faber, Über meine opportunistische Konzeption und meine partei- und staatsfeindliche Verbindung mit dem “Ostbüro der SPD,” 14.1.1960, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 21699, fols. 2–51, here

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fol. 30. Harig’s self-confidence evident in this statement was likely rooted in his biography. A doctor of philosophy, he had emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1933 where he worked for the NKVD. When his cover was blown he was deported to Germany in 1938, where he was held at Buchenwald concentration camp until 1945.

Chapter 3

The Apparatus as a Communication Space

The mood was tense in the meeting room of Party headquarters, where on November 2, 1955, the sixteen regional commissioners of the Central Committee had just finished their second full day of discussions. The focus of debate was on their difficulties asserting themselves against SED regional secretariats, a situation some of these commissioners found deeply discouraging. “We’re tired of adamantly trying to change these things.”1 To make matter worse, Walter Ulbricht, who was attending the meeting, added another item to the agenda. The General Secretary joined them at first in their criticism of these regional “princes,” who were allowing the “capitalist sector to grow,” he argued, and thus fostered an “extremely dirty form of opportunism” in economic affairs.2 But then he turned his ire to the regional commissioners: “The reports I get from you,” Ulbricht said reproachfully, “are weak, are like when I talk to our Foreign Ministry, they’re cautiously worded.”3 They weren’t even worth reading, he said. This is why he had “sent out a few comrades, so they can keep me filled in. Their reports are different from the ones I get from you. They say exactly what’s going on and how it needs to be changed.” Ulbricht’s critique of the “weak” reports of his Central Committee staff points to a key dilemma at SED party headquarters: While it is true that political communication in the GDR was strictly monopolized and revolved around the Central Committee apparatus, the Party leadership and with it the central apparatus were consistently hungry for more information. This was due on the one hand to the Central Committee apparatus’s strong focus on its environment, on the state, economy and society. One of the core tasks of Central Committee departments was the ability to provide information at all times about the status quo and presumed developments in its “environments,” meaning that information and knowledge4 per se were critical to the viability of the apparatus.5 On the other hand, all decision-making power was

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concentrated in the Politbüro and the Central Committee Secretariat. These bodies needed maximum information and knowledge in order to translate their formal omnicompetence into political action. Yet although the Party apparatus made an enormous effort to procure information on a daily basis from all levels of the Party and society, in its own estimation the Party leadership could not get enough information or get it fast enough. Or it didn’t get the information it thought it needed.6 It is easy to see that Party leaders, above all Ulbricht himself, were beholden to a model of communication that was not compatible with the structure of a functionally differentiated large-scale organization. The notion that every SED district leadership (or even every regional commissioner) could be made to report “the truth” in a constant and comprehensive manner ignores the existence of “local rationalities” and fails to recognize that, for practical reasons alone, the differentiation of the apparatus made it impossible for Party leaders to directly “experience,” by way of a steady stream of information, what was happening in the territories.7 But this is precisely what Ulbricht and his comrades had in mind. And so they were always looking for alternative channels to provide them with “better,” more complete and more comprehensive information than what was available through the official system of reporting. It was not just Ulbricht who occasionally sent out trusted representatives to finally get an “unvarnished” picture of how things looked on the ground. Almost every Party organization tried to get their information directly. An official system of Party information8 and informal communication flows, of “ritualized” and more “substantive” communication,9 coexisted universally. Admittedly, the coexistence of formal and informal communication flows is a typical feature of most organizations. The difference here is that the SED Central Committee apparatus—and this goes for the Party apparatuses of communist countries in general—did not use informal channels of communication to complement the formal ones. The informal channels were the only really relevant ones.10 The question, from the perspective of the present work, is to what extent this communicative structure affected the political efficacy of the Central Committee apparatus. The literature to date has argued that SED leaders were supplied with “embellished images of life in the GDR,” as Detlef Pollack put it, and that as a result they lost “touch with reality” and ultimately their grip on power.11 Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg point out another aspect in their micropolitical approach to internal organizational structures: that the ability to control information and channels of communication is one of an organization’s most important sources of power.12 But if informal and hence uncontrollable communication was the only really relevant form, this begs the question of how much control SED leaders actually had if they were not even in a position to keep the communication at Party headquarters within a desired framework. In some circumstances SED headquarters lacked a key function of modern organizations, namely the ability to make communication likely to be successful all of the time rather than some of the time. In the following I will attempt to outline the structure and transformation of the Central Committee apparatus’s communication space. One underlying assump-

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tion is that written communication alone will provide an incomplete picture of this communication space. Thus, the transformation of written reporting will be the focus of the first section. This will be followed by an in-depth look at oral communication, which is how almost all informal processes of communication took place. The reconstruction of this informal oral communication, the present study argues, is essential to understanding the inner workings of a communist power apparatus and the political processes shaped by it. Finally, the example of Central Committee brigade deployments as well as the institution of Central Committee regional commissioners will be used to show the extent to which the tendencies of orality and informality had a formative effect on practices deeply rooted in the culture of a communist party.

The Desire for Information and Information Overload Chapter 1 showed that the political influence of the apparatus of the Central Secretariat was narrowly circumscribed in the early postwar years. This is particularly evident in the fact that its departments were initially unsuccessful in getting subordinate Party organs to report on a regular basis. A memorandum of Central Secretariat departmental head Rudolf Reutter to the SED regional leadership of Mecklenburg– Western Pommerania in June of 1946 is typical of this period. The latter, Reutter wrote, should “make sure that in future detailed reports are submitted here on time for once.”13 The central administrations, too, were not particularly forthcoming with reports to SED headquarters.14 By the same token, the top-down communication from SED headquarters to subordinate bodies did not always have the expected results. “In the apparatuses of the state executive committees,” the office of Otto Grotewohl reported in the spring of 1949, there was “an unserious attitude towards the directives, instructions and other circulars of the Party leadership.” Only some of these, if any, were passed on to the relevant recipients.15 It was in this context and, as was often the case, pressured by their Soviet comrades, that in 1949 the Party leadership introduced the “system of Party information” in the SED apparatuses. This, in turn, was part of the organizational consolidation of the SED or, as it was called back then, “Party development” (Parteiaufbau), but was also an aspect of the “cold civil war” being waged in the 1950s. Most visibly, this meant that the Party leadership imposed a range of reporting obligations on subordinate Party organs. In November 1950, the Central Committee Secretariat decided that from now on the SED state executive committees had to submit a monthly report16 and communicate “the experiences of Party work and any newly emerging problems.”17 Moreover, it required the state executive committees to send the minutes of their meetings by courier mail to the Central Committee within three days.18 A third stipulation was that eight SED district committees had to report directly to the Organization Department of the Central Committee, bypassing the state executive committee. The Party leadership significantly expanded this channel in 1952, imposing “direct

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reporting requirements” on thirty-six districts and additionally about eighty Party organizations in factories.19 The frequency of Party reports increased in the years that followed. On December 4, 1952, the Central Committee Secretariat decided that district and regional secretariats had to send two detailed monthly reports rather than one to the Central Committee: one “on the political situation in the district or region” and one “on the activities of their own leadership and subordinate Party organizations.”20 Important events had to be reported as quickly as possible.21 It was presumably in 1952 that the Central Committee Secretariat introduced, at Ulbricht’s request, the “daily report” for district and regional secretariats. By late 1952, the first regional and district secretaries, in addition to their monthly reports, had to submit to the Central Committee a weekly “brief analysis of the political situation.”22 In terms of content, the focus of these reports during these years was on “building socialism.” District secretaries reported on the mood in “kulak villages,”23 Party leaderships in factories—such as the steel and rolling mill in Riesa in August 1952—on the “wrecking work of Trotskyist groups.”24 Regional secretaries repeatedly analyzed the “reactionary activities of pastors.”25 The “hysterical bustle” in Party headquarters during these years fed off reports like these. It took until the 1960s for this hectic “frontline reporting” of the cold civil war to develop into the highly formalized later style of reporting, marked by two characteristics in particular: high in self-image cultivation, low in content. The Party leadership itself initiated this transformation, being keen on reducing the mass of incoming reports already in the mid-1950s. In order to secure a “higher quality” of reports, the Central Committee Secretariat concluded in October 1955, the situation analyses of first regional and district secretaries, hitherto submitted on a weekly basis, would from now on only be submitted every two weeks. Then, in the early 1960s, it went back to monthly reporting, which remained in place until 1989. The style and content of these reports gradually shifted over time. In 1957–58, regional secretariats were still very likely to report in their situation analyses and progress reports on topics such as the “struggle against remnants of junkerdom” in the countryside26 or the “ideological wavering” of comrades.27 By the mid-1960s, however, the monthly reports were noticeably more positive in tone, more in line with the official discourse. Workers everywhere were now making “good progress” and “achieving great things in industry and agriculture.” Problems, if any, were usually found towards the end of these reports, nestled between good news, and usually qualified by a “not yet” suggesting that the problem would be solved sooner than later.28 This change in discourse was accompanied by a tendency of the report-writer to “filter” information. This had in fact been a problem all along. As early as January of 1952 the Central Committee Secretariat came to the conclusion that the district and state leaderships had thus far not waged “a decisive struggle for the objectivity and factuality of their reports.”29 It repeatedly expressed its disapproval of particularly striking cases: the regional secretary for agitation and propaganda in Neubrandenburg, for example, who in October 1955 “had every fact indicating poor work on the

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part of the regional leadership deleted from a weekly report.”30 Ulbricht himself on numerous occasions criticized the use of “routine wording and general conclusions” to hide unpleasant truths in reports.31 Even Erich Honecker, whose well-known aversion to bad news was cited by many of his contemporaries as an important reason for the “depletion” of content from official reports, was under no illusion about the Party’s system of reporting in the late 1980s. “There is an art of withholding the truth before the Politbüro,” he said, criticizing reports on the Leipzig Gymnastics and Sports Festival in the summer of 1987. “This is beneath contempt.”32 It is worth pointing out again that what Party leaders perceived as an undignified omission and whitewashing of the facts was simply rational behavior from the point of view of subordinate bodies. That many of the 62,000 SED basic organizations did not report to their district leaderships at all might have had to do with the fact that there was no incentive to report anything. Positive feedback was rare, but it was more than likely that problems would ensue if, say, a report truthfully mentioned that the designated number of candidates had not been recruited for Party membership. Hence only a third of the reports on “membership flow” due each month were ever submitted to the district secretariats.33 In the mid-1970s the SED district leadership of Brandenburg complained, for example, that “soliciting” the missing reports would require an “effort that is no longer justified.”34 Added to this is the fact that many reports were apparently pure make-believe. The leadership of a basic organization in the urban district of Brandenburg, for instance, described in part of its report the mandatory monthly political-education sessions (Parteilehrjahr) while declaring in another part that none had even taken place.35 An investigation of the regional leadership of Neubrandenburg in the fall of 1973 came to a similar conclusion: The basic organizations investigated and reviewed had an average participation [at member meetings] of only 50 to 60 percent, contrary to reports submitted to the district leaderships. The discrepancy [with the reported 90 to 95 percent] results from the fact that retirees, the sick and officially excused were counted as participants.36 The basic organizations were essentially practicing what Ralph Jessen called a “preventive ritual,” only passing on to their superiors the kind of information that did not result in irritating inquiries.37 The solution thought up by the Party information division of the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department in the late 1960s was of a piece with the temporary boom of applied social research in the GDR:38 standardized reporting forms that required more quantitative information, were easier to fill out and could be evaluated using electronic data processing. Electronic data processing (EDP) was indeed, for a time, considered a universal remedy for communication problems in the Party apparatus. It seemed to make possible what wasn’t possible using conventional methods: getting data from basic organizations “directly to the Central Committee with no information loss.”39 The standardized reporting forms were sent out during the first half of 1970. The staff of the district secretariats made a considerable effort to teach the secretaries of the basic organizations how to fill out

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the forms.40 Starting in June 1970, seventeen thousand basic organizations had to enter their data into the new reporting forms as part of a pilot project. In one of the fifteen newly built data-processing centers of the regional secretariats, the statistically relevant parts of the reports were transferred to punch cards, evaluated and, after again being stored on cards, sent by courier mail to the computing center of the Central Committee. Here they were fed into the EDP project on “membership flow” by the staff of the Party information division of the Party Organs Department.41 Though various technical glitches were eventually ironed out, the overall project failed. In the fall of 1971, the computerized evaluation of monthly reports was discontinued.42 The system failed because the “cost of machine-processed statistical data [outweighed] the benefits.” But it also foundered on the lack of acceptance for “scientific management methods” of this sort. As the Party information division of the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department concluded, a number of first district secretaries felt that “the amount of statistical material provided by the computing station exceeds the information requirements of district leaderships.”43 In other words, the yards of paperwork being spit out by “high-speed printers” in the regional data centers in the late 1970s were merely being filed away at the district secretaries. Perhaps the district secretaries also preferred to analyze the data of their own basic organizations and pass this on to their superiors rather than being supplied with information from regional data centers about the membership development of their own district Party organizations. Following this brief empirical interlude in Party reporting, the district secretaries went back to constructing a picture of the situation that met the expectations of their higher-ups. The monthly reports of district leaderships were forwarded to the Party information divisions of the regional secretariats, as had been the case since the advent of the “system of Party information.” The staff of the regional secretariats had to summarize the monthly reports submitted by twenty-two district leaderships as well as having to evaluate periodic thematic reports. “They really busied themselves with nothing but fricking paper,” recalled former second regional secretary Harald Gross with a chuckle, “that was basically their life.”44 But how to summarize the district reports, Gross went on, that was “frequently touch and go, because the comrades were often faced with the question: ‘Do I say it exactly the way it’s worded in the district report?’” In many cases they didn’t—not in the monthly reports about Party life and not in the periodic thematic reports which, according to Paul G., a former second secretary of an SED regional leadership, had often been “all spruced up.” Every regional secretary knew that critical reports would “never land on Honecker or Mittag’s desk.”45 But Party headquarters, G. added, “knew well enough that we filtered the reports, because we didn’t have the guts to report anything to them.”46

Opinion Polling and Petition Analyses So why did “headquarters” not change anything if they knew on the one hand that reports were being “filtered” but on the other hand desperately needed unfiltered

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information? The reason is to be found in a basic assumption that the “mistrustful patriarchs,” the Party leaders with an Old Communist pedigree, had deeply internalized: an all too critical report threatened the legitimacy of the communists’ monopoly on power.47 It was with this in mind that Ulbricht remonstrated MfS leaders in February 1957 for “legally spreading enemy hate propaganda” in the form of its reports.48 And it was also for this reason that later, in 1979, Erich Honecker disbanded the SED Central Committee’s Institute for Public Opinion Research founded not long before in 1964. He justified this move with the unusual argument that an institute of this sort was no longer necessary under “developed socialism,” that Party reporting and the analyses of Central Committee departments were sufficient. In fact, “the Honecker leadership was increasingly unable to make any sense of these nuanced public opinions,” according to Hans Erxleben, who worked at the abovementioned polling institute between 1972 and 1979.49 The Central Committee departments could not change the modes of thinking of their general secretaries. But they did have access to alternative sources of information outside the Party reporting system. The Central Committee’s Institute for Public Opinion Research, under the authority of Central Committee secretary Werner Lamberz, was in fact primarily a service provider for the Central Committee apparatus.50 If Central Committee employees were reluctant at first towards using the methods of social science, their fears were quickly overcome in light of the mass of innovative and illuminating data they provided. The Central Committee departments, Erxleben recalled, “had [informational] needs. They wanted us to conduct the surveys.” And the “departmental heads themselves could recommend whatever they wanted” in terms of new surveys.51 To be sure, some of the surveys must have made certain Central Committee departmental heads a little anxious. A survey on political work with the masses, for example, which posed the question to non-Party members working at factories “whether senior economic functionaries appear frequently, rarely or never at the workplace.” Only 7 percent of those surveyed said “frequently,” whereas 60 percent answered “rarely” and a full 28 percent “never.”52 But the prospect of finally getting some unfiltered information from the grassroots or from factories by way of these surveys was an alluring one for most departments.53 According to an archive list from 1979, staff at the polling institute carried out 268 surveys posing nearly six thousand questions to half a million individuals. Almost all the responses landed in the files of the Central Committee departmental heads until Honecker ordered the destruction of these documents in 1979, at which point they were removed and shredded.54 A further strand of information in competition with the reports of the Party apparatus were the reports of State Security. Only a handful of Central Committee departments, however, had access to this secret information from the Stasi. Reporting channels only existed between the MfS and the Central Committee’s Security Issues, State and Legal Affairs, and Church Affairs departments. Additional channels of communication existed between the Stasi’s Intelligence Department as well as XX/10

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and II/6 and the Central Committee’s Telecommunications, Cadre Issues and Transportation departments, as will be shown in more detail in chapter 5. The majority of Central Committee departmental heads received Stasi information only through their Central Committee secretaries. Horst Wambutt, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry, reports that he did in fact have contact with an officer of the MfS’s Main Department XVIII, but goes on to explain: “He could not give [me] any information. He passed the information on to his boss and his boss then gave it . . . to the minister [Mielke]. It was only the minister who informed Honecker, he then gave it to Mittag and then Mittag sometimes gave me the information from my area.”55 Then there were the letters and petitions from the population at large— yet another steady flow of information reaching Party headquarters. The information they contained was generally less valuable due to their conformist lines of argument.56 In purely quantitative terms they were overwhelming, however. By the late 1950s the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues alone was receiving about seven hundred petitions and complaints from the public every year. By 1988–89 the figure, according to its departmental head at the time, Wolfgang Herger, had grown to about seven thousand.57 An entire division of the Party Organs Department was occupied with evaluating these petitions and “letters from the public” received by the Central Committee. The division wrote reports for the Party leadership, on a quarterly basis in the 1960s and every six months in the 1980s. Increasingly, Party headquarters became a kind of last resort, responsible—from its point of view—for ironing out the mistakes of subordinate bodies. “It has become apparent in every region,” one evaluation from 1986 wrote, “that letters to the Central Committee have in most cases been preceded by petitions dealing with the same issue being submitted to local authorities which the latter, however, did not deal with in a satisfactory manner . . . .”58 All the same, these complaints and petitions did offer Central Committee departments the opportunity to project the image of a Party leadership attending to people’s needs. The Central Committee’s Construction Department, for example, arranged for “immediate emergency repairs” in 1983 when they received a petition from a certain “Comrade Schott,” who’d allegedly been complaining about a leaky roof since 1972. At about the same time, the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry was looking after the tenants of a building in Bad Schandau who “for some time” had been complaining about an “inadequate water supply.” The department was having “discussions with the comrades from VEB Wasserversorgung . . . in Dresden about their faulty work.”59 The question is what Central Committee employees did with the information they obtained from these petitions. Did they merely use it for short-term problem management? Or did they process this information, i.e., did they store it and link it to other information? There are few indications of the latter. A lack of information was not the problem for the Central Committee apparatus. Thus, the fact that the Party’s written reporting system became ritualized and devoid of content did not greatly affect its ability to function. The core problem was the Central Committee apparatus’s inability to process information at odds with its own

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expectations and to take appropriate action. The manner in which Party headquarters handled the monthly reports of the first regional secretaries might serve as an example here. The reports were by no means exclusively loyal self-depictions of these “regional princes.” With increasing frequency from the 1970s onwards they also contained information that was critical of supply shortages and production problems in their regions.60 The Party information division of the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department made excerpts of these critical passages in the monthly regional reports and forwarded them to the appropriate specialist departments. No Central Committee departmental head saw these critical passages in their entirety.61 What followed were telephone calls from Central Committee employees to the respective line ministries, whose staff then called the regional secretaries in question. They sometimes explained to the disgruntled regional secretary why they couldn’t help. Sometimes they provided emergency assistance.62 But even if the well-dosed complaints of regional secretaries occasionally paid off, the Central Committee rarely bothered to systematically analyze the information contained in these critical reports. At no point in time—not even under Ulbricht, who, unlike Honecker, was well aware of the problem—did the Central Committee apparatus have a specialist team or even fixed meetings of mid-ranking functionaries who could have carried out this process of information sharing and problem analysis. As early as the spring of 1949, Central Committee secretary Helmut Lehmann bemoaned the “policy of cluelessness and confusion” at the House of Unity. He urgently demanded that the apparatus have at least “one place that at any given time can provide authentic information on issues . . . being raised over the phone by state and district authorities.”63 In the same manner, Central Committee employees of the Party Organs Department demanded in 1961 that a central office be set up where “all important insights and experiences . . . be aggregated.” 64 The demand is related to the belief, apparently shared by many staff members, that their analyses and reports were being written for the “wastepaper basket.” Such was the case of one “Comrade Harry” from the Party Organs Department, who complained in March 1961 that he had “submitted 29 reports in 1960 . . . but only received any feedback and been consulted in six cases.”65 Yet a centralized gathering of information, a “brain,” as it were, in the Central Committee apparatus, was inconsistent with its organizational culture.66 The competitive thinking of Central Committee secretaries, who preferred to keep “their” departments away from each other, was one decisive obstacle, as was, in particular, the guiding principle of conspiracy, a throwback to the first third of the twentieth century. “As a rule,” recalled Honecker’s personal aide Frank-Joachim Herrmann, “only enough information reached the desk of a Central Committee employee as was needed to solve a certain task”; “background materials” were few and far between.67 Horst Wambutt, the former head of the Department of Basic Industry, agrees with this assessment with regard to the “information” policy of Central Committee Secretary Günter Mittag: Mittag did not brief the heads of the Central Committee’s eco-

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nomic departments at all about the non-economic issues being discussed at Politbüro meetings: “Not a single word. Mittag did not brief [any of us] about cultural issues, that is to say what they were talking about [in the Politbüro], nor about foreignpolicy issues; departmental heads learned absolutely nothing about these things from Mittag.”68 If Wambutt wanted to know more about issues outside of his area of responsibility, he got this information from other departmental heads—on a “friendly basis,” “not through official channels but . . . simply through personal connections.” They used the many unofficial channels that oiled the gears of the apparatus and made it work in the first place, according to Frank-Joachim Herrmann. These informal channels in the Central Committee apparatus, like in other formal organizations, were generally based on oral communication. They relied on contacts between employees that were rooted in a sense of trust. It was probably thanks to these informal channels—and all the informal aspects of the Central Committee apparatus’s communication space—that Party headquarters remained relatively operational throughout its decades-long existence despite a dysfunctional reporting system.

Oral Communication The literature to date has a tendency to regard the state of the political system as a function of how well the Party’s reporting system worked. The filtering of information and whitewashing, the “preventive rituals” and dearth of facts in reports are all seen as expressions of the “calcification” of this system. The supposed “flight into orality” is likewise interpreted as part of a narrative of decline.69 The element of decline was seen in the fact that written reporting—a hallmark of modern statehood according to Max Weber—only served in the GDR to lend “structure” to the relationship between Party and state. Informal, oral communication hence gained a new significance in this situation.70 It is seen here as a stopgap, as the final passage in a barricaded communication space. This view builds on the “depletion” of content from Party communication and the ritualization of its written records, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. In and of itself this fact is indisputable. But is it possible to infer from this a “calcification” of the political system or even of just the Party apparatus? More recent approaches from the history of communication would recommend caution. They posit that the transformation of one medium—in this case the written reporting of the SED—has to be viewed in the context of its respective media system, that is to say in its interdependence with the other media being used in parallel.71 If we inquire into the transformation of the media system of the Party apparatus, it immediately becomes apparent that the telephone was becoming considerably more important as of the late 1950s.

The Telephone as a Key Medium In its early years, the SED apparatus had very few telephone connections at its disposal. In the summer of 1945, only 1 percent of the telephone lines connected before

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the war were still functional. Unlike in the Western zones, the reconstruction of destroyed or dismantled telephone networks in the Soviet Occupation Zone and later in the GDR was sluggish.72 Though the Soviet Military Administration had begun already in 1945 to install a special telephone and telegraph network which the KPD/ SED Party apparatus was permitted to use,73 all of this communication was routed through a Soviet switchboard. For this reason, but especially because of a simple lack of connections at the regional and local level, the Soviet telecommunications network took a backseat to written communication. In February 1952, the Politbüro decided to set up a Party-internal telephone network. The intention was to connect the Central Committee apparatus with the state and district leaderships, using the— still rather incomplete—post-office telephone network.74 Even with this solution, though, there were still no telephones on the desks of political employees at the Central Committee. A telephone of one’s own was still a symbol of power, reserved for departmental heads, their deputies and division heads. As Michael Voslensky put it with regard to the CPSU Central Committee apparatus: “To a nomenklaturist a telephone is a status symbol and hence an object of pride.”75 Only in the 1960s did the telephone become a daily means of communication for all Central Committee employees. Three factors were decisive for this development. First, the telephone network in general had been greatly expanded in the GDR during the 1960s. At the same time, direct dialing had become the norm. Between 1960 and 1970, the share of telephone conversations made without the aid of a switchboard operator increased from 7.3 to 84 percent.76 This changed the character of telephone communication, making it more immediate. Informal telephone conversations must have increased along with it. Second, only now did the majority of political employees have their own telephone. If only 10 percent of political employees had their own phone in the 1950s, 69 percent did by 1968 (using the Central Committee telephone directory as a guide) and 99 percent by 1989.77 Third, the Party leadership gave its Party-internal telecommunications network a new technical foundation: in August 1955 the Politbüro decided to develop a microwave radio relay for the Party.78 The new system was much less prone to breakdown compared with the cable-based postal network, which until 1989 was characterized by “poor acoustics with typical crackling, whistling and clicking sounds.”79 Making phone calls within the Party apparatus became easier and more convenient. The decision to develop a microwave relay network for the Party was one lesson Party leaders had learned from June 17th. The Party and security apparatuses had been critically weakened back then by disconnected telephone lines or postal workers defecting to the rebels. The new network was independent of the postal system and operated by employees of the Party apparatus.80 By 1960, “Fundament AG,” a Party enterprise, had set up the first network level, linking the Central Committee with the regional secretariats. By the early 1970s network level two was complete, comprising all district leaderships of the Party.

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State Security, however, had noticed a serious weakness in the microwave radio system: the bundled radio signals being sent in a certain direction had a tendency to scatter. According to a study by the MfS’s Intelligence Department in the spring of 1967, they were “perfectly capable of being received a number of kilometers outside the bundle” of directional radio waves.81 Thus, in late April 1967 MfS employees at their observation post on Brocken mountain in the Harz were able to document dozens if not hundreds of conversations or snippets of conversation of the Party apparatus. This illustrates the everyday and banal but also the fundamental role that telephone communication played for Party headquarters. On April 20 at 1:30 p.m., for example, a Central Committee employee told a staff member at the regional leadership in Rostock that a telephone directory of the regional apparatus had mistakenly made its way to Berlin by courier mail (“We wanted to know if you were missing anything . . .”).82 On April 25 at 7:19 p.m., the Cadre Department of the Central Committee wanted to speak with a certain Comrade Seidel from the municipal leadership of Magdeburg who had “bungled a health cure application.”83 Shortly thereafter an employee at the Central Party Control Commission asked the regional Party control commission of Rostock to send them the cadre files of one Professor Karl B., who had been “a member of the Party since 1918” but now wanted to be “recognized from 1912” on84—perhaps with a view to the honors of sixty-year Party membership in 1972. Many of the conversations were about the Seventh Party Congress that was being held at that time.85 Thus, for example, on April 20 at 3:45 p.m. a Central Committee staff member called the television factory in Stassfurt to inquire if the driver who was “picking up eight portable [TV] sets for the Seventh Party Congress” had been there yet. The TVs were to be given away as awards to activists. On April 21 the regional leadership of Rostock communicated to the Records Department of the Central Committee the schedule of “visits to the region by Party Congress delegations from the Communist parties of Colombia, Bolivia and Peru as well as Italy.” On April 20 Alois Pisnik, the first regional secretary of Magdeburg, had used a Central Committee phone to call an employee of the regional leadership and inform him about the visit of a CPSU delegation in Magedeburg. The delegation was not Antonov but Comrade Lutak, secretary of the Ukraine, and Comrade Voss, first secretary of the Central Committee of Latvia. Departure 8:30. . . . Rally at the Ernst Thälmann plant . . . a worker is supposed to speak there. Yes. Ten minutes at the most. It’s important to emphasize German–Soviet friendship . . . Around noon in Magdeburg, lunch at the Interhotel, factory visit.86 This did not prevent the regional secretariat from calling the Central Committee the next day to ask if Antonov or Lutak was coming. And how should they be addressed, as “secretary or first secretary?”

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Statements of an ideological nature were hardly documented. Only in one conversation about two young people arrested by the People’s Police did a district leadership staff member express his anti-Western stance (Adenauer had “died much too late,” he said).87 Instead MfS employees recorded a sometimes seemingly bizarre polyphony of Party communication on the telephone: “Yes, this is the Central Committee,” one phone call to the regional leadership of Potsdam began on April 20 at 10:45 a.m. “I’m calling . . . There is no Comrade Löffler?” Less than two hours later a “female voice” from the Central Committee called the regional leadership of Schwerin. After being prompted to speak, “Yes, go ahead,” she evidently broke into laughter for no apparent reason.88 Most of the phone calls within the apparatus are likely to have followed this clipped and polyphonic pattern, primarily for organizational purposes but also, to a lesser extent, to give relationships a more well-defined structure. “So, how are we going to do it,” a “female voice from the Central Committee” asked an employee of the district leadership in Röbel on April 20 at 1:12 p.m. “I’d be happy to come to you, all we need is a Tatra [truck] . . . Great! We’ll pull it off then the way we planned it.”89 A third function or, rather, subject of telephone conversations was only marginally recorded by the Stasi: the preparations for political decision-making. State Security had no access to this level of communication since the discussions between Party and state apparatus could not be monitored on the Party’s microwave relay network. The medium of telephone in effect created a new type of apparatchik: the telephone politician, the “great game master behind the scenes” who did everything by phone.90 Central Committee departmental heads could communicate, for example, with the heads of State Security by phone, thus bypassing the prescribed channel via the Party leadership. In March of 1972, for instance, the deputy head of the Central Committee’s Agitation Department Eberhard Fensch asked the head of the MfS’s Main Department XX by phone to check if the frequent “disruptions in broadcasting on GDR television” of late were being caused by “enemy activities.”91 Even day-to-day operations at Party headquarters were largely conducted on the phone. Wolfgang Herger reports that the in-house telephones of the Central Committee were constantly being used for “short calls back and forth, for ten or twenty minutes” at a time.92 The bland uniformity of reports from the first regional secretaries to the General Secretary is ultimately put into perspective if one keeps in mind the lively communication going on over the telephone. “When something out of the ordinary happened,” according to Harald Gross, a second district secretary, “the first” would “simply pick up the phone and inform the General Secretary” so that “sometimes no more paper was even needed.”93 The more “substantive” telephone communication became, the more serious the problem—from the perspective of Party leaders and the MfS, as concluded by the latter’s Intelligence Department in April 1967—that the “enemy” would spy on the microwave radio relay network.94 In late 1972 Erich Mielke presented Party leaders with

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a list of information that the West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) had obtained from intercepting messages from the microwave relay network of the SED (which State Security, in turn, had procured from its own sources within the BND). The list shows that many Party employees were heedlessly discussing anything they considered important or noteworthy:95 the “pay grades of employees at district and regional leaderships,” “violations of Party discipline (e.g., details about the behavior of a Central Committee employee under the influence of alcohol),” “petitions from varied segments of the population.” To make matters worse—and to the horror of the MfS—a Central Committee employee had told a comrade about the exact location of a “military airfield of the GSFG [Group of Soviet Forces in Germany],” which would now be known to the BND and hence probably NATO as well.96 A partial solution to this security problem was to connect a range of senior Central Committee employees to the encrypted government network. This was referred to as “WTsch,” the Russian acronym transliterated into German.97 WTsch was the network for the inner circle of Party elites used for discussing even the most confidential matters. “The rule for us,” said Hans Modrow about the group of first regional secretaries, “was that these phones weren’t wiretapped by anyone.”98 The majority of employees with no access to this special network were constantly reminded by the Office of the Politbüro to maintain “the rules of conspiracy” on the telephone. And so they, too, must have sooner or later followed the general rule of thumb for using the phone in the GDR: “Don’t say anything over the phone.”99 In this vein, former Central Committee departmental head Karl Hengst told a comrade (and Stasi informer) in the State Planning Commission that “the Central Committee departmental heads turned on the radio during important conversations, because of the threat of someone listening in”—not specifying if he meant Western intelligence services.100 In the 1970s and 1980s many Central Committee employees—like the rest of the population—did in fact suspect State Security of listening in on their phone calls. They were not wrong, either, as will be shown in chapter 5. Hans Erxleben, a member of the editorial staff at Neuer Weg, claims that a well-meaning MfS employees once pulled him aside and said, “Hans, don’t talk so much on the phone.”101 Manfred Uschner as well, a personal aide to Hermann Axen who in early 1989 was supposed to be removed from the apparatus for “Social Democratic tendencies,” was convinced he was being bugged until then. In April 1988, in a phone conversation with a Central Committee division head and friend of his, he discovered that at some point he had not been able to reach this friend even though he should have been reachable. Uschner concluded: “Of course! Special electronic surveillance . . . but there’s going to be a reckoning . . . for that too.”102 This at least was the written transcript of a wiretap tape made by a Stasi employee. As important as the telephone was for the Party apparatus, not all members of this Party elite were uninhibited in their use of it. Especially confidential information is unlikely to have been shared on the phone. This outline of the Central Committee apparatus communication space is therefore not complete if we do not take into

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account the oral communication that took place “on location in the presence of individuals,” i.e., in the apparatus itself or in personal encounters between apparatus employees or between these employees and outsiders.

The Thirst for Rumors On-site communication in the apparatus, like telephone communication, could take two basic forms. The first was formal verbal communication. This was the dominant form in the countless meetings and conferences that Central Committee employees had to take part in week after week, the department and division consultations, as well the meetings of their respective basic organizations.103 The second was informal verbal communication. This included “corridor conversations”—the proverbial water cooler chat—and all manner of private conversations, communication during lunch or over a beer after work. Informal verbal communication will be the focus below in an attempt to answer the question of to what extent it was possible in the apparatus to have “substantive” and, from the participants’ perspective, relevant communication. Access to this informal communication is available in the form of wiretap transcripts made by the MfS in their surveillance of Party functionaries. The reports of unofficial collaborators documenting conversations with Central Committee employees also provide the occasional insight. Though caution is advised in using these sources,104 they do allow two basic observations. For one thing it becomes evident that the “group speak” of Central Committee employees used in informal contexts was only minimally marked by the terminology and set phrases of official discourse.105 As masterful as Central Committee employees were in using this discourse on official occasions, in informal private conversations they spoke in an everyday, candid and sometimes vulgar way, presumably comparable to the speech of non-Party members. Thus, in April 1955, Central Committee division head Rudolf Krankemann ranted and raved about the minister of foreign trade, calling him a “stupid ass” (verkotzte Affe),106 and in the late 1950s employees of the Science Department derided Central Committee secretaries Alfred Neumann and Erich Honecker for being “unconstructive.”107 In April 1974, a Central Committee departmental head got into an argument with a former employee about the SPD leadership—“R. [the employee] should know,” that the new Federal chancellor “Schmidt was . . . a real loser [Pfeife].”108 Hermann Pöschel, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Research and Technical Development, confessed in the summer of 1979 that he was “fed up with the economy” and wanted to quit.109 In October 1989, Central Committee departmental head Karl Seidel assured a state functionary that “we” in the apparatus worked “like Trojans [Kümmeltürken]” so the new General Secretary could find his footing.110 The list could go on. The discovery that employees at Party headquarters essentially talked, cursed and bitched like their fellow citizens “outside” is less banal than it might appear at first. It supports an assumption previously formulated by Ralph Jessen: that the official discourse used by these employees in other contexts was primarily a form of ritualized

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communication. The latter had a performative dimension and strengthened the sense of a shared identity,111 helping to integrate an ever more functionally differentiated apparatus. At the same time, this communication revolving around an official discourse was hegemonic, i.e., it could not be avoided in formal situations and, moreover, was extremely standardized. It therefore says little about the personal views and convictions of the speaker.112 In addition, these informal personal conversations indicate that information in the apparatus was indeed a primary source of power. It put the person who wielded this information in an exceptional position. As Wolfgang Herger put it in retrospect, “there were unfortunately people in the Central Committee too . . . who wanted this privileged information [Herrschaftswissen] for their own purposes, who thought they had to base their authority as departmental head on the fact that they knew a lot of things.”113 The reasons occasionally given for the restrictive handling of information point to an organizational culture rooted in the “global civil war” of the 1920s and 1930s. As a senior functionary in the Central Committee’s polyclinic responded to reproaches from comrades in his basic organization: “You can’t talk about everything, because how [else] would the Party have succeeded in its illegal activities in the past?”114 The obvious conclusion was that rumors and gossip, that “grapevine” communication and “café discussions” played an outsized role.115 One can think of them as a kind of “surrogate public sphere” inside the apparatus.116 A popular subject of rumors was the members of the Party leadership itself. Division head Krankemann, for example, knew in the mid-1950s that Honecker had “finally split with his wife” and that he was “moving to the town with Margot.”117 As of 1975, employees at the Central Committee’s economic-policy departments were preoccupied with the question of whether and when Günter Mittag would “come back”—from the Council of Ministers to the central Party apparatus—a move which seemed increasingly likely.118 Technical employees spread particularly fanciful rumors. In the mid-1960s, there was talk in the telecommunications division that Walter Ulbricht had “adopted a child born to Russian parents” and “with Russian citizenship.” At a banquet honoring Yuri Gagarin’s visit to the Central Committee there had supposedly been some wild debaucheries (“the trash collectors had to come . . . to carry everything away”) and the swastika graffiti repeatedly found as of 1960 in elevators and restrooms at Party headquarters was said to be “the work of members of the guard regiment.”119 Finally, in late 1970, a dietary chef of the Central Committee even reported that “hash parties” were taking place in Wandlitz. Her source in this instance was said to be a friend who had “actively taken part” in these parties.120 In addition, all cadre-policy issues were likewise of great interest (“G. . . . was speaking in hushed tones about someone they let go”121) along with the salaries of other Party and state functionaries (“well, you can figure that as a departmental head he’s got an E4, E5 [pay grade], meaning he’s making about 1,600 marks”122). A frequent topic of conversation was when a functionary deviated from the role of outwardly modest “Party worker.” They were up in arms about a district secretary

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who “unabashedly furnished his home like the rich” (how “is he supposed to receive a worker in his home, I wonder”123) and first regional secretary of Berlin Konrad Naumann, who acted like a [Nazi] Gauleiter and “only thinks about his women.”124 Finally, some employees deliberately spread rumors for their own purposes. This was the case with Günter Glende, head of the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department, who claimed, at least in his own department, that the Financial Administration Department did not want to relinquish its “homes and schools” division to his own department because its departmental head Karl Raab could then no longer use the Party home in Altenhof as a “private weekend property.”125 In the 1980s, Central Committee employees went so far as to spread rumors in anonymous letters to Central Committee secretaries—for instance about an employee in Krenz’s office whose “father had surely been a staunch Nazi” and—in a letter addressed to Günter Mittag—about a Berlin district secretary who was “nostalgic for the days of Conny Naumann, who would have at least been a match for you [Mittag].”126 As hard as it is in retrospect to get a read on such attempts at character assassination, there is no doubt that they were potentially destructive, taking place as they did in a communication space in which all relevant information passed through informal channels and where everything imaginable was declared a secret. In early 1973, for example, an electrician found ammunition and uniforms in a false ceiling of the Central Committee building that apparently had been stowed away there in the final days of World War II by members of the Norge Regiment of the Waffen SS’s Viking Division.127 Departmental heads Gisela Trautsch and Günter Glende subsequently had all electricians instructed “not to speak to anyone about this discovery,” whereupon an employee of the Main Department for Personal Security commented rather caustically that now it was a foregone conclusion that everyone at Party headquarters would know about the ammunition and SS uniforms.128 The communication space of the Central Committee apparatus, we can note at this point, was fundamentally shaped by a culture of orality. Having attempted to approximate this oral culture in the foregoing, it should be abundantly clear that there was a considerable discrepancy between the contents of written reports and the topics discussed in informal oral communication. There was little overlap, at least in terms of style and ideological content, between the written analyses of Central Committee departments and water cooler conversation, between the Politbüro proposals and preliminary oral agreements on the phone. Oral and written communication almost seemed to come from two completely different “apparatuses.” Which is reason to stress once again that without taking the element of orality into account, which thanks to State Security we have a record of even for SED headquarters, any historical analyses of state-socialist political processes—which admittedly are not the same as their results—will necessarily remain one-dimensional. Taking this oral communication into account can even be helpful with a view to the practices of Party rule, which seem sufficiently documented in the available written records. This will be illustrated in the following section.

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Communication Channels to the Periphery In retrospect many Central Committee employees have unanimously declared that in private or in conversation with other comrades or indeed—if the “atmosphere” was right—even in one’s own department it was possible to say just about “anything.” This may have been true subjectively. But the foregoing has made clear that the space of informal communication was not free of interests or domination either. The “corridor conversations” were precisely about exchanging information that could be used to maintain certain relationships or, by holding it back, to strengthen one’s own authority. In this sense they were a power resource. The exchange of such information was dependent on mutual trust or protected spaces—on friendships or at least on personal acquaintances, at birthday parties or in the breakroom. These relationships and contexts existed in many instances at Party headquarters itself, less so, however, with regard to interorganizational communication, e.g., between a Central Committee department and the Party organization of a factory. More “substantive” information from the territories or large factories was therefore in short supply in the Central Committee. In essence, the kind of informal verbal communication that existed in a local context—at the “Big House” itself—and that enabled a “genuine” exchange of information was usually nonexistent between the center and the periphery. Things were no different in the apparatus of the CPSU during the 1920s, where representatives from headquarters were sent out to various locations129 to act as local “antennas” and compensate for this lack of informal communication. These instructors suffered from the abovementioned “outpost” problem, having to act in a local context as representatives of headquarters while often having to be more flexible than the Party line allowed them in order to get any information at all.130 Whereas Central Committee instructors in the GDR during the 1950s mainly used such visits to exercise more control, this changed over time due to the chronic lack of information. Local investigations by the apparatus as well as its practice of routinely sending out representatives (in the form of “regional commissioners” of the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department) gradually acquired a different character: they became, at least in a limited context, instruments of knowledge generation.

Local Reconnaissance The local deployment of “brigades” or “working groups” was an integral part of communist organizational culture. With a view to the SED in the early postwar years, the interface between such deployments and the instructor system presented in chapter 2 were considerable to begin with. Terms such as “brigade” and “instructor deployments” were often used synonymously.131 Deployments, at any rate, were very popular at Party headquarters, if only because they enabled direct action, the kind of contact with “working people” so idealized in the culture of the Communist Party. They also suggested to a “precarious organization” that opportunities to act and in-

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fluence others were available in local Party organizations and factories that one could only dream of in similar interactions with the state apparatus. Otto Schön, director of the Office of the Politbüro, had to repeatedly call on departmental heads to report every deployment to him in advance, as deploying Central Committee brigades in the same area without their being aware of each other could make “an unfavorable impression” on the ground.132 In the spring of 1959, the ZRK bemoaned that the “months-long deployment of department employees in various brigades” had meant that their work at Party headquarters was languishing.133 Party leaders, for their part, evidently attached great importance to these deployments. The heads of brigade deployments were sometimes paid a handsome bonus—Horst Ossig, for example, who headed a Central Committee brigade in the region of Neubrandenburg and had helped there to “uncover the reasons for the regional leadership’s lagging behind,” received about 700 marks in early 1961.134 The “energetic uncovering” of mistakes was in fact one of the core functions of these deployments in the 1950s. To be sure, an SED delegation visiting Moscow in late 1954 had been warned by their Soviet comrades against this very practice. It was “utterly wrong when leading functionaries of the Central Committee visited the territories [just] to gather material for fault-finding.”135 In practice, however, many brigades—often with the reinforcement of employees of the ministry or a regional secretariat136—did exactly this: they used some issue or other as a pretext to send out a delegation, then looked for individuals there they could make accountable for these problems. Thus, during the second reform of higher education, the Cadre Department of the Central Committee used a number of deployments from April to June 1951 to investigate “in an ongoing manner the state of the selection process” for workers and peasants attending university, the universities having done a “poor job.”137 A deployment of the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department to the regional Party school in Erfurt in the fall of 1954 ended with the recommendation to replace the two head administrators of the school,138 despite Central Committee employees being well aware that the problems at this particular school would not be solved by a change in cadre. The problems included a fully overloaded curriculum as stipulated by the Karl Marx Party School and its unassailable director Hanna Wolf. A deployment of the SED regional leadership of Berlin at the College of Economics (HfÖ) in September 1958 had the same result. The final report in this instance recommended sending two adjuncts “to the factory floor” on probation. The brigade had unmasked the adjuncts as the source of “revisionist views” that had gained currency at the HfÖ as a long-term consequence of the “thaw” at the Institute for Marxism-Leninism.139 The latter example indicates that, even years and decades after the Stalinist era, Central Committee deployments remained Stalinist at heart. They remained first and foremost an instrument of power for exercising selective control, especially in crisis situations. Thus, in September and October of 1961 the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues inspected no less than fifty-nine military units of the

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National People’s Army and border troops to vet how “ideologically steadfast” they were after the erection of the Wall.140 The character of these deployments as instruments of power can be seen as well in the diverse deployments carried out for instance by the Science and Health Policy departments in the late 1960s at universities in the GDR. These deployments were concerned with addressing the “serious backlogs and problems” encountered while implementing the third reform of higher education.141 Their being an instrument of power can be seen, moreover, in deployments of the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues at the regional authorities of the People’s Police in Potsdam and Frankfurt an der Oder in late 1985, whose critical conclusions enraged Minister of the Interior Friedrich Dickel. According to the report of an unofficial collaborator, he fumed at the lunch table, in the presence of his coworkers, about Central Committee employees, whom he said were “all clueless.” “The things they imagine!”142 But the image of Central Committee deployments as “punitive expeditions” was thanks in particular to a number of them carried out by the Party Organs Department. In early 1979, for example, it undertook a deployment at the regional leadership of Magdeburg to prepare the ousting of its first regional secretary, Alois Pisnik, who in his later years had become too “pessimistic” for the Central Committee’s tastes.143 This was followed in the summer of 1987—against the backdrop of the impending “final crisis”—by a deployment at the Dresden State Playhouse in the course of which, during “agonizing discussions lasting for hours,” Central Committee employees enlightened members of the basic organization about the “tasks of a Communist in our time”—which clearly did not include criticizing Politbüro member Kurt Hager (for his infamous “wallpaper interview” with the West German magazine Stern).144 But this image of “punitive expeditions” was mainly due to a brigade deployment in January 1989 at the regional leadership of Dresden involving more than a hundred employees. The explicit objective here was to bring Hans Modrow “in line,” his “critical comments” in a monthly report having gone too far for Honecker.145 All the same, these deployments had limited value as instruments of power in particular due to their campaign-like nature. Who knew what happened in a district leadership, a factory or a regional authority of the People’s Police once the brigade had packed up and left? The problem was evident as early as the 1950s: “The results of our brigade work fell short of expectations,” concluded an employee of the Executive Organs Department in late 1956 about a deployment in the Magdeburg region. “We have no way of verifying whether we have effectively implemented the new working method in a district.”146 In late 1957, another employee in this department came to a rather similar conclusion: “Our deployments have not made a great deal more progress than our decision-making has. . . . We do not know enough about what is being done with our suggestions in, say, Gera or Jena.”147 But he had a solution at the ready: “Stick with it wherever we are and verify whether our work is being implemented later.”

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An increasing number of “long-term instructor deployments” were in fact carried out—by the sports working group, for example, from February to May 1962 to find out how regional leaderships influenced the “improvement of Party work in sports clubs.”148 Yet long-term deployments of this sort were at odds with the interests of Party leaders. If the latter wanted an apparatus that was able to act as a direct executive steering the Party, state and society, then its members could not be “on the ground” for months at a time in factories and regional Party organizations. It was in this context that in the course of the 1960s and 1970s an originally secondary function of the deployments began to take center stage: their function as an instrument of knowledge generation. Here, too, however, it’s important to note: collecting information played an important role in deployments as far back as the 1950s. This was the case, for example, for the first secretary of the district leadership in Prenzlau, who in June of 1954 proclaimed at a meeting of the regional leadership in Neubrandenburg that they were now working more with brigades in Prenzlau in order to “get a good idea of the actual conditions” in basic organizations.149 In a similar vein, a brigade from the Institute of Social Sciences emphasized after a deployment at the “in-house laboratory for radio and television” in Adlershof in the summer of 1958 “that we’ve returned to the institute with new knowledge and insights about our own work.”150 But the deployments of subsequent years were a good deal more about information gathering. Available records show that the debriefings after deployments were much more conciliatory in the 1970s than they had been two decades earlier. Direct attacks on or denunciations of employees in the institutions being “paid a visit” were avoided if possible.151 Brigade members instead sought dialogue with local comrades and nonParty members alike. Members of the Central Committee’s Science Department, for example, during a deployment at Karl Marx University in Leipzig in late 1974, visited dormitories to engage students in conversation.152 At factory visits, Central Committee employees sought contact with workers and, according to one Bernhard L., talked with “whoever happened to cross our path or whoever we happened to find at their work . . . And these people, the lower you came, or let me put it this way: the lower they were in the pyramid, the less they minced their words,” which proved “very effective.”153 Many working groups, however, did not rely on chance encounters with forthcoming comrades; they conducted full-blown surveys. Thus, for example, in late 1973 a working group deployed at Karl Marx University in Leipzig underscored that its main achievement was having “conducted talks with about 200 academics . . . individually and in groups.”154 This tendency to conduct extensive surveys during deployments was new in the 1960s. It shows the concerted and ever greater efforts of all departments to seek valid information on the ground. According to a ZRK audit from 1976, it was an “integral part of organization work” of the Department of Basic Industry to “compile information and assessments . . . on the spot”—especially about the “activities of working groups.”155 The aforementioned Bernhard L. emphasizes how important the deploy-

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ments were for the “information management” of his Youth Department. They were a source of information that “never ever” would have made it into a report.156 Granted, Central Committee employees probably seldom heard the unvarnished truth of “public opinion” during their deployments. Being “downright bombarded with negative questions and accusations against the Party and government”—like the members of a Central Committee brigade had been at a Berlin construction site in July 1951157—remained a phenomenon of the early years. Later on, it would have likely been individuals loyal to the system who addressed “the comrades from the Central Committee” with critical comments during a factory tour. In some cases, the visiting Central Committee employees did not speak to the “working people” at all, but were content to sound out the regional Party secretary about the mood at the factory and his own views on the situation.158 Yet even in the case of such distorted information, it was probably closer to reality than anything conveyed to Party headquarters via written channels. A side effect of these deployments having shifted from a pure control function to control and information gathering is that Central Committee departments were now privy to exclusive information that could be used for political purposes. An instructive example is the approach taken by Werner Hering, head of the Central Committee’s Health Department, when in September 1967 he reported to Kurt Hager about the “problem” of private medical treatments. The latter, Hering claimed, were a topic “much discussed” among doctors and the general population. “The regional leaderships repeatedly ask during our instructor deployments when a well-considered plan will emerge to eradicate these excesses inconsistent with socialism.”159 Hering in this case uses knowledge—supposedly or actually—gathered during deployments as an argument for eradicating “bourgeois relics in the health-care system.” Hering could be sure of getting Hager’s attention by referring to sentiments picked up during Central Committee deployments, as Party leaders attached great importance to all information that seemed to come directly from the grassroots or the general population. At any rate it took until the early 1970s to wind down the private sector in the healthcare industry.160 In a certain respect, deployments are indicative of an evolution in state-socialist methods of management and rule. In the 1950s and 1960s they went from being an instrument of intervention into one of knowledge generation. They reveal that the Party apparatus had a limited flexibility in reacting to new situations, but they also show an important structural deficit of state-socialist systems: their exceptionally sluggish organizational culture meant that they had a limited range of techniques for governance and rule. And each of these techniques had its own shortcomings. The core deficit of deployments was and remained their campaign-like nature. One could never be sure, according to Bernd Preusser, an employee at the Party training school, whether local comrades “didn’t say when it was over: ‘Thank God they’re gone!’—and then carry on with business as usual.161

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The Deputies Both written reports and brigade deployments exhibited crucial deficits: the former became ritualized and the latter ultimately remained an isolated occurrence. Thus, the ideal channel of communication and control from the perspective of Party leaders was sending out Central Committee employees on a permanent basis to represent the interests of headquarters and push through their objectives at the local level. The vertical and horizontal networking of the Party and state apparatus by means of such deputies was in fact a universal organizational principle of the Party apparatus. This began with the Central Committee employees who routinely took part in the advisory-committee meetings of “their” ministries, men like Bruno Wansierski, an Old Communist who until the mid-1970s acted as deputy head of the Central Committee’s Security Department. According to the somewhat irritated report of an employee of the Ministry of the Interior who was unofficially working for the Stasi, Wansierski had an “often unconventional opinion” about “almost every item on the agenda” at advisory-committee meetings.162 Of great importance for economic management were the Party organizers of the Central Committee. The latter were Party secretaries of large factories who, as of 1952, were appointed at the suggestion of the respective Central Committee department (naturally after being elected by the delegates of the basic organization).163 They served as a direct channel of influence and information for headquarters in these factories.164 A prime example of this deputy principle was furthermore the “regional commissioners” (Bezirksbeauftragten) of the Central Committee (and, analogously, the district officers of the regional leaderships). Remnants of the instructor principle that was introduced with great panache in 1949, in the 1970s and 1980s they acted as links between the Central Committee and the individual regional Party organizations. Over the years, however, each of these forms of the “deputy principle” underwent a transformation which could be described as an “outpost” or a “principle-agent” problem.165 The “unconventional” Wansierski as a representative of the Central Committee’s Security Department in the advisory committee of the Ministry of the Interior was thus succeeded by Heinz Leube, who behaved in a totally different manner. Leube—to the consternation of leading cadre in the ministry, who were waiting for their minister to retire—was on good terms with Minster Dickel: “The information coming from . . . Leube,” said one deputy minister (and unofficial collaborator of the Stasi) in the Ministry of the Interior, was “surely not the most reliable. Leube will never depict the situation [in the Ministry of the Interior] as it is, because he has a vested interest in it”166—on account of his being in league with Dickel, in the view of the deputy minister. The situation was similar for the Party organizers of the Central Committee. Though the Central Committee departments may have seen them as “their men” (and women) in the factories, it would have in fact spelled the end of them had they reported as candidly and explicitly as their departments asked them to. This

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transformation is particularly striking in the case of the Central Committee’s regional commissioners. The latter, in Party lingo, were referred to as “regional catalysts” (Bezirksbeschleuniger),167 but by the 1970s and 1980s their role was much less to “catalyze” than to ensure that relations between Party headquarters and regional Party organizations were as smooth and free of conflict as possible. This was not the case during the early years. Clashes between the “commissioners of the Central Committee” and regional secretaries were commonplace in the 1950s. You didn’t get far at the regional level, one such “commissioner” complained in late 1955, without the “intervention of Central Committee authority.”168 “Regional secretariats,” another bemoaned, “should at least accept decisions of principle for once.” Walter Ulbricht, in meetings with the LOPM Department, occasionally recommended attacking regional secretaries with critical articles in the functionary’s magazine Neuer Weg (“Why didn’t you resort to Neuer Weg?”). This failed to convince most commissioners, however. “We don’t have the guts,” said the Erfurt commissioner in a meeting with Ulbricht. He also expressed his doubts about whether it was even possible to “criticize the first regional secretary in this manner.”169 At another meeting in December 1956, the regional commissioner in Leipzig painted a dramatic picture of the situation he was in: “Certain functionaries are leading a witch-hunt [against us]. Certain regional secretaries have ventured to take action against us. Why is it so (in Leipzig too) that an ideology has developed that makes them think they can beat up comrades from the apparatus just for being criticized?”170 Party leaders reacted as usual with an inquisitive glance at Moscow. In early 1960, they implemented the “territorial principle”—long propagated by Khrushchev—in the Party Organs Department, as the Executive Organs Department was now called. For the regional commissioners, this meant that three or four at a time were clustered into five “territorial groups.”171 SED leaders hoped that these groups would be more assertive vis-à-vis the regional secretariats in implementing “central tasks.” The effect was a different one, however. Since the commissioners were no longer specialized on one region, they lost much of their previous “antenna” function. They lost their value as information channels without improving their position in the regional secretariats. Things took a turn for the better, however, with a resolution of the Eleventh Plenary of the Central Committee in December 1965. The territorial groups were disbanded and from now on each regional commissioner was permanently responsible for one region. This stabilized relations between the regional secretaries and the commissioners, giving the latter greater leeway and allowing them to react more flexibly to problems. The outpost function of commissioners changed: having previously served as the local representatives of Party headquarters, they now became moderators ideally capable of balancing the contradictory expectations of headquarters and the respective region. Hans Modrow, who served as first regional secretary of Dresden as of 1973, has positive recollections of the longtime regional commissioner of the Central Commit-

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tee in Dresden. “Hanusch and I could talk quite frankly in private.” They agreed on many things. “Here we have some leeway, let’s keep it that way, you don’t say a word at the top and I take care of things down below.”172 Paul G., secretary of an SED regional leadership in the 1970s and 1980s, comes to a similar though somewhat more detached conclusion about cooperating with the regional commissioners. The latter, at any rate, were not there to snitch on the region back at headquarters. Of course, they couldn’t get too cozy with the region, which obviously was hard for them, but they weren’t the ones who denounced us, either. When they noticed that something wasn’t working right, they came to us instead of going straight to headquarters. You could say we had a pretty chummy relationship.173 In the 1970s and 1980s, many regional commissioners and regional secretaries were on an amicable footing. This was made possible by a lengthening of their time in office. None of the regional commissioners who complained of being “beat up” by regional secretaries in 1955–56 had held their appointments for longer than two years. The regional commissioners of the 1970s and 1980s, by contrast, remained at their posts in the same region for seven, eight, sometimes even ten years or more. Helmut Schieferdecker, for example, was in Karl-Marx-Stadt from 1979 to 1989, and Gerhard Hanusch was in Dresden for almost twelve years.174 Over such long periods of time it was almost inevitable that they developed close relationships with the local SED regional secretaries, like the one between Hans Modrow and Gerhard Hanusch. Trusting relationships were also established with important regional actors. “I always tried, of course,” said Peter F., the former commissioner in Karl-Marx-Stadt, “to cultivate some kind of relationship with them [the general directors of combines].” This usually worked, because they could “talk turkey” with me, “they couldn’t talk at Central Committee meetings the way they talked with me.”175 What’s more, commissioners and regional secretaries discovered “certain common interests” over time.176 “If a commissioner wanted to look good” at Party headquarters, recalls Hans Modrow, “his region had to have a good track record.”177 At Monday briefings in the Party Organs Department it was “simply the custom,” according to former regional commissioner Peter F., to begin by talking about “the positive things.”178 Indeed, “I saw it as my function,” he goes on, “to bring everything positive going on in Karl-Marx-Stadt . . . to Berlin every week and talk about it.”179 Regional commissioners, despite their changing role, still had a direct line of communication to Party headquarters. They knew precisely when to report something straightaway without recourse to comrades at the regional level. Peter F. prides himself in hindsight at having “reported all the crap that was going on there [in Karl-MarxStadt] as well.”180 And yet little of the information Party leaders would have actually needed was contained in their reports. The alleged direct line of communication to the regional level was counteracted on the one hand by the trusting relationships that emerged through personal interaction. It was exacerbated on the other hand by the

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fact that regional commissioners, rather than receiving unfiltered information, were only presented with “behaviors conforming to expectations”—what the “environment,” that is to say the regions, felt that the “system” wanted to see and hear.181 This became apparent in the second half of the 1980s: “The closer we got to 1989,” says Peter F., the more Horst Dohlus, the Central Committee secretary responsible for the Party Organs Department, urged them to “speak openly.”182 Even then Dohlus, however, did not get satisfactory answers or “precise information.”

Conclusion The by no means mundane question of what a fulltime Party apparatus with several tens of thousands of employees working at all levels of the SED was actually “doing” all day has found a clear answer in this chapter: it produced, selected and processed information.183 The fact that the Party leadership’s criticism of its own executive was particularly trenchant with regard to this core activity and was so during the entire period under investigation suggests a fundamental problem of state-socialist rule inherent in the logic of Party-internal communication. Party leaders had a fully differentiated and—as will be shown in chapter 4—increasingly qualified and professional apparatus. And yet, on account of their own organizational culture and political influences, they were not willing to draw the necessary conclusions from this differentiation. One of these conclusions was that information was necessarily distorted and filtered on its way through the hierarchy. Information is filtered, of course, in every complex organization and this filtering is not in itself dysfunctional. The problem of the SED apparatus was not the “absorption of uncertainty” through the internal filtering of information—the fact that the decision-making level did not learn all the likely worrisome details184—but that this filtering increased the need for information among the “suspicious patriarchs” in the Party leadership. It was only their continued insistence on “complete” and “truthful” information while at the same time refusing to accept any unsparing depictions of the actual situation on the ground that led to the extreme ritualization of written reports. Yet Party-internal communication was not limited to this ritualized form. Rather, it has become apparent that members of the Party apparatus sought and found ways to communicate with each other in a “substantive” fashion: by switching to oral communication and by the “willful” use of genuinely communist forms of mobilization and guidance, such as brigade deployments and the “deputy” principle. While brigade deployments at least partially lost their character as instruments of control and increasingly served the purpose of information generation, the “regional commissioners” relied on the opportunities offered by personal and long-term interaction with local actors in positions of responsibility. These regional commissioners, in particular, seemed in retrospect to have been quite capable in many cases of dealing

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in a productive manner with the contradictions they encountered in their “outpost” position between apparatus and “outside world.” As to oral communication, especially over the phone, it is noteworthy that it, too, evidently underwent a transformation over the years, telephone behaviors becoming more differentiated depending on the status group and the network being used. Undoubtedly the departmental heads connected to the WTsch, the secret government network, formed a kind of “communication elite.” Only they, in the words of Hans Modrow, could “say everything” on the phone. The vast majority of Central Committee employees, on the other hand, who euphorically adopted the new medium in the 1950s and 1960s, eventually grew more reluctant, possibly given the threat of being bugged. This notwithstanding, there was an intensification of communication within the Party apparatus. The telephone enabled a greater transfer of information to an evergreater number of actors. This may have been partly responsible for the increasing efficiency of the apparatus, the effects of which became visible starting in the 1960s.

Notes 1. Versammlung der Abteilung Leitende Organe am 1.11.1955, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/59, fols. 63–78, here fol. 72. 2. Ibid., fol. 73. As of late 1955 the Party and state leadership had been debating the status of private enterprises, which still played a key role in supplying goods to the population. In January of 1956 the Council of Ministers decided to stop giving loans to private companies that were short on capital due to state price and tax policies; instead it would “give the state a share of these companies.” André Steiner, Von Plan zu Plan. Eine Wirtschaftsgeschichte der DDR (Munich, 2004), 90f. The SED regional secretariats were more aware than Party leaders of the problems that might arise from even a partial nationalization of private enterprises in their territories. This was the context of Ulbricht’s comments. 3. Ibid., fol. 87. 4. The distinction made here between “information” and “knowledge” follows the perspective established by representatives of the sociology of knowledge that “knowledge” needs to be interpreted as the product of processes of social construction and is therefore distinct from “storable” information. See esp. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York, 1966) 3: “It is our contention, then, that the sociology of knowledge must concern itself with whatever passes for ‘knowledge’ in a society . . . .” 5. Herbert Alexander Simon, Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations (New York, 1997); Christof Wehrsig and Veronika Tacke, “Funktionen und Folgen informatisierter Organisationen,” in ArBYTE. Modernisierung der Industriesoziologie, ed. Thomas Malsch and Ulrich Mill (Berlin, 1992), 219–39. 6. An investigation by Arpad Szakolczai and Agnes Horvath based on interviews with instructors of the Hungarian Communist Party in 1988 suggests that this was a structural problem of all communist state parties: Arpad Szakolczai and Agnes Horvath, “Information Management in BolshevikType Party States: A Version of the Information-Society,” East European Politics and Societies 5, no. 2 (1991): 268–305. Ralph Jessen talks about an “information dilemma” with regard to the Party and state apparatus in the GDR: Jessen, “Diktatorische Herrschaft.” 7. Wehrsig and Tacke, “Funktionen und Folgen,” 223. 8. See esp. Mario Niemann, “‘Schönfärberei und Schwarzmalerei.’ Die Parteiinformationen der SED,” in Die DDR—eine deutsche Geschichte. Wirkung und Wahrnehmung, ed. Detlev Brunner and Mario Niemann (Paderborn, 2011), 159–84. 9. The dichotomy is pointed out by Jessen, “Diktatorische Herrschaft.”

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10. Szakolczai and Horvath, “Information Management,” 281. 11. Detlef Pollack, “War die DDR-Gesellschaft modern? Eine Gesellschaft im Konflikt zwischen politischer Homogenisierung und funktionaler Differenzierung,” in (Dys)Funktionale Differenzierung? Rekrutierungsmuster und Karriereverläufe der DDR-Funktionseliten, ed. Heinrich Best and Ronald Gebauer, SFB 580 Mitteilungen, Gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen nach dem Systemumbruch (Jena/ Halle, 2002), 45–48. 12. Crozier and Friedberg, Macht und Organisation, 50. On the micropolitical approach of Crozier and Friedberg, see also Tacke, “Formalität und Informalität,” 56–58. 13. Rudolf Reutter an den SED-Landesvorstand Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: betr.: Bericht der Abt. Landwirtschaft der SED Mecklenburg-Vorpommern vom 6.6.1946, 28.6.1946, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/55, fol. 17. 14. In September 1947, Reutter reproached an employee of the German Economic Commission (DWK), saying it was “an untenable situation” that his department could not even comment on the work of the DWK in the area of agricultural policy “because these proposals and materials have thus far not been sent to us.” Rudolf Reutter an Kaulfuß, DWK, betr.: Übersendung von Materialien der DWK an die Abteilung IVc Landwirtschaft des Zentralsekretariats, 9.12.1947, BArch, DC 15/259, fol. 41. It should be kept in mind here that the DWK, like other central authorities and enterprises, also had to submit reports to the Soviet Military Administration and the Soviet Control Commission and was not misguided in giving priority to the administrative authorities of the occupying power. Foitzik, “Sowjetische Ordnungspolitik,” 105. 15. Entwicklung der SED, undated [April/May 1949], SAPMO-BArch, NY 4090/303, fols. 213–32, here fol. 219. 16. Niemann, “‘Schönfärberei und Schwarzmalerei,’” 161. 17. Quoted in ibid. 18. It was after this strict requirement was issued that the first secretary of Schwerin, Karl Mewis, made the “provocative” remark alluded to above, asking at a Central Committee meeting who exactly in the Central Committee apparatus was actually going to read all the paperwork they were supposed to submit. 19. By late 1974 there were still twenty-five district leaderships and forty-five basic organizations that had to report to the Central Committee directly. Niemann, “‘Schönfärberei und Schwarzmalerei,’” 163. 20. Ibid. 21. Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort, 91. 22. Ibid. The fact that they “passed on” the same reporting requirements to their own subordinates, requiring factory Party organizations to submit daily reports as well, was inherent to the logic of this communicative “tonnage ideology.” 23. LOPM: Protokoll über die Arbeitsberatung der Abteilung von 10.12.1956 (Fortsetzung), 12.12.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/59, fols. 113–32, here fol. 118. 24. Protokoll der Politbürositzung vom 19.9.1950, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2/109, fols. 11–18. 25. Protokoll der Politbürositzung vom 5.5.1953, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2/278, fols. 5f. 26. Beschluss des Politbüros vom 4.6.1957 zum Bericht der Bezirksleitung Neubrandenburg, Anlage Nr. 4 zum Protokoll der Politbürositzung vom 3.6.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2/544, fol. 2. 27. In May 1958, for example, the secretariat of the regional leadership of Berlin attested that Berlin comrades in general were wavering on “fundamental questions.” Schlussfolgerungen aus der Berichterstattung der Bezirksleitung Berlin, Anlage Nr. 5 zum Protokoll der Politbürositzung vom 3.6.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2/596, fol. 65. 28. Quotes taken from: Berichterstattung der Bezirksleitung Magdeburg über die Leitung der politischen Arbeit zur Vorbereitung der Wahlen, Anlage Nr. 7 zum Protokoll der Politbürositzung vom 14.9.1965, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2/1003, fol. 28–32, here fol. 28. 29. Entschließung des Sekretariats des ZK zur Verbesserung der Parteiinformation, 14.1.1952, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3/261, fols. 18–24. 30. Vorlage an das Sekretariat des ZK, Weisungen des Sekretariats des ZK zur besseren Durchführung des Beschlusses über die Aufgaben und die Arbeitsweise der Parteiinformation vom Dezember 1952, 10.10.1955, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/51, fols. 234–42, here fols. 235.

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31. See, e.g., ZK-Abteilung Parteiorgane: Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung der Arbeit der Abteilung Parteiorgane nach der Aussprache mit dem Genossen Walter Ulbricht, 1.3.1961, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/5/55, fols. 98–102, here fol. 99. 32. Quoted in Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 330. Honecker’s critique was triggered by the booing of the crowd when the delegation from Berlin arrived at Leipzig’s Central Stadium, a fact which was conveniently glossed over in all of the respective reports. 33. Bericht über erste Erfahrungen der Anwendung der elektronischen Datenverarbeitung auf dem Gebiet der Parteiinformation, 8.12.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1964, fols. 24–30, here fol. 26. 34. Quoted in Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort, 93. 35. Ibid. 36. BPKK [Bezirksparteikontrollkommission] Neubrandenburg: Probleme der Entwicklung des innerparteilichen Lebens in zurückbleibenden Grundorganisationen auf dem Gebiet der sozialistischen Landwirtschaft und Schlussfolgerungen zur Erhöhung ihrer Kampfkraft, 15.11.1973, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2J/5029, unpaginated. 37. Jessen, “Diktatorische Herrschaft,” 68f. 38. Jens Gieseke, “Opinion Polling Behind and Across the Iron Curtain: How West and East German Pollsters Shaped Knowledge Regimes on Communist Societies,” History of the Human Sciences, 29, nos. 4–5 (2016): 77–98. 39. Bericht über erste Erfahrungen der Anwendungen der elektronischen Datenerarbeitung auf dem Gebiet der Parteiinformation, 8.12.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1964, fols. 24–30, here fols. 28. 40. Seminars and regular “consultation hours” were offered to Party secretaries. Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort, 92. 41. Bericht über erste Erfahrungen der Anwendungen der elektronischen Datenverarbeitung auf dem Gebiet der Parteiinformation, 8.12.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1964, fols. 24–30. 42. ZK-Abteilung Parteiorgane: Bericht über durchgeführte Experimente der Anwendung der EDV bei der Auswertung der Monatsberichte der Grundorganisationen in der Parteiinformation, 4.11.1971, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3/2097, fols. 21–26, here fol. 23. 43. Ibid., fol. 24. 44. Interview by Andrea Bahr with Harald Gross, June 7, 2010, 9, Transcript and audio recording of Andrea Bahr, Berlin. 45. Janson, Totengräber der DDR, 225; see also Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort, 96f. 46. Paul G. went on to say that “the things being passed up the hierarchy . . . would have been more than sufficient to change some things if headquarters had only been capable of doing so.” Interview with Paul G., May 20, 2011, 13, author’s transcript and audio recording. 47. Here, e.g., with a view to MfS reporting: Jens Gieseke, “Annäherungen und Fragen an die ‘Meldungen aus der Republik,’” in Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft. Studien zum Herrschaftsalltag in der DDR, ed. Jens Gieseke (Göttingen, 2007), 79–98, here 82. 48. Ibid. The accusation was surely part of Ulbricht’s efforts to isolate Minister of State Security Wollweber and ultimately force his resignation. It is nevertheless a telling example of Ulbricht’s way of seeing things. 49. Hans Erxleben, “The Dilemma of the Party’s Own Opinion Research in the GDR: Insights from a Former SED Pollster,” in The Silent Majority, ed. Bachmann and Gieseke (Frankfurt am Main, 2016), 213–24, here 222. 50. It is hard to reconstruct the work of the Institute for Public Opinion Research and especially its cooperation with Central Committee Departments given that Erich Honecker ordered the destruction of all its surveys when the institute was disbanded. Only a fraction of the material survived. Hans Erxleben, “Umfragen für den Panzerschrank? Zum 50. Jahrestag der Gründung des Instituts für Meinungsforschung,” talk delivered on April 2, 2014 at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation / Helle Panke, 3. I thank Hans Erxleben for providing me with a manuscript of the talk. 51. Interview with Hans Erxleben, April 12, 2013, 8f., author’s transcript and audio recording.

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52. Erxleben, “Umfragen für den Panzerschrank?” 8. 53. “If departmental heads could claim the authority of a survey, others would say: Boy, they . . . have different information, a different kind of knowledge. We have to try that too.” Interview with Hans Erxleben, April 12, 2013, 9, author’s transcript and audio recording. 54. Erxleben, “Umfragen für den Panzerschrank?” 3. 55. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 24f., author’s transcript and audio recording. 56. Gieseke, “Annäherungen und Fragen,” 97f.; see also Siegfried Suckut, Volkes Stimmen: “Ehrlich, aber deutlich”—Privatbriefe an die DDR-Regierung (Munich, 2016). 57. Protokoll der Vernehmung von Wolfgang Herger, 15.9.1992, Archiv der Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin bei dem Landgericht Berlin, 26 JS 1002/93, Bd. IV, fol. 1–17, here fol. 10. 58. Horst Dohlus, Information an das Sekretariat des Zentralkomitees, betr. Information über die Eingaben der Bevölkerung an die Abteilungen des Zentralkomitees im 1. Halbjahr 1986, 11.7.1986, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/50/28, unpaginated. 59. ZK-Abteilung Parteiorgane, Information an das Sekretariat des Zentralkomitees betr. Eingaben der Bevölkerung an die Abteilungen des Zentralkomitees der SED im 1. Halbjahr 1983, 9.8.1983, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/50/18, unpaginated. 60. Niemann, “‘Schönfärberei und Schwarzmalerei,’” 174–82. 61. A shortened version of the monthly reports—including the critical parts—was given to the members and candidates of the Politbüro, who—at least in the Honecker era—were, for a variety of reasons, not in a position to critically synthesize or discuss these issues affecting the regional level of government. Janson, Totengräber der DDR, 224f. 62. See, e.g., Niemann, “‘Schönfärberei und Schwarzmalerei,’” 174–77. 63. Helmut Lehmann, Vorlage für das Politbüro—ein neuer Kartoffelskandal. o. D. [Mai 1949], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.022/13, fol. 124. Emphasis in the original. 64. This was the upshot of a survey of employees of the Party Organs Department for the purpose of exchanging Party documents. SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/55, fols. 103–5. 65. Ibid., fol. 103. 66. It should be noted here that, despite their generally very hierarchical structure, communist apparatuses are not per se incapable of developing such institutions. This can be seen in the example of the Central Evaluation and Information Group (ZAIG), which as of the late 1960s was developed into the central coordination point and “brain” of the MfS, and to a certain extent did in fact meet these requirements. Roger Engelmann and Frank Joestel, Die Zentrale Auswertungs- und Informationsgruppe, MfS-Handbuch, published by the BStU (Berlin, 2009), 1–6. 67. Frank-Joachim Herrmann, Reiner Oschmann, and Brigitte Zimmermann, Der Sekretär des Generalsekretärs: Honeckers persönlicher Mitarbeiter über seinen Chef. Ein Gespräch mit Brigitte Zimmermann und Reiner Oschmann (Berlin, 1996), 31. 68. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 27, author’s transcript and audio recording. 69. Explicitly in Detlef Pollack, “Wie modern war die DDR?,” in Koordinaten deutscher Geschichte in der Epoche des Ost-West-Konflikts, ed. Hans Günter Hockerts (Munich, 2004), 175–205, here 187. 70. Jessen, “Dikatorische Herrschaft,” 74. This perspective is supported by the abovementioned interviews with instructors of the Hungarian Communist Party, according to which official discussions and meetings were generally detested and only viewed as a waiting period before the real discussions which took place “in the hallways.” Szakolczai and Horvath, “Information Management,” 277f. 71. Volker Depkat, “Kommunikationsgeschichte zwischen Mediengeschichte und der Geschichte sozialer Kommunikation. Versuch einer konzeptionellen Klärung,” in Medien der Kommunikation im Mittelalter, ed. Karl-Heinz Spieß and Oliver Auge (Stuttgart, 2003), 9–48. 72. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, “Telefongeschichten. Grenzüberschreitende Telefonüberwachung der Opposition durch den SED-Staat,” in Fasse Dich kurz! Der grenzüberschreitende Telefonverkehr der Opposition in den 1980er Jahren und das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, Analysen und Dokumente 41, ed. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk and Arno Polzin (Göttingen, 2014), 17–172, here 29, n. 61. 73. Foitzik, “Sowjetische Ordnungspolitik,” 115. 74. Ibid., 117.

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75. Michael S. Voslensky, Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class, trans. Eric Mosbacher (New York, 1984), 207. 76. Kowalczuk, “Telefongeschichten,” 31. Still, telephone service remained extremely backward compared with in the Federal Republic. 77. See the telephone directories of 1968 and 1989 in SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9162. 78. Set up as a twenty-four-channel system, as of the mid-1960s it was also used by the Ministry of National Defense. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK der SED, betr.: Struktur- und Stellenplan der Fernmeldeanlage der Partei, DY 30/J IV 2/3A, 1273, fols. 9–11, here fol. 11. 79. Kowalczuk, “Telefongeschichten,” 31. 80. According to the staff plan of 1955, there were 479 technical employees working in the telephone system of the Central Committee and the regional leaderships. Struktur- und Stellenplan der Fernmeldeanlage der Partei, 16.2.1966, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30//J IV 2/3A/1273, fols. 9–111, here fol. 10. 81. Abteilung N, Abschlussbericht über die Abhörbarkeit von Nachrichten, Gesprächen und Mitteilungen aus dem Dezi-Richtfunknetz und den Kreisrundspruchanlagen des Zentralkomitees der SED, BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 320, fols. 3–50, here fol. 3. 82. Ibid., fol. 24. 83. Ibid., fol. 18. 84. Ibid., fol. 20. 85. This was presumably also the reason that the Stasi’s Intelligence Department chose this particular moment to “observe” the microwave relay network; there was reason to believe that the phones would be busier than usual. 86. Ibid., fols. 29f. The MfS also recorded a range of private conversations, e.g., on April 21 at 9:07 a.m., when a Central Committee employee called the district leadership in Suhl with the following request: “Give me my apartment. Hi, Lotte, how are you?” (Inquires about her well-being, family talk.) 87. Ibid., fol. 26. Konrad Adenauer had died on April 19, 1967. It seems that the arrest of these young people was connected to this event. 88. Ibid., fol. 31. 89. Ibid., fol. 23f. 90. With a view to the same type in the Central Committee apparatus of the CPSU, see Nikolay Mitrokhin, Die “Russische Partei.” Die Bewegung der russischen Nationalisten in der UdSSR 1953–1985 (Stuttgart, 2014), 72. 91. Paul Kienberg, betr. Vermerk, 7.7.1972, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 17116, fol. 198. 92. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, May 27, 2010, 19, author’s transcript and audio recording. 93. Interview by Andrea Bahr with Harald Gross, June 7, 2010, 9, transcript and audio recording of Andrea Bahr, Berlin. 94. The problem was taken care of with the introduction of the Integrated Staff Network of the Party and State Leadership in the mid-1980s as well as through the establishment of a new “covert,” i.e., encrypted microwave radio relay network. 95. Information über das Abschöpfen von Klartextfunksprüchen durch den Gegner aus dem drahtlosen Sprechfunknetz des ZK der SED, 11.12.1972, BStU, MfS, ZAIG, Nr. 2094, fols. 1–5, here fol. 1. 96. Ibid., fol. 4. 97. In May 1978 departmental heads Herbert Häber, Günter Ehrensperger, Hermann Pöschel, Bruno Kiesler, Johannes Hörnig and Ursula Ragwitz among others were given a WTsch connection at Honecker’s request. Gisela Glende an Heinz Lübbe, 19.5.1978, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9244, fol. 39. 98. Interview with Hans Modrow, March 4, 2010, 24, author’s transcript and audio recording. 99. Kowalczuk, “Telefongeschichten,” 36. 100. An employee of the State Planning Commission who also worked for the Stasi, and reported on Hengst in this instance, added this comment to Hengst’s statement: “I do think he might have meant spied on by the West”—and that he therefore didn’t mean being spied on by the MfS. Bemerkungen zu Gen. Karl Hengst, 17.9.1982, BStU, MfS, HA XVIII, AP, Nr. 5835/92, fols. 78–80, here fol. 79.

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101. Interview with Hans Erxleben, April 12, 2013, 28, author’s transcript and audio recording. 102. Information, 12.4.1988, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 255, fols. 113f. 103. According to an assessment of working hours carried out by the Central Committee Secretariat in the summer of 1960, regional commissioner Herbert Hase spent twenty-five hours in meetings of the regional leadership of Dresden alone from August 8 to 13, 1960, and this apparently was no exception. SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/193, fols. 177–179. 104. See esp. Engelmann, “Zum Quellenwert.” 105. The distinction between “ritualized group speak” and official monopoly language—which overlaps to a certain degree with James C. Scott’s distinction between “public” and “private transcripts”—is found in Jessen, “Diktatorische Herrschaft,” 67. 106. SfS, HA S: Auftrag B/267/318 [Abhörprotokoll eines Gesprächs zwischen Rudolf Krankemann und Hans Schoof am 28.3.1955], 30.3.1955, BStU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146/56, Bd. 1, fols. 121–46, here fol. 121f. 107. Bericht betr.: Aussagen inhaftierter Personen, o.D. [1960], BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 21699, fols. 73– 92, here fol. 74. 108. MfS, HA XVIII/7: Informationsbericht vom 17.5.1974, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 156–60, here fol. 159. 109. MfS, HA XVIII/7: Informationsbericht vom 20.7.1979, 4.8.1979, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 146–49, here fol. 148. 110. MfS, Abteilung 26/7 an HA II/6, Leiter: “Händler.” Information A 7776/86/109-110/89, Bd. 61873, 26.10.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 6/2041, fols. 261f. 111. Jessen, “Diktatorische Herrschaft,” 66; Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, esp. 24f. 112. Cf. in this context Alexei Yurchak’s concept of “authoritative discourse,” ibid., esp. 76. 113. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, May 27, 2010, 18, author’s transcript and audio recording. 114. The backstory was that a physician from the polyclinic had apparently moved to the West at the behest of the Party, which her colleagues at the polyclinic were kept in the dark about. Horst Reinhardt, betr. Bericht (IM »Renn«), 19.05.1969, BStU, MfS, AIM 15396, Nr. 89, Bd. 2, fols. 233–35, here fol. 230. 115. Janson, Totengräber der DDR, 198. 116. A similar situation was found to exist in the Communist Party of Hungary in the late 1980s, see Szakolczai and Horvath, “Information Management,” 289f. See also Georg Wagner-Kyora, “Väter der Gerüchte. Angst und Massenkommunikation in Halle und Magdeburg im Herbst 1989,” Journal of Modern European History 10, no. 3 (2012): 364. 117. SfS, HA S: Auftrag B/267/318 [Abhörprotokoll eines Gesprächs zwischen Rudolf Krankemann und Hans Schoof am 28.3.1955], 30.3.1955, BStU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146/ 56, Bd. 1, fols. 121–46, here fol. 135. 118. MfS, HA XVIII/7: Informationsbericht vom 31. Dez. 1974, 2.1.1975, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 213–16, here fol. 216. 119. An immensely rich source on the gossip spread by technical employees in the apparatus are the conversations between one such employee, Gertrud Liebing, who was arrested by the Stasi in the fall of 1966 on suspicion of espionage, and her cellmate, a Stasi informer. Even if we assume that Liebing wanted to impress her fellow prisoner (there is no evidence that she recognized her function as an informer), over all her statements appear to give an authentic impression of what technical employees in this division were talking about. The above quotes were all taken from BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24140, passim. 120. Horst Reinhardt, betr. Bericht (IM “Renn”), 3.12.1970, BStU, MfS, AIM 15396, Nr. 89, T. II, Bd. 3, fols. 199f. 121. MfS, HA XVIII/7: Informationsbericht vom 28.6.1974, 2.7.1974, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fol. 151. 122. SfS, HA S: Auftrag B/267/318 [Abhörprotokoll eines Gesprächs zwischen Rudolf Krankemann und Hans Schoof am 28.3.1955], 30.3.1955, BStU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146/56, Bd. 1, fols. 121–46, here fol. 133.

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123. BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 6/69, Teil 2, fol. 133. 124. MfS, HA XVIII/7, Informationsbericht vom 20.7.1979, 4.8.1979, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 146–49, here fol. 149. 125. Vernehmungsprotokoll des Beschuldigten Arno Heine, 15.8.1972, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15110, fols. 448–75, here fol. 474. 126. Anonymus an Egon Krenz, undated [1988], BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 6/69, part 2, fol. 139; Anonymus an Günter Mittag, undated [1988], BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 6/69, part 2, fol. 133. Despite intense investigations, State Security was not able to determine who wrote the letters. It is clear, however, that it must have been a Central Committee employee given the individual’s inside knowledge. 127. The photo documentation of the MfS’s Main Department for Personal Security shows patches with SS runes, cuff titles with a “Norge” imprint, and metal Totenkopf (“Death’s Head”) insignia. In the final days of the battle for Berlin members of “pan-German” SS units had tried to pass themselves off as prisoners of war to the advancing Red Army, and of course had to dispose of their uniforms so as not to give themselves away. 128. Bericht über die Befragung des Angestellten des ZK der SED K., Werner, Elektriker im ZK der SED am 31.1.1973, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 6323, fols. 170f. 129. Kotkin, Stalin: Volume I, 431f. 130. See chapter 2, “Power and Authority,” of the present work. 131. The main difference is that instructors had the explicit function of serving as a link between headquarters and the territory. Working groups, by contrast, were comprised of employees from the Party and state apparatuses who in most instances were permanently engaged in the Central Committee apparatus or a ministry and were only dispatched to a local context for the duration of a deployment. 132. Gisela Trautzsch an Rudi Thunig [both employed in the Office of the Politbüro], betr.: Bemerkungen zur Arbeitsordnung, 4.9.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9159, fols. 108f. 133. Zentrale Revisionskommission an Sekretariat des ZK, 25.4.1959, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 3/58, no folio numbers [6]. 134. Abt. Parteiorgane: Vorlage an das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Vorschlag zur Prämierung von zwei Instrukteuren der Abteilung Parteiorgane, 2.12.1960, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/753, fol. 108. According to the salary regulation of April 1, 1960, “instructors who head a complex brigade” would receive “15 percent of their basic salary as limited additional income for the duration of their deployment.” Gehaltsregulativ für den Parteiapparat, gültig ab 1.4.1960, 17.2.1960, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/5337, fols. 87–104, here fol. 87. 135. Protokoll der Aussprache mit dem Abteilungsleiter und den Sektorenleitern der Abteilung Parteiorgane im ZK der KPdSU, 22.12.1954, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/158, fols. 3–35, here fol. 7. 136. Mixed brigades of this sort were sometimes called “complex brigades.” In general, though, the terminology was rather inconsistent, with talk of working groups, brigades, complex brigades or even information brigades. 137. Bericht über den Verlauf der Auswahlarbeit zum Arbeiter- und Bauernstudium im Jahre 1951, 9.3.1951, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/11/126, fols. 69–74, here fol. 70. The second reform of higher education in the GDR was focused on establishing preparatory schools for workers and peasants (ABFs), which would allow those from underprivileged classes to attend a university. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 220. 138. Jan Kiepe, Für die Revolution auf die Schulbank. Eine alltagsgeschichtliche Studie über die SED-Funktionärsausbildung in Thüringen, Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte 101 (Bonn, 2016), 237–41. 139. Steffen Alisch, “Die Hochschule für Ökonomie in Berlin-Karlshorst (HfÖ). Teil I: Gründung, Kontrolle und ‘Anleitung’ einer wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Kaderschmiede,” Zeitschrift des Forschungsverbundes SED-Staat, no. 20 (2006): 106–22, here 109. 140. Wagner, Walter Ulbricht, 250. 141. E.g., ZK-Abteilung Wissenschaften, Protokoll Nr. 18/68 der Beratung des Abteilungsleiters mit den Sektorenleitern am 1.10.1968, 2.10.1968, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A2/9.04/61, no folio numbers. 142. MfS, HA VII, Bereich des Leiters: Tonbandabschrift IMS “Kellermann,” 3.2.1986, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 195/89, Bd. II/2, fols. 49–59, here fol. 56.

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143. Mario Niemann, “‘Vom Standpunkt des Pessimismus jedoch kann man keine erfolgreiche Parteiarbeit organisieren.’ Die Absetzung des 1. Sekretärs des Bezirks Magdeburg Alois Pisnik im Februar 1979,” in Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung 2006, ed. Ulrich Mählert et al. (Berlin, 2006), 217–36. 144. Niemann, Die Sekretäre der SED-Bezirksleitungen, 319. See also chapter 8, “Perceptions of and Responses to Crisis” of the present work. 145. Rüdiger Bergien, “Activating the ‘Apparatchik’: Brigade Deployment in the SED Central Committee and Performative Communist Party Rule,” Journal of Contemporary History, 47, no. 4 (2012): 793–811, here 793–95. 146. Protokoll über die Arbeitsberatung der Abteilung vom 10.12.1956 (Fortsetzung), 12.12.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/59, 113–132, here fol. 121. 147. Notizen über die Arbeitsberatung unserer [Organisations-]Abteilung am 16.11.1957, Thema: Verbesserung der Arbeit in der Org-Abteilung und im Apparat des ZK, 18.11.1957, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/59, fols. 244–255, here fol. 44. Kleiner, as head of the Executive Organs Department, had demanded in April 1956 that complex brigades of the apparatus should be “active down there for a longer period so that the comrades [there could] really change the situation.” SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.01/2, fols. 1–13, here fol 1. 148. Arbeitsplan der Arbeitsgruppe Sport für das I. Halbjahr 1962, 3.1.1962 SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/2/18/1, fols. 28f., here fol 29. 149. LHA Schwerin, BL Neubrandenburg/102, no folio numbers. 150. Abschlussbericht der Brigade des Instituts für Gesellschaftswissenschaften beim ZK der SED im Betriebslaboratorium für Rundfunk und Fernsehen in Berlin Adlershof, 7.8.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/9.08/36, fols. 45–53, here fol. 53. 151. Hence, in February 1973, a staff member of the Central Committee’s Department of Education was none too happy about the conduct of a member of his working group deployed in the district leadership of Zwickau. The individual in question, he noted, had “severely attacked the secretary of agit[ation and] prop[aganda], contrary to our mutual agreement,” accusing him of “false and dangerous orientations” in his school Party organizations. According to their “agreement,” they were not to say another word about the failings of said “agitprop” secretary. Information über die Behandlung von Volksbildungsfragen im Sekretariat der KL Zwickau am 16.2.1973, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV B 2/9.05/22, no folio numbers. 152. At least this was listed in the schedule of events. SED-KL Karl-Marx-Universität: Ablaufplan für den Arbeitsbesuch der Abt. Wissenschaften des ZK, 4.11.1974, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV B 2/9.04/12, no folio numbers. 153. Interview with Bernhard L., June 15, 2010, 37f., author’s transcript and audio recording. 154. This deployment was led by the Ministry of Higher and Technical Education: Bericht über die Ergebnisse der Tätigkeit der Arbeitsgruppe des Ministeriums für Hoch- und Fachschulwesen (MHF) an der Karl-Marx-Universität Leipzig, undated [December 1973]. SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV B 2/9.04/12, unpaginated. In a similar vein, a brigade of the Youth Department recorded “a total of 53 discussions in 13 factories and 3 cooperatives” after a deployment in the region of Frankfurt an der Oder in November 1983. They also gathered information “in youth clubs about the recreational habits of young people.” Bericht über den Einsatz einer Arbeitsgruppe der Abteilung Jugend im Bezirk Frankfurt/Oder, 23.11.1983, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/vorl. SED/33527, no folio numbers. 155. According to the audit report, these working groups of the Department of Basic Industry “included Party organizers of the Central Committee in VVBs [Associations of National Enterprises], employees at regional and district leaderships of the Party, as well as trusted workers and scientists. Zentrale Revisionskommission, Bericht über die Prüfung in der Abteilung Grundstoffindustrie des Zentralkomitees, August 1976, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/vorl. SED/33565, Bd. 1, no folio numbers (4). 156. Interview with Bernhard L., June 15, 2010, 45, author’s transcript and audio recording. On the ground, he recalled, one always met “individuals who . . . didn’t kill themselves bending over backwards in an effort to be diplomatic” but who openly addressed the problems they were having. These

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were “not just the problems of young people but . . . of international politics, supply issues, everything imaginable.” 157. Organisations-Instrukteur Abteilung und Abteilung Wirtschaftspolitik: Bericht zur Überprüfung der Parteiarbeit und wirtschaftlichen Probleme in der volkseigenen Bauindustrie Berlins. 30.7.1951, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.06/3, fols. 33–46, here fol. 35. 158. See also Szakolczai and Horvath, “Information Management,” 283. 159. Werner Hering an Kurt Hager, betr.: Information an das Sekretariat des ZK über die schrittweise Beseitigung der Privatbehandlung in Gesundheitseinrichtungen der DDR, 11.9.1967, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/19/33, no folio numbers. 160. By the end of 1989, only 341 out of 20,580 outpatient physicians worked in private practices. Gerhard A. Ritter, “Thesen zur Sozialpolitik der DDR,” in Sozialstaatlichkeit in der DDR. Sozialpolitische Entwicklungen im Spannungsfeld von Diktatur und Gesellschaft 1945/49–1989, ed. Dierk Hoffmann and Michael Schwartz, special edition of the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Munich, 2005), 11–29, here 24, n. 65. 161. Interview with Bernd Preusser, July 15, 2011, 27, author’s transcript and audio recording. 162. Treffbericht IM Journalist, 24.6.1968, BStU, MfS, AOP, Nr. 7208/76, fols. 168f. As of early 1957, of course, as outlined in chapter 2, Central Committee employees could only take part in advisorycommittee meetings (Kollegiumssitzungen) at the “security ministries”—that is to say, in the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of National Defense, and the Ministry for State Security. 163. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 164. The deployment of Party organizers was expanded after June 17th: Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK, betr.: Direktive des Sekretariats des ZK über den Einsatz von Parteiorganisatoren des ZK und die Bildung von Sekretariaten in Großbetrieben. 21.8.1953, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/20, fols. 118–26. 164. To be sure, at the expense of regional Party organs. The former Party organizer of the Brandenburg Steel and Rolling Mill, for example, the largest producer of steel in the GDR, spoke mockingly in retrospect about the “little instructors” of the SED regional leadership of Brandenburg and seemed proud that they apparently didn’t “dare come anywhere near us.” Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort, 85. 165. Mark Ebers and Winfried Gotsch, “Institutionenökonomische Theorien der Organisation,” in Organisationstheorien, ed. Alfred Kieser and Mark Ebers (Stuttgart, 2006), here 258–62. 166. Abschrift eines IM-Berichts vom Band—“Karl,” 26.2.1988, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 194/89, Bd. 1, fols. 307–12, here fol. 309. See also Tobias Wunschik, “Risse in der Sicherheitsarchitektur des SED-Regimes. Staatssicherheit und Ministerium des Innern in der Ära Honecker,” Deutschland Archiv 44, no. 2 (2011): 200–7. My thanks to Tobias Wunschik for directing my attention to the reports of unofficial collaborators in the advisory-committee meetings of the Ministry of the Interior. 167. Otfried Arnold and Hans Modrow, “Außenansichten,” in Das Große Haus von außen: Erfahrungen im Umgang mit der Machtzentrale in der DDR, ed. Hans Modrow (Berlin, 1996), 9–38, here 32. 168. Versammlung der Abteilung Leitende Organe am 1.11.1955, Diskussionsbeitrag des Gen. Schäfer, Beauftragter des Bezirks Magdeburg, 1.11.1955, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/59, fols. 69–71, here fol. 70. 169. LOPM, Protokoll über die Arbeitsberatung der Abteilung von 10.12.1956 (Fortsetzung), 12.12.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/59, fols. 113–32, here fol. 122. 170. Ibid. 171. Maßnahmen zur weiteren Verbesserung der Arbeit der Abteilungen des ZK, undated [March/April 1960], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.10/4, fols. 131–139, here fol. 136. The system of “territorial groups” in the Party Organs Department of the Central Committee of the SED was of course not a one-to-one correspondence with the model of the CPSU. The Party Organs Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU was split up in 1956. One of the two new departments subsequently had sole responsibility for the Russian Soviet Republic and the other for the Union republics. As a result, the department responsible for the Russian Republic had eight territorial sectors, each for a specific region: the Volga, North Caucasus, West and East Siberia, etc. 172. Interview with Hans Modrow, March 4, 2010, 18f., author’s transcript and audio recording.

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173. Interview with Paul G., May 20, 2011, 14, author’s transcript and audio recording. 174. He was transferred to Berlin in 1981 only because Party leaders felt they needed a particularly seasoned commissioner to counteract the headstrong first regional secretary Konrad Naumann. 175. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 16, author’s transcript and audio recording. 176. Arnold and Modrow, “Außenansichten,” 32. The “pacification” of relations between regional secretaries and the state organs in a given region since the early 1960s had been based on the mutual understanding that economic success—which could make or break the status of a region in the eyes of Party headquarters—was more likely to be promoted through cooperation than confrontation and mutual recriminations. Rowell: Der Erste Bezirkssekretär, S. 218. 177. Arnold and Modrow, “Außenansichten,” 32. 178. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 19, author’s transcript and audio recording. 179. Ibid. 180. Ibid., 14. 181. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 220f. 182. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 19, author’s transcript and audio recording. 183. For the interpretation of formal organizations as information-processing systems, see Simon, Administrative Behavior. 184. The concept of uncertainty absorption is taken here from James G. March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations (New York, 1958).

Chapter 4

A Brake on Reforms? The Apparatus in the Late Ulbricht Era (1960–70)

The committee consisted of [Party secretary] Günther Habesatt . . . and a guest from the Science Department of the Central Committee of the SED, whom Günther introduced as Comrade Ernst. . . . He was not very tall, distinctly shorter than Günther . . . and had gray hair cut short and a face that seemed to be constantly smiling . . . while he enlightened the meeting on the role of historiography in the struggles of our time, and on the connection between the Party line and historical truth. Silence had fallen in the room, a silence that did not turn to coughing and rustling even when the speaker came to an end. Now it was Rohde’s turn: self-criticism. Kurt listened to Rohde jerkily reciting the text he had learned by heart, every word of it obviously fixed in advance, Kurt heard him swallowing, the pauses stretched out at unbearable length, until remarks like with hostile intent . . . acted . . . irresponsibly . . . slowly formed structures resembling sentences. Then Günther asked for opinions. The head of the department “spontaneously” spoke up, condemned their colleague Rohde, in whom he was severely disappointed, and then, to a nod of approval from Comrade Ernst, apologized for his own lack of vigilance. Next in line was Kurt, that was the order of events. He sensed the attention of the others turning to him. His throat was dry, his head was empty. He himself was surprised by the words that came out of his mouth. “I’m not sure that I entirely understand what this is about,” said Kurt. Comrade Ernst narrowed his eyes as if he could hardly see Kurt. You might still have thought he was smiling, but his face had changed to something malicious and piglike.1

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The Party meeting at the Institute for History at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR described here is a literary invention. It is taken Eugen Ruge’s novel In Times of Fading Light. Ruge sets the meeting in 1966, soon after the Eleventh Plenary of the Central Committee of the SED, the notorious “clean-sweep plenary.” This plenary was the culmination of an ideological tightening carried out in this case by the “pig-faced” Central Committee member “Comrade Ernst.”2 The figure follows an interpretive pattern well-established in GDR studies: “the apparatus” is assigned a conservative braking function, blocking even piecemeal liberalization in its dogmatic zeal. In the GDR’s reform decade, the 1960s, it was thus the apparatus that ultimately sided with the opponents of reform in a divided Party leadership. This interpretation was advanced in particular by Monika Kaiser. In her analysis of the long run-up to the “transition of power from Ulbricht to Honecker” she interprets the central Party apparatus as an important opponent of the reformer Ulbricht.3 Kaiser assumes that “the” apparatus felt its power threatened by economic reforms and the liberalization of cultural and youth policy. This is why it rallied behind Ulbricht’s younger but at this point—in Kaiser’s view—much more dogmatic adversary Erich Honecker, undermining “the reform process right from the very start,” the same conclusion reached by Andreas Malycha.4 Newer research has largely adopted Kaiser’s position on the failure of Ulbricht’s reform policies.5 This interpretation, of course, is not necessarily wrong. There is no question that Ulbricht’s reform package of the 1960s had some resolute opponents, the most important of whom were probably in the Central Committee. But the interpretation is not entirely sound. Its proponents see the failure of reforms as the fault not only of Honecker but of a group they don’t investigate in any detail: “the functionaries,” who, according to Monika Kaiser, governed in “dreary complacency” and were “jolted awake” by Ulbricht’s reform agenda.6 Gunnar Decker, in his more journalistic depiction of the events of 1965, talks about the “loud and boastful stupidity” of these functionaries which effectively dashed any hopes for a different kind of GDR.7 Even Stephan Merl links analogous developments in the Soviet Union—the end of cautious liberalization precipitated by the fall of Khrushchev—to “the apparatus” of the CPSU. The latter, “at the cost of the permanent bureaucratization of the system,” sought to restore “its peace and quiet, which turned out to be a deathly quiet.”8 And yet it has become abundantly clear that in state-socialist Party dictatorships there was no Party apparatus acting in the collective singular—not in the 1960s, nor before nor afterwards. “The apparatus” in the 1960s—and even more so in the 1950s—was a differentiated social system whose subsystems increasingly developed divergent perceptions of their own environments. Furthermore, and this too has become apparent thus far, it cannot be assumed a priori that the interests of “the apparatus” were identical with those of the central decision-making bodies of the SED dictatorship. Very few of the leading cadre in the Central Committee apparatus had any access whatsoever to the small circles of power that were actively working for or against the reforms. And when an especially influential departmental head the likes

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of Horst Dohlus did have access to them and was able to influence the anti-reform course, this does not mean he represented the views of the approximately eighty political employees subordinate to him in the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department. There can be no doubt, however, that Central Committee departmental heads increasingly developed into political actors precisely in the decade of reform. Against the backdrop of these reform efforts, they actively sought to expand their own influence over state and society—and this in both camps, those for the status quo behind Honecker and the reformers around Ulbricht—the expansion of power of the central executive of the Party leadership being a prerequisite for reform as well as for the conservative countermovement.

Organizational Development The organizational development of the Central Committee apparatus followed a set pattern as of the late 1940s: SED leaders reacted to their own policy failures by restructuring the central apparatus. At the same time—and this remained a constant— they always endeavored to rapidly implement any structural reforms introduced by the CPSU. This was the case in 1952–53, for example, when the problems of “building socialism” mounted and the Politbüro broke up its large general departments into specialist departments. The same occurred in 1955–56, when Party leaders adopted Khrushchev’s policy of “simplification.” Until 1957, they had worked in at least a half-hearted way to downsize the Central Committee apparatus and limits its encroachment on the state apparatus. In a sense this pattern of reaction began all over again with the Fifth Party Congress in July 1958. The Fifth Party Congress had adopted a package of measures that aimed to accelerate the socialist revolution.9 Ulbricht himself had set a lofty target when he announced that “in a matter of years” he would “develop the economy of the GDR” so that the per capita consumption of food and consumer products in the GDR would “reach and surpass” that of the Federal Republic.10 The years 1958 and 1959 did in fact see remarkable increases in the gross industrial output of the GDR. But this growth came to a standstill by the fall of 1960. The collectivization of agriculture, accelerated once again as of 1959, in conjunction with bad weather led in the fall of 1961 to a devastating crop failure.11 A good 300,000 East Germans left their country for the West between January 1960 and June 1961.12 This profound crisis could not be countered by the various political offensives launched at the same time, from the “brigade movement” in the working world to the “Bitterfeld Path” in the area of cultural policy. As a result, the Central Committee apparatus increasingly came under fire from the Party leadership after previously fending off most such accusations in 1957–58. But now, in late 1959, for example, Ulbricht was complaining that everything the Western apparatus was doing was pointless,13 that many Central Committee departments were “unable . . . to think beyond their own purview,”14 and he was repeatedly annoyed, as described in chapter 3, by the meaningless reports and cliched “analyses.”

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In October 1959, the ZRK bemoaned—presumably echoing Ulbricht—that most departments thought they “could solve new and complicated problems while adhering to the old routine.”15 In the summer of 1961, senior staff even diagnosed “signs of erosion.” Horst Sindermann, head of the Agitation Department, observed that “even among employees of the Central Committee” there was a “reluctance to appear before the masses, the lack of a fighting spirit.”16 Heinz D., of all people, commander of the Central Committee combat group—employed fulltime as director of the Central Committee’s chauffeur service—was relieved of his post after the erection of the Berlin Wall for supposed “panic buying” in the summer of 1961.17 Of course these voices are only a partial reflection of the internal state of affairs in the apparatus. It was precisely during these years, as will be shown below, that the latter increasingly developed into a center of government. What is certain is that Party leaders, Ulbricht in particular, once again saw the need to act. The tendency, on the one hand, was to deepen the formalization of the apparatus. In the summer of 1959, the Central Committee Secretariat deployed a working group to revise the “Work Regulations for the Central Committee Apparatus” of January 1953 which, even as late as early 1961, ZRK chairman Gäbler lamented were “unknown to most staff members.”18 In the spring of 1960, the Central Committee Secretariat wanted to get to the bottom of how efficient or inefficient its employees were. It ordered two assessments of working hours for June and August, the results of which were sometimes revealing—e.g., that Party Organs employee Erich Schuster spent 18.5 hours in the week of August 8 to August 13, 1960 organizing the departmental files.19 In early 1961, the Central Committee Secretariat founded yet another commission, demanding new structural plans and staff reductions from each department. On the other hand, there was yet another push for greater differentiation: new Central Committee departments were established, but also—a functional innovation on this scale—nearly a dozen Politbüro commissions.

The Heyday of Commissions The years 1957 and 1958 were the last time a range of Central Committee departments were merged, in line with the policy of “simplifying Party work.” The first department to be newly founded after this wave of departmental mergers was the Health Policy Department under thirty-four-year-old lawyer Werner Hering, who until then had served as deputy head of the Science Department. Four of the eleven positions in the new department were reserved for physicians. This betokened the professionalization of the apparatus that began in these years. The Department of Health Policy was responsible for medical research as well as for the healthcare system,20 which suffered enormously during these years from doctors fleeing the country. Likewise in 1959, the Central Committee Secretariat elevated the sports division in the Department of Security Issues under Rudolf Hellmann into an independent working group. In 1961, the working group on youth issues under Arno Goede be-

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came a Central Committee department. As in the case of Werner Hering, the thirtythree-year-old Hellmann and thirty-four-year-old Goede represented a new generation of departmental heads. Günther Wyschofsky, who took over the Department of Basic Industry at the age of thirty in 1959, is also symbolic of this generational break.21 Even the average age of the Women’s Commission, founded in 1962, was relatively low for a policy advisory body of this sort: thirty-eight years (its head, Inge Lange, was thirty-five years old upon its founding).22 The “Politbüro commissions” were a special organizational form compared to the Central Committee departments. They included not only members of the Party apparatus but also state and economic functionaries, scientists and various “practitioners.” Alongside the “offices” for industry and construction as well as for agriculture, all set up in 1963, they were the most striking new structural feature of the Party apparatus during the reform years. During the 1950s, only four commissions played a significant role.23 Five commissions were added, however, in 1958 alone: for agitation, medicine, schools, chemistry and economics; and two more in 1959: for propaganda and “all-German work” (gesamtdeutsche Arbeit).24 Ideological and agricultural commissions followed in 1960. This “heyday” of commissions has led to much speculation by scholars. Some interpreted them as Ulbricht’s answer to the rigid “bureaucratism” of Central Committee departments and as intended cross-connections between areas with a similar function in the Party and state apparatus.25 Their significant loss of importance as of 1965 has hence been seen as a partial victory for the reform opponents around Erich Honecker. To begin with, however, the wave of new commissions must be seen against the backdrop of developments in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev was propagating these commissions as a silver bullet for the apparatus to capitalize on external expertise. Ulbricht probably achieved this goal at least to a certain extent. Membership in a Politbüro commission must have been attractive, a sign of prestige, for many specialist functionaries in the state apparatus. The twenty-five-member Women’s Commission, for example, included medical doctors, university instructors and factory managers. The Agitation Commission boasted Old Communists like Karl Wloch, who had once written for Die Rote Fahne; “technocrats” such as Heinz Adameck, director of East German state television Deutscher Fernsehfunk; the editor-in-chief of the Party newspaper Neues Deutschland, Hermann Axen, and others—a total of eight fulltime and fourteen honorary members in 1965.26 The thirty-four-member Medical Commission27 was also a kind of “Who’s Who” of the “medical intelligentsia” of the GDR.28 The Medical Commission, moreover, headed a variety of sub-working groups and sub-commissions in which some two hundred physicians and scientists are said to have collaborated, half of them non-Party members.29 The fact that Neues Deutschland regularly reported on its proceedings only boosted the Medical Commission’s prestige.30 Yet external expertise and publicity alone do not translate into political significance. Regardless of Ulbricht’s ultimate aims, the commissions were never a serious

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threat to the influence of Central Committee departments. Thus, members of the Medical Commission would hear about “important health-policy decisions of the Politbüro . . . only when they were written up in the paper,”31 the commissions’ influence being curbed even more by the fact that it was usually Central Committee departmental heads who served as commission secretaries or chairmen. The latter were successful, as evidenced by the minutes of Medical Commission meetings, in enforcing the Party line against the objections of medical researchers and practitioners.32 And even the commissions that did have a political impact—such as the Ideology Commission, which in 1964–65 played a key role in stifling the liberalization of cultural policy of the early 1960s,33 and the Agitation Commission, which at times directly reported to the Central Committee’s Agitation Department—had to cope with the disadvantage of not having the routines, experience and especially the staff of the Central Committee departments. The Agitation Commission, for example, headed by Albert Norden—probably the most capable propagandist and media influencer in the GDR—even had a kind of competence in setting the guidelines for East German media.34 But even this relatively strong commission could only steer its policy field to a limited degree. The consultations held at Central Committee headquarters for commission members were devoted less to debating strategic questions than to hours of discussion about the weekly “argumentation instructions” sent to East German media.35 Even Albert Norden, the commission chairman, thought the amount of paper used for these voting procedures was “downright obscene.”36 And then, in the fall of 1964, when the commission was finally poised to exert an influence on the structures of the GDR’s media system—they’d been given the task of drafting a development plan for the East German press—it suddenly had to “pass,” as it did not have the necessary “manpower” to come up with such a complex plan, which required agreements with the ministries of machine building and foreign trade among others.37 In March 1965 the Agitation Commission was formally stripped of its powers by Politbüro decree and accorded a mere advisory function.38 There is no question that Erich Honecker welcomed the “death” of this commission—and that of the Western Commission that was simultaneously deprived of its authority to issue instructions.39 He didn’t think much of “debate clubs” at Party headquarters. Keeping Moscow in mind had also become superfluous, since the Ideology Commission there was on the brink of being dissolved after Khrushchev’s ousting, with the likelihood that others might follow.40 But probably just as important as the objective of eliminating the commissions as “places of discussion” within the apparatus was the fact that these commissions were ultimately foreign bodies in a Central Committee apparatus whose political influence was increasingly based on administrative routines. It was precisely these routines that the commissions lacked on account of their predominantly honorary membership. The Party reforms of 1963 would remain an isolated episode for similar reasons.

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“Party Work According to the Production Principle” The SED party reforms of 1962–63 and 1964–65 were closely linked to the key reform project of the late Ulbricht era: economic reform, the so-called New Economic System of Planning and Management of the Economy (NES). They marked the greatest break in the formal structure of SED party headquarters and took place, as usual, following the lead of the CPSU apparatus. CPSU General Secretary Khrushchev had always reacted to economic setbacks by impulsively expanding the control of his party apparatus over the economy.41 The “introduction of the production principle in Party work,” adopted by the Central Committee of the CPSU in November 1962, was one such response. Faced with a difficult economic situation, Khrushchev focused the Party apparatus wholly on economic control. The party reform of the CPSU had the sole aim of adapting the structures of the CPSU apparatus to a new priority: economic management. Weakening the apparatus was the last thing Khrushchev had in mind. Ulbricht, for his part, who launched “his” party reform at the “suggestion” of Khrushchev in November 1962, likewise had no intention of curtailing the “influence of the fulltime Party apparatus.”42 The Sixth Party Congress, where Ulbricht announced his economic reforms, took place in January 1963. The implementation of party reforms began at the same time. New decision-making bodies in addition to the secretariats were created at the regional and district levels, namely the “offices for industry and construction” and the “offices for agriculture.” Like the Politbüro commissions, these offices had not only fulltime Party functionaries working for them but also external specialists.43 Unlike the commissions, however, the offices had an “apparatus.” They had their own Party organs department made up of fulltime employees and which directed subordinate Party organizations—e.g., those of large factories—with no outside interference.44 In theory they were organs that could have robbed the secretariats of a great deal of their authority. But just as Khrushchev’s Party reform had unforeseen side effects,45 the theoretical side of Ulbricht’s reforms cannot be equated with political practice in 1963–64.46 The concrete effects of reform at the level of the Central Committee apparatus were not immediately visible. The only real difference was that two additional committees now met on a weekly basis: the Office for Industry and Construction and the Office for Agriculture. The occasional “external expert” was now involved in the discussions.47 The majority of those in the offices, however, were members of the Party apparatus, which is reason enough to explain the limited reform initiative of these offices. The offices, furthermore, were not independent organizations; they were merely decision-making bodies. The changes they brought were most likely to affect Central Committee employees belonging to an economic-policy department or the Department of Agriculture, as they now had to present their proposals to the head of the respective office and no longer to the Central Committee Secretariat.48 The daily

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work routines of the majority of Central Committee employees—who still answered to the Secretariat49—largely remained as they were. It is not true that Central Committee departments “in some instances only existed in a rudimentary form during the reorganization,”50 that is to say during party reform. While the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department did in fact lose twenty employees to the new Party organs departments created in the offices—division head Horst Ossi, for example, who in September 1964 became head of the Party Organs Department of the Politbüro’s Office for Agriculture51—the size of the remaining Central Committee departments hardly fluctuated at all during the party reforms of 1963–64.52 Things looked different at the regional and district levels, where departments were slated to be dissolved and their employees placed under the new offices. The pushback here was considerable, though. Employees of the regional and district secretariats felt blindsided by the pace of reform.53 They also perceived the decentralization brought about by the new offices as a loss of coordination.54 The office model did “not pay off at all,” concluded Horst K., for instance, who worked as second secretary in the SED district leadership of Löbau in the early 1960s. “It was chaos.”55 Resistance at the district level was recorded in detail by the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department and incorporated into analyses critical of the reforms that were regularly passed on to the Party leadership. As early as May, rapporteurs in the department came to the conclusion that the reforms had led to a “duplication of work” (Doppelgleisigkeit), with basic organizations now having to report to district secretaries as well as to the offices. This led to “mountains of paperwork.” Some members of the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department seemed to go out of their way to make sure that nothing good was said about the reforms.56 In September 1964, Hans-Joachim Rüscher57 reported the following to Central Committee economic secretary Günter Mittag, who at that time was an advocate of the reforms and the office model. He, Rüscher, as representative of the Politbüro’s Office for Industry and Construction, had had to work with employees from the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department to compile a report about the implementation of reforms in the Cottbus region. In so doing, the employees at the Party Organs Department had massively tried to present the offices for industry and construction at the district level in a bad light while enhancing the image of the secretariats. According to Rüscher, all positive examples of work in factories, work with analyses, etc. were portrayed as having taken place under the direction or at the behest of the secretariat of the regional leadership. The secretariat [was always] the sovereign leader and the office was held accountable whenever something didn’t work out.58 Mittag took revenge in his own way on the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department. In a report on a seminar “about current issues regarding the implementation of the NES” that he sent to the Central Committee Secretariat in November

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1964, he noted that two employees of the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department had shown “a certain reluctance to scrutinize their own behavior.” The two men had supposedly refused to participate in the seminar’s final project. The topic of the project was “What is my understanding of an optimal plan?”59 The actual nail in the coffin, however, when it came to the offices and party reform in general was not so much these running battles. The decisive factor was that Ulbricht himself, as 1964 wore on, eventually shied away from focusing the Party apparatus too intensely on economic policy. He did this less as a concession to the ideologically motivated opponents of reform around Erich Honecker,60 and more because economic reforms had failed to produce tangible results in the short term. The more the SED focused on economic policy, the more it could be held responsible for its failure.61 Walter Ulbricht’s much-cited remark at the Seventh Central Committee Congress in December 1964 that the SED “is not an economic party” makes more sense in this context.62 This is the reason the Politbüro instructed its offices for industry and construction to refrain from direct economic steering and focus more on “ideological work.”63 In early 1966 the offices formally disappeared from the organigrams of the Party apparatus. They were no longer mentioned in the new work regulations of the Central Committee apparatus of June 29, 1966. The “heyday of commissions” and the establishment of offices for industry and construction are part of the search for optimization that has characterized the organizational history of the central SED apparatus (and of course the CPSU apparatus as well) ever since its founding. In the 1960s it oscillated back and forth between being a purely political “mobilizing organization” and a bureaucratic “superstate.” The commissions and offices were ultimately the attempt to better integrate the apparatus through new horizontal organs on the one hand—and thus to orient its activities more to its environment, to “mobilize” the apparatus as it were. But this greater focus on its environment necessarily led to Central Committee specialist departments “growing out of ” the organizational rationality of Party headquarters and “growing into” the economic field. Party reform was thus a “constitutively contradictory” undertaking,64 but not one that was bound to fail for this reason.65 In fact, the new structure failed less because of inherent contradictions than because of the unwillingness of both the Honecker and the Ulbricht “camps” to take the functional differentiation of their central executive seriously and in particular to focus its economic apparatus solely on economic steering. As it was, both camps thought the Central Committee’s specialist apparatus should be able to do both things: steer the economy and enforce the official discourse. This rendered superfluous an office model that emphasized the technical orientation of the economic apparatus and networked it more intensely with the state organs of economic steering. The pressure to adapt to a complex environment, understood as the actual driving force of differentiation in organizations,66 had naturally not been lifted from the apparatus—on the contrary. Thus, the end of Party reform was followed in the second half of the 1960s by a further—and final—wave of new departments being founded,

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essentially giving the apparatus the structure it would have until 1989. In January 1965, the Politbüro established a working group for “socialist economic management” that was subsequently elevated to the status of a department in 1967. Headed by Carl-Heinz Janson until 1989, it was mainly responsible for the Central Institute for Socialist Economic Management, which was likewise founded in 1965. The working group for “research, technical development and investment policy,” which became a Central Committee department in 1967 and was responsible, among other things, for basic research in industry, was likewise a product of the NES. It was headed by Hermann Pöschel, who had cut his teeth as an engineer during the Second World War at the Junkers aircraft factory. Pöschel was considered Günter Mittag’s “right-hand man” and confidant until the demise of the GDR.67 The General Department was founded in 1966, having hitherto been a division of the Office of the Politbüro. The department was comprised of interpreters and translators and served as a kind of liaison with CPSU headquarters.68 The SED propaganda apparatus was likewise affected by restructuring. As early as March 1963, the Politbüro decided at the behest of Albert Norden to turn the “foreign information” division—until then part of the Agitation Department—into a working group. Norden chose Werner Lamberz,69 a thirty-four-year-old FDJ functionary, to head the working group. Manfred Feist, the brother-in-law of Erich Honecker, took over the working group in 1966, which acquired the status of a department in March 1967.70 The Foreign Information Department profited from the fact that since the late 1950s the GDR and, more specifically, the SED’s agitation apparatus under Albert Norden had been waging a bitter media war with the Federal Republic focused on the Nazi past of West German functional elites.71 The Western apparatus as a whole capitalized on this development. As early as summer 1965, the Western Department under Heinz Geggel was given a “West Berlin” division,72 and in December 1966 the Central Committee Secretariat designated the Western Department as being responsible for “direct agitation and propaganda targeting West Germany,”73 having previously shared this task with the Agitation and Propaganda departments. The Department of Transportation—responsible, e.g., for smuggling West German KPD/ DKP comrades into the GDR and back—was given a new task. With Josef Steidl as its new division head as of 1965,74 it became responsible for the “Western enterprises” of the SED, i.e., the latter’s business ventures based in the Federal Republic.75 Accordingly, in the second half of the 1960s the department was given a new “West economy” division.76 Another new department was set up for telecommunications, which had previously been a division in the Office of the Politbüro. The new Telecommunications Department was founded in 1967, being placed under telecommunications engineer Heinz Zumpe. The move was undoubtedly pragmatic in nature, given the size of the former division: with seventy-six political and technical employees it was about as big as the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department.77 But security issues may have played a role as well. As chapter 5 will explain in more detail, in late 1966 a technical

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employee of the division, Gertrud Liebing, was arrested as an agent of the CIA. From the viewpoint of the MfS this was a serious security breach. Turning the telecommunications division into its own department aimed to facilitate its surveillance. It is also entirely possible that plans already existed at this time for what would come to pass in 1975, when Zumpe, having left the apparatus, was replaced by Heinz Lübbe, an “officer on special assignment” (OibE) working for State Security.78 In a sense the Stasi effectively got its own Central Committee department. One thing is for sure, and that is that the Telecommunications Department henceforth followed a rigid policy with regard to Western contacts. In the course of 1967 all Central Committee employees had had to sign a new and stricter pledge to not have any Western contacts. Even “retirees living in the household” of a Central Committee employee were forbidden from that point on from receiving visitors from the West.79 But most parts of the apparatus pretended to be “more liberal than in other institutions.” “If the Central Committee hired you despite having relatives in the West,” as Carl-Heinz Janson put it, “they never asked you about it later.”80 That said, a division head in the Telecommunications Department, Werner Bock, was dismissed in the summer of 1970 for having Western contacts, his relatives in West Berlin having attended his daughter’s wedding.81 This example shows that membership requirements as well varied throughout the apparatus, with one department having stricter standards than another when it came to Western contacts. The staff profile of the apparatus overall exhibited a certain differentiation, as discussed below in this chapter. But first, having examined the formal structures of the apparatus in the decade of reform, let us now have a look at the informal ones or, rather, at the factors that characterized this period.

The New Central Committee Building The transformation of the formal and informal structures of the Central Committee apparatus during the 1960s literally took place in a new framework—that is to say, in a new building. Since the mid-1950s, auditors in the ZRK had repeatedly bemoaned the “splintering” of the Central Committee apparatus. They were referring to the organizational structure of Party headquarters but could have just as well been describing the spatial distribution of its departments. Indeed, in 1956 only a small number of Central Committee employees had their offices in the House of Unity on Wilhelm-Pieck-Strasse (now Torstrasse) 1, a former department store built in the 1920s that served as of 1933 as the headquarters of the Hitler Youth.82 Other departments were housed on Wilhelm-Pieck-Strasse 3–7, and the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department was located on Weydinger Strasse 26. In the first half of 1955, the Security Commission of the Politbüro accelerated the decentralization of the Central Committee apparatus even more. After several cases of espionage it decided to move the Office of the Politbüro and the Department of Transportation to Weydinger Strasse 25 and Wilhelm-Pieck-Strasse 49, respectively, in order to reduce visitor contact with deliverymen and workmen as well as

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with “West German comrades.” All of these groups were thought to pose particular security threats.83 The Central Committee apparatus had outgrown the House of Unity, as it were, during the years of building socialism. But not until the late summer of 1958, in the context of sweeping plans to design a flagship “socialist boulevard” from Stalinallee to Brandenburger Tor,84 was the decision made to move the now roughly 1,600 employees into a larger building housing Party headquarters. A Politbüro proposal dated September 4, 1958 and signed by Otto Schön put forth a concrete plan to move into one of Berlin’s biggest spaces: the building complex on Unterwasserstrasse 5–10 and Kurstrasse 36–51 at Werderscher Markt, which had hitherto been the headquarters of the East German Ministry of Finance.85 The building was originally built as the headquarters of the Reichsbank. Its lateral facades stretching several hundreds of meters and its compact seven-story structure lent it a massive, fortress-like impression. The building’s size and features were nothing short of megalomanic. It was the second-largest building in Berlin, after Tempelhof airport. In the 1950s it had about one thousand rooms covering a total of 25,700 m2 (nearly 277,000 ft2), not including the sixth and seventh floors—where among other things the kitchens and cafeterias were located—or the basement. There were eighteen meeting and conference rooms spread across the first five floors. The biggest of these, the congress hall on the ground floor, offered room for eight hundred people; the smaller plenary hall would be the future location of Central Committee congresses.86 The basement had parking spots for 150 cars, as well as room for vaults, the film office and several firing ranges. Two armories were also set up here in the 1960s: one for handguns, rifles and submachine guns for the two hundred-man combat groups of the Central Committee, the other for employees of the Stasi’s Main Department for Personal Security (HA PS), which provided for the building’s security.87 The new Central Committee building had its own power plant and two turbines that supplied it with electricity, making it independent of the Berlin power grid.88 It also had a combined heat and power plant which provided heat to the German State Opera, a printing press, a telephone switchboard, an outpatient clinic and a waterworks that continually pumped out the groundwater seeping into the basement.89 As Otto Schön wrote in his proposal to the Politbüro, the new building could “fully accommodate the apparatus of the Central Committee . . . and under better conditions” than before.90 There were even ninety rooms left over for the regional leadership of Berlin, whose employees moved into the southern portion of the wing on Kurstrasse where they had their own meeting and dining halls.91 In the years and decades that followed, the Big House, as it quickly became known in Party jargon, became a symbol of Party rule, and this for SED comrades as well as for the East German population in general. Even passersby, who approached the sentries of the Stasi’s “Feliks Dzierzynski” guard unit securing the perimeters, could plainly see that, as playwright Heiner Müller put it, this was a “maximum-security compound of the powers that be.”92 Visitors became aware of this at the latest once

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Figure 4.1. Headquarters of power, symbol of Party rule: As part of the festivities for the twentieth anniversary of the SED on April 19, 1966, Young Pioneers enter the “Big House” for the official congratulations. Source: ddrbildarchiv.de/Heinz Schönfeld. they reached the security checkpoint in the main entrance on Kurstrasse, where members of the MfS’s Main Department for Personal Security took down their personal information and, after conferring with a Central Committee member on the phone, issued them a visitor pass.93 Even fulltime functionaries were impressed by these Party headquarters in the heart of Berlin. “It was always something special,” to be summoned to the Central Committee from your district or region, according to Peter F. from his perspective as a former second district secretary. It was never an everyday experience, “there was too much mystique surrounding this place, this house on high with its tight security, where the Politbüro resided.”94 Inge H., an employee at the Party journal Einheit, had a similar impression: “I did feel a little strange,” she says, recalling her first day of work at Party headquarters in 1967, “a little queasy. Finally face to face with the Big House.”95 But the Big House was not only a symbol of Party rule. It was a social space as well, one whose characteristics informed the social relations inside it.96 The expansiveness of Party headquarters, for example, meant that employees could work there for years without ever getting to know the employees of other departments. “I had

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very few contacts,” says Renate Michalik, who as a staff member of the journal Neuer Weg had her office on the first floor on Unterwasserstrasse, “each person was in his own boat so to speak.”97 On the other hand, the move to the Big House meant that considerably more political and technical employees were now meeting in fewer places. The potential for informal encounters had multiplied. Cafés and cafeterias on a given floor were social spaces where staff could “mingle a little,” as one political employee puts it in retrospect. “You’d run into this or that person there, . . . over and over, and would get to know them a little.”98 In the big cafeteria on the fifth floor too, people from different departments would wind up at the same table. “Of course,” admits Renate Michalik, “you had contact with other people who . . . went to the cafeteria.”99 A shopping street on the ground floor—which was nothing unique to Central Committee headquarters but a typical feature of administrative buildings in the GDR100—included a fabric store, a grocery store, a café and a barbershop,101 offering additional spaces of encounter. More than anything, though, the new building made all the departments and areas of the apparatus potentially accessible to every staff member. Heinrich Krämer, for example, an employee in the Construction Department in the mid-1960s, says he routinely went from the fourth to the second floor to visit a friend in the Party Organs Department whenever he “had something on [his] mind.”102 Gertrud Liebing, a technical employee in the telecommunications division from 1959 to 1966, would occasionally take the paternoster to the fifth floor and bring a “small gift from West Berlin” (where her mother lived) to an employee of the union leadership (BGL). Liebing, in exchange, and much to the annoyance of the other technical employees there, “always got a vacation spot” through the FDGB.103 Others, like a secretary in the Office of the Politbüro, would “shirk her duties the entire day by hanging around in the offices of other department secretaries,” returning to her own department with all the latest gossip, e.g., that a particular secretary was expecting a child by a particular departmental head and so forth.104 The apparatus became more closely knit after the move. Despite the attempts of individual areas to isolate themselves, most departments saw, heard and knew more about each other than they did before. Informal channels of communication between departments expanded, and, unlike the period before 1959, the Central Committee building became a point of reference linking almost all Central Committee staff. To be sure, this shared reference point was not a static one. Just as Party headquarters as a space influenced social behavior, this space itself was the result of social behavior and as such was malleable. In a physical sense, this mutability is expressed in the fact that numerous reconstruction, renovation and new construction projects were always going on there simultaneously. It is of a piece here, then, that in 1970 the responsible departmental head, Günter Glende, requested that the twelve painters and three bricklayers working there be given permanent positions, since they had “always been busy working here” anyway “ever since we moved in.”105 The first reconstruction phases, from 1959 to 1962, focused on redoing the entire facade in Elbe sandstone and renovating the

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halls on the first floor for the plenary sessions of the Central Committee where the former cashier’s hall of the Reichsbank had been located. The second story was converted into the executive floor.106 Security measures also played a big role. Thus, immediately after the move in 1960, security checkpoints were set up at the basement entrances and in the underground passageway connecting the Central Committee building with the Berlin State Opera. In March 1967, lockers were installed in the entrance area of the Big House,107 where every staff member had to deposit his or her key when leaving.108 Only the plenary hall, which for years had been causing technical problems, was affected by the second phase of reconstruction. Participants at Central Committee meetings had complained about the draft, and film crews had battled with extremely poor lighting conditions. And so, in late 1966, the Central Committee Secretariat decided to fully overhaul the air-conditioning and lighting systems, investing 1.2 million marks to this end109—a fairly small sum compared with subsequent expenditures on additional construction measures undertaken following the transition of power from Ulbricht to Honecker, the third major phase of reconstruction, lasting until 1982. The Politbüro floor was completely remodeled and the offices of Politbüro members lavishly furnished. The latter now had floor-to-ceiling wood paneling, built-in cupboards and closets, filing cabinets and bookcases, all the woodwork being distinguished by a “modern, timeless design and choice veneered surfaces made of teak, cherry, Chilean beech or oak,” according to architectural historians Peter Kroos and Andreas Marx.110 In 1973, the Central Committee Secretariat approved over six million marks for refurbishment of the congress hall. After a report from Günter Glende in March 1973 that the kitchens had been “heavily infested with cockroaches” upon moving in in 1959 and that these pests had “now turned up on other floors in recent months,” the Secretariat agreed to a fundamental overhaul of the kitchens and dining halls as well.111 Another eighteen million marks were shelled out for this and the installation of a dropped ceiling on the first floor.112 This was followed by an addition to the Central Committee building towards Spittelmarkt meant to house “social facilities” for staff members, including the Central Committee polyclinic and preschool.113 In the 1970s, the MfS’s Main Department for Personal Security even maintained its own “construction group” at the Central Committee building whose task was to prevent “accidents” as well as “adverse practices” by workmen.114 The physical remodeling of Party headquarters brought workmen, Central Committee employees and the MfS’s construction group face to face with the history of the building. In February 1966, workmen found a pistol underneath the floor of an elevator that someone had apparently placed there in 1945—the gun fired when one of the workmen pulled the trigger to test it.115 As mentioned above already, in January 1973 electricians working on a cable shaft found parts of uniforms apparently stashed there by members of the Norge Regiment of the Waffen SS’s Viking Division.116 Finally, drawings were found on several basement walls of the Central Committee building clearly depicting high-tech equipment of the warring Third Reich: a V1

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rocket and a Me 262 jet aircraft.117 The Stasi employees investigating the find were not sure if they were the work of German soldiers in what was then the Reichsbank, defending the government district in April 1945, or if Central Committee members had made them. The latter seemed entirely possible, given the spate of little swastikas found carved into elevator and paternoster cabins as well as in toilet stalls as of October 1960.118 Other measures to restructure Party headquarters pointed to the future, or rather the digital age, which was beginning to take shape in the late 1960s. Extensive construction and cable work was carried out on the first floor of the Central Committee building’s west wing starting in the fall of 1968, the former reading room of the library being converted into a new, 775 m2 (8,342 ft2) data-processing center.119 In early 1969, employees of the Robotron electronics company and the Party’s building contractor, Fundament, began the installation of a Robotron “R 300” there—by Soviet-bloc standards, a state-of-the-art mainframe computer newly developed by the state-owned company VEB Elektronische Rechenmaschinen Karl-Marx-Stadt.120 This entailed setting up the forty-five cabinets housing the computer as well as putting in new power lines and water pipes—the later diverting the cooling water back into the Spree River—in addition to which a ventilation system was installed along with a new elevator.121 Once the computer was up and running—on the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the GDR, as planned—Party headquarters had the requisite hardware of a veritable data center with the new R 300 and an older Gamma 10 model manufactured by the French company Bull.122

An R 200 for the Big House As early as November 1968, the Central Committee Secretariat decided to set up a data-processing division in its Party Organs Department. The staff plan was a generous one, providing for forty-five employees in 1969.123 With the introduction of the “three-shift system” on the R 300 in September 1970, an additional fourteen staff members were added “for data capture [and] the archiving of data carriers.”124 The Central Committee Secretariat appointed Karl-Heinz Steuer, one of the GDR’s top EDP experts, as division head. Steuer had been pivotal in introducing computer technology to the Leuna chemical works in the course of economic reform.125 It is likely thanks to Steuer that the Party apparatus of the SED was up to speed in the years that followed in terms of the latest computer technology available in the GDR. The first desktop computers were purchased in 1981, and by 1987 there were thirty of them in operation on a trial basis.126 In the mid-1980s, the Central Committee data-processing center got a new ES EVM mainframe computer,127 and in 1988 radiation-proof rooms were set up in the Central Committee building for the processing of documents of a “confidential classified” (VVS) and “secret classified” (GVS) nature.128 Finally, in late 1988, the MfS’s Intelligence Department (Abteilung N) was given orders by the Central Committee to set up a kind of local area network in the Big House—a “user solution in the form of a local network for secure

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messaging and office communication.”129 To be sure, this early LAN system was never fully implemented. From the late 1960s on, Party leaders had extravagant expectations about what EDP could deliver. It would provide a whole new foundation for “Party management,” or so they hoped.130 One expression of this was a series of talks aimed at the whole of Central Committee staff. In the fall of 1969, for example, Karl-Heinz Steuer lectured on the R 300 while an employee from the Central Institute for Socialist Economic Management gave a talk on the “problems of EDP-compatible information and documentation.”131 But the track record of computerization was ultimately mixed. Like many other state organizations in East and West alike, the Central Committee’s division for data processing had to abandon projects that turned out to be dead ends.132 One of these was a project devoted to “resolution storage.” EDP was expected in this case to help solve an efficiency problem at Party headquarters, namely its hundreds of resolutions—the Central Committee passed up to two thousand a year, the Politbüro up to six hundred133—dozens of which had no effect whatsoever if only because they were lost in the shuffle.134 The aim of the project was to store all decisions reached by the Central Committee, the Politbüro, and the Central Committee Secretariat in machine-readable form. This would help make it easier to “quickly retrieve resolutions” rather than letting them fall into oblivion.135 The energy invested in this project alone by the EDP division was enormous. After every meeting of the Secretariat and the Politbüro, the resolutions made there were recorded on punch tape by means of a typewriter. The tape was then fed into the R 300. As of 1969, a total of twenty thousand resolutions passed between the Sixth and the Eighth Party Congresses—that is to say, between 1963 and 1971—were stored in this manner. But no one in the apparatus apparently had the time to attend to overlooked resolutions. In any case, said EDP application was “used relatively little by Central Committee departments,” the Party Organs bemoaned Department in 1972.136 Thus, on January 1, 1974, the project was discontinued.137 The same went for a project on “basic-organization reports” mentioned above in chapter 3. District secretaries saw little benefit in evaluating the reports of basic organizations at the data centers of regional leaderships, which resulted in the district level being flooded with tables and statistics. A real breakthrough, however, in the view of the Party Organs Department was the so-called cadre project, which gathered into a database a wealth of biographical data on leading cadre of the Party apparatus (from foreign-language skills and practical work experience to disciplinary measures taken by the Party). The database enabled cadre managers to search in a targeted way for potential candidates suitable to this or that position.138 In 1974, employees in the EDP division stored on magnetic tape the cadre profiles of 3,700 nomenklatura cadre of the Central Committee as well as of 13,000 political employees of the SED regional and district apparatuses.139 They had thereby created a “very helpful tool for managers,” in the opinion of cadre experts at the Central Committee and regional levels.

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The project on “membership flow” was likewise assessed positively. The long-term goal of this project was to collect data on all of the nearly two million members and candidates of the SED in 1970, from their age and number of years in the Party to their political past prior to 1945.140 Available evidence suggests that SED organs did in fact use this instrument. In early 1973, for example, seven district leaderships in the Erfurt region made inquiries with the data centers of their regional leaderships in the run-up to Party elections with the aim of identifying all members of their district Party organizations who were under fifty and had attended a Party school for at least three months, these individuals being deemed eligible for elected office.141 Several new categories were added to the database on “membership flow.” By the mid-1980s, 295 pieces of information could be entered about each member or candidate of the SED.142 And the complexity of this database was further increased by repeatedly linking it up to other data banks. In 1972, for instance, programmers in the data-processing division integrated the EDP project on the Central Party Control Commission so that any Party disciplinary measures were noted in the records of each individual.143 In 1980, the identity numbers introduced for all citizens of the GDR in the mid-1970s were added to the approximately 2.3 million records now in the database. The explicit goal in this case was importing “data from the GDR’s external data funds,” e.g., from the data repository on individuals in the GDR, the “workforce data repository” of the ministries and regions, the “social-insurance data funds of the FDGB,” etc.144 What had led in the Federal Republic to considerable social insecurity with warning cries of an “Orwellian state”—the creation of a “transparent citizen” through the networking of separate databases145—at about the same time was accomplished by the SED leadership more or less in passing with regard to its employees and members. The “transparent comrade,” of course, was not merely the product of a dawning information age but of the endless hunger for information and control on the part of communist Party apparatuses. But the prospect of obtaining more and new kinds of information on comrades and cadre was indeed an early motive for the SED’s computerization projects. Thus, as early as 1969, employees in the Central Committee’s Department of Cadre Issues had planned as part of a cadre project to make a record of trips abroad to capitalist countries. They had hoped to establish, “for example, the frequency of trips abroad . . . and particular points of concentration.”146 The organizational development of Party headquarters in the “long 1960s” was marked by the dual concepts of “stabilization” and “differentiation.” If in the early 1960s there are still reverberations of the “hysterical bustle” of the decade of building socialism, then the move to a new Central Committee building signalized stabilization. Even the Party reforms of 1963–64 unsettled the apparatus much less than the organigrams of those years would suggest. At the same time, the ideology and specialist departments came into their own as relatively independent units of the apparatus. The discord and differences they may have experienced, e.g., regarding the value of “Party work,” were less an indication that ideology was of varying importance in different areas of the apparatus. Rather, they point to the fact that, due to

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differentiation in the apparatus, tensions existing in a functionally differentiated East German society as a whole were increasingly reflected in internal conflicts within the apparatus.147 Similarly, the establishment of new departments in the late 1960s and the introduction of EDP point to an ongoing specialization of the apparatus at odds with its organizational objective of political homogenization. The staff development of the 1960s underscores these tensions even more.

Staff Development Viewed from the perspective decades, the staff development of the central SED apparatus seems to be a story of continual growth. Only two significant attempts were made between 1946 and 1989 to reduce the number of employees. The first of these was the abovementioned Politbüro resolution of January 1957 to streamline or “simplify” Party work. This resulted in a reduction of ninety political employees by the end of 1958.148 But these cuts were quickly cancelled out with the founding of new departments starting in 1959 and in light of the “new and complicated tasks” set for the apparatus by the Fifth Party Congress. Hence the actual number of political employees in the Central Committee rose from 580149 to 729150 between mid-1958 and late 1961. The second attempt was made in 1961, in the context of efforts to increase efficiency in the apparatus through new work regulations and assessments of working hours. This time Party leaders seemed determined. In October 1961, the Department of Cadre Issues complained that the Central Committee apparatus had added forty-three employees measured against the previous year. It was “unacceptable that regional and district leaderships had to reduce their staff while the apparatus of the Central Committee was growing.”151 Already in early 1961, the Central Committee Secretariat instructed departmental heads to draft new structural plans for their departments with significant staff reductions. In May 1961, the Secretariat established a working group that spent the entire summer discussing with departmental heads their suggestions for downsizing. In some cases, when the requested staff reductions failed to materialize, the discussions were “harsh”—with Albert Norden, for example, who saw “no possibility” of letting go any of the forty-two employees working in the Western Commission.152 Even the smallest working groups and departments—those for sports, church issues and “friendly organizations,” each of which had only five to seven employees—successfully resisted these downsizing efforts. The same went for Politbüro members and Central Committee secretaries who refused to give up their own staff or secretaries. This notwithstanding, in January 1962 the working group submitted a new departmental structure to the Secretariat entailing cutbacks of 110 political and 138 technical employees.153 Though not a radical reduction, it was nonetheless felt in every department. If we view the development of Central Committee staff numbers after 1961, however, the cuts were merely a minor dent in an otherwise steady upward curve.

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Diagram 4.1. Membership development of the Party organization of the Central Committee, 1956–70. The number of members in the Party organization of the Central Committee, for instance, only fell by 86 individuals (from 2,282 to 2,196) between the end of 1961 and the end of 1962. By the end of 1966, there were 69 more members (2,351) than at the end of 1961.154 The number of political employees in the Central Committee apparatus grew from 654 at the end of 1964155 to 745 at the end of 1968. Finally, by the end of 1971 there were 783 political and 1,105 technical employees at Party headquarters—a surplus of 54 political and 232 technical employees compared with 1961.156 It should not be forgotten that these figures date from the early Honecker era, which brought even more albeit moderate staff increases. To be sure, not all parts of the apparatus profited equally from these job gains. The specialist departments in particular showed only modest growth. Some even remained at the low levels brought by the downsizing campaign of January 1962—the Department of State and Legal Affairs, for instance, which in 1961 had thirty-one political employees but only twenty in 1968. The same went for the Department of Agriculture, which had forty-six political employees at the end of 1961 but only thirty-three by the end of 1968, clearly reflecting the completion of collectivization in the early 1960s. Only one specialist department had significantly grown between 1961 and the end of 1968: the Department of Security Issues, increasing its staff from twenty-one to thirty individuals. But the pacesetters of staff growth in the late 1960s were the functional departments, just as they had been in the 1950s. In the

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new data-processing sector, for example, at least forty new employees were hired since the end of 1968. The telecommunications division, too, exhibited job growth, as did the typing pool in the Office of the Politbüro. Above all, though, the sizable Administration of Economic Enterprises Department expanded exponentially. From 1961 to 1966 it acquired no less than 100 new technical employees, and in November 1970 an additional 111 permanent positions were added.157 The chauffeur division alone had 232 employees according to the staff plan of 1970, including 170 drivers, responsible for the operation and maintenance of almost 700 cars and a dozen buses.158 According to the staff plan of the 1970s, there were 68 (as opposed to 47 in 1961) electricians, plumbers, carpenters and painters working for the Central Committee, and the Central Committee’s polyclinic now had 50 (as opposed to 38) doctors, nurses and other staff. The job gains in the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department are indicative of “autogenerative” staff growth in the Central Committee apparatus during the decade of reform.159 The areas responsible for technical and social infrastructure profited in particular from these new hires. A somewhat different picture emerges if we widen the comparative framework and compare the situation in individual areas of the apparatus in 1968 with analogous figures in 1953. In this case we see a growth of specialist departments and a relative decline in importance of ideological ones. The functional departments, on the other hand, remained at about the same level. The functional departments expanded their share of overall staff numbers in the Central Committee between 1953 and 1968, from 48 to 57.5 percent.160 The considerable growth of the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department (still known as the Business Department in 1953) was compensated in part by losses to the Cadre Issues and Party Organs departments compared with their predecessor, the LOPM Department.161 The specialist departments, by contrast, comprised 35.5 percent of all political employees in 1968 (compared with 26.7 percent in 1953) at least in terms of target levels. The ideological departments, for their part, made up only 26.5 of all political employees in the apparatus in 1968, declining from 37 percent in 1953.162 Admittedly, this development does not mean that ideological questions were less important in the 1960s than they were in the early 1950s. The specialist departments, after all, were also organs of ideological transfer. Our concern here is something else though, namely fluctuations in the share of Central Committee employees who were working in fields that were not, or not exclusively, subject to the Party’s claim to political homogeneity, in which subsystemic internal rationalities persisted. In this respect the findings are unequivocal. Relatively speaking, in 1968 there were considerably more Central Committee members working in fields such as health care, the chemical industry or foreign trade rather than organizing Party schooling or supplying the GDR’s press with “lines of argument.” The opposite had been the case in 1953. This notion of an increasingly specialized central government is of a piece with the stabilization of staff in the Party apparatus as of the late 1950s. In the late 1950s, staff

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Table 4.1. Employees in Central Committee departments as of April 30, 1968.i Groupii

Functional departments

Department

Technical employeees

Total

General Department

7

2

9

Union leadership/ Party organization of the Central Committee

3

7

10

Office of the Politbüro

16

93

109

Telecommunications

26

49

75

Financial Administration and Party Enterprises

15

25

40

Cadre Issues

18

28

46

Party Organs

44

33

77

8

607

615

Central Auditing Commission (ZRK)

11

4

15

Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK)

17

5

22

Subtotal

165

853

1,018

Agitation

36

31

67

Agitation Commission

6

4

10

Friendly Organizations

5

1

6

24

5

29

8

2

10

10

2

12

4

5

9

Culture

18

4

22

Neuer Weg (journal)

18

5

23

Propaganda

20

5

25

5

1

6

Education

16

3

19

Science

28

5

33

Subtotal

198

73

271

Administration of Economic Enterprises

Einheit (journal) Women Youth Ideological departments

Political employees

Church Issues

Socialist Military Training

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Construction

15

3

18

Research and Technical Development

9

4

13

Health Policy

13

4

17

Trade Unions and Social Policy

13

3

16

Basic Industry

22

4

26

Trade, Supply and Foreign Trade

19

4

23

Agriculture

29

4

33

Light, Food and Regional Industry

21

4

25

Machine Building and Metallurgy

25

4

29

Planning and Finance

26

5

31

Security Issues

25

5

30

Socialist Economic Management

7

2

9

Sports

6

2

8

State and Legal Affairs

18

7

25

Transport and Communication

15

3

18

Subtotal

263

58

321

KPD Working Office

8

5

13

Transportation

17

3

20

Western Department

41

15

56

Subtotal

66

23

89

Foreign Information

8

2

10

International Relations

45

16

61

Subtotal

53

18

71

Total

745

1,025

1,770

Notes i. All figures are target employment levels. While records do exist for the actual employment levels on April 4, 1968, in this case I have used target levels to enable a comparison with January 1, 1953, as actual employment numbers are unavailable for this period. In 1968, the actual number of employees was usually slightly lower than the target. The discrepancies, however, are not so pronounced as in the 1950s. Die Angaben nach SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9157, fol. 73. ii. It is important to note here once again that the assignment of departments to groups is somewhat arbitrary. The goal is not an exact classification per se, but an approximate quantitative assessment of individual task areas within the apparatus.

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Diagram 4.2. Recruitment and attrition in the Central Committee Party organization, 1952–70. turnover was one of the biggest problems at Party headquarters from the perspective of the Cadre Department.163 By the mid-1960s this problem was thought to have been solved. In the mid-1950s, recruitment and attrition in the Party organization of the Central Committee still affected 20 to 30 percent of staff—in 1952–53 as much as 30 to 40 percent. By the mid-1960s the figure had dwindled to 10 to 14 percent. In 1967–68, recruitment and attrition levels had dipped to under 10 percent for the first time in the history of the apparatus.164 This stabilization is illustrated even more clearly by the fact that the average term of employment was rising. In 1955, political employees in the Central Committee apparatus had been working there for three years on average. In 1959 it was five years, in 1965 eight, and by 1970 ten years on average.165 Shifts in age structure fit this picture of continued stabilization. In 1955 the average age of political employees in the apparatus was thirty-seven. By 1959 it had risen to forty, and by 1970 to forty-five years. Similarly, the share of political employees between the ages of forty-one and fifty rose from 18.9 percent in 1959 to 52 percent in 1970, while the share of those thirty-one to forty sank to 50 and 28.4 percent, respectively.166 Employees under the age of thirty had all but vanished from Party headquarters: in 1959 they still made up 12.9 percent of political employees, whereas by 1970 they only accounted for 1.3 percent—or four as opposed to the forty-five employees working there in 1959. Within a mere ten years there had thus been a major shift in age structure among Central Committee members. This was not only due to fewer people being hired and

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Table 4.2. Age structure of political employees in the Central Committee, 1959–70. 1959 (N = 350)

1965 (N = 346)

Age

absolute

30 and under

45

12.9

31–40

175

50

159

41–50

66

18.9

51–65

63

18

over 65

1

in percent

0.2

absolute 8

in percent 2.3

1970 (N = 321) absolute

in percent

4

1.3

46

91

28.4

116

33.5

167

52

56

16.2

46

14.3

7

2

13

4

employees remaining at their posts for a longer period of time; it was also because employees joining the apparatus in the 1960s were considerably older upon being hired than their comrades hired in the 1950s had been. Employees hired between 1950 and 1953 were 33.4 years old on average at the time of entering employment at the apparatus. By comparison, those newly hired between 1966 and 1970 were thirty-eight years old on average when they signed their employment contracts with the Central Committee.167 This development was the result of a cadre policy introduced in the second half of the 1950s that strongly focused on hiring employees not just on the basis of their “Party and life experience” (as the Secretariat put it in 1958) but increasingly insisted on specific sets of skills as a condition for their employment. This explains the social and biographical profile of apparatus employees hired in the 1960s. This group was first of all marked by an even more pronounced “disappearance of Old Communists” (and former Social Democrats) than attested to in the 1950s. In 1959 their share was about 25 percent, which in 1965 had dwindled to 19 percent and by 1970 had reached a new low of 9 percent.168 The share of Old Communists was therefore roughly equal to that of Central Committee employees who had belonged to the Nazi Party, the Nazi stormtroopers (SA) or the SS prior to 1945 (though usually in their youth), comprising a good 8 percent in 1970.169 Most of these individuals had managed to conceal their Nazi past.170 Otherwise men such as Walter Borning, head of the Department of Security Issues, or Fritz Müller, head of the Cadre Department—both of whom had joined the Nazi Party in 1939—would never have occupied the positions they did. The few employees who openly admitted to their Nazi past sometimes had it catch up to them, even decades later. In 1975, Gertraud Hentschel, for example, was not promoted to the position of cadre clerk in her department because she had joined the Nazi Party on April 20, 1944.171 Günter Glende—who as head of the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department considered himself the “secret king” of the Big House—was almost brought down in

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the 1960s by the information that before 1945 he had been a lieutenant (and not a sergeant as he had claimed) in the ground personnel of the 3rd Fighter Wing of the Luftwaffe.172 In the end State Security decided not to use it against Glende. Granted, Party leaders never showed an excessive desire to investigate all too deeply the Nazi ties of their employees. Not even during Albert Norden’s “bloodjudge” campaign devoted to outing the Nazi ties of prominent West Germans were the former lives of the SED’s own leading cadre investigated—despite the fact that West German journalists were beginning to show an interest in the former careers of higher-placed East German and SED functionaries. Investigations by the MfS also seldom concerned employees of the Big House. The case of Hans W., a political employee in the Department of Transportation whom State Security identified in 1963 as a former member of the SS Totenkopf division, remained an exception.173 This evident disinterest might well be interpreted as a psychological mechanism of repression. But it does in fact reflect an actual shift in interests: namely, that by the early 1960s formal education and the stages in one’s career before entering the apparatus were now far more important in evaluating a prospective employee than his or her experiences prior to 1945. This represented a far-reaching change compared with the late 1940s, when the bulk of employees in the Staffing Policy Department were busy gathering information on the pasts of Central Committee employees.

Academization and Professionalization Chapter 2 showed how since the early 1950s cadre policymakers endeavored first and foremost to increase the share of formally and professionally qualified employees in the apparatus. The path to this objective was an arduous one. In the 1950s, cadre with a college degree were regularly transferred to where they seemed to be needed most—to factories or regional secretariats.174 Thus, the Department of Cadre Issues observed in July of 1958 that Central Committee “cadre with a university education” had gone down from 106 in the previous year to only 77 (from 16 to 13 percent).175 The development reversed, however, as of the late 1950s. One reason for this was that the intelligentsia and higher-education policies of the SED were now bearing fruit and a “new intelligentsia” loyal to the system was beginning to take shape. The members of this group were certainly attracted by the prospect of a career in the Party apparatus.176 By the fall of 1961, the share of Central Committee members with a university education had more than doubled in comparison with 1958, from 13 to 28.7 percent.177 By the late 1970s, almost 50 percent had a college degree. The share of graduates from technical colleges, which in the early 1950s was higher than university graduates, increased at the same time, albeit to a lesser degree, from 9 percent in 1954 to 19 percent in 1979.178 In this respect, and given the many caveats with regard to the “cult of education” in the Party and state apparatuses of the GDR,179 one can rightly speak of an academization of the Central Committee apparatus. Admittedly, this process of academization did not necessarily translate into a more efficient or capable steering organization.180 A college degree was not the only prerequisite. More important was the practical experience that new hires had acquired

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in managerial positions in the state or economy. And it was precisely these qualifications that the employees joining the Central Committee’s specialist apparatus in the 1960s had—in addition to having graduated from a university and, naturally, a Party training school. It was this, the combination of academic training and management experience, that made all the difference between those who entered the Central Committee in the 1960s and their predecessors recruited in the 1950s. This difference can be illustrated by taking a closer look at the career paths of a few representative individuals. Günter Mittag, who was hired by the Railroad, Transport and Communication Department in 1952 at the age of twenty-six, was typical of the group that joined the Central Committee during the 1950s. Though Mittag was a trained railman, he had neither attended college nor did he have any political experience let alone the technical qualifications to head the Central Committee department he took over in 1953.181 Günther Wyschofsky, who joined the Department of Basic Industry in 1953 at the age of twenty-four, did have a degree in chemistry but had failed to gather any managerial experience in his few years working as a chemist at VEB Plasta Espenhain. The new recruits of the 1960s offered a very different picture. Herbert Hoffmann, who joined the Central Committee’s Department of Light Industry in 1966 at the age of thirty-nine, was not only a graduate engineer but had also been a departmental head in the Ministry of Light Industry as well as a line manager in the State Planning Commission. Similarly, Günther Witteck, who joined the Central Committee’s Department of State and Legal Affairs in 1969 at the age of forty-one, had previously served as deputy minister in the Ministry of the Interior, where he was responsible for instructing regional and district councils.182 This change in the profile of employees working in specialist departments took more than just a few years, of course. As late as October 1963, Fritz Nowak, head of the metallurgy division in the Central Committee’s Machine Building Department, was removed from the apparatus for his “tendency to give special priority to technical problems,”183 a surprising criticism in light of Ulbricht’s “scientific-technical revolution.” In March 1969, the Central Auditing Commission (ZRK) criticized the Machine Building Department for not all of its employees having the “level” of skills needed to solve problems arising “in connection with the implementation . . . of the economic system of socialism.”184 Horst Wambutt, who joined the department in 1964, recalls that it was the “old guard of Party workers,” with no technical qualifications, who set the tone at first.185 The transformation began in the late 1960s. In 1967–68 alone, the Machine Building Department got six new employees, among them Erhard Kunath, a certified engineer who until 1967 had worked as a departmental head in the Ministry of Processing Machinery and Vehicle Construction. At the same time, “Party workers” moved from specialist departments into other functions—Heinrich Krämer, for example, who had come to the Central Committee’s Construction Department in 1963 despite his lack of professional qualifications (with the exception of a degree from the Party training school of the CPSU). His task there had been to oversee in-

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dustrial construction combines, but he took no “real pleasure” in his work, because “I noticed over and over that whenever it came to specialist and technical issues I simply lacked the experience, the knowledge just wasn’t there,” so that he finally switched to the position of second district secretary at his own request.186 A few years later, the Construction, Machine Building and Basic Industries departments—again according to Horst Wambutt, head of the Department of Economics—had “nothing but college graduates” working for them.187 With this shift in career profiles in the wake of the functional specialization of the apparatus, the latter’s specialist departments came more and more to resemble the specialist bureaucracies they were meant to oversee. The development of the Central Committee apparatus thus confirms a general trend of organizational development: that the differentiation of organizations usually results in their subsystems, in this case the Central Committee departments, finding that they resemble their “partners in the environment.”188 For the organization this means a “demolishing of boundaries” and a loss of coherence, but it also entails an increase in influence.189 Indeed, in the course of their professionalization and scientification, Central Committee departments did in fact forfeit some of their political exclusivity190 while gaining a significant measure of power and influence in return. The sociobiographical transformation of its staff therefore did more to bolster the status of the Central Committee apparatus as the center of government of the GDR than the many Politbüro resolutions positing the “leading role” of the Party. Horizontal channels of communication between the Central Committee apparatus and the state apparatus increased as the former became more specialized. By recruiting individuals for Central Committee departments who had already occupied management positions in the state and economy, the apparatus became considerably more networked. Every departmental head in the State Planning Commission or even deputy ministers who transferred to Party headquarters left behind a wealth of contacts in their former workplace—unlike the employees in the 1950s who were recruited directly from universities and therefore had no such network to fall back on when they entered the apparatus.191 By the same token, for employees of the Central Committee apparatus having greater professional credentials meant that they were now more qualified to be delegated from the apparatus into leading state functions. A new career pattern was taking shape in particular within the specialist apparatus: highly qualified mid-level state functionaries would transfer for a couple of years to the Central Committee apparatus and from there move on to top positions in the state apparatus. The literature to date has been dominated by the view that the Party and state apparatuses of the GDR represented two “parallel career corridors” that were relatively isolated from each other. Only briefly, in the late Ulbricht era, did the “Party apparatus career corridor” open up to “competent lateral recruits.” Conversely, it was always supposedly an exception when a leading Central Committee member left the apparatus to hold a high-ranking state function.192 The facts do not bear out this perspective. For one thing, the late Ulbricht era was not just a brief window of opportunity for the lateral entry of specialist functionaries

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into the Central Committee apparatus, but was merely the starting point for the professionalization of the apparatus, a trend which continued under Honecker. This can be shown with a view to the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry. In 1965, only three of its eighteen political employees had held a leadership function in the state before entering the Party apparatus. By 1980, nine out of twenty employees in the department had held such a position—as departmental heads, factory directors or planning directors—before joining the Central Committee apparatus.193 For another, Central Committee employees frequently transferred to the state apparatus.194 The situation in the Department of Security Issues—where “as of the mid-1970s there were hardly any employee transfers from the department back to positions in the troops, staff and outfits of the armed forces”195—seems to be the exception that confirms the rule here. The norm is described by Manfred Uschner, who points out that there was “a constant cadre rotation” between the Central Committee’s International Relations Department and the Foreign Ministry, and that the Central Committee department was a “launching pad for careers,” e.g., in the diplomatic service.196 This is also illustrated by the share of former Central Committee members in the Council of Ministers of the GDR. No less than ten of the twenty-five SED line ministers belonging to the Council of Ministers between 1976 and 1981 had held a senior position in the Central Committee apparatus for a number of years, in most cases immediately before being transferred to the ministry.197 In other words, several years of service in a Central Committee department, though not an absolute requirement, was clearly helpful. Certainly the networks between Party and state apparatus should not be overemphasized. The mere fact of having been employed at Party headquarters did not mean that ministers or state secretaries now only viewed the world from the perspective of the apparatus. Günther Wyschofsky is a case in point. From 1953 to 1962, Wyschofsky was an employee and eventually departmental head at the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry. As the minister of chemical industry, however, he was said to have shown “a huge aversion towards whatever the Central Committee said,” at least according to Christa Bertag, a former Central Committee employee.198 On the other hand, every departmental head, state secretary or plant manager who spent a few years working at Party headquarters must have seen the Central Committee apparatus with different eyes after returning to the state apparatus. They might have still continued to berate “the people from the Central Committee,” but nonetheless reached for the telephone to consult with “their” division heads, possibly a personal acquaintance, about this or that proposal or to gather valuable information from inside Party headquarters.

A Schism in the Central Committee Apparatus? Any discussion of the professionalization and academization of the central apparatus of the SED cannot avoid addressing the hypotheses of Peter Christian Ludz. As mentioned in the introduction, in the late 1960s Ludz predicted a transformation of SED elites, an all but inevitable development in his view given the Party’s preferred re-

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cruitment of technical and economic experts.199 This much is certain: what Ludz saw coming for the Party leadership—the Central Committee and its decision-making bodies, the Politbüro and Secretariat—soon became reality for the Party apparatus. The latter’s different parts—its ideological, functional and specialist departments— increasingly developed in divergent directions with respect to the qualifications and professional profiles of their employees. The share of college graduates in the specialist departments grew much more rapidly than in the ideological departments, for one thing. As of October 1, 1985, 95.5 percent of the employees at the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry had graduated from a university or technical college, 96.6 percent of those at the Machine Building Department, and a full 100 percent in the Department of Planning and Finance. By contrast, the proportion of graduates in the ideological departments was generally much lower: 50 percent in the Youth Department and 60.9 percent in the Propaganda Department, whereas only 40 percent of employees at the Department of Cadre Issues, a functional department, had graduated from a university or technical college.200 This difference of 30 to 40 percent is considerable. But can we extrapolate from this that—in line with the older discussion about the differentiation of elites under state socialism201—the apparatus was divided between loyal (Party) bureaucrats on the one hand and professionals with a higher education on the other? The answer here is no. First, because formal education did not necessarily result in specific attitudes and perceptual patterns.202 Not by a long shot did every science or engineering graduate become a pragmatic technocrat upon joining the Central Committee. Nor did the programs at Party training schools in Berlin or Moscow, frequently attended by employees in the Cadre Issues and Party Organs departments, churn out consistently loyal and ideologically reliable servants of the Party.203 On the other hand, the type of Party worker who had moved up the ladder via the FDJ and the SED apparatus was becoming rarer in the Honecker era. Already in the second half of the 1960s one had to look hard to find an employee in the Party Organs Department who fit the mold of a “classic” Party worker.204 Its employees included many so-called specialist functionaries: engineers or, as in the case of Harald Kohler (b. 1949), even math and physics teachers.205 Even in the departments more focused on ideological work the social spectrum was broadening in the 1970s and 1980s. Hans-Jürgen Danisch (b. 1946), like some of his younger coworkers in the Central Committee’s Agitation Department, which he joined in 1987 after several years as deputy director of the FDJ’s Wilhelm Pieck Youth Training College, came from the intelligentsia; his father was a dentist, his three sisters medical doctors. Danisch, who later advanced to the position of division head in his department, thus came from a milieu that Erich Honecker would have liked to “shoot to the moon” or “send to the lignite mines,” as he said once in a fit of anger in August 1981.206 Formal education and social background, in other words, were not a strong indicator of who became an “ideologue” and who became a “technocrat,” at least since from the late 1960s on. The dividing line and mutual misgivings between specialist and ideological departments that did undoubtedly exist (and increasingly so in the

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wake of the crisis of the 1980s) were less the result of the one group’s technocratic pragmatism and the other’s unconditional “beliefs.” The existing divisions were the result of the apparatus’s differentiation and the formation of “local rationalities,” of the fact that external events were assessed differently in, say, the Central Committee’s Machine Building Department than they were in the Cadre Department, seeing as the two departments had fundamentally different tasks and were embedded in different communicative contexts.207 Their different fields of activity and the partly different experiences resulting from this are the reason for the sometimes opposing perceptions of ideology and specialist departments, which were very conspicuous to outsiders and occasionally interpreted as being indicative of a schism within Party headquarters. Such was the case with a minor scandal on the occasion of the opening of the Autumn Trade Fair in Leipzig in September 1982, as recorded by an unofficial collaborator working under the code name “Renn,” an employee at Urania magazine with good contacts to the Central Committee apparatus.208 During the opening concert at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Stasi informer reported, the SED’s General Secretary Erich Honecker was sitting in the first row while the Soviet ambassador Pyotr Andreyevich Abrassimov had to make do with a seat in the second. This was a “questionable political decision” in the view of “high Party and state functionaries.” According to Renn’s report, this perspective was shared by Hubert Egemann, departmental head of the Central Committee’s Transport and Communication Department (“You just can’t do a thing like that!”),209 but not fellow departmental head Klaus Gäbler working in propaganda. In Renn’s account Gäbler supposedly claimed that “P. Abrassimov . . . is always pushing his way in and to the fore.” He was “so pushy he sometimes acted like a member of the Politbüro of the Central Committee of the SED and not like an ambassador of a socialist country on a friendly footing with the GDR. There is therefore nothing wrong in drawing the line somewhere.”210 In Renn’s depiction, Gäbler was playing the loyal “Party soldier” defending his General Secretary whereas Egemann was being the critical and detached economic functionary. In short, they typified two stereotypes increasingly used by outsiders to categorize apparatus employees during the 1980s. The key takeaway here, however, is that stereotypes like this, which former economic functionaries in particular willingly cultivated even after the demise of the GDR, did not mean that leading members in different parts of the apparatus before 1989 had fundamentally different views on ideological issues. The apparatus, after all, held together until 1989. The motivations inducing hundreds of men and women to join and remain in the Central Committee had a reinforcement effect. In line with the heterogeneity of the apparatus, the Party leadership offered its employees different incentives211 of varying importance to individual employee groups.

Motives of a Power Elite The key motivator for members of a Communist Party apparatus is commonly considered to be ideology. There can be no doubt that ideology played a vital role until

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1989, though probably in many cases reflecting a “consensual fiction”—the conviction that, since ideology was important to everyone else, one was better off sticking to the official discourse.212 For the majority of comrades, though, “material perks” and privileges were at least as important as the ideological conviction of personally witnessing the transition to communism. Chapters 6 and 7 will look more closely at the growing importance of this system of material incentives during the Honecker era. At this point I would like to briefly mention one other motivation that most Central Committee employees are likely to have shared regardless of whether they belonged to a specialist or an ideological department: the status accrued from being part of a social or political elite. According to the memoirs of Manfred Uschner, most members of the apparatus were motivated by the desire to really do “everything for the good of the people.”213 It was this mindset that supposedly held the apparatus together fairly well until the early 1980s. Wolfgang Herger, too, offered the selfimage of an elite that drew its legitimation from the services it rendered to society. As he explained to his colleague Dieter Mechtel in the late summer of 1986, it was “the greatest thing of all to enter the ranks of the Central Committee.” And with it came the obligation to “always and everywhere act as a role model.”214 Speaking in hindsight, Mechtel says that this moral ambition of Herger motivated him to carry out his tasks with even greater zeal in the face of the GDR’s evident decline. Value orientations of this sort are likely to have played a role for some employees. There is no doubt, however, that the awareness of most employees of belonging to an elite was more straightforward and not so grounded in a sense of moral responsibility. The key word here is that being in the Central Committee meant being at the very top. This self-image is illustrated by the view of one state functionary, recorded for posterity by unofficial collaborator “Renn,” that “Central Committee staff often behaved like ‘gods descending to earth,’” whereas Party leaderships for their part in many cases acted as if these comrades really were gods.215 Senior Central Committee employees also behaved with an undisguised and almost brutal awareness of their power. In June 1970, for example, a technician from the East German postal service sent to the Central Committee building to provide technical support for a conference got into an argument with Günter Glende, head of the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department. According to the postal employee, the conflict culminated with Glende’s outburst that the man didn’t “need to think at all in this house [because] we call the shots here.” It was “like in the army, orders being carried out with no discussion.”216 Thus, the images circulating in parts of East German society of “apparatchiks” obsessed with their power and out of touch with the people apparently had some basis in reality.

The Practice of Rule Throughout the entire 1950s, Central Committee departments encountered the limits of political practice. These limits took the form of self-assertive ministers and first

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regional secretaries, who might have been willing to negotiate with a Central Committee secretary but certainly not with a young Central Committee departmental head. By the late 1960s, these limits on their power had been overcome. Only very powerful ministers such as Erich Mielke could afford to ignore the Central Committee departments assigned to their ministries. From the perspective of top functionaries on the other hand, Central Committee departmental heads were now key political actors. The latter were at least on an equal footing with ministers, though usually had only fifteen to thirty employees as subordinates with no real authority, whereas a minister headed an executive organ typically with several hundred employees. The changing role of Central Committee departmental heads is particularly evident in the fact that they no longer gained authority on account of having once been antifascists. Rather, their power and influence were now linked to their position as departmental heads in the Central Committee of the SED. Gerhard U., who transferred to the Central Committee apparatus in the mid-1970s, said that in the ministry he had had to put up with “more criticism from below or next-door than as deputy [Central Committee] departmental head. My authority . . . was greater . . . as a deputy departmental head. I was beyond criticism, so to speak, I was sacrosanct, because whatever I said was the Party line.”217 Central Committee heads had upped their official and functional authority and with it their political power. A prerequisite of this development was the organizational stabilization of the apparatus, the positive effects of which were now gradually becoming apparent. Apart from becoming more accustomed to bureaucratic procedures, this included most notably the abovementioned longer periods of employment of senior apparatus members in particular. Between 1953 and 1959, Josef Hafrang, state secretary of construction, had had to deal with four successive heads of the Central Committee’s Construction Department: Ernst Scholz, Herbert Spalteholz, Alfred Schwanz and, as of 1959, Gerhard Trölitzsch. The fact that Trölitzsch would go on to head the department until 1989 can perhaps be interpreted in hindsight as an indication that the apparatus was “stagnating” in the Honecker era. In the 1960s, however, this kind of continuity meant first and foremost that a departmental head could accrue functional knowledge and hence increase his influence. A considerable boost in authority was provided moreover by the professionalization of the apparatus described above. “Anyone labelled an ‘agitator’ in economic circles,” said Central Committee departmental head Carl-Heinz Janson after the fact, “couldn’t count on commanding much authority.”218 Conversely, Central Committee employees who had work experience as engineers or plant managers enjoyed a certain prestige in factories. Peter F. believes that his experience as a foundry worker helped him a lot as a Central Committee instructor in the region of Karl-Marx-Stadt, “because no one”—at least in the foundries—“could dupe me when it came to technical matters.”219 Functional and technical authority were two sources of power that Central Committee departments had more and more of thanks to the stabilization and profes-

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sionalization of the apparatus. As of the 1950s they acquired a third source of power that in the long term proved to be the most pivotal: the de facto competence to determine who filled management positions in the policy fields these departments were responsible for.

Party Headquarters as a “Cadre Kitchen” In the early 1950s it became particularly apparent in the field of cadre policy that the Central Committee apparatus was not yet able to play the role that Party leaders had envisioned for it. The cadre nomenklatura system introduced on the “recommendation” of the Soviets in 1949–50 did give Central Committee departments considerable authorities at least in theory. They now had an influence in the appointment of functionaries for hundreds of mid-level and senior leadership positions—departmental heads in the ministries, factory managers in industry, senior editors, university professors, etc.220 In practice, however, they rarely took advantage of this potential influence.221 This was mainly because the departments did not yet have a “cadre reserve” at their disposal—that is to say, a list of candidates who were ready to occupy these “individually defined higher functions,” e.g., in construction or internal security.222 “There is no targeted cadre policy for the creation of a cadre reserve,” concluded the Central Auditing Commission (ZRK) in May 1956 with regard to the Department of Security Issues.223 The system of control nomenklatura,224 introduced by Party leaders in the mid-1950s and revised in 1957, was slow to be adopted by the departments. Furthermore, dozens of senior positions in all policy fields were filled without the help of the Central Committee apparatus. In November 1958 the ZRK noted that several departments had “not even defined the range of functions to be included in the control nomenklatura.”225 In the summer of 1959 it also wrote in a review report on the sports working group that there was “no systematic cadre work” in the latter.226 The working group, it said, did not even have an overview of the leading functionaries in the German Gymnastics and Sports Federation. As late as February 1960, Central Committee secretary Alfred Neumann complained that Central Committee Departments had a “very sketchy knowledge of the skills of their cadre.”227 Improvements were on the horizon, however. Not surprisingly, the MfS division in the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues began in 1958 to formulate “cadre development plans” for senior cadre in State Security, albeit in cooperation with the MfS’s Main Department for Cadre and Training and the SED district leadership within the MfS.228 In late 1960, the ZRK confirmed that overall there was “a positive development” in Central Committee departments, pointing out their cadre work in particular.229 In August 1961 it reported about the Central Committee’s Department of Trade, Supply and Foreign Trade, saying its “control nomenklatura” had “for the most part been established” and that a “cadre reserve” was “in place” though “not sufficient in every respect.”230 In fact, Central Committee departments were no longer merely rubber-stamping the cadre proposals of the ministries, as seems to have

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often been the case in the first half of the 1950s. They increasingly engaged in intense negotiations231—like those in October 1959 between Gerhard Trölitzsch, head of the Construction Department, and the Ministry of Construction resulting in the agreement on eleven senior positions in the German Academy of Architecture alone.232 By the late 1960s, it seems that Central Committee departmental heads had become the linchpin of cadre appointment in a given policy field. One indication of this is a request addressed by Dieter Klein—an economist and director of the Institute of Political Economy at Humboldt University in Berlin—to the head of the Central Committee Science Department, Johannes Hörnig. Klein wanted to hire Klaus Korn, an education economist (and cofounder of the Central Institute for Youth Research in Leipzig), at the university. Efforts to recruit him had failed on account of Korn’s employment at the Ministry of Education and the fact that minister Margot Honecker was reluctant to let him go. So Klein put his hopes in his “dear Comrade Hörnig,”233 who appeared to be partly successful. Korn did resign from the Ministry of Education but went to the Academy of Sciences rather than Humboldt University. He was nonetheless an honorary professor of economics at the university until 1989. The powerful position of the Central Committee apparatus in the field of cadre policy was shored up further in the 1960s by several senior Central Committee members transferring to a ministry and heading a cadre department there. Alfred Schwanz, for example, head of the Central Committee’s Construction Department in the 1950s, became cadre director in the Ministry of Construction. Siegfried Wagner, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture, had taken over the cadre division in the Ministry of Culture as early as 1966, which he found in a “deplorable state,” as he complained to Kurt Hager.234 Finally, Werner Leonhardt, division head in the Department of Basic Industry, became cadre director in the Ministry of Chemistry in 1970; once there, he often sorted out cadre issues directly with his former comrades in the Central Committee department he used to work at. In a number of cases, he did this without “coordinating with us in advance,” or so the irritated comment of an employee at the MfS’s Main Department XVIII/1.235 The expansion of “cadre policy” as a sphere of influence and the professionalization of Central Committee members were processes taking place in the 1960s against the backdrop of Ulbricht’s reforms. They would have guaranteed the central apparatus an important position even if Ulbricht really had been trying to reduce the influence of the apparatus. There is little evidence of this, however, beyond a few peeved remarks by the First Secretary about the “departmentalism” and “bureaucratism” of the apparatus.236 Despite their different political styles, the SED’s Party rule without a central apparatus was just as unthinkable for Ulbricht as it was for his successor Honecker. Like Honecker, Ulbricht was an “apparatus man,” who, at least until the early 1960s, was more likely to take part in discussions with Central Committee departments than to sit down at sessions of the Politbüro commissions he (supposedly) held in high regard237 or to have an exchange with scientists or practitioners.238 Indeed, Ulbricht’s agenda after the Fifth Party Congress did not entail any loss of influence for

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the central apparatus.239 On the contrary, the reforms and the political processes they unleashed played a key role in expanding the influence of the apparatus, turning it into the “superstate” it represented in the Honecker era. SED leaders in fact took a range of deliberate measures to increase the clout and efficiency of the Central Committee apparatus after the Fifth Party Congress. In the fall of 1959, a delegation of Central Committee employees visited Moscow to “study the Party work of the CPSU.” All political employees of the apparatus had to read the delegation’s report by the end of December 1959 and make suggestions for improving their own working methods.240 The ZRK actually intensified its audits in 1959–60, with the result that Central Committee departments were accused of a tendency towards “indifference, complacency and liberalism.”241 The new work regulations of 1962 were also aligned with the aims of greater efficiency and influence. The same goes for the introduction of the “performance principle”242 in the Party apparatus’s salary regulation of April 1960. Finally, the substantial investments in the Party apparatus’s new radio relay network under construction since 1959 do not exactly suggest that the apparatus was intended to play a subordinate role. A Politbüro resolution of July 1960 had an outsize effect on strengthening the Central Committee apparatus. The resolution was linked to the domestic-policy and economic crisis that paved the way for the erection of the Wall and the second, “inner founding” of the GDR as of the spring of 1960,243 and can be understood as an amendment to the directive of October 17, 1949 that made all state bills subject to the approval of the Politbüro.244 This Politbüro resolution in a sense regulated the inverse path of legislation and norm-setting. It stipulated that “all resolutions of the Central Committee or the Politbüro of the Central Committee of the SED concerning state activities shall be submitted unmodified to the Council of Ministers.”245 Given that there was zero likelihood the Council of Ministers would reject a Politbüro proposal, it is fair to say that—after this resolution, if not earlier—the former had become an executive organ of the latter. Political and economic resolutions of strategic importance, e.g., the program started in the summer of 1964 to “implement machine data processing in the GDR,” were now typically passed twice: first by the Politbüro, then by the Council of Ministers.246 The fact that Politbüro resolutions had de facto force of law only strengthened the role of Central Committee departments as gatekeepers controlling access to the center of power. This was all the more the case as Party leaders were simultaneously sending out signals that what it perceived as the “pronounced division between the Party and the state apparatus” had to be overcome—this “division,” of course, referring to the supposedly excessive autonomy of the ministries. The signals did not go unheeded. Employees at the Department of Trade, Supply and Foreign Trade, for example, concluded their “suggestions for improving the work of Central Committee departments” in the spring of 1960 as follows: “If no progress is made, the Party must step in to manage the state and economy.”247

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A Policy Actor on the Rise: The Central Committee’s Health Department The effects of this change in course towards subordinating the state to the Party can be illustrated with regard to health policy. On the one hand, the field of healthcare was strongly marked by subsystemic rationalities. Increasing complexities resulting, for instance, from medical progress could not be offset by hospital directors or professors of medicine having a “firm class standpoint.” On the other hand, the field was immensely important politically in the view of Party leaders. Because if your family doctor went to the West on account of poor working conditions or pay in the East, even the most loyal citizens found it hard not to pin the blame at least in part on the misguided policies of the Party and state. The influence of the Central Committee apparatus on state health policy was weak until the late 1950s—presumably weaker than that of any given departmental head in the Ministry of Health.248 This was not self-evident, as the ministry was headed by a CDU minister (Luitpold Steidle) and by 1953 had come under massive criticism from Party leaders as well as the medical profession, and this increasingly so as doctors continued to flee to West Germany.249 But the health division in the Central Committee’s Department of Labor, Social Services and Health did not behave as a political actor; at best it acted as a “watchdog” of the Party, reporting on the miserable morale of medical practitioners, giving the minister “recommendations,”250 and once even freely admitting that it only had a minor influence on the “medical intelligentsia.”251 The division’s political effectiveness was further curbed by the fact that it included only one medical doctor, division head Rudolf Weber—who, incidentally, was one of the few high-ranking Central Committee members whose Nazi past was no secret at Party headquarters.252 Weber’s counterpart in the Ministry of Health was state secretary Jenny Matern. Politically beyond reproach, Matern, who was not a physician by training and had been installed in the ministry primarily in a supervisory function for the SED,253 was at least on equal terms with the head of the Central Committee’s Department of Labor, Social Services and Health.254 The founding of an independent Department of Health Policy in 1959 spelled a fundamental change in this power figuration. The department quickly developed into an independent entity in the field of health policy, or to use the terminology of policy analysis: it became a policy actor.255 The fact that the department had four medical professionals was very significant, as these individuals were capable of offering detailed and knowledgeable criticism of bills and other regulations put forth by the ministry.256 It is evident here that, from the perspective of the line ministries, the professionalization or scientification of the Central Committee apparatus did not always result in pragmatic and harmonious cooperation. Central Committee members with technical expertise could in fact cause more problems than classic “Party workers,” the latter being particularly concerned that draft legislation always took the most recent Central Committee congress into consideration. It was in this vein that health minister Ludwig Mecklinger complained to a Stasi member in early 1987 that

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“in his opinion . . . there are too many doctors and not enough Party workers in the Department of Health Policy.” This made “cooperation sometimes very difficult.”257 The close ties of the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy to the medical profession meant that some East German medical specialists assumed the role of lobbyists, becoming “spokespersons of the outside world in the system.”258 Thus, in December 1960 the Politbüro approved a joint proposal of the Ministry of Health and the Department of Health Policy to found a Medical Association—the professional representation long demanded by medical practitioners—and reintroduce certain medical titles abolished in 1945 (Sanitätsrat and Medizinalrat, roughly: medical consultant and medical officer).259 At the same time, however, the new Central Committee department increased “Party influence” on the ministry; the weak leadership of the minister and his deputy diagnosed by the MfS seemed to have facilitated this.260 Hence, in the course of the 1960s, the ministry was faced with a deluge of “proposals” and “recommendations” from the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy, each of which had the potential to tie up a considerable amount of the ministry’s resources. In November 1962, for example, departmental head Werner Hering called on Minister Sefrin to finally do something to improve their ability to assess the demand for pharmaceuticals in the GDR. This was a particularly sensitive topic from the Party’s perspective given the acute shortfalls of medicine after the Wall went up.261 In January 1963, Hering proposed a legal regulation on the “removal of tissue parts from the deceased,”262 and in July 1964 he presented the health minister with a comprehensive evaluation of heart surgery in the GDR compiled by his Central Committee department. Cardiologists, Hering concluded, were “blithely operating away” even outside the three heart centers in the GDR, because the ministry had neglected to steer them to other areas, “e.g., lung surgery.”263 Also in the area of private treatments the ministry, in Hering’s view, was much too passive. In September 1967 he therefore recommended to Kurt Hager “that the minister of health should be instructed [by the Politbüro] to submit a plan to gradually phase out private treatments.”264 Hering was asking Hager for a decision from the Party leadership that would have been binding for the minister (in accordance with the Politbüro resolution from July 13, 1960). This example shows that when a Central Committee departmental head wanted to, and if, as in the case of Hager, there was a senior Central Committee secretary above him who was open to such requests, he or she could very well initiate landmark political decisions. That the actual political practice was more complicated in many instances will become apparent in chapter 6. But for now the example of private medical treatments shows that departmental heads at least had an option of imposing their will on a minister. No such option had existed in the 1950s. In the early 1970s, the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy outgrew its role as an incentive-giving supervisory body and grew into that of a “supergovernment” of the ministry.265 Hering, his deputy Weber, and Erich Fischer, the division head responsible for medical science, initiated in the wake of Honecker’s

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“unity of economic and social policy” and in close coordination with the ministry a health-policy program that was turned into law with the “joint-decision” of September 25, 1973.266 It provided for a considerable expansion of medical care and benefits for the insured, which the department implemented rigorously in some cases in the years that followed—the requirement, for example, issued in 1975 that the MfS procure 1,700 new orthopedic beds within a year. Since the ministry’s budget did not have funds for this, the responsible main departmental head, Christian Münter, suggested converting 1,100 normal hospital beds into orthopedic ones. In Hering’s view this represented a “deviation from the Party line.” He demanded that Minister Mecklinger publicly criticize Münter,267 the main departmental head, in front of all senior employees of the ministry and said that, should it happen again, Münter would be removed from his post. But Hering had even bigger plans. His goal, by all appearances, was to merge the Party and state apparatus in the field of health policy. According to a report in the summer of 1977 submitted by a Stasi informer highly placed in the Ministry of Health, “Comrade Dr. Hering” was planning “to appoint his deputy, Comrade Dr. Fischer, as state secretary in the Ministry of Health. Comrade Prof. Dr. Seidel from the Charité Psychiatric Clinic is to be the new head of the science division and the new deputy of Comrade Hering.”268 Seidel, for his part, was to one day succeed Mecklinger, as Hering mentioned to the latter casually. With his confidant Fischer as state secretary in the ministry, Hering could have pursued a “faultless” health policy. It didn’t quite come to this, as chapter 6 will show. But Hering’s ambitions are striking proof that at least some Central Committee departmental heads were by no means content doing the legwork for Party resolutions and monitoring their implementation, as prescribed by the work regulations of the Central Committee apparatus. They wanted to play an active role themselves in shaping these policies. The expansion of Party rule in the field of health policy may have been facilitated by a favorable set of circumstances: a newly founded Central Committee department under pressure to perform, now face to face with a ministry headed by a member of the CDU bloc party. Here, more than in other policy fields, the Party could also claim to be responding to the needs of the “working people.” And yet the trend towards expanding the political influence of Central Committee departments was visible in all policy fields. As of 1958, the economic-policy departments in particular became increasingly important under the new economic secretary, Erich Apel, and in the course of economic reform.

Reformers vs. Dogmatists? On the eve of Ulbricht’s trio of reforms—Party reform, economic reform, as well as the liberalization of cultural and youth policy—the political influence of the Central Committee apparatus was greater than ever before. The question therefore arises as to how its senior employees positioned themselves vis-à-vis these reforms—and if, as Monika Kaiser argues, they adopted an inhibiting if not openly hostile stance. The

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assumption here is that this position was not an ideological issue for most Central Committee members. Their attitude towards reform did not hinge upon whether or not they adhered to an orthodox Marxism-Leninism. The attitudes of “the apparatus”—or, rather, its individual parts and departments—towards reform can probably be better understood by adopting a rational-choice perspective.269 This perspective calls attention to the fact that individual parts of the apparatus stood to gain differently from the policy of reform. The attitude of Central Committee employees, i.e., of departmental and division heads, towards reform depended upon how these reforms reinforced their own influence and the significance of their respective policy field. Members of the economic-management or ideological departments might very well have come to entirely different conclusions at first. For the economic-policy departments, economic reform meant even more power. Following the Sixth Party Congress in January 1963, the departments fell even more into the role of actors initiating economic-policy processes.270 They were innovators with respect to implementing the NES. Even in the introductory stage in 1963, employees of the Central Committee’s economic departments organized seminars to explain the reform program to economic functionaries,271 and were frustrated to encounter their passive resistance. According to an assessment of the Central Committee’s Department of Planning and Finances, members of the National Economic Council in particular did “not understand” the reform concept. They were therefore “not competent,” from the Central Committee’s perspective, to explain it to subaltern levels. In general, claimed Günter Mittag at a meeting of the Politbüro’s Office for Industry and Construction in January 1964, the National Economic Council and the Ministry of Finance were “fighting tooth and nail against the economic system.”272 Throughout the reform process, the economic-policy departments of the Central Committee performed a controlling function. They investigated the unexpected effects of reform, such as the considerable increases in profit made by some associations of state-owned enterprises and combines (VVBs) in 1965 once self-management had been introduced.273 The reform line, of course, was prescribed by the small circle of economists around Walter Ulbricht, among them Erich Apel and Günter Mittag, Walter Halbritter and Herbert Wolf, the latter a professor of political economy.274 In practice, however, at meetings and factory visits, it was often Central Committee employees who urged state functionaries and general directors to adhere to the NES line. In the case of unexpected profits, Central Committee departmental head Siegfried Böhm, among others, tried to appeal to participants at a conference of the National Economic Council in July 1965: “The New Economic System” after all, he said, meant “more planning and not more self-reliance”!275 At least as important was that members of the Central Committee’s economic departments collaborated on the practical aspects of reform, primarily in the larger VVBs in which certain elements of the NES were introduced in an exemplary fashion. This was the case with Horst Wambutt, who entered the Department of Machine Building and Metallurgy in 1964 at the age of thirty. In 1964–65 he was deployed “for longer periods—often

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ten, fourteen days at a time”—at VEB Schiffsbau Rostock, a shipbuilding company that was one of the first industrial enterprises in the GDR to get a mainframe computer. Test runs were carried out there for months on end with the ZRA 1 model. Wambutt fondly recalls this “era of optimism.” They worked into the night, developing “grandiose plans on the chalkboard and sticking up notes”—just like he saw them do in the West German companies he was allowed to visit as an assistant at the Institute for Social Sciences and as a specialist for chemical plant construction.276 At this level, he recalls, there was no opposition to reform—“we all knew that something had to change in the economy.”277 The optimistic mood did nothing to alter the fact that the Central Committee’s economic-policy departments were under a lot of pressure to make the NES a success. In this regard, the abovementioned credo of the apparatus also applied to them: “If no progress is made, the Party must step in to manage the state and economy.” The departments thus sought and found new ways to ratchet up the pressure on reform skeptics in the state apparatus. Much more than before the reform years, the departments used the Party organizations of the State Planning Commission, the National Economic Council and the ministries to leverage pressure for increased control and guidance. In November 1966, for example, Siegfried Wikorski—speaking with a certain authority as a Central Committee member with a doctorate in economics—explained to the basic organization of the State Planning Commission’s Department of Research and Technical Development that the latter was partly responsible for the “slackening tempo” of the NES. “You fellows,” said Wikorski, “are not tackling the real problems!”278 The Party secretaries in the ministries were also perceived more strongly as representatives of Party headquarters during the reform decade—the Party secretary of the Ministry of Heavy Machinery, for example, whom Minister Zimmermann, himself critical of the reforms, suspected of “stirring up opinion against him in the Central Committee.”279 Similarly, in the mid-1970s, senior cadre in the Ministry of Health considered their Party secretary, S., to be a mouthpiece of their “super-government,” the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy. In the staff meeting at which Minister Mecklinger obediently criticized main departmental head Münter, who had fallen out of favor with the Central Committee, it was the Party secretary who, according to one Stasi informer, spoke out against Münter with a “spiteful undertone” and accused him of having “subjective ideas.” Those in the ministry were certain he was following Hering’s cue.280 This impression hardens further by adding into the equation the Central Committee’s Party organizers, who as of 1964, in the wake of economic reforms, were systematically employed as sources of information and as representatives of the Central Committee’s economic apparatus in large factories. The Central Committee economic departments had no reason to oppose the reforms. On the contrary, they used the very argument of having to implement the reforms against the will of the state to expand the control and steering instruments that, as of the second half of the 1970s, gave the “economic dictatorship” of Günter Mittag its relative effectiveness.

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There is no question, of course, that Central Committee departmental heads such as Horst Wambutt and Karl Hengst, Gerhard Trölitzsch and Hermann Pöschel came to regret the Ulbricht reforms once Honecker came to power. There was certainly an “NES generation” of economic-policy departmental heads who helped keep the GDR’s economy strongly oriented towards the West during the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, however, these reform-oriented “professionals” were for their part likewise convinced that the Party’s “help” was needed to increase economic performance.

Dance Music at Christmas For employees in the Central Committee’s ideological departments, the reform period was less promising than for their comrades in the economic apparatus. While the “ideologues” and “Party workers” in the apparatus may not have been trying from the very start to undermine the reforms, as Monika Kaiser assumes, it is true that Ulbricht’s reforms were constantly accused of neglecting “organizational” and “ideological work.” The criticism was multifaceted. It began with diagnoses examining the state of affairs at the Party’s grassroots level. The Central Party Control Commission reported, for example, in February 1964 that the view is still very much present among many members and even functionaries . . . that, after August 13, 1961 and the victory of socialist relations of production, the struggle against antagonistic ideology is only of secondary importance . . ., [that] the political-ideological struggle . . . by Party leaderships has slackened.281 As early as the second half of 1963, Party control commissions at the regional and district levels had detected “serious symptoms of indifference and a lack of discipline” among regional Party functionaries.282 The Central Party Control Commission highlighted the case of the office for industry and construction in the district leadership of Grimma as a particularly egregious instance, as its members had failed to “bring to a principled conclusion discussions . . . with comrades celebrating on June 17, 1963.”283 In addition, the Science Department, upon auditing several universities during these years, came to the conclusion that there was “a lack of faith in the power of the Party and the working people”—at the German Economic Institute (DWI), for example, whose employees accused the Politbüro of having an “arch-reactionary cultural policy.”284 To ideological policymakers at Party headquarters, such descriptions of the state of the Party seemed to justify countermeasures. The preview of Problems and Power by Peter Hacks at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in September 1962—a highly controversial play whose planned performance was a clear indication of a liberalization of cultural policy—was therefore followed by a week-long debate. Kurt Hager, the Central Committee’s cultural secretary, and his dogmatic predecessor Alfred Kurella lashed out against the play and more specifically against the theater’s artistic director Wolfang Langhoff. In January 1963, the play was once again banned as it had been in

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1959. In March 1964, the Central Committee Secretariat determined—surely under the influence of Honecker—that the NES was lagging behind due to “ideological constraints.”285 Though Ulbricht’s abovementioned statement at a Central Committee Congress in December 1964 that the SED was “not an economic party”286 served to exonerate the Party from responsibility for a potential failure of the NES, “Party workers” and ideological policymakers such as Erich Honecker and Horst Dohlus, Kurt Hager and Alfred Kurella could just as well interpret it as a confirmation of their own course. As of spring 1965, the Central Committee Secretariat headed by Honecker took active measures against the effects of the liberalization of cultural policy. By summer at the latest, a whole range of employees in the Central Committee’s departments for security issues and Party organs, education and culture were busy writing up reports on supposed instances of immoral or deviant behavior among young people (fights, rebellious behavior towards teachers, alleged rapes).287 Then, in the fall, it was supposedly taboo-breaking artists that came to the fore. In October 1965, for example, members of the Central Committee Department of Culture condemned Manfred Bieler’s play ZAZA, calling it a “disgusting and shamefully lousy work” that was “hostile to the Party and state.” In November they were already wondering if Wolf Biermann—who had just, for all intents and purposes, been banned on November 1, 1965, from performing by the FDJ288—could somehow be deported from the GDR.289 The question of just how “disgusting” and “shameful” members of the Department of Culture actually found Bieler’s play is impossible to answer in retrospect. What is certain is that the greater importance attached to ideology as of 1963–64 strengthened the position of the ideological departments and increased their political influence. Just how much control the “ideologues” in the apparatus had after the Eleventh Plenary, the “clean-sweep plenary”—at which Party leaders wanted to set a warning example for artists and intellectuals, prohibiting a dozen of that year’s DEFA film productions alone290—is evident in the case of Inge Schmidt, a thirty-three-yearold political employee in the Agitation Department. Schmidt was in charge of the State Broadcasting Committee. The latter’s employees, according to one informer’s report, evinced a highly “skeptical attitude towards the resolutions of the Eleventh Plenary” if not viewing it “as a relapse into Stalinism.”291 In this context, Schmidt called the deputy director of the State Broadcasting Committee, Reginald Grimmer, a few days after the plenary, “asked about the Christmas program and voiced [his concern about] whether it was necessary to broadcast the scheduled Christmas songs. In her opinion it made more sense to broadcast dance music . . . . Moreover, she spoke out against Handel’s Christmas oratorio”—which “infuriated Comrade Grimmer,” according to another informer’s report.292 And yet there is no doubt that Central Committee employees such as Inge Schmidt were not just “cogs in the wheel” carrying out strict orders. She and her comrades developed their own initiatives and actively worked on the Party’s cultural-policy U-turn. This is evident in a meeting in

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June 1966 between members of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture and “comrades from the [East] German Writers’ Union, the Ministry of Culture and our Party’s regional leadership in Berlin.”293 The topic of the meeting was how they should deal with artists Stefan Heym, Wolf Biermann and Manfred Bieler now that the Eleventh Plenary had ostracized them. Opinions varied on Heym and Bieler. There was general agreement on Biermann, however: “All participants,” reported the head of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture, Wagner, to Kurt Hager afterwards, were “of the opinion that Biermann . . . must not be allowed to remain in Berlin any longer.” But that wasn’t all. Wagner promptly inquired with legal experts at the Central Committee’s Department of State and Legal Affairs whether there were “sufficient legal grounds to expel Biermann from Berlin”—and the answer was yes. What’s more, he knew how to proceed. The petition for his expulsion had to be lodged with the “responsible state prosecutor in the municipal district where Biermann currently lives” and by the Main Administration of Publishers in the Ministry of Culture. “The comrades in the Department of State and Legal Affairs,” Wagner asserted, would provide “support in a mediating capacity.”294 In the run up to and after the “clean-sweep plenary” in December 1965, the “ideological workers” of the Central Committee apparatus seemed to be completely in their element, rigorously enforcing a dogmatic line, punishing dissenters, and coercing leading state functionaries. The scene from In Times of Fading Light quoted at the start of this chapter—the social annihilation of “Comrade Rohde” who had dared to make disparaging remarks to a West German colleague about the state of East German historiography—may seem somewhat overdone with its “pig-faced” Central Committee member. There is no denying, however, that the Central Committee’s Science Department conducted show trials of this sort in the aftermath of the Eleventh Plenary. At the same time, the notion that an ideological “bloc” formed during these years that ultimately predominated over the pragmatic economists in the apparatus and that dictated where the apparatus was going until 1989 needs to be relativized here. For one thing, the “ideologues” in the apparatus were less homogeneous and probably less dogmatic than the opinions of the Department of Culture on Bieler’s play ZAZA would suggest. The preview in September 1962 of Problems and Power by Peter Hacks at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin is once again an indication of this.295 Though pushback from hardliners like Alfred Kurella was hardly surprising, at least one employee in the Central Committee’s Department of Culture, Hans Grümmer, got behind the production. Hacks, reported Grümmer after the performance, was “essentially correct in his depiction” of the process of historical development and above all “understood the role of the Party.”296 And during a “poetry evening” moderated by Stephan Hermlin at the Academy of Arts in East Berlin on December 11, 1962, another Central Committee employee behaved in an ostensibly unusual way. When a controversy threatened to erupt between Hermlin and Neues Deutschland

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editor Willi Köhler, it was Willi Lewin, a member of the Central Committee’s Agitation Department, who arbitrated. Lewin praised the “new poetry” performed at the event and expressed his understanding for the audience’s vehement criticism of the newspaper and its cultural supplement.297 Grümmer and Lewin were by no means “reformers,” but neither were they dogmatists untouched by social change. Horst Sindermann, head of the Agitation Department, went on record in January 1963 when he made some remarks criticizing the “cult of personality” around Walter Ulbricht.298 Hans Hensmann, deputy head of the Agitation Department, was removed from the apparatus on December 14, 1965, after the Eleventh Plenary and demoted to the position of editorial secretary at the Berliner Zeitung, supposedly for allowing “distortions of the Party line” in several magazines.299 Finally, Kurt Turba, who advocated for a liberal youth policy as head of the Politbüro’s Youth Commission, claimed in retrospect that, when forced by Honecker to justify himself before the Central Committee’s Party activist group, he was greeted with applause from a third of the staff.300 Monika Kaiser reads this scene as an expression of ideological unity among anti-reformist apparatus members. Yet given the considerable pressure to conform weighing on Central Committee members at that particular moment in history, the scene might very well demonstrate the opposite: a fault line within a center of power that truly was divided over the question of how much it should give in to social change as opposed to suppressing it.

Conclusion In the course of the 1960s, the decade of reform, the Central Committee apparatus definitively and irreversibly burst the constraints that, at least sporadically during the 1950s, had been meant to keep it in check and tie it to its roots as a Party apparatus in the narrow sense. The periodic attempts to homogenize the structure of the apparatus subsided. The Party reforms as of 1963 were no longer about “simplifying Party work,” as propagated in the previous decade, but aimed to further adapt the apparatus to a complex environment. Even after the end of Party reform in 1965 and a renewed emphasis on “Party work,” Central Committee departments were brought in line with the state institutions they were meant to steer politically. They adapted themselves to their environment—to the rationalities of heavy industry or the media system of the GDR. This made them more efficient and they saw their political influence grow, but it also gave rise to tensions at Party headquarters of the kind that existed in state institutions. These tensions in the latter were described, in the terminology of the ruling discourse, as “deviations,” “insufficient adherence to the Party line [mangelnde Parteilichkeit],” etc. And yet they ran deeper than the “faith” or lack thereof of individual employees. They beg the question of to what extent a functionally differentiated steering organ is capable of being politically homogenized at all. And they foreground the problem of to what extent the “inner barriers” erected during the process of differentiation

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jeopardized the unity of the apparatus—or, rather, the question of which factors were ultimately responsible for its holding together in the end. Paradoxically the differentiation of the apparatus was one of these integrative factors. It would in fact be short-sighted to only see centrifugal forces at work in the conflicts between departments with a more ideological orientation and more practical-minded “economic functionaries.” Rather, this conflict shows that in their day-to-day work the departments with an ideological focus and those with an economic one must have succeeded pretty well in avoiding the rationalities of the other or possibly even finding commonalities. In the words of Horst Wambutt: “At the end of the day, we all wanted the Party to survive, wanted the system in the GDR to be stable, and for this to happen the [ideological departments] worked just as hard and showed the same interest [as we did in the economic ones].”301 Instead of there being a showdown between “ideologues” and “technocrats,” they adhered to a modus vivendi. The respective “local rationalities” of the ideological and economic departments were ultimately so different from each other that they did not see the interpretive framework of the other side as a challenge to their own modes of perception. Its organizational differentiation helped the Central Committee apparatus to a certain extent overcome its inner contradictions. Certainly this “decoupling” of subdivisions within the apparatus made it necessary to commit all Central Committee employees to a formal structure in order to guarantee a certain cohesion.302 This formal structure—the work regulations, official rules, formal membership requirements—had to bind employees together in a way that shared interpretations of reality or emotions could only achieve to a lesser degree. Contemporary witnesses recall that the inner discipline of the apparatus intensified in various fields in the 1970s and 1980s. This development does not merely signify the backwardness of the Party leadership, but also the coupling of differentiation and formalization. This picture of a more rigid course with respect to discipline and disciplinary measures was accompanied, in the view of some historical witnesses, by the supposedly growing influence of State Security on Party headquarters during the Honecker era. Was its influence in fact growing—and, if so, why? The following will attempt to answer this question in yet another systematic longitudinal study.

Notes 1. Eugen Ruge, In Times of Fading Light: The Story of a Family, trans. Anthea Bell (Minneapolis, 2013), 128–29. 2. Kurt Umnitzer, who attempts here to oppose Comrade Ernst, is the fictional alter ego of Wolfgang Ruge (1917–2006), the author’s father. Upon his return from a Siberian prison camp in 1956, Wolfgang Ruge was given a position at the Academy’s Institute for History in Berlin. The Party meeting depicted here took place at this institute. 3. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 46. 4. Malycha and Winters, Die SED, 192.

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5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

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See most recently ibid. 159–65, 192. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 134. Decker, 1965, 152, 303. Merl, “Kapitel III: Entstalinisierung,” 251. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 173. Quoted in ibid., 74. Steiner, Von Plan zu Plan, 117. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 190. Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik, 40. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 63. ZRK, Einige allgemeine Hinweise über die Tätigkeit des zentralen Apparats, 5.10.1959, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/IV3/58, no folio numbers. Horst Sindermann in der Sitzung der Agitationskommission am 10.8.1961, quoted in Fiedler, Medienlenkung in der DDR, 204. At least according to a rumor circulating among technical employees of the apparatus and which the MfS picked up on. Aufstellung über Personen, die durch inhaftierte Agenten den imperialistischen Geheimdiensten zur Anwerbung vorgeschlagen wurden und die beim ZK der SED tätig sind, o. D. [ca. 1973], BStU, MfS, ZAIG, Nr. 2691, fols. 47–54, here fol 50. Fritz Gäbler an Alfred Neumann, betr. 1. Ergebnisse der Überprüfungen der Abteilungen im Apparat des ZK im Jahre 1960, 17.1.1961, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV3/58, no folio numbers. The working group was exclusively made up of Old Communists and/or members of the functional departments: Horst Dohlus (Party Organs), Richard Herber (head of Ulbricht’s office), Rudolf Thunig and Gisela Trautzsch (both in the Politbüro) and Fritz Gäbler (ZRK). The new regulations took effect with a resolution of the Secretariat from May 17, 1962 (SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3/809, fols. 32–63), but were in no way radically different from the regulations of 1953. New were several references to the territorial principle, work with volunteers, and the “scientific-technical revolution.” See also Amos, Politik und Organisation, 580f. Abteilung Leitende Parteiorgane: Berichterstattung über die Tätigkeit vom 8.8. bis 13.8.1960, 16.8.1969, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/193, fols. 177–79, here fol. 178; see also Amos, Politik und Organisation, 580. Up until that point in time there had only been a health-protection division in the Trade Unions and Social Policy Department. Udo Schagen and Sabine Schleiermacher, “Gesundheitswesen und Sicherung bei Krankheit,” in Geschichte der Sozialpolitik in Deutschland seit 1945, Vol. 8: Deutsche Demokratische Republik 1949–1961. Im Zeichen des Aufbaus des Sozialismus, ed. Dierk Hoffmann and Michael Schwartz (Baden-Baden, 2008), 387–435, here 396. Though to a lesser extent here than the abovementioned examples, since Wyschofsky, born in 1929, replaced an only slightly older Berthold Handwerker, born nine years before him. The generation gap was more pronounced in the Health Department: Hering was born in 1930, his de facto predecessor, deputy head Rudolf Weber, in 1909. Anlage Nr. 9 zur Politbürositzung vom 27.2.1962, betr.: Zusammensetzung der Frauenkommission beim Politbüro des Zentralkomitees der SED, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2/817, fols. 330–32. These were the Foreign Policy Commission, founded in 1949; the Committee for German Unity, founded in 1953; the Security Commission, founded after June 17th; and the Commission for Work on West Germany, newly constituted in 1956. On the latter, see Fiedler, Medienlenkung in der DDR, 91f. The Commission for All-German Work replaced the Commission for Work on West Germany. Ibid., 92. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 63; Malycha and Winters, Die SED, 160f. Fiedler, Medienlenkung in der DDR, 83f. Its official name was the Permanent Commission for Medical Science and Health Care Issues in the Politbüro of the Central Committee of the SED. Members of the Medical Commission included Robert Ganse, director of the gynecological hospital at the Dresden Academy of Medicine from 1954 to 1972; Louis-Heinz Kern, director of the Institute

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29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

of Pathology at Humboldt University in Berlin from 1953 to 1976; Gerhard Misgeld, editor-in-chief of Deine Gesundheit magazine from 1958 to 1987, as of 1960 director of the Science Department in the Ministry of Health; Samuel Mitja Rapoport, director of the Institute of Biological and Physiological Chemistry at Humboldt University in Berlin from 1952 to 1978. All of the abovenamed individuals were highly regarded specialists of international repute. Schagen and Schleiermacher, “Gesundheitswesen,” 396. Ernst, “Die beste Prophylaxe ist der Sozialismus,” 41. Ibid. To give an example: at a meeting of the Medical Commission on June 23, 1959, pathologist Gerhard Misgeld questioned the principle decreed by the Party that biologists should be involved in the research work at medical schools. In his experience, Misgeld said, doctors refused to work with staff that did not have the requisite training, besides which there were no permanent positions for biologists. Commission secretary Rudolf Weber, who was also deputy director of the Central Committee’s Health Department, tersely informed Misgeld that “there’s no need to continue this discussion, the principle of inclusion is settled and we’re going to stick to it.” Stenographische Niederschrift der Tagung der Ärztekommission beim Politbüro des ZK, 22./23.6.1959, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/70824, fols. 1–306, here fol. 174 Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 184f. Fiedler, Medienlenkung in der DDR, 215. Unlike most other commissions in the early 1960s, the Agitation Commission had a permanent staff that included seven technical employees in late 1964. [Übersicht über die Zahlen der Mitarbeiter der Abteilungen des ZK], undated, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9157, fol. 73. To be sure, this permanent staff begs the question of whether this commission was not more like a regular Central Committee department than the other commissions working mainly with volunteers. These instructions had titles such as “Why the GDR represents the interests of all peace-loving Germans.” In March 1965, commission secretary Rudi Singer had to write up a twelve-page report on a single set of reporting instructions. See Fiedler, Medienlenkung in der DDR, 355. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 226. Ibid., 356. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 204. When massive problems emerged with the Five-Year Plan in 1956, Khrushchev implemented the regional economic councils with the aim of giving regional Party organizations a considerably greater influence than before on the regional economy. This decision, however, resulted “in total chaos rather than the hoped-for increase in efficiency.” Merl, “Kapitel III: Entstalinisierung,” 227–30, quote on 228. This is the assumption of Kaiser, Machtwechsel, S 45. As proof for her hypothesis that the “introduction of the production principle” was directed against the Central Committee departments, Kaiser points out that in February of 1963 they were “told in no uncertain terms that they do not have the right to write to first regional secretaries.” This was nothing new, however, because, as was shown in chapter 1, repeated attempts had been made since the late 1940s to convey this to the departmental heads. This conclusion thus in no way supports the notion that “Ulbricht wanted” the Central Committee apparatus to “lose influence.” Amos, Politik und Organisation, 605. The offices, moreover (and again in contrast to the commissions), had full sway over their own cadre policy in their respective fields. It led, for example, to a de facto splitting of the apparatus, to a scramble for authority, and even to the agricultural and industrial apparatus working at cross-purposes. Merl, “Kapitel III: Entstalinisierung,” 248. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 45, n. 60. The president of the Patent Office and the state secretary of the Ministry of Higher and Technical Education, for example, were in the Politbüro’s office for industry and construction.

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48. Amos makes a similar point, Politik und Organisation, 609: “Compared to the previous organization of the SED’s specialist apparatus . . . not much changed in the end.” 49. These included the following departments: Party Organs, Cadre Issues, State and Legal Affairs, Security Issues, Health, Financial Administration and Party Enterprises, as well as the Working Office of the Politbüro, the General Department and the working groups for sports, friendly organizations and church affairs. Kaiser’s conclusion (Machtwechsel, 44) that these departments, with the sole exception of Party Organs, had “relatively little influence on the functioning of the overall system” is incorrect. 50. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 45. 51. The number of employees in the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department shrank from eightyfive in late 1961 to fifty-eight by the end of 1964, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9157, fol. 73. 52. Ibid. 53. Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort, 53f. 54. The same went for the second secretaries when they saw their authority trimmed, having previously been the key figure of every district secretariat, indispensable to the first secretaries in cadre issues and organizational work. The reform meant that every office and every commission now had their own authority in Party and cadre work. This resulted in open competition for cadre and resources in some instances—despite the warnings of Party leaders that the production principle demanded “a much greater level of collectivity in the work of leading Party organs.” Horst Dohlus, “Produktionsprinzip erfordert höheres Niveau der Organisationsarbeit,” Neuer Weg 18, no. 21 (1963): 961. 55. He goes on, “There’s nothing positive I can say about the offices.” Interview with Horst K., April 27, 2011, 14, author’s transcript and audio recording. 56. Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort, 56. 57. Hans-Joachim Rüscher was at that time head of the Party Organs Department in the Politbüro’s Office for Industry and Construction and was hence in competition as it were with Horst Dohlus and his Party Organs Department in the Central Committee. 58. Hans-Joachim Rüscher an Günter Mittag, betr.: Arbeitsplan des ZK, Punkt 76: “Grundsätze einer wissenschaftlich-komplexen Leitungstätigkeit am Beispiel der Bezirksleitung Cottbus und der Kreisleitung Guben,” 30.9.1964, BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/6.01/105, fols. 90–92, here fol. 91. 59. Günter Mittag, Information über die Beratung des Büros für Industrie und Bauwesen beim Politbüro mit den leitenden Partei-, Staats- und Wirtschaftsfunktionären aus der Industrie, dem Bauwesen und des Verkehrs- und Verbindungswesens, 17.11.1964, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A2 /6.08/45, no folio numbers (6f.). 60. This is the interpretation of Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 47. 61. Steiner, Die DDR-Wirtschaftsreform, 88. 62. Ibid. Accordingly, the same Central Committee Congress dissolved the Party organs departments in the offices and gave their authority in the area of cadre work back to the secretariats and the Central Committee departments. 63. The “tendencies [of these offices] to neglect political-ideological work and directly assume tasks of the state economic-steering organs” had been overcome, wrote Hans-Joachim Rüscher in September 1965, repeating the official discourse. Probleme bei der Durchführung des neuen ökonomischen Systems der Planung und Leitung der Volkswirtschaft, 26.9.1965, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV A 2/6.01/8, no folio numbers. 64. The term is used by Detlef Pollack, “Die konstitutive Widersprüchlichkeit der DDR-Gesellschaft. Oder: War die DDR homogen? Eine Fortsetzung der Diskussion zwischen Sigrid Meuschel und Ralph Jessen,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 24, no. 1 (1998): 110–31. 65. The transformation of organizations being motivated by contradictory objectives seems to be the rule rather than the exception: Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 33. 66. Ibid., 88. 67. It should be noted in passing that the dissolution of the National Economic Council (Volkswirtschaftsrat) into seven independent ministries of industry (Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 121f.) had no consequences for the structure of the Central Committee’s economic apparatus. Splitting up the Central Committee’s key departments here—Basic Industry as well as Machine Building and Metallurgy—was apparently never

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on the table. This is an indication that the apparatus had become more stable compared to the 1950s and did not immediately follow suit whenever the state apparatus was modified. 68. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 87. 69. Bemerkungen zur Auslandsinformation, undated, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/2.028/50, fols. 1–6. The working group was assigned to the Central Committee’s International Relations Department until 1965. 70. This department was in fact one of the “winners” of the organizational developments of the 1970s and 1980s, possibly thanks to the family ties between Manfred Feist and Erich Honecker. By 1985 it had seventeen political employees, as many as the construction and cadre departments, even though its original purpose—the “fight against Western imperialism in the international arena”—had become less important and the department increasingly concerned itself with conveying a positive image of the GDR abroad. 71. See esp. Staadt, Die geheime Westpolitik; Michael Lemke, “Kampagnen gegen Bonn,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte no. 2 (1993): 153–74. 72. The four employees of this division were responsible, among other things, for coordinating the “political influence of social organizations and institutions in the GDR on West Berlin.” Vorlage an das Sekretariat des ZK, betr.: Bildung eines Sektors Westberlin in der Westabteilung des Zentralkomitees, 20.8.1965, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1227, fol. 56f. 73. Werner Lamberz an Erich Honecker, 6.12.1966, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/9.02/12., o. Bl. 74. Kaiser (Machtwechsel, 220) interprets the dismissal of Steidl from his previous post as head of the Central Committee’s Trade Unions and Social Policy Department as one of a variety of punishments meted out to leading cadre after the Eleventh Plenary of the Central Committee in December 1965. In fact, Steidl’s transfer to the head of the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation was a promotion. Moreover, the move was coordinated with the MfS, which cooperated closely with this department. Mensing, SED-Hilfe, 38f. 75. Wie weit diese Zuständigkeiten indes gingen, ist unklar. Mensing, SED-Hilfe, S. 37–40. 76. Ibid., 40. 77. Stellenplan des Sektors Fernmeldewesen mit Stand vom 4.9.1966, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1281, fol. 95. 78. See chapter 5, “ Security Partner and Personnel Consultant,” of the present work. 79. Verpflichtungserklärung, undated, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9159, fol. 327. 80. Janson, Totengräber der DDR, 177. 81. Werner Bock, Stellungnahme, 4.6.1970, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15611, fols. 52–56, here fol. 53. 82. See also Jochen Staadt and Manfred Wilke, “‘Ein Hochsicherheitstrakt der Macht.’ Das Zentralkomitee der SED am Marx-Engels-Platz,” in Das Haus am Werderschen Markt. Von der Reichsbank zum Auswärtigen Amt [The History of the New Premises of the Federal Foreign Office], ed. Hans Wilderotter (Berlin, 2000), 205–52, here 236. 83. Beschluss der Sicherheitskommission vom 16.12.1954, betr. Maßnahmen zur Erhöhung der Sicherheit und zum verstärkten Schutz gegen das Eindringen von Agenten in den Parteiapparat, 16.12.1954, BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 407, fols. 1–5, here fol. 3. 84. Staadt and Wilke, “‘Ein Hochsicherheitstrakt der Macht,’” 215–20. 85. Vorlage an das Politbüro, 4.9.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 63/3609, no folio numbers. 86. Hinweise zur Orientierung für das neue Haus des Zentralkomitees, 26.3.1959, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.01/87, fols. 191–201, here fol. 198f. 87. MfS employees inspecting the armory of Department 2 of the HA PS at Central Committee headquarters in 1976 were surprised to find a rocket launcher (RPG 7) and armor-piercing ammunition. The decision was made to remove them, since no HA PS employee had been trained to use these weapons. Unger, MfS, HA PS, Arbeitsgruppe des Leiters: Überprüfung der Waffenkammern im Objekt ZK, 18.10.1976, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 1032, fol. 5f. 88. In the 1960s and 1970s, twenty tons of heating oil, delivered directly from Schwedt by the Central Committee’s own tank truck, were needed on a daily basis to heat the building during the heating season. BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15110, fol. 472.

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89. Peter Kroos and Andreas Marx, “‘Die Lösung eines Bauproblems von geradezu nationaler Bedeutung.’ Der Erweiterungsbau der Reichsbank 1933–1990 [The solution of a building problem of no less than national importance], in Das Haus am Werderschen Markt, ed. Wilderotter (Bonn, 1999), 85–152, here 129. 90. Vorlage an das Politbüro, 4.9.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 63/3609, no folio numbers. See also Kroos and Marx, “‘Die Lösung eines Bauproblems von geradezu nationaler Bedeutung,’” 128–31. 91. To be sure, not all Central Committee departments moved into the new building. As of 1959–60, the departments and working groups responsible for Western work had their offices at former Party headquarters in the House on Unity as well as in the present-day Karl Liebknecht House. Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik, 48. 92. Staadt and Wilke, “‘Ein Hochsicherheitstrakt der Macht,’” 222. 93. A summary of the security measures taken by the MfS can be found in Utln. Elze, Ofw Reimann, Fachschulabschlussarbeit: Chronik der Geschichte der Wache Zentralkomitee der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 10576, fols. 95–112, here fol. 105. 94. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 11, author’s transcript and audio recording. 95. Interview with Inge H. December 19, 2011, 12, author’s transcript and audio recording. 96. Thomas Mergel, Parlamentarische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik. Politische Kommunikation, symbolische Politik und Öffentlichkeit im Reichstag, Düsseldorf 2002, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien 135 (Düsseldorf, 2002), 83. 97. Interview with Renate Michalik-Erxleben, January 18, 2016, 13, author’s transcript and audio recording. 98. Interview with Inge H., December 19, 2011, 20, author’s transcript and audio recording. 99. Interview with Renate Michalik-Erxleben, January 18, 2016, 13, author’s transcript and audio recording. 100. Kroos and Marx, “‘Die Lösung eines Bauproblems von geradezu nationaler Bedeutung,’” 128. 101. Hinweise zur Orientierung für das neue Haus des Zentralkomitees, 26.3.1959, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.01/87, fols. 191–201, here fol. 193. There was also a bookstore, a shoe-repair shop and a doctor’s office of the Central Committee polyclinic. 102. On one such visit Krämer learned that the position of second district secretary was up for grabs, enabling him to “make the eagerly anticipated break” from Party headquarters, where he felt uncomfortable. Interview by Andrea Bahr with Heinrich Krämer, November 23, 2010, 11, Transcript and audio recording of Andrea Bahr. My thanks to Andrea Bahr for sharing this interview with me. 103. [Gespräch der Zelleninformantin mit der Beschuldigten Gertrud Liebing], 10.10.1966, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24140, fols. 197–202, fol. 200. 104. [Gespräch der Zelleninformantin mit der Beschuldigten Gertrud Liebing], 11. 10. 1966, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24140, fols. 212 – 30, here fol. 217f. 105. Günter Glende, Vorlage für das Sekretariat des Zentralkomitees betr. Struktur- und Stellenplan der Abteilung Verwaltung der Wirtschaftsbetriebe, 23.11.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1961, fols. 53–72, here fol. 54. 106. Kroos and Marx, “‘Die Lösung eines Bauproblems von geradezu nationaler Bedeutung’” 130f. 107. Zu einigen Problemen und Schlussfolgerungen, die sich aus der Schlüsselordnung des Hauses ergeben, 24.8.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9159, fols. 245–248, here fol. 245. Of course the problem persisted of “some comrades forgetting to lock their offices when they finish work.” The Office of the Politbüro singled out a particular incident it considered an “especially egregious lack of vigilance,” namely the fact that “on November 8, 1969, not only the door to room 1331 but also the safe and two other cabinets were left open in the EDP section.” Ibid., fol. 246. 108. Prior to this they had to leave and collect their keys at the front desk. But the staff working the desk would hand out multiple keys to a single person (e.g., all the keys to one department were given to the department secretary), which was deemed a security risk. Hinweise zur Orientierung für das neue Haus des Zentralkomitees, 26.3.1959, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.01/87, fols. 191–201, here fol. 191. 109. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK der SED, betrifft: Umbau des Plenarsaales im Haus des ZK am Marx-Engels-Platz, 11.1.1966, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1258, fols. 113–15.

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110. Kroos and Marx, “‘Die Lösung eines Bauproblems von geradezu nationaler Bedeutung,’” 142. 111. Ibid., 134. 112. Information über die Entwicklung der Finanzwirtschaft der Partei im Jahre 1973, 15.4.1974, SAPMO-BArch, DY 63/3533, no folio numbers. 113. It never came to this, however, since upon its completion it was given over to the Academy of Sciences, whose Institute of Cybernetics took up residence there. The annex is now home to the Political Archive of the Foreign Office among other things. 114. Utln. Elze, Ofw Reimann, Fachschulabschlussarbeit: Chronik der Geschichte der Wache Zentralkomitee der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 10576, fols. 95– 112, here fols. 107. 115. No one was injured. Abteilung V, Referat 1, Bericht, 9.2.1966, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 6323, fol. 7. 116. MfS, HA PS, Abteilung IX: Bericht über die Befragung des Angestellten des ZK der SED Knaack, Werner, Elektriker im ZK der SED am 31.1.1973, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 6323, fols. 170f. 117. BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 6323, fols. 34–43. 118. See, e.g., MfS, HA XX/2: Sachstandsbericht Hakenkreuzschmierereien im Gebäude des ZK der SED, 10.5.1965, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 14164, fols. 80–84. There is actually good reason to believe that the drawings of these “wonder weapons” were made after 1945, not least of all because no soldier defending the capital in April 1945 is likely to have had such detailed knowledge of an Me 262 as evidenced in the drawing. 119. The library had to move to “attic space on the fifth floor”—a rather out-of-the-way location that was unlikely to have increased its number of readers. Information über die Vorbereitung der Projektierung zum Ausbau der Räume für die Aufstellung des Robotron R 300, o. D., mit einem Anschreiben von Gisela Trautzsch an Günter Mittag, 15.10.1968, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/2.01/3, fol. 36f. 120. The main prototype of the R 333 was the IBM 1401. Though lagging four to five years behind the West, the R 300 was the most modern and reliable computer in its class within the socialist economic area. See J. Liegert, “Die Geschichte der Entwicklung und Überleitung der EDV R 300 von Robotron,” UAG Historie Robotron der Arbeitsgruppe Rechentechnik in den Technischen Sammlungen Dresden, Fassung: 29.1.2006, http://robotron.foerderverein-tsd.de/311/robotron311a.pdf (retrieved on June 24, 2016). 121. Fundament Baubüro Berlin, Aktenvermerk betr.: Einbau einer EDV-Anlage Robotrin 300 im Haus des ZK der SED, 19.11.1968, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/23/4, no folio numbers. 122. State Security was no better off at any rate. Its “working group for securing tourist traffic” also had a Bull Gamma 10 at its disposal since late 1965. ([Handreichung für einen Rundgang durch das Traditionszimmer der MfS-HA XIII], BStU, MfS, SED-KL, Nr. 5215, November 1987, fols. 48–55, here fol. 52). Only in 1971, with three Siemens S4004/45 computers procured through conspiratorial channels and installed at the Stasi’s new data center in the Wuhlheide area of Berlin, did it have hardware comparable to or better than the R 300 generation. 123. Vorlage an das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Bestätigung der Aufgabenstellung und des Stellenplans des Sektors Datenverarbeitung in der Abteilung Parteiorgane des ZK, 13.11.1968, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1669, fols. 19–23. By way of comparison, the Stasi’s thirteenth working group, responsible for introducing and operating the EDP division of the MfS, had no more than a hundred permanent positions in late 1969. See Roland Wiedmann, Die Diensteinheiten des MfS 1950–1989. Eine organisatorische Übersicht, MfS-Handbuch (Berlin, 2012), 183. 124. Vorlage an das Sekretariat des Zentralkomitees betr. [. . .] Erweiterung des Strukturplans für den Sektor EDV der Abteilung Parteiorgane des ZK, 4.9.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1929, fols. 38f., here fol. 39. 125. Steuer had held the position of chief accountant at the Leuna works see Karl-Heinz Steuer, Dieter Berger, and Karl Heinz Klein, Theoretische Grundlagen der elektronischen Datenverarbeitung sowie ihre Hauptanwendungsgebiete und Integrationsphasen in der chemischen Industrie der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Halle, 1967).

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126. In 1987, a training course was established for teaching employees in the Party apparatus basic computing and word-processing skills. 127. ES EVM (Unified System of Electronic Computers) refers to a standardized series of IBM clones used in the COMECON countries. 128. Information über den Stand der Realisierung der Beschlüsse des Sekretariats des ZK vom 1.10.1986 und 21.1.1987 zur schrittweisen Einführung der Mikrorechentechnik im Parteiapparat, 26.1.1988, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/30660, no folio numbers (9). 129. Zukunft (MfS, Abteilung N) an Irmler, Werner (MfS, ZAIG): Prüfung einer Aufgabenstellung, 15.12.1988, BStU, ZAIG, Nr. 50174, fol. 7. 130. In early 1968, the Secretariat founded a working group for the “application of EDP in the central Party apparatus” headed by Werner Jarowinsky. Horst Dohlus an Gisela Trautzsch, 26.1.1968, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/2.01/3, fol. 16. 131. Horst Dohlus an Gisela Trautzsch, 18.9.1969, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/2.01/3, fol. 58. 132. Examples in Josef Egger, “Ein Wunderwerk der Technik.” Frühe Computernutzung in der Schweiz (1960–1980), Interferenzen 21 (Zurich, 2014); Felix Herrmann, “Zwischen Planwirtschaft und IBM. Die sowjetische Computerindustrie im Kalten Krieg,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History Online Edition 9, no, 2 (2012), www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/2-2012/ id=3442 (retrieved on June 24, 2016); Daniela Zetti, “Die Erschließung der Rechenanlage Computer im Postcheckdienst, 1964–1974,” Traverse 16, no. 3 (2009): 88–102. 133. Or so the result of an evaluation from 1968, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/2.01/3, fol. 40. 134. The work regulations of the Central Committee apparatus from 1953 and 1962 instructed Central Committee departments to keep a list of appointments for monitoring resolutions. This meant that every Central Committee department had to record the date of implementation or inspection of all Party resolutions relevant to their work. Keeping tabs on this list was to help ensure that no resolution was drowned out by the mass of other resolutions. (see, e.g., Arbeitsordnung von 1962, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3/809, fols. 32–63, here fol. 41). The system proved to be ineffective, either because the departments failed to implement it or because the resolutions were too broadly defined to link their implementation to a specific date. 135. Bericht über Erfahrungen bei der Anwendung der EDV [. . .] in der Parteiarbeit, 31.5.1972, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/2182, fols. 115–23, here fols. 121f. 136. Ibid., fol. 122. 137. Bericht über die Erfahrungen bei der Anwendung der EDV in der Parteiarbeit, 20.5.1974, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/2524, fols. 116–23, here fol. 116. The project probably failed not least of all due to the difficulty of text research at that time, especially considering that Central Committee staff generally had no computer skills. 138. The cadre project was conducted alongside and in close cooperation with the cadre project of the Council of Ministers of the GDR. The profiles and data structure were agreed upon by a joint working group of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers. See Dietmar Remy, “Datenfriedhof oder Füllhorn für die DDR-Forschung? Geschichte, Funktionsweise und wissenschaftlicher Wert des Zentralen Kaderdatenspeichers des Ministerrates der DDR,” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 28, no. 1/2 (2003), 78; Heinrich Best and Stefan Hornbostel, “Prozess-produzierte Daten als empirisches Material für eine Soziologie des realen Sozialismus. Das Beispiel der Kaderspeicher des Ministerrates der DDR,” in Materialien zur Erforschung der DDR-Gesellschaft. Quellen. Daten. Instrumente, ed. Gesellschaft Sozialwissenschaftlicher Infrastruktureinrichtungen e.V. (Opladen, 1998), 201–21. 139. Bericht über die Erfahrungen bei der Anwendung der EDV in der Parteiarbeit, 20.5.1974, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/2524, fols. 116–23, here fol. 120. 140. This, too, involved a considerable effort. In 1971, employees in the EDP division of the Central Committee and the data centers of the regional leaderships claim to have recorded “189,608 changes of address, 143,368 new candidates and members, 36,898 fewer members due to death, expulsion and deletion, [and] 10,588 name changes.” Bericht über Erfahrungen bei der Anwendung der EDV [. . .] in der Parteiarbeit, 31.5.1972, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/2182, fols. 115–23, here fol. 117.

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141. The fact that district leaderships made such inquiries on their own initiative was considered a great success by the EDP division of the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department. It is unclear how frequent such inquiries were. Anforderungen an die EDV A von den Kreisleitungen der Bezirksleitung Erfurt, 27.9.1973, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/27947, no folio numbers. 142. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK, betr.: Bericht über die Erfahrungen und Arbeitsergebnisse des Sektors EDV in der Abteilung Parteiorgane des Zentralkomitees der SED, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/4418, fols. 133–45, here fols. 135f. 143. Bericht über die Erfahrungen bei der Anwendung der EDV in der Parteiarbeit, 20.5.1974, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/2524, fol. 121. 144. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK, betr.: Bericht über die Erfahrungen und Arbeitsergebnisse des Sektors EDV in der Abteilung Parteiorgane des Zentralkomitees der SED, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/4418, fols. 133–45, here fol. 137. 145. Nicolas Pethes, “EDV im Orwellstaat. Der Diskurs über Lauschangriff, Datenschutz und Rasterfahndung um 1984,” in Medienkultur der 70er Jahre, ed. Irmela Schneider, Christina Bartz, and Isabell Otto (Wiesbaden, 2004), 57–75; Hans Jörg Schmidt, “Digitalisierung,” in Angst. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, ed. Lars Koch (Stuttgart, 2013), 374–81. 146. SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/2.01/3, fol. 79. 147. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 88; see also Detlef Pollack, “Auf dem Weg zu einer Theorie des Staatssozialismus,” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, 28, no. 1/2 (2003): 10–30, here 15. 148. See chapter 2, “Organizational Development,” of the present work. 149. Analyse über die kadermäßige Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des ZK, in den Apparaten der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen für den Berichtszeitraum vom 1.2.1958 bis 31.8.1958, 19.12.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/643, fols. 12–24, here fol. 16 (The share of women among these political employees was indicated as 16.9 percent, which would work out to ninety-four. 150. [Übersicht über die Zahlen der Mitarbeiter der Abteilungen des ZK], o.°D., SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9157, fol. 73. 151. Bericht über die Zusammensetzung der Apparate der Kreisleitungen, der Bezirksleitungen und des Apparates des Zentralkomitees, 1.10.1961, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/11/142, fols. 22–32, here fol. 31. To be sure, the Cadre Department had vehemently demanded such a reduction three years earlier. Analyse über die kadermäßige Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des ZK, in den Apparaten der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen für den Berichtszeitraum vom 1.2.1958 bis 31.8.1958, 19.12.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/643, fols. 12–24, here fol. 15. 152. Liste der Abteilungen, bei denen eine Kürzung nicht vorgenommen wurde, undated [January 1962], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/841, fol. 20. 153. This worked out to 13.8 and 15.7 percent, respectively, as the working group proudly noted. Otto Schön, Horst Dohlus, Fritz Müller, Vorlage an das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Strukturplan des Zentralkomitees, 26.1.1962, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/841, fol. 19. 154. SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/28559, fols. 20–23, 47–49, 89. It should be kept in mind, however, that the Party organization of the Central Committee still included the basic organizations of various facilities not considered part of the Central Committee apparatus, e.g., the polyclinic of the Central Committee or Dietz publishing house. 155. [Übersicht über die Zahlen der Mitarbeiter der Abteilungen des ZK], undated, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9157, fol. 73. 156. Entwicklung des Stellenplans des ZK der SED, 12.1.1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/2180, fol. 10. 157. Günter Glende: Vorlage für das Sekretariat des Zentralkomitees betr. Struktur- und Stellenplan der Abteilung Verwaltung der Wirtschaftsbetriebe, 23.11.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1961, fols. 53–72, here fol. 54. 158. In 1963 alone, in the wake of the modernization of the Central Committee’s fleet of vehicles, 300 Wartburgs and 360 Volgas were newly purchased. Heinz Fülle (SPK) an Günter Glende, 3.12.1962, BArch, DE 1/48758, no folio numbers.

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159. The term and similar findings in Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 240. 160. See chapter 2, “Organizational Development,” of the present work. 161. The Cadre Issues and Party Organs departments accounted for 14.5 percent of the political employees in the apparatus, down from the LOPM’s 18.4 percent in 1953. This was likely due to the fact that the organizational build-up of the Party had more or less been completed by the late 1950s. Departments in the regional secretariat took on many of the tasks that had been considered neutral in the early years of building socialism. 162. Even if the Western apparatus were counted among the ideological departments, the figure would still be only 33.7 percent, significantly less than the share of specialist departments. 163. See chapter 2, “Staff Development,” of the present work. 164. SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/28559, fols. 99, 104. 165. Author’s estimate based on 350 résumés of Central Committee staff in 1959, 346 in 1965, and 321 in 1970. And yet this stabilization effect went beyond considerably longer terms of employment, i.e., the time spent in a given position, since staff in the 1960s were transferred much less within the Central Committee apparatus. 166. Author’s estimate based on a sample of 267 political employees in 1955, 350 in 1959, and 321 in 1970. 167. Author’s estimate based on the résumés of eighty-eight political employees. There is good reason to believe, as noted above, that the lack of assertiveness of the apparatus in the decade of building socialism can largely be traced back to the fact that employees were constantly being shuffled back and forth between headquarters and the regional level. 168. Author’s estimate based on 350 résumés of Central Committee staff in 1959, 346 in 1965, and 321 in 1970. A 1961 report of the Central Committee’s Department of Cadre Issues on the makeup of the Party apparatus indicates that 19.5 percent of its employees had been “pol[itically] organized before 1933.” The (slight) discrepancy with the figures established in this study are likely due to the inclusion here of individuals who, though not belonging to the KPD or SPD prior to 1933, had been active, for example, in a workers’ party in Czechoslovakia or in the illegal KPD organization in the Third Reich. Bericht über die Zusammensetzung der Apparate der Kreisleitungen, der Bezirksleitungen und des Apparats des Zentralkomitees, 1.10.1961, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/11/172, fols. 22–32, here fol. 28. 169. Author’s estimate, for a more comprehensive assessment see also Bergien, “Das Schweigen der Kader.” 170. Of the seventy-six political employees in the Central Committee who were able to be identified as former Nazi Party members in the course of this study by examining the NSDAP membership files at the former Berlin Document Center (BDC), only six had indicated these formal ties in their résumés. See Bergien, “Das Schweigen der Kader.” 171. Hentschel had been working in the Department of Culture since 1954 at which point her former membership in the Nazi Party became known. Information über abgelehnte bzw. von den Abteilungen zurückgezogene Vorschläge zum Einsatz von Kadern in Funktionen der Nomenklatur des ZK seit Mai 1974, 21.11.1975, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/vorl. SED/17093, o. Bl. 172. HA XX/AG 1, 19.10.1966, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15110, fol. 393. 173. Notably, in late 1963 W. was given the opportunity by his departmental head to “supplement” his cadre files by adding a “written postscript in particular with regard to the time during the war.” Only when he failed to avail himself of this opportunity, writing a postscript but “not a word about his having belonged to the SS,” did they consider removing him from the apparatus. He subsequent dismissal was apparently for reasons of age, however. Aktennotiz, Absprache bei der Abteilung Verkehr am 3.2.1964, BStU, MfS, HA II/MF, Nr. 37, no folio numbers. 174. Thus, the most qualified economic functionaries were mostly ending up in factories while the State Planning Commission and other economic organs of the state had to make do with less qualified employees. Boyer, “Arbeiterkarrieren?” 673. 175. Vorlage für das ZK-Sekretariat, betr.: Analyse zur Stabilisierung über die kaderpolitische Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter des Parteiapparats nach dem Stand vom 31.1.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/625, fols. 72–94, here fols. 82f.

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176. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 171f. The number of graduates from universities or technical colleges had greatly increased after 1950 in the wake of the Five-Year Plan. Boyer, “Arbeiterkarrieren?” 673. 177. Bericht über die Zusammensetzung der Apparate der Kreisleitungen, der Bezirksleitungen und des Apparates des Zentralkomitees, 1.10.1961, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/11/142, fols. 22–32, here fol. 25. 178. Statistik über die Gesamtzusammensetzung des Apparats des ZK, der Bezirks- und Kreisleitungen, 30.6.1954, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/5/1557, fols. 47–66, here fols. 56; Statistik der politischen Mitarbeiter im ZK der SED, Stand vom 31.12.1978, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18529, no folio numbers. 179. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 250–61. 180. Christian Ludz draws this very conclusion with a view to the members of the Central Committee of the SED. For a criticism of this approach, see, e.g., Meyer, Die DDR-Machtelite, 201. 181. Mittag was quick to begin correspondence courses, however, as many Party and state functionaries did in his day, in his case at the Dresden School of Transportation (Hochschule für Verkehrswesen). He completed his degree in 1956 and even earned a doctorate in 1958. 182. He immediately assumed the office of deputy departmental head there. 183. The rationale for his dismissal went on as follows: “His working method resulted in the collective of his division occasionally being insufficiently focused on the organization of Party work and the rearing of comrades in basic organizations.” Abteilung Maschinenbau und Metallurgie: Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK, 22.10.1963, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1002, fols. 293f. 184. Bericht über die Prüfung in der Abteilung Maschinenbau, 7.3.1969, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/vorl. SED/22208, Bd. 1, no folio numbers. 185. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 7, author’s transcript and audio recording. 186. Interview by Andrea Bahr with Heinrich Krämer, November 23, 2010, 10. 187. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 16, author’s transcript and audio recording. 188. An observation made in the late nineteenth century by Georg Simmel, Über sociale Differenzierung (Leipzig, 1890); see also Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 79. 189. Ibid. 190. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 219. 191. Former high-ranking Central Committee members who later entered the state apparatus had comparable networks in the opposite direction—Karl Hengst, for example, who after thirteen years in the Central Committee’s Planning and Finance Department (in the end as departmental head) became a research assistant at the State Planning Commission in 1969. A report from an unofficial collaborator illustrates the special position he enjoyed there on account of his good contacts in the Party apparatus: “This special position is also due to the fact that as head of the Central Committee’s Planning and Finance Department he provides developmental support to many individuals who are now leading cadre in the State Planning Commission as well as to the fact that he knows many cadre in the Party apparatus . . . On account of this position, H. has the possibility to obtain and consult all material produced . . . in the State Planning Commission . . .” HA XVIII, Inspektion SPK, Bemerkungen zu Gen. Karl Hengst, 17.9.1982, BStU, MfS, HA XVIII, AP, Nr. 5835/92, fols. 78–80, here fol. 79f. 192. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 144; Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 39. 193. The following is a list of these employees working in the Department of Basic Industry in 1980; their names are followed by their last position before entering the Party apparatus: Claus Pakull, main departmental head at VEB Braunkohlenkombinat Borna (1971–72); Christa Bertag, group manager at VEB Leuna-Werke (1967–74); Hans-Günther Burghardt, departmental head at VVB Kraftwerke Cottbus (1966–68); Horst Niesar, production director at Kombinat Schwarze Pumpe (1967–74); Gerhard Schneider, deputy division head at the Ministry of Basic Industry (until 1972); Helmut Bubig, mine operations manager at Tagebau Spreeta (1966–75); Jochen Kratzke, departmental head at the Ministry of Basic Industry (until 1970); Eberhard Alff, technical director at VEB Erkundungsbetrieb Mittweida (until 1972); Manfred Mühlbach, head of planning and economic director at VVB Feste Minerale Berlin (1962–66).

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194. Though Gerhard Schürer, who in 1962 went from being head of the Central Committee’s Planning and Finance Department to deputy chairman of the State Planning Commission, is depicted as an isolated case by Malycha in Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 187. 195. Wolfgang Herger, Werner Hübner, and Günther Frenzel, “Verantwortung—Eigenver- antwortung— Fremdbestimmung. Zur Praxis der Militär- und Sicherheitspolitik der DDR. Über Rolle und Funktion der Abteilung Sicherheitsfragen des Zentralkomitees der SED,” unpublished manuscript (Berlin, 1993), 23. The abovementioned work is a draft version of Wolfgang Herger, Werner Hübner, and Günther Frenzel, “Eigenverantwortung und Selbstbestimmung,” in Das Große. Insider berichten aus dem ZK der SED Haus, ed. Hans Modrow (Berlin, 1994), 176–95. I thank Arnim Wagner for providing me with this version. 196. Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 36. 197. Apart from Schürer, who was chairman of the State Planning Commission, these individuals were: Siegfried Böhm, minister of finances, 1959–66 employee and eventually departmental head of the Central Committee’s Department of Planning and Finances; Hans-Joachim Hoffmann, minister of culture, 1971–73 head of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture; Oskar Fischer, foreign minister, 1960–62 division head in the Central Committee’s International Relations Department; Klaus Siebold, minister of coal and energy, 1954–57 political employee at the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry; Günter Wyschofsky, minister of chemical industry, 1953–62 employee and eventually departmental head at the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry; Werner Buschmann, minister of light industry as of 1978, 1968–76 employee and intermittently head of the Central Committee’s Department of Light, Food and Regional Industry; Gerhard Briksa, minister of trade and supply, 1962–72 head of the Central Committee’s Department of Light, Food and Regional Industry; Horst Sölle, minister of foreign trade, 1952–62 employee at the Central Committee’s Department of Trade, Supply and Foreign Trade, eventually departmental head; Heinz Kuhrig, minister of agriculture, food industries and forests, 1952–61 employee and intermittently division head at the Central Committee’s Department of Agriculture; Werner Halbritter, director of the Price Office, 1954–61 employee and eventually departmental head at the Central Committee’s Department of Planning and Finances. 198. Hans-Hermann Hertle, Theo Pirker, Rainer Weinert, and Mario Rainer Lepsius, “‘Wir dachten, wir finden schon eine Lösung.’ Gespräch mit Christa Bertag, Berlin, 19.10.1993,” in Der Plan als Befehl und Fiktion, ed. Theo Pirker (Opladen, 1995), 237–54, here 241. 199. See the Introduction, section 2 of the present work. 200. All figures taken from: Statistik über die Qualifikation der politischen Mitarbeiter des ZK der SED, Stand: 1.10.1985, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18530, no folio numbers. 201. For more on these discussions, see Ettrich, Die andere Moderne, esp. 136f. 202. As argued in Meyer, Die DDR-Machtelite, 201, in a critique of the premises of Ludz, Parteielite im Wandel. 203. Gerda Opitz, Lehrgangsleiter 20./I, an Hanna Wolf, Bericht Monat Februar 1970. 2.3.1970, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/IV A 2/9.09/138, no folio numbers. It is worth noting here that the one-year training courses were predominantly attended by economic functionaries along with employees of Central Committee specialist departments such as Manfred Uschner who already held senior positions and only needed to be “ordained” by a Party training school in order to continue climbing the career ladder. The “Party workers,” the first and second district secretaries, but also employees in the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department on the other hand almost always attended the three-year programs at the Karl Marx Party School if not in Moscow. In March 1970, an instructor at the Karl Marx Party School in Berlin came to the conclusion that “many students nowadays find the Marxist-Leninist take on classes and class struggle difficult” to relate to. 204. Horst Ossig is probably the best example. Ossig worked in the Party Organs Department from 1959 to 1975, having worked his way up to the Central Committee apparatus without attending a university or technical college, first through the FDJ and a position as political director at a machine-tractor station, then as an instructor and secretary at SED district leaderships. Regarding his past before

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1945, he was not exactly a model SED employee, having volunteered for the paratroopers during the war and joined the Nazi Party at the age of eighteen in 1944. 205. See Kohler’s résumé in SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/4252, fol. 23 (Einsatz der Absolventen des Zweijahrlehrgangs 1983-85 bei PHS des ZK der KPdSU). 206. See chapter 6, “Power and Authority,” of the present work. 207. Wehrsig and Tacke, “Funktionen und Folgen,” 223; see also Ettrich, Die andere Moderne, 148. 208. On unofficial collaborator “Renn,” see also Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 297. 209. Bericht IM “Renn,” 10.9.1982, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 15396/89, Bd. 14, fols. 27–30, here fol. 27. 210. Ibid. 211. Kühl, Ganz normale Organisationen, 240f. 212. One expression of this consensual fiction is Renate Michalik-Erxleben’s retrospective conviction that “All of us were believers.” Michalik-Erxleben may have indeed been a “believer” herself—her father, Roman Rubinstein, was a highly honored antifascist and fighter in the French Resistance, which surely left its mark on her. Such firm convictions, however, cannot be presumed per se for the majority of her department colleagues. Interview with Renate Michalik-Erxleben, January 18, 2016, 31, author’s transcript and audio recording. 213. Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 79. 214. Interview with Dieter Mechtel, June 10, 2013, 25, author’s transcript and audio recording. 215. Bericht IM “Renn,” 16.7.1974, BStU, MfS, AIM 15396, 89, Bd. 7, fols. 41–44., here fols. 44. 216. Peter Klemt, [Bericht über ein Vorkommnis während der Internationalen Wissenschaftlichen Konferenz im ZK der SED am 12.6.1970], 16.6.1970, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15110, fols. 416–18. 217. Interview with Gerhard U., February 5, 2010, 7, author’s transcript and audio recording. 218. Janson, Totengräber der DDR, 175f. 219. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 12, author’s transcript and audio recording. 220. According to the nomenklatura confirmation list of 1951, these functions added up to no less than 1,100 leadership positions. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 101–5. 221. On the establishment of the cadre nomenklatura system in 1949–50, see ibid. 93–107; Matthias Wagner, Ab morgen bist du Direktor. Das System der Nomenklaturkader in der DDR (Berlin, 1998); Kaiser, Herrschaftsinstrumente. 222. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 248. 223. Zentrale Revisionskommission, Bericht über die Überprüfung der Abteilung S. vom 22. bis 26.5.1956, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30/IV 2/12/1, no folio numbers. The fact that in the spring of 1952 the Central Committee’s Machine Building Department could only fill half the spots allocated to it at the Central Committee’s central training school in Ballenstedt was also typical of the first half of the 1950s. Its employees, simply put, did not know of any more suitable economic functionaries they could have sent to Ballenstedt, which, as one staff member at the Central Committee’s Executive Organs Department fumed, was “bad enough in a lower Party organ, but shouldn’t be allowed to happen at all in the case of a Central Committee Department!” Eine notwendige Kritik an der Arbeit einiger Fachabteilungen beim Zentralkomitee, undated [April/May 1952], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/5/42, fols. 28–34. 224. The control nomenklatura included individuals who were not registered in the main nomenklatura but who still held sufficiently important positions so that changes in function could only be made with the approval of the respective Central Committee department. Amos, Politik und Organisation, 594. 225. Fritz Gäbler an Erich Apel, 13.11.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.10/11, fols. 39–45, here fol. 40. 226. Bericht über die Überprüfung der Arbeitsgruppe Sport beim ZK, 15.6.1959, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2/18/1, fols. 37–39, here fol. 37. 227. Alfred Neumann, Vorlage für [das] Sekretariat, betr.: Alle Abteilungen des ZK sind verantwortlich für die Kaderarbeit, 19.2.1960, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/700, fols. 56–59, here fols. 56f. 228. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 247.

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229. Bericht über Überprüfungen im Apparat des ZK, 20.12.1960, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 3/58, no folio numbers. 230. Bericht über die Prüfung der Abteilung Abteilung Handel, Versorgung, Außenhandel vom 27.7. bis 5.8.1961, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.10/11, fol. 82. 231. With respect to the Department of Security Issues, see Daniel Giese, Die SED und ihre Armee. Die NVA zwischen Politisierung und Professionalismus 1956–1965 (Munich, 2002), 111; with regard to higher education, see Jessen, Akademische Elite, 78f. 232. Aussprache mit den leitenden Genossen des Bauwesens am 28.10.1959, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/6.06./12, fols. 202–4. 233. “My question and request is the following, dear Comrade Hörnig: Are you in a position to effect a policy decision whereupon Comrade Dr. Korn will leave the ministry in early 1969?” Dieter Klein an Johannes Hörnig, 5.2.1968, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A2/9.04/31, no folio numbers. 234. Siegfried Wagner an Kurt Hager, undated [Januar/February 1967], Entwurf, BArch, DR 1/24016, no folio numbers. 235. Zusammenarbeit MfS—Kaderabt. MfC/Leonhardt, 27.2.1974, BStU, MfS, AOPK, Nr. 12782/74, fols. 146–148, here fol. 147. 236. See, e.g., Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 82. 237. “Only once . . . did Ulbricht show up at a plenary session of the Agitation Commission, in March of 1963, after it had just been formed.” Fiedler, Medienlenkung in der DDR, 226. 238. Indeed, no evidence was found during the research for this study that Erich Honecker ever personally took part in a meeting of a Central Committee department. Ulbricht’s participation on the other hand is documented by a range of Central Committee departmental records, see in particular the meeting minutes of the LOPM Department from 1955 to 1959 in SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/5/55/59, passim. 239. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 47, comes to a different conclusion. 240. See, e.g., Ernst Lange an die Mitarbeiter der Abteilung Handel, Versorgung und Außenhandel, 22.12.1959, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.10/4, fol. 139. The range of answers was broad. While members of one department wanted to see the “effectiveness of the central Party apparatus enhanced relative to the regional and district leaderships,” members of the Trade, Supply and Foreign Trade Department were unanimous that “we are currently losing a lot of time with meetings and consultations about reports, preparing presentations and suchlike.” SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.10/4, fols. 140–45, here fol. 141. 241. Einige allgemeine Hinweise über die Tätigkeit des zentralen Apparates, 5.10.1959, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 3/58, no folio numbers. 242. According to the salary regulation of April 1, 1960, all political employees were now eligible for bonuses of up to one monthly salary “for particularly outstanding achievements.” 243. It was apparent at least since the spring of 1960 that the stream of refugees heading West would continue to grow, leading to new production and supply problems. Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, 190. 244. See chapter 2, “Organizational Development,” of the present work. 245. Gerhard Naumann, “Beschluss des Politbüros des ZK der SED vom 12.7.1960,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung 32, no. 4 (1990): 515. 246. In this instance, the Politbüro passed the program on June 23, 1964 and the Council of Ministers followed suit on July 3, 1964. SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2A/1038. 247. Maßnahmen zur weiteren Verbesserung der Arbeit der Abteilungen des ZK, o. D. [March/April 1960], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/6.10/4, fols. 131–39, here fol. 132. This sentence was crossed out by hand in the draft resolution, suggesting that it might be an accurate reflection of how employees felt but was ultimately deemed too controversial. 248. Schagen and Schleiermacher, “Gesundheitswesen,” 396. 249. Ibid., 398. 250. The division, for example, repeatedly recommended to the minister in the summer of 1956—apparently in vain—that he initiate talks between representatives of the ministry and critical physicians, see

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ZK-Abteilung Arbeit, Sozial- und Gesundheitswesen an Minister Steidle, Ministerium für Gesundheitswesen, 9.8.1956, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/19/58, fol. 78. 251. Doctors, the division concluded in the summer of 1957, were performing “a responsible function without recognizing the close connection between their professional work and political objectives”; they avoided “discussions of fundamental political issues.” Sektor Sozial- und Gesundheitswesen, 26.6.1957, ibid., fols. 138–40, here fol. 138. 252. His joining the Nazi Party in 1937 did not obstruct his subsequent career in the Central Committee apparatus, the symbolic capital of having been a member of the National Committee for a Free Germany being deemed sufficient compensation in this case. Bergien, “Das Schweigen der Kader,” 141. 253. Ernst, “Die beste Prophylaxe ist der Sozialismus,” 42f. 254. Various examples in BArch, DQ 1/5855. 255. Volker Schneider, “Akteurkonstellation und Netzwerke in der Politikentwicklung,” in Lehrbuch der Politikfeldanalyse 2.0, Lehr- und Handbücher der Politikwissenschaft, ed. Klaus Schubert (Munich, 2009), 191–219, here 192. 256. The department, for instance, complained about “unhelpful” arguments, “platitudes” and factual errors in a proposal on “training . . . members of mid-level medical professions.” Stellungnahme zur Vorlage des Ministeriums für Gesundheitswesen “Die Berufsausbildung des mittleren medizinischen Personals und des medizinischen Hilfspersonals im Gesundheitswesen der DDR,” 22.3.1961, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.024/4, fols. 10f. 257. MfS, HA XX/1: Vermerk, 20.1.1987, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 527, part 1, fol. 3. 258. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 88. 259. Ernst, “Die beste Prophylaxe ist der Sozialismus,” 52f. 260. Minister Max Sefrin, according to the Stasi’s Central Evaluation and Information Group in the spring of 1960, was “often charged with other tasks on account of his function as deputy prime minister and, anyway, he is no specialist, so that he has little influence on political and technical problems. The deputy minister, Comrade Gehring, who is generally acknowledged as being politically and professionally competent, is often absent on account of his poor health.” Einige Probleme der Arbeitsweise des Ministeriums für Gesundheitswesen, undated [March/April 1960], BStU, ZAIG, Nr. 249, fols. 15–21, here fol. 18. 261. Jürgen Wasem, Doris Mill and Jürgen Wilhelm, “Gesundheitswesen und Sicherung bei Krankheit und im Pflegefall,” in Geschichte der Sozialpolitik in Deutschland seit 1945, Vol. 9: Deutsche Demokratische Republik 1961–1971. Politische Stabilisierung und wirtschaftliche Mobilisierung, ed. Christoph Kleßmann (Baden-Baden, 2006), 377–428, here 385f. 262. Werner Hering an Max Sefrin, 24.1.1963, BArch, DQ 1/5263, no folio numbers. Hering’s proposal was rejected by Sefrin with the argument that a uniform legal regulation “could surely give rise to unnecessary discussions and possibly even be unsettling for especially emotional segments of the population.” Max Sefrin an Werner Hering, 8.2.1963, ibid. 263. The two foregoing quotes, from Hering’s letter to Sefrin, refer specifically to a surgeon working at St. George Hospital in Leipzig. Werner Hering an Max Sefrin, 29.7.1964, BArch, DQ 1/5263, no folio numbers. Hering therefore “recommended” that Sefrin “discuss the problem at a ministerial meeting.” 264. Werner Hering an Kurt Hager, betr. Information an das Sekretariat des ZK über die schrittweise Beseitigung der Privatbehandlung in Gesundheitseinrichtungen der DDR, 11.9.1967, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A2/19/30, no folio numbers. 265. The term was coined by Horst Spaar, “Leitende staatliche Organe des Gesundheitswesens und Verantwortung für die Gesundheitspolitik,” in Dokumentation zur Geschichte des Gesundheitswensens, Teil IV: Das Gesundheitswesen der DDR in der Periode des Übergangs zum umfassenden Aufbau des Sozialismus und der Entwicklung des neues ökonomischen Systems (1961–1971), ed. Horst Spaar (Berlin, 2001), 20–23, here 22; see also Wasem et al., “Gesundheitswesen,” 372. 266. Ibid., 376f. See also the depiction in Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse, 128–36. 267. Information, 3.10.1975, BStU, MfS, HA XVIII, Nr. 15324, fols. 4–7, here fol. 5.

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268. Jaekel (MfS, HA XX/1): Bericht über ein Gespräch mit dem Minister für Gesundheitswesen, Genossen Prof. Mecklinger, am 15.9.1977, von 16.00 bis 18.20 Uhr, 19.9.1977, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 527, Teil 1, fols. 204–7, here fol. 206. 269. On applying this approach to the CPSU, see also Belova and Lazarev, Funding Loyalty, 10. 270. Steiner, Die DDR-Wirtschaftsreform, 74. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 45, on the other hand, says—without offering any evidence—that the economic-policy departments had less influence after the reforms. 271. Steiner, Die DDR-Wirtschaftsreform, 85. 272. Quoted in ibid., 86. 273. These profit increases promptly led the National Economic Council to fundamentally question the usefulness of the entire reform project (“we warned about profit from the very start”). Ibid., 99–101. 274. Steiner, Von Plan zu Plan, 129. 275. Quoted in Steiner, Die DDR-Wirtschaftsreform, 101. 276. Interview with Horst Wambutt, January 7, 2012, 12, author’s transcript and audio recording. 277. Only the minister of heavy machinery, whose ministry’s meetings on the introduction of EDP Wambutt occasionally attended, would “sometimes gripe: ‘What’s the point of any of this?’ He still stood for the old command economy.” Ibid., 13. 278. Nevertheless, the first secretary of this basic organization considered Wikorski’s talk “interesting” enough to forward it to the chairman of the State Planning Commission, Gerhard Schürer. Wikorski was a member of the Central Committee’s working group for research and technical development. Diskussionsbeitrag des Genossen Wikorski, ZK, undated [November 1966], BArch-Berlin, DE 1/53355, no folio numbers. 279. Information über die Leitungstätigkeit im Ministerium für Schwermaschinen- und Anlagenbau [. . .], 31.5.1966, BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 1442, fols. 202–5, here fol. 204. 280. Information, 3.10.1975, BStU, MfS, HA XVIII, Nr. 15324, fols. 4–7, here fol. 6. 281. Einige Probleme aus der Arbeit und den Erfahrungen der Parteikontrollkommissionen, 27.2.1964, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A2/4/30, fols. 67–74, here fol. 67. 282. Probleme aus einigen von den Kreisparteikontrollkommissionen (KPKK) und Bezirksparteikontrollkommissionen (BPKK) durchgeführten Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiet der Landwirtschaft, 27.1.1964, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A2/4/30, fols. 61–66, here fol. 66. 283. More specifically the complaint was leveled against members of the Party organization of the “VEB Zwirnerei und Spinnerei Naunhof ” spinning mill. Auswertung der Untersuchungsberichte in Parteiorganisationen der Industrie, 25.1.1964, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A2/4/30, fols. 53–60, here fol. 57. It was surely no coincidence that the Central Party Control Commission chose an office unpopular with “ideologues” as a negative example. 284. Bericht, 23.4.1965, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A2/9.04/68, no folio numbers. 285. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 48. 286. Steiner, Die DDR-Wirtschaftsreform, 88. 287. For a detailed account, see Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 168–73. 288. Decker, 1965, 221. 289. Staadt and Wilke, “‘Ein Hochsicherheitstrakt der Macht,’” 239, n. 30. 290. Günter Agde, ed., Kahlschlag. Das 11. Plenum des ZK der SED 1965, Studien und Dokumente (Berlin, 1991). 291. Treffbericht, 29.11.1965, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 15143/89, fols. 209–11, here fol. 209. 292. Grimmer “declared that methods like this would only drive listeners to Western stations.” Ibid. 293. The following is based on Siegfried Wagner, ZK-Abteilung Kultur, an Kurt Hager, 21.6.1966, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A2/2.024/70, fols. 123f. 294. Ibid. Evidently, at this point in time, things did not get beyond the planning stage. It remains an open question whether Kurt Hager advised taking a more moderate stance. 295. Decker, 1965, 149. 296. Ibid. 297. For a detailed account of the evening, see ibid. 82–88.

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298. Information, 9.1.1963, BStU, MfS, AP, Nr. 489, fol. 7. 299. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 220f. 300. Ibid., 223. 301. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 15, author’s transcript and audio recording. 302. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 79f.

Chapter 5

“The MfS Only Comes Up to Our Chest”? The Central Committee Apparatus and State Security

Gertrud Liebing only had a few months to live when members of State Security apprehended her in broad daylight on September 14, 1966.1 Liebing, who was fifty-four years old and had worked as a technical employee of the Central Committee of the SED since 1959, was suffering from pancreatic cancer. Doctors at the prison hospital in Hohenschönhausen determined2 that there wasn’t much time left to interrogate Liebing about her treasonous doings, which were bound to send shockwaves through the Party leadership and the apparatus. Ever since she had been hired by the Office of the Politbüro—actually years earlier, as an employee of VEB RFT-Anlagenbau—the telecommunications technician had been supplying the CIA with sensitive information from Party headquarters. In a total of 108 encoded messages sent to fake addresses in the West, she had reported on the structure and functions of Central Committee departments. She supplied them with hundreds of home addresses of senior Party functionaries and described security-sensitive internal matters related to the Big House, from the key-deposit system in the foyer of the main entrance3 to the location of the armories of the combat groups.4 In 1959, she even managed to smuggle a telephone directory from the new Party headquarters to West Berlin, where it was then photographed by the CIA.5 The arrest of a Western agent did not come out of the blue for the SED leadership. Since the early 1950s, SED headquarters had attracted the particular attention of Western secret services.6 A Mr. and Mrs. B., for example—the former a division head in the State Chemical Office, the latter a stenotypist in the Central Committee

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apparatus—had been arrested in 1959 for supplying information to the French secret service about the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry.7 Around the same time as Liebing, a driver employed by the Central Committee chauffeur service, Harry Wierschke, was taken into MfS custody for allegedly being in the employ of West Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.8 But the Liebing affair stood out from all the previous cases of espionage. Because never before had a Central Committee employee been able to deliver to a Western agency information of such a sensitive nature—even transcripts of the telephone conversations of Politbüro members—over such a long period of time. The “Workman” operational case (OV “Handwerker,” as the Stasi called the Liebing espionage affair) was a nightmare come true for the “suspicious patriarchs” in the Party leadership. This was all the more so, when further investigations of State Security revealed that Liebing, Wierschke and Arno Heine, a Central Committee film projectionist arrested in 1970, had all received assistance from Central Committee staff.9 It was as if the “enemy” itself had been ferreted out at Party headquarters. Erich Mielke, on the other hand, must have felt a certain measure of satisfaction with these revelations—not only on account of Liebing’s realistic portrayals of the Big House as a “drinking den and whorehouse” whose employees “craved” accolades “like animals”10 and whose nightly carousing caused extensive damage.11 More importantly for the minister was the fact that this served as proof to SED leaders that Party headquarters needed even higher security standards. And this could not happen, in his view, without increasing the influence of the MfS on internal affairs in the Central Committee building. Thus, in late 1966 the MfS put together a list of suggestions to help better protect Central Committee headquarters from infiltration by Western spies.12 These ranged from stricter bag and vehicle checks to regular inspections of “all working rooms, cable installations and floor distributors by MfS specialists.”13 The Liebing espionage case was seen as grounds to connect all Politbüro employees to the encrypted government network, which was technically monitored by members of the MfS.14 The Central Committee Secretariat also increasingly isolated itself from the West on the recommendation of the Stasi—Liebing’s mother, after all, lived in West Berlin, which was how her daughter had come into contact with an “imperialist secret service” in the first place, according to the logic of the MfS. In the years that followed, a range of Central Committee employees lost their jobs at Party headquarters because they were unable or refused to sever all ties with the West. This happened, for example, in 1970 to the abovementioned division head in the Telecommunications Department, Bock, because his daughter had been visited by a relative from West Berlin to celebrate her wedding; and in the spring of 1974 to a secretary from the Department of Transportation—which “deeply upset” her deputy departmental head. It was “terrible,” he said, “if they start looking into whether someone has an aunt in the Federal Republic and . . . every comrade . . . in the apparatus

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is now looked upon with suspicion.” Anyway, he couldn’t understand “why Security has to know about all these things.”15 These comments have been preserved for posterity because a technical employee whom the deputy departmental head spoke with happened to be an informant of the MfS. This was not the first time that State Security was criticized at SED headquarters. Fritz Zeiler, head of the Department of Machine Building and Metallurgy until 1961, reportedly made disparaging remarks about the “Beria men” and their “network of spies.”16 And former Central Committee division head Erich Fischer was not alone with his impression that, especially in the Honecker era, “the central Party apparatus was kept on a tight rein by [Stasi headquarters on] Normannenstrasse.”17 It was mentioned above that there was a widespread fear of being bugged by the Stasi in the Central Committee apparatus of the 1970s and especially the 1980s.18 These rumors have been confirmed by Andreas Malycha, whose recent study on the SED in the Honecker era offers evidence that the MfS did in fact eavesdrop on Central Committee departmental heads.19 His finding has far-reaching implications. If not even the Central Committee’s departmental heads, a group of leading functionaries, was free of Stasi surveillance, then the image of a “Stasi state” may be a more accurate notion of actual power relations in the GDR than recent research has suggested. And if the Stasi did in fact listen in as they pleased on members of Party headquarters, the power figuration between Party and state apparatus would have to make room for another actor that potentially limited the power of the apparatus. The relationship between the central Party apparatus of the SED and the Ministry for State Security, the focus of this chapter, can be addressed at three levels. The first level constitutes the type of interactions that Party headquarters had with most other ministries and central state organs: the instructional relationship that existed at least formally between the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues and the MfS or, more precisely, between the “MfS division” in this department and the SED’s Party organization in the MfS. The two other levels had no equivalent with the other ministries. The second level arises from the role of State Security as a “general contractor in security issues,”20 whose main departmental heads were constantly sharing information with certain Central Committee departments. At this level they prepared political measures as well as acting as “personnel advisers” to the Party leadership. The third level of the relationship between the Central Committee apparatus and State Security is the most informative with regard to the power figuration that both organizations found themselves in. It concerns the attempts of the Stasi to obtain information from inside the Big House. To this end it did indeed use unofficial collaborators, as Andreas Malycha has noted. But it was operational cases against Central Committee employees that largely served the purpose of information procurement here. The following will focus first of all on the role of the MfS that came closest to its self-image as the “shield” of the Party: its function as the security force of Party headquarters.

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The Central Committee Building as a Security Object Effectively, the majority of Central Committee employees experienced the MfS mainly as a kind of heavily armed security-guard service. Every day they encountered members of the Feliks Dzierzynski guard unit patrolling outside the Central Committee building. Passing through the main or side entrances, they had to present their employee badges to the MfS’s Main Department for Personal Security, and Stasi employees were always present when incidents major or minor occurred. Erich Fischer, for example, a division head in the Department of Health Policy, was given a lecture on his very first day in the Big House by the Stasi’s house commander because a gust of wind had broken his office window sending glass shards raining down on one of the inner courtyards (the one where “leading representatives” happened to park their cars).21 And when, in late September 1968, there was a power outage on the second floor where the Politbüro resided, the house “commander was on the spot immediately,” “trying to give orders” despite being unable to locate the problem, according to the somewhat scornful report of one informer.22 Added to this were further MfS employees who were constantly on duty at the “security object,” to use the Stasi lingo: e.g., employees of the Intelligence Department (Abteilung N), who operated their own control room in the basement of the Central Committee building for the special communication lines of the MfS (and which only they could enter23), as well as members of Department 10 of Main Department XX. The latter, according to its head Paul Kienberg, used “unofficial opportunities” during “larger events on the premises” such as conferences to vet representatives of the press and television in advance.24 To be sure, the members of the Intelligence Department or of Main Department XX were not in uniform. Hence most Central Committee employees were probably never really aware of the actual extent of the Stasi’s presence at Party headquarters. In the early postwar years, the headquarters of the SED were still guarded by Soviet soldiers. As of 1951, however, with the formation of MfS units in barracks (which at first were called a guard battalion, then a guard regiment, and finally guard reserves25) the latter were responsible for protecting the Party building. This was the case on June 17, 1953, when members of the MfS units in barracks “in conjunction with employees of the Central Committee” made sure that “the class enemy at no point managed to even set foot in the Central Committee building.”26 And yet there seemed to be problems. According to a 1987 thesis paper entitled “A Chronicle of the Central Committee Guard” written for a technical college by two members of the Main Department for Personal Security (HA PS), these problems were rooted in the lack of “assertiveness” of eighteen- and nineteen-year-old reserve unit members. As early as August 1953, the Politbüro had made the HA PS responsible for safeguarding Party buildings. This led in its view to “a higher quality in all areas of security.” From then on the highest-ranking MfS representative on the ground was the “object commander” provided by the HA PS, starting with Lieutenant-Colonel Erwin Milewsky, then in the late 1960s Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Stürze.

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External security, however, was still provided by MfS guard units in barracks under the HA PS. In November 1954, the state secretary for state security, Wollweber, ordered 1,700 troops to be removed from the guard unit. From that point on these men would form the “Berlin Guard Unit” (which only as of 1967 bore the honorary name “Feliks Dzierzynski”) with the task of securing the central Party and government buildings,27 to which end they were provided with an arsenal of small arms as well as twelve armored scout cars—suggesting that civil war was still considered a likelihood. Security service was human-resource intensive. Until 1959, the Central Committee apparatus occupied the buildings on today’s Torstrasse 3 to 5, directly adjacent to residential buildings. This called for twenty-five to thirty guards on duty day and night. Absent other technical means, HA PS employees inspected by hand every delivery of goods received by Party headquarters, whether food, office equipment or furniture. The Central Committee security checkpoint on today’s Torstrasse 5 tied up another four Stasi employees. The move to the new Central Committee building at Werderscher Markt in 1959 was a relief from the object commander’s perspective. On the one hand, the soldiers of the guard unit as well as personal bodyguards were given new staff rooms, which the House of Unity had apparently been lacking: the guard unit was quartered on the ground floor on Unterwasserstrasse, the bodyguards received a staff room and a “control room” directly on the Politbüro floor.28 On the other hand, the self-contained, fortress-like location of the former Reichsbank made it possible to reduce the number of guards for external security down to fifteen or twenty men. Four of these, in the 1980s, were solely responsible for securing access to the Politbüro floor. Without a special pass, not even Central Committee employees were allowed through.

Weaknesses in Counterterrorism The use of guards to protect the Central Committee was only one of many security measures. Another was inspecting the several hundred vehicles that parked in the basement or at the north side of the building and/or delivered goods on a daily basis. Yet another was setting up a central mailroom and receiving station in 1975 in the very rooms on Unterwasserstrasse that had previously housed the soldiers of the guard regiment.29 The mailroom and receiving station were state of the art. The HA PS procured a Minishot Dual X-ray machine from the West to screen incoming mail whose greatest advantage, from the Stasi’s point of view, was that it could be operated “with no additional radiation protection precautions.”30 They were also equipped with UV lamps, electronic stethoscopes, as well as gas and radiation detectors.31 As of 1976 the object commander, Stürze, and the head of the Central Committee’s Telecommunications Department, Heinz Lübbe, worked together to install modern security equipment at the building’s weak points. The “working rooms of the representatives”—that is to say, the offices of the Central Committee secretaries on the second floor—were equipped with safe locks, electric door security systems, and

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alarms.32 There were also plans to install twelve “remote monitoring systems,” i.e., security cameras with zoom objectives and video recorders, allowing total surveillance of the area around Party headquarters.33 The ironclad rule for all of these security measures, according to object commander Stürze, was that “The leading representatives must not be disturbed!” In practice, the question of how extensive these security measures should be regularly led to conflicts between the HA PS and the responsible senior cadre at Party headquarters, namely the director of the Office of the Politbüro, Gisela Glende, and her husband, the head of the powerful Administration of Economic Enterprises Department, Günter Glende. Both were viewed by the MfS—and incidentally by many Central Committee employees—as a regular demonic duo, whose behavior lived up to every cliché of Central Committee employees being “gods descended to earth.” For object commander Stürze, consultations with Gisela Glende were generally an unpleasant affair. The latter once expressed her “surprise” to Stürze that the MfS employed “such young and inexperienced men, with an often almost cheerful manner, in the Central Committee of all places.”34 At one point a traffic regulation led to outright conflict. Every morning and late afternoon there was a traffic jam outside the Central Committee’s underground parking garage, “affecting departmental heads of the Central Committee of the SED,” noted Glende, rebuking the Stasi man. Stürze sought a technical solution to the problem, but the “installation of traffic lights at the entrances to the facility was rejected,”35 Glende went on to repeatedly attack him, claiming that his guards did not intervene energetically enough in their efforts to direct traffic. Günter Glende, for his part, reprimanded Stürze on a different occasion because his guards—who were merely following orders—demanded valid parking tickets from cars wanting to park in the guest lot.36 A comment Günter Glende once made to employees in his department—“the MfS only comes up to our chest”—was thus demonstrated quite visibly in the behavior of both Glendes towards Stasi security staff.37 The security measures of the HA PS were hardly an expression of a genuinely communist organizational culture in which “vigilance” was an end in itself.38 The threats were sometimes real. The headquarters of the SED were not only spied on in numerous instances by Western agents such as Gertrud Liebing, not to mention still being a focus of espionage by the West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) during the 1980s.39 On one occasion they even narrowly escaped a bombing. On June 30, 1963, at around noon, MfS guards on the empty square of Werderscher Markt noticed a package outside the Central Committee building containing “twelve 100-gram rounds of explosives, a flashlight battery, and a pocket watch as a contact switch.”40 Only because the trigger mechanism was defective did the homemade bomb fail to explode. The package had been planted by the West German right-wing extremist Herbert Kühn, who had already carried out bombings in the northern Italian province of South Tyrol.41 In this context, and given the terrorist tactics of the RAF in West Germany, the Stasi’s counterterrorism efforts at the Central Commit-

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tee building became a top priority in the 1970s, however much object commander Stürze felt his troops were poorly prepared for this task. Even in 1983, they were not geared to the “new challenges of averting terrorist and other op[eratively] significant acts of violence.” In particular the members of the Feliks Dzierzynski guard regiment, wrote Stürze, “are very poorly trained in preliminary surveillance . . . . This makes it necessary to check back with them, which delays the taking of initial measures.”42 From the point of view of the HA PS, the members of the guard unit were rookies which they, the real professionals, unfortunately had to work with. “They eagerly listened to problems of preliminary surveillance when we explained . . . these” to them, the object commander noted. “But ultimately this was not reflected in any improvement of surveillance activities.” Given these difficulties, the head of HA PS sought to oust the guard regiment from the security object entirely. Presumably in August or September 1989, the head of the HA PS, Günter Wolf, proposed to Mielke that “the Personal Security unit be given sole responsibility for the military-operational security of the following objects: the SED Central Committee building, the office of the Council of State, and the office of the Council of Ministers.”43 Wolf ’s reasoning is noteworthy: “In light of . . . the increasing attempts of hostile-negative forces to engage in demonstratively provocative activities in the city center,” he wrote, the security of Party headquarters had “be given a higher priority.” To this end, the coexistence of the HA PS and the guard regiment had proven to be an “increasing hindrance.” As the guard regiment was only scheduled to be withdrawn from Central Committee headquarters on January 2, 1990, its members were not spared the events of the fall revolution.

Not on an Equal Footing: The MfS and the Central Committee’s Security Department The employees of the HA PS, the Intelligence Department, and Main Department XX were not the only fulltime MfS members who worked at Party headquarters. As of 1961, there were a number of “officers on special assignment”—four in 1961— who were delegated by State Security to the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues. There they formed the “MfS division” and were charged with the task of directing the Party work of their own ministry44—analogous to the “MdI” and “NVA” divisions, for the Ministry of the Interior and the National People’s Army, respectively, which were likewise staffed with professional soldiers and police officers who were subject to the disciplinary authority of the military and the police. This situation, unique in the apparatus, is a partial explanation for why the Central Committee’s Security Department, despite its size and the central importance of its policy field, was politically less influential than, say, the much smaller Department of Health Policy.45 And yet, at least until the early 1970s, no one can claim that the MfS division and the Central Committee’s Security Department accepted the autonomy of State Security without a fight. In the early 1950s, it was their Soviet “friends” who

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stood in the way of State Security being made subordinate to the Party leadership. The Soviets’ control of East German State Security was extensive. According to a 1958 staff plan, a hundred Soviet instructors were still working in the MfS.46 At least until 1952–53, the latter had taken the most important investigations into its own hands and had de facto authority in the organization.47 The Soviets behaved possessively towards the MfS, frequently acting as its advocate in their dealings with SED leaders48—though Ulbricht, for his part, was under no illusion about where the real power rested: who, he asked rhetorically in 1956 in a conversation with Ernst Wollweber, was actually in charge of State Security, was it “us” or “our friends?”49 In this context, the Central Committee’s Security Department—which until August 1953 went under the name of “M Department” (M for Militärpolitik or military policy) in the tradition of the KPD50—had minimal influence on the Stasi at first. The “regional Party organization” of the MfS was given no regular “instructions” prior to 1953.51 Its secretaries, at any rate, complained in May of 1953 that its instruction “by the Central Committee . . . has been insufficient to date” and that they were never invited to the Central Committee for “important meetings.”52 After June 17th, the fall from power of Minister of State Security Wilhelm Zaisser and the creation of the Security Commission in the Politbüro, it looked as though the Party was expanding its influence over the Stasi.53 And, indeed, the Security Commission “increasingly handled acute concerns of State Security on a regular basis until 1957,” from cadre issues to large-scale operations.54 But the Stasi was also busy with the mass arrest of dissidents and “concentrated blows” against supposed agent headquarters. It was during these years that it proved to be a pillar of Party rule.55 The Party’s few existing chances to expand its influence over the secret police were then squandered by Gustav Röbelen, head of the Central Committee’s Security Department. At its first meeting in July 1954, for instance, the Security Commission in the Politbüro had called for a statute that would lay down the rights and duties of Central Committee employees with respect to the MfS. A statute like this would have been a real source of power against MfS officers who balked at any oversight by Central Committee employees, appealing to the need for secrecy in their line of work. But the statute was never put into writing, probably due to Röbelen’s carelessness.56 Röbelen had no interest in administrative work and, despite being a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and a former officer of the NKVD, had no pull with State Security leaders. This is evident in the disparaging comments made about him in MfS reports. The former volunteer in the International Brigades was considered “overly talkative . . . and unable to keep anything to himself,”57 and after June 17th was described as “hysterical.” He spread a “distinctly panicky mood,” according to Wollweber in his memoirs, and was always on the alert for attempted coups.58 This was one of the reasons—along with the disastrous outcome of an audit conducted on the Security Department by the Central Auditing Commission in May 1956—that Röbelen was removed from his post and transferred to the Ministry of National Defense.59

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Röbelen’s successor, too, was at first glance not the “strong man” who would have been needed for the Party to assert its control over State Security. There was pushback in the Central Committee apparatus the very moment Walter Borning (b. 1920) was appointed deputy departmental head. Borning’s father had a been a member of the Nazi Party, he himself had been educated in a markedly nationalist environment and had volunteered for the war in 1940—indeed, it was sheer good luck for him that he was able to hide his own Nazi membership as of 1939.60 In his favor, Borning was thought to be assertive and a good organizer. Erich Honecker, Central Committee secretary for security issues as of 1956, regarded him highly. Thus, in October 1960 the Politbüro confirmed Borning as departmental head after having held this position for three years on a provisional basis.61 By this time, however, Erich Mielke had long since established himself as a minister of state security who, unlike his predecessors, was considered politically reliable to the extreme and enjoyed the full backing of Walter Ulbricht. The heads of the MfS division in the Security Department, Artur Hofmann and, as of 1960, Fritz Renckwitz, viewed Mielke as a subordinate.62 At any rate, Central Committee secretary Honecker was highly critical of employees at the MfS division just months after Mielke assumed office. The division, he said, went “weak in the knees whenever someone in the [MfS] advisory committee so much as raised his voice!”63

“Liberalism” in the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance Honecker’s criticism is surely a sign that Party leaders sought to expand their influence on State Security during these years—a move initially directed at Minister Wollweber, who during his term of office became a detractor of Ulbricht. With the suppression of the uprising in Hungary, Ulbricht urged MfS leaders to broaden its repression in the GDR in late 1956. “Some comrades in State Security,” Ulbricht said without mentioning Wollweber by name, apparently “no longer have the resolve”—after the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU—“to move against the enemies of the state.”64 In February 1957, a brigade deployment of the Central Committee’s Security Department was subsequently undertaken in the MfS regional administrations of Potsdam and Magdeburg, and—just like earlier and later “punitive expeditions” of the Central Committee apparatus—its only purpose was to gather as much material as possible against Wollweber.65 Wollweber resigned less than a year later. But the MfS division continued to carry out relatively frequent brigade deployments in MfS offices66 and did not limit itself to Party work in the MfS. Thus, in a deployment at the regional administration of Gera in the summer of 1959, Central Committee employees praised the fact “that, e.g., arrests in 1958 had doubled compared to 1957”—which apparently, for the secret police, was in itself an indication of a job well done.67 On the other hand, they were not happy that the district administration had recruited only fourteen “secret informers” from the 340 employees who had been laid off. Members of the MfS division even kept an eye on the ministry itself. On numerous occasions they reported to Honecker about the poor state of “inner conspiracy” within State Se-

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curity—in the summer of 1961, for example, when First Lieutenant Männel from the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance defected to the Federal Republic and willingly spoke on West German television about the workings of his former employer. Männel’s remarks showed that he “knew more than was necessary to carry out his tasks,” according to a report of the MfS division submitted to Honecker.68 Männel’s treason may have been one of the reasons why, in March 1962, the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance was targeted for a brigade deployment by the MfS division. In their final report, Central Committee employees Fritz Renckwitz, Martin Appelfeller and Karl Buffleb heavily criticized the GDR’s foreign espionage, which in their view had made “no substantial progress in obtaining information from the enemy’s key centers.” Moreover, the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance’s “attitude in questions of operational work has been insufficiently critical and self-critical,” they wrote. Markus Wolf, head of the directorate, they accused of tolerating “liberalism” in Party educational work, as “was the case, for example, with the traitor Männel.” Even Mielke wasn’t spared their disapproval, being criticized for not having established a “firm system of control” for the directorate.69 This deployment of the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues to the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance in March 1962 was undoubtedly to some extent intended to demonstrate the Party’s power over the MfS. In this sense, it was part of a conflict between SED leaders and the MfS that came to a head in 1962. Mielke, since being appointed minister, had expanded his tools of repression—initially very much in line with Ulbricht’s objectives. The increase of fulltime Stasi employees from 17,400 to around 23,500 between 1956 and 1961 is just one indication of this.70 When Mielke tried to stick to this course after the Wall was erected, however, he found himself at odds with Ulbricht’s new reform agenda. The state security minister’s much-propagated struggle against “ideological diversion” in all areas of life was not compatible with the Party leader’s limited liberalization in the field of cultural and youth policy. Presumably instructed by Honecker to do so, the MfS division prepared a twentyeight-page general critique of the MfS in the fall of 1962. The report listed violations of the law that Stasi employees had committed, e.g., in the course of house searches and arrests, culminating in the accusation that the Stasi was acting as a supervisory body over the rest of the state apparatus. The showdown occurred at an MfS delegates’ conference in December 1962. It was surely at Ulbricht and Honecker’s behest that Hermann Matern, the chair of the Central Party Control Commission, presented the key points from the MfS division’s paper at the conference. Mielke’s heckling (“Our enemies used to throw bombs at us, now they’re more subtle”) shows that the minister was aware how grave the situation was. Otherwise MfS leaders appeared unimpressed. “The comrades” from the MfS, summed up the almost disillusioned Central Committee departmental head Borning, “responded to none of the questions . . . that Comrade Matern raised in his talk.”71

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In the medium term, the MfS stuck to its course. With the ousting of Khrushchev in October 1964, however, SED leaders were surely no longer interested in limiting the powers of State Security. In 1965, the MfS had proved its worth in Honecker’s estimation by supplying information on an almost made-to-order basis “verifying” that Ulbricht’s liberalization of youth and cultural policy was playing into the hands of the enemies of the state.72 There was no comparable attempt to downgrade the MfS to a ministry like any other for the remainder of the GDR. But the MfS did not fully escape the control of the Central Committee apparatus.73 Its political work remained under the supervision of the Central Committee’s Security Department, which was not insignificant for a secret police force that was strictly political-ideological in its orientation. The reports of the MfS division remained critical into the 1980s and occasionally Borning was capable of landing targeted blows. In early 1969, he reported to Honecker that there was “hardly any discussion of problems” in the MfS’s Party organization and that the ministry failed to sufficiently penetrate “the ideological content of Party resolutions.” Most of all, however, Borning and his successors remained in control of the most important source of power for any Central Committee departmental head: cadre policy. Borning did fail in the spring of 1965 to temporarily appoint one of his own employees to the position of first secretary of the SED district leadership in the MfS. It was more important, though, that no main departmental head was appointed in the MfS and that no colonel could be promoted to general without the Central Committee Security Department’s approval. If the latter became the “Party leadership’s most knowledgeable informant about the state of affairs in the secret service”74 then not least because Borning periodically summoned top MfS functionaries to cadre discussions at the Big House and because members of the MfS division played the role of their “confessors.”75 In the early 1970s, moreover, Borning scored a minor victory against Mielke in the field of cadre policy. In September 1970, the Central Committee Secretariat had passed a resolution regulating the “work of the Department of Security Issues with the nomenklatura cadre.”76 Following this resolution, the MfS division drafted its own guidelines meticulously regulating the cooperation on cadre issues between the Security Department and the MfS. These guidelines resulted in a categorical statement: “No cadre can be appointed in its designated function before being confirmed by . . . the Department of Security Issues of the Central Committee of the SED.” Such guidelines were nothing new, of course, the Security Department having drawn them up in the 1950s for the Ministry of the Interior—and presumably for the National People’s Army as well.77 And yet the passing of cadre guidelines with the MfS at the very same moment when Mielke was being promoted to the Politbüro and State Security was massively expanding was surely intended as a message from the Party leadership, that is to say Honecker: namely, that the Party wanted to retain its control over the MfS. Mielke signed the document in January 1972.

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Walter Borning resigned in March at the age of fifty-two. This was no conspiracy of Mielke’s.78 Borning was simply an alcoholic who failed to show up for work more often than the Party was willing to accept. On the night of September 3, for example, Borning was supposed to sign a press release on behalf of the East Berlin city commander after a serious incident at the Berlin Wall. But Borning insisted on “emptying a bottle of vodka first with the [commander’s] messenger”79 and could hardly hold a pen once he was ready to sign. In 1970 he participated, while drunk, in a capabilities exercise of the National People’s Army. In doing so he berated soldiers in a reconnaissance battalion, calling them “sad sacks” who “need to be shown how we did it thirty years ago.” The comment not only shows how Nazi socialization could leave long-term traces even in leading cadre in the SED; coming from a former accounting officer in an anti-aircraft reserve regiment, it smacked of an overidentification with the Wehrmacht.80 Finally, on August 5, 1971, Borning got so drunk celebrating the fiftieth birthday of a coworker, Willi Baumgardt, that “he sat down on the steps of the main entrance to the Central Committee building and had to be removed by an employee from his department.” In other words, he drank so much he couldn’t even walk.81 Honecker had long protected his departmental head for security issues. After this incident, however, the search began to find a replacement for him. In January 1972, Borning had to answer to the Party leadership of the Central Committee and the basic organization of the Security Department for his “petty-bourgeois behavior” that was “detrimental to the Party,” the latter giving him a comparatively mild “warning.”82 But by then his authority had been irreversibly damaged. In February 1972, Party proceedings were instituted against Borning and, according to his cadre file, he was subsequently dismissed from his post as departmental head due to his “un-Party-like behavior.”83 His successor was Herbert Scheibe, who, though only six years older than Borning, belonged to a different generation: Borning had joined the Nazi Party in 1939 and was a corporal in the Luftwaffe during the war, whereas Scheibe, born in 1914, had been held in Buchenwald from 1937 to 1945. Scheibe was thus an Old Communist, while Borning belonged to the reconstruction generation shaped (in his case radically) by Nazism.84 Scheibe had served as commander of the East German Air Force / Air Defense in the Ministry of National Defense. It is certainly not unfair to describe him as an authoritarian individual with a very military mindset and perception of the world.85 Cooperation with the MfS went smoothly during his tenure—e.g., when Stasi and Security Department employees jointly investigated the causes of desertion in the East German army.86 At the same time, however, it seems that the MfS was no longer the center of attention for the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues. The latter was now increasingly devoted to preparing the state and the economy for national defense purposes and, as of the late 1970s, with “military education,” i.e., premilitary training through the Society for Sports and Technology (GST) and in schools.87 Scheibe did not act as a political counterpart to the security ministries.

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Figure 5.1. “A genuine Party worker” heading the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues: Wolfgang Herger (left) visits the NVA’s motorized rifle regiment in Stahnsdorf together with the GDR’s minster of national defense, Heinz Kessler, on August 30, 1987. Source: ddrbildarchiv.de. From Mielke’s perspective it was a provocation then when Wolfgang Herger was appointed head the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues in 1985. With the retirement of former air-force commander Scheibe, who had always felt more like a lieutenant-general than a Central Committee employee, there was the expectation, according to one contemporary witness, that “the position should be filled with a genuine Party worker.” Egon Krenz, the respective Central Committee secretary for security issues, not only wanted to “change habitualized military modes of thought in the department.”88 He was surely also interested in “pushing back the influence of [the Ministry of National Defense] in Straussberg,” that is to say in strengthening the influence of the Party apparatus vis-à-vis the security ministries. Mielke should have hardly felt threatened by this. And yet Herger’s background and habitus annoyed him; he had no use for a doctor of philosophy and longtime FDJ politician. Mielke “did not take him seriously” at first, according to Herger’s former coworker Dieter Mechtel. “Who’s this guy? Something to that effect.”89 It is entirely possible that, after Herger’s appointment, Stasi leaders consulted the dossier in Department XII on his time as an FDJ secretary at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.90 But dossier aside, it is evident that no one asked Mielke’s opinion when it came to finding a successor for Scheibe. At least in this instance, there seemed to have

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been a clearcut “distribution of roles between those giving orders and those receiving them,” i.e., the SED and the MfS.91

Security Partner and Personnel Consultant The relationship between the Central Committee’s Security Department and the MfS leadership was one aspect of the relationship between the “state party and State Security”—but little more. There were many other channels of communication and interaction between the Central Committee apparatus and the MfS—e.g., between the MfS’s Intelligence Department and the Central Committee’s Telecommunications Department. The close cooperation between these two departments was a direct result of the Liebing espionage affair, after which the MfS effectively assumed responsibility for securing all telephone communication of Party headquarters. In the 1970s and 1980s, employees at both departments coordinated their work on the secret government network (WTsch) and radio networks, among other things. The MfS’s Intelligence Department and the Central Committee’s Telecommunications Department also collaborated on encryption and, furthermore, in the late 1980s, on setting up radiationproof rooms for “confidential-classified computers.”92 But the entanglement of the MfS and the Central Committee apparatus went even further in the case of the Telecommunications Department. When it became apparent in 1975 that its departmental head, Heins Zumpe, would soon be leaving the apparatus, Erich Mielke suggested to Honecker that the vacant position be filled by a Stasi man.93 The head of the MfS Intelligence Department recommended Heinz Lübbe, who until then had been head of the intelligence department in the regional administration of Schwerin. The thirty-eight-year-old Lübbe was thus transferred to the Stasi’s Intelligence Department, effective December 1, 1975, where he was given a permanent position as an “officer on special assignment,” took charge of the Central Committee’s Telecommunications Department, became the supervisor of 87 Central Committee employees,94 and was now a close contact person of the HA PS in all security issues, often acting as a go-between for the MfS and Gisela Glende. Though Lübbe lost his status as a Central Committee departmental head in 1987 when the Telecommunications Department was incorporated into the larger Office of the Politbüro, as head of the telecommunications division he became the deputy of the new director of the Office of the Politbüro, Edwin Schwertner.95 He had thus moved even closer to the innermost circle of power in the Big House. Another focus of cooperation between the MfS and the Central Committee apparatus was travel. Incidents at border controls went straight to the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues. In an effort to bring “greater order” to the expanding travel business of West German travel groups—trade unionists, teachers, Bundestag members—in the mid-1980s, the head of the Western Department, Herbert Häber, founded the “political tourism” working group in 1984 in which members of

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the MfS’s Main Department VI and the Central Committee’s Western Department discussed the travel industry.96 Most notably, however, the MfS vetted hundreds of economic cadre, artists, scientists, scholars and other representatives of the GDR each year on behalf of Central Committee departments to see if they seemed reliable enough to be allowed to travel abroad in the West. Central Committee departmental heads usually followed these Stasi “recommendations.” But sometimes they asked for exceptions to be made. In February 1983, for instance, departmental head Karl Seidel requested that Main Department XX support the application of the president of the Society of Psychiatry for a study trip to Austria. In July 1983, Kurt Hager and the head of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture, Ursula Ragwitz, entreated the head of Main Department XX, Kienberg, to verify “short notice the travel credentials of the spouses” of Peter Meyer, Harry Jeske and Dieter Birr, three members of the rock band Die Puhdys, who were furious at being denied a vacation in France. Hager, for his part, was keen on “avoiding a confrontation with the group.”97 He also recommended that Kienberg lift the Stasi’s entry ban against Günter Grass, as otherwise the writer and elected president of the West Berlin Academy of Arts could not “maintain his ties with our Academy of Arts.” Hager, in fact, wanted to speak with Mielke in person about this.98 There is also evidence of occasional cooperation on policies of repression. As early as the 1950s, a commission in the Central Committee’s Department of State and Legal Affairs examined the indictments of the First Criminal Division of the Supreme Court of the GDR, which was responsible for political crimes. Members of the commission—which apart from Central Committee departmental head Klaus Sorgenicht included the vice-president of the Supreme Court and a high-ranking Stasi representative, usually Erich Mielke himself—gave recommendations for sentencing, which could even include the death penalty.99 Central Committee departmental heads would also pass on hints to the MfS that were likely understood as investigative orders. In early 1975, Werner Hering, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy, for example, informed the head of Main Department XX, Paul Kienberg, that he was “informed verbally that an employee of Friedrichshain hospital . . . supposedly heard Prof. S[. . .] saying to another doctor something to the effect of: ‘He’s going on vacation in Czechoslovakia and after that will probably become a spa physician in the Black Forest.’”100 In the summer of 1973, the chair of the Central Party Control Commission, Erich Mückenberger, had asked the head of the Central Committee’s Department of State and Legal Affairs, Klaus Sorgenicht, to request that “the respective state authorities” conduct a “very thorough investigation” of the case of a district attorney who planned to import Western goods to the GDR.101 Mückenberger had learned about the incident through Party channels thanks to his position as chairman. Now he apparently wanted to make sure that the state machinery of repression likewise concerned itself with the district attorney. This case makes clear that even Politbüro members used channels of the Central Committee apparatus when they wanted to get the MfS involved without having to go through Mielke.

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Finally, the head of the Central Committee’s Cadre Department, Fritz Müller, informed Main Department XX in April 1984 that professional athlete Boris M. had applied to emigrate to the Federal Republic. Kienberg noted that the application “should be denied” and “measures should be introduced to reclaim” the subject.102 In this case, at least, this information from the Central Committee apparatus was close to being a directive to the Stasi. The MfS—namely its Main Department XX/10—and Party headquarters worked hand in hand in the field of cadre policy too. Close “work contacts” existed, for example, with the head of the Central Committee’s personnel office, Günter Arnold, who was responsible for hiring technical employees and was “very committed to supporting the needs of our agency,” as the head of Main Department XX/10 said in praise of him.103 Moreover, Department XX/10 regularly asked Horst Dohlus’s Department of Party Organs in the Central Committee for information—e.g., when vetting a prospective unofficial collaborator and learning that the Party had taken disciplinary measures against this person, which it then wanted to know more about. Such information was usually forthcoming.104 The flow of information between State Security and the Central Committee’s Cadre Department, under Fritz Müller from 1963 to 1989, was particularly heavy. It is evident here that the Central Committee apparatus knew how use the MfS for political purposes. Thus, in late 1972, according to a file memo of Paul Kienberg, Main Department XX/10, which was subordinate to him, supplied information on a departmental head in the State Planning Commission “at the request of the Central Committee’s Department of Cadre Issues” that was to “serve as the basis of a change in cadre.” It turned out that the departmental head, Peter G., had extensive Western contacts, making his current position untenable.105 Obviously, the Western contacts were just a pretext to get rid of a State Planning Commission departmental head who had fallen out of favor with the Party, and with Stasi intelligence stacked against him even the leaders of the State Planning Commission had little influence in the matter. This takes us to another level of the relationship between the MfS and the Central Committee apparatus: the capacity of Main Department XX/10 as a “personnel consultant” to the SED.

Security Clearances Alongside the Main Department for Personal Security, Main Department XX/10 (which until 1964 went under the name Main Department V) likely played the most important role in securing SED headquarters.106 Employees in this department, for example, took advantage of the “unofficial opportunities” provided by conferences and other such “larger events on the premises” to screen representatives of the press and television beforehand.107 The members of Main Department XX/10 also stepped into action when it came to combatting “political diversion” at Central Committee headquarters—the little swastikas, for instance, repeatedly found carved into elevator and paternoster cabins as of 1960.108 Most of all, though, Main Department XX/10

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screened “the majority of individuals being newly employed” at Central Committee headquarters.109 To this end Department XX conducted so-called security clearances.110 These were evidently sporadic until the late 1960s. While investigating the Liebing espionage affair, at any rate, members of Main Department IX came across dozens of technical employees at the Central Committee who should never have been allowed to work there on account of their Western contacts or Nazi pasts.111 This notwithstanding, MfS records from the early 1970s on contain a vast quantity of relevant “cadre” or investigative orders.112 These went from the Central Committee Cadre Department to Main Department XX/10, which then sent inquiries to the MfS offices responsible for the place of residence of the person in question. Main Department XX/10 then compiled work references, requested evaluations of political commitment from basic and social organizations, and made inquiries at the workplace and generally in the “residential environment” of the individuals in question. Informants,113 i.e., neighbors the Stasi considered reliable and sometimes registered in special files, provided detailed insights into the private lives of these Central Committee employees-to-be.114 As a rule these investigations resulted in positive recommendations—which should hardly be surprising considering, after all, that these individuals were applying for jobs with the Central Committee. Rudolf S., born in 1939, departmental head in the Ministry of Regional and Light Industry, is a case in point, the MfS’s Main Department XIII/3 having characterized him as follows in early 1973: “class-conscious comrade,” squad leader in his combat group, “very even-tempered character,” “family relations . . . in order,” no Western contacts, “no incidents of RF [fleeing from the GDR] in his family circle.” The conclusion was therefore unequivocal: “Based on the investigation results at hand, employment as a political staffer in the Central Committee is approved.” And yet one specific detail about S.—who was indeed hired as a political employee in the Central Committee’s Department of Light, Food and Regional Industry in 1974—was not shared with the Central Committee’s Cadre Department (or was possibly only communicated verbally): that S. had worked for the MfS as a secret informant for thirteen years up to that point in time. This fact was likely to have had a very positive influence on his recommendation.115 In cases where the Stasi did give a negative appraisal, the Central Committee specialist departments tended not to follow these blindly. In late 1973, Horst Wambutt, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry, appointed a new general director of VVB Leichtchemie, even though “we”—an employee of the MfS’s Main Department VIII/1 said in retrospect—had “raised some concerns about installing [this] cadre” as general director. The Stasi employee was referring here to the fact that members of the prospective general director’s family had “contacts to the NSW [non-socialist economic area].”116 In another case, from the summer of 1983, Main Department XX/10 declined “the appointment of E.”—an employee at the Ministry for Geology—“as a political staffer in the Central Committee of the SED, Department of Basic Industry” for the following reason: “E.’s manner is known to

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have a tendency toward arrogance, as seen, e.g., in his disparaging attitude toward the work of the MfS.”117 But even in this case Horst Wambutt stuck to his cadre recommendation. After one year at the Party academy in 1987, Nobert E. was hired in the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry, where he even rose to the rank of division head in 1989—which should come as no surprise, since even the Stasi had to admit he was an “experienced professional with a broad basic knowledge” in his field. Despite these setbacks, it is hard to deny that Main Department XX/10 played the role of a “personnel consultant” to SED leaders.118 Nobert E. became a Central Committee division head because he knew Horst Wambutt or the respective division head personally. This is why the latter felt they could override the Stasi’s veto. There were no such personal contacts in the case of many other employees or members of the respective cadre reserve. In these instances the MfS’s recommendation was the deciding factor. The extent to which Party headquarters trusted State Security as a personnel consultant is illustrated by a kind of performance report that the head of Main Department XX, Kienberg, put together in May 1976 with a view to the Ninth Party Congress: “The Department of Cadre Issues in the Central Committee,” Kienberg wrote, “gave us 52 individuals to review” who were being considered for election to the Central Committee during the Party congress. After “extensive background checks,” Main Department XX provided “the Central Committee of the SED with 36 suggestions . . . . A number of the proposed comrades were not selected because of this.”119 This means that State Security could even influence who sat in the Party’s highest governing body—not through an open veto process, but through the composition and filtering of information. Admittedly, there are no indications that the Stasi pursued its own cadre policy with regard to Central Committee staff or members. They assessed prospective cadre on the basis of their own norms and patterns of perception—which, in fact, largely overlapped with those of SED headquarters itself. Like the Stasi, Party leaders expected a habitus exhibiting “class consciousness,” “Party allegiance” and efficiency, any of which could be undermined by Western contacts. Of course, opinions might have differed with regard to the importance of professional qualifications, but these differences should not be overestimated and were a relatively seldom occurrence. Moreover, professional expertise, a rigorous education and political loyalty were perfectly compatible, as evidenced by the case of Rudolf S., a departmental head in the Ministry of Regional and Light Industry who for years collaborated with the MfS as an unofficial collaborator. One indication of this compatibility is the fact that during the 1970s there was a marked increase in the number of Central Committee employees who worked for the Stasi before they were hired by Party headquarters.

Former Unofficial Collaborators as Central Committee Employees This development is by no means surprising. While it is true that, as a rule, the MfS was supposed to recruit unofficial collaborators from among non-Party members, in reality this guideline was not always followed. This is because Party comrades were

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more likely to be motivated by “ideological conviction,” which seemed to guarantee smooth cooperation more than any “material rewards” did. Added to this was the fact that in the organizations and institutions of particular interest to State Security from the 1960s to the 1980s—combines and ministries, colleges and universities, the mass media—it simply wasn’t possible to persuade non-Party members to cooperate. SED membership was an entry requirement here. But the more unofficial collaborators State Security recruited from the management of such institutions, the higher the likelihood these individuals would transfer to Party headquarters in the course of their careers given the professionalization of the Central Committee apparatus. In the context of the present study, a total of 310 Central Committee employees were crosschecked with cases and personal files of the MfS on the basis of biographical research conducted at the BStU.120 It turned out that in seventy-nine cases the individuals in question had collaborated with the MfS—as a secret informer (GM) or unofficial collaborator (IM), as a secret main informer (GHI), as an unofficial collaborator for securing a facility or area (IMS), and not least of all as the owner of an apartment used for conspiratorial purposes (IKW). The majority of those who owned a conspiratorial apartment belonged to the thirty out of seventy-nine employees who were contacted by the MfS after their period of employment in the Central Committee. From the Stasi’s perspective, this group of former Central Committee employees was particularly reliable. They generally supplied valuable information from their new state leadership positions. Or—as unofficial collaborators for securing conspiracy (IMKs)—they generally didn’t hesitate to offer the Stasi their apartments, a room or weekend cottage when needed. As for the remaining forty-nine Central Committee employees who worked with the MfS before being hired at Party headquarters, two aspects stand out here. First, the average year the members of this group joined the Central Committee was 1971, their average year of birth 1933. However unrepresentative these figures, and however incomplete the number of former unofficial collaborators, it is nevertheless apparent that employees with a “Stasi past” were much more common in the apparatus during the 1970s and 1980s than in the 1950s. The career of Central Committee employee and former unofficial collaborator Horst M., born in 1938, might illustrate why this was the case. After studying chemistry at Humboldt University in Berlin, M. began working as an assistant production manager at VEB Pharmazeutische Werke Oranienburg in 1963. He was recruited there by the Stasi as an unofficial collaborator and, in 1964, was promoted to the position of assistant to the general director at VVB Pharmazeutische Industrie Berlin. Here he came to the attention of the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry, which hired him as a political employee in 1969, thus ending his stint as an unofficial collaborator. A career like this would have been impossible in the early GDR. It is therefore feasible to argue that the increasing number of unofficial collaborators in the Central Committee apparatus is a consequence and secondary effect of professionalization. Second, the majority of the forty-eight former unofficial collaborators in the Central Com-

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mittee apparatus, thirty to be more precise, worked in a specialist department, one of them, professor of neurology Karl Seidel, even as a Central Committee departmental head as of 1981.121 Concentrations of former unofficial collaborators can be seen in a number of departments, most notably of Agriculture, Construction, Planning and Finances, and Basic Industry. The remaining eighteen former agents were distributed among International Relations (3) and Agitation (3), and to a lesser extent among Youth, Women’s Affairs, the COMECON working group, Telecommunications, as well as the Financial Administration and Party Enterprises departments. This shows that the former unofficial collaborators were not, or rarely, in the ideological departments.122 They were active in those departments that, according to Peter Christian Ludz, would have been the stronghold of the “institutionalized counter-elite” within the apparatus123 and which fostered a sense of resentment against the “ideological people” in the apparatus. Of course, acting as an unofficial collaborator is not a reliable indicator of any ideological convictions per se. The men and women in question here, cooperating with the MfS as assistant chemists or deputy departmental heads in the State Planning Commission, used the opportunity, on the one hand, to present themselves as loyal to the system—it would surely be mistaken to think of these former Stasi collaborators as “150 percenters” who aggressively backed the Party line in every instance. On the other hand, it may well have affected the “climate,” the organizational culture of a Central Committee department if a quarter to a third of political employees there had worked with the MfS in the past, as was the case in some economic-policy departments in the 1970s and 1980s, a circumstance certainly not conducive to the formation of a critical “counter-elite.”

Surveillance Object The figures compiled in the present study provide at least circumstantial evidence that, during the 1970s and 1980s, a significant number of Central Committee employees had collaborated with State Security before entering the apparatus. This is an “invisible” level of reciprocal relations, complementing and reinforcing the abovementioned “official” contacts—to the extent that these two levels could even be distinguished from each other at all. Central Committee departmental head Karl Seidel, for instance, acted as an “official contact” of the MfS during the 1980s in his conversations with the head of Department XX/1, Lieutenant-Colonel Jaeckel—his former case officer, whom he provided with information from the Academy Psychiatric Clinic in Dresden and Charité Hospital in Berlin from 1967 to 1978 as IMS Fritz Steiner.124 In addition to configurations like this, there was yet another “invisible” level: the “unofficial” contacts the Stasi had at Party headquarters. These unofficial contacts were actually illegal according to Party statutes. They pointedly raise the question as to what role the Central Committee apparatus and State Security played in the power figuration in the upper echelon of Party dictatorship.

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The majority of unofficial Stasi contacts with Central Committee employees likely resulted from previous relations as unofficial informers. It was actually not uncommon that existing relations of this sort were continued on an “informal” basis once the informer entered Party headquarters. Karl-Heinz B. is a case in point. In 1975 he began working for the MfS as a social collaborator for security (GMS) until he left his post as director of a geological institute to enter the Central Committee apparatus in 1983. Though his Stasi handler thought it no longer expedient to hold “periodic meetings,” they would still have “talks as needed.” “To this end the GMS offered his home in W[. . . ], a suitable location.”125 “In practice,” recalls Dieter Mechtel, a former employee in the Central Committee’s Security Department, “the Ministry for State Security did not always adhere to its own instructions to ‘deactivate’ an unofficial collaborator” when the latter entered the Party apparatus. “Instead [they] said, well, let’s meet again there.”126 The instruction to “deactivate” (abschalten) unofficial collaborators had been given in 1954 by the Security Commission of the Politbüro. Following the example of the CPSU leadership under Khrushchev, the Security Commission decided per resolution that “the organs of State Security shall be forbidden to work with informants in the Party apparatus,” in other words to recruit unofficial collaborators.127 The resolution was meant seriously and taken seriously—as evidenced by the files of dozens of promising informer candidates whose recruitment was terminated because they had transferred to the Party apparatus. The practice of “meeting again” with former unofficial collaborators after they had switched to the Central Committee apparatus was already overstretching this provision. There are a number of indications, however, that the Stasi openly breached this provision and maintained contacts with employees in the Party apparatus whom the MfS handled as unofficial or “conspiratorial.”128 There is proof of several technical employees who worked as unofficial collaborators of the Stasi. Among them was IMS “Erwin,” who mingled with the in-house technicians and reported to the Main Department for Personal Security in September 1968 that the electricians grew “panicky” when the electricity went out on the Politbüro floor.129 Another was Fritz W., the driver of Josef Steidl, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation. W. was a “longtime, reliable contact of Main Department II/19” who provided the latter with “valuable information on the situation in the department.”130 “Official” unofficial collaborators were more rare among political employees, probably because many of them took the prohibition on cooperation with the Stasi seriously—such as former departmental head Hans Geffke. Geffke did provide the MfS with a “conspiratorial apartment” from 1969 to 1972, but refused to sign a commitment to work as an unofficial collaborator, “because he felt bound to the Central Committee’s oath of confidentiality.”131 Other political employees in the Central Committee did sign such commitments. Some of them were even so conspicuous in their dealings with “Security” that inquiries were made with Main Department XX: “We were asked by the Central Committee,” the head of Main Department XX, Kienberg, wrote in a memorandum on October 17, 1978, “to verify if [political employee] Mienert, Herbert,

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is working with the MfS.” Mienert, it turned out, was collaborating with the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, which, according to Kienberg, was “not prepared to abandon its conspiratorial cooperation.” He went on: “The MfS has the instruction that unofficial collaboration with employees of the Central Committee of the SED can only be sanctioned by the Comrade Minister. Please clarify.”132 The instruction prevented overzealous Stasi units from bypassing Mielke and maintaining their own communication links to Party headquarters—the self-assured Main Directorate for Reconnaissance under Markus Wolf possibly being the exception here. Generally speaking, however, and Kienberg’s memorandum is proof of this, Mielke knew about the unofficial collaborators at Party headquarters and hence allowed his agency to violate the directives of the Party leadership. It is not entirely clear, though, if Mielke knew about Gerd Pelikan, who entered the Central Committee’s Department of Planning and Finances in 1988 and reported from there to Main Department II of the MfS in his capacity as an unofficial collaborator until October 1989.133 Pelikan, born in 1954, belonged to the youngest group of employees working at Party headquarters until 1989. His career path illustrates in exemplary fashion the type of the well-educated, rapidly rising state functionary who spent several years at Party headquarters to “consecrate” him for a state leadership position. Pelikan had been born in the socialist service class.134 He studied and earned his doctorate between 1972 and 1981 at the Leningrad Financial-Economics Institute. In 1981 he entered the East German Ministry of Finance, where he became a research assistant to the state secretary and, as of 1984, at the same worked for State Security as IMS “Fritz Schuchardt.” None of this was out of the ordinary. Yet when Pelikan met again with his MfS case officer in May of 1988, shortly before transferring to the Central Committee apparatus, their conversation did not end with the usual mutual thankyous for the excellent cooperation. Instead they discussed “questions regarding future cooperation.” According to the meeting report, the unofficial collaborator “unhesitatingly declared his willingness to conceal his unofficial contact with the MfS from the cadre division [sic] of his department. He sees the necessity of this and is prepared to continue working with the MfS.”135 Indeed, IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,” alias Gerd Pelikan, continued to meet once a month with his case officer in a conspiratorial apartment even after joining the Central Committee’s Department of Planning and Finances, reporting extensively about the daily work of his department. Thus, Lieutenant-Colonel Mandel received firsthand information about the attempts of departmental head Ehrensperger to “patch up holes in the state budget” together with the Ministry of Finance. Pelikan gave an account of his work on a proposal to cut back subsidies, of a working group in the Politbüro devoted to price policies as of December 1988, and of discussions triggered by a Politbüro resolution of January 10, 1989, on “elevating the level of political-ideological work in the Party apparatus.”136 In the last documented meeting, on October 5, 1989, he reported that “the principal problem for his department with deporting tens of thousands of citizens of the GDR consisted in the lack of clarity with regard to the regulation of

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property issues.” There was no consensus about what was to be done with the houses, apartments and land of “deportees.”137 The case of “Fritz Schuchardt” is clear evidence of the suspicion expressed at the start of this chapter that the Stasi kept tabs on the central Party apparatus, keeping it on a “tight rein” as it were. But it also shows that the red line drawn between State Security and Party apparatus was still valid for the latter’s members during the final crisis of the GDR. Thus, IMS “Fritz Schuchardt” confided in his case officer at a visit to a restaurant in October 1988138 that he had a bad conscience, since an employee of the Central Committee was “actually not allowed to have any unofficial contact with the MfS.” His only motivation to continue working together was his trusting relationship with his handler.139 Added to this was the fact that Main Department II/6 was not playing fair and square with Gerd Pelikan, much like in the case of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance with regard to Central Committee employee Mienert. In any case, the head of Main Department II/6, General-Lieutenant Günther Kratsch, passed off IMS “Fritz Schuchardt” as a “confirmed consultation partner of Main Department II/6 employed in the Department of Planning and Finance of the Central Committee of the SED.”140 The wording “confirmed consultation partner” sounds more like an official contact rather than an IMS, which is what “Fritz Schuchardt” actually was. In this respect it looks as though in this case an individual MfS unit had crossed the line in order to take advantage of what it considered a unique opportunity to place a source in an otherwise inaccessible area.141 All of this is consonant with the activities of a State Security apparatus that clung to its role as a “general contractor in security issues” in the Honecker era142 and that, given the economic crisis, believed it had to have a direct line of contact with decision-making centers. It is impossible to conclude from this case, however, that the division of roles between the state party and State Security had fundamentally changed or been blurred. Things were different with the “operational handling” of Central Committee employees. Here we see State Security acting in an increasingly arbitrary and self-willed manner.

Operational Measures Against Central Committee Employees In the early 1950s, State Security not only had few scruples when it came to recruiting “secret informers” from the ranks of the central Party apparatus; in individual cases it was even surprisingly aggressive in its attempts to enlist senior Party employees—in early 1953, for example, with Central Committee division head Joachim Mückenberger (the brother of Erich Mückenberger, no less, then first secretary of the SED’s regional leadership in Erfurt). Colonel Josef Kiefel, head of Department II (counterintelligence), wanted to test the reaction of Mückenberger by sending him fictitious invitations from a secret collaborator (“Tasso”) for meetings in West Berlin with enemy “agent headquarters.” Fortunately, for his sake, Mückenberger’s behavior was entirely above-board and “Party-like.” He gave the first letter to his Central Committee departmental head, and when he handed over the second as well the

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secret collaborator was so inept that Mückenberger’s wife had him arrested by the People’s Police.143 In another instance, in early 1955—i.e., after the 1954 resolution of the Security Commission forbidding State Security from recruiting informers from the Party apparatus—head of Department 6 in Main Department V was less satisfied with the results. In this case it was an employee in the State Organs Department, Herbert K., who was being targeted. K.’s name had been given by someone being held in custody as an individual the CIA supposedly had an interest in. K.’s departmental head, Klaus Sorgenicht, for his part informed Ulbricht’s office in writing that he didn’t believe the accusations and that he had “no intention . . . of dismissing Comrade K[. . .] from the Party apparatus.”144 All the same, the head of Main Department V initiated “the necessary operational measures” against K. in August 1955, including the recruitment of a secret collaborator in the Central Committee’s State Organs Department. With that the Stasi officer not only overrode Sorgenicht’s veto; he also violated the instructions of the Security Commission in the Politbüro. In the second half of the 1950s the central Party apparatus acquired the status of a no-go zone from the perspective of the MfS. This study, at any rate, found no evidence of the Stasi investigating a political employee of the Central Committee during the 1960s. This changed in the early 1970s—with the start of the Honecker era or, more importantly, with the Liebing espionage affair. The latter not only strengthened the role of the MfS as a counterintelligence organ of the Big House; the investigations in this case also unearthed intimate information about high-ranking political employees that was passed on by Liebing and Arno Heine, the technical employee arrested in 1972, to Western secret services, as it seemed to indicate “weak spots” of potential use for recruiting purposes. Thus, this study uncovered four special operational cases (SOVs) in the 1970s and 1980s concerning five Central Committee departmental heads.145 Added to this were three additional operational cases (OVs) concerning political employees of the Central Committee. If we bear in mind that there were likely even more operational cases than the ones identified here, it becomes apparent that the Stasi’s surveillance of the Party apparatus was indeed more pervasive than previously assumed. Perhaps the most controversial, in any case the most extensive special operational case against leading cadre in the Central Committee apparatus took place in the context of the Arno Heine espionage affair. Heine worked in one of the Central Committee’s workshops, and therefore answered to Günter Glende, head of the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department as of 1964, Heine having been “on rather good terms” with him. Following instructions from the BND, Heine devoted his attention to Glende “very thoroughly” between 1958 and 1970, according to statements he made in MfS custody, “at least 25 reports, in my estimation.”146 The West German intelligence agency learned from these reports that Glende was very power-hungry and considered himself the “uncrowned king” of the house, having everyone “under his thumb.”147 In Heine’s view Glende was a gifted networker who

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“always focused on the leading functionaries who, in his opinion, were ‘up and coming’”—Honecker, Mittag, Axen and Lamberz in the 1960s, for example.148 More than anything, though—and this is what interested Heine’s clients the most—Glende was extremely corrupt. The patterns and scope of this corrupt behavior will be discussed in more detail below.149 For the moment we are only interested in how the MfS dealt with the compromising information it obtained through Heine. At first glance, the case of Glende would seem to indicate that the Stasi was an organization that had no “red lines.” Because in 1973 Main Department XX began its “political-operational handling” of Günter Glende150 as a result of the Heine interrogations, despite Heine being convinced that Glende was “not suitable material for recruitment by an enemy secret service,” Glende being too fond of his present position. Moreover, Glende had meanwhile married Gisela Trautzsch, who as director of the Office of the Politbüro was the political employee closest to Erich Honecker in the Central Committee apparatus. In the course of the 1970s, employees in Main Department XX gathered extensive information on Glende. They were actively supported by Main Administration XVIII/7, which even bugged the house of one of Glende’s acquaintances. Thus, for years on end, the conversations between Günter Glende and this individual, whenever the former paid the latter a visit, were being recorded by the Stasi.151 In the late 1970s, counterintelligence, i.e., Main Department II/6, also began to monitor Glende. In November 1977, an anonymous letter informed the MfS that West Germany’s Military Counterintelligence Service had a source very close to the Party leadership. According to the information available in the spring of 1980, this person was thought in all likelihood to be none other than Günter Glende. Glende, after all, as the Heine interrogations revealed, had been “the focus of imperialist intelligence services for over ten years.”152 This “handling” of Glende by several MfS units at the same time is remarkable for two reasons. On the one hand, it was an open violation of the 1954 resolution passed by the Security Commission. By this point the Security Commission no longer existed, but there is no question that Glende’s handling would have needed Honecker’s approval. It is possible, of course, that Mielke informed the General Secretary about the situation in one of their notorious personal discussions after a meeting of the Politbüro. But it is unlikely that Honecker would have agreed to having the husband of his office manager kept under surveillance for ten years to the extent done here.153 On the other hand, it is striking that the Stasi units involved were careful not to break certain rules in this case. No unofficial collaborator, for example, who could have supplied information on Glende was recruited within the Party apparatus. Instead they limited themselves to monitoring Glende’s private life. It is possible, of course, that Main Department II/6 deliberately abstained from reporting to Party leaders so as not to have to abandon its special operational case before having gathered sufficient incriminating evidence. Only in 1980 did the MfS stop its surveillance of Glende.154

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MfS Cadre Policy? It is conceivable that the intensity with which State Security conducted operational cases or special operational cases against Central Committee employees was dependent upon whether the individual in question was considered a “friend” or a “foe” of the MfS. Glende’s claim that “the MfS only comes up to our chest” may have acted as an additional incentive for the Stasi officers assigned to his case. It is clearly evident that the “operational work” of the MfS was sometimes guided by its own interests, as in the case of Anton Günter, division head in the International Relations Department. From the Stasi’s perspective—and presumably that of Central Committee cadre director Fritz Müller—the international section of the Central Committee was particularly vulnerable to “enemy” influence. Its employees—even measured against the overall high level of academic credentials in the specialist apparatus during the 1980s—were particularly well-educated, traveled often to capitalist countries, had access to Western literature and to especially sensitive documents.155 Furthermore, Main Department XX/10 had no choice but to classify Anton Günter as an “enemy” of the MfS, what with the man having demanded to be “informed in detail about the reasons for the MfS rejecting travel and international cadre in the state sector”—a clear indication to the MfS that Günter was “interested in problems that are none of his business.”156 It was therefore more than convenient that in 1982 Main Department IX/11 discovered some compromising material about Günter in an archive:157 a list of Nazi Party members from the Sudeten German town of Langenau, Günter’s birthplace, compiled by the local Antifa Commission presumably in 1945 or 1946. Günter was on the list, with his correct date of birth.158 Main Department XX/10 immediately went on the offensive. Just like in the case of Häber three years later,159 it considered it “probable” that “enemy . . . secret services, etc., might access information about Günter’s past and use it to contact him.” It therefore requested that Günter be “subjected to a thorough security clearance in the form of an operational identity check [OPK].” The OPK was never carried out, however. Perhaps the head of Main Department XX, Kienberg, thought an eighteen-year-old Günter joining the Nazi Party was too minor an infraction. Or perhaps Mielke himself didn’t authorize the investigation.160 Another special operational case would seem at first glance to indicate that Mielke tried to make sure that incriminating material about high-ranking Central Committee employees remained within his ministry. The target in this case was Karl Seidel, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy. Seidel had apparently “succumbed to the temptations of capitalist consumer society” in the mid-1980s, buying up large quantities of technical equipment in West Berlin and reselling it for a profit in the GDR.161 Recognizing this as “a threat to the image of our Party and a considerable security risk to the Party and state,” Main Department II under General-Lieutenant Kratsch began the surveillance of Seidel in 1986.162 It spared no effort in doing so. No less than twenty employees of Main Department II, disguised

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as army soldiers, spent weeks in the summer of 1988 searching Seidel’s cottage in the countryside,163 and for years Seidel’s private telephone line was tapped. The material gathered in this manner was alarming. Seidel was not only extremely corrupt, he was also reckless, running the risk of starting a political scandal if he, a Central Committee departmental head, were to be stopped by police in West Berlin and found to have a trunk full of personal computers. Kratsch therefore recommended to Mielke on multiple occasions—in January 1987, August 1987 and finally August 1989—that Seidel’s business activities be made known to “Comrade Erich Honecker.”164 But it was only the intelligence gathered by Department 26/7 in mid-October 1989—that Seidel planned to “take a stand at the next Plenary of the Central Committee of the SED against the privileges of the functionaries living in Wandlitz and to advocate the dissolution of this ‘townlet’”165—that prompted Mielke to act. “After consultation with the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, Comrade Egon Krenz,” he forwarded the material to the head of the Central Committee’s Security Department, Wolfgang Herger.166 It was only when Seidel became a threat, so it seems, that Mielke used the information at his disposal to make him disappear from the political stage. And yet a memorandum from Kurt Hager to Mielke from May 1989 sheds a different light on this episode. It shows that Hager, as the Central Committee secretary responsible for Seidel, was well-informed about his activities and coordinated with Mielke on how to proceed.167 But if Hager knew about Seidel’s dealings, Honecker must have too. And so it must have been the General Secretary who shielded his departmental head. It is possible that Honecker was thinking of Seidel’s professional reputation or perhaps that, given the dire state of the healthcare system of the GDR, it would have been hard to find a suitable replacement for him. It is also conceivable, of course, that Mielke did not report the full story to Party leaders. He would have had good reason for this. As mentioned above, Seidel had been an “official contact” of Main Department XX/1 throughout the 1980s and reported directly to its head, Jaekel, about problems and developments in his policy field.168 Having a talkative Central Committee departmental head as an official contact was a boon to the MfS. And it might have been Seidel that prompted Mielke to continue spying on Kratsch and Main Department II but to be selective in which incriminating information was passed on to the General Secretary. Such caution was surely not exercised in yet another special operational case aimed against two senior members of the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation.

SOV “Schweinekopf ” No other Central Committee department had such a bad relationship to the Stasi as the Department of Transportation.169 Its first years, in which it was referred to as the “Stahlmann Department,” were mostly devoted to intelligence tasks in the Federal Republic. As of the 1960s, it was mainly involved in financing the (West) German Communist Party (DKP) and the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin (SEW). It also

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assisted these organizations’ cadre when the latter were in the GDR as part of delegations or for training purposes. Moreover, the Department of Transportation was responsible for maintaining contacts between SED leaders and the executive committees of the DKP and the SEW with the help of a messenger service. An additional task, “Western companies,” was added in the mid-1960s, the Department of Transportation now being responsible for Party enterprises operating in the Nonsocialist Economic Area (NSW)—that is to say, in the Federal Republic.170 All of these tasks brought the Department of Transportation in close contact with State Security. The MfS, first Main Department II, then Management Office (BdL) II, had been responsible for securing the Department of Transportation as of 1955. With the erection of the Wall, the MfS secured the department’s border work—the border crossing of couriers and delegations.171 The extent of the conflicts that arose was remarkable. In the 1950s, Adolf Baier, the head of the Department of Transportation, had a deep aversion to Colonel Erich Jamin, a higher-up in the MfS’s Department VI.172 When Baier had a car accident in West Germany and was subsequently interrogated by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, thus being rendered useless for work in the apparatus, the department was given over to the leadership of Josef Steidl. The head of Management Office II, Colonel Gerhard Harnisch, felt that Steidl was out of his depth and weak in leadership skills, and that his two deputies Kapphengst and Cebulla were utterly incompetent and corrupt.173 According to Harnisch, departmental leaders employed septuagenarian couriers merely because they had done “valuable work” for the KPD’s military apparatus in the 1920s. They also repeatedly violated the rules of conspiracy, so that several agent crossing points on the German-German frontier became known to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Harnisch seemed to literally be gathering evidence of Kapphengst and Cebulla’s corruption. He documented, for example, how Kapphengst had insisted on being paid in West German marks for his conspiratorial work so he could buy a television in West Berlin.174 From the point of view of senior cadre in the Department of Transportation, the MfS in the person of Colonel Harnisch represented a constant “troublemaker” who “presumed to place himself above the Party”—that is to say, above the Department of Transportation. When an employee in Management Office II commented critically on the fact that Steidl had fired an employee in his department—presumably because of this individual’s being well connected to the Stasi—Steidel went ballistic. He explained to the Stasi employee “in a rather loud and indignant tone” that they—in the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation—were “perfectly capable of making their own decisions about which employees should stay and that [the MfS] has no business interfering in this matter.” Furthermore, the Stasi report continued, “he mentioned . . . that if there were problems with us in this regard he would complain to Comrade Erich Honecker and clarify the situation.”175

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Outbursts of this sort can only be understood when viewed in the continuity of nearly two decades of ongoing conflict, during the course of which the MfS was undergoing a certain professionalization while the Department of Transportation remained much the same as it was in the years of building socialism, its leading functionaries relying heavily on personal networks, turning policymaking into the granting of favors, and espousing a notion of “conspiracy” that was reminiscent of a secret society. In this conflict situation, the MfS and Main Administration II/19 (the successor unit of BdL (II)) did not always restrict themselves to the role of the loyal “shield of the Party.” Thus, on the occasion of the annual Liebknecht-Luxemburg demonstration on January 13, 1975, Erich Mielke asked the head of the Central Committee’s Cadre Department, Fritz Müller, to “concern yourself a little more with the Department of Transportation,” where “gifts,” according to Mielke, were “being distributed beyond the usual scope.” There can be no doubt that Mielke got this information from Main Department II/19, whose employees had been upset about this very practice for years.176 In the end, Main Department II/19 resorted to extreme measures, presumably starting in the late 1970s. It initiated a special operational case (SOV “Schweinekopf ”) against Steidl for allegedly leaking top-secret information to imperialist secret services—a rather far-fetched suspicion, given his biography and his close ties to the Party leadership. Though Steidl was never proven to have engaged in any “activities hostile to the state,” the investigations—likely with Mielke’s177 approval—were continued up until Steidl’s death in 1986. In early 1982, the head of Main Department II, General Lieutenant Kratsch, even requested “implementing a Measure B by Department 26” against the archenemy of Main Department II/19, Julius Cebulla: the “acoustic surveillance” of his private apartment. The aim was to prove his “possible collaboration with ‘Schweinekopf ’ in activities hostile to the state.”178 In the end Mielke didn’t authorize the measure. Perhaps the suspicions presented by Main Department II were too vague to justify bugging a deputy departmental head of the Central Committee, or perhaps he did bring the matter to the attention of the General Secretary who then forbade further measures against Steidl. And yet all of this was clearly motivated by a desire to get rid of Cebulla and Steidl. In this regard it is more than remarkable that, after Steidl’s death, Cebulla even became head of the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation. This would, indeed, seem to be “proof of the MfS’s political weakness when it came to Politbüro staffing decisions.”179

Conclusion Did East German State Security put itself above its “client,” the SED leadership in the form of its central apparatus? Whatever the case, as of the late 1960s the Stasi came to know more and more about the Central Committee apparatus and its em-

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ployees. The number of Central Committee employees who had worked for the Stasi before joining Party headquarters increased each year, offering the MfS a multitude of contacts and sources, even if only in the form of official contacts with departmental heads and division heads. The routine security checks of Main Department XX/10 provided State Security with extensive information on Central Committee employees, compensating for the formal—and only formal—prohibition on the operational handling of Central Committee employees. In reality, MfS units had “conspiratorial contact” with a number of political employees in the Central Committee, with Mielke’s knowledge and consent. As far as the technical employees were concerned, no restrictions had been put in place anyhow—all the less because State Security viewed this group as the actual weak spot in the Central Committee apparatus following the arrest of telecommunications technician Liebing, driver Wierschke and projectionist Heine. Unofficial collaborators at the management level of ministries, moreover, enabled the MfS to access a large part of the information intended exclusively for Party headquarters. Last but not least, Main Department II/6 conducted a number of special operational cases (SOVs) in the 1970s and 1980s against Central Committee departmental heads. In doing so, the Stasi began with the more or less plausible suspicion that these leading functionaries were vulnerable to Western intelligence agencies (or were working with them already). It took full advantage of all the means at its disposal, including the interception of private mail, tapping telephones and bugging private rooms. There is no reason to believe that the MfS, which needed Mielke’s authorization in each of these instances, was in any particular hurry to find their suspicions disproven and declare these cases closed. Because, when it came to power politics, there was no better way for the Stasi to obtain more exclusive information than from the working and living environment of a senior Central Committee employee. In this respect, there was a kernel of truth to the conviction of some contemporary witnesses that the Stasi had Party headquarters itself under surveillance during the Honecker era. The concomitant implication that State Security had power over the members of the Central Committee apparatus is another matter, with no clear indications of this having been the case. While there is some evidence that Mielke tried to use the information at his disposal to achieve certain political ends—e.g., by informing the head of the Cadre Department, Fritz Müller, in the mid-1970s about “gifts” being distributed in the Department of Transportation—functionaries whose corruption did indeed pose a danger to the security of Party headquarters had little to fear from the Stasi. For years the latter meticulously documented any of their activities considered “detrimental to the Party.” But rarely (and only at the last minute) did they intervene directly. This was probably due, on the one hand, to the fact that these corrupt leading functionaries were particularly well adapted to the demands of the “general-secretary system” under Honecker, about which more in the subsequent chapter. They were well connected with Party leaders and in this regard invulnerable to Mielke’s attacks. On the other hand, these leading functionaries were working in

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an SED state and not in a Stasi one. The MfS may have been more self-assertive in its dealings with Party headquarters than other state actors in the GDR were, but it never questioned the primacy of the Party in any fundamental way.

Notes 1. Borgmann and Staadt, Deckname Markus, 43. 2. BStU, MfS, ZAIG, Nr. 6772, fol. 23. 3. Vernehmungsprotokoll der Beschuldigten Liebing, Gertrud, 22.11.1966, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24130, fols. 303–14, here fol. 309. 4. Vernehmungsprotokoll des Beschuldigten Misterfeld, Georg [. . .], 19.10.1966, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24434, fols. 130f., here fol. 130. 5. Borgmann and Staadt, Deckname Markus, 58. 6. Beschluss der Sicherheitskommission vom 16.12.1954, betr.: Maßnahmen zur Erhöhung der Sicherheit und zum verstärkten Schutz gegen das Eindringen von Agenten in den Parteiapparat, 16.12.1954, BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 407, fols. 1–5. 7. BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 21699, passim. 8. On Harry Wierschke, see BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24823, passim. 9. See, e.g., Aufstellung über Personen, die durch inhaftierte Agenten den imperialistischen Geheimdiensten zur Anwerbung vorgeschlagen wurden und beim ZK der SED tätig sind, undated [1970], BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 2691, fols. 48–54. 10. BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24130, esp fols. 200–7; Nr. 24140, passim. See also Borgmann and Staadt, Deckname Markus, 107. 11. Vernehmungsprotokoll der Beschuldigten Liebing, Gertrud, 4.10.1966, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24130, fols. 200–7, here fol. 201. 12. Borgmann and Staadt, Deckname Markus, 145f. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 147. 15. Bericht, 3.5.1974, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 19/14192, fols. 169–71, here fol. 169. 16. Oberst Zeiler, Friedrich [. . .] Stellvertreter des Vorsitzenden der Staatlichen Plankommission, 7.12.1966, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 6630, fols. 99–102, here fol. 101. 17. E. Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse, 123. 18. See chapter 3, “Oral Communication,” of the present work. 19. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 259f. 20. Klaus-Dietmar Henke, “Staatssicherheit,” in Handbuch zur deutschen Einheit, ed. Werner Weidenfeld and Karl-Rudolf Korte (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), 646–53, here 647. 21. E. Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse, 81f. 22. MfS, HA PS, Abteilung I: Mündlicher Bericht IMS “Erwin,” 4.10.1968, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 6323, fol. 101. 23. Bericht über durchgeführte Ermittlungen, 2.10.1968, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24134, fols. 179–81, here fol. 180. 24. Paul Kienberg an Franz Gold: Analyse des Systems der Sicherheit im Objekt des ZK der SED—Ihr Schreiben vom 25.9.1970—Tgb.Nr. 3808/70, 21.11.1970, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 1690, fols. 1f. 25. Wiedmann, Die Diensteinheiten des MfS, 466. 26. At least this is the image that two members of the Main Department for Personal Security conveyed in a thesis paper: Utln. Elze, Ofw Reimann, Fachschulabschlussarbeit: Chronik der Geschichte der Wache Zentralkomitee der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 10576, fols. 95–112, here fol. 101. 27. Befehl Nr. 314/54: Durchführung der Maßnahmen zur Außensicherung der Partei- und Regierungsobjekte durch die Hauptabt. PS, 8.11.1954, BStU, BdL, Dok, Nr. 263.

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28. HA PS, Abt. II an den stellv. Leiter HA PS, Gen. Oberst Michael: Information, 6.4.1972, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 11040, fols. 42f., here fol. 42. 29. The members of the guard regiment first moved temporarily into the construction barracks on Kurstrasse built during the reconstruction of the Central Committee building in the first half of the 1970s. 30. HA PS, Abt. II: Maßnahmeplan zur Einrichtung einer zentralen Post und Warenannahme im Zentralkomitee der SED, 11.4.1975, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 11040, fols. 5–12, here fol. 6. 31. Ibid., fol. 9. 32. The alarm systems could be activated by pressing a button located under their desks. HA PS, Abt. II an den stellv. Leiter HA PS, Gen. Oberst Michael: Information, 6.4.1972, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 11040, fols. 42f.; see also Robert Stürze an Heinz Lübbe, ZK-Abteilung Fernmeldewesen, 16.2.1978, SAPMO-Barch, DY 30, 9244, fols. 33–35, here fol. 33. 33. Only four of these cameras were installed in the end, see Günter Wolf (MfS, HA PS – Leiter) an Gisela Glende (Büro des Politbüros), betr. Vorschlag für die Errichtung einer Fernbeobachtungsanlage am “Haus des ZK der SED” und Gästehaus “Haus an der Spree,” 11.8.1982, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 11239, fol. 9. 34. Robert Stürze. MfS, HA PS, Abteilung 2—SO-Haus des ZK: Zuarbeit, 28.11.1978, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 11239, fols. 111f., here fol. 111. 35. MfS, HA PS, Abteilung 2 an Oberstleutnant Wirth (Stellvertreter des Leiters der HA PS), betr. Projektierung und Installierung von FBA und anderer Sicherungstechnik im “Haus des ZK der SED,” 28.5.1982, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 11239, fols. 18f., here fol. 19. 36. Abteilung II, SO–Haus d. ZK, OTL Stürze: Aktennotiz, 18.3.1981, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 11239, here fol. 43. 37. Glende’s comment was noted by former employee Arno Heine, who was detained and questioned by the MfS after spying for Western secret services. MfS, HA IX/1, betr. Bericht über die im Ermittlungsverfahren gegen technische Angestellte des ZK der SED getroffenen Feststellungen zur Existenz begünstigender Bedingungen für das Eindringen und Wirksamwerden des Gegners sowie den Stand der eingeleiteten Sicherungsmaßnahmen, 12.10.1970, BStU, MfS, SdM, 313, fols. 8–35, here fol. 24. 38. For the interpretation of “vigilance” as an “axiom” of East German society, see Rainer Gries and Silke Satjukow, “Die Vorhut der Großväter. Eine Generationengeschichte der Avantgarde im real existierenden Sozialismus,” in Avant Garde und Gewalt, ed. Niels Beckenbach (Hamburg, 2007), 93–138, here 96. 39. In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, the BND apparently had multiple “sources” among the political employees of the Central Committee, in its Department of Culture and Agitation, for instance, whose intelligence played an important role in BND reports on the inner state of East Germany’s Party and state leadership. See, e.g., BArch, B 206/470, esp. fols. 28–31, 139–41, 156–58, 162–64. 40. PdVP [Präsidium der Volkspolizei Berlin] Berlin, Munitionsbergungsbetrieb: Bericht betr. Feststellungen am Tatort des versuchten Sprengstoffanschlags auf das Gebäude des ZK der SED, 30.6.1963, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 5018, fol. 20. 41. See, e.g., “Lebenslanges Zuchthaus für Bombenleger Kühn,” Neues Deutschland, February 27, 1964, 2. 42. Robert Stürze, MfS, HA PS, Abteilung II, SO ZK: Beurteilung der Handlungssicherheit der Führungs- und Sicherungskräfte [. . .], 10.8.1983, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 10634, fols. 1–7, here fol. 7. 43. In exchange, Wolf asked for 117 permanent positions of the guard regiment for his main administration. Günter Wolf an Erich Mielke, Gemeinsamer und mit dem Kommandeur des Wachregiments “F.E. Dzierzynski” abgestimmter Vorschlag zur Übernahme der Wache des Objektes Zentralkomitee der SED/Amtssitz des Staatsrates sowie des Amtssitzes des Ministerrates in die Verantwortung der Hauptabteilung PS mit Wirkung vom 2.1.1990, undated draft [February–October 1989], BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 11736, fols. 1f. 44. Struktur- und Stellenplan der Abteilung für Sicherheitsfragen, 30.8.1961, SAPMO, BArch, DY 30/ J IV 2/3A/809, fols. 162–66, here fol. 166.

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45. Jens Gieseke concurs that, compared with the influence of the Central Committee apparatus in other policy fields, the MfS division in the Central Committee’s Security Department was “rather weak.” Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 225. 46. The figure was likely much higher in the preceding years. Roger Engelmann, “Diener zweier Herren? Das Verhältnis der Staatssicherheit zur SED und den sowjetischen Beratern 1950–1959,” in Staatspartei und Staatssicherheit, ed. Siegfried Suckut and Walter Süß (Berlin, 1995), 51–72, here 53, n. 7. 47. Ibid., 53. 48. In late 1952, for example, they requested the recruitment of “127 college-educated cadre” with a “scientific-technical” background for the ministry. This was of course just a drop in the bucket in light of the “catastrophic level of education” of early MfS employees. Ibid., 54, 139. 49. Engelmann, “Diener zweier Herren,” 67. 50. Wagner, Walter Ulbricht, 239. 51. State Security’s regional Party organization was centralized and non-territorial prior to the fall of 1953. The Party organizations of the MfS regional administrations, which had the status of district Party organizations, were subordinate to it. Schumann, Die Parteiorganisation, S. 30–33. 52. Quoted in Engelmann, “Diener zweier Herren,” 54. It was this very complaint that, after June 17th, prompted Ulbricht to accuse the MfS’s Party organization of being “independent” of the Central Committee. Schumann, Die Parteiorganisation, 31. 53. The Soviet model needs to be kept in mind here too. After the overthrow of Beria in the summer of 1953, the KGB was “subjugated” to CPSU leadership. Voslensky, Nomenklatura, 163; Andreas Hilger, “Sowjetunion,” in Handbuch der kommunistischen Geheimdienste in Osteuropa 1944–1991, ed. Lukasz Kaminski, Krzysztof Persak, and Jens Gieseke (Göttingen, 2008), 43 – 141. 54. Engelmann, “Diener zweier Herren,” 61; Wagner, Walter Ulbricht, 173f. 55. Karl Wilhelm Fricke and Roger Engelmann, “Konzentrierte Schläge”: Staatssicherheitsaktionen und politische Prozesse in der DDR 1953–1956 (Berlin, 1998). 56. Wagner, Walter Ulbricht, 240. 57. Streng geheim, 22.6.1952, BStU, MfS, AP, Nr. 4698/60, fol. 153. 58. Quoted in Engelmann, “Diener zweier Herren,” 64. 59. Wagner, Walter Ulbricht, 251. 60. Borning joined the Nazi Party on September 1, 1939 (membership no. 7149941, BArch, R 1, NSDAP-Ortsgruppen—bzw. Gaukartei, Film-Nr. 3200 C 004, fol. 466) and had briefly worked as departmental head in the Ministry of Finance in 1951–52 before switching to the Military-Political Department of the Central Committee apparatus in 1952. 61. Wagner, Walter Ulbricht, 249. 62. Ibid. 63. Quoted in Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 225. 64. Quoted in Roger Engelmann and Silke Schumann, Kurs auf die entwickelte Diktatur: Walter Ulbricht, die Entmachtung Wollwebers und die Neuausrichtung des Staatssicherheitsdienstes 1956/57 (Berlin, 1995), 29f. 65. Wagner, Walter Ulbricht, 251; Thomas Auerbach, Matthias Braun, Bernd Eisenfeld, Gesine von Prittwitz, and Clemens von Vollnhals, Hauptabteilung XX: Staatsapparat, Blockparteien, Kirchen, Kultur, “politischer Untergrund,” MfS-Handbuch (Bonn, 2008). 66. Prior to 1957 there had only been sporadic deployments at the MfS. See Schumann, Die Parteiorganisation, S. 41. 67. ZK-Abteilung Sicherheitsfragen, Sektor MfS: Bericht der Brigade der Abteilung Sicherheitsfragen des ZK über ihren Einsatz in der Parteiorganisation der Bezirksverwaltung Gera des MfS und in den Grundorganisationen der Kreisdienststelle (KD) Gera und Zeulenroda. 14.8.1959, BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 1351, fols. 103–20, here fol. 104. 68. Quoted in Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, Stasi konkret. Überwachung und Repression in der DDR (Munich, 2013), 203. 69. Ibid. A note written by Markus Wolf illustrates how irritating a report like this from Party headquarters could be to Stasi leaders. It was “unacceptable,” Wolf said, to present the report of the Central

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Committee brigade to the Party leadership of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance. There needed to be a “meeting of Comrade Mielke with . . . the head of the brigade, Comrade Renckwitz, in order to correct . . . the report.” Markus Wolf, Vorschlag, undated [April 1962], BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 1351, fols. 139f. 70. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 229. 71. Ibid., 233; Walter Borning: Einschätzung der zweiten Tagung der Delegiertenkonferenz im Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, undated [December 1962], SAPMO-BArch, NY 4076, 104, fols. 282–85, here fol. 282. 72. Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 167–92. 73. This assessment is shared by Wagner, Walter Ulbricht, 252. 74. Walter Süß, Das Verhältnis von SED und Staatssicherheit. Eine Skizze seiner Entwicklung, BF informiert 17, ed. BStU (Berlin, 1997), 10. 75. The term was used in this context by Herger, Hübner, and Frenze, Verantwortung—Eigenverantwortung—Fremdbestimmung, 22. 76. Formally the resolution was an amendment to the “Guideline on Work with Nomenklatura Cadre of the Central Committee of the SED.” 77. Richtlinie über die Zusammenarbeit zwischen der Abteilung für Sicherheitsfragen im Zentralkomitee der SED und dem Ministerium des Innern in Kaderfragen, mit einem Anschreiben von Walter Borning an Karl Maron, 24.5.1963, BArch, DO 1/26.0/35612, no folio numbers. 78. As claimed by Borgmann and Staadt, Deckname Markus, 157, without giving any sources. 79. Siegfried Suckut, “Mielke contra Hoffmann. Wie die Stasi die Entlassung des DDR-Verteidigungsministers betrieb. Eine Fallstudie zum Verhältnis MfS-SED,” in Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung 2012, ed. Ulrich Mählert (Berlin, 2012), 265–302, here 302. 80. Anlage Nr. 14 zum Protokoll der Politbürositzung vom 29.2.1972, Veränderung der Funktion des Abteilungsleiters für Sicherheitsfragen des ZK der SED [. . .], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2/1381, fols. 134–36, here fols. 135f. 81. Ibid., fol. 136. 82. Bericht über die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Genossen Borning auf der Mitgliederversammlung der Grundorganisation der Abteilung Sicherheitsfragen am 10.1.1972, 12.1.1972, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2/1381, fols. 138–40. 83. Thereafter Borning entered early retirement, as it were, serving until 1979 as general director of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship (DSF), a mass organization with its many “Houses of German-Soviet Friendship” throughout the country. 84. Scheibe had also worked for the Soviet military secret police and for the military intelligence service of the National People’s Army, which may have made him more attuned to the needs of the MfS. 85. See the brief characterization in Karl-Heinz Schmalfuß, Innenansichten. 30 Jahre Dienst im Ministerium des Innern der DDR. Ein General meldet sich zu Wort (Aachen, 2009), 68. 86. BStU, MfS, HA I, Nr. 13420, fols. 20–31. 87. Jörn Steike, Die Steuerung der Militärjustiz der DDR (Munich, 1997), 102. 88. Protokoll der Vernehmung von Wolfgang Herger, 15.9.1992, Archiv der Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin bei dem Landgericht Berlin, 26 JS 1002/93, vol. IV, fols. 1–17, here fol. 5. 89. Interview with Dieter Mechtel, June 10, 2013, 10, author’s transcript and audio recording. 90. Booß and Pethe, “Der Vorgang ‚Rote Nelke,’” 60. 91. Contrary to the view of Andreas Malycha that ambiguity was generally a given here, Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 263. 92. See, e.g., Vereinbarung zwischen dem Büro des Politbüros des Zentralkomitees der SED und dem Ministerium für Staatssicherheit über das Zusammenwirken von Diensteinheiten des MfS mit dem Büro des Politbüros, Bereich Fernmeldewesen, 25.4.1989, BStU, MfS, Abt. 26, Nr. 304, fols. 5–12, here fol. 11. 93. Karl Zukunft, Leiter Abteilung N, an Walter Otto, Leiter HA Kader und Schulung, betr.: Mitarbeiter Lübbe, Heinz, Leiter der Abt. N der BV Schwerin, 22.10.1975, BStU, MfS, KS, Nr. 15493/90, fol. 35.

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94. The number of staff in the Telecommunications Department in 1978, see Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Struktur- und Stellenplan der Abteilung Fernmeldewesen des ZK der SED, 5.1.1978, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/3088, fols. 119–25, here fol. 125. 95. HA Kader und Schulung, Leiter der Abteilung Kader: Information, 20.3.1986, BStU, MfS, KS, Nr. 15493/90, fol. 38. 96. See e.g., Heinz Fiedler, MfS, HA VI: Beratung beim Mitglied des Politbüros, Genossen Prof. Herbert Häber, am 31.1.1985, 10.00 Uhr [AG “Polittourismus”], 31.01.1985, BStU, MfS, HA VI, Nr. 3911, fols. 424–27. On July 1, 1985, for example, they agreed to limit day trips organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation—if anyone asked why, Häber said, they should argue that everything was booked up. 97. HA XX, Leiter: Vermerk, 19.7.1983, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 17116, fols. 123–27, here fol. 124. 98. Ibid., fol. 127. 99. Susanne Muhle, Auftrag Menschenraub. Entführungen von Westberlinern und Bundesbürgern durch das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit der DDR (Göttingen, 2015), 211f. 100. HA XX, Leiter: Vermerk, 8.1.1975, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 17116, fol. 172. 101. Erich Mückenberger an Klaus Sorgenicht (ZK-Abteilung Staats- und Rechtsfragen), 17.8.1973, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr, 17116, fol. 188. 102. HA XX, Leiter: Vermerk, 25.4.1984, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 17116, fol. 102. 103. This was reason enough to give Arnold a relatively generous present in the form of a book on his sixtieth birthday. Busc MfS, HA XX/10: Vorlage, 21.12.1988, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15611, fol. 31. 104. A series of such inquiries can be found in in BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15612, passim. 105. Paul Kienberg (MfS, HA XX) an Bruno Beater, 05.12.1972, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 17116, fol. 190. 106. Auerbach et al., Hauptabteilung XX, 9. 107. Paul Kienberg an Franz Gold, Analyse des Systems der Sicherheit im Objekt des ZK der SED—Ihr Schreiben vom 25.9.1970—Tgb.Nr. 3808/70, 21.11.1970, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 1690, fols. 1f. 108. MfS, HA XX/2, Sachstandsbericht Hakenkreuzschmierereien im Gebäude des ZK der SED, 10.5.1965, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 14164, fols. 80–84. 109. Kienberg an Gold, 21.11.1970, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 1690, fols. 1f. 110. See esp. Christian Booß, “Kollege Judas? Oder: Trau keinem über 40?” in Die indiskrete Gesellschaft, ed. Christian Booß and Helmut Müller-Enbergs (Frankfurt am Main), 71–89, here 76f. 111. As late as October 1970, the head of Main Department IX, Colonel Walter Heinitz, complained that “despite repeated suggestions to Comrade Renckwitz [head of the Central Committee’s MfS division] and Wagner no use has been made of MfS capabilities to screen new recruits” to the Central Committee apparatus. Quoted in Borgmann and Staadt, Deckname Markus, 148. 112. See, e.g., BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 16659–16661. 113. Christian Booß, “Denunziationskomplex,” in Die indiskrete Gesellschaft, ed. Christian Booß and Helmut Müller-Enbergs (Frankfurt am Main, 2014), 25–47, here 35–39. 114. See chapter 6, “Staff Development,” of the present work. 115. MfS, HA XIII/3 an HA XX/AG RV, Kaderauftrag 169—Ihr Schreiben vom 24.1.1973/He., 6.2.1973, BStU, MfS, AGMS, Nr. 4370/75, fol. 55. 116. Zusammenarbeit MfS-Kaderabt. MfC/Leonhardt, 27.2.1974, BStU, MfS, AOPK, Nr. 12792/74, fols. 146–148, here fol. 147. 117. Böhm, HA XX, an HA XX/10, Ihr Schreiben vom 21.3.1983, XX/10/he/4684/83—Kaderauftrag Nr. 88, 19.7.1983, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 82055/92, fol. 20. 118. The term is used by Booß, “Kollege Judas,” 76. 119. HA XX, Leiter, 3.5.1976, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 17116, fol. 165. 120. This group, too, was not the result of systematic sampling but of a pragmatic research strategy. In general, the individuals investigated at the BStU in the course of this study were those for whom no biographical data was available in the SAPMO records. These individuals tended to be employees below the rank of division head, since division and naturally departmental heads were certainly mentioned by name when being confirmed at Central Committee Secretariat meetings, the minutes of which usually included a résumé in the appendices.

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121. Seidel worked as an IMS under the code name “Fritz Steiner,” first in Department XX/1 in the regional administration of Dresden, then in Main Administrationn XX/1 of the MfS. At this time he was serving as senior physician at the Academy Psychiatric Clinic in Dresden and, as of 1971, as director of the Charité Psychiatric Clinic in Berlin. His work as an unofficial collaborator ended when he joined the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy in 1978. See Sonja Süß, Politisch missbraucht? Psychiatrie und Staatssicherheit in der DDR, Berlin 1998, Analysen und Dokumente 14 (Berlin, 1998), 182. 122. Thus, in the department with the most political employees, Party Organs, not a single former Stasi collaborator was identified—logically enough, since almost all the employees of this department had moved up the ladder within the territorial Party apparatus before making it to Party headquarters, the territorial apparatus, like headquarters, being exempt from MfS recruiting since the 1950s. 123. Ludz, Parteielite im Wandel, 2f. 124. S. Süß, Politisch missbraucht? 239. 125. MfS, HA VIII/3, Aktenvermerk GMS “Karl Ruschert,” 11.3.1985, BStU, MfS, AGMS, Nr. 2476/86, fol. 353. 126. Mechtel goes on: “Of course they had their people there [in the Central Committee apparatus]. And they weren’t afraid to ask them.” Ibid., 32. 127. Walter Süß, “‘Schild und Schwert’—Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit und die SED,” in Aktenlage, ed. Klaus-Dietmar Henke and Roger Engelmann (Berlin, 1995), 85, n. 8. 128. This conclusion or assumption was reached in Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 259–63. 129. MfS, HA PS, Abteilung I: Mündlicher Bericht IMS “Erwin,” 4.10.1968, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 6323, fol. 101. 130. Just to be clear, the writer of the report from HA II/19 emphasized: “Cooperation with him [W.] is on a conspiratorial basis.” HA II/19: W., Fritz, 21.9.1986, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 30577, fol. 30. 131. BStU, MfS, AIM, N 12860/77, fol. 44. A similar instance is departmental head Herbert S., who the Stasi attempted to recruit as an unofficial collaborator after he left the Party apparatus in 1959. His recruitment was successful, although S. demanded a written confirmation from State Security that “all information resulting from my previous work (Central Committee) . . . may be freely disclosed to representatives of the MfS without this course of action running contrary to Party statues and/ or directives of the Party apparatus.” Herbert S., Ergänzung zu meiner Erklärung vom 13.11.1959, 30.12.1959, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 7052/74, vol. 1, fols. 32f. 132. HA XX, Leiter, Vermerk, 17.10.1978, BStU, MfS, HA XX, 17116, fol. 155. 133. See also Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 259–63. 134. His parents, at least, were on the threshold, his father being an employee in the Ministry of Transportation and his mother a daycare director. Das Folgende nach: Einsatz der Absolventen des Einjahrlehrgangs 1987/88 an der PHS “Karl Marx,” SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/4694, fol. 134; BStU, MfS, AP, Nr. 79033/92, fols. 1–5; BStU, MfS, AIM 1825/89, passim. 135. MfS, HA II/6/3, Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,“ 25.5.1988, BStU, MfS, AIM 1825/89, fols. 106f., here fol. 107. 136. “In the inner circle” of his department, he reported, “they think that this resolution was mainly meant to discipline comrades.” HA II/6/2, Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,” 28.1.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 124–27, here fol. 127. 137. A last-minute draft proposal for the Council of Ministers would be necessary, “Fritz” said, “but this was deemed impossible at present.” HA V/6/2, Treffbericht Konsultationspartner “Fritz Schuchardt,” 6.10.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 162f., here fol. 163. 138. Case officers inviting unofficial collaborators to dinner was considered a token of appreciation and served to deepen mutual trust. 139. The reason Pelikan opened up was his case officer’s announcement that they would have to “continue their cooperation with another comrade from the MfS.” The former pleaded with the latter not to make the switch—and his wish was granted. HA II/6/2, Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,” 25.10.1988, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fol. 123. 140. Neuberger: HA II/6, an Generalleutnant Kratsch, 22.2.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fol. 130. The reason for this memo was the information supplied to Main Department II/6 by “Fritz

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Schuchardt”: that the Party and state apparatus were working on a revision of the subsidy system “which could result in considerable price changes.” Main Department II/6 apparently considered this sufficiently controversial to forward it by way of Kratsch to the Stasi’s Central Evaluation and Information Group. 141. We can only speculate about the reasons for this. The most likely variant at first glance is that Main Department II/6—formed in the second half of the 1970s in order to bolster counterintelligence in politics and the economy—saw the threat of the Department of Planning and Finance and/or the economic apparatus in general being skimmed off from outside. What speaks against this interpretation is the fact that counterintelligence (or the critical observation of Pelikan’s departmental colleagues) played no role in the reporting of this IMS. It seems, rather, that in view of the steadily worsening economic crisis Main Department II/6 wanted to acquire a source in the economic-policy decision-making center to potentially have an information advantage within the MfS. It is just as unclear why Main Department II/6 kept Pelikan on as an unofficial collaborator. An official contact would of course have been hard to maintain, as these only existed with senior Central Committee employees and not with “ordinary” political employees like Pelikan. But there was the alternative of ending Pelikan’s role as an unofficial collaborator—to simply go on meeting with him. This option would have presumably not had the same frequency of meetings and density of information that Main Department II/6 was apparently aiming for. 142. Henke, “Staatssicherheit,” 647. 143. “Since M. has indicated no interest in this whole affair,” the MfS report continued, “it is suggested that Mückenberger’s file be deposited with Dept. XII.” Abteilung II–1: Abschlussbericht, betr. Mückenberger, Joachim, geb. 11.8.1926, 11.3.1953, BStU, MfS, AP, Nr. 7323/60, fol. 17. 144. StS, HA V/Abt. 6, Auskunftsbericht betr. Herbert K[. . .] tätig als Instrukteur im Sektor Justiz beim ZK der SED, 24.5.1955, BStU, MfS, AOP, Nr. 429/56, fols. 21f. 145. The four SOVs went under the code names “Pendel” (Pendulum), “Schweinekopf ” (Pig’s Head), “Händler” (Dealer) and “Händler 1” (Dealer 1). SOVs were operational cases of the MfS’s Main Department II on individuals considered highly relevant to security policy. Roland Lucht, ed., Das Archiv der Stasi. Begriffe, Archiv zur DDR-Staatssicherheit 11 (Göttingen, 2015), 211. 146. Vernehmungsprotokoll des Beschuldigten Arno Heine, 15./16.8.1972, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15110, fols. 448–75, here fol. 449. 147. Ibid., fol. 457. 148. Ibid., fol. 465. 149. See chapter 7, “A Corrupt Apparatus?” of the present work. 150. Information zum SOV “Meilenstein,” 15.5.1980, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 1016, fols. 3–5. 151. See the files in BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45. 152. Information zum SOV “Meilenstein,” 15.5.1980, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 1016, fols. 3–5. 153. It is at least conceivable that Mielke informed Honecker about Günter Glende being under surveillance but not about the extent of the actual measures taken. 154. A similar pattern is evident in the handling of Central Committee departmental head Ursula Ragnitz, who as of 1985 was suspected of being the source of the Military Counterintelligence Service, the same source Main Department II/6 had taken Günter Glende to be just a few years earlier. In her case, as well, the Stasi dug deeply into her personal affairs, apparently without consulting the minister or even the Central Committee, even intercepting letters to her, yet did not rely on sources within the Central Committee apparatus. Neuberger: MfS, HA II/6, Sachstandbericht zum SOV “Pendel,” 29.3.1986, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 69, Teil 2, fols. 143–63. 155. Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 37. 156. MfS, HA XX/10: Eröffnungsbericht, 20.2.1982, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15456, fols. 155f. 157. Department 11 of Main Department IX had been founded in 1968 to investigate “Nazi and war crimes.” 158. Ibid. 159. In Häber’s case as well, Main Department IX/11 passed on information to Main Department II/6 concerning Haber’s family in the past. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 169f. Apart from any

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political interest Erich Mielke may have had in taking down Häber, it cannot be ruled out that Main Department IX/11 systematically investigated any East German foreign policymakers with vulnerabilities on account of their personal history. 160. Günter remained in office until the end of 1989 as division head in the International Relations Department. 161. S. Süß, Politisch missbraucht?, 239–41, quote on 239. 162. Information, Oktober 1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 2041, fols. 161–66, here fol. 161. 163. S. Süß, Politisch missbraucht?, 239, n. 378. 164. Ibid., 240. 165. Information, Oktober 1989, BStU, MfS HA II/6, Nr. 2041, fols. 161–66, here fol. 166. 166. Erich Mielke an Wolfgang Herger, 23.10.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 2041, fol. 179. 167. The subject of the memorandum was a visit Seidel was planning to an exhibition of medical technology at the International Congress Center in West Berlin. Hager wrote that he would “probably have to grant permission” for Seidel to attend. This suggests that he would have preferred to prohibit the visit, but that his hands ultimately were tied since Seidel could prove that the trip was linked to a legitimate business interest. Kurt Hager an Erich Mielke, 8.5.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 41809, fol. 23. 168. These briefings are summarized in BStU, MfS, HA XX/1, Nr. 41. 169. For a comprehensive look at the period up to the mid-1970s, see Mensing, SED-Hilfe; see also Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik. 170. Mensing, SED-Hilfe, 37–40. 171. Ibid., 13; Struktur und Aufgaben der Abteilung Verkehr, undated [November 1989], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/31580, fols. 77–85. 172. Jamin had a strong influence on the department’s cadre policy in the early years and forced a deputy on Baier whom the latter rejected. Mensing, SED-Hilfe, 32. 173. The different biographical imprints of the two long-serving Wehrmacht sergeants and the Old Communist and concentration-camp inmate Harnisch gave rise to more harmless “atmospheric disturbances,” although Kaphengst and Cebulla’s having served in the Wehrmacht was repeatedly brought up by the MfS in its internal communication, e.g., Stellv. Leiter der Abteilung Verkehr beim ZK der SED, undated [1976?], BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 306, fols. 20–27, here fol. 22. 174. Auszug, Februar 1969, BStU, MfS, HA II/19, Nr. 14192, fol. 240. 175. Bericht über eine Aussprache mit dem Abteilungsleiter der Abteilung VR, Gen. Jupp Steidl in der Angelegenheit des Dieter E. [. . .], 24.8.1976, BStU, MfS, HA II/19, Nr. 14192, fols. 82–84, here fol. 82. 176. Auszug aus dem Bericht über die durchgeführte Absprache bei der Abteilung Verkehr am 2.10.1975, BStU, MfS, HA II/13, Nr. 14192, fols. 128f. In this case, however, there was a certain solidarity between Central Committee departmental heads, as Fritz Müller informed Steidl about Mielke’s foray and agreed with him to “immediately inform Comrade Honecker about this before Comrade Mielke talks to him about it.” 177. The surveillance of leading functionaries was directly authorized by Mielke or his deputy, Schwanitz. Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik, 580. 178. Günter Kratsch, Vorschlag zur Durchführung einer Maßnahme B der Abteilung 26 bei dem Cebulla, Julius [. . .], 13.1.1982, BStU, MfS, HA II/19, Nr. 14250, fol. 201. 179. This was the conclusion reached by Mensing, SED-Hilfe, 99.

Chapter 6

“In the General Staff of the Party” The Honecker Apparatus (1971–85)

I:1 The fact was . . . there were something like forty departmental heads, so there must have been groups or some that you knew better than others. R:2 I wouldn’t put it that way . . . There were the departmental heads, who were subordinate to Günter Mittag, there were four departmental heads subordinate to Egon Krenz, etc. And these individuals had many contact points, of course . . . But there was no overall briefing for departmental heads, there was never anything like that. It wasn’t necessary either. We only got together when we went to Erich Honecker, for example, to gratulate him [on his birthday], and he would always refer to us, the forty departmental heads, as the “general staff of the Party.” That was one of his favorite phrases . . . I:

Do you think he really saw you that way?

R: He did see us that way, he firmly believed it. I:

And Ulbricht didn’t?

R: No, Ulbricht probably felt the same. But, but this was . . . one of the core mistakes, because what does that even mean, the departmental heads are the general staff? The departmental heads are not some select group; they were simply appointees, staffers of the SED . . . . The actual general staff would have been the Central Committee. The elected Central Committee. And not the departments of the Central Committee.3

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Wolfgang could have invoked Lenin at this point of the interview. Because Lenin did in fact call the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party the “general staff of the Party,”4 whereas Stalin referred to the highest functionaries as the “generals of the Party”5 and the central Party apparatus as the “general staff.” Whether Erich Honecker was consciously echoing Stalin here when he referred to the Central Committee departmental heads as the “general staff of the Party” is uncertain. It cannot be ruled out.6 What is certain is that he felt closer to his departmental heads than Walter Ulbricht did, who occasionally made irritated remarks about their professional expertise or political vision.7 It is also clear that with the transition of power from Ulbricht to Honecker the days were over when there could be any fundamental discussion of how to better structure or organize Party headquarters. Honecker’s only designs with regard to the structure of the central apparatus was to maintain the status quo. He had no visions of a different—smaller, more assertive, more activist—apparatus of the kind that preoccupied Ulbricht again and again. The Central Committee apparatus of the 1970s and 1980s thus largely met the expectations of the First Secretary. It would not be amiss to call it part of the “Honecker system.” To what extent, then, did it contribute to the oncoming crisis during the Honecker era? Contemporaries were convinced of one thing: in the final crisis of the GDR, during the 1980s, the image took root of Party headquarters being a fossilized “superstate”; the “ruling apparatuses,” wrote Rudolf Bahro, “had about as much to do with Communism as the Grand Inquisitor with Jesus Christ.”8 Self-images like that of the “house on high”9 or Honecker’s dubbing it the “general staff of the Party” were likely to shore up these associations. It is telling in this context that the dissolution of the MfS and its successor the Office for National Security in the winter of 1989–90 took considerably longer than that of the central Party apparatus.10 Criticism of the apparatus and its members continued after the events of 1989–90, and it was often former state functionaries who were now doing the complaining. The latter, of course—like employees at the Main Administration of Publishers and the Book Trade in the Ministry of Culture—were exonerating themselves by blaming the “apparatus” for the evils of the Honecker era. Cultural historian Robert Darnton was able to conduct interviews with some of these employees in the summer of 1990. His impression was that employees of said state administration fancied themselves as “heroes in a cultural war” and that, when it came to getting permission to print unorthodox literary fiction, they fought against the “ideological watchdogs” of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture. But did the apparatus in the Honecker era really correspond to these perceptions of it by others? To what extent was it part of the problems that the political system of the late GDR suffered from in general? And, conversely, to what extent were its members able to solve problems and mitigate crises? Underlying all of this is a question running through the entire present study, but one that seems particularly relevant with regard to the apparatus rule of the Honecker era: How flexible does a dictatorship have to be for it to be stable?11 How adaptable did the SED’s Central

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Committee apparatus have to be? To what degree did it have to transform itself, rather than “ossifying,” in order to maintain at least the superficial stability that existed in the GDR into the mid-1980s?

Organizational Development Outwardly at least, the Central Committee apparatus had settled into place during the Honecker era. The 1950s had been marked by repeated waves of departmental foundings or mergers, and even in the 1960s half a dozen Central Committee departments were formed. During the Honecker era, by contrast, only one new department was founded—when the “friendly parties” working group was elevated to the status of a Central Committee department12—and only two were dissolved: in August 1981, when the General Department was downgraded to a working group,13 and in 1986, when the Central Committee Secretariat decided to make the Telecommunications Department part of the Office of the Politbüro, thus demoting it into a division. Staff numbers at Party headquarters were also stable compared with the Ulbricht era. In late 1968, there were 745 political and 1,025 technical employees in the Central Committee apparatus; in December 1988, there were 846 political and 1,157 technical employees. There were only minor shifts in the relative distribution of political employees in each area of the apparatus between 1968 and 1988. In 1988, 23.8 percent of all political employees worked in functional departments (compared with 22.1 percent in 1968), 25.6 percent in ideological departments (versus 26.5 percent in 1968), and 35.5 percent in specialist departments (35.3 percent in 1968). Marked shifts occurred only in the Western apparatus—whose share of total employees dropped from 7.8 to 4 percent—and in the international departments, whose share increased from 7.1 to 10.4 percent. The latter was a reflection of the GDR’s becoming an international player as of the early 1970s. For a range of Central Committee departments, staff numbers did not change at all in the last two decades of the GDR. The Department of Basic Industry, for instance, had twenty-two political and four technical employees between 1968 and 1989, whereas the Department of Socialist Economic Management had “always had eight political and two technical staff members from its founding in 1965 to its dissolution in late 1989.”14 The 101 political employees the apparatus gained in this time period were distributed among a handful of departments: forty-three in International Relations, sixteen in Planning and Finances, and twelve in Security Issues. The considerable expansion of these three departments was due to new divisions being added to them. In this respect, the modest staff growth of most departments during the 1970s and 1980s shifts our focus to changes in their internal structure. These were substantial even after 1971, as the apparatus continued to adapt itself to its environment. The Department of International Relations, for example, got a new “international cadre” division, which it needed, according to departmental head Paul Markowski, because in the preceding years the number of “employees in the Minis-

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Table 6.1. Departments of the Central Committee of the SED in December 1988.i Group

Political employees

Technical employees

Total

33

127

160

1

6

7

Financial Administration and Party Enterprises

23

28

51

Cadre Issues

17

9

26

Party Organs

78

84

162

6

4

10

Administration of Economic Enterprises

16

713

729

Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK)

17

6

23

Central Auditing Commission (ZRK)

11

5

16

Subtotal

202

982

1,184

Agitation

44

24

68

Agitation Commission

5

3

8

Friendly Organizations

7

2

9

Einheit (journal)

25

6

31

Women’s Affairs

8

2

10

11

2

13

4

4

8

Culture

26

5

31

Neuer Weg (journal)

19

4

23

Propaganda

24

10

34

Education

17

3

20

Science

27

5

32

Subtotal

217

70

287

Department Office of the Politbüro Union leadership

Functional departments

Party organization of the Central Committee

Youth Ideological departments

Church Issues

“in the general staff of the party”

Specialist departments

Construction

17

3

20

Research and Technical Development

12

4

16

Health Policy

15

4

19

Trade Unions and Social Policy

13

3

16

Basic Industry

22

4

26

Trade, Supply and Foreign Trade

20

5

25

Agriculture

29

4

33

Light, Food and Regional Industry

20

4

24

Machine Building and Metallurgy

32

6

38

Planning and Finance

37

8

45

Security Issues

37

10

47

8

2

10

Socialist Economic Management Sports

6

2

8

State and Legal Affairs

18

7

25

Transport and Communication

15

3

18

301

69

370

International Politics and Economics (formerly Western Department)

20

5

25

Transportation

18

3

21

Subtotal

38

8

46

Foreign Information

17

3

20

International Relations

71

25

96

Subtotal

88

28

116

846

1,157

2,003

Subtotal

Western apparatus

International departments

| 269

Total

Note i. For comparative purposes (with the figures from 1953 and 1968 used elsewhere in this study), employees in the Office of the General Secretary and the Central Committee secretaries are not included in this list. Figures from: Edwin Schwertner and Erich Honecker, 12.1.1989, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/2180. Target figures are indicated here, also for comparative purposes. Actual staff numbers for December 1988 based on the same document can be found in Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 81.

270 | inside party headquarters

try of Foreign Affairs had . . . increased from 1,685 to 4,283,” with Department IV responsible for their guidance, training and further education.15 In May 1975, the head of the Department of Culture, Peter Heldt, put in a request with the Central Committee Secretariat for a division handling “international work in the area of culture.”16 In October 1974, Party headquarters had already turned the “international economic relations” division—hitherto part of the Department of Planning and Finances—into the COMECON working group. Its seven employees under Horst Tschander now devoted themselves to questions such as how the economic integration of COMECON countries could be intensified to the advantage of the GDR. In 1985, the Secretariat disbanded the working group, probably on account of centrifugal forces at work in the socialist economic area.17 In general, the increasing interdependence of the East German economy was reflected in the structure of the Central Committee economic apparatus—e.g., in the “Druzhba Pipeline” working group founded in 1974 in Horst Wambutt’s Department of Basic Industry and responsible for Party work at the major construction site of the same name in the Ukraine. The FRG working group was likewise founded in 1974, a new, interdepartmental body for coordinating German-German economic relations.18 The Western Department, too, a standard-bearer of ideological struggle against the Federal Republic, adapted itself to the primacy of economic policy. Headed by Herbert Häber—Honecker’s most important and probably most qualified expert on policymaking with regard to West Germany19—the department concerned itself as of 1973 with the question of how German-German economic cooperation could be expanded. The actual economic apparatus of the Central Committee was also undergoing changes. In the fall of 1973, Honecker “transferred” the economic secretary of the Central Committee, Günter Mittag, to the position of deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers.20 His successor, Werner Krolikowski, though popular among Central Committee departmental heads and generally considered personable—it was even rumored in the Big House that he would “drink a few bottles of beer with his supervisors . . . as a matter of principle before beginning work meetings”21—could not hold a candle to Mittag professionally. By mid-1974 Mittag was thought by economic departmental heads to be back “on the rise” again,22 and in October 1976 he did in fact return to his position as Central Committee economic secretary. One of Mittag’s first official acts was to revive the Economic Commission.23 The latter now met every Monday morning and mainly served as a stage for him to enact his command economy. Reviling and humiliating combine directors and ministers who reported plan deficits was part of the program.24 Mittag initially tried to counter the economic-policy crisis with price reforms. The Central Committee’s Planning and Finance Department under Günter Ehrensperger was therefore given two new divisions, “economic analysis” and “pricing.”25 The restructuring of the Machine Building Department was another reaction to the economic crisis. In October 1985, it was given a new division for “key technologies and complex analysis.” The employees

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in this division were to devote themselves to the microelectronics program that the GDR, since the late 1970s, had hoped held the promise of future growth.26 The confrontation between the Western and the Soviet bloc intensified once again beginning in the late 1970s. The GDR’s military integration in the Eastern alliance had been deepening since the early 1970s. Both of these developments were reflected in the departmental structure of the Central Committee apparatus. As early as 1974 the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues under Herbert Scheibe was given a new division for “B issues,” responsible for mobilization.27 In 1979 the department was expanded to include a division for “military-political work with the masses,” responsible among other things for military instruction in schools,28 which was introduced in 1978.29 Already in early 1978, the Telecommunications Department—headed by Heinz Lübbe, an officer on special assignment in the employ of the MfS—received ten additional permanent positions. In the context of “B work,” the Telecommunications Department was subsequently responsible for securing communication between military and civilian leadership positions, which included anything from laying cables to the ongoing development of encryption systems for the Party apparatus.30 Just like the Security Department before it, the Agitation Department was given a “B work” division in 1982. Its eight employees were charged with the task of readying the Central Intelligence and Information Office (ZeNIB), which would take effect in the event of war. Under the direction of Central Committee secretary Joachim Hermann, the ZeNIB would have regulated the radio, press and television of the GDR31 with the aim of making intelligible to the “masses” the “just character of an anti-imperialist war.”32 Other structural changes in the apparatus pointed not to external transformations but to shifts in the power structure of Party headquarters, including the sometimes abrupt rise and fall of individual members. Thus, in 1983 two Party enterprises, Fundament and Zentrag, were incorporated as divisions of the Central Committee’s Finance Department—and this solely because Werner Würzberger, the new general director of Zentrag, wanted for status reasons to retain his office as deputy director of the Finance Department. By making Fundament and Zentrag part of the Central Committee apparatus, Würzberger could occupy both positions simultaneously.33 The reorganization of the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy in late 1981, on the other hand, was due to the rapid fall of its director Werner Hering. Hering—about whom more below34—had submitted a social-policy proposal (improving wage policy for nursing staff) at the wrong time (during a drastically worsening economic crisis) and hence incurred the wrath of Honecker, who indirectly vented his hostility towards doctors by singling out Hering at a meeting of the Secretariat on August 26, 1981. Hering was dismissed and his successor Karl Seidel tasked with bringing “political-ideological work with medical intelligentsia” to a higher level. In formal terms, this “realignment” of the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy found expression in its having to relinquish its medical science division to the Central Committee Science Department.35

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News of the scandal, this “decapitation” of the Department of Health Policy, soon spread to the rest of Party headquarters, as did other “special incidents” of this sort, when the “bush telegraph”36 was set in motion in the breakrooms and cafeterias after the Secretariat meeting. The “thirst for rumors,” detailed in chapter 3, made sure of this. From the point of view of Party leaders, it was important to counter this ultimately uncontrollable informal communication with an official, internal discourse inside the apparatus. This chore along with others was assumed by an organization within the Central Committee organization, one that has only been mentioned in passing here: the Party organization of the Central Committee. The latter’s basic organizations were likely to have thoroughly “evaluated” the reasons for Werner Hering’s dismissal.

Structure of Control: The Party Organization of the Central Committee The Party organization of the Central Committee was a core element in the formal structure of Party headquarters. It also had a considerable bearing on its inner workings, since things were no different for the employees of the Central Committee than they were for the hundreds of thousands of comrades in every factory, public office and residential district in the GDR: they, too, regularly attended the Party meetings of their basic organizations,37 or at least the 95 percent of them who belonged to the SED.38 They listened to the announcements of their basic-organization secretaries, periodically elected organization leaders, and evaluated the resolutions of the latest Central Committee congress.39 The procedures were monotonous, and genuine discussions were rare. It was “so boring . . . I can’t even really remember,” says Renate Michalik about the meeting of the Neuer Weg basic organization she belonged to.40 From the perspective of the Party leadership, basic-organization meetings did not even serve the purpose of a free exchange of ideas. As in the rest of the Party, they were an instrument of mobilization and control. How this instrument was used was up to the secretariat of the Central Committee’s Party organization, which during the 1980s had two fulltime secretaries—Peter Jureczko and Walter Grossmann41—as well as four political and four technical employees. These employees organized the chronically unpopular Parteilehrjahre—the recurrent ideological training courses for members of the Party42—at the Big House, as well as initiating and organizing visits to Party training schools. They also investigated issues such as why, in 1979, thirty of the sixty-three members of the Party organization under the age of twenty-five were not organized in the basic organization of the FDJ in the Central Committee.43 The secretariat of the Central Committee Party organization was headed by a first secretary, a key position that Ulbricht as well as Honecker only entrusted to their closest followers. In the early 1950s, Ulbricht appointed Karl Strohbusch, the deputy head of the Agitation Department, as first secretary.44 Strohbusch was succeeded by a new appointee, Ulbricht’s personal assistant Richard Herber, in 1958. Herber’s prominence is evidenced by the fact that in 1967 he was elected to the Central Committee.45 In 1969, the position was assumed by Kurt Tiedke, head of the Propaganda

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Department and a confidant of Honecker. Then, in 1979, when Tiedke switched to the position of first regional secretary in Magdeburg, he was finally succeeded by the head of the Cadre Department, Fritz Müller, as director of the Central Committee’s Party organization. Herber, Tiedke and Müller were something akin to the “Party boss” of every Central Committee employee, and they certainly availed themselves of this power. Fritz Müller, for example, personally attended Party meetings of the International Relations Department’s basic organization in order to exercise a certain control over what he viewed as a “weak spot” at Central Committee headquarters, as Manfred Uschner remembers it.46 Werner Hering, head of the Department of Health Policy, was summoned by Müller to the secretariat of the Party organization in early 1981, where he was criticized for a biased cadre policy that neglected the “political qualifications” of his employees. One of the thumbscrews Müller used was sending the minutes of the meeting to the General Secretary.47 But it was the technical employees in particular, who were shown their place in the Big House—that is to say, at the very bottom—by way of the Party organization. Thus, in the early 1960s, Richard Herber had a member of Basic Organization 9 (chauffeur service) removed from the Party because of “griping.” At a basic organization meeting in the presence of Herber, the driver had “given a very detailed account of everything wrong” in the chauffeur service “as well as those things that bothered him personally.”48 Another driver, who had found the courage in 1965 to oppose Herber’s recommendation to elect Günter Glende as head of the Central Committee’s Party organization, only fared slightly better. “Comrade Glende,” the driver explained, was “not a good role model for drivers . . . since he . . . often drove at excessive speeds.”49 In this instance Herber, who once again was present at the meeting, used the tactic of intimidation. Had the driver only come to stir up opinions, he asked. Did he “think . . . that the [Central Committee] Secretariat made a mistake in confirming Comrade Glende as departmental head”?50 In early December 1989 there was a kind of general reckoning with Fritz Müller, but also with the secretariat of the Central Committee’s Party organization in general, during a delegates’ meeting of the latter (at which representatives were supposed to be elected for the special Party congress of the SED). Edwin Schwertner, a member of the secretariat, complained about the very “uncritical atmosphere” that prevailed at secretariat meetings, while Walter Lorenz spoke about a “cult of personality” around Fritz Müller.51 Müller, it was claimed, had “patronized” (bevormundet) the basic organization and treated the leadership of the Party organization like “gullible voters” (Stimmvieh). They always had to stand and wait outside the room where the secretariat convened, said one member of the Party organization leadership during the delegates’ meeting. Only during voting were they each briefly called in. More than anything, though, bemoaned Walter Lorenz once again, the leadership of the Party organization of the Central Committee barely ever concerned itself with the problems of technical employees—the basic organizations of the chauffer

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service, the cafeteria staff, the polyclinic. And yet “it was clear to us that this is where the greatest problems” were.52

“The Human Being Only Starts with the Rank of Political Employee” “It was a hierarchy,” recalls Renate Michalik regarding the internal relations in her department. “It was a real hierarchy. And at the bottom of the hierarchy were the technical employees.”53 The technical employees in the Central Committee apparatus kept quiet after 1989—they published no memoirs and gave no interviews as contemporary witnesses.54 And yet many of them must have experienced Party headquarters as a place where the official discourse of egalitarianism and actual practice wildly diverged. Many of them would surely agree with the words of one former political employee, Arnolf Kriener: it “was not a feel-good kind of place.”55 Here, too, it should be noted that “the” technical apparatus, like the overall apparatus, was a heterogeneous entity. The majority of its members experienced Party headquarters completely differently than their “political” colleagues or comrades. In 1988, only seventy-five out of 1,103 technical employees worked as secretaries and stenographers in the offices of Politbüro members or the departments of the apparatus. Only these seventy-five individuals shared in the day-to-day work and experiences of political employees.56 By contrast, more than 70 percent of all technical staff employed in 1988 worked in two functional departments, the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department and the Office of the Politbüro, as telecommunications technicians and drivers, cooks and bricklayers, electricians and nursery-school teachers. These technical employees were far younger than their political counterparts: 42.2 years old on average in 1988 compared with 50.2. Technical employees, moreover, were predominantly women: 65.8 percent in 1988. Only 4.5 percent of technical employees in 1986 had attended a Party training school for at least one year (compared with 93 percent of political employees),57 and only seventeen out of 1,103 technical employees in 1988 had a college degree. Twelve out of seventeen worked as physicians in the polyclinic. From the point of view of the personnel office of the Office of the Politbüro—responsible for hiring and firing technical employees—there were stable and less stable areas of the technical apparatus. The pool of drivers was among the more stable with 194 employees in 1988, a male stronghold in an otherwise female-dominated technical apparatus. Only four of the drivers were women. Drivers may have been known inside the apparatus for their energetic trade in spare parts as well as for their “unauthorized use of the official cars entrusted to them,” but their level of political training was above-average (66 percent had attended a Party school) and a good 64 percent of them had been in the apparatus for more than fifteen years in June of 1988. Less stable, by contrast, were the kitchen crews, the “brigade” of cleaners and guesthouse staff. In 1988, a full 86 percent of these technical employees were not Party members,58 with fluctuation being particularly high in these areas. Among trainee “cooks,

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waiters, housekeeping assistants” there were “increasing problems in terms of cadrepolicy qualifications, but also disciplinary issues,” according to a 1988 report. The Administration of Economic Enterprises Department therefore discontinued these training programs in 1989. There was no demand for unruly cooks and waiters.59 Regardless of whether they were employed as drivers or cooks, most technical employees perceived Party headquarters as a two-class society. One reason for this was the pay gap. A departmental secretary in the mid-1970s earned about 800 marks plus 75 marks in so-called expense allowances, while a political employee, depending on his experience, had a salary of about 1,500 marks plus an expense allowance of 400 marks—in other words, more than double the pay. This discrepancy was exacerbated by the fact that political employees profited much more than secretaries, drivers and computer experts did from various kinds of bonuses and supplements, e.g., for their many years of faithful service.60 Technical employees were likewise well-aware of the monetary value of other “distinctions” such as birthday gifts. If they had a birthday, the relevant regulation of the Office of the Politbüro was usually adhered to: a present, say, worth 50 marks for an employee’s fiftieth birthday, along with a flower bouquet and 200 marks for a workplace celebration. The corresponding expenses for political employees could be upwards of 1,000 marks.61 Technical employees were also keenly aware that Party leaders barely included them in the self- and public image of Party headquarters. A driver in the Youth Department, for example, complained at a meeting of the basic organization in October 1974 that “hardly any or no technical employees were invited to the 25-year celebrations” of the founding of the GDR. This was a “policy of separating Party functionaries from the working class,” he said.62 Departmental heads got one more full week of paid vacation than technical employees,63 and the two groups rarely crossed paths while on leave. The Central Committee had vacation homes open exclusively to political employees, but even in the homes available to both political and technical employees the former had priority.64 Above all, however, there was a pronounced sense of detachment towards the Central Committee and its official discourse at least among parts of the technical apparatus, most notably drivers and telecommunications technicians, rooted in their working-class identity. This was expressed in jokes, like the one supposedly told by Central Committee purchasing agent Paul F. in 1954. They “elected him [F.] into the Politbüro,” he allegedly told a departmental head, “but he turned it down, since the thousand-mark salary [sic] was too much for him.”65 This aloofness is also evident in the defamatory discourse among technical employees about the Central Committee “whorehouse” and its arrogant political employees, a place that “Teddy [Thälmann] would have swept clean long ago with his iron broom.”66 The divide between political and technical employees is discernible in the answer given by a butcher employed in the Central Committee kitchens when asked how he felt about joining the Party: “Not me, I’d prefer to have a clean conscience.”67 It is also reflected—irrespective of the political offense it entailed—in the dozens of swastikas carved and scrawled between 1960 and 1962 mostly in the cabins of paternosters, on the walls of lava-

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tories and in basement corridors, which the Stasi identified as the work of technical employees.68 It should be emphasized that technical employees, too, were a heterogeneous group. Not everyone will have shared Gertrud Liebing’s view that “the human being only starts with the rank of political employee.” In smaller specialist departments even the secretaries could be part of the work collective. She “likes to go to work,” it gives her pleasure, one secretary in the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry reported to the Stasi at any rate.69 There were also career paths like those of Otto Schlichting, born in 1919, who rose from being a simple driver to head of the transport division in the Central Committee’s Transport and Communication Department. For the vast majority of technical employees at Party headquarters, though, there were no career opportunities to speak of, but rather a clear boundary line between those at the top and those at the bottom. The boundary also ran between genders.

Men’s Club The hierarchical dividing line between political and technical employees corresponded with hierarchical gender relations. The status group of political employees was male-dominated, whereas technical employees were predominantly female.70 In 1988, there were 720 women working in the technical apparatus as opposed to 101 political employees; the respective share of women in each was 65.8 and 11.7 percent. Despite a majority of women in the technical apparatus, the senior positions here were mostly occupied by men. The guesthouses, polyclinic, chauffeur service and kitchens were all male-run. It also goes without saying that the share of women was marginal among Central Committee departmental heads. In 1989, only three out of thirty-three departmental heads were women (Gisela Glende, Ursula Ragwitz and Ingeborg Lange). In a few departments the share of female political employees was somewhat higher. This was the case with the Party journals (Einheit had 40 percent female employees in 1986, Neuer Weg 21 percent) and in the Office of the Politbüro (almost 26 percent), as well as in the Department of Health Policy (25 percent) and the Department of Culture (21 percent).71 On the other hand, most economic departments in the Central Committee did not employ any women at all (apart from secretaries). The same went for the Department of Security Issues as well as for the Finance Department. This disparity is remarkable, not least because—as noted above—it was less pronounced in the 1950s. The share of female political employees was a solid 25.7 percent in 1953 (compared with 11.7 percent in 1986). The extent of this imbalance in the Central Committee apparatus stood in marked contrast to the territorial Party apparatus, where from 1971 to 1986 the share of female political employees in SED district leaderships rose from 18.4 to 29.1 percent.72 The gender ratio at the central Party apparatus thus confirms the finding that the closer a state or Party organ was to the center of political power, the lower the share of women it had.73

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The SED’s central apparatus was clearly a man’s world. It was therefore no coincidence that former Central Committee employees liked to use the soldierly term “camaraderie” to describe the solidarity among “Party workers” and “professional revolutionaries”—two more self-images taken from a male and military world.74 Women were not excluded from this per se, but were limited to certain roles.75 The fact that there were a house commander and uniformed guards, that most political employees had service weapons, that some employees fondly remembered smuggling a keg of beer into the Central Committee building and transporting it with the paternoster76 lent the Big House a barracks-like character in which women led a peripheral existence. The male nature of Party headquarters was not up for debate. “The second you brought it up,” says Renate Michalik, “you immediately became a women’s libber.”77 Conformity and subordination were the only options for women in this man’s world. Inge H., a Central Committee employee working for a Party journal, was once received in a factory with the exclamation “an editor with breasts!” She summed up the pressure to conform when she said that you “couldn’t feel very sorry for yourself—I mean, in the Central Committee it wasn’t that bad but . . . you had to be resilient.”78 The few women who were “tough” enough, who made it to the top with the help of stereotypically masculine qualities, had a bad reputation at Party headquarters. Ursula Ragwitz, head of the Department of Culture, was known for being “distinctly ambitious and careerist” according to Stasi reports,79 and Gisela Glende, director of the Office of the Politbüro, who was notorious for her “domineering” personality, was “downright feared” by some departmental heads. Women who acted more reserved, like Ingeburg Lange, were considered political lightweights, and are still depicted this way by historians. Finally, the hierarchical gender relations at Party headquarters are illustrated by the fact that many younger female employees had to put up with the advances of men higher up in the chain of command. Gertrud Liebing, for example, reported to the Stasi informant sharing a detention cell with her about a departmental head who was “no longer allowed to work in the Central Committee” because he would “try to ask out all the young women and get them into bed.”80 She also knew of a waitress on the “7th floor”—the cafeteria for Politbüro and Central Committee members as well as for departmental heads—who had to have “repeated abortions” on account of her many “acquaintances” with political staffers.81 Characteristic for the view of women held by at least some leading Central Committee members is the case of Josef Steidl, who in 1973 made serious efforts to entice an employee at the Interhotel in Leipzig—who was “only working there because of her good looks,” according to a Stasi assessment—to come work as a secretary in his department.82 Then, at the 1976 Leipzig Spring Trade Fair, Steidl had “no compunction” using female employees from his department as “hostesses” to attend to representatives from West German companies and who acted as “lady companions” in the evening.83 “At Steidl’s behest, they were given an extra 300 deutschmarks for a job well done.”84 Another revealing example is the dispute in a basic organization over the

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“intimate relationship” between a married telephone operator and a likewise married political employee in the Department of Culture. In the end the female telephone operator (and not the male political employee) had to give up her job in the Central Committee apparatus.85 The relationship between technical and political employees as well as between men and women points to at least two latent fault lines within Party headquarters that are contrary to its image of homogeneity and “deathly silence.”86 There were more than these two, however. There was the “craving” for accolades described by technical employee Gertrud Liebing,87 for instance, which supports the hypothesis of a progressive social differentiation taking place in the center of power, about which more below.88 And tensions emerged in the Honecker era—as they had in the decade of building socialism—from the hierarchy between departmental and division heads on the one hand and political employees on the other. Thus, a Stasi employee thought it worth noting that an employee in the Central Committee’s Department of Planning and Finance whom he handled as an unofficial collaborator, “Fritz Schuchardt,” could call on “departmental head Comrade Ehrensperger only when attended by his own division head.”89 This happened only twice in one year.90 That said, many former political employees claim there was a “comradely working atmosphere” in the Central Committee apparatus.91 Dieter Mechtel, who was transferred to the Department of Security Issues in 1986 after serving as head of the Editorial Department in the Ministry of the Interior, recalls the department as being “exceptionally relaxed, friendly, comradely.”92 The contact with other departments was also good, by Mechtel’s account: “you helped each other out in the apparatus, that was a given, . . . you could go wherever you wanted.” Horst K., an employee in the Party Organs Department, likewise confirms this widespread spirit of cooperation: “We had a little allotment garden in Biesdorf-Süd, and if I ever asked someone, ‘Can you help me tear something down or put something up over the weekend?’— that was never an issue.”93 Bernhard L., an employee in the Youth Department during the 1970s, similarly maintains that there was “a certain team spirit” in the Central Committee apparatus, though he adds that it was “a little typical of the GDR that you did a lot more together in work collectives.”94 It was also typical of the GDR to have a departmental get-together at least once a year. A Stasi employee reporting in the mid-1970s on the off-duty activities of the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation was deeply impressed. There were constantly “little celebrations” going on, and once a year there was a bigger gathering for “all employees, usually with their families,” which, given the number of technical employees, often meant three hundred to four hundred people in attendance. Food and drink, the MfS employee continued, were “considerably cheaper” at the department’s celebrations “than under normal circumstances,” the food being supplied by the Central Committee guesthouses.95 But there were many other celebrations in the Big House apart from these office parties: awards, anniversaries and,

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of course, birthdays. Birthday parties, in particular, especially those of division or even departmental heads, were social events and networking opportunities, e.g., with members of the state apparatus and mass organizations whom Central Committee employees worked with on a daily basis. Dieter Mechtel was head of the Editorial Department in the Minister’s Office of the Ministry of the Interior until 1986. When the division head in the Central Committee Department of Security Issues responsible for the Ministry of the Interior had a milestone birthday, he recalls, “it was standard procedure . . . to go to Central Committee headquarters and congratulate him.” Horst Wambutt’s birthday celebration was attended not only by departmental and division heads from other departments but also by the departmental heads responsible for the chemical industry in Main Department XVIII of the MfS, who “brought me a bouquet of flowers.”96 And when it was Wolfgang Herger’s birthday, “employees, say, in the Youth Department or friendly employees in the FDJ knew the door was open and you should stop by.”97 The excursions organized by many departments and divisions were likewise social events. “Every year,” according to Horst K., “we had a blast . . . with our division, . . . fifteen, sixteen of us with our wives”—sometimes a boat ride together, sometimes a hike.98 In the Department of Basic Industry, the family excursions were “a big deal” each year, says Horst Wambutt. They were “real family gatherings with sporting events and the whole shebang . . . with spouses, children, everyone was there, they were pretty popular.”99 Friendships and partnerships developed in the Central Committee the way they do anywhere when people with similar career paths and who have undergone similar processes of socialization find themselves working together. They carpooled to work or went shopping for each other, just as working people did in the rest of the GDR. These inner social workings lend substance to Claus Krömke’s claim about a “comradely, maybe sometimes too comradely working atmosphere in the Party apparatus.”100 But they also raise the question of how these experiences of belonging and identity comported with the abovementioned fault lines that were likewise said to exist—sometimes by the same individuals who praised the social solidarity in their departments. The obvious answer to this question of contradictory memories—of social conflict on the one hand and social cohesion on the other—lies in a consistent finding of this work: an outwardly monolithic Central Committee apparatus was in fact an extremely multifacted social space marked by a variety of subcultures, experiences and working conditions. Things were different on the Politbüro floor—which Manfred Uschner described as a hectic power apparatus prone to suspicion and seclusion101— than they were in the Science Department with its “relatively peaceful working atmosphere,” as one contemporary witness put it.102 Generally speaking, the social point of reference or object of identification for most employees was their own department or even just their division, and almost

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never “the apparatus” as a whole. Thus, SED Party headquarters reflected the general tendency of large, specialized organizations to devolve into networks of close relationships with intense identification between employees on a familiar footing and who draw a line between “us” and “them” and shield one another emotionally.103 In the case of the Central Committee apparatus, this tendency was reinforced by the fact that, at the level of individual departments, the sociobiographical and generational profile of employees was far more homogeneous than it had been in the 1950s. Homogeneity at the departmental level was probably a key contributing factor to many employees’ sense of belonging. And yet there are also indications that the staff structure of the Central Committee apparatus began to shift again in the second half of the 1980s, as its generational homogeneity began to crumble.

Staff Development One of the core structural problems of state socialism was the superannuation of its elites. No procedures existed for an orderly exchange of elites. In 1988, the average age of Politbüro members was sixty-seven, of Politbüro candidates sixty-one.104 In the late GDR, even leading functionaries growing weary of their work, like Minister of the Interior Friedrich Dickel (born in 1913), didn’t dare retire. “As long as the General Secretary is older than me,” Wolfgang Herger reports Dickel having said, “I, a young pioneer, can’t request my retirement earlier.”105 Hermann Axen (b. 1916), also wanted to “call it quits only when Erich does,”106 and octogenarian Albert Norden still seemed to believe as late as 1976 that he “couldn’t do that to the Party,” meaning his resignation.107 Hence, an aging Party apparatus, at least from the perspective of younger functionaries such as Manfred Uschner (b. 1937), had become one of the GDR’s most pressing problems. When Honecker announced in the fall of 1988 that, together with the existing Politbüro, he would run for reelection at the Twelfth Party Congress scheduled to take place in 1990, many employees on the Politbüro floor were appalled108—not to mention the rest of Party headquarters. Thirty-four-year-old Renate Michalik, the youngest political employee in the Central Committee at that time, had always thought until then that “Once they’re gone, we can finally get down to business.”109 The apparatus in general, however, and not just the Politbüro floor, seemed to be superannuated. “Working in the same position at the management level for twenty to thirty years makes little sense in any social system,” remarked Carl-Heinz Janson after 1989 with reference to the group of Central Committee departmental heads.110 Günter Sieber, the last head of the Department of International Relations, even thought it was “crazy” that someone could work “for 35 years as a departmental head in the Central Committee. . . . They might be the best, most decent people, even made of gold, but after a while the sparks stop flying.”111 Bernhard L., an employee in the Youth Department during the 1970s, likewise distanced himself in an interview from the “people who . . . had spent half their lives” in the Central Committee.112

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Diagram 6.1. Average age of political employees and departmental heads in the Central Committee apparatus, 1946–89.114 At first glance, the available figures support the image of the Central Committee apparatus as an aging center of power during the Honecker era. This was particularly true of Central Committee departmental heads, whose rising average age leaves no doubt that Erich Honecker placed a premium on staff continuity.113 In 1970, the thirty-seven Central Committee departmental heads had an average age of 46.5 years old. The age spectrum ranged from the thirty-eight-year-old head of the Department of Basic Industry, Horst Wambutt, to the seventy-one-year-old head of the church issues working group, Willi Barth. Almost half of the members of this group (nineteen out of forty) were younger than forty-five. A decade later, the average age was 53.6 years old,115 and another nine years later it had climbed to 59.3 years old. A particularly striking aspect about the age structure in 1989 is that 25 percent of all departmental heads were over the age of sixty-five. And this group included some of the most influential Central Committee departmental heads: sixty-nine-year-old “Cadre Müller”; seventy-one-year-old Hermann Pöschel, considered inside the apparatus to be Günter Mittag’s right-hand man; and Günter Glende, the “secret king in the Big House.”116 It is therefore not surprising that many employees felt, at least in retrospect, that they had worked for a bunch of old men—referring to the Central Committee apparatus as a whole, and not just the Politbüro.

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But the aging of the “general staff of the Party” can be viewed in a different light. The increasing average age is less striking if we bear in mind that a Central Committee departmental head in the GDR was higher placed, hierarchically speaking, than the minister assigned to him.117 In this case, an average age of 56.2 years (in 1985) for a group of such high-ranking functionaries was entirely in keeping with international standards then and now. The seventeen-member second cabinet of Helmut Kohl, for example, had an average age of fifty-five years in 1985, only slightly lower than the corresponding figure for departmental heads in the GDR. Moreover, the notion of collective superannuation does not bear out with regard to political employees, particularly in the 1980s. Between 1970 and 1989, the average age of political employees rose by a good five years, from forty-five to 50.5, a much slower rate than for Central Committee departmental heads. The growth rate vis-à-vis departmental heads weakened even more visibly in the late 1980s, increasing by only 0.3 years between 1985 and 1989. This is partly due to cadre managers having taken countermeasures.

The Belated Rejuvenation of the Apparatus The secretariat of the Central Committee Party organization was indeed troubled by the rising average age of political employees. An analysis from January 1983 predicted that “in some cases considerable increase in age groups over 51 . . . will cause the average age of comrades . . . to rise relatively quickly.”118 Already in the late 1970s, a working group in the Central Committee’s Salary Commission had therefore made the following suggestion: “reliable employees who have worked at least 25 years in the Party apparatus” and “who only have a few years left before reaching retirement age” should be paid from the central payroll of the Central Committee. This would have freed up their positions ahead of schedule, which could then be filled with younger employees.119 More effective, though, were probably the targeted efforts, especially of the economic-policy departments themselves, to “rejuvenate their staff and elevate their expertise.”120In the Department of Basic Industry, for example, five new employees in their early thirties were hired in the 1980s.121 These efforts to bring new blood into the apparatus are also evident among political staffers, albeit to a more modest degree. While the share of fifty-one to sixty-five-year-olds did increase slightly between 1983 and 1987, from 46.5 to 49.8 percent, the share of thirty-one to forty-year-olds working in the Central Committee increased at the same time from 11.5 to 14.2 percent. True, this did not represent a radical generational shift like the one that occurred at the regional and district level. Yet new employees like Marion Morgenstern, who joined the Department of Culture in 1988 at the age of thirty-six, or Gerd Pelikan, who joined the Department of Planning and Finance the very same year at the age of thirty-four, may well have contributed to a change in the collective habitus within the apparatus. A rudimentary generational shift was visible in leadership positions within the apparatus. Thus, Wolfgang Herger filled the position of deputy head of his Security

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Table 6.2. Age structure of political employees in the Central Committee, 1970–89.i 1970 (N = 321) Age

absolute

in percent

1980 (N = 256) absolute

in percent

1989 (N = 359) absolute

in percent

30 and under

4

1.3

2

0.8

31–40

91

28.4

31

12.1

65

41–50

167

120

46.9

115

32

51–65

46

14.3

96

37.5

165

46

over 65

13

4

7

2.7

14

52

–

– 18.1

3.9

Note i. As explained above, the data corpus underlying these figures is not representative, but reflects the sum total of political employees analyzed in the context of a pragmatic research strategy and who were working in the apparatus at the end of the given year. Still, 42 percent of the political employees working in 1970 were able to be included in the calculation. The analogous figures for 1980 and 1989 were 31 and 43 percent, respectively. That the data used here are more or less reliable is corroborated by analyses conducted by the secretariat of the Central Committee Party organization which the author was able to obtain for the years 1979, 1983, 1985 and 1987. The secretariat of the Party organization calculated the following age structure for 1983 using a complete data corpus: up to the age of 30: 0.4 percent; 31–40 years old: 11.5 percent; 41–50 years old: 40.2 percent; 51–65 years old: 46.5 percent; over 65: 1.5 percent. The corresponding figures for 1987 were as follows: up to the age of 30: 0.1 percent; 31–40 years old: 14.2 percent; 41–50 years old: 34.5 percent; 51–65 years old: 49.8 percent; over 65: 1.5 percent. The sum of 100 percent was exceeded by a tenth of a percent in the original figures in each case and was not corrected here. SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18529, 18530, passim.

Department with forty-two-year-old naval officer Peter Miethe,122 whereas fortyfive-year-old Wolfgang Langnitschke had been acting as deputy head of the Finance Department since 1986. Miethe briefly became head of the Department of Security Issues in the fall of 1989. Greater tasks awaited Langnitschke: as director of finances in the party executive of the PDS, the SED’s successor party, in the early 1990s, he played a key role in its attempts to keep the party’s domestic and foreign assets from being seized by the state.123 However much importance one attaches to this generational shift, it is clear that the Central Committee apparatus became more heterogenous in terms of age during the 1980s. The share of median age groups among political employees decreased, while that of the younger and older age cohorts increased. Did this generational differentiation have an effect on the unity of staff? Or was it offset by the fact that the sociopolitical background of employees became more homogeneous?

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Sociopolitical Background The social and political profile of Central Committee employees also changed in the course of the Honecker era. This was largely due to demographics. The employees newly hired in the 1980s had mostly been born in the 1930s and 1940s. They were thus part of the “Wall generation,” politically socialized after 1961 in an outwardly stable GDR.124 The share of Central Committee members who had personally been KPD or SPD members before 1945 sank to 1.5 percent by 1979,125 and the share of those whose parents had been politically influenced by the German labor movements prior to 1933 steadily decreased as well. This is shown by statistics compiled by the secretariat of the Party organization of the Central Committee and available from 1979 on. On October 31, 1979, there were still 266 political employees (31 percent) working in the Central Committee apparatus whose parents had been members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) or the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, (KSČ) or the Young Communist League of Germany (KJVD) prior to 1945. Eight years later, on October 1, 1987, the corresponding figure was only 190 (or 22.1 percent). The number of those whose parents, for demographic reasons, only joined the KPD, SPD or SED after 1945— and who likely belonged to a Nazi organization—increased during the same time period from 130 (15 percent) to 218 (25.3 percent). The number and share of those whose parents had no party affiliation before or after 1945 remained constant (at a solid 50 percent). Party headquarters was therefore steadily losing its biographical roots in the labor movement. The Central Committee apparatus, of course, was subject to special requirements regarding the share of its members who had to hail from the workingclass—conditions which did not apply to the State Planning Commission and most ministries. In 1987, the share of workers—according to the “origins and development” category—was 33.1 percent.127 This was a “healthy” figure, just slightly below the 37 percent considered the accepted standard for the SED in general as of the mid1960s.128 The figure is not very reliable, however, considering that the SED, and its apparatus in particular, was a socially “constructed” Party. The indisputable takeaway is that even these categories—often modified over the decades for the purpose of meeting the social targets set by the SED—are an indication that the SED was gradually becoming a Party of higher-ranking state employees in its power center as well. Thus, the share of Central Committee members whose “social origins” were officially defined as working class sank from 88.4 percent in 1957129 to 70.6 percent in 1987.130 Analogously, the share of those who were categorized as workers upon joining the Party had diminished from 53.7 percent in 1954 to 31 percent in 1987.131 These are rather unambiguous trends. This shifting social profile in the apparatus only becomes tangible, however, at the level of individual departments. In the course of the 1980s, for example, eleven new employees joined the Department of Basic

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Diagram 6.2. “Political origins” of political employees of the Central Committee, 1979–88.126 Industry, six of which were the offspring of the intelligentsia or salaried employees— teachers, university instructors and engineers. The father of Hilmar Adler (b. 1949) was deputy minister in the Ministry of Chemical Industry, whereas that of Peter G., who joined the Department of Basic Industry in 1987, held a chair at Humboldt University in Berlin. G.’s mother, moreover, was a librarian, his brother a research assistant at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. What’s more, he was married to a Soviet citizen, the daughter of a professor at Lomonosov University in Moscow, where G. had studied. G., who had earned his doctorate at the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the SED in the early 1980s, thus had a whole range of social, symbolic and family resources that he skillfully put to use, so it seems. “At every opportunity,” reported Stasi informants in 1971, he referred to “the services rendered by his father.”132 Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s it was these resources that decided if a young person entered the ranks of the “socialist service class” or not—in this case the Party elite of the Central Committee.133 G. and Hilmar Adler as well as their departmental colleague Norbert Ehle, whose father-in-law was the longtime deputy head of the Central Committee’s Health Department, Rudolf Weber,134 were not only “politically reliable”—a quality they were credited with as a matter of course by dint of their descending from functionary families—but thanks to their family ties they also had inside knowledge of the informal mechanisms of career advancement in the Party

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and state. They were the candidates for the leadership positions in the Party and state apparatus that would hopefully open up once the reconstruction generation retired in the late 1980s.135 At this point it is instructive to cast a glance at the CPSU. This shows that the degree to which Central Committee members came from the functional elite was nowhere near the corresponding figure in the Central Committee of the CPSU, where in the 1970s and 1980s three-quarters were the children of mid-ranking Party and state functionaries.136 The formation, seclusion and self-recruitment of functional elites in the GDR lagged, of course, by about two to three decades compared to the Soviet Union, having begun in 1945 rather than 1918.137 The nomenklatura of the GDR, in other words, did not yet fully rely on the principle of self-recruitment, i.e., hiring cadre from functionary families. This explains why the private living conditions of many Central Committee employees during the Honecker era were either on par with their environment or seemed to reflect the status needs of social climbers. They did not have the self-confidence of a power elite that had come into its own politically as well as socially, and did not succeed in acquiring it by 1989.

The Milieu of the Party Elite A revealing source for learning more about the private living conditions of Central Committee employees are the Stasi’s investigation reports mentioned in chapter 3. The reports, compiled by Department XX/10 in the process of conducting its security clearances, contained statements from informants in each respective residential area—often retirees or functionaries living in the neighborhood and whose information sometimes had to be taken with a pinch of salt.138 And yet the reports clearly indicate that the way Central Committee members were perceived in their private sphere changed over the decades.139 In short, the “after-hours agitators” of the 1950s and 1960s had turned into “private individuals” during the Honecker era. These individuals still attracted the attention of those around them, but, given the diversification of lifestyles in East German society of the 1970s,140 their neighbors were willing to see them in roles other than the “Party worker.” The reports of Stasi informants in the 1950s often depicted Central Committee members as “150 percenters.” You could “not say a bad word about our government” or “tune into a Western radio station” in their presence, one informer said in 1954 with reference a Central Committee member in the Department of Agriculture.141 While the Office of the Politbüro did appear to issue occasional instructions in the late 1950s not to disclose one’s identity as a Central Committee member in residential settings,142 this cautionary advice was hard to follow. A comrade inevitably had to get involved in his residential community sooner or later. And it was precisely in such contexts that some Central Committee members acted in a “class-conscious” and “Party-like” manner, true to the expectations placed upon them in this role. Or they endeavored to dissociate themselves from their environment.

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According to one report, several neighbors who were not in the Party complained about Heinz K., an employee in the Department of Basic Industry from 1959 to 1962, claiming that his “tone was a little too strident,” meaning he acted more “Partylike” than his neighbors were comfortable with.143 The case of Adolf W., employee in the Machine Building Department, was another matter. Though he behaved in an “extremely arrogant” way, he “struggled to put out a flag on state holidays” and was a “shirker when it came to doing anything for the National Front.”144 Central Committee division head Werner L. left a similarly bad impression in the early 1960s. While preparing a fundraiser for People’s Solidarity, he explained to his neighbors that “Central Committee employees should not be expected to do such petty tasks.” Comrade Ulbricht himself had said so, according to L.145 Observations of this sort, obviously based on conflicts between Central Committee employees and their residential environment, were rare in the Honecker era. Typical for the 1970s were reports like the following, written in 1971 about Central Committee employee Werner H. The latter did “not stand out as a comrade” in his residential area, so much so that several of the informants could not even say if H. was a Party member at all. He never had political conversations and in his free time was “very active in his garden, located in Berlin-Blankenburg.” The neighbors of Horst M., too, were “mostly unaware of where he worked and what he did.”146 It was “common knowledge” in his case that he was a Party member. And he did enjoy “a very good reputation” overall. But he led a “rather withdrawn” existence with his wife and two daughters (both active in the FDJ) in a “spacious two-and-a-half room prewar apartment” in Pankow. All that his neighbors knew was that during the summer months M. and his family often took his “atlas-white Wartburg” and drove to his weekend property, where he spent a lot of time. M.’s departmental colleague Norbert E. and his wife—who worked as a doctor at Charité hospital—were also counted among the residents who behaved “inconspicuously” in their neighborhood in Lichtenberg.147 The informants could say little more about E. and his wife than that they had “a good standard of living,” dressed fashionably, lived in a “sophisticatedly furnished four-room apartment in a new building” and drove a Škoda S 100. The only conspicuous behavior noted was that he collected rocks and minerals and grew orchids. In terms of their “social collaboration,” however, the married couple adopted a “wait-and-see attitude” in their neighbors’ estimation. It is important to note here that E.’s and M.’s predecessors in the 1950s probably likewise preferred (or would have preferred) to spend more time at their weekend properties rather than pushing the official discourse at house meetings. But even if the pressure to conform exercised by a “greedy organization” eased up only slightly over the decades—in the 1980s Central Committee employees still had to inform their departmental heads if they planned to get a divorce148—it is nonetheless clear that Central Committee employees began to enjoy more freedoms in the course of the 1960s and 1970s. Of course, not every Central Committee employee could af-

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ford to have the nonchalance of a Günter Glende—head of the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department—who supposedly “only did politics till 5 p.m.” and then “acted like a bourgeois.”149 By the 1970s and 1980s, though, probably every Central Committee employee could leave behind their role as “Party worker” as soon as they left the office. And some of them used the loosening role requirements and their increased financial means—more on this in chapter 7—to cultivate a lifestyle that aimed to distance themselves from their supposed social inferiors by means of subtle “distinctions.” Hilmar E., who joined the Department of Basic Industry in 1985, led just such a life, albeit discreetly. According to a report from 1982, E. lived “with his family in a handsome, modern three-room apartment,” owned a Wartburg 353 car as well as a “weekend property with a bungalow,” and had a “certain standard of living with regard to clothing, delicacies [Genussmittel] and home furnishings.”150 But this was nothing compared with Werner Leonhardt, division head in the Department of Basic Industry, whose children supposedly wore “almost exclusively Western things” in the 1960s, which caused a stir in his neighborhood. Leonhardt was allegedly asked “if this was compatible with his work in the Central Committee.”151 The apartment of Julius Cebulla, deputy head of the Department of Transportation, was also said to be “furnished solely with Western goods”—which caused problems the moment his daughter brought a friend home with her. Leonhardt and Cebulla thus failed to exercise the common sense expected of representatives of the Party regime, namely hiding their personal wealth while acting modest and folksy in public.152 The need to distinguish oneself through personal possessions could easily lead to corruption in an economy of scarcity. Chapter 7 will investigate this in more detail. But another aspect stands out here, one that was a prerequisite for the Stasi collecting so much information about the transgressions big and small of Central Committee employees: the fact that most of them, even in the stage of “developed socialism,” lived not in single-family dwellings but “in the middle of society, in rental apartments,” as Horst Wambutt puts it. “Of course they were closely watched by the public eye.”153 For sure, in certain parts of Berlin—in the newly built apartments east of Alexanderplatz, on the Fischerinsel, or Friedrich-Engels-Strasse in Pankow—residential areas were created with a high “density of functionaries.” Their concentration in new housing developments was partly because this power-securing elite was the “main beneficiary” of the GDR’s housing policy.154 Yet the overwhelming majority of political employees did not lead an insular existence, being rather well integrated in daily life under real socialism. This had a direct effect on the political practice of the Central Committee apparatus in the Honecker era, reducing its capability to dogmatically hinder social transformation. So how did the social-biographical profile of political employees evolve during the Honecker era? In essence they became older, predominantly male, and had more formal education—in continuation of the trend that began in the 1950s. They tended to come from families who already belonged to the intelligentsia or the socialist ser-

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vice class. In private, they were private individuals—to a much greater degree than their comrades two decades earlier—whose neighbors were mostly unaware that they worked at Party headquarters. They were likely thought to be senior state employees, which indeed many of them had been before joining the ranks of apparatus, or became once again after leaving it. In short, the Party workers and professional revolutionaries of old were absorbed or grew into the socialist service class. By the same token, the Central Committee’s specialist departments increasingly became a part of state socialism’s institutional order, enhancing their power in many instances.

Power and Authority On May 3, 1971, at the Sixteenth Congress of the Central Committee of the SED, Walter Ulbricht read out a declaration that had previously been ratified by the Politbüro and endorsed by Leonid Brezhnev. “After careful consideration,” he asked the Central Committee to relieve him of his function as First Secretary.155 This was the conclusion of a long power struggle between himself and the almost twenty-yearyounger Erich Honecker. Honecker had come out on top, because the Soviet leadership was tired of the senile and stubborn self-confidence of Ulbricht. Moreover, the majority of the members of the SED Politbüro stood behind Honecker. The backing of the central Party apparatus carried less weight in this instance. Indeed, not all Central Committee members were on board with this transition of power. And there certainly must have been mixed feelings in the Department of International Relations under Paul Markowski. There was downright “hostility towards Honecker” here, according to former employee Manfred Uschner.156 The mood was ambivalent at best among the departmental heads responsible for economic policy following a resolution, passed by the Politbüro at Honecker’s behest on March 23, 1971, that formulated a clear departure from previous economic policies.157 If Ulbricht had pursued a moderate “structural policy” of reform,158 Honecker focused instead on raising the standard of living. “It didn’t take long for us to see that Honecker was ruining a lot of things,” comments Horst Wambutt.159 According to internal documents, the Central Committee departmental heads for economic policy under Central Committee Secretary for the Economy Werner Krolikowski engaged in a good deal of critical discussion about the new “main task” and its consequences160—at least until 1976, when Günter Mittag replaced Krolikowski and put an end to this open dialogue. The economic experts in the Central Committee had first been forced to openly renounce the NES. Helmut Koziolek, director of the Central Institute for Socialist Economic Management and actually one of the brains behind the economic reforms, had felt obliged to engage in “harsh self-criticism and criticism” and admit the “mistakes made prior to the Eighth Party Congress.”161 It was not just the economists, though, who were less than enthusiastic about the new leading man; the ideological departments shared their skepticism. The Science Department and Department of Culture were certainly not sad to see Ulbricht go, a

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man who had failed to appreciate their work. But their employees knew just as well that Honecker was “deaf to science”162 and was “terribly allergic to culture—that is to say, to literary types, the theater.”163 It is therefore almost paradoxical that, after the transition of power, it was the Department of Culture that found itself pressured to relax the “rigid” line it had followed since the Eleventh Plenary, what with Honecker wanting to present himself as more modern and open towards artists and intellectuals than Ulbricht had been.164 Ultimately employees in the Agitation Department as well had to adjust to the new policy line, which, according to a guideline issued by its secretary Werner Lamberz, maintained that “decisive political mistakes were made under the leadership of Comrade Walter Ulbricht.”165 This meant that the “producers of ideology” in the Party and state apparatus were no longer allowed to use certain phrases associated with Ulbricht and his agenda. In May 1971, an employee of the State Broadcasting Committee was given a list of taboo phrases courtesy of his boss: scientific-technical revolution, scientific-technical progress, socialist human community, developed social system of socialism, building socialism, revolution of the material-technical basis, economic integration of the USSR/GDR, mobilization of reserves of consciousness, and “socialism has become a decisive factor in the world.”166 This list shows that the formulation and interpretation of the ruling discourse in the GDR faltered briefly in the spring of 1971. The producers of ideology may have even been rendered speechless, like the abovementioned employee of the State Broadcasting Committee when presented with the list of undesirable phrases. When he timidly objected that “Comrade Honecker” had just recently used one of these phrases, his boss explained to him that this was “Honecker’s business.” “We won’t be needing these phrases anymore.”167

The Apparatus in the General-Secretary System One thing is certain: uncertainties and realignments of this sort are nothing unusual when it comes to a transition of political power. This is particularly true for a party dictatorship of the Soviet type that had no formal procedures for changes in leadership. Furthermore, there can be no doubt that many staff members in the Party apparatus welcomed the transition of power. Ulbricht had never been able to “win the hearts” of his Party workers; his erratic working style and tendency to talk in monologues were both considered tiresome. Honecker, by contrast, had the reputation of being decisive and disciplined.168 Moreover—and unlike Ulbricht—he was considered a man of the people, his folksiness and solidarity with workers had a certain appeal. Several former Central Committee staff members still hold the view that “Honecker, for all his faults, was a very affable and not very aloof person” who “could surely talk with any worker better than with a professor or an artist.”169 Others were also relieved that Ulbricht’s constant self-staging seemed to have been replaced by a more sober, down-to-earth style of leadership. You had to grant Honecker one

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Figure 6.1. A rare photo document of the “general staff of the Party.” On September 29, 1979, the departmental heads of the Central Committee line up before their General Secretary in the meeting room of the Politbüro. The original caption of the unpublished photo reads: “Erich Honecker bestows the 30th Anniversary Medal on the departmental heads of the Central Committee . . . Fritz Müller gives thanks on behalf of the other departmental heads.” Note the almost military posture of Müller and Honecker. Source: SAPMO-BArch, Bild Y 1/1722. thing, in Wolfgang Herger’s view: “the way Ulbricht used to do it, the never-ending birthday greetings with tons of presents, he did away with all of that, which to me was a good thing.”170 And this widespread appreciation felt for the new First Secretary171 at the start, at least in parts of the apparatus—especially in the Party Organs, Cadre Issues and Youth departments—was mutual. The Central Committee apparatus played an even greater role for Honecker than it did for his predecessor. Honecker had always been much more in tune with the working rhythm of Party headquarters. Unlike Ulbricht, he was usually in the Big House on workdays even after he became First Secretary. And, unlike Ulbricht, he saw his power base first and foremost in “his” central apparatus and his Central Committee departmental heads. Chapter 7 will show that he almost became a patron for the latter. Through significant salary increases, a multitude of material and immaterial benefits, and prestigious elective offices he showed an appreciation that Ulbricht had lacked.172 For Honecker, people and informal ties were more important than institutions and formal procedures. In practice, this meant that Honecker was involved in all decision-making even more than Ulbricht had been. This undermined the significance of decision-making bodies like the Politbüro. Johannes Raschka and Andreas Malycha call this political style the “general-secretary system.”173 Rather than merely

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being the expression of an individual style of politics on the part of Honecker, it was also a reaction to the considerable differentiation within Party headquarters. The complexity of the Party headquarters “system” gave its protagonists an advantage, allowing them to use informal methods of coordination. One of these protagonists, indeed the main one, was the General Secretary himself. This situation had a paradoxical effect. On the one hand, functional differentiation made the working style of the Big House increasingly “office-like” during the 1970s, according to Bernhard L. “You get there at eight a.m. and make sure you’re out the door by five p.m.”174 The “hysterical bustle” of the years of building socialism gave way at least in parts of the apparatus to “a relatively peaceful working atmosphere.”175 In the terminology of organizational research, this means that routines gained in importance while direct responsiveness to changes in the environment decreased.176 On the other hand, the personalization of decision-making processes meant greater uncertainty at the level of Central Committee departmental heads and secretaries. The deformalization of decision-making processes made it more difficult for them to calculate beforehand how other actors would act and behave—since the latter could have depended, for example, on whether or not they happened to have access to the General Secretary in a given situation.177 This sustained, or even increasing, uncertainty might be a reason for the widespread perception, particularly among leading functionaries in the apparatus during the 1970s and 1980s, that Party headquarters was “not a feel-good kind of place” but sometimes the cause of psychological overload and burnout. The starting point of this personalization and informalization of political processes was what Honecker called a “rational working style.” Ulbricht had often taken part in departmental meetings at least until the early 1960s. The Politbüro meetings he chaired were sometimes characterized by excessive discussion,178 to the chagrin of many Politbüro members as well as and especially Central Committee departmental heads. They had to wait outside until “their” point of order—a proposal, say—was addressed, but thanks to Ulbricht’s style of leadership they never knew when this would be. The meetings, according to one participant, lasted “sometimes into the night or were continued the next day,” and “if you had a proposal for the Politbüro and were scheduled for noon . . . but only had your turn at midnight, then, well, you can imagine what the mood was like in the famed anteroom.” In response to these prolonged debates Honecker offered a “rational working style” in the Secretariat meetings he conducted starting in the early 1960s, with precise agendas and exact schedules. When he became First Secretary in 1971, he applied the same method to Politbüro meetings. By the 1980s, Günter Schabowski and other participants perceived this style of holding meetings as monotonous and mechanical, with items on the agenda being handled checklist style. But departmental heads in the early 1970s found this new kind of meeting appealing: “we young people,” says Wolfgang Herger, found this “better than sitting around for nights on end.”179 The new working style made discussion more superficial, however. Although there were still heated debates in the Politbüro in the 1970s, as Andreas Malycha has pointed out—e.g., when the chairman of the State Planning Commission, Gerhard

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Schürer, criticized the volume of imports from the West180—Honecker’s main concern was economic policy. He often appeared clueless about topics that didn’t interest him. Frank T., an employee in the Science Department, recalls Honecker’s reaction to the “Central Plan for Social Science Research” presented to him in 1978: he wanted to delete the entire introduction because he thought it contained “too much chatter.”181 And a few years later the General Secretary accused the Department of Health Policy of submitting proposals that “only deal with specialist problems, which no one understands anyway.”182 In general, under Honecker there was less and less time to discuss or defend proposals in Politbüro or Secretariat meetings. This was even more the case considering that Honecker had never been one to value the open exchange of arguments. That’s why “all of us,” says Hans Modrow, “were interested in avoiding disputes in the Politbüro if possible”183 and clearing up any problems beforehand. A popular method was to “clarify something by means of an in-house memorandum,” meaning that, instead of drafting a proposal, departmental heads or Central Committee secretaries used internal memos to explain what they wanted to achieve or have—a new permanent position, a conference, a new law. Honecker often signed off on these memoranda without a fuss (provided they weren’t too expensive), and so they saved themselves the hassle of having to draw up a proposal.184 When they did have to resort to a proposal, however, they made an effort to clarify things, especially the financial aspects, ahead of time.185 In the case of Politbüro proposals, the respective Central Committee secretary would try to discuss the issue with Honecker before the meeting.186 Of course you still might “tremble a little” once these steps were taken, says Wolfgang Herger, “but basically everything has been discussed ahead of time, the secretary agrees, and in many cases the respective Central Committee secretary . . . has discussed it in advance with Erich Honecker . . . and so things took their course.”187 But if these preliminary measures were neglected—if the financial issues had not been clarified and if there was no “Agreed, EH” circled on the cover sheet of the proposal—the proposal could very well fail. In extreme cases the Central Committee departmental head went down with it, as seen with Werner Hering, the head of the Central Committee’s Health Department. Hering’s dismissal was a unique event, at least for the Honecker era. (Gisela Glende, the longtime director of the Office of the Politbüro, was awarded the Karl Marx Medal for appearances’ sake upon her forced resignation in 1986).188 And yet Hering’s fall had more than just an individual significance. It shows that political processes at Party headquarters were only outwardly routine and uniform. In fact, they were prone to disruption and dependent on extensive preparations as well as networking and relationship building. “Getting a proposal through” was no easy matter in the Honecker era either.

“If You Don’t Toe the Line, I’ll Send You to the Coal Mines!” Werner Hering, a doctor of law born in 1930, had been the head of the Central Committee’s Health Department since 1960. A “powerful” man much feared in the Ministry of Health, his “excessively critical attitude” was “sometimes unbearable,” or so

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Minister Mecklinger complained to the MfS.189 In 1973, Hering succeeded in getting a “joint resolution” through the Politbüro that resulted in a considerable expansion of benefits in East Germany’s healthcare system. But a number of hospital construction projects and a general spike in the cost of medical treatments left the health sector underfinanced and even exacerbated the problem.190 According to a Stasi report from August 1976—which turned out to be so dramatic that it was not forwarded to the General Secretary as planned—the hospital structures in use were consistently deteriorating. Nurses, moreover, earned the same as cleaning staff. Applications for exit visas and especially attempts to flee by nursing staff and physicians had been steeply on the rise since the mid-1970s.191 This was compounded by the economic crisis that began in 1978–79, resulting in a reduction or cancellation of planned imports of medical technology from West Germany. In early 1979, Mecklinger even expected a “reduction in the use of pacemakers and kidney dialysis” in hospitals.192 After multiple attempts in the late 1970s, Hering and Mecklinger eventually managed in the summer of 1981 to again draft a proposal to considerably increase the wages of medical staff. This came at a price, however: 500 million marks in additional expenditures in the state budget. Hering submitted the proposal to the Central Committee Secretariat on or around August 20, 1981—at the worst conceivable moment. Because shortly before, on August 3, 1981, Honecker had been informed by Brezhnev on the Crimean Peninsula that the Soviet Union would be reducing its deliveries of crude oil, a crucial factor in the GDR’s foreign-exchange balance.193 This meant a dramatic deterioration of the economic situation in the GDR. Thus, the meeting of the Central Committee Secretariat on August 26, 1981, did not go according to plan for Hering and Mecklinger.194 When Hering, division head Erich Fischer and Minister Mecklinger were called into the meeting room to discuss their point of order, Mecklinger began by offering reasons in favor of the proposal: “It would ease the difficult nursing situation” and vacant beds could be put back into use. He wasn’t even finished when “he was struck by the lightning bolt delivered by Günter Mittag.” The latter “heatedly” exclaimed that the half a billion marks the pay hikes would cost simply weren’t there. The “cash cow had been milked dry” and the health policymakers had “reached rock bottom.”195 At this point Hering should have taken the floor and, as if on cue with Mecklinger, “commented on the ideological consequences of the proposal.”196 But Hering suffered a kind of blackout or, as Fischer speculates, had possibly taken an overdose of valium,197 because as it was he was incapable of uttering a single word.198 And so the General Secretary broke his usual habit and spoke up in the Politbüro. The healthcare system, Honecker said, was the most politically unstable sector of society, a good “two-thirds of doctors were unreliable citizens who could just as well be shot to the moon.”199 And it was the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy that was responsible for this. Since its very founding it had “never proposed a resolution on political-ideological problems” but had only aimed to “milk the state.” This “rotten liberalism” had to be “fought relentlessly.”200 According to Fischer, Honecker ended

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by shouting: “And anyone causing trouble I’ll send straight to the coal mines, no matter if he’s a professor or a student!”201 This was a unique occurrence: Honecker passing the “political death sentence” for a Central Committee department. The “mutilation of the corpse” began in the anteroom, according to Fischer. Johannes Hörnig, head of the Science Department, was waiting there, already in the know. He explained to Hering that he would do his best to integrate the “science and education” division of the Health Department into the Science Department.202 The day after the meeting, cadre chief Müller banned from the premises the head of the science division, Erich Fischer, who was considered to be Hering’s liberalist advisor.203 A few weeks later Hering himself was relieved of his post and replaced by Karl Seidel, a former Charité professor and division head in the Health Department whom Hering had actually planned to make Mecklinger’s successor. Already in September 1981, Seidel had explained to an MfS employee the possible implications of ousting the two policy specialists Hering and Fischer. The “department would in future have to keep out of the decision-making process in all medicalscience and specialist issues, strictly concentrating on its political tasks” instead.204 The fact that he didn’t stick to this course—and, given the functional differentiation of the Central Committee specialist apparatus, probably would not have been able to—is indicated by Mecklinger’s abovementioned comment from 1987: “There are too many doctors and not enough Party workers in the Department of Health Policy.”205 A fall from grace the likes of Werner Hering’s was not an everyday occurrence in the Central Committee apparatus. But it was a distinct possibility, since political processes and ultimately the job of a departmental head were at the mercy of the General Secretary. And yet Hering’s fall points to a precondition of political action on the part of a Central Committee departmental head: the informal access to Honecker that the Central Committee secretary responsible for a department had or, in Hering’s case, didn’t have. The figuration of power at Party headquarters that determined the “pull” of a departmental head in Honecker’s apparatus essentially depended on the position of the Central Committee secretary, his proximity to or distance from the General Secretary. Another important factor was the openness of secretaries to the initiatives and aims of their departmental heads.

The Role of Central Committee Secretaries: The “Domains” of Mittag and Hager The Secretariat meeting on August 26, 1981, presumably would have gone differently for Hering had “his” Central Committee secretary Kurt Hager been present. But Hager, according to Erich Fischer, was “once again absent. He was never there when the going got tough.”206 Hager, according to Arno Hochmuth, the former head of the Department of Culture, was “not very resilient . . . . When the Department of Culture was criticized, he freely let it happen.”207 While it is true that Hager often played the part in Politbüro meetings of “the grumbling critic of investment cuts in his field” and repeatedly pointed out the

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“alarming state of affairs in science and the healthcare system,”208 he had less of a grip on his departments than, say, Günter Mittag. It happened on several occasions that Honecker went over Hager’s head and conferred with one of his departmental heads—in December 1986 with Karl Seidel, for example, whom the General Secretary informed of his plans to provide more money for medical research.209 The head of the Department of Culture, Ursula Ragwitz, sometimes reported directly to Honecker as well. In January 1981, she told him about a West German radio broadcast that addressed the disenchantment of young East German writers.210 Ragwitz, moreover, had a semi-private relationship with Honecker. According to the recollection of Hager’s former colleague Erika Hinckel, she used her friendship with his wife Margot to “bring some things directly to the attention of the First Secretary, not least to shed a more positive light on the work of the [cultural] department.”211 She apparently had little faith in Hager in this regard, since—again, according to the recollections of former employee Erika Hinckel—it always took him a long time “to get an appointment” with Honecker in order to “discuss difficult questions in the area of culture.”212 Hager, for one thing, wasn’t power-hungry like Günter Mittag. For another, he enjoyed a good reputation among artists and literati. He was considered amenable to argument. In early 1983, for instance, Stephan Hermlin was able to convince him to allow the publication of a selection of poetry and prose by Wolfgang Hilbig (Stimme Stimme) despite the fact that Ursula Ragwitz had condemned it as “late-bourgeois” and “distant from our ideology.”213 Above all, however, he was fully absorbed in his field of cultural policy. As one employee in the Science Department, Gerhard U., put it in retrospect, he was “constantly preoccupied . . . with culture and art, art first and foremost.”214 Hager took a lot of time to go through book manuscripts with writers and give them “recommendations” for revision. He was always in communication with the head of the Department of Culture, Ursula Ragwitz, about problems big and small—in early March 1982, for example, about the ideological situation at the Deutsches Theater, about the eccentric views of cultural minister Hoffmann, about the failing health of movie director Konrad Wolf.215 By the same token, Hager “gave them free rein” when it came to the Science Department,216 and if Werner Hering’s Health Department was making “great strides” in the 1970s then this was because Hager let them. A counter-model to Hager’s sphere of influence with respect to the role of Central Committee secretaries was the rather infamous one of Günter Mittag. Mittag sometimes treated his departmental heads like dim-witted petty officers. Rarely did he slip out of his role as the power-seeker. He was well aware that things on the fourth floor of the Big House, where the departments for economic policy had their offices, could “sometimes get a little rough.”217 This was putting it mildly, if not to say a downright mockery of the departmental heads and secretaries who had to put up with his temper tantrums. Amelie G., who worked as a stenographer in Mittag’s office from 1977 to 1979, “often had to get things done . . . after normal working hours,” was “barely

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Figure 6.2. “You never knew what was up”: Office of Günter Mittag at Central Committee headquarters, photo taken in 1997 in its state as a protected historical monument. Source: ullstein bild 00381252. able to cope psychologically,” had “anxiety attacks and thoughts of suicide, and began to doubt [her] own professional skills.”218 The regular meetings between Mittag and his departmental heads were hardly discussion forums, according to Klaus Blessing, head of the Machine Building Department as of 1986. They were “command receptions.” They dreaded when the button lit up on their desks: the direct line of communication from Mittag to his departmental heads. “The boss wants to see you. You never knew what was up.”219 Even the Stasi was astonished by the state of affairs in Mittag’s domain. An employee of Main Department II/6—handled by IMS “Fritz Schuchardt” in the Central Committee’s Department of Planning and Finance—noted that even a departmental head such as Günter Ehrensperger needed an appointment to speak to Mittag. It was an absolute exception for Ehrensperger to accompany Mittag to the “GS” or “PB”— that is to say, to the General Secretary or the Politbüro.220 Every proposal prepared by one of his departments, no matter whether it concerned zinc mining or automobile manufacturing, was read by Mittag, who often raised objections. His departmental heads had little opportunity to make their own mark as policymakers.221 If they did want to ask a critical question or even raise an objection, then it only happened in a one-on-one setting, according to Klaus Blessing: “And let me tell you, you had to click your heels, of course, just to put in a request about something you wanted that conflicted with his own point of view.”222

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While it is true that Mittag ran a tight ship with his economic departments, if something crossed his desk—and most proposals from his departments had to, often with modifications—it would also pass through the Politbüro and if need be the Council of Ministers. The economic-policy departmental heads interviewed in this study could not recall a single instance of a proposal under Mittag’s watch encountering any serious objections from the Politbüro. Thus, Mittag’s power, which was based on his having an inside line to the General Secretary, was to a certain extent a power shared by his departments.

“Soft” Methods of Rule For Central Committee departmental heads, the respective Central Committee secretary they answered to was the key individual in the power figuration they operated in. His position in the innermost circle of power as well as his personality—as seen in the examples of Hager and Mittag—determined the potential influence of any given member of the “general staff of the Party.” But senior state functionaries were also part of this power figuration. Relations with these functionaries, however, were generally more amicable during the Honecker era than they had been in the previous decades, as almost all contemporary witnesses have pointed out. “Generally speaking,” says Horst Wambutt, “the relationships were very good with employees of the ministries and the Planning Commissions . . . even at a personal level.”223 “There was no bossing people around,” recalls Dieter Mechtel about his work as an employee of the Department of Security Issues working in the division responsible for the Ministry of the Interior. Horst Laude, a former employee in the Department of Culture, likewise emphasized that cooperation between the Party and state was “as a rule comradely,” “supported in many instances by the fact that employees switched back and forth between [Central Committee] departments and [state] ministries.”224 Lastly, Wolfgang Herger claims that he and the majority of his colleagues working as departmental heads cultivated a “democratic style of leadership.” “At least in my day,” Herger explained in a hearing conducted by the Berlin State Prosecutor’s Office in 1992, “the Department of Security Issues tried to offer convincing political arguments.” It offered recommendations; it never issued directives or orders.225 Surely there is reason to be skeptical when leading functionaries in a dictatorial party emphasize in hindsight how comradely their relations were to the state apparatus and how democratic their style of leadership was. And, indeed, many state functionaries had and have a different picture of the political practice of Central Committee departments during the Honecker era. Werner Rothe, a lieutenantgeneral and political chief of the ground forces in the Ministry of National Defense, was irritated in retrospect for being loaded with reproaches by Wolfgang Herger at a central delegates’ conference of the National People’s Army because his contribution to the discussion did not toe the Party line.226 Klaus Höpcke, former deputy minister of culture, mentions the “sometimes very petty-minded comments” that the Cen-

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tral Committee’s Department of Culture used to make about his annual publication plan.227 Contrary to the rhetoric of “camaraderie” and being “on an equal footing,” a range of Central Committee departments in the Honecker era unabashedly issued work orders which they urged the ministries to complete as quickly as possible.228 Ultimately, one of the reasons Werner Hering was so unpopular in the Ministry of Health was that he repeatedly threatened to dismiss senior functionaries. In 1975 he told a deputy minister he would fire him if “it happens again that any future draft proposals deviate from [his] views.”229 Undoubtedly, even in the Honecker era the Central Committee departments might resort to the use of force if necessary. That being said, the power figuration between the Party and the state apparatus had changed from what it had been near the end of Ulbricht’s reign. At least until the early or even the mid-1980s, these relations seem to have been more strongly characterized by cooperation and negotiation processes than the prevailing interpretation would suggest, according to which the state apparatus was an “instrument” subordinate to the Party apparatus.230 The abovementioned differentiation effect is evident here in the Central Committee apparatus, its specialist departments becoming increasingly oriented towards potential partners in its environment beginning in the 1960s.231 With regards to Central Committee departmental heads and their corresponding ministers or state secretaries, there were even “horizontal cliques” being formed which advocated for their policy fields in an informal manner across organizational boundaries.232 From the viewpoint of Central Committee departmental heads and their deputies, increased cooperation with “the state” was an “objective” necessity from the early 1970s on. They perceived themselves as having more overall responsibility for their policy field than before—a side effect of Honecker’s style of politics and his greater reliance on his departmental heads than had been the case under Ulbricht. Without the collaboration of the respective ministry, however, it was impossible for Central Committee departmental heads to exercise this responsibility, the manpower of a department with fifteen to twenty employees being severely limited if measured against that of the ministries, which often had more than one hundred staff members—not to mention the State Planning Commission, which in the 1980s boasted around two thousand employees. The “twelve people at most working in the social sciences division,” says Frank T., a former employee in the Science Department, were simply incapable of overseeing the entire spectrum of social-science institutions, nor could they “constantly be bossing people around” (herumregieren).233 Horst Wambutt even goes so far as to claim that his Department of Basic Industry was dependent on the ministries or departments in the State Planning Commission: “If they had closed up shop, things would have looked pretty grim for us.”234 It was not only the Central Committee apparatus’s dependency that made the relationship between Central Committee departments and ministries more cooperative; even more important was the functional differentiation of Party headquarters into increasingly specialized departments. This is because the latter not only led to internal contradictions; they also helped Central Committee departments become

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aware of their outward similarities and to gradually perceive the ministries as partners with shared interests.235 The relationship between Central Committee departmental head Hering and health minister Mecklinger must have therefore become more difficult in purely human terms. Ultimately they agreed, however, that the situation in the healthcare system was catastrophic and that something had to be done236—an assessment that in certain points clearly put them at odds with the Politbüro line. They came up with a range of shared proposals, which Mittag and Honecker scornfully referred to as “milking the cash cow” in August 1981. “They were not our adversaries,” remarks the former head of the Central Committee’s Machine Building Department Klaus Blessing about the state functionaries in the ministry and the State Planning Commission. There was “a circle of responsibility comprising Party and state functionaries who had a specific aim in mind.”237 In most cases, according to Horst Wambutt, “we were always on the same side with different responsibilities. The ministers were responsible and so they of course got a beating, but the same went for us as a department.”238 Klaus Höpcke, too, deputy minister in the Ministry of Culture and a supposed “expert at slipping unorthodox books past the Central Committee” and into the hands of readers,239 had at least one common interest with the “ideological watchdogs” in the Central Committee’s Department of Culture: they both wanted the production of books in the GDR to maintain a certain quality standard and thus ensure the country’s reputation as a “land of readers.” The situation could have been worse. Thus, in the mid-1980s both Höpcke and Ragwitz were deeply concerned about paper shortages hindering the output of the publishing industry, which registered a drop in printed copies of new East German fiction from 3.7 million in 1978 to 2.3 million in 1984. “Further reduction,” Ragwitz wrote to Hager in July 1983 with a dramatic undertone, “would not be defensible on cultural-political grounds.”240 Up to this point it is clear that the relationship between the Party and state apparatuses in the Honecker era was somewhat more complex at the central level than previous research has suggested.241 To be sure, the forms in which the Central Committee departments exercised their power varied considerably depending on the policy field and the individuals involved. They ranged from the sometimes authoritarian “style of instruction” found in the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy to more discreet forms of influencing such as the one-on-one discussions between Central Committee division heads and ministers or state secretaries. Yet even in its complexity, the practice of governance of the Central Committee apparatus was marked by three general tendencies during the Honecker era. These were partially evident in the preceding decades, but their structuring effect became more pronounced as of the 1970s. First, there was the function of Central Committee employees to represent the Party line or the interests of the apparatus at all levels of politics and society. Senior employees, in particular, often exercised several time-consuming elective functions, allowing them to influence political processes in multiples ways. Thus, Gregor Schirmer, the deputy head of the Science Department, was a member of the Volks-

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kammer’s Foreign Affairs Committee as well as of the presidium of the Cultural Association of the GDR. Rudolf Hellmann, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Sports, was on the executive board of the German Gymnastics and Sports Federation as well as being vice-president of the National Olympic Committee of the GDR until 1989. Wolfgang Herger, head of the Youth Department and, from 1985 on, the Security Department, oversaw the Volkskammer’s Youth Committee from 1976 to 1986 and, as of 1987, the National Defense Committee. Furthermore, as of 1986 he was the first head of the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues to be a member of the National Defense Council, the nerve center of the GDR’s “security architecture.”242 Beyond such elective and honorary offices or functional memberships, there were Central Committee members in dozens of temporary expert committees and working groups, in which Party and state functionaries endeavored together to solve the most disparate problems. Hilmar Weiss and Günter Ehrensperger, for instance, belonged as of 1976 to the Politbüro’s “balance-of-payments working group,” which already at that point in time was trying to counter a growing national debt.243 An employee of the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues served on the “working group for socialist military training,” in which he and representatives of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of National Defense thought of ways to make premilitary education more attractive—e.g., by adding “emotional elements (bonfires),” according to one suggestion from June 1971.244 Already in the late 1960s, state prosecutors, representatives of the MfS and the Ministry of the Interior, members of the Central Committee’s Western Department as well as the Central Committee’s International Information Department teamed up in the “neo-Nazi working group” to discuss how best to continue the campaigns to expose former Nazis among West German politicians and judges.245 Dozens of Central Committee members were involved in such horizontal coordinating committees during the Honecker era. This is one argument to attribute to the Central Committee apparatus in general the role of a central “social” or “economic manager” between various sub-bureaucracies in the GDR. “At the Ludwigsfelde automobile plant,” said chief accountant Bartel of VVB Auto in a consultation in May 1977, “comrades from the Central Committee have helped stabilize production. Paths previously barred to the management of the company and even the ministry have suddenly become viable.” “Is it right,” Bartel asked rhetorically, to have “to involve the Central Committee in order to accomplish tasks that the factory or VVB should solve?”246 Right or wrong, it was not uncommon in many East German factories in the 1970s and especially the 1980s that problems would escalate to such a degree that employees from the ministries or the Central Committee had to show up to deal with them.247 Thus, in early 1989, Horst Wambutt’s Department of Basic Industry facilitated continued construction on VEB Zellstoff- und Zellwollewerke Wittenberge, a cellulose and rayon-staple factory, after it had come to a standstill due to a shortage of elastomer construction foil. Wambutt commissioned “the Ministry of

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Chemical Industry . . . to secure 5,500 m2 of elastomer construction foil for the project”—and apparently it was secondary where this material would be lacking thanks to this intervention.248 Sometimes the more “political” Department of Security Issues acted as a “troubleshooter.” Thus, in July 1985, Wolfgang Herger informed the deputy minister responsible for “specialized construction” in the Ministry of Construction that the accommodations of the “Robert Siewert” road-building crew in Laage249 were deficient.250 While there is no good reason to refer to the Department of Security Issues as a “collective ombudsman for the armed forces” on account of such interventions,251 in this case Herger’s memo had just such an effect for the soldiers in the road-building crew. Ludwig, at any rate, reported a few weeks later to his departmental head that the deficiencies had been remedied.252 The last instance brings us to a second developmental tendency characterizing the governing practices of Central Committee departments in the Honecker era more than in the 1960s: the role of these departments as lobbyists at the center of power acting on behalf of various branches of the economy or groups in East German society—soldiers, “cultural workers,” nurses. In the end they even advocated on behalf of individuals who had a bearing on their policy fields.253

Lobbyists in the Struggle for the Distribution of Scarce Goods The struggle for the distribution of scarce goods began with Central Committee departmental heads providing state and economic cadre or even their own employees with apartments or telephone connections when these persons relocated to Berlin. In the latter instance, they would call the head of the Central Committee’s Transport and Communication Department, who in turn informed the post office, and a connection was soon installed.254 Admission to universities or employment for the wives or children of senior cadre could also be procured by Central Committee departments—in the case of Comrade W., for instance, head of cadre and training at VBB Lacke und Farben, a paint company, whom the Department of Basic Industry wanted to bring to Berlin in January 1973 to fill a high Party function. To this end the Department of Basic Industry had to find a way “for his wife to complete her training as a dental specialist in Berlin.”255 Werner Hering’s Department of Health Policy was able to be of assistance here: by way of the Ministry of Health and the Berlin Magistrate a corresponding “salaried training position for Comrade Wagner” was procured.256 By late February 1973 everything had been arranged and the Wagners could move to Berlin. Conversely, state organs activated Party authorities when they needed an apartment, a travel permit to the Nonsocialist Economic Area, or a new job for an employee or high-ranking cadre. Indeed, in the 1980s in particular, the ability of Central Committee departmental heads to obtain travel permits to the West (e.g., for scientists and artists) by exerting their influence on State Security was a source of power comparable to that of “cadre work.”257 Since no one was directly harmed by this give and take, such practices need not be included among the forms of corruption dealt

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with in chapter 7.258 They can be seen, rather, as part of a barter system reinforcing the entanglement of Party and state. The role of Central Committee departments and their heads as lobbyists is even more apparent, however, in the cases where they advocated on behalf of individuals, groups or the economy independent of such Partystate barter transactions. This goes for the abovementioned efforts of Wolfgang Herger to help out construction soldiers in a road-building crew—which he surely did without receiving anything in return. But it also applies to a variety of other cases. Elli Glöckner, deputy head of the Central Committee’s Department of Women’s Affairs, not only supplied regular reports within the apparatus on the problems and needs of women;259 she also promoted—with only limited success—the interests of certain occupational groups such as daycare workers, who in 1970 had to look on as preschool teachers got considerable raises while they themselves came away empty-handed.260 Hence daycare workers were now switching by the dozen from nurseries to preschools, Glöckner wrote to Honecker in July 1970. The early-childhood daycare facilities were suffering as a result.261 The economic-policy departments too, however, engaged in what we might call lobbyism. That a Central Committee department and a ministry of industry acted in concert was in itself nothing new in the Honecker era. Yet the power figuration between these departments and ministries and/or the State Planning Commission had been somewhat different under Ulbricht, the Central Committee departments back then having presented a unified front in their support of a certain Party line, in particular the implementation of the NES. The Honecker era was different, the goal no longer being to push through a certain economic program, if need be against the will of “the state,” but to cope with the steadily increasing pressures of plan fulfilment and export quotas. These pressures rested evenly on the Party and state apparatuses. What Klaus Blessing, head of the Central Committee’s Machine Building Department, says in retrospect was now even more true than it had been in the 1950s and 1960s: “To be at loggerheads with the ministry and give them hell”—there was no point in that, from his perspective. Because “the person responsible in the Central Committee was basically in the same boat.”262 It was better in his opinion for a Central Committee department, the State Planning Commission and a ministry to work together and “pass each other the ball.” This could go so far in some instances that the economic-policy departments of the Central Committee would come into conflict with each other—all the more so considering that individual sectors of the East German economy were increasingly competing for resources, labor and lower plan targets. Such was the case during the oil crisis of the 1970s, especially for the chemical industry. In the first half of 1975, VEB Kombinat Chemische Werke Buna, a chemical combine in Schkopau, was supposed to begin production of helmet blanks out of low-pressure polyethylene, a type of plastic made by the Buna works itself.263 Prior to this, helmet blanks made of rubber had had to be imported from the Nonsocial-

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ist Economic Area. Producing helmets from polyethylene, in other words, was an important contribution to reducing these imports, a key focus of economic-policy adjustment.264 As was almost always the case, there were problems, however, with production start-up, as too little time had been set aside for testing. An entire production chain was disrupted: the plastic-processing unit, VEB Plastverarbeitungswerk Staaken, was not supplied with helmet blanks, and VEB Perfekt Berlin, whose job was to produce the finished product—hard hats and motorcycle helmets—found itself in “plan arrears.” By July 31, 1975, a shortfall of 12,000 work helmets and 36,000 motorcycle helmets had accumulated.265 The economic council of the region of Berlin, responsible for the Staaken plant, was alarmed at first. As a state steering organ, it endeavored to “find a joint solution with everyone involved,” which ultimately failed because “Buna,” subordinate to the Ministry of Chemical Industry, “never showed up” at the scheduled meeting. The management of VEB Perfekt subsequently lodged a complaint with the Ministry of Light Industry, which in turn notified the Central Committee’s Department of Light Industry. Its head, Hans-Joachim Rüscher, lived up to his role as a lobbyist and turned to Horst Wambutt—who, as head of the Department of Basic Industry, was responsible for the Buna works—with the hope that he would “influence” “Buna.” A few weeks later, production at VEB Plastverarbeitungswerk and VEB Perfekt resumed. All told, this was very much an everyday occurrence in the East German economy of the Honecker era, but one that illustrates how quickly and self-evidently combine managers or ministers resorted to the official authority of “their” Central Committee departmental heads. A few weeks after these incidents, Rüscher and Wambutt had to intervene on behalf of two factories in their respective economic areas that were having a dispute. The cause this time was an “instability” on a machine that produced plastic soles by means of a direct-injection process at the VEB Schuhkombinat “Banner des Friedens,” a shoe combine in Weissenfels, the upshot of which was production losses of 2,550 pairs of shoes each day. By mid-September 1974, the production deficit at the factory had amounted to 25,000 pairs of shoes. In this case, export targets to the Nonsocialist Economic Area were at risk266—a particularly inconvenient situation for this particular shoe combine, since it happened to be in the process of greatly expanding its business dealings with West German companies and was under pressure to deliver on time.267 As usual in the event of such calamities, the problem first reached the respective general directors—in this case of VVB Schuhe and VVB Agrochemie—followed by the relevant minister and Central Committee departmental head, Rüscher and Wambutt, respectively. The latter two set up a working group. Three weeks later the machine was up and working again. The outage, incidentally, was discovered to have been caused by a “failure to master the technology,” which was also characteristic of East German industry during the 1970s. On Monday, September 23, 1975, the morning shift in Weissenfels began producing shoes again. But

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discussions of who was to blame were only just beginning. Addressing the Central Committee Department of Basic Industry, the Party organizer of VVB Agrochemie, Dr. Lange, excoriated the “sluggish” crisis management of the Weissenfels shoe combine.268 Horst Wambutt, who as head of the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry was responsible for VVB Agrochemie, forwarded Lange’s report to his colleague and fellow departmental head Hans-Joachim Rüscher. The latter immediately sided with “his” shoe combine and asked Wambutt to have a “discussion” with Party organizer Lange. One can imagine that on occasions like this in the mid-1970s there was a “strained atmosphere” in the Central Committee’s economic apparatus of the kind later reported to the Stasi by an unofficial collaborator in the early 1980s.269 Of course, such conflicts of interest did not necessarily lead to strained relations between Central Committee departmental heads (just as memoranda and written notes are not an indication of the overall atmosphere and tone of communication in the apparatus. A “strident” memorandum between departmental heads did not mean much, and it’s entirely possible that, two hours later, they were having a friendly lunchtime chat up on the seventh floor270). But conflicts of this sort do reveal that the relationships between economic departmental heads in the Central Committee were not divorced from economic realities. They also indicate that the once clear “line of demarcation” between the Party and state apparatuses had become blurred in the Honecker era as a variety of conflicts arose between individual areas of the economy. These conflicts, moreover, had the potential to escalate. This is evident in the case of a dispute between minister of agriculture Heinz Kuhrig and minister of machine building Günther Kleiber. As early as the fall of 1974, recalls Kuhrig in a letter from March 1977, he had informed Kleiber about the “inadmissible activities” of certain employees in his ministry: attempts by Kleiber’s men to poach employees from the Department of Agriculture. Kleiber, at the time, had promised to take action. And yet, according to Kuhrig, there were renewed attempts . . . of late . . . to lure away employees from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forests and Food Industries to work in your own ministry. Apart from the fact that all of these measures have been taken behind my back . . . , I consider it particularly improper that the prospect of higher salaries is being used as an incentive.271 Kleiber did not react to this, or not quickly enough, and so Kuhrig turned to “his” departmental head in the Central Committee’s Department of Agriculture, Bruno Kiesler. The relationship between Kiesler and Kuhrig—as evidenced by the harsh tone adopted by Kiesler in their correspondence—was actually rather strained. But in this instance Kiesler proved to be a reliable “lobbyist” on Kuhrig’s behalf. He promptly wrote to the head of the Central Committee’s Machine Building Department, Gerhard Tautenhahn, and asked him to “see to it that such actions do not happen again in the future.” What’s more: “Thus far,” continued Kiesler, he had advised

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the Party organization of the Ministry of Agriculture not to “approach the General Secretary of the Central Committee, Comrade Erich Honecker, with this issue, since we believe that such issues can be settled among ourselves.”272 Kiesler said no more about this recommendation. But his “thus far” was clearly a threat, from one Central Committee departmental head to another. In this case it would be interesting to know how friendly or aloof Kiesler and Tautenhahn were with each other the next time they met in the cafeteria up on the seventh floor.

The Power of the Apparatus: “Big Opportunities to Decide Small Matters”?273 Conflicts of this sort, it is worth emphasizing again, should not be overestimated. They’re an expression of conflicting interests and are commonplace in any formal organization of this size. Hostilities, rivalries and “departmentalism” of this order undoubtedly existed at West German party headquarters or in the Federal Chancellery and still exist today. But these conflicts also illustrate that the Central Committee apparatus of the Honecker era was not only divided into ideological, specialist and functional departments. There were also internal differentiations within these departmental groups that need to be taken into account. There were latent tensions, for example, within the Central Committee’s economic apparatus, with the actual specialist departments for economic policy—Basic Industry, Machine Building, Light Industry—standing opposite cross-functional economic-policy departments such as Planning and Finance. The latter, according to an employee in the Department of Basic Industry, “sometimes worked against us—well, against us might be the wrong way of putting it, but they always found something to criticize about us.” A wiretap transcript of the MfS from 1976 reports one Central Committee employee as saying that “unfortunately” there was “often little solidarity” in the Party apparatus.274 These conflicts, moreover, also raise the fundamental question of whether feuds over supposedly illicit headhunting are indicative of the kind of politics a Central Committee departmental head was capable of. Could a Horst Wambutt or Gerhard Tautenhahn do no more with their growing political influence (compared with their predecessors in the 1950s), with their “gatekeeper” role and functional authority than to make sure that their respective economic sector got a maximum of resources? Nikolai Mitrokhin has argued with reference to the power of the CPSU’s Central Committee apparatus that it had “big opportunities to decide ‘small’ matters.” Was it the same with the SED, and were strategic decisions in the GDR all explicitly left to the Politbüro (or upstream informal bodies such as the “inner circle”)?275 There are some compelling reasons to apply Mitrokhin’s conclusions to the central apparatus of the SED. “The authority of the International Department was limited,” in Manfred Uschner’s quite typical view, “you could channel certain information, but there was no way to directly influence the power structures of the GDR.”276 In a similar vein, former lieutenant-general Werner Rothe, who worked for the Ministry of National Defense, wrote about the Department of Security Issues that, while it was true they routinely had “constructive talks” with its staff, he was not aware of this

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“ever changing anything with regard to the issues at hand.” “At no point in time,” did the department “determine the development of the National People’s Army.”277 A closer look at the kind of political decisions being made by a comparably influential economic-policy department invariably leads to the field of investment policy. “We heavily promoted different things [here] that we considered essential”—or blocked what was thought to be pointless. Horst Wambutt points out, for example, how “through unrelenting stubbornness” he blocked plans for a new pulp mill in Wittenberge in the 1980s.278 Klaus Blessing cites the steel mill built in Eisenhüttenstadt during the 1980s as an example of how a Central Committee department could “help” with its positive feedback. The political decisions of the ideological departments were no less spectacular. The influence of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture ultimately boiled down to making sure that the annual publishing plan for literary fiction—elaborated by the Main Administration of Publishers and the Book Trade under Klaus Höpcke—sufficiently emphasized proletarian themes. Departmental head Ursula Ragwitz, for example, took credit for the fact that in 1982 more “utopian literature” (i.e., science fiction) than usual was printed in the GDR, a literature that aimed to “strip bare the inhumane character of imperialism.”279 Wolfgang Herger, when asked about his political achievements as head of the Youth Department, mentioned the “youth research collectives” of the FDJ that were set up in large factories to “better place the young technical intelligentsia in positions of leadership immediately after completing their studies.”280 None of this should be underestimated in its social reach. If we add to this the broad but discreet influence exercised by Central Committee employees in state working groups, as speakers at social events, as Volkskammer representatives or Central Committee members, and if we consider moreover the economic influence of the Party apparatus as an employer and as the owner of almost the entire printing industry in the GDR, the considerable political heft of the Central Committee apparatus slowly becomes apparent. And yet none of this would qualify these departments as autonomous political actors, particularly with regard to their influence on “strategic questions.” They appear, instead, to be elements of a parallel structure running alongside the state that, while perhaps able to give fresh impetus, were ultimately irrelevant to the functioning of the GDR as an industrial and even as a welfare state—as a number of contemporary witnesses have themselves come to admit in hindsight. Horst Wambutt, for example, thinks it was “really not very healthy” to have “something parallel . . . to the structure of the state organization.”281 Horst K., a longtime senior employee of the Party Organs Department, even wonders if the Central Committee apparatus should not have been dissolved “after building socialism.” “Because that had actually been its real task.”282 Members of bureaucracies or subordinate apparatuses, however, tend to underestimate their own influence. And there is reason to believe that even after the SED consolidated its grip on power the Central Committee apparatus continued to exercise at least three key functions or methods of rule in the political system of the GDR

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that no other organ did. First, in the second half of the 1950s and in the 1960s, the Central Committee departments had already gained extensive control over the cadre positions in their policy fields. Their influence reached its limits only when it came to positions in the main nomenklatura of the Central Committee: ministers or state secretaries, general directors or editors-in-chief of the most important media, or even foreign correspondents.283 Though even here the influence of Central Committee departments on these positions was all but decisive in the 1970s and 1980s. Gerhard U., an employee of the Science Department as of the mid-1970s, recalls “that in one particular case [Kurt] Hager,” as the relevant Central Committee secretary, “or the Secretariat of the Central Committee had objections to confirming the people we had nominated,” whether “rectors, deputy ministers, or obviously ministers.”284 Horst Wambutt also notes that “those of us in Cadre Issues . . . actually had a great deal of influence,” and that, in coordination with the respective minister, he was able to make his own decisions about the appointment of general directors.285 Klaus Blessing, too, head of the Central Committee’s Machine Building Department as of 1986, was able to “make” a minister during his tenure in the Central Committee by nominating the general director of the steel mill in Brandenburg as the new minister of heavy-machinery and plant engineering.286 As shown above, Werner Hering, until his downfall in August 1981, had followed the “master plan” of appointing his deputy Erich Fischer as state secretary and his division head Karl Seidel as health minister. But Seidel, who succeeded Hering as Central Committee departmental head, likewise proved to be an ambitious “cadre maker.” As late as early 1989, he was able to reshuffle the upper echelons of the Ministry of Health on his own terms by installing his friend Klaus Thielmann287—deputy minister of higher and technical education— as Ludwig Mecklinger’s successor, when the latter was thought to no longer be up to the task.288 What is remarkable here is that Seidel was acting single-handedly, as evidenced by his telephone calls intercepted by the Stasi.289 Second, there are a number of examples of how Central Committee departments, through a targeted information policy, were able to surreptitiously set the course for the Party leadership. In the summer of 1976, the head of the Central Committee’s Propaganda Department, Klaus Gäbler, told Urania staff member and Stasi unofficial collaborator “Renn” that the Central Committee apparatus could unfortunately not speak openly and that the only way to have an influence was to “word [reports] in such a way that [Party] leaders come to the desired conclusions from the facts themselves.”290 Gäbler’s report has a hint of resignation, when in fact this strategy offered him and his fellow departmental heads a rather powerful tool. This is evident in the special cooperation between the deputy head of the Central Committee’s Agitation Department, Fensch, and the head of MfS Main Department XX, Paul Kienberg. The Party, Fensch explained to Kienberg on the phone in January 1972, was concerned about the recent “failures and disruptions” of East German television.291 He asked Kienberg to check whether these were technical in nature or “if there are hostile elements causing the disruptions.” In the summer of 1972, Kienberg answered Fensch, this time in person, that extensive investigations had been carried out and

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that there was no evidence of any “enemy activity.” There were, however, indications of “deficiencies in the leadership and management” of the broadcaster.292 Fensch then asked Kienberg to inform the Ministry of Postal Services and Telecommunications of this, whereupon the Central Committee’s Telecommunications Department would inquire into the matter and present it to Party leaders—a convoluted path but a necessary one, since officially Fensch was not allowed to communicate with Kienberg, not to mention order any investigations from him. The official channel would have been through the respective Central Committee secretary and Minister Mielke. But the path taken was ultimately successful: the “information-to-order” from the Stasi eventually took the form of a Politbüro proposal.293 Third, at least some departmental heads were indeed in a position to use the leeway and instruments of power at their disposal in a programmatic fashion from time to time. The example of Werner Hering and his Health Department was presented above. But also Herbert Häber succeeded as of 1974 in making the Western Department a much more flexible instrument for developing German-German relations than it had been under his predecessor. In his case, too, he was able to pursue a relatively independent course, which helped advance him to the position of Central Committee secretary and Politbüro candidate in 1984—and ultimately brought him down, just like the independent-minded Werner Hering.294 Finally there is Wolfgang Herger, whose policymaking was less determined by his function in the Youth Department and, as of 1984, the Department of Security Issues than by the mutual trust he enjoyed with Egon Krenz. Which points to another key role that Central Committee departmental heads—or even employees—could play: as advisors to Party leaders. It was this role that enabled Herger in the summer and fall of 1989 to become the spin doctor of a change in leadership in the SED and, at least incrementally, to a change in policy—never mind that these changes came too late. What’s important here is that it would be ignoring the complexity of political processes in the GDR to reduce the power of Central Committee departmental heads to their ability to effect big policy changes. Their strength, empirically often hard to measure but undoubtedly significant, lay not so much in their decision-making power with regard to strategic issues; it was their ability to appoint or depose ministers, state secretaries and general directors, the ability to filter or strategically proffer information, and the function of some departmental heads as close advisors to Politbüro members. The “big opportunities to decide small matters” may have been the daily business, the surface of apparatus politics. But behind this lay a second level of clearly more far-reaching political powers, which did in fact make the central Party apparatus of the SED a center of government of the GDR.

Conclusion The apparatus of the Central Committee was the central government of the GDR during the Honecker era. Its access to information from all areas of society, its extensive control over cadre policy, but also its ability to present the Party leadership with

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certain, targeted information while withholding other information gave it a unique role in the GDR. Yet the power resources resulting from this position were limited by several factors. These included, above all, the coupling of the influence of Central Committee departmental heads with the power and position of “their” Central Committee secretaries. Added to this—as a consequence of this coupling—is the fact that departmental heads were unable to constitute themselves as a group with similar interests. Here, too, it was the ties to their respective secretaries that stood in the way of this intermediary role. In this instance we see the aspects of organizational culture that inhibit organizational transformation, which even in the 1980s kept these departmental heads in the role of assistants to their secretaries despite their having long since effectively held the rank of ministers. The organizational transformation of the apparatus in the Honecker era is also marked by its deepening differentiation even though the differentiation of departmental structures had come to an end, structural changes being limited to the division level. But the differentiation of the apparatus found even greater expression in the social and habitual diversification of its employees, following its division into subsystems with “local rationalities,” as it were. The cosmopolitan habitus of members of the International Relations Department, for example, stood out much more than in the 1950s from the mannerisms found in Horst Dohlus’s Party Organs Department, whose members tended to adhere to the role of the “Party worker” even if they themselves came from a functionary family. The difference between departmental heads and “normal” political employees also became more distinct. The former now remained in their posts much longer than their predecessors had in the years of building socialism. With increasing levels of experience and knowledge they gained “authority of office,” and, increasingly in the 1980s, found themselves in generational conflict with the younger group of political staffers (of which more in chapter 8). The contrast between political and technical employees as well as between men and women also became more pronounced than it had been before. This was probably not, or not completely, because women were more discriminated against than before, but because of a heightened sensitivity in general in East German society to the affectations of socialist elites and the discrimination of women. In this respect as well, there were fault lines in the apparatus that mirrored those of East German society in general. These experiences of difference and discord, of class rule or patriarchy were compensated on the one hand by “familiar worlds” (Nahwelten) that offered emotional and cognitive shelter. The experience of discipline and alienation was counteracted by the “informal organization” of the Central Committee apparatus, which existed in the geology division of the Department of Basic Industry just as well as in the chauffeur service or among kitchen staff. These more intimate relationships, validated time and again by the exchange of gossip, the granting of favors, but also by birthday parties, formed something of an emotional bonding agent at Party headquarters in the Honecker era. On the other hand, as in previous decades, integration also took place

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through the formal structure of the apparatus itself, the work regulations and extensive membership requirements that encompassed not only complete identification with the Party line but also morally impeccable conduct. Even in the 1980s, divorce was considered a serious issue requiring consultation with one’s departmental head. Finally, there existed a system of material incentives somewhat at odds with the ideal of the ascetic Party worker. How the Party leadership exploited this system of incentives and to what extent it may have trumped ideology as a motivation to join the apparatus will be handled in chapter 7, which adopts a synchronic approach one last time and examines Party finances, member salaries, and the problem of corruption from a longitudinal perspective.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

I = interviewer (Rüdiger Bergien). R = respondent (Wolfgang Herger). Interview with Wolfgang Herger, December 2, 2010, 22, author’s transcript and audio recording. This wording reflects Lenin’s Clausewitz reception; Wolfgang Pickert and Wilhelm von Schramm, eds., Carl von Clausewitz. Vom Kriege, 2nd ed. (Pfaffenhofen, 1969), 15. Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator (New Haven, 2015), 137. Honecker, at any rate, cherished the memory of two encounters he had had with Stalin that apparently left a deep impression on him. Martin Sabrow talks about Honecker’s having been “enchanted,” understanding it as the ecstatic form of a charismatic relationship. Sabrow, “Der führende Repräsentant.” Leading cadre of the apparatus incidentally adopted this “favorite phrase” of Honecker. Fritz Müller, head of the Central Committee’s Cadre Department as of 1960, is said, like Honecker, to have repeatedly referred to the central apparatus as the “supreme general staff [Kampfstab] of the Party” which “the leadership must absolutely rely on at every hour and in every matter.” Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 22. He is said to have remarked, for instance, that he did not need a Science Department in the Central Committee, because “if he wanted to know something he preferred to ask Prof. Manfred von Ardenne.” Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 82. Bahro, Die Alternative, 425; on the term “superstate,” ibid., 283. A similar role being played by the CPSU Central Committee apparatus in the reform debates of the perestroika years is pointed out by Mitrokhin, “The CPSU Central Committee Apparatus,” 316. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 11, author’s transcript and audio recording. This was in part due to the fact that the MfS was part of the state and was therefore not immediately affected by the initial consequence of the fall revolution, the disempowerment of the SED. The fact is, however, that while Party headquarters were emptying the MfS and its successor organization were making plans to establish an East German office for the protection of the constitution. Merl, Politische Kommunikation, 19–21. The “friendly parties” working group, responsible for cooperation between the party headquarters of the various bloc parties, had been founded back in 1955. Its upgrade to a department was a mere formality. Vorlage an das Sekretariat des ZK, bet Umwandlung der Arbeitsgruppe Allgemeine Abteilung in den Sektor Dolmetscher/Übersetzer der Abteilung Internationale Verbindungen, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/4101, fols. 77–79. Janson, Totengräber der DDR, 177. Vorlage an das Sekretariat des ZK, betr. Bildung des Sektors Auslandskader in der Abteilung Internationale Verbindungen des ZK der SED, 21.1.1975, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/2629, fols. 70–73, here fol. 72.

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16. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Bildung eines Sektors für Internationale Arbeit auf kulturellem Gebiet in der Abteilung Kultur des ZK, 8.5.1975, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/2709, fols. 58–65, here fol. 60. 17. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 89. 18. In the years that followed, the working group expanded its range of tasks to include overall innerGerman relations. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 92; Hermann Wentker, Außenpolitik in engen Grenzen. Die DDR im internationalen System 1949–1989, Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte 72, published by the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich (Munich, 2007), 377. 19. Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik, 119f. 20. Obviously Honecker didn’t “transfer” Mittag, but “recommended” to the Volkskammer that it elect him to this position. The decision was motivated not so much by any doubts Honecker might have had about Mittag’s economic expertise, but by Honecker’s desire to protect Mittag from criticism in the Party leadership, which was looking for a scapegoat for the supply crisis of 1970. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 93–95. 21. This was reported by the barber at Central Committee headquarters, Max P., MfS, HA XX: Information, 12.6.1975, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15456, fols. 731f. 22. MfS, HA XVIII/7: Informationsbericht vom 17.5.1974, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 156–60; MfS, HA XVIII/7: Informationsbericht vom 31. Dez. 1974, 2.1.1975, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 213–16. 23. The Economic Commission in the Politbüro had existed between 1958 and 1961 under the then economic secretary, Erich Apel. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 93. The commission included the heads of the industrial ministries, of important interdisciplinary ministries, the economic-policy departmental heads in the Central Committee and one representative each from the unions and the FDJ—in total thirty-five individuals. 24. See Janson, Totengräber der DDR, 155–61. 25. Since the aim was not to let the apparatus grow too big, these two new divisions were staffed by employees from other economic departments. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Bildung eines Sektors “Volkswirtschaftliche Analyse” und eines Sektors “Preise” in der Abteilung Planung und Finanzen des ZK, 7.2.1980, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/3428, fols 93–95. In 1982, the economic analysis division was dissolved and replaced by the “economic analysis and statistics” and “plan control” divisions. 26. Steiner, Von Plan zu Plan, 209f.; Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK, betr.: Struktur der Abteilung Maschinenbau und Metallurgie; Bestätigung eines Sektorenleiters, 9.10.1985, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/4310, fols. 18–20. 27. “B” signified the calculation (Berechnung) of “expenditures on tasks and plan indicators in the event of war.” “Terms such as mobilization and war preparations were not allowed, which is why the term Berechnung, shortened to ‘B,’ quickly took hold.” To be sure, the Department of Security Issues had had an independent working area for “calculation issues” (Berechnungsfragen) since 1963. Wagner, Walter Ulbricht, 244; Bröckermann, Landesverteidigung, 79. 28. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK, betr. “Konzeption zur Einführung des Wehrunterrichts für die Schüler der 9. und 10. Klassen der allgemeinbildenden polytechnischen Oberschulen der DDR,” 17.8.1976, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV B 2/9.05/50, no folio numbers. 29. The division was headed by Werner Hübner, who headed the “socialist military training” working group since 1964 and later advanced to the rank of major-general. The working group was thus incorporated, so to speak, in the Central Committee apparatus. This restructuring must have seemed all the more sensible to the Central Committee Secretariat since “the apparatus of the CPSU likewise assigned these questions [of military-political work with the masses] to the Department of Security Issues.” Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr.: Auflösung der Arbeitsgruppe Sozialistische Wehrerziehung—militärpolitische Agitation (Beschluss des Politbüros 4/79 vom 23.1.1979), 8.2.1979, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/3265, fols. 101–3, here fol. 103.

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30. The key document in this instance was a directive of the National Defense Council from April 2, 1970; Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Struktur- und Stellenplan der Abteilung Fernmeldewesen des ZK der SED, 5.1.1978, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/3088, fols. 119–25. 31. The Main Department for Mass Media in the Ministry of National Defense had previously been responsible for “putting the mass media on defense alert.” The assumption of this task by the Central Committee apparatus is therefore an indication that the entanglement of the Party and the state continued in the Honecker era. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Bildung eines Sektors B-Arbeit in der Abteilung Agitation des ZK der SED, 25.6.1982, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/3810, fols. 160–63. See also Bröckermann, Landesverteidigung, 569–71. 32. Or so Paul Verner put it, the head of the Central Committee command post, during a training session in 1979. Quoted in ibid., 570. 33. This was not the first time this type of restructuring had occurred. Until the summer of 1950 both enterprises had been divisions of the Financial Administration and Party Enterprises Department. Wilhelm Kirschey, Zu einigen Fragen der Geschichte der Zentrag, undated [1977?], SAPMO-BArch, DY 63/3608, no folio numbers. 34. See chapter 6, “Power and Authority” of the present work. 35. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK, betr.: Struktur- und Stellenplan für die Abteilung Gesundheitspolitik, 3.12.1981, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/3726, fols. 10–13, here fol. 13. 36. Janson, Totengräber der DDR, 198. 37. To be sure, not every department had its own basic organization. Depending on their size, the respective basic organizations included one or several departments. While the comrades in Security Issues or Party Organs had their own basic organizations, the Agitation and Propaganda departments had a single basic organization. 38. There were in fact non-Party members employed in the apparatus of the Central Committee, though these were exclusively technical employees, mostly working as cleaners, cafeteria or guesthouse staff. In 1988, 86 of the 1,927 employees were not members of the Party. Analyse über die Zusammensetzung der technischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des Zentralkomitees der SED 1988 (ohne Abteilung Verkehr), Mai 1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18530, no folio numbers. 39. See, e.g., Vorlage an das Sekretariat des ZK betr.: Vorschläge der Zentralen Parteileitung der Parteiorganisation beim ZK zur Auswertung der Beschlüsse des 9. Plenums im Apparat des ZK, 7.11.1968, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1666, fols. 73–75. 40. Interview with Renate Michalik-Erxleben, January 18, 2016, 30, author’s transcript and audio recording. 41. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK, Einsatz eines zweiten hauptamtlichen Sekretärs der Parteiorganisation beim Zentralkomitee der SED, 22.3.1976, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/2808, fol. 8f. 42. On the forty-year aversion to these ideological training courses at the grassroots level of the SED, see Mark Allinson, Das Parteilehrjahr der SED, Konfliktfeld zwischen Parteiführung und Massenbasis. Grundlagen, Ziele und Problembereiche (Berlin, 2013). 43. Zu einigen Fakten und Problemen der Mitgliederbewegung der Parteiorganisation beim ZK per Ende Mai 1979, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18529, no folio numbers. 44. Strohbusch, born in 1913, had served as second deputy head of the Office of Information before joining the Central Committee apparatus in 1952. 45. Herber, born in 1911, was a KPD member since 1931. 46. Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 37. Müller was better received among “Party workers.” Heinrich Krämer, an employee in the Central Committee’s Construction Department during the 1960s, reports being “able to talk with Fritze.” Interview by Andrea Bahr with Heinrich Krämer, November 23, 2010, 11, transcript and audio recording of Andrea Bahr. 47. At least according to the—in light of parallel records relatively reliable—memoirs of Hering’s close associate, Erich Fischer. Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse, 188f. Incidentally, Müller was able to summon Hering to the secretariat of the Party organization because the latter—like most Central Committee departmental heads—held the elected position of deputy Party secretary in the basic organization of the Department of Health Policy.

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48. At least according to the testimony of Gertrud Liebing on November 14, 1966, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24130, fols. 274–88, here fol. 280. 49. He personally, the driver went on, had had “Comrade Glende overtake me on Lenin-Allee at a speed of about 70 km [an hour], then honk his horn and threaten with his fist, later claiming I had blocked his right of way.” The scene was depicted by driver Harry Wierschke, albeit in Stasi custody, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24823, fols. 222f. 50. Ibid. 51. Since the period of “thaw,” the term “cult of personality” came to denote among other things an exceptionally authoritarian style of leadership. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, quote on fols. 48f., 51f. 52. Ibid. 53. Interview with Renate Michalik-Erxleben, January 18, 2016, 29, author’s transcript and audio recording. 54. This, at least, is what the author of this study found. One technical employee who was asked to participate in an interview explained quite literally that she didn’t want to talk anymore about “those awful times.” 55. Michael Meyen and Anke Fiedler, Die Grenze im Kopf. Journalisten in der DDR (Berlin, 2011), 96. 56. These and the following figures are taken from: Analyse über die Zusammensetzung der technischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des Zentralkomitees der SED 1988 (ohne Abteilung Verkehr), Mai 1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18530, no folio numbers (12 pp.). 57. A one-year training course for technical employees usually meant at a regional Party school. In 1986, no less than 46 percent of technical employees had spent three to eleven months at a district or regional Party school. Ibid. 58. Analyse über die Zusammensetzung der technischen Mitarbeiter im Apparat des Zentralkomitees der SED 1988 (ohne Abteilung Verkehr), Mai 1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18530, no folio numbers. 59. Ibid., 9. 60. See chapter 7, “ The Salary Development of Central Committee Employees” of the present work. 61. “Comrade Würzberger demonstrated with examples that departmental heads allocate different amounts for food and beverages for the milestone birthdays of employees (with a range of 50 to almost 1,000 marks).” Aktennotiz betr.: Aussprache über den Finanzplanvorschlag des Büros des Politbüros für 1970, 6.11.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9238, fols. 5–7, here fol. 6. 62. Bericht des IM “Renn,” 4.10.1974, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 15396, 89, Bd. 7, fols. 96–102, here fol. 98. The driver addressed his criticism to the union leadership of the Central Committee for approving this invitation policy. 63. As of January 1979 departmental heads and their deputies received twenty-six working days of vacation, division heads and political employees twenty-three days, and technical employees twentyone. Urlaubsregelung ab 1.1.1979 für Mitarbeiter des Parteiapparates und seiner Einrichtungen, 1.11.1978, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9229, fols. 27–30. 64. Another category was the homes for “leading representatives”—Politbüro and Central Committee members, including Central Committee departmental heads. As far as the principle of egalitarianism and political reality goes, it is telling that in 1972 a new rest home on the Baltic Sea for members of the Politbüro and Central Committee and Central Committee departmental heads was moved to a different location. Rather than being built in Ahlbeck as planned, next to a home for political and technical employees, it was relocated to Neuhaus in the Ribnitz-Damgarten district. “The coast of Ahlbeck,” argued the Financial Administration and Party Enterprises Department responsible for the move, shows “worsening water conditions due to increasing ship traffic to Świnoujście,” apart from the fact that Ahlbeck was “no longer the peaceful resort” it used to be. “In light of the nomenklatura for the new home,” it concluded, “the new location is more favorable.” Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Neubau eines Erholungsheims des ZK an der Ostsee, 20.7.1971, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/2206, fols. 85–87, here fol. 86. 65. At least according to the testimony of Rudolf Krankemann in MfS custody: Vernehmungsprotokoll des Beschuldigten Krankemann, Rudolf [. . .], 22.9.1955, BStU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146/56, Bd. 1, fols. 237–41, here fol. 239.

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66. Gespräch der Zelleninformantin mit der Beschuldigten Gertrud Liebing, undated [1966], BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24140, fols. 73f. 67. Bericht, betr.: J., Bernhard, 12.9.1967, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15611, fol. 177. 68. The MfS spared no expense investigating these incidents, even installing a “conspiratorial camera” in a paternoster and electrical sensors on the walls of elevator cabins that would trigger an alarm if damaged. See, esp., MfS, HA XX/2, Sachstandsbericht Hakenkreuzschmierereien im Gebäude des ZK der SED, 10.5.1965, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 14164, Bl. 80–84; MfS, HA IX/7, Abverfügung zur Archivierung, 16.3.1983, BStU, MfS, AS, Nr. 148/83, Bd. 3, fol. 55. 69. MfS, HA IX: Protokoll über die Befragung der Annelie G., 15.11.1982, BStU, MfS, AS, Nr. 148/83, fols. 57–80, here fol. 58. 70. A similar situation was found to exist in the CPSU, see Mitrokhin, “The CPSU Central Committee Apparatus,” 318. 71. Figures taken from Statistik über die Qualifikation der politischen Mitarbeiter des ZK der SED, Stand: 1.10.1986, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18530, no folio numbers. 72. Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort, 139. To be sure, these figures are offset by the fact that the share of female secretaries only rose from 6.8 to 11.3 percent between 1971 and 1986. Ibid. 73. Sabine Ross, “Verhinderter Aufstieg? Frauen in lokalen Führungspositionen des DDR-Staatsapparats der achtziger Jahre,” in Eliten im Sozialismus, ed. Peter Hübner (Cologne, 1999), 147–66, here 149. 74. See e.g., Hans-Hermann Hertle and Mario Rainer Lepsius, “Innovationen—nur gegen den Plan. Gespräch mit Prof. Dr. Claus Krömke, Berlin, 18.10.1993,” in Der Plan als Befehl und Fiktion, ed. Theo Pirker (Opladen, 1995), 33–66, here 57. 75. See, e.g., the following remark by Horst Wambutt about the “family excursions” organized by the Department of Basic Industry: “We were actually a pretty lively department, we had a couple of female employees who could sometimes be the life of the party.” Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 22, author’s transcript and audio recording. 76. Interview with Bernhard L., June 15, 2010, 35, author’s transcript and audio recording. 77. Interview with Renate Michalik-Erxleben, January 18, 2016, 35, author’s transcript and audio recording. 78. Interview with Inge H., December 19, 2011, 25, author’s transcript and audio recording. 79. Another MfS investigation concluded that she was extremely sensitive to criticism and would react in typically “feminine” fashion: “Feeling sorry for herself, she seeks comfort from others in her personal or professional environment and quickly bursts into tears.” Sachstandsbericht zum SOV “Pendel,” 29.3.1985, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 69, Teil 2, fols. 143–63, here fol. 153. 80. Betr.: Frau Gertrud Liebing [Bericht der Zelleninformantin], 11.10.1966, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24434, fol. 212. 81. Anhang zum Bericht vom 12.10.1970, BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 313, fols. 26–35, here fol. 30. 82. His cadre proposal was boycotted by the MfS, of course. Angaben zu den Verbindungen des S., undated [1974], BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 306, fols. 13–19, here fol. 18. 83. Mensing, SED-Hilfe, 107. 84. Ibid. 85. Anhang zum Bericht vom 12.10.1970, BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 313, fols. 26–35, here fol. 27. 86. For the use of this term with reference to the CPSU in the Brezhnev era, see Merl, “Kapitel III: Entstalinisierung,” 251. 87. In Liebing’s view, this “craving” could be seen, e.g., in the case of Otto R., a division head in the Telecommunications Department. The man was supposedly extremely annoyed that on his sixtieth birthday he was “only” awarded the Order of Merit of the GDR while the Party secretary . . . and then departmental head . . . were given the Patriotic Order of Merit in Bronze and Silver, respectively, on the same occasion. Vernehmungsprotokoll der Beschuldigten Liebing, Gertrud, 14.11.1966, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24130, fols. 274–88, here fol. 279. 88. On the practice of bestowing awards in the GDR as an indicator of social processes of differentiation, see Stefan Hornbostel, “Ehre oder Blechsegen? Das Auszeichnungswesen der DDR,” SFB 580-Mitteilungen no. 3 (2002): 33–39.

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89. Emphasis in the original. 90. Anlage Treffbericht “Fritz Schuchardt” vom 16.5.89—Information zu SOV “Korrektur,” 16.5.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 141f., here fol. 141. 91. Hertle and Lepsius, “Innovationen—nur gegen den Plan,” 57; interview with Dieter Mechtel, June 10, 2013, 22, author’s transcript and audio recording. 92. Interview with Dieter Mechtel, June 13, 2013, 21, author’s transcript and audio file. 93. Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 25, author’s transcript and audio recording. 94. Interview with Bernhard L., June 15, 2010, 35, author’s transcript and audio recording. 95. Thanks to “close ties to the military command of the Soviet armed forces in Wünsdorf,” a group of artists from the latter’s cultural ensemble performed for the Central Committee department in May 1975, whereas “elite athletes and other celebrities” had been secured “in other years by way of the Central Committee’s Department of Sports and Culture.” Bericht über Veranstaltungen der Abteilung Verkehr beim ZK der SED, 31.3.1975, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 23541, fol. 51; Mensing, SED-Hilfe, 52. 96. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 24, author’s transcript and audio recording. 97. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, June 3, 2013, 24, author’s transcript and audio recording. 98. Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 25, author’s transcript and audio recording. 99. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 22, author’s transcript and audio recording. 100. Hertle and Lepsius, “Innovationen—nur gegen den Plan,” 57. 101. Uschner, Die zweite Etage. 102. Interview with Gerhard U., February 5, 2010, 34, author’s transcript and audio recording. 103. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 83. 104. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 113. 105. According to Wolfgang Herger, Dickel said this in a conversation between the two of them in the second half of the 1980s. Dickel himself supposedly expressed the wish to retire at the start of their conversation. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, April 29, 2014, 21, author’s transcript and audio recording. 106. Quoted in Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 60. 107. This at least is what Klaus Gäbler, head of the Central Committee’s Propaganda Department, told unofficial collaborator “Renn” about what Norden had said. Bericht (IM “Renn”), 5.6.1976, BStU, MfS, AIM 15396, 89, Bd 8, fols. 220–22, here fols. 221f. 108. Ibid., 91. 109. Interview with Renate Michalik-Erxleben, January 18, 2016, 11, author’s transcript and audio recording. 110. Janson headed the Central Committee’s Department of Socialist Economic Management between 1966 and 1989. Janson, Totengräber der DDR, 178. 111. Sieber is presumably referring here to Klaus Sorgenicht, who had headed the Central Committee’s Department of State and Legal Affairs as of 1954. Quoted in Zimmermann and Schütt, ohnMacht, 233; the same quote is also found in Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 89f. 112. Interview with Bernhard L., June 15, 2010, author’s transcript and audio recording. 113. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 89f. 114. Author’s estimate; see also Statistik der politischen Mitarbeiter im ZK der SED, Stand vom 1.6.1979, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18529, no folio numbers; Statistik über die Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter des ZK der SED, 11.1.1988, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18530, no folio numbers. 115. Tellingly, the youngest departmental head at that time, Wolfgang Herger, aged forty-five, was the head of the Youth Department. The oldest was Karl Raab, aged seventy, who headed the Financial Administration and Party Enterprises Department. 116. A notable exception here was fifty-four-year-old Wolfgang Herger, who briefly rose to the ranks of the Politbüro in November 1989. 117. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 86. 118. Information über die Zusammensetzung der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED im Jahre 1982 (1.12.1981–30.11.1982), 12.1.1983, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18529, no folio numbers. Revealingly, the paragraph containing the statement quoted here was deleted by hand from the draft version

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of this document, apparently because it sounded too alarmist. In the margin there’s a handwritten remark: “Do not comment, exaggerated!” 119. Vorschlag an die Gehaltskommission, undated [August 1977], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9242, fols. 17f. But even if the proposal had been implemented—there is nothing in the records to suggest it would have been—it conflicted with resolutions providing for special payments to longtime employees, “a full month’s salary after 25 years of service.” Janson, Totengräber der DDR, 178. 120. Ibid., 174. 121. Jörg Schließmann (b. 1953), Hans-Jürgen Hamsow (b. 1949), Olaf Dahms (b. 1952), Hilmar Enke (b. 1953) and Hilmar Adler (b. 1949). 122. His being appointed to this post indeed reflected a conscious strategy of rejuvenating the apparatus. “That was a basic principle,” says Wolfgang Herger about the cadre policy of the Party apparatus: “continuous transitions from age group to age group. Of course you could keep it modest by replacing a 65-year-old with a 55-year-old, which wouldn’t gain you much. I appointed Peter Miethe as deputy departmental head, who was in his mid-forties at the time, I believe.” Interview with Wolfgang Herger, April 29, 2014, 22, author’s transcript and audio recording. 123. Bericht der Unabhängigen Kommission zur Überprüfung des Vermögens der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR über das Vermögen der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), ab 1989: Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS), des Freien Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes (FDGB), der sonstigen politischen Organisationen und Stellungnahme der Bundesregierung, Deutscher Bundestag, 13. Wahlperiode, Drucksache 13/11353, Berlin 24.8.1998, 104 and passim. 124. This generation was more strongly represented in the territorial Party apparatus already in the 1970s. Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort, 134. 125. Statistik der politischen Mitarbeiter im ZK der SED, Stand vom 1.6.1979, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18529, no folio numbers. 126. Figures taken from SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18529, passim; SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18530, passim. 127. Statistik über die Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeier des ZK der SED, Stand vom 1.10.1987, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18530, no folio numbers. 128. Jessen and Gieseke, “Die SED in der staatssozialistischen Gesellschaft,” 52. 129. Vorlage für das ZK-Sekretariat, betr.: Analyse zur Statistik über die kaderpolitische Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter des Parteiapparates nach dem Stand vom 31.1.1958, 1.7.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/625, fols. 72–94, here fol. 77. 130. Statistik über die Zusammensetzung der politischen Mitarbeiter des ZK der SED, 11.1.1988, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18530, no folio numbers. 131. It might be noted in passing that a considerably expanded definition of “worker” was established in 1987 which, unlike in 1954, included, e.g., members of the armed forces. 132. MfS, HA VIII/1, Ermittlungsauftrag vom 6. 3. 1971, BStU, MfS, HA VIII, Nr. RF/1760/36, no folio numbers (Bericht Gen. Löschinger vom 15. 5. 1972). 133. Solga, “‘Systemloyalität,’” esp. 32–38. 134. BStU, MfS, HA XX, AP, Nr. 82055/92, fol. 5. 135. On the other hand, it was sometimes still advantageous to have a working-class background in the Honecker era—at least in the key functional departments, Party Organs and Cadre Issues. Career paths like that of Benno Kukelka, the son of a construction worker and a housewife, were still in demand in the late GDR. Kukelka joined the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department in 1979 after an almost ideal-typical career as a “Party worker,” having held almost a dozen fulltime positions in the regional FDJ and SED apparatus. 136. This is what Mitrokhin found on the basis of more than 120 biographies of individuals working as political employees in the Central Committee apparatus of the CPSU between 1970 and 1985: “Three-fourths of the apparatchiki were born in families from the middle and upper-middle segments of Stalinist society. Put simply, the majority of them were the children of the lower and middle layers of Soviet policymakers: kolkhoz chairmen, school directors, the directors and head engineers of major enterprises, officers in the army and the NKVD, . . . heads of ministerial subdivisions . . . .” Mitrokhin, “The CPSU Central Committee Apparatus,” 319.

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137. Heike Solga came to the conclusion that the “actual tipping point in mobility opportunities” for the sons of working-class families as opposed to those of the service classes came for those born in 1959–60 and later: “At this point the sons of the service classes had a seven to eight times higher chance of entering the service classes themselves than the sons of working-class families.” For those born between 1951 and 1953, by comparison—the cohort that many of the youngest members of the Central Committee apparatus in the 1980s belonged to—the chances for sons of the service classes were “only” three times higher. Solga, “‘Systemloyalität,’” 533. 138. The informers probably tended to overemphasize any privileges they observed or behaviors deviating from the social norm. 139. Which could of course be an expression of increasing social transformation or of the social perception of “functionaries.” 140. Jens Gieseke, “Soziale Ungleichheit im Staatssozialismus. Eine Skizze,” Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History 10, no. 2 (2013): 171 – 98. 141. Bericht, 10.10.1954, BStU, MfS, AOP, Nr. 553/55, fols. 61f., here fol. 62. 142. Stefan Wolle, whose father was a political employee in the Central Committee, recalls that he and his siblings had been instructed to “answer the telephone with ‘hello’ and not with the family name” as was customary. “There should be no name plate at the gate of the house, and it was even prohibited to hang a flag from the window on state holidays.” Stefan Wolle, Aufbruch nach Utopia: Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR 1961–1971 (Berlin, 2011), 16. 143. Ermittlungsbericht vom 9.4.1963, BStU, MfS, HA XVIII, AP, Nr. 28072/92, fols. 17–22, here fol. 18. 144. BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24140, fol. 27. 145. At least according to a Stasi report compiling statements made by Werner L. in the past: Bericht [. . .], 19.4.1974, BStU, MfS, AOPK, Nr. 12792/74, fols. 134–40, here fol. 135. 146. “Only one informant speculated that he or his wife might work in the Central Committee.” Ermittlungsbericht [. . .], 19.11.1977, BStU, MfS, HA XX, AP, Nr. 80369/92, fols. 29–34, here fol. 30. 147. Ermittlungsbericht, 30.6.1983, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 82055/92, fols. 171–74, here fol. 172. 148. “When it came to marriage,” says Wambutt with reference to the morals of the Big House, “everything had to be in order, and if it didn’t work out that way then they tried to get involved and patch things up if possible. It was all very exaggerated. Everyone in the department took an interest. And if something went wrong, they discussed it and patched it up.” Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 26, author’s transcript and audio recording. 149. At least according to a statement by Glende’s former colleague Arno Heine, a finding supported, however, by the results of comprehensive investigations in the course of Glende’s “operational handling.” Vernehmungsprotokoll des Beschuldigten Arno Heine, 15.8.1972, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15110, fols. 448–75, here fol. 456. 150. The author of the report went on: “Sometimes he gives the impression of arrogance and prejudice. He has a pronounced need for recognition [Geltungsbedürfnis].” BV für Staatssicherheit Cottbus an MfS, HA XX, 3.3.1982, Kaderauftrag Nr. 1282, Ihr Schreiben vom 3.2.1982, BStU, MfS, HA XX, AP, Nr. 72328/92, fols. 44f., here fol. 45. 151. Bericht [. . .], 19.4.1974, BStU, MfS, AOPR, Nr. 12792/74, fols. 134–40, here fols. 137f. 152. Gieseke, “Soziale Ungleichheit,” 190f. 153. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 27, author’s transcript and audio recording. In the case of Central Committee employee Gerd B., this led to the Stasi being forced to abandon an investigation of him. Following the rules of conspiracy, the members of MfS Main Department VIII could not obtain any information from B.’s residential area, since it was “mostly senior employees of the Central Committee” living there. HA VIII an HA XX/10, Gen. OSL Nistler, 2.5.1985, BStU, MfS, HA VIII, RF, Nr. 1774/34, no folio numbers. 154. Gieseke, “Soziale Ungleichheit,” 182f. 155. On the background and timeline of the transition of power from Ulbricht to Honecker, see Kaiser, Machtwechsel, 424–38; see also Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 50–68. 156. Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 35.

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157. To be sure, the Fourteenth Central Committee Congress in December 1970 had already made some adjustments to economic policy. Steiner, Die DDR-Wirtschaftsreform, 537; Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 58f. 158. This had concentrated on investing in certain “centers of growth,” e.g., machine building or the chemical industry. Ibid., 58. 159. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 9, author’s transcript and audio recording. 160. The handwritten notes taken by the heads of the Department of Planning and Finance, Wrappler and Ehrensperger, on the discussions between Krolikowski and his economic departmental heads between 1973 and 1976 are revealing. (SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/6587, passim). These minutes of internal briefings confirm the picture painted by Andreas Malycha with regard to the Politbüro that Honecker’s economic policy met with criticism and was a topic of discussion in Politbüro meetings even in the 1970s. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 212. 161. At least according to information provided by the MfS in 1987 on the occasion of the celebrations in honor of Koziolek’s sixtieth birthday. BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15112, fols. 288–90. Cf. his statements in Pirker et al., Der Plan als Befehl und Fiktion, S. 255–81. 162. Interview with Gerhard U., February 5, 2010, 19, author’s transcript and audio recording. 163. Ibid. 164. Yet employees in the Department of Culture didn’t anticipate the change of course fast enough, insisting, for example, on banning the film Her Third because of its portrayal of lesbian love. In late 1971, a conflict arose between the Ministry of Culture under Klaus Gysi and the Central Committee’s Department of Culture under Arno Hochmuth about whether or not to allow the film. Kurt Hager settled the conflict by declaring that he saw no reason “not to screen the film in its present form.” Aktennotiz von Helmut Diller (Mitarbeiter der ZK-Abteilung Kultur) vom 28.12.1971, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/9.06/124, no folio numbers. The conflict was one of the reasons Hochmuth had to resign. His successor was Hans-Joachim Hoffmann, who had previously held the position of second secretary in the SED regional leadership of Leipzig. 165. Information, 1.6.1971, BStU, MfS, AP, Nr. 489/73, fols. 139–41, here fol. 140. 166. Ibid., fol. 139. 167. Ibid. 168. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 69f. 169. Interview with Bernhard L., June 15, 2010, 33, author’s transcript and audio recording. 170. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, December 2, 2010, 22, author’s transcript and audio recording. 171. Honecker initially adopted the title “First Secretary” after assuming power, but as of 1976 opted for “General Secretary” again—like Ulbricht in the early 1950s, and Brezhnev. 172. To be sure, Honecker’s appreciation did not take the form of conferring new powers on them or reinstating ones revoked by Ulbricht, as argued by Andreas Malycha. According to Malycha, the Central Committee departments regained under Honecker certain powers “they had forfeited to the Politbüro commissions formed in January 1963” (Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 91f.). Yet he doesn’t specify what these powers were. The Agitation and Ideology commissions lost their responsibilities for cadre issues in their respective policy fields in 1964–65, when Party reforms ended, and the Western Commission never had any authority in cadre issues to begin with. Given their lack of a permanent or sufficiently large staff, the commissions only sporadically made use of the possibility of submitting proposals to the Politbüro or the Secretariat, and abandoned the practice entirely in 1965. Central Committee departments, on the other hand, were never formally stripped of this option. 173. Johannes Raschka, Justizpolitik im SED-Staat: Anpassung und Wandel des Strafrechts während der Amtszeit Honeckers, Schriften des Hannah-Arendt-Instituts für Totalitarismusforschung 13 (Cologne, 2000), 299; Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 72–74. 174. Interview with Bernhard L., June 15, 2010, 13, author’s transcript and audio recording. 175. Interview with Gerhard U., February 5, 2010, 34, author’s transcript and audio recording. 176. Luhmann, “Lob der Routine,” 117. 177. The organizational development of the Central Committee apparatus thus confirms Luhmann’s assumption that every uncertainty in social systems that is absorbed, for example, in the course of

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modernization will always be regenerated, if only sometimes at a higher level. Niklas Luhmann, Organisation und Entscheidung (Opladen, 2000), English translation: Organization and Decision, trans. Rhodes Barrett (Cambridge, 2018); see also Maja Apelt and Konstanze Senge, “Organisation und Unsicherheit—eine Einführung,” in Organisation und Unsicherheit, ed. Maja Apelt and Konstanze Senge (Wiesbaden, 2015), 1–13, here 8. 178. Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik, 21. 179. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, May 27, 2010, 13, author’s transcript and audio recording. On Honecker’s style of Politbüro meeting, see “Politbüro,” in Herbst, Stephan, and Winkler, Die SED, 515 f.; Schabowski, Das Politbüro, 20f. 180. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 183f., 212. 181. Interview with Frank T., February 5, 2010, 19, author’s transcript and audio recording. 182. This, at least, is how health minister Ludwig Mecklinger portrays Honecker. HA XX/1: Vermerk über ein Gespräch mit dem Minister für Gesundheitswesen, Genossen Mecklinger, am 31.8.1981, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 527, Teil 1, fols. 139f. here fol. 140. 183. Interview with Hans Modrow, March 4, 2010, 15, author’s transcript and audio recording. Modrow made this comment with reference to his time as head of the Central Committee’s Agitation Department, in particular to the question of to what extent Central Committee departmental heads coordinated their actions and tried to reach an agreement among themselves before attending Politbüro meetings. 184. “If those of us in the Youth Department,” says Wolfgang Herger, “had something urgent on the table, we would recommend to Egon Krenz, the secretary in charge: ‘Just send a memorandum to Erich Honecker,’ and he’ll either write ‘Agreed, EH’ or ‘Disagree, EH.’ He usually wrote ‘Agreed, EH,’ and that was that. Bypassing the Secretariat and the Politbüro.” “With Ulbricht” Herger continues, “that wasn’t an option. Ulbricht didn’t initial, but often wrote instead: ‘Proposal to the Politbüro,’ ‘Proposal to the Secretariat.’” Interview with Wolfgang Herger, May 27, 2010, 17, author’s transcript and audio recording. 185. If a proposal concerning higher education “cost money,” says Gerhard U. in retrospect, “the head of the Department of Planning and Finance had to sign off beforehand” and it was a matter of course to discuss this with one of the division heads at the department before submitting the proposal. 186. This was facilitated by Honecker’s tendency to deal with paperwork in the shortest possible time or to find solutions to individual problems rather than making fundamental policy changes. Sabrow, “Der führende Repräsentant.” 187. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, May 27, 2010, 14, author’s transcript and audio recording. 188. The author of the present study was unable to find out anything new about Glende’s resignation apart from what was reported at the time by RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) in West Berlin and Spiegel magazine. Supposedly Honecker relieved her of her duties in the summer of 1986 because of “difficulties in the cooperation between her and a fellow employee, i.e., the 38-year-old daughter of Honecker from his first marriage, Erika Baumann.” The fact that Glende was awarded the medal twice in two consecutive years was either an expression of Honecker’s bad conscience or an attempt to appease Glende’s former colleagues, in the Western media’s estimation. RIAS-Bericht vom 21.8.1986, zit. nach BStU MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 766, fols. 14f. 189. HA XX/1: Information über ein Gespräch mit Genossen Minister Mecklinger [. . .], 2.1.1979, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 527, Teil 1, fols. 182f., here fol. 182. 190. One reason for the uptick in costs in the GDR, as in all industrialized countries, was that a growing standard of living brought more demand for medical services. Wasem, Mill, and Wilhelm, “Gesundheitswesen,” 377. 191. Siegfried Suckut, “Seismographische Aufzeichnungen. Der Blick des MfS auf Staat und Gesellschaft in der DDR am Beispiel der Berichte an die SED-Führung 1976,” in Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft, ed. Jens Gieseke (Göttingen, 2007), 116–18. See also Wasem, Mill, and Wilhelm, “Gesundheitswesen,” 385. 192. HA XX/1: Information über ein Gespräch mit Genossen Minister Mecklinger [. . .], 2.1.1979, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 527, Teil 1, fols. 182f., here fol. 182.

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193. See Hans-Hermann Hertle, “Die Diskussion der ökonomischen Krisen in der Führungsspitze der SED,” in Der Plan als Befehl und Fiktion, ed. Theo Pirker (Opladen, 1995), S. 150 f.; Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, S. 251–53. 194. The summary minutes of the meeting say nothing about it, but two other sources do. First, the memoirs of former division head Erich Fischer in the Department of Health Policy (Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse, 150–53); second, a report that health minister Mecklinger submitted to his official contact at the MfS a few days later (HA XX/1: Vermerk über ein Gespräch mit dem Minister für Gesundheitswesen, Genossen Mecklinger, am 31.8.1981, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 527, Teil 1, fols. 139f.). Fischer’s memoirs are sometimes colorful, sometimes cryptic. Concerning this meeting, however, they often correspond almost verbatim to the statements made by Honecker as recorded in Mecklinger’s report. Fischer’s memoirs are therefore likely to be reliable in this instance. 195. Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse, 151. 196. BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 527, Teil 1, fol. 139. 197. In East Germany, valium (diazepam), a long-acting tranquilizer manufactured by VEB Arzneimittelwerk Dresden and widely abused in the GDR, was marketed under the tradename “Faustan.” 198. Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse, 151. 199. Ibid., 152. 200. Ibid. 201. Ibid. Mecklinger’s report deviated at this point: “It would be better if some physicians would be sent to work in the coal mines rather than making a mess of things politically in the healthcare system.” BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr 527, Teil 1, fol. 140. 202. The corresponding resolution was adopted by the Central Committee Secretariat in December 1981. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK, betr.: Struktur- und Stellenplan für die Abteilung Gesundheitspolitik, 3.12.1981, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/3726, fols. 10–13, here fol. 13. 203. Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse, 153. 204. MfS, HA XX/1: Vermerk. 11.09.1981, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 41, fols. 1–3, here fol. 1. 205. MfS, HA XX/1: Vermerk. 20.01.1987, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 527, Teil 1, fol. 3. 206. Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse, 151. 207. Quoted in Ackermann, “Der SED-Parteiapparat,” 22. 208. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 361. 209. Jaekel (MfS, HA XX/1): Vermerk, 6.12.1986, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 41, fols. 239–41. 210. Darnton, Censors at Work; Honecker took a similar tack with the Department of International Relations. Here, too, he took charge of foreign policy, going over the head of the responsible Central Committee secretary Herman Axen to coordinate important foreign-policy decisions together with Central Committee departmental head Sieber, which made Axen “suffer greatly.” Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 60. 211. Quoted in Ackermann, Der SED-Parteiapparat, 33. 212. Quoted in ibid., 21. 213. Darnton, Censors at Work, 176 214. Interview with Gerhard U., February 5, 2010, 12, author’s transcript and audio recording. 215. Darnton, Censors at Work, 169f. 216. Interview with Gerhard U., February 5, 2010, 12, author’s transcript and audio recording. 217. Interview with Klaus Blessing, September 4, 2012, 24, author’s transcript and audio recording. 218. It is worth keeping in mind, however, that Amelie G. had an interest in painting a dismal picture of the working atmosphere in Mittag’s office. She made these statements in November 1982 under Stasi interrogation, having been arrested for making swastika graffiti. G. admitted having done so, but denied that it was politically motivated. She instead emphasized her poor mental state, which seemed plausible enough to the Stasi, since she happened to be undergoing psychiatric treatment in the Central Committee polyclinic. G.—who had merely committed a copycat crime, swastika graffiti at Central Committee headquarters having been a repeated occurrence ever since 1960—was ultimately released on condition that she go to therapy. MfS, HA IX: Protokoll über die Befragung der [. . .], 15.11.1982, BStU, MfS, AS, Nr. 148/83, fols. 57–67, here fol. 58.

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219. Interview with Klaus Blessing, September 4, 2012, 25, author’s transcript and audio recording. 220. Anlage Treffbericht “Fritz Schuchardt” vom 16.5.1989—Information zu BV “Korrektur,” BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 141f., here fol. 141. 221. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 13, author’s transcript and audio recording. 222. Interview with Klaus Blessing, September 4, 2012, 25, author’s transcript and audio recording. 223. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 8, author’s transcript and audio recording. 224. “The cooperation,” Laude continues, “was of course even closer, the more familiar you’d become with each other over the years.” Quoted in Ackermann, Der SED-Parteiapparat, 51. 225. Protokoll der Vernehmung von Wolfgang Herger, 15.9.1992, Archiv der Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin bei dem Landgericht Berlin, 26 JS 1002/93, Bd. IV, fols. 1–17, here fol. 13. 226. Werner Rothe, Jahre im Frieden. Eine DDR-Biographie (Schkeuditz, 1997), 184. 227. Quoted in Ackermann, Der SED-Parteiapparat, 50. For example, Ursula Ragwitz, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Culture, declared that Volker Braun’s “Hinze-Kunze Novel,” which was printed with Höpcke’s approval, was an “intellectual bomb” and forced Höpke to engage in “self-criticism.” Darnton, Censors at Work, 163. 228. The minister of science and technology, for example, had to constantly produce reports for the Central Committee’s Department of Research and Technical Development under Hermann Pöschel (see, e.g., Hilbert an Weiz, Minister für Wissenschaft und Technik, 14.2.1983, BArch, DF 4/20683, no folio numbers.). 229. Or so a report by IMS “Theo,” a senior employee in the Ministry of Health. Information, 3.10.1975, BStU, MfS, HA XVIII, Nr. 15924, fols. 8–13, here fol. 11. 230. This observation is also made by Suckut, “Mielke contra Hoffmann,” 301. 231. Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 79. 232. The term clique, both horizontal and vertical, was applied to the management of organizations by Dalton, Men Who Manage, 52ff. Dalton’s study disproved the prevailing notion that informal structures only existed at the lower levels of organizational hierarchies. 233. Interview with Frank T., February 5, 2010, 7, author’s transcript and audio recording. 234. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 10, author’s transcript and audio recording. 235. With reference to Simmel, Über sociale Differenzierung; Luhmann, Funktionen und Folgen, 79: “A system undergoing differentiation pushes its boundaries by enabling its subsystems to have a more specialized and hence a more universal [external] orientation.” 236. HA XX/1: Bericht über ein Gespräch mit dem Minister für Gesundheitswesen, Genossen Prof. Mecklinger, am 15.9.1977, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 527, Teil 1, fol. 204. 237. Interview with Klaus Blessing, September 4, 2012, 17, author’s transcript and audio recording. 238. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 7, author’s transcript and audio recording. 239. This at least was the impression gained by Darnton, Censors at Work, 163, based on interviews with former colleagues of Höpke. 240. Ibid., 168. Ragwitz an Hager, 7.7.1983, SAPMO-BArch, #DY 30/34935, o. Bl.# 241. Joachim Ackermann, for example, in his many-faceted account of the influence of the SED Party apparatus on cultural policy in the GDR comes to the sweeping conclusion that “no independent state activity [was] discernible” in this context (Ackermann, Der SED-Parteiapparat, 52). Andreas Malycha, too, in his highly nuanced analysis of economic policy in the Honecker era is content to sum up the relationship between the Party and state apparatuses by saying that “decisions of technical significance” were “not made in the ministries but in the respective Central Committee department.” Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 86. On the significance of shared interests between the Party and state at the regional level in the 1960s, see, however, Rowell, “Der Erste Bezirkssekretär”; for comparable phenomena at the district level, see Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort. 242. Heiner Bröckermann rightly sees Herger’s appointment to this body as an effort by the Party leadership—and of Egon Krenz in particular—to strengthen the “influence of the Party apparatus vis-à-vis the team of security ministers somewhat weakened by the death of [Minister of National Security] Hoffmann.” Bröckermann, Landesverteidigung, 84.

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243. Other members of this working group were Günter Mittag, finance minister Böhm, and State Planning Commission chairman Schürer. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 191. 244. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr.: Bericht und Schlussfolgerungen zur sozialistischen Wehrerziehung, 30.6.1971, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/2041, fols. 17–29, here fols. 27. 245. Aktennotiz, Beratung der AG “Neonazismus” am 24.1.1968, BStU, MfS, ZAIG, Nr. 11526, fols. 161–63. 246. Information über eine Problemberatung in der Bezirksrevisionskommissionssitzung Karl-Marx-Stadt am 25.5.1977, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/30668, no folio numbers. 247. E.g., Horst Wambutt an Günter Mittag, 23.11.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/6.03/123, no folio numbers. 248. Quoted in Niemann, “‘Schönfärberei und Schwarzmalerei,’” 175f. 249. This must have been a reference to parts of road-building crew 7002 based in Neuseddin, which was being used for construction work at Rostock-Laage military airport. 250. Moreover, according to Herger, the security department received complaints about the work of the military trade organization in the “Robert Siewert” construction crew, which for weeks had failed to sell any nonalcoholic beverages and was only open for a few hours at a time. Wolfgang Herger an Generalleutnant Ludwig, 26.7.1985, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/857, fols. 1f. 251. E.g., Armin Wagner (Wagner, “Walter Ulbricht,” 247), while simultaneously denying such a claim in Herger, Hübner, and Frenzel, “Verantwortung—Eigenverantwortung—Fremdbestimmung.” 252. Ludwig an Herger, Wolfgang, 14.8.1985, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/857, fols. 3f. 253. On the comparable situation in the CPSU, see Mitrokhin, “The CPSU Central Committee Apparatus,” 324. 254. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 22f., author’s transcript and audio recording. 255. Werner Hering an Ludwig Mecklinger, 10.1.1973, BArch, DQ 1/10249, Bd. 2, no folio numbers. 256. Erler, Ministerium für Gesundheitswesen, an Dr. Menz, Abteilung Gesundheits- und Sozialwesen beim Magistrat von Berlin, 15.2.1973, BArch, DQ 1/10249, Bd. 2, no folio numbers. 257. See the correspondence of Ursula Ragwitz in BArch, DR 1/11564, passim. 258. Corruption is distinct from other offenses in that, among other things, “it works ‘to the advantage of all those involved’ but is offset by damages incurred by non-participants.” Peter Graeff, “PrinzipalAgent-Modelle als Zugangsmöglichkeit zur Korruptionsforschung,” in Korruption. Historische Annäherungen an eine Grundfigur politischer Kommunikation, ed. Niels Grüne and Simona Slanička (Göttingen, 2010), 57. 259. In the summer of 1975, for example, she reported that comrades from the Karl-Marx-Stadt region had complained to her about the “extremely poor supply of fresh vegetables” there. “It would be advisable,” Glöckner wrote, “to check in general if the comrades in charge of this in the region have these problems under control.” Elli Glöckner an Hilmar Weiß, 4.8.1975, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/16549, no folio numbers. 260. This happened in the wake of the Seventh Pedagogical Congress, which decided on a range of wage-policy measures for teachers and educators and hence for preschool employees as well. Daycare workers were considered medical staff and therefore didn’t profit from the wage increases. 261. ZK-Abteilung Frauen, Entwurf einer Hausmitteilung an den Genossen Honecker, undated [October 1970], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/19/41, o. Bl.; ZK-Abteilung Gesundheitspolitik Information über die lohnpolitische Situation einiger Berufsgruppen im Gesundheits- und Sozialwesen, 31.7.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/19/46, no folio numbers. 262. Interview with Klaus Blessing, September 4, 2012, 16, author’s transcript and audio recording. 263. The Buna combine was established in 1970 and was responsible for half of the GDR’s plastic production by the 1980s. The following is taken from Hans-Joachim Rüscher an Horst Wambutt, betr. Ungenügende Belieferung des VEB Perfekt Berlin mit Helmschalen für Arbeitsschutz- und Motorradhelme aus Niederdruck-Polyäthylen, 23.7.1975, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/25231, no folio numbers. 264. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 194.

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265. Ibid. 266. Zur Plandurchführung in der Leichtindustrie, undated [September 1975], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ 25231, no folio numbers. 267. According to Tobias Wunschik, the Weissenfels combine had business contacts with twenty-one West German companies and seven other Western companies in 1977. On an unrelated note, it employed at this point in time 350 prison laborers. Tobias Wunschik, Knastware für den Klassenfeind: Häftlingsarbeit in der DDR, der Ost-West-Handel und die Staatssicherheit (1970–1989) (Göttingen, 2014), 223. 268. She accused the Weissenfels factory of not having communicated with other shoe factories about the problem they were having with the machine and instead conducting elaborate trials to achieve an optimal preliminary product. Hans-Joachim Rüscher an Horst Wambutt, 24.9.1975, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/25231, no folio numbers. 269. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 299. 270. Interview with Horst K., January 27, 2010, 7, author’s transcript and audio recording. 271. Heinz Kuhrig, Minister für Land-, Forst und Nahrungsgüterwirtschaft an Kleiber, Minister für Allgemeinen Maschinen-, Landmaschinen und Fahrzeugbau, 17.3.1977, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/1568, fol. 10. 272. Bruno Kiesler an Gerhard Tautenhahn, 22.3.1977, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/1568, fol. 11. 273. The phrase was used by Mitrokhin, “The CPSU Central Committee Apparatus,” 313, with reference to the Central Committee apparatus of the CPSU in the Soviet Union. 274. MfS, HA XVIII/7, Informationsbericht vom 3.11.1976, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 306–9, here fol. 306. 275. Mitrokhin, “The CPSU Central Committee Apparatus,” 313. 276. Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 40. 277. Rothe, Jahre im Frieden, 213f. 278. While the State Planning Commission was pushing for the new plant (for reasons of “import relief,” as was so often the case), he preferred to replace worn-out facilities. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, author’s transcript and audio recording. 279. Quoted in Darnton, Censors at Work, 167. 280. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, May 27, 2010, 22, author’s transcript and audio recording. 281. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 13, author’s transcript and audio recording. 282. Interview with Horst K., April 27, 2011, 20, author’s transcript and audio recording. 283. In the case of these positions, it sometimes happened that the Central Committee Secretariat rejected the nominations of a Central Committee department. In early 1966, for example, the Secretariat turned down a proposal of the State Broadcasting Committee and the Agitation Department of the Central Committee for a new Deutschlandsender correspondent in Bonn because the individual in question had once belonged to the East German CDU. This had been precisely the reason the Agitation Department had suggested him in the first place, as his former CDU membership would have given him an “in” in Bonn, at least according to a secret collaborator of the MfS in the State Broadcasting Committee. Treffbericht, 24.2.1966, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 15143/89, fols. 223f. 284. Interview with Gerhard U., February 5, 2010, S. 12, author’s transcript and audio recording. 285. Only in the case of key combines such as Leuna did Mittag want to decide himself. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 46, author’s transcript and audio recording. 286. Interview with Klaus Blessing, September 4, 2012, 23, author’s transcript and audio recording. 287. Thielmann was a physician and had served as prorector of the Erfurt Academy of Medicine from 1976 to 1982. Wasem, Mill, and Wilhelm, “Gesundheitswesen,” 374, n. 48. 288. Already in early 1987, Minister Mecklinger confided to his contact at the MfS that he sensed “they might be looking for a new health minister” and that the Department of Health Policy was out to “prove that he and the Ministry of Health are incompetent.” MfS, HA XX/1: Vermerk, 20.1.1987, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 527, Teil 1, fols. 3f., here fol. 4. 289. MfS, Abteilung 26/7, “Händler,” Information A 70595/88/3/89, streng vertraulich, mit einem Anschreiben an Generalleutnant Günther Kratsch, 14.1.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 960, fols. 65–69.

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290. Bericht (IM “Renn”), 05.06.1976, BStU, MfS, AIM 15396, 89, Bd.°8, fols. 220–22, here fol. 222. 291. Paul Kienberg, Vermerk, 28.3.1972, BStU, MfS, HA°XX, Nr.°17116, fols. 203f. See also chapter 3, “Oral Communication” of the present work. 292. Paul Kienberg, Vermerk, 7.7.1972, BStU, MfS, HA°XX, Nr.°17116, fol. 198. 293. Another example: in the summer of 1986, following the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, sentiments in the Politbüro were apparently divided about whether to continue using nuclear power in the GDR. The head of the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry, Horst Wambutt, therefore instructed a research assistant at the “Bruno Leuschner” Nuclear Power Plant to write a kind of assessment report. Wambutt wanted a written assessment of “nuclear energy in the GDR and FRG, intended for E. Honecker.” Wambutt also advised the nuclear expert what he should write: “The GDR cannot do without nuclear energy, now or in the coming years.” And: “The Federal Republic of Germany would be less impacted by abandoning nuclear energy because . . . it could switch to other sources of energy faster than the GDR.” Betr. Helmut Berg, 3.9.1986, BStU, Rst AIM, Nr. 555/89, fols. 125f. 294. On Häber, see the differing more recent assessments in Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 162–75, and Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik, 574–88.While Malycha attaches great importance to incriminating materials about his father’s past prior to 1945, Amos assumes that Honecker had lost his trust in Häber—possibly for leaking details about conversations with Moscow leaders in which Honecker did not fare well.

Chapter 7

“Funding Loyalty”? Employment at the Party apparatus of the SED did not make you rich—at least in the recollection of contemporary witnesses. The latter unanimously emphasize that the salaries were “not that great.”1 Bruno Jura, as a fulltime Party secretary at the Brandenburg steel mill, says he “earned less money than a foreman. As a Party secretary. . . . Can you imagine?”2 Even Central Committee departmental heads were “for many years paid very badly,” according to Horst Wambutt.3 And “our employees earned less than if they had worked in the ministry or the economy.”4 Only in the final years, under Honecker, did the salary gap relative to state functionaries in comparable positions decline somewhat. As Bruno Jura puts it: “Later, that was under Erich, we all became privileged too. We got a raise in the early 1980s.”5 The salary regulations of the Party apparatus do in fact confirm these statements. On the one hand, it is hard to claim that a Central Committee departmental head earning an average of 3,000 marks a month in 1975 was “paid very badly.” Average gross earned income in the GDR in 1975 was just under 900 marks a month.6 On the other hand, a monthly income of 1,600 marks for a political employee of the Central Committee who had had to work his way up the career ladder before being hired by the apparatus does not seem out of proportion. And the feeling of a former departmental head that he was very badly paid is also understandable. A minister— de facto his equal—earned considerably more, 3,800 marks in 1975. Even a deputy minister was better paid, at 3,400 marks a month.7 Maybe it was because these salary relations were no secret in certain parts of society that the “privileges” of Party and state elites—income included—only briefly became the focus of political protests in the fall of 1989.8 Many historians in the 1990s tended to agree with ex-functionaries that their privileges for the most part had actually been “rather modest.”9 But is that the whole story regarding money and privileges? Do we have to agree with the contemporary witnesses who felt at the time that, relative to their responsibilities and workload, their pay was rather modest and who nowadays—in the case of

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former Central Committee departmental heads—feel they’ve gotten a raw deal as the recipients of “punitive” pensions?10 Hardly. Because, first of all, the question of how “privileged” fulltime Party employees were or how above-average their pay was—not to mention how they positioned themselves within or above the socialist service class—has yet to be systematically examined. Second, there is no real clarity as to how significant “material incentives” really were over the decades for fulltime functionaries of the SED, or, to put it another way, to what extent other, “idealistic” principles—of the kind that were characteristic of the apparatuses of communist parties before their takeover of state apparatuses—had a determining influence on the “general staff of the Party.” Did high salaries and privileges become the main motivation of functionaries? And was this the reason the SED made generating revenues at any cost one of its primary policies? The latter would not necessarily mean that ideology no longer played a role in the Central Committee apparatus under Honecker—that Party leaders, as the American scholars Eugenia Belova and Valery Lazarev have argued with reference to the CPSU, tried to “fund” the loyalty of their functionaries, in essence buy them off, because they no longer had faith in the cohesive power of ideology.11 After all, as explained above, it is practically in the nature of organizations to offer their members “a range of incentives in the vast majority of cases,”12 in our case ideology and “material incentives.” It still remains to be clarified, though, which of these the Party leadership attached more importance to and how this changed over time. In the attempt to answer these questions, the following will begin by outlining the financial apparatus and the structure of the Party budget from a longitudinal perspective as well as identifying the SED’s main sources of income and key expenditures. A second step will address the question of how the Party’s revenues and expenditures, and hence the salaries and other income of fulltime employees, developed over the decades. Third, I will ask which incentives the Party leadership—in the person of Erich Honecker—might have used apart from salaries to encourage the faithfulness and loyalty of its leading functionaries. Finally, I will outline if and to what extent Party headquarters was affected by phenomena collectively referred to since October 1989 as abuse of office and corruption.

Financial Apparatus and Budget Structure13 The financial apparatus of the SED largely resembled that of its role model, the CPSU.14 The SED counterpart to the Soviets’ Upravlenie delami (Administration of Affairs) in the Central Committee of the CPSU15 was the Central Committee’s Financial Administration and Party Enterprises Department. In 1950, the previously separate departments of Treasury Management (Kassenwesen) and Administration of Party Enterprises were combined into a new department initially comprising two divisions, the Central Committee Main Treasury (Hauptkasse) and Party Enterprises,

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and about fifty employees. The department was headed by Karl Raab, an Old Communist who had been in exile in Moscow and entered the apparatus in 1946 as a personal assistant to Anton Ackermann. Raab held a position of trust in the Party leadership and enjoyed great autonomy in overseeing the Party’s finances. He and his deputy Paul Hockarth took care of construction and property matters, prepared resolutions on membership-fee and salary regulations, decided on the purchase and sale of companies, and were responsible for the whole of cadre policy in Party-owned enterprises. Most importantly, though, they drew up the SED’s annual budget or “finance plan” in November or December. Each April they wrote a report on the previous financial year. The finance plan and financial report had to be approved by the Central Committee Secretariat.16 At the regional level, the business departments of the SED regional secretariats were responsible for finances; at the district level, an “instructor of finances,” subordinate to the second secretary. Like the Central Committee departments, the regional secretariats drafted a yearly finance plan for approval—or rejection—by the Central Committee’s Finance Department based on the SED’s overall finance plan. District Party and regional Party organizations had to pay their revenues, for the most part membership dues, to the Central Committee’s Main Treasury. Regional secretariats and Central Committee departments reported their financial requirements to the Central Committee’s Finance Department on a yearly basis. Any individual item considerably deviating from the previous year had to be explained. The SED’s accounting system was standardized through a series of written instructions compiled in the “Manual of Party Finances.” It followed established standards of bookkeeping. “Every financial and material transaction,” it stipulated, had to be “documented by a receipt.” Moreover, “all entries and records” had to be “truthful, complete and verifiable.”17 Inspections were continuous, with the Central Committee’s Finance Department regularly auditing the business departments of regional secretariats.18 The latter, like Central Committee departments, had to report their monthly account balances. Embezzlement does not seem to have been a big problem in the Party apparatus. In 1988 it amounted to 21,000 marks, and in 1989 (through November) to around 18,000 marks.19 Membership dues, around 700 million marks in the late 1980s, were also comparatively small sums. Like the audits, the SED’s financial planning basically fulfilled its intended function. It’s true that Central Committee departments occasionally overdrew their accounts—in the fall of 1968, for example, when the Department of Culture reported additional funding requirements for account 442 (events) because, according to its employee Dieter Heinze, “higher costs were incurred, booked to this account, in connection with the new practice of honoring 10 and 15 years of employment in the apparatus.” On balance, however, Central Committee departments as well as regional and district Party organizations stayed within their budgets. In this respect, the budget plans submitted each year by the Central Committee’s Financial Administration and Party Enterprises Department were a reasonably reliable reflection of the actual

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Party budget. An important exception was the revenue item “reimbursements from the state budget,” which will be discussed below. At any rate, the finance plans are an indication of financial priorities.

Maximizing Revenue at Any Cost Budgets and finance plans actually say a lot about the political goals, the social practices and the basic incomes of the organizations that draw them up. They not only reveal sources of income and expenditures, they give a chronology of shifting policy priorities and changing dependencies on certain sources of income in the respective organization. In the case of the SED, they indicate two things. First, that the Central Committee’s Finance Department pursued a policy of increasing revenues “on its own.” In other words, it did not rely solely on “plundering” the state, whose direct and indirect allocations nevertheless provided a kind of basic funding at least until the mid-1980s, albeit concealed in a shadow budget. Second, SED budgets show that the Party invested its revenues primarily in “human capital,” in the salaries of its fulltime employees. It invested much less in ideological transfer. In terms of revenues, the structure of the SED budget remained relatively unchanged for four decades.20 Like in the KPD and SPD before 1933, membership dues in the SED long comprised the largest source of revenue. Dues were graded according to income. The dues regulations of 1971, for instance, stipulated that a comrade with a gross income of up to 500 marks had to pay half a percent of this income to the Party.21 Those with an income of 700 to 800 marks—the average income in the GDR in the early 1970s—paid 2 percent, and those with incomes over 1,000 marks paid the maximum rate of 3 percent on their gross income. Thus, a gross income of 1,030 marks meant Party dues of of 30.90 marks. But the average monthly dues per member in 1971 were significantly lower: 11.84 marks.22 This discrepancy would suggest that, just as Central Committee financial instructors had noted in the early 1960s, many comrades sought “ways and means to report a low gross income.”23 The next block of revenues was from the so-called profit transfers of Party enterprises. In its forty years of rule the SED built up an “unprecedented economic empire,”24 the reconstruction and analysis of which would be a welcome addition to the literature. The SED had founded forty-six “organization-owned companies” by 1989, only a few of which can be mentioned here.25 The most important was Zentrag, the Zentrale Druckerei-, Einkaufs- und Revisionsgesellschaft mbH (Central Printing, Purchasing and Auditing Company) founded in 1946. In the 1980s it accounted for 80 percent of the GDR’s printing capacities and controlled the entire newspaper and printing industry.26 Added to this were Dietz publishing house, which brought out the collected works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, and the theoretical journal Einheit; the Deutsche Werbe- und Anzeigengesellschaft (DEWAG) advertising agency; and Intertext-Fremdsprachendienst, the translation service responsible for almost all printed materials translated from foreign languages. The Panorama DDR Auslandspresseagentur GmbH,27 the foreign press agency of the GDR, and the Genex-

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Geschenkdienst GmbH, founded in 1957, were also Party enterprises. The latter “gift service” allowed citizens of Western countries to buy goods for East German citizens—generally upscale products specially produced in the GDR, but also Western products in exchange for hard currency.28 Finally, there were the companies the SED founded in the West starting in the early 1960s: the Hansatourist GmbH travel agency in Hamburg, for example, or the ORVAG AG financial holding company headquartered in Niederurnen in Switzerland. Originally these “Western companies” were primarily meant to support West German communist parties such as the DKP and the SEW. Later they mainly generated funds for the Central Committee’s Main Treasury, like all of the SED’s “organization-owned enterprises.”29 Another important source of revenue was the abovementioned “reimbursements from the state budget.” This was money remitted to the SED by the East German Ministry of Finance for tasks the former—in its own estimation—was performing for the state and society: stipends for participants in courses at the Party academy; the “honorary pensions” paid out from Party funds to “fighters against fascism”; the salaries of fulltime Party secretaries in SED basic organizations. The money the Central Committee’s Main Treasury received from the Ministry of Finance for these purposes was accounted for in the official Party budget. In the early 1980s, it amounted to 70 to 100 million marks a year. In fact, however, the Party provided itself with an even greater range of privileges and subsidies. The Ministry of Postal Services and Telecommunications waived television and radio license fees for the SED, while the ADN state news agency and Panorama foreign press agency provided their contributions to the Party press free of charge. The Ministry of Finance covered the costs of fuel used by the SED’s fleet of vehicles as well as the additional costs resulting from statutory wage supplements, e.g., in the wake of industrial price reforms. There were also state subsidies to the Party-owned college of polygraphic engineering in Leipzig. According to calculations by the Independent Investigative Committee, between 1981 and 1985 about 400 to 600 million marks of state funding, including the abovementioned “official” reimbursements, flowed into Party coffers each year.30 Hence, the bulk of payments to the SED constituted a “shadow budget,” the exact extent of which has yet to be determined.31 One more minor revenue item is worth pointing out: the income from so-called organizational and administrative work—e.g., by the Party guesthouses and through the sale of pens and Party badges. Furthermore, the SED generated income from the license fees it received for distributing the works of Marx and Engels through state publishers.32 These individual revenue items added up, and the total income of the SED increased significantly over the decades. Between 1959 and 1988 the SED quadrupled its income, from 421.6 to 1,666.2 million marks. But naturally this sum is relativized if we take into account general price and wage developments in the GDR over the

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Table 7.1. Development of the SED’s main revenues in millions of marks, 1959–88.i Membership Organizational and dues administrative work

Profits of Party enterprises

State allocations

Total revenuesii

1959

93.3

8.3

7.3

60.7

421.6

1968

200.5

28.0

n.s.

84.8

569.3

1978

437.1

52.4

272.2

106.1

1154.7

1988

725.9

136.8

710.6

69.6

1666.2

Notes i. All figures taken from UKPV 1998, 333–48.The currency denomination for 1959 is “German marks of the GDR” (DM); for all other years “marks of the GDR.” ii. The total includes additional incomes not listed in detail here, namely from license fees (e.g., paid by state publishers for printing the works of Marx and Engels), from industrial price reforms, and from allocations from the Party’s reserve fund.

same period.33 A more reliable indicator than the increase in revenue is the changing proportions of each revenue item in the Party’s overall income. The first thing that stands out here is that the share of allocations from the state budget indicated in the official finance plans of the SED dropped considerably, from 20 percent in 1958 to 4 percent in 1988.34 But even including the SED’s “shadow budget,” i.e., the state allocations not accounted for in the Party’s finance plans, there is still no substantial increase in their share of the overall budget. In 1959, official reimbursements accounted for almost 15 percent of overall revenues. The “unofficial” reimbursements at this time would have increased the total amount to between 20 and 25 percent. In 1984, official and unofficial state reimbursements totaled 500 million marks or 27 percent of total revenues.35 But 27 percent was the high point of state allocations, because as of 1985 the SED only received them for stipends and honorary pensions. The wages of fulltime secretaries of the basic organizations, television and radio license fees, and fuel for the Central Committee’s fleet of vehicles were henceforth paid from Party funds.36 Heinz Wildenhain, the head of the Finance Department, justified this decision as the Party’s contribution to mitigating the state debt crisis. One thing is for certain: the Central Committee’s Finance Department would not have relinquished 400 million marks in state funding if, as Heinz Wildenhain pointed out, the “good financial situation of the Party” had not allowed it to.37 The good state of Party finances was not just a momentary occurrence, however; it was an expression of the fact that the SED, ever since its founding, was not just a state party but had developed into a business enterprise geared towards maximizing its profits.

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The development of Zentrag, the most important Party enterprise, is a good illustration of this. In May 1970, the Council of Ministers dissolved the central management of state-owned printing presses and handed over twenty-one large printing plants to Zentrag, effectively giving the latter a monopoly on all manner of printed materials in the GDR.38 In the 1980s, its seventy-eight operations employed over 33,000 people, with profits increasing from 48 to 646 million marks between 1954 and 1989. Between 1952 and 1989 it paid 9.7 million marks into the Main Treasury of the Central Committee—almost as much as the SED received from the state budget during the same period.39 In 1989 alone, the transfer of profits from VOB Zentrag to the Main Treasury of the Central Committee amounted to 646 million marks, about 43 percent of the Party’s total revenues for that year.40 Even more profitable than Zentrag, however, was Genex Geschenkdienst GmbH. With only one hundred employees, it generated a profit of almost 2.4 billion marks between 1968 and 1988, all of which flowed into the Party’s coffers. The foreign-currency revenues of Genex, likewise considerable, were shared, however, with the state, the Party generally keeping 35 percent—which still amounted to a good 30 to 40 million deutschmarks annually (“West marks”) in the 1980s.41 Like the revenues generated by the SED’s “organization-owned enterprises,” those from “membership dues” rose as well. This was due in part to the SED becoming a state party (and the requisite Party membership for relatively well-earning members of the socialist service class that went along with it). But it was also the result of a targeted policy on the part of the SED’s financial apparatus. Despite sometimes massive critique and manifold strategies of avoidance by the Party’s own members,42 the apparatus managed to increase the share of membership dues in total Party revenues from 12 to 44 percent (from 82 to 725.9 million marks) between 1958 and 1988. And, indeed, SED financial instructors took the topic of “arrears” quite seriously when it came to Party dues. The Central Committee Finance Department even came up with a ranking system in 1958. The regional Party organizations with the highest average collection rate were contrasted with regions “where something is obviously amiss with the amount of dues” received—above all the industrial regions of Magdeburg and Karl-Marx-Stadt.43 A number of regional leaderships even held “competitions to achieve the best results in the collection of dues.”44 Some financial instructors with a particularly poor showing actually fudged their reports in order to save face before the regional secretariat. The business department at the regional leadership of Frankfurt an der Oder uncovered one such instance in December 1969. A financial instructor in the SED district leadership of Angermünde, on the other hand, had been forging his membership statistics for years, artificially deflating them so that only about one hundred Party members were reported as being in arrears with their dues when in fact it was more than three hundred.45 It should be noted here that the “treasurers” of the SED—Karl Raab as head of the Central Committee’s Finance Department as well as his deputy and successor Heinz Wildenhain—did not rely on the state budget to cover the current or poten-

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tially growing future needs of the Party. They endeavored through their own efforts to increase the financial resources of the SED. This, of course, did not preclude Raab and his comrades from repeatedly helping themselves with state support beyond the agreed-upon “reimbursements.” In the case of Party real estate, for example, twice, in 1956 and 1966, the SED ceded property to the state—unappealing plots it didn’t need—in exchange for seventy-seven far more valuable properties, mostly “prime real estate.”46 The same in 1970, when 800,000 valuta marks were needed to set up an “information television network”47 at Central Committee headquarters. The Central Committee departmental heads involved in the project came to the conclusion that, “regarding the ca. 500,000 valuta marks still needed, . . . the State Planning Commission [would have to be] engaged to look for possibilities to include it in the economic plan for 1971.”48 But these were isolated incidents that did not affect the basic premise of Party finances that the SED was an independent organization with its own revenues and its own Party assets. The Party never backed away from this principle—which paid off in 1989–90.

The Relatively Waning Significance of “Political Work” Like its revenues, the expenditures of the SED were dominated by two to three very big items. The largest of these was consistently “staff,” the salaries paid to the fulltime employees of the Party apparatus.49 In October 1989, there were a total of 44,000 political and technical employees of the Party apparatus as well as fulltime secretaries of the basic organizations on the payroll of the SED.50 At the same time, the Party maintained a bonus and social fund into which about eight million marks were funneled yearly in the early 1970s. The fund was used to finance productivity bonuses and loyalty rewards. But it could also be used to organize celebrations, as was the case in the mid-1970s with the Department of Transportation.51 The second-biggest element of expenditure was “political work.” This included everything commonly associated with the activities of a communist party: visuals such as posters, banners and flags used in public spaces, and of course the various major events marking the socialist calendar. Thus, for example, in 1970 the Central Committee’s Department of Culture set aside “about 420,000 marks” for the festivities at Friedrichstadt-Palast on the occasion of the Lenin Centenary and 150,000 marks for the “150th anniversary of Engels’ birth” on November 28, 1970 at the State Opera.52 A separate subcategory of expenditures was “international political work.” This comprised, among other things, “support measures in solidarity with brother parties”—in 1980, for example, the construction of a printing press in Kabul for the communist party of Afghanistan.53 Not part of this official Party budget were the payments made to the West German DKP, about 70 million deutschmarks a year in the 1980s.54 The category “central expenses” included outlays for Central Committee congresses, foreign delegations and key Central Committee properties such as the Party academy and Party institutes. It routinely accounted for 8 to 10 percent of total expenditures. The category “investments” included property purchases but mainly

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Table 7.2. Development of the SED’s main expenditures in millions of marks, 1959–88.i Political work

Administration

Central expenses

Staff

Investments

Total expendituresii

1959

29.6

20.3

36.5

243.5

37.5

416.6

1968

59.8

39.9

64.6

312.3

55.3

567.3

1978

92.2

41.2

122.8

490.0

187.7

1009.3

1988

440.4

66.5

192.9

709.5

224.2

1666.2

Notes i. UKPV 1998, 333–48.The figures for 1959 are in “German marks of the GDR” (DM). ii. Additional expenditures not specified here were for leased postal lines, bank fees, ruble clearing, etc. Ibid., 334.

“construction” and “building maintenance,” both of which could be costly at times. From 1959 to 1962, for example, the Party spent 10.5 million marks on converting the former Reichsbank into its new headquarters, 6 million of this alone on refurbishing the congress hall.55 A diachronic perspective will also be adopted for the case of expenditures. Between 1959 and 1998 the SED nearly quadrupled its expenditures—just like its revenues—from 416.6 to 1,666.2 million marks. The rise in revenues came from two sources: membership dues and profit transfers of Party enterprises. The increase in expenditures, on the other hand, was mainly due to staff. This expenditure item increased from 243.5 to 709.5 million marks from 1959 to 1988. At the same time, its share in total expenditures decreased from 58 to 42.5 percent.56 Outlays for political work increased from 29 to 110.5 million marks between 1959 and 1985 while their share in total expenses stagnated at around 7 to 9 percent until 1985. In 1986 this item seemed to increase drastically, to around 434 million marks or 28 percent of total expenditures.57 In reality, 339 of these 434 million were allocated to “price support for the Party press,” which, given its high print runs, was heavily affected by rising paper prices. Deducting these subsidies, the expenditures on political work were in keeping with the previous levels and amounted to 124 marks in 1988. Eugenia Belova and Valery Lazarev have shown that between 1938 and the 1960s the CPSU significantly upped it expenditures on employee wages with a concomitant decline in spending on “political work.”58 They conclude from this a waning influence of ideological policy. Parallel developments in the SED were not so clear, at least for the period under investigation here. Unlike in the CPSU, the share of the SED’s total expenditures allocated to political work did not sink over time. It is also more than likely that costs for ideological policy were outsourced, being removed from the

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Party budget and “nationalized,” i.e., handed over to the state. This was the case with “event” funding used by the Central Committee’s Department of Culture for the anniversary of “liberation,” the October Revolution, the birthdays of Marx, Engels and Lenin, etc. Its outlays sank from 400,000 marks in 1971 to 80,000 in 1987—not because there were no more celebrations of this sort, but because now the costs were being defrayed for the most part by the Council of Ministers.59 Moreover, the expenditure item “political work” did not by far include all the expenses for communicating ideology, many of which were subsumed under the category “central expenses.” A case in point were the expenses for Party training schools and special schools of the Central Committee, which increased almost five-fold from 1965 to 1986, from 47 to 233 million marks.60 To be sure, the rising costs of the Party School—due mostly to higher stipends and operating costs—was not a good indicator of how important ideology was to the SED. More meaningful was a relatively small element of expenditure within the category of “political work” which covered the funding for “political work with the masses” in basic organizations, i.e., ideological work at the grassroots of the Party. It is indeed telling here that Karl Raab’s (and Heinz Wildenhain’s) Finance Department had a big problem getting the basic organizations of the SED to actually spend the money allotted to them for political work. In 1957, for example, they only requested 2.2 million of the 3.75 million marks at their disposal. And even this money was used less for political work with the masses and “mainly for . . . book premiums, newspapers and magazines, wreathes, gifts to comrade jubilarians and students of Party schools.”61 This resistance of basic organizations to engaging in “political work with the mases” was a persistent problem from the perspective of the Central Committee’s Finance Department, one that existed in the 1950s and that still existed three decades later.62 The increase in expenses in this area was correspondingly moderate. In 1964 (there are no figures for earlier years), the Central Committee’s Finance Department earmarked 6.1 million for political work with the masses in its budget; in 1989 it was 21.5 million. For “international political work,” by comparison, the SED provided 36 million marks in 1989. At least one thing can be concluded from these numbers: ideological transfer to its base was not a priority of Party leaders. The organizational goal of the Central Committee apparatus was to preserve the political order in the GDR and hence the power of the Party. In this respect, the ideological consolidation of the Party’s base apparently lost some of its importance. More important was to offer its own fulltime employees a system of incentives to keep them “in line” and prevent them from seeking more lucrative career paths outside the apparatus. A necessarily “growth-oriented” system like this, given wage developments in the GDR, cost money—more money than any spurious reasoning was able to divert from the state budget. It is therefore no surprise that the “treasurers” of the SED made such an effort to increase revenues from membership dues and profit transfers from Party enterprises. The increasing

336 | inside party headquarters

importance of this system of material incentives is reflected in the development of the SED’s most important expenditure item: its payroll.

The Salary Development of Central Committee Employees Here, too, it should be noted straightaway that salaries were not just an issue for fulltime functionaries under Honecker but had been under Ulbricht as well. It is not true that Party employees initially adhered to an ascetic ideal of the functionary and that only in the wake of a “loss of utopia” that began in the late 1960s did they discover an interest in “material incentives.” Income had always been important to employees in the Party apparatus and “Party workers” had always been well paid. Gustav Just, departmental head in the SED state executive committee of SaxonyAnhalt in 1950–52, notes with regard to his income at the time that with “500 marks plus 300 marks in tax-free expense allowances” one could “get by pretty well”63— especially considering that “workers in material production” received an average monthly gross wage of 225 marks.64 Walter Borning, as an instructor in the Central Committee’s “M Department” (postal surveillance), even got 1,000 marks in November 1952. In the fall of 1955, he demonstrated how important his pay was to him during a discussion with the Executive Organs Department, which wanted him to attend a special training course in Moscow. Borning, according to a file memo, showed “little modesty” and insisted on a “family allowance” of “at least 1000 marks a month”65—bearing in mind that in 1955 the average income of a gainfully employed East German was 360 marks.66 Borning’s departmental head, Gustav Röbelen, received about 3,000 marks, and even Röbelen’s secretary was paid around 560 marks. These were salaries that presumably made the special demands of serving in a “precarious organization” like the Central Committee apparatus more tolerable.67 For Peter F., taking a fulltime position in the apparatus of the FDJ in the early 1960s—with a salary structure comparable to that of the SED apparatus—was so enticing financially that he gave up his post as manager of a steel foundry subsidiary. When asked about his reasons for changing jobs, he said that, apart from his conviction about the “project of the GDR,” “[t]here was maybe one more aspect. I earned 750 marks before taxes as manager of the foundry, so my take take-home pay was less than 500. The FDJ offered me 900, and I had two kids already. It offered me a little more security, in other words.”68 It is clear that the Central Committee apparatus and the SED Party apparatus offered better salary conditions even in the 1950s. A comparable situation existed with State Security, which “operated with massive financial incentives and rewards” in the early years.69 The idea that Ulbricht had “always been stingy” with the employees of the Party apparatus70 is therefore just as questionable as the evocations of militant idealism among the reconstruction generation. Which is not to say that the political staff who joined Party headquarters in the 1950s did not have idealistic motives. For the vast majority of them, however, signing a contract with the personnel office of the Central Committee meant a considerable improvement in their

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income. On the other hand, a multitude of career opportunities opened up in the state and economy during the 1960s for college graduates in particular. Moreover, since the early 1960s income differentials were on the rise in the GDR, with salary increases for leading state and economic functionaries.71 As a result, SED cadre policymakers found themselves in a competitive environment. “Cadre recruited from the economy for work in the Party apparatus,” so the usual lament, “received higher salaries in their former jobs.”72 Time and again “these differences have given rise to problems, particularly with the appointment . . . of senior employees or instructors.” “Nobody in the Central Committee, no matter how loyal a comrade he was, worked out of conviction alone,” says former head of the Department of Basic Industry Horst Wambutt, in confirmation of these conclusions.73 The scene described at the start of this book, in which Walter Rädel, without being asked, tells the other customers at the Hopfenstube on Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin how much he earns, shows one thing in particular: that Rädel saw his “value” as a human being expressed in his high salary. He had internalized the notion of a meritocracy, the Party’s increasing emphasis on the performance principle, which ultimately rested on income differentials.74 In the 1950s, how much a Central Committee employee earned depended on their age as well as their status—political staffers in the functional departments were paid less than those in the specialist and ideological departments, and the latter less than division heads.75 Effective April 1, 1960, “several performance levels [were] introduced for all groups of political employees.” An employee could qualify for the next-higher level by means of individual achievement, foreign-language skills or by earning a degree.76 Social-policy measures were also supposed to help make the Party apparatus a more attractive employer. In June 1968, for example, the Central Committee Secretariat introduced a voluntary additional pension scheme based on a recently issued decree of the Council of Ministers.77 Once they reached retirement age, SED employees would receive 50 to 60 percent of their last monthly earnings, depending on their salary level, in addition to their regular pension claims.78 In the 1980s, the special medical care for members of the Central Committee apparatus and the Party leadership was expanded. As in the hospitals for government and State Security employees, the Central Committee polyclinic made “high-quality diagnostic equipment such as computer tomography scanners” available to a small group of individuals. Equipment of this sort was not available at regular healthcare centers.79 Finally, the financial and cadre policymakers of the Central Committee apparatus waged their “cadre battle” with the help of various special payments. In 1976, the Central Committee Secretariat gave departmental heads access to the bonus fund, increasing it several times in the years that followed. Thus, in 1976 the Department of Culture got 6,750 marks (for twenty-six employees); by 1981, the figure (for virtually the same number of employees) had risen to 12,150 marks.80 In June of 1984, the Central Committee Secretariat passed a resolution “on the recognition of the many years of commendable work by fulltime employees of the Party apparatus,”81 meaning all those who had worked for at least fifteen years in the Party apparatus received an

338 | inside party headquarters

annual special payment of 1,000 marks or more. This allowance—together with the simultaneous increase in the salary regulation—cost the Main Treasury of the Central Committee 43 million marks a year from 1985 on—more than double what it provided the SED basic organizations for their political work with the masses.82 Most notably, however, in addition to these age- and performance-related bonuses, the Central Committee’s salary commission beefed up the basic salaries of Party workers. For example, the “Salary Regulation for the Central Committee” effective as of June 1, 1974,83 improved the incomes of departmental heads by 400 to 500 marks compared with the regulation of 1969. Their total income—still comprised of their basic salary plus an “expense allowance”—thus ranged between 2,800 and 3,000 marks as of 1974. The Secretariat upped the salaries for all political employees again in 1980,84 and yet again in 1984.85 Depending on their performance level, political employees of the Central Committee now received between 1,400 and 2,500 marks a month compared with a range of 1,000 to 1,700 marks ten years earlier. Whereas departmental head Herbert Häber had a monthly income of 2,630 marks in 1973,86 his successor Gunter Rettner received a minimum of 4,200 marks under the salary regulation of 1984. This translates to an increase in income of more than 40 percent within a period of twelve years. By contrast, the average gross monthly income in the GDR during the same period rose “only” 25 percent, from 836 in 1973 to 1,140 in 1985.87 It must be emphasized once again that the substantial salary increases of Central Committee employees and even departmental heads were not a unilateral privilege. A Central Committee departmental head had a lower salary than a minister, and even the salaries of Stasi generals, between 4,000 and 6,500 marks in the late 1980s, were on average higher than those of senior Central Committee functionaries.89 Political rank, then, did not immediately mean that one was paid above the level of a “subordinate” state apparatus. Rather, the rising salaries of Central Committee employees fit the general pattern of income differentials in the GDR during these years.90 They show that the apparatus, in this respect too, was part of East German society and subject to the transformations taking place in it. Central Committee employees may have been different from the higher ranks of the socialist service class in that ideology for many of them still played an important role in the 1980s. To maintain organizational loyalty and recruit new functionaries, however, cadre managers at all levels did not rely on an intensification of ideological training but on a system of material incentives. This system of incentives was not based on money, the potential of which was inevitably limited in an economy of scarcity like the GDR. As touched upon in chapter 6, it relied first and foremost on a multitude of minor privileges: access to coveted vacation spots, better stocked Exquisit and Delikat stores on the ground floor of the Central Committee building, considerably shorter waits for a telephone connection at home for political employees, allocation of a newly built apartment. While Central Committee employees were relatively well-paid under Ulbricht and had their pick of

“funding loyalty”? | 339

 







 






 









 



























    

  



 



 







 
 
 

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Diagram 7.1. Income development of Central Committee employees, 1950–84.88 apartments and vacations spots, it was a novelty of the Honecker era that dozens of senior Central Committee employees were promoted to the status of Central Committee members. The election of Central Committee departmental heads as Central Committee members illustrates to what extent Erich Honecker personally sought to cement political loyalty by dispensing symbolic capital. Honecker, like Brezhnev, was more interested in a “loyal than a . . . qualified exercise of office” on the part of his leading functionaries. He placed a premium on keeping trusted functionaries in office as long as possible, and he severely punished any breach of trust—as learned the hard way by his “expert on German affairs” Herbert Häber.91 Though somewhat at variance with the Soviet ideal type, he can be described as a communist Party leader who used patronage as an instrument of power.92

The General Secretary as a Patron In the 1950s, it was extremely rare for a Central Committee departmental head to be an elected Central Committee member. And if so, then it was always a prominent functionary the likes of Karl Schirdewan. As of the early 1960s, however, their number began to multiply, so that by the late 1980s twenty-six out of forty departmental heads were members of what was formally the Party’s highest decision-making body. The criterion for getting onto the slate of candidates drawn up by the Central Com-

340 | inside party headquarters

mittee’s Department of Cadre Issues in coordination with Honecker in the run-up to a Party congress was either a good personal relationship with Honecker or it resulted from the objective of “cementing the authority of the heads of certain departments,” as Wolfgang Herger puts it.93 Often both criteria applied. At the Sixth Party Congress in January 1963, two heads of core political-ideological departments, Horst Sindermann (Agitation) and Honecker confidant Horst Dohlus (Party Organs), were elected to the Central Committee. It is uncertain to what extent Honecker was able to bypass Ulbricht in arranging this—the latter was no stranger to the instrument of granting political favors in the form of high elective offices, having helped his own personal assistant Richard Herber (first secretary of the Central Committee Party organization) achieve the rank of Central Committee member. Honecker’s influence was more evident, of course, at the Seventh Party Congress in 1967, when Kurt Tiedke (head of the Propaganda Department), who’d been close to Honecker ever since their time together at the Moscow Party School (1954–55), became a Central Committee member. Fritz Müller (Cadre Issues), Hermann Pöschel (Research and Technical Development, the right-hand man of Günter Mittag) and Johannes Hörnig (Science) likewise joined the ranks of the Central Committee in 1967. Five departmental heads became Central Committee members during the Eighth Party Congress in 1971: Siegfried Lorenz (Youth), Paul Markowski (International Relations), Heinz Geggel (Western Department), Bruno Kiesler (Agriculture) and Gisela Glende (Office of the Politbüro). In the case of Markowski, there had likely been an interest in enhancing his international reputation by making him a Central Committee member. No explanation is required as to why Gisela Glende, Honecker’s office director, was elected. Geggel and Kiesler enjoyed particular prestige: Geggel had been an antifascist in his earlier days, and Kiesler had the reputation of being the “first tractor driver of the GDR,” the “Adolf Hennecke [i.e., Stakhanovite activist] of agriculture.”94 In 1976, the Central Committee elected Werner Hering, Herbert Scheibe, Manfred Feist and Wolfgang Herger as new members, followed in 1978 by Herbert Häber, Honecker’s most important specialist on “Western policy.” Only in 1981, with the Tenth Party Congress, did the “technocrats” in the apparatus, the departmental heads for economic policy, have their turn: Gerhard Trölitzsch (Construction), Gerhard Tautenhahn (Machine Building), Günter Ehrensperger (Planning and Finance) and Helmut Koziolek (Socialist Economic Management) all became new members. In addition, Ursula Ragwitz (Culture) and Werner Eberlein, deputy head of the Party Organs Department at the time, were also elected to the highest executive body of the Party. Both were on good terms with the General Secretary.95 Being elected to the Central Committee—or the Volkskammer, in the case of Wolfgang Herger and Horst Wambutt—meant more income for these individuals. Every Central Committee member and every Volkskammer deputy generally received an expense allowance of several hundred marks.96 This certainly wasn’t much compared with the income of a Bundestag member. But it was a respectable bonus

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considering how seldom the Volkskammer or the Central Committee convened. More importantly, though, it meant an increase in political capital. If, according to Wolfgang Herger, you were not just a departmental head but a member of the Central Committee, “it simply carried more weight” when you were speaking “at the regional leadership . . . or at a regional delegates’ conference.”97 Belonging to the Central Committee or the Volkskammer was a symbolic distinction, as was being in the entourage of their “patron,” Erich Honecker. The bestowing of high honors likewise served this function.98 Even at the center of power, awards were a greater distinction than being elected to the Central Committee—those who hadn’t been considered for such honors called the holidays when these awards were bestowed, the “day of long faces.”99 Awards and honors had played an important role for Central Committee employees under Ulbricht as well. Gertrud Liebing, the technical employee in telecommunications, told her cellmate and MfS informant in late 1966 that Central Committee division head Otto Reissmann almost died of envy because “on his 60th birthday he only received the Order of Merit of the GDR.” Reissmann’s Party secretary and his departmental head had been “awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in Bronze and Silver, respectively, on the same occasion.”100 It is striking here, too, that the number of “Heroes of Labor” and recipients of the Karl Marx Medal among Central Committee departmental heads increased dramatically starting in the 1970s. What the honorees had in common was an antifascist past, certain personal ties to the General Secretary, and above all at least two years of service in the central apparatus. The first Karl Marx Medal101 to be awarded to a sitting departmental head went to Horst Dohlus, head of the Party Organs Department, in 1979.102 The medal, which came with prize money of 20,000 marks, was bestowed the same year on Dohlus’s deputy Werner Eberlein as well as on the head of the International Information Department, Manfred Feist, who happened to be Erich Honecker’s brother-in-law. Heinz Geggel, head of the Agitation Department, got it in 1981, then again in 1986, having also become a Hero of Labor in 1984. Klaus Sorgenicht, head of the Department of State and Legal Affairs and the longest-serving departmental head until 1989, was awarded the Karl Marx Medal in 1983, as were Hermann Pöschel in 1984, Fritz Müller in 1985, Gerhard Trölitzsch in 1986, and Helmut Koziolek in 1987. Gisela Glende, Honecker’s longtime head of the Office of the Politbüro, was likewise awarded the Karl Marx Medal twice. Far more clearly than membership in the Central Committee, being a recipient of the Karl Marx Medal reflected an informal hierarchy, an inner circle of senior apparatus employees around the General Secretary.103 In his tendency to bestow high honors on employees he particularly valued or thought to be particularly important Honecker proved to be a true disciple of Brezhnev.104 The decoration with elective offices and prestigious medals was therefore not limited to Party functionaries. More and more ministers and state secretaries, too, joined the Central Committee under Honecker. But the Central Committee departmental heads were likely the most highly decorated status group and the one

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Figure 7.1. The General Secretary as patron: Gisela Glende, director of the Office of the Politbüro, receives the Karl Marx Medal (1985). Source: BArch, Bild 183/1985–1030–0022. with the most Central Committee members across the GDR in the 1980s. This was surely a deliberate strategy on the part of the General Secretary—patronage aimed at creating a sense of loyalty. The literature until now has tended to make a distinction between the patron-client networks in the CPSU of Brezhnev105 and the SED, the latter supposedly being characterized more by a “respect for the rules of procedure and for formalized and depersonalized administrative behavior.”106 This difference likely existed. But Honecker’s behavior should be a warning not to overemphasize it. This is all the more the case since Honecker was solicitous in rather unconventional ways with employees who were particularly close to him. Gisela Glende, director of the Office of the Politbüro, is a case in point. When she had to undergo an eye operation in 1974, he not only made sure she was operated on by a specialist in Moscow; he sent a specialist from Greifswald with her to Moscow who was to continue giving her medical care once she got back to the GDR. Upon her return, Honecker provided his office manager with “a big BMW” for her weekly trips from Berlin to Greifswald, “because Frau Glende cannot ride in a car that jolts her too much.”107 On multiple occasions Honecker gave material and monetary perks to employees leaving the apparatus. Ernst Altenkirch was one example, removed from his function as a political employee in the Central Party Control Commission in early July 1974.

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In this case the First Secretary felt compelled to sweeten Altenkirch’s departure—one of the few remaining Old Communists in the apparatus—by continuing to pay him his regular salary and letting him drive his staff car.108 Karl B., the deputy director of a functional department, was “gifted upon his retirement the car he’d been given to drive.”109 And the Central Committee departmental heads who left office in the 1980s due to old age—including Karl Raab, head of the Financial Administration and Party Enterprises Department—were granted “honorary pensions” by Honecker by way of cadre chief Fritz Müller. According to the findings of an internal investigative committee set up in November 1989, these were higher “than the net salary” they had received until that point in time.110 The fact that, in these instances too, Erich Honecker was “looking after” his generational peers, who also happened to be the last “antifascists” among the group of departmental heads, points again to a core element of the patron-client system that likewise characterized his “general-secretary system”:111 people that Honecker knew well and trusted were of outsized importance to him. If he had to let them go, then the Party and society owed it to them—his generation, himself included—to do so with the requisite honors and privileges. In short, employees at Party headquarters, who already earned good salaries in the early 1950s, profited immensely over the years from the combined effects of a general increase in salaries and greater income differentials, the latter securing them their position in the upper income bracket of the GDR. What we don’t see is a unilateral income privilege for “Party workers.” Rather, their salary regulations remained in line with the salary scales of high-ranking state and economic functionaries. By contrast, the Central Committee apparatus itself was affected by greater income differentials. The income gap between “simple” political employees and departmental heads visibly widened in the Honecker era. The effect was amplified by special payments to “long-serving” employees as well as by the elective offices and accolades available to Central Committee departmental heads in particular. It was amplified even more by the possibilities open to leading functionaries within the apparatus to multiply their capital by violating the official laws of the apparatus.

A Corrupt Apparatus? In November 1989, under pressure from the rank and file, the Krenz leadership set up an investigative committee to look into abuses of authority and corruption in Honecker’s SED.112 The committee played an important role in the SED’s transformation into the PDS (with an intermediate stage as the SED-PDS), criminalizing Honecker’s policy of patronage and the violations of the law by Party functionaries who sought to gain personal advantages and/or enrich themselves. It undergirded the narrative, developing since October 1989, that a small and corrupt leadership clique had ruined the Party “morally and ethically in a disgraceful way.”113 In doing so it helped the SED reorient itself in times of radical upheaval—but does not really serve historians as a useful interpretive aid.

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Because even if Honecker violated the Party statute by granting “honorary pensions” through the Cadre Department (which seems by no means certain), his position as General Secretary gave him—in line with the Party statute—considerable political leverage. At the same time, the SED (like the CPSU) lacked any normative rules that would have circumscribed this power, as well as lacking regulatory bodies that could have enforced these rules against the General Secretary.114 It is important to note that what the investigative committee dressed up in the language of decline in the late fall of 1989—including the bestowing of medals and privileges by Honecker in exchange for loyalty—was an unquestioned (or seldom questioned) part of the general power mechanisms used by state socialist regimes prior to 1989.115 It is also clear that Honecker’s policy of patronage had consequences for the organizational culture of the central apparatus. This can be seen in the reaction of Central Committee departmental head Günter Glende to the abovementioned gratuity Honecker rewarded to Altenkirch when the latter left his position at the Central Party Control Commission: “Glende speaks in hushed tones about one they let go. He’s still getting paid. 1,650 marks. That might not be much. But he has no responsibility. It’s like a pension. He can drive the Wartburg he has as long as he works for them. Glende says something in hushed tones, then adds: It’s thanks to Erich.”116 The fact that the pension that Glende described as “not much” was still twice as high as the average income of a working person in the GDR needs no further comment. What matters here is that Glende, rather than being upset by Honecker’s having granted this perk, found “Erich’s” behavior remarkable in this instance. In December 1989, Glende was considered one of the main culprits when it came to corruption in the apparatus. His comments suggest that he was closely observing how the General Secretary was behaving in this regard. It would therefore not be far-fetched to claim that it was Honecker himself whose behavior diminished the importance of formal rules at Party headquarters. He himself helped lower the threshold of the abuse of power and personal enrichment. This is not to say that corruption and the abuse of authority were a peculiarity of the “general-secretary system” of Honecker (just as these practices in the CPSU were not limited to the Brezhnev era117). In chapter 1 it was mentioned that Anton Plenikowski—a Social Democrat and teacher in the 1920s, and from 1946 to 1954 the head of the Central Secretariat’s, later the Central Committee’s Department of State and Legal Affairs—“secured a villa for his own personal use in the Bohnsdorf district of Berlin” in the spring of 1946.118 The “system of favoritism and corruption” developed by the head of the Finance Department Karl Raab and his deputy Paul Hockarth119 was also mentioned. Hockarth, the Central Auditing Commission reported in 1962, had imported into the GDR large quantities of spirits and suit fabric, among other things, through the trade relations with West Germany of several Zentrag companies under his department. He distributed these goods as gifts to Party and state functionaries he considered important.

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Rudolf Krankemann, on the other hand, according to an MfS wiretap transcript, broke the rules in his role as a Central Committee division head responsible for Party “apartments and accommodations.” Krankemann’s tasks included reserving sometimes dozens of hotel rooms on short notice for conferences and congresses organized by the Central Committee. This was extremely difficult in Berlin back then, a city still destroyed by the war.120 His recipe for success was to ensure the cooperation of hotel operators by privately enabling them to temporarily put up family and friends in apartments he had at his disposal as the Central Committee’s housing manager. This was yet another instance of the kind of informal swap that was typical of Soviet “shadow economies” and which many Central Committee employees were involved in. One of these was Gerhard F., a senior employee of the Central Committee’s chauffeur service who engaged in similar “barter transactions” in the 1960s. F. would get “free spare parts” for TV sets from the director of a television factory while the director, for his part, “received in exchange from F[…] a ‘Tatra’-model staff car decommissioned by the Central Committee.”121

Favoritism in the Shadow Economy The last two examples—Rudolf Krankemann and Gerhard F.—are a reminder not to be too careless in using a notion of corruption that only became a normative guideline in the fall of 1989. The planned economy of the GDR would have hardly functioned without informal exchange transactions and “unplanned” economic activity. Numerous Central Committee employees—Paul Hockarth, Rudolf Krankemann, Gerhard F.—were economic actors ex officio as members of the Finance Department and the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department. They were in control of the infrastructure apparatus and the SED’s “economic empire.” They managed the guesthouses, vehicles and building services, as well as being responsible for Partyowned enterprises in the West. And, by dint of their office, these functionaries were actors in the shadow economy of the GDR. They could not have fulfilled their tasks if, like every other economic functionary, they hadn’t cultivated networks and engaged in barter transactions.122 True, the Central Auditing Commission limited such practices to a certain degree during the Ulbricht era. In 1962 it wrote a scathing report on the “favoritism” (Freundschaftspolitik) of Karl Raab and Paul Hockarth.123 But apparently it was not the favoritism in itself that posed the problem in the commission’s eyes; it was the fact that Hockarth had “handled Party property and funds irresponsibly.” There are no records from the Honecker era of such reports from the auditing commission. The only sources detailing corruption at Party headquarters are from the MfS starting in the 1970s—e.g., on Josef Steidl, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation, who maintained “an intense acquaintance” with Manfred Feist, the brother-in-law of Erich Honecker. Evidently Steidl was very good at using this connection with the General Secretary.

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In early 1970, the MfS learned from Josef Steidl that, “often under the pretext of acting on instructions from the First Secretary,” he was doing business whose “financial sources . . . were anyone’s guess” and that, among other things, he was sending “gifts abroad to socialist countries,” to functionaries of socialist “brother parties.”124 The Stasi reported similar things about Julius Cebulla, Steidl’s deputy. Cebulla was procuring tools from the Nonsocialist Economic Area by way of East German companies with branches in West Berlin, these companies receiving “vacation spots from the department’s quota in return”125—a horizontal process of exchange that was quite commonplace in the shadow economy of the GDR and other state-socialist societies. The West German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution also learned that Steidl repeatedly “showed up for the birthdays of Politbüro members with the managers of his Western companies and presented costly gifts, obviously ‘Western goods.’”126 This is likely to have made him well-liked among even the highest-ranking Party leaders. Thanks to “his” Western companies, Steidl had access to economic resources he was able to convert into political capital in the economy of scarcity of the GDR well into the mid-1970s. Gerhard Tautenhahn, minister of general machine building, agricultural machinery and vehicle construction, acted in a similar way in the late 1980s, according to one report by an unofficial collaborator of the Stasi. Tautenhahn had worked for many years as head of the Central Committee’s Department of Machine Building before he took up his ministerial post in 1986 and was therefore probably well-connected at Party headquarters. Conversely, he took it upon himself to do the occasional favor for his comrades in the apparatus, being in a position, for example, to deliver cars to private individuals from central state reserves, with no waiting time and “bypassing the state machine-building trade, which is to say at a ten-percent discount.”127 Whenever the minister “paid a visit to the Central Committee,” the informer’s report went on, he “always had an order to deliver a car from the Central Committee’s IA Department.” Presumably this was a reference to the Department of International Relations, whose employees, according to the informer, “provided all their relatives with cars from state reserves.”128 The informer does not explicitly state if Tautenhahn was simply doing his comrades a favor by supplying them with cars or if it was part of an exchange network. The question is moot in the case of Günter Glende, head of the Central Committee’s Administration of Economic Enterprises Department and perhaps the functionary at Party headquarters with the most resources at his disposal. According to a Stasi wiretap transcript, Rudolf E. described his former boss as someone who “organizes, e.g., . . . the hotels when foreign delegations come. He organizes state funerals too. He organizes literally everything. He has to supply the office equipment with paper, imported or not. He provides the televisions for Politbüro members—or this and that.”129 It seemed only natural that an organizer and “doer” like Glende could not always follow the letter of the law or adhere to the work regulations of the Central Committee under the terms of state socialism. And he didn’t have to. His marriage to Honecker’s office manager, Gisela Glende, was all the protection he needed.

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Glende availed himself of the warehouse of the Customs and Goods Traffic Control Office for the purpose of his “business dealings”—a storehouse of Western goods confiscated at border crossings. He was officially allowed to take from here any Western products the Central Committee needed. Glende also used this resource to foster his relationships within the Big House—e.g., by “personally handing out converters” for the reception of Western television to the employees he “used for ‘private favors.’”130 He also handed out color TVs to departmental heads and Central Committee secretaries—in November 1974, for example, he wanted to give one “to Inge Lange as long as she’s still living in Berlin,” and he “also needed one for Paul Markowski [who] wanted to have one too.”131 In the early 1980s, the “secret king” of the Big House went even one step further, in the recollection of Wolfgang Herger. He bought his department “Neckermann houses132 and had them set up here in Pankow, [but] didn’t offer them to everyone, just to departmental heads XYZ, whom he hoped would have special influence . . . . Glende offered me one too, but I declined.”133 Glende proved to be a virtuoso at networking, providing high-ranking Party functionaries and their families with converters, color televisions and even prefab houses. There was no explicit prohibition, of course, on moving into a prefab house that any “deserving Party worker” was officially entitled to. But everyone involved—the recipients and Glende himself—implicitly knew they were violating a kind of rule or norm, according to which the representatives of an egalitarian system had to behave modestly in the eyes of the outside world.134 Following the logic of inclusion and exclusion, Glende’s material favors were part of an informal network that created “trust and mutual obligations,”135 thereby expanding Glende’s scope of maneuver.

Enrichment and Personal Gain It was mentioned above that in early December 1989, at the delegates’ meeting of the Central Committee, Glende was described as the “main culprit” with regard to the “abuse of office and personal enrichment.”136 He was the first Central Committee departmental head to be expelled from the SED. It so happened that Glende did not use the Western products from the abovementioned warehouse for the sole purpose of “fostering relationships”; he used them to furnish his own apartment as well. In the second half of the 1980s he had employees in his department procure “from the Nonsocialist Economic Area a whole range of automobile extras”—spare parts and various equipment—“and other articles that could only be used for private purposes, and this to the tune of several thousand . . . valuta marks.”137 Glende, furthermore, was evidently a poor role model in his department. In late 1982, an “investigation” by the Central Committee’s Cadre Department revealed that the deceased head of the catering / warehousing division, Rüthard Stanislawski, had “for years trafficked in Party property (specifically food and luxury goods) . . . for his own personal benefit.” He left behind “a very big bank account as well as an incredible amount of valuable crystal,” or so Stasi unofficial collaborator “Renn” learned from his contacts at Central Committee headquarters.138

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Josef Steidl, too, used the opportunities available to him as the head of the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation, and not always in the interests of the Party. He was also in it for personal gain. According to Stasi reports, he used his “stays in socialist and nonsocialist countries, intended for the fulfilment of department tasks, . . . to frequent bars, restaurants, cabarets and other places of entertainment with female companions.”139 In doing so he regularly exhibited “carelessness and violated the rules of conspiracy,” according to the secret police. In November 1972, Steidel, for example, received a visit from two young Czechoslovakian women who worked “at the reception of the sanatorium in Marienbad where Comrade Steidl had been staying” during his spa treatment. The MfS was “doubtful that these were Party contacts.” And during the 1973 Autumn Trade Fair in Leipzig, Steidl assured an “extremely attractive . . . female from the reception” of the Interhotel that he could get her “a job with the Central Committee of the SED.” The Stasi, by its own account, had had to intervene to prevent this from happening.140 In the cases of Glende and Steidl, participation in the shadow economy and seeking personal gain went hand in hand. Both, moreover, had their own channels of communication to the General Secretary: Glende through his marriage to Honecker’s office manager Gisela Glende, Steidl through his friendship with Honecker’s brotherin-law Manfred Feist. But there were also a number of Central Committee functionaries who were neither close to Honecker’s inner circle nor involved in the shadow economy of the GDR and who nevertheless enriched themselves and sought their own personal advantage by way of the political resources their offices made available to them. These functionaries indicate that behaviors which in the fall of 1989 seemed like corruption or a manifestation of system decay under Honecker were at least partially inherent to the system. The fundamental problem of a Party elite under state socialism was that the Party itself merely “conferred” this elite status. When Central Committee departmental heads the likes of Walter Borning or Werner Hering were removed from office prematurely, as described in chapters 5 and 6, they may have obtained compensatory positions, but nothing remained of their power and authority. In this respect, it made sense for the holders of temporary elite positions to translate their status into material capital while they were still in office. This need was probably the reason why division head Rudolf Krankemann enriched himself in the early 1950s with the property left behind by “fugitives from the Republic.” The need was evidently reinforced by the general diversification of lifestyles and modes of self-expression in East German society since the 1970s.141 In the case of Heinz Meyer as well, the drive to accumulate possessions as a mark of distinction seems the most likely motivation. From 1960 to 1963, Meyer had acted as deputy head of the Department of Basic Industry before serving as departmental head in the State Planning Commission and finally, in the late 1970s, becoming an honorary member of the Central Committee’s Central Auditing Commission. Meyer, according to an unofficial collaborator of State Security highly placed in the

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State Planning Commission, was well-known as “a comrade who is everywhere trying to establish ties that enable him to derive personal advantages, especially when it comes to building his dacha.”142 “As of 1972, [Meyer owned] a very expensive dacha in the north of Berlin” along with a motorboat, whose motor he had “brought back illegally from a business trip to Berlin.” “At work he talked for hours with Comrades S.[. . . ], K[. . .] and S[. . .] about building dachas and different types of cars.” In late 1979, the MfS came to the conclusion that Meyer was extremely interested “in procuring consumer goods, such as deep-freezers, furniture, etc.” and was “enlisting employees and vehicles to this end.”143 When, in early 1980, it was discovered that “Comrade Meyer has furnished his apartment with rococo-style furniture” allegedly originating from export production in the GDR and whose procurement had unleashed “considerable discussion in the combine concerned,” the MfS employee working on the case had “for the first time a concrete instance . . . in which Meyer’s dealings can be proven.”144 And yet nothing happened to Meyer. While it is true that he was “handled” by secret police until his death in 1987, there is no evidence that the head of the Central Committee’s Cadre Department, Fritz Müller, or the chairman of the Central Auditing Commission, Gustav Seibt, were ever informed about Meyer’s activities—which, given the culture of orality that characterized the interaction between the MfS and Party headquarters, does not mean that no such information was exchanged. Surely, as a member of the Central Auditing Commission of the Central Committee of the SED, Meyer was a senior functionary whom no Stasi departmental head, not even Erich Mielke, would tangle with without good reason—especially considering that the MfS was aware of much more severe cases of corruption among leading Central Committee members. The case of Karl Seidel follows a similar pattern of considerable personal enrichment and abuse of office yet no Stasi prosecution.145 As noted above, Seidel was the son of a doctor, had studied medicine in Leipzig in the early 1950s, and served from 1971 to 1978 as the director of the Charité Psychiatric Clinic in Berlin. In 1978, he became a division head in the Central Committee’s Department of Health Policy, then, in the fall of 1981, he succeeded Werner Hering when the latter was brought down on account of his plans to raise the pay of nursing staff. Seidel was the perpetrator of what was probably the biggest case of individual corruption in the Central Committee apparatus. The MfS gave its “special operational case,” launched in 1986, the telling code name “Dealer.” In view of his bourgeois origins, his career and his professional reputation, what happened is hard to grasp. In any case, Seidel was not involved in the shadow economy of the GDR. It is true that before joining the Big House he added another, informal level to his official business ties between the Charité clinic and the West German Siemens Corporation. Siemens, at any rate, felt obliged in the 1980s to “thank” him for their “many years of business with computer tomography scanners” by supplying him with high-end household and entertainment products.146 But his day-to-day work as head of the Central Com-

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mittee’s Department of Health Policy in the mid-1980s, when he began his illegal activities, was not characterized by business practices of this sort. In fact, the case of Seidel is an almost ideal-typical example of how leading socialist cadre endeavored to make the temporary elite status granted to them by the Party more permanent, i.e., to convert it into more durable types of capital. Added to which, Seidel was clearly consumer-oriented. He emulated a bourgeois lifestyle of the kind exemplified by the West German colleagues he met at conferences and congresses. And so Seidel and his wife furnished their home and weekend cottage with “high-quality period furniture and technical consumer goods.” Both owned a car, and they also had two dogs—the reason why, in the summer of 1989, Seidel bought a Volkswagen Passat from West Berlin, to have a means of transporting them.147 Starting in 1984, Seidel and his wife, or his former colleague Thorsten K., “periodically” made shopping trips to West Berlin, misusing his diplomatic passport to this end. According to one MfS report, he sometimes got “the permits for such trips by pretending to be on official business.”148 He would go to the Europa Center shopping plaza on Breitscheidplatz, an electronics store close to Nollendorfplatz or, together with his wife, cosmetics and fashion stores on Tauentzienstrasse. He bought various technical gadgets—from a voice recorder to a voltage detector—and household appliances such as a coffee machine or, “at his wife’s insistence, an icemaker.”149 But that’s not all. When Seidel had to have kidney stones removed he did not go to the government hospital of the GDR but to a specialist in Vienna “by exploiting his function as departmental head . . . in the Central Committee of the SED.” And this despite the fact that, at least in State Security’s estimation, there was “no need from a medical point of view.”150 For his wife, Seidel organized an “annual study visit to Austria.”151 Up to this point, Seidel’s activities can be classified as abuse of authority. They gain a criminal dimension by the fact that he tried to secure additional sources of income and, according to the report of the East German attorney general from December 1989, committed “acts of customs fraud” to this end.152 By May 1986 at the latest, according to MfS sources, he began buying up “high-end computer and video technology as well as technical consumer goods” in West Berlin and selling these to secondhand stores in East Berlin and Leipzig. The high selling prices for such goods in the GDR left him with a handsome profit. In October 1987 alone, according to the MfS, he sold personal computers and related equipment worth 276,950 East German marks, and by the fall of 1989 he had raked in 130,000 marks from these dealings. In response to suspicious secondhand dealers, he claimed “that the Department of Security Issues in the Central Committee of the SED and/or the regional leadership of the SED in Leipzig were aware of these transactions.”153 As shown in chapter 3, nothing happened to Seidel prior to October 1989— although the head of Main Department II, Lieutenant-General Krutsch, recommended to Mielke on several occasions that all the relevant material be forwarded to the Central Party Control Commission and/or the General Secretary. Either Mielke or Honecker must have been protecting Seidel: Mielke to retain an important contact person for Department XX/1, Honecker because Seidel was loyal as well as having

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solid professional credentials. Whatever the case, his “acts of customs fraud” are put into perspective to some extent by the fact that they were part of a broader pattern of everyday strategies of personal gain and enrichment that few functionaries eluded in the course of their careers. It was therefore nothing unusual in the 1970s and 1980s that a Central Committee departmental head not only owned a dacha but a lavishly furnished one—like Heinz Wildenhain’s “residential and recreational complex in Müggelheim,” or Karl Seidel and Heinz Meyer, who furnished theirs with antiques.154 It was not unheard of, and never punished, to disregard the law or the rules of Party headquarters when building a dacha—like in the case of Karl Seidel, who built his in a nature reserve, or Wildenhain, who had his “villa” built by the Party-owned enterprise Fundament. Wildenhain paid a low monthly rent of 200 marks for this property, which according to the MfS had a value of 230,000 marks.155 It was not unusual for senior Central Committee employees with a staff car and driver to use it for private purposes. This was the case with Werner Müller, a senior member of the Central Party Control Commission who had “his daughter picked up from Cottbus then driven back on a regular basis, 41 times in all, on the Party’s tab.”156 Many employees with a staff car and no chauffeur used the cars for private outings but did not deduct the cost.157 Departmental heads or those with connections could use the Central Committee’s workshop to have their cars repaired—Heinz Wildenhain, for example, who had his Peugeot repainted “with imported paint” and had “various components” installed, on the house.158 A number of departmental heads and senior employees spent weekend after weekend in Party homes that were actually intended for foreign guests, delegations or “deserving comrades.” Others availed themselves of the services of manual laborers in the employ of the Central Committee for work on their private apartments “without properly billing or paying” for it, as the investigative committee concluded in early December 1989.159 Already in early 1960, an unofficial collaborator of the Stasi voiced the opinion that the “maintenance of electrotechnical units at the Central Committee leaves much to be desired [because] house electricians are too often called away to work on the ‘dachas’ of certain employees.” The informer mentioned by name, among others, the first secretary of the Central Committee’s Party organization, Richard Herber.160

Conclusion Given the extent of personal enrichment and abuse of office, Wolfgang Herger speaks of “corruption by habit.” “Everyone does it, or more or less everyone does it, so I don’t see anything wrong with it either.”161 But did everyone do it? How typical was this behavior? To what extent was the gathering of substantial evidence due to the specific interests of State Security or the commissions tasked with “purging” the apparatus and Party in the fall of 1989? It is hard to reach a verdict. It is safe to assume that cases like Karl Seidel were the exception, in terms of both the scope of his electronics smuggling as well as the

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attendant risks. But the activities one level lower—the building of a private dacha using Party labor, the immediate procurement of cars from state reserves, moving into prefab Neckermann houses supplied by Günter Glende—such activities were widespread at the level of senior employees in the apparatus. The same goes for the day-to-day personal gain and enrichment occurring yet another level lower. The apparatus’s own reckoning with these practices may suggest another story. The mood was one of outrage when, at a delegates’ meeting on December 5, 1989, several hundred Central Committee employees were presented with the results of the internal investigation into the misconduct of senior Central Committee employees; the question as to whether “said comrades . . . still had the moral right to hold senior functions in this organization” was greeted with vigorous applause.162 But these reactions only partly speak for a “clean” apparatus. Rather, based on the materials examined here, it is fair to assume that a certain degree of acceptance for “minor” violations of the norm was part and parcel of the organizational culture of the Big House up to the fall of 1989. It was this very collective disposition in the “general staff of the Party,” however, that enabled the few highly corrupt functionaries at the top to do what they did in the first place. The relevant supervisory bodies, moreover, lost whatever influence they had. This goes in particular for the Central Auditing Commission. In the 1950s, it scrutinized Central Committee departments very thoroughly especially with respect to their financial activities—as far as we can know from its reports. This changed in the Honecker era. Not only did it now have in its ranks top functionaries like Heinz Meyer, with his abovementioned predilection for motorboats and rococo-style furniture; thanks to a statute adopted at the Ninth Party Congress in 1976, the body was now limited to monitoring the “effective organization and technical procedures of the work . . . of the Party apparatus.” The “rights and duties of the auditing commission with regard to spending controls,” concluded Kurt Seibt, the commission’s chair, in November 1989, had “never been so restricted . . . as [stipulated] in the statute that took effect after the Ninth Party Congress.”163 Regardless of whether or not Honecker intended the new statute to have this effect, it was of a piece with his political style, which valued individuals and their loyalty much more than formal rules. It would be a mistake, however, to see these increasing incidents of corruption in the 1970s as part of a narrative of decline. The forms of corruption described above are no reason to assume that the performance and assertiveness of Central Committee departments suffered in any way because of it. A whole range of Central Committee departments as well as the territorial apparatus164 actually gained influence in their policy fields in the 1960s and 1970s compared with the decade of building socialism. It can even be argued that the increasing number of corruption cases in the Honecker era would tend to suggest that the political and economic system of the GDR was becoming even more differentiated. From this perspective, corruption as a policy strategy— the existence of barter networks, for example—can be interpreted as the attempt of individual actors to reintegrate sub-bureaucracies and policy fields that were slowly

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drifting apart.165 The efforts of Karl Seidel and other functionaries to furnish their weekend houses with antiques, on the other hand, can be read as an expression of the progressive differentiation of elites. From this point of view, the corruption of the Big House does not indicate its moral decline or a loss of utopia. It points instead to modernization processes in East German society. In the context of modernization, however, the institutional order of Party dictatorship was proving to be increasingly dysfunctional.

Notes 1. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 5f., author’s transcript and audio recording. 2. Interview by Andrea Bahr and Sabine Pannen with Bruno Jura, October 3, 2010, 50. My thanks to Ms. Bahr and Ms. Pannen for sharing this interview with me. 3. Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 5f., author’s transcript and audio recording. 4. Ibid. 5. Interview by Andrea Bahr and Sabine Pannen with Bruno Jura, October 3, 2010, 50. 6. This and the following figures on the average gross earned income of East Germans are taken from Statistisches Jahrbuch der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 1989 (Berlin, 1990). 7. These statistics are taken from Einschätzung über die Anwendung der im Jahre 1974 für die politischen und technischen Mitarbeiter des Parteiapparates eingeführten Gehaltsregulative, undated [May 1980], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9242, fols. 75–104, here fols. 81, 90. 8. Gieseke, “Soziale Ungleichheit,” 195. 9. Thomas Ammer, “Strukturen der Macht—die Funktionäre im SED-Staat,” in Der SED-Staat: Neues über eine vergangene Diktatur, ed. Jürgen Weber (Munich,1994), 5–22, here 10. 10. For the debate on “punitive pension legislation,” i.e., the flat cap on pension payments to the highest Party functionaries and members of State Security among others, see Jens Gieseke, “Zwischen Privilegienkultur und Egalitarismus. Zu den Einkommensstrukturen des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit,” Deutschland Archiv 43, no. 3 (2010): 442f. 11. Belova and Lazarev, Funding Loyalty. 12. Kühl, Ganz normale Organisationen, 23f. 13. The party finances of the SED have been dealt with only marginally in the literature, and an indepth study of the role and development of Party enterprises is lacking in particular. Our knowledge is currently limited to the extraordinarily informative reports of the various committees and commissions tasked in the 1990s with appraising and repurposing the assets of the SED and the mass organizations of the GDR. See, esp., the report of the Unabhängige Kommission zur Überprüfung des Vermögens der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR from 1998; see also the Berichte der Untersuchungsausschüsse des Deutschen Bundestags (Bundestag 1994, Bundestag 1998). See also Volker Klemm, Korruption und Amtsmissbrauch in der DDR (Stuttgart, 1991); as well as André Steiner, “Bolsche Vita in der DDR? Überlegungen zur Korruption im Staatssozialismus,” in Geld, Geschenke, Politik: Korruption im neuzeitlichen Europa, ed. Jens Ivo Engels, Andreas Fahrmeir, and Alexander Nützenadel (Munich, 2009), 249–74. 14. Belova and Lazarev, Funding Loyalty, esp. 45–55. 15. Ibid., 8. 16. The plans and reports for the previous financial year (the latter usually entitled “Report on the Development of Party Finances”) have mostly been preserved since the mid-1950s in the meeting minutes of the Central Committee Secretariat (under “working protocols,” in the SAPMO collection at the Federal Archives). The following deliberations on the SED budget are based on these. 17. Quoted in the report of the Unabhängige Kommission zur Überprüfung des Vermögens der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR (UKPV) of 1998 (Bundestagsdrucksache 13/11353, August 24, 1998), 98.

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18. See a range of auditing reports of the Central Committee’s Finance Department in SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/22/2, passim. 19. These are the figures given by Kurt Seibt as chairman of the ZRK in mid-November 1989 at the Twenty-First ZRK Conference. In the context of ongoing social debates about abuses of power and corruption, the ZRK found itself under considerable pressure, which makes it unlikely that Seibt was doctoring the numbers, making them artificially low. Redemanuskript für die 21. Tagung der ZRK am 15.11.1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/16563, no folio numbers [15]. 20. The designation and number of revenue categories changed frequently in the first two decades of the SED’s existence. “License fees,” for example, were sometimes logged under “revenues from organizational work” and sometimes under revenue items. 21. The dues had to be paid monthly to the secretary of the respective basic organization. Every time a comrade paid his dues, he received a stamp to stick into his party membership book. This made it easy to check if a Party member was a “disciplined payer of dues.” 22. For comparative purposes, a Social Democrat in West Germany paid about 2.48 deutschmarks a month to his party at that point in time. Günter Olzog and Hans-J. Liese, Die politischen Parteien in Deutschland: Geschichte, Programmatik, Organisation, Personen, Finanzierung, 25th rev. ed. (Munich, 1999), 36ff. 23. Analyse des Arbeitsgebiets Beitragsabrechnung für das Jahr 1963, undated [March 1963], SAPMOBArch, DY 30/IV A 2/22/3, no folio numbers. 24. UKPV 1998, 151. 25. For a list of these enterprises, see ibid. 349–58. 26. Ibid., 157f. 27. UKPV 1998, 74. 28. Armin Volze, “Die Devisengeschäfte der DDR. Genex und Intershop,” Deutschland Archiv, 24, no. 11 (1991): 1145–59. 29. These Western companies were initially subordinate to the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation. In 1976 they were placed under the control of the Commercial Coordination Sector (KoKo) in the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Bundestag 1994, 105; UKPV 1998, 75. 30. Ibid., 131. 31. It is worth noting here that state financing of political parties in the Federal Republic constituted and still constitutes a considerable share of their budgets. Provided this financing followed clear and transparent rules, Western parties have helped themselves to money from the state budget whenever they had the power to do so. In the 1950s, for example, the CDU had no scruples about having the Federal Press Office finance their promotional literature and political ad campaigns. Frank Bösch, Macht und Machtverlust. Die Geschichte der CDU (Stuttgart, 2002), 157f. 32. Lokatis, Der rote Faden, 141f., points out, however, that the profit transfers of “organization-owned enterprises” were also entered as “license fees” in order to hide their provenance. But this practice must have dated from the late 1940s and early 1950s, because as of the mid-1950s these “profit transfers of Party enterprises” were openly designated as such. 33. It is worth noting here that the average monthly gross earned income in the GDR nominally tripled from 439 to 1,311 marks between 1955 and 1989. It is also worth noting that the revenues of the West German SPD increased from 40 to 205 million deutschmarks between 1955 and 1988, thus increasing five-fold. 34. In 1956, the SED received 56 million marks from the Ministry of Finance; in 1989, it was 72 million marks—a considerable decline in relative terms, given the quadrupling of its total revenues between 1959 and 1988. This trend of a relative decline in direct state allocations is even more pronounced for the CPSU into the 1960s (there are no data for subsequent years). In 1938, 65 percent of its income came from the budgets of the Soviet Republics or of the local and regional state authorities; in 1954, the figure had dwindled to 40 percent, and by the late 1950s a mere 10 percent at best. Belova and Lazarev, Funding Loyalty, 23. 35. Abteilung Finanzverwaltung und Parteibetriebe, Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr.: Gesamtfinanzplan der Partei für das Jahr 1985, 17.12.1984, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/4191,

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36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

fols. 104–14, here fol. 107. The SED’s total revenues in 1984 added up to a good 1.4 billion marks. This figure included about 100 million marks in state reimbursements. If the total amount of state reimbursements was 500 million, overall revenues would increase to 1.8 billion (plus 400 million), of which the 500 million constituted a share of 27 percent. To be sure, this is only a rough approximation of the Party’s budget structure during these years. As mentioned above, a thorough economic history of the SED would be a welcome addition to the literature. UKPV 1998, 131. Ibid. Ibid., 156. On the following, see also Handmaterial zur Entstehung, Entwicklung und Bedeutung der Zentrag, undated [1992], SAPMO-BArch, DY 63/3565, no folio numbers. According to calculations of the Unabhängige Kommission zur Überprüfung des Vermögens der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR, the sum total of state reimbursements for the years 1958 to 1988 was at least 13.3 billion East German marks. UKPV 1998, 131. These profit transfers were offset, however, by subsidies from the Party budget on the subscription and retail price of newspapers and magazines, which in 1989 cost 336.7 million marks. UKPV 1998, 157. UKPV 1998, 180. Every increase in Party dues unleashed relatively open criticism at the grassroots level. In the 1950s, employees of the Central Committee’s Financial Administration Department noted in every annual report that there were “difficulties collecting the right amount of dues from comrade LPG farmers, manual laborers, teachers and physicians” (e.g., Über die Erfüllung des Finanzplanes 1957, 21.3.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/603, fols. 21–25, here fol. 22) and until the end of the GDR there were “examples from all regions and districts of comrades [trying] to exclude certain parts of their income from their dues.” Teachers who resisted the inclusion of the teacher’s child allowance in calculating their Party dues were a particular thorn in the side of the Finance Department. Bericht über die Entwicklung der Finanzwirtschaft und des Finanzplanes der Partei im Jahre 1973, 25.3.1974, SAPMO-BArch, DY 63/3580, no folio numbers. ZK-Abteilung Finanzverwaltung und Parteibetriebe: Über die Erfüllung des Finanzplanes 1957, 21.3.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/603, fols. 21–25, here fol. 22. Bericht über den Einsatz einer Arbeitsgruppe der Abteilung Finanzverwaltung und Parteibetriebe im Bezirk Erfurt, undated [April/May 1965], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/22/2, no folio numbers. Aktennotiz [Einige Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung der Beitragskassierung im Bezirk Frankfurt/ Oder], April 1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV A 2/22/2, no folio numbers. UKPV 1998, 73. Information television is indicative of the technological euphoria that gripped Party leaders in the 1960s. The plan was to install a closed-circuit television system at Central Committee headquarters with a hundred units: twenty for members and candidates of the Politbüro and Central Committee secretaries, seventy-five for Central Committee departmental heads, and five for meeting rooms. The system would broadcast “regular daily news and information programs of ca. 20 minutes with reruns” and report on “the governmental practice of regional and district leaderships,” “worldwide comparisons of the state of science and technology,” “the fulfilment of economic tasks” and suchlike. There would also be “a daily review of the West German and West Berlin press.” The Office of the Politbüro even did a kind of casting, scouting for potential anchors among its technical staff. The project was discontinued after a couple of years, however. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Projekt- und Finanzplan für die zu errichtende Anlage des Informationsfernsehens der Zentralkomitees, 28.11.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1964, fols. 31–42, here fol. 38. Ibid., fol. 32. Here too the SED was following in the footsteps of the prewar workers’ parties which, unlike the bourgeois parties, always relied on a fulltime apparatus of employees. Bösch, Macht und Machtverlust, 156. UKPV 1998, 96. Central Committee departmental heads were responsible for allocating resources from the bonus and social fund. The amount of available resources depended on the number of employees in a given department. Mensing, SED-Hilfe, 52.

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52. ZK-Abteilung Kultur, Finanzplan für 1970, Betr.: Festveranstaltungen, 4.11.1969, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18591, no folio numbers. 53. Karl Raab an Paul Kubach (Zentrag): Sekretariatsbeschluss vom 4.4.1979—Druckereiobjekt für DVPA [Demokratische Volkspartei Afghanistans] [in Kabul], 29.2.1980, SAPMO-BArch, DY 63/1552, no folio numbers. 54. Bundestag 1994, 285. 55. Kroos and Marx, “‘Die Lösung eines Bauproblems von geradezu nationaler Bedeutung,’” 131, 133. 56. By way of comparison, the West German SPD had staff costs of 60 million deutschmarks in 1987, accounting for 28 percent of its total expenditures. Alf Mintzel, ed., Parteien in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Bonn, 1992), 561. 57. UKPV 1998, 347. 58. Whereas in 1938 the CPSU had allocated 37 percent of its total expenditures to “ideological work” or “political work with the masses,” by 1948 this figure was only 5 percent and would stay this way until the mid-1960s (and most likely later too). Belova and Lazarev, Funding Loyalty, 158. 59. Finanzpläne der ZK-Abteilung Kultur in SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18591, passim. As early as November 1969, the head of the Department of Culture, Arno Hochmuth, made a handwritten note that “after consulting on the phone with Comrade Würzberger [from the Central Committee’s Finance Department], . . . the costs for major programs (Lenin + Liberation) will not figure in the department’s budget.” By way of a “special resolution,” they would now be part of the state budget. ZK-Abteilung Kultur: Finanzplan für 1970, betr.: Festveranstaltungen., 4.11.1969, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18591, no folio numbers. 60. More specifically, this item comprised the “funds for the Marxist-Leninist training of Party members at Party schools and institutes” which in turn consisted of “holding classes, stipends, meals, wages, heating, lighting, purchases, construction projects.” 61. Über die Erfüllung des Finanzplanes 1957, 21.3.1958, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/603, fols. 21–25. 62. Rather than supporting the hypothesis of “de-ideologization,” this tends to point to the sustained resistance to ideological work among parts of the Party’s base. The latter also helps explain the persistent unpopularity of the Parteilehrjahr, the obligatory monthly sessions of political education. Allinson, Das Parteilehrjahr. 63. Just, Deutsch, 75. 64. Foitzik, “Sowjetische Ordnungspolitik,” 250. 65. SAPMO-BArch, BY 30/IV 2/11/v. 2998, fol. 83. Borning, of course, lost his training spot, which speaks for the fact that there was still some expectation that a Central Committee employee conform to the model of the ascetic Party worker. The incident, however, did not negatively impact Borning’s subsequent career in the Central Committee apparatus, as two years later he became acting head of the Department of Security Issues. 66. Gieseke, “Zwischen Privilegienkultur und Egalitarismus,” 448. 67. Gehaltsregelung für den Apparat des Zentralkomitees, 3.8.1955, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/ 441, fols. 147–49. 68. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 3, author’s transcript and audio recording. 69. Gieseke, “Zwischen Privilegienkultur und Egalitarismus,” 448. 70. Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse, 123. 71. André Steiner, “Die personelle Einkommensverteilung in den staatssozialistischen Ländern zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 91, no. 4 (2004): 484–89. 72. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Gehaltsregulativ für den Parteiapparat der SED, 17.10.1980, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/3549, fols. 143–65, here fol. 145. 73. Wambutt goes on: “They were well aware of the difference [in pay].” Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 5, 2013, 5f., author’s transcript and audio recording. 74. Steiner, “Die personelle Einkommensverteilung,” 484.

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75. Gehaltsregelung für den Apparat des Zentralkomitees, 3.8.1955, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/ 441, fols. 147–49. 76. Moreover, the “outstanding individual job performance of political employees” would be “rewarded with one-time bonuses.” Gehaltsregulativ für den Parteiapparat, gültig ab 1.4.1960, 17.2.1960, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/5337, fols. 87–104, here fol. 87. 77. “Verordnung über die freiwillige Versicherung auf Zusatzrente bei der Sozialversicherung” vom 15.3.1968. Grundsätze für die freiwillige zusätzliche Altersversorgung für Mitarbeiter der Partei; Beschluss des Sekretariats des ZK vom 19.6.1968, 20.6.1968, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9241, fols. 1–8, here fol. 1. 78. This made the Party apparatus considerably more attractive, e.g., for Central Committee preschool teachers employed by the Berlin Magistrate prior to 1970 (who had previously not been eligible for a supplementary insurance). “With the new pension scheme,” they now asked to join the Party apparatus. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Struktur- und Stellenplan der Abteilung Verwaltung der Wirtschaftsbetriebe, 23.11.1970, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/1961, fols. 53–72, here fol. 54. 79. Wasem, Mill, and Wilhelm, “Gesundheitswesen,” 370f. 80. Die Finanzpläne der ZK-Abteilung Kultur in SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18591, no folio numbers. 81. Beschluss des Sekretariats des ZK vom 6.6.1984, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/4096, fol. 34. 82. Abteilung Finanzverwaltung und Parteibetriebe: Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr.: Gesamtfinanzplan der Partei für das Jahr 1985, 17.12.1984, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/4191, fols. 104–14, here fol. 112. 83. Contained as an appendix in Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Gehaltsregulativ für den Parteiapparat der SED, 17.10.1980, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/3549, fols. 143–65, here fol. 158. 84. Ibid. 85. Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Gehaltsregulativ für die politischen Mitarbeiter des Parteiapparates, 21.12.1984, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/4191, fols. 115–26. 86. Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik, 98. 87. Statistisches Jahrbuch DDR, 1989, 9. 88. The figures for Central Committee employees and departmental heads are median values of the respective levels of experience and performance. Bonuses and supplements have not been taken into account. The figures in the table are based on Neufestsetzung der Gehälter im zentralen Parteiapparat (Anl. 8 zum Protokoll der Sitzung des ZK-Sekretariats vom 15.11.1950), 15.11.1950, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3/153, fols. 35–37; Gehaltsregelung für den Apparat des Zentralkomitees, 3.8.1955, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/441, fols. 147–49; Gehaltsregulativ für den Parteiapparat (lt. Beschluss des Sekretariats des ZK vom 17.2.1960), gültig ab 1.4.1960, 17.2.1960, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/5337, fols. 87–104; the figures for 1965 are taken from Amos, Politik und Organisation, 584; Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Gehaltsregulativ für den Parteiapparat der SED, 17.10.1980, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/3549, fols. 143–65; ZK-Abteilung Finanzverwaltung und Parteibetriebe: Vorlage für das Sekretariat des ZK betr. Gehaltsregulativ für die politischen Mitarbeiter des Parteiapparates, 21.12.1984, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/4191, fols. 115–26. 89. The higher salaries of MfS generals were the result of a range of factors, from seniority bonuses to housing allowances. The basic salary of an MfS departmental head in 1987 was “only” 2,450 marks at most, and was hence comparable to that of a Central Committee division head. The figures for the MfS are taken from Gieseke, “Zwischen Privilegienkultur und Egalitarismus,” 445. 90. Steiner, “Die personelle Einkommensverteilung.” 91. Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik, 581; Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 174f. 92. Oberender, “Die Partei der Patrone und Klienten,” esp. 57–62. 93. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, April 29, 2014, 3, author’s transcript and audio recording. The list drawn up by the Central Committee’s Department of Cadre Issues containing proposals for the members and candidates to be included in the newly elected Central Committee had to receive the blessing

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of the Politbüro. The members and candidates had previously been elected by a regional delegates’ conference as delegates to the Party congress. During the Party congress, they would then be elected to the Central Committee by its delegates. 94. Fischer, Geständnisse und Bekenntnisse, 150. 95. Finally, Helmut Semmelmann (Agriculture), Karl Seidel (Health Policy) and Gunter Rettner, head of the Department of International Politics and Economics as of 1986, were elected to the Central Committee—the first two in 1986, the latter in 1988, all three replacing their predecessors when these left the apparatus. 96. While the Party did not pay a flat-rate expense allowance to members and candidates of the Central Committee, it did set respective amounts for newly elected members in the 1950s and 1960s. (SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/439, fol. 4.) In 1963, for example, the Secretariat decided on a monthly expense allowance of 300 marks for newly elected members (Abt. Finanzverwaltung und Parteibetriebe, Vorlage für das Sekretariat, 12.2.1963, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3A/931, fols. 164f.). Horst Wambutt received 1,000 marks for being a Volkskammer representative in the 1980s, of which “50 percent had to be given to the Party,” (“a KPD tradition”), so that “actually I got 500 marks as a representative of the people.” Interview with Horst Wambutt, June 3, 2013, 9, author’s transcript and audio recording. 97. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, April 29, 2014, 3, author’s transcript and audio recording. 98. Hornbostel, “Ehre oder Blechsegen?” 34, 38. 99. Ibid., 38. 100. Ibid. 101. The Karl Marx Medal was bestowed by the Chairman of the State Council, and because it was awarded relatively infrequently, had a special symbolic importance, topped only by the National Prize, First Class. Hornbostel, “Ehre oder Blechsegen?” 35, 37. 102. Dohlus was awarded the Karl Marx Medal a second time in 1985. 103. And yet the medal, though prestigious, was just one of a number of distinctions that loyal senior cadre in the apparatus could get, along with the attendant social and financial capital. In the course of her career in the apparatus, Gisela Glende, for example, was awarded no less than three Patriotic Orders of Merit, along with the Clara Zetkin Medal in 1969, the Combat Order for Services to the Nation and the Fatherland in 1975, and the Honor Clasp of the Patriotic Order of Merit in 1984. Horst Dohlus was a two-time recipient of the Banner of Labor, received the honorary title Hero of Labor in 1975—with prize money of 5,000 marks—and the Soviet “40 Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War” jubilee medal in 1985, among other decorations. 104. Vernehmungsprotokoll der Beschuldigten Liebing, Gertrud, 14.11.1966, BStU, MfS, HA IX, Nr. 24130, fols. 274–88, here fol. 279. 105. See John P. Willerton, “Patronage Networks and Coalition Building in the Brezhnev Era,” Soviet Studies 39, no. 2 (1987): 175–204; Pakulski, “Bureaucracy.” 106. Pollack, “Auf dem Weg zu einer Theorie,” 26f. 107. MfS, HA XVIII/7, Informationsbericht vom 31.10.1974, 3.12.1974, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 189–94, here fol. 194. 108. MfS, HA XVIII/7, Informationsbericht vom 28.6.1974, 2.7.1974, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fol. 151. 109. MfS, HA XVIII/7, Informationsbericht vom 20.7.1979, 4.8.1979, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 146–49, here fol. 148. 110. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, Bericht des Gen. Manfred Wiedemann, 5.12.1989, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 62. 111. See chapter 6, “Power and Authority,” of the present work. 112. Its full name was the Commission for the Investigation of Violations of the Party Statute and the Law by Former and Current Functionaries of the SED. The commission was headed by Gregor Gysi. In December 1989, it submitted an interim report at a special Party congress, reprinted in “Zwischenbericht der Untersuchungskommission an den außerordentlichen Parteitag,” Neues Deutschland, December 21, 1989, 5.

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113. Ibid. 114. Oberender, “Die Partei der Patrone und Klienten,” 60f. 115. With a view to Brezhnev’s “nepotism”: Schattenberg, “Von Chruščev zu Gorbačev,” 267. 116. MfS, HA XVIII/7, Informationsbericht vom 28.6.1974, 2.7.1974, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fol. 151. 117. Oberender, “Die Partei der Patrone und Klienten,” 61. And still informative in this regard: Voslensky, Nomenklatura, 272–333. 118. Scholz, Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht? 66. 119. The following is based on Einige Bemerkungen zur Kaderpolitik der Abteilung Finanzverwaltung und Parteibetriebe, 21.2.1962, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3J/233, fols. 1–13, here fol. 3. 120. SfS, HA S: Auftrag B/267/327 [Abhörprotokoll eines Gesprächs zwischen Rudolf Krankemann und Hans S. am 6. 4. 1955], 7. 4. 1955, BStU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146/56, Bd. 2, fols. 147–72, here 164. See also SfS, HA V/6: Befragung des Gen. Erwin G., 25. 8. 1955, BStU, MfS, AU, Nr. 146/56, Bd. 1, fols. 192f. 121. This information was also gleaned from a Stasi interrogation: Vernehmungsprotokoll [. . .], 15.8.1972, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15110, fols. 448–75, here fol. 455. 122. Steiner, “Bolsche Vita in der DDR?” 258; J. M. Montias and Susan Rose-Ackerman, “Corruption in a Soviet-type Economy: Theoretical Considerations,” in Economic Welfare and the Economics of Soviet Socialism: Essays in Honor of Abram Bergson, ed. Steven Rosefielde (Cambridge, 1981), 53–83, here 56. See also the contributions in Annette Schuhmann, ed., Vernetzte Improvisationen. Gesellschaftliche Subsysteme in Ostmitteleuropa und in der DDR, Zeithistorische Studien 42 (Cologne, 2008). 123. Einige Bemerkungen zur Kaderpolitik der Abteilung Finanzverwaltung und Parteibetriebe, 21.2.1962, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/3J/233, fols. 1–13. 124. Auskunftsbericht zum vorliegenden Material über die Abteilung [. . .] beim ZK der SED, undated [1976?], BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 306, fols. 1–12, here fol. 12. 125. Stellv. Leiter der Abteilung [. . .] beim ZK der SED. undated [1976?], BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 306, fols. 20–27, here fol. 27. 126. Mensing, SED-Hilfe, 107f. 127. This was the conclusion of the internal commission for the investigation of corruption and abuse of office at Party headquarters in the late fall of 1989, reprinted in Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, Beitrag des Gen. Hartmut Lorenz, GO Landwirtschaft, 5.12.1989, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 61f. 128. MfS, HA VI, Abteilung Zoll-Abwehr: Auszug aus einem IM-Bericht über Äußerungen zur PKW-Beschaffung für Funktionäre des ZK der SED, 9.1.1989, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15456, fol. 16. 129. MfS, HA XVIII/7, Informationsbericht vom 9. April 1974, 6.5.1974, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 223f. 130. Vernehmungsprotokoll des Beschuldigten Heine, Arno, 15.8.1972, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 15110, fols. 448–75, here fol. 464. 131. MfS, HA XVIII/7, Informationsbericht vom 11. Nov. 1974, 10.12.1974, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 165–67, here fol. 167. 132. Prefab houses manufactured by the West German company Streit GmbH and sold through the Neckermann mail-order company. They were shipped to the GDR through Genex (Geschenkdienstund Kleinexporte GmbH), with prices starting at 114,000 deutschmarks, according to the 1986 Genex catalog. 133. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, April 29, 2014, 34, author’s transcript and audio recording. Moreover, he supposedly “outfitted, among others, the daughter of Erich Honecker,” according to Glende’s former employee Rudolf E., and was in the know about “how many appliances, fittings, lawn mowers, etc. had to be procured”—evidently, judging by the context, from the Nonsocialist Economic Area and for Politbüro members. Glende could “risk putting in a word. The most they could do is send him into retirement.” MfS, HA XVIII/7, Informationsbericht vom 3. 11.1976, 9.11.1976, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 306–9, here fol. 306. 134. “The things that crossed Glende’s desk are enough to cause a scandal,” as his former employee Rudolf E. put it. Ibid.

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135. Steiner, “Bolsche Vita in der DDR?” 268; Karsten Fischer, “Korruption als Problem und Element politischer Ordnung. Zu der Geschichtlichkeit eines Skandalons und methodologischen Aspekten historischer Komparatistik,” in Geld, Geschenke, Politik, ed. Jen Ivo Engels, Andreas Fahrmeir, and Alexander Nützenadel (Munich, 2009), 49–65. 136. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, Bericht des Gen. Manfred Wiedemann, 5.12.1989, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 62. 137. Ibid., fol. 67. 138. Bericht IM “Renn,” 6.11.1982, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 15396/89, Bd. 14, fols. 92–95, here fol. 93. 139. Auskunftsbericht zum vorliegenden Material über die Abteilung [. . .] beim ZK der SED, undated [ca. 1976], BStU, MfS, SdM, Nr. 306, fols. 1–12, here fol. 5. 140. Ibid., here fol. 8. 141. Gieseke, “Soziale Ungleichheit,” 194. 142. Bericht über Meyer, 19.9.1974, BStU, MfS, AKK, Nr. 4052/87, fol. 16. 143. Information zur Person Meyer, 12.12.1979, BStU, MfS, AKK, Nr. 4052/87, fol. 28. 144. Kasper, betr.: Genossen Heinz Meyer, 6.2.1980, BStU, MfS, AKK, Nr. 4052/87, fol. 29. 145. On the following, see also Süß, Politisch missbraucht? 239–42. 146. This information came from the interrogation by the MfS of a close colleague of Seidel in October 1989. Gesprächsprotokoll mit dem DDR-Bürger [. . .]. 26.10.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 1059, fols. 9–17, here fol. 11. 147. Lohse, Amt für Nationale Sicherheit, Hauptabteilung II, Vorlage zur Einleitung von Verdachtsprüfungshandlungen, 6.12.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 1059, fols. 1f., here fol. 2. When asked by an acquaintance why he didn’t buy an East German Wartburg Tourist to transport the dogs, Seidel supposedly answered that its engine wasn’t powerful enough. Gesprächsprotokoll mit dem DDRBürger [. . .], 26.10.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 1059, fols. 9–17, here fol. 13. 148. Information, August 1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 1059, fols. 3–9, here fol. 4. 149. Gesprächsprotokoll mit dem DDR-Bürger [. . .], 26.10.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 1059, fols. 9–17, here fol. 13. 150. Lohse, Amt für Nationale Sicherheit, Hauptabteilung II, Vorlage zur Einleitung von Verdachtsprüfungshandlungen, 6.12.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 1059, fols. 1f., here fol. 2. 151. Information, August 1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 1059, fols. 3–9, here fol. 7. 152. Quoted in Süß, Politisch missbraucht? 241. 153. Information, August 1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 1059, fols. 3–9, here fol. 4. 154. Owning prime real estate in the GDR was “the reserve of a relatively small elite group of functionaries as well as a number of artists and scientists.” Central Committee departmental heads evidently felt they belonged to this group. Gieseke, “Soziale Ungleichheit,” 183. 155. MfS, HA XX/10, Vermerk, 3.2.1986, BStU, MfS, AP, Nr. 81607/92, fol. 77. 156. Or so the findings of the Central Committee’s internal commission for the investigation of corruption and abuse of office at Party headquarters in early December 1989. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, Bericht des Gen. Manfred Wiedemann, 5.12.1989, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, fol. 72. 157. A report of the Central Auditing Commission from 1973 shows that the chauffeur-service division of the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department had “requests for private use” from only five of the approximately forty departments of the Central Committee. This means, by implication, that all the other users of staff cars who drove the vehicle themselves had no qualms about dispensing with the prescribed procedure. ZRK, Bericht über die Prüfung im Sektor Fahrdienst der Abteilung Verwaltung der Wirtschaftsbetriebe, Juni 1973, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/vorl. SED/22208, Bd. 2, no folio numbers. 158. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, Bericht des Gen. Manfred Wiedemann, 5.12.1989, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 69. 159. Ibid., fol. 62. 160. Mündlicher Bericht IMS “Wolfgang Zellerfeld,” 16.1.1970, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 6323, fol. 103f. 161. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, April 29, 2014, 33, author’s transcript and audio recording.

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162. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 63. 163. Kurt Seibt, Redemanuskript für die 21. Tagung der ZRK am 15.11.1989, November 1989, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/16563, no folio numbers (12.). 164. Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort; Rowell, “Der Erste Bezirkssekretär.” 165. This is the argument of Fischer, “Korruption als Problem,” 60; see also Annette Schuhmann, “Einleitung,” in Vernetzte Improvisationen, ed. Annette Schuhmann (Cologne, 2008), 9–20.

Chapter 8

Decaying Authority and Self-Dissolution The Apparatus in the “Final Crisis”

On the morning of December 2, 1989, Karl Seidel called his father on the phone. He said he just wanted to get in touch; his father was pleased. A brief exchange ensued which, thanks to the Stasi’s continued practice of bugging phones, has been preserved for posterity: His father just read in the newspaper that there’s going to be a meeting tomorrow. Karl says yes. . . . [We] are going to gradually close up shop. On January 1st he’s starting again at [a state research institution]. His father thinks he’s doing the right thing. Karl elaborates that he wants nothing to do with this “pack of crooks.” It’s disgraceful what they’ve done. It’s really hard to believe. His father thinks there’s a lot of envy and resentment involved. Karl agrees, adding though that they’ve done some awful things.1 The speed with which Seidel dissociates himself from the “pack of crooks,” the Party leadership of the SED, with whom he stood in firm allegiance just a few weeks before is breathtaking. In early 1989, as an unwavering representative of the power-hungry “superstate,” he had sent health minister Mecklinger into retirement, replacing him with someone he personally knew and respected. He used to the fullest the privileges his office entailed and, as detailed above, largely abused them. As late as the second half of October 1989 he had placed his hopes entirely in the new General Secretary, a man with whom you could “tackle anything.”2 And yet, in early December, he played the innocent bystander in the presence of his own father. Seidel, who for almost a decade enforced the Party line in a key policy field of the GDR, shows not one iota

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of anger, despair or resignation in the face of the failure of socialism. Instead he seems deeply satisfied that he already managed to clinch a job at his old research institute. He failed to foresee that less than two weeks later he would be arrested for “customs fraud.”3 Opportunism, of course, or to put a positive spin on it: the ability to quickly adjust to new circumstances, is no anomaly in and of itself. It is part of every historical reality, especially in times of rapid political upheaval. The question is what it says about the Central Committee apparatus as a power organization if its top functionaries were capable in no time flat of turning away from the Party and all its existential associations seemingly unaffected. Of course it is possible that Seidel’s behavior was wholly atypical—or that the way he acted around his father is not how he truly felt. But this study has made clear that certain elements of Seidel’s pragmatism were shared by quite a few Central Committee employees. Chapter 7 in particular, about the material incentives of Party elites for joining the apparatus, has demonstrated this. On the other hand, the reactions and behavioral patterns of other Central Committee members in the fall of 1989 were not identical to Seidel’s, as we shall see. There were employees in the apparatus who reviled as their “enemies” anyone who was open to the West or perestroika. And for that matter there were employees who were thrown off track by the sudden censuring of their “privileges” and who suffered from social rejection, and in some cases still do. One thing can already be concluded from this diversity: even in its final years, “the apparatus” was no Stalinist bastion of power that ultimately crumbled under pressure from below—from the Party base, the grassroots protests on the streets.4 But the prevailing dispositions of Central Committee members do not entirely correspond to those of the “uncivil society” described by Stephen Kotkin either: a caste of beneficiaries of the dictatorial system who renounced the Party and the project of socialism in 1989, partly out of inertia, partly for purely personal reasons.5 Rather, the apparatus of the Central Committee of the SED, even in its final crisis, was still very much a heterogeneous organization with inner divisions between “technocrats” and “ideologues,” between the “reconstruction” generation and the one that followed. The pressures from outside and below, economic crisis, perestroika, and the “street politics” starting in September 1989, did not weld together the subcultures within the apparatus. They only increased the pressure on its predetermined fracture lines. The result was the initially successive, then rapid dissolution of common frames of reference and interpretations of reality.6 This concluding chapter traces the dissolution of the “general staff of the Party.” It begins by sketching the heightened perception of crisis and the change in political style of Central Committee departments in the second half of the 1980s. It subsequently attempts to reconstruct the reactions of the apparatus to the summer crisis and the fall revolution of 1989, which were not limited to mere paralysis and resignation. Third, it will show that the end of the apparatus came faster and more sweep-

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ingly than seemed possible in October. The stages and forms of the self-dissolution of Party headquarters offer revealing insights into the culture of this now former power organization. Analogously, the subsequent paths of Central Committee employees in reunifying and reunified Germany outlined here by way of example illustrate once again—in some respects more vividly than the prosopographical data—that the boundary between these communist Party elites and socialist functional elites had dissolved over the decades.

Perceptions of and Responses to Crisis The memories of contemporaries might lead one to assume that Party headquarters remained unaffected by social crisis for a very long time. Because when asked, in retrospect, when they got the impression that the crisis was no longer normal, former Central Committee employees are almost unanimous that this happened “very late.” Bernd Preusser was a research assistant at the Party academy and as such at least within the discursive space of Party headquarters. He was “basically convinced until early 1989 that what we were doing is right. I mean what the Party was doing.”7 Peter F., too, who was deployed as a regional commissioner in an industrial area during the 1980s and as such had an immediate impression of the mood among workers, cannot recall having had any thoughts of impending demise. There may have been “some pretty fierce” signals at the grassroots level in 1987–88. But F. was “confident in my belief that, if we only try harder, we’ll manage, that all these problems are solvable.”8 Wolfgang Herger, as head of the Department of Security Issues in the second half of the 1980s, was directly concerned with the growing emigration movement. But he, too, thinks in retrospect that his perception of the situation in his country did not really change during this period. “Except that . . . in the late 1980s the issues were becoming more urgent. And critical voices louder and clearer. But I was still convinced we could rescue socialism in the GDR if we implemented it better.”9 Horst Wambutt only realized the GDR might collapse when “mass exodus” set in. “At that point I said: this is the end, and the department knew it too, we talked about it pretty openly.”10 It is natural that, given the shock brought by the fall of 1989, the preceding symptoms of crisis have faded in the memories of contemporary witnesses. Their memories are trustworthy at least in one respect, however: most Central Committee staff members were late to even entertain the idea of the GDR actually going under. For a very long time they had hoped that “the Party would hold on, that the system of the GDR would remain stable,” as Horst Wambutt puts it. And yet even in the few comments quoted here there are differing interpretations of reality underneath this minimal consensus. Bernd Preusser’s conviction “that what we were doing is right” was in fact likely only shared by a minority of apparatus members in early 1989. Those like regional commissioner Peter F who saw some “pretty fierce” signals at the grassroots in 1988–89 or earlier presumably shared this view only with reser-

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vations. And while many employees in the economic departments may have hoped to the very end that the GDR would remain a sovereign state in the future, as did Horst Wambutt, what they experienced in their economic sectors in the late 1980s gave them little cause for optimism. The combination of growing foreign debt and a real economy set on “wear-and-tear mode” would have given even the most proactive Party leadership little room for maneuver in the later 1980s. The heads of the economic-policy departments who had an overview of the political situation and were likewise well-informed about the situation on the ground, in the factories, had long seen that they were headed up a blind alley.

Return to a Command Economy The heads of the Central Committee’s economic-policy departments had had their doubts since the early 1970s that Honecker’s “consumer socialism” would help the GDR more than Walter Ulbricht’s economic reforms had.11 At least by the late 1970s, it was obvious to them that Honecker’s social policy was not financially feasible. As an MfS report from November 1977 put it: “responsible functionaries in the State Planning Commission and the specialist departments of the Central Committee unanimously take the view that Comrade E. Honecker is gravely mistaken with regard to the economy of the GDR.”12 The social-policy resolutions of the Party cannot be wrong, he had recently informed Günter Mittag and Gerhard Schürer when they sounded the alarm about the GDR’s “acute cash-flow problems.” The Party leader curtly refused their recommendation to curtail imports of consumer goods from the West.13 Even at this point in time, senior Central Committee employees were discouraged about the state of the economy. They included Günter Glende, who, according to an MfS wiretap transcript, felt that the production of cameras “could actually be stopped, since the GDR is practically giving them away.” Hermann Pöschel, head of the Central Committee’s Department of Research and Technical Development, said in 1979 that he was “fed up with the economy”14 and wanted to quit. In February 1982, Günter Ehrensperger, head of the Department of Planning and Finance, sought a dialogue with the head of MfS Main Department XVIII to inform him about economic problems, perhaps in the hope that the Stasi might be able to effect a change for the better. In the mid-1980s, Ehrensperger seemed convinced that Honecker’s economic course was plunging the GDR “into ruin.”15 In the late 1970s, Günter Mittag began reverting the GDR to the very command economy he and Erich Apel had been trying to overcome in the early 1960s. The so-called Leipzig seminars became the symbol of this rehashed command economy.16 Their ostensible aim was an exchange of experience, to which end Mittag sought to bring together at one table the general directors and technical directors of all East German combines, the ministers and deputy ministers, “a big meeting of about 800 people.”17 By the early 1980s, though, the seminars were more about “ramping up the pressure to perform.”18 “The pressure was tremendous,” recalls Inge H., a Cen-

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tral Committee staffer who attended the Leipzig seminars every year.19 According to Hubert Egemann, head of the Central Committee’s Transport and Communication Department, Mittag just about lost it during the seminar on September 3 and 4, 1982. He was “fuming” because a slew of combines reported production and delivery backlogs as well as quality issues. And yet when Mittag made “no comments whatsoever on the Plan for 1989” during the Leipzig seminar in early September 1988 and clearly seemed to be in poor health, the combine directors were “disconcerted” and “extremely concerned,” according to IMS “Fritz Schuchardt.”20 However much everyone may have suffered under Mittag the “economic dictator,” he was not readily replaceable in his role as whip and mobilizer in the late GDR. In the course of the 1980s, the tone became more strident between the line ministries, the State Planning Commission and the Party apparatus, “especially when we were expected to implement Mittag’s orders unconditionally.” Party leaders blamed the state for any setbacks, just as they had in the 1950s.21 At the Politbüro meeting on May 10, 1988, for example, Mittag claimed that the State Planning Commission was an “enormous apparatus” that had “begun to lead an independent existence.”22 Against the backdrop of economic crisis, the day-to-day affairs of the Central Committee’s economic-policy departments likewise changed. Up until the early 1980s, says Horst Wambutt, the “fundamental questions” significant over the long- and medium-term had been the focus in his department: “the effectiveness of the chemical industry, . . . the development of carbochemistry, then the question: nuclear power or coal, and of course geological exploration.”23 The “Party work” of his department had consisted in organizing conferences, bringing together scientists, elaborating concepts. Then, when everything started to “creak,” they made more factory visits to look for “reserves.” “Almost every week, every two weeks at the least,” Wambutt went to a factory,24 often with the question: “Where can we economize, and: How can we mobilize even more . . . ?”25 The “number crunchers” in Günther Ehrensperger’s Department of Planning and Finance were asking themselves the same questions about the state budget. The reports of IMS “Fritz Schuchardt” alias Gerd Pelikan indicate that the employees in this department grew increasingly frustrated with their work. On the one hand they were anxious about the annual doomsday scenarios. The motto in December 1988, for example, was that “an export surplus is absolutely necessary in the GDR’s foreign trade . . . lest the GDR go bankrupt.”26 On the other hand, the employees in Planning and Finance were repeatedly confronted with “political decisions” that rendered obsolete the investment cuts they had just suggested. In late 1988, for example, the “Association of Antifascist Resistance Fighters,” explained “Schuchardt,” had been “promised a considerable pension increase.” And East German television was supposed to be granted 20 million to “create a youth/ children’s program between 4 and 6 p.m. (approved by the departmental head of the C[entral]C[ommittee]’s Agitation/Propaganda Dept.).” The parenthetical note seems tantamount to a shaking of the head by the “technocrats” in the apparatus

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about “these ideological folks” who apparently couldn’t see the writing on the wall. “Schuchardt’s” helplessness is also palpable in his comments from December 1988, when he writes with a certain disbelief that the “ceremonies for the 40th anniversary of the Republic . . . have not yet been financially secured.”27 The records of MfS “meeting reports” give an indication of how much pressure employees in the Central Committees’ economic apparatus were under, both psychological pressure and their actual workload. “Schuchardt” had to cancel a number of these meetings on account of “work demands”—in December 1988, for instance. At the beginning of a report written in January 1989, the Stasi man noted: “C[ontact]P[erson] currently under a lot of work strain. His wife, however, has been very understanding.”28 Work pressures and, consequently, the “brusque tone” in “Mittag’s domain” did indeed increase considerably in the second half of the 1980s. Already in October 1983, unofficial collaborator “Renn” had reported on the “strained atmosphere” around Mittag.29 There was “often just a lot of yelling.” Klaus Blessing, who switched from his post as state secretary in the Ministry of Ore Mining, Metallurgy and Potash to become head of the Central Committee’s Machine Building Department in 1986, was not even given a minimum of discretionary powers by Mittag. The machine-building sector, says Blessing, recalling when he took office in 1986, “was in a pretty bad state. [They wanted us to] [e]xport more, textile machinery, heavy machinery, all kinds of things. But [they were] not [willing to] invest too much.”30 So he “tried to do something, at my level to begin with, on a small scale.” But “someone up there must have tipped him [Günter Mittag] off.” “And then, of course, my goose was cooked. They summoned me. ‘We didn’t bring you here for you to make decisions. I make the decisions. Your job is to keep me informed, make suggestions.’”31 Working under Mittag in the final years of the GDR was “very, very problematic” with a lot of “psychological pressure,” according to Blessing. His deputy Siegfried Leiterer talks about an increasingly hectic atmosphere, caused in good part by Mittag repeatedly demanding answers about very specific things—why, say, the GDR produced three types of combine harvesters.32 Mittag fired two of Blessing’s division heads33 despite the latter’s protests, effectively dismissing the established right of departmental heads to “put together their own department however they wanted.”34 This, according to Blessing, “of course led to symptoms of mental breakdown after a couple of years.”35 In early 1989, Blessing finally collapsed under the pressure to keep the GDR’s onetime flagship industry, machine building, afloat and had to seek medical treatment. He did not return to his office at the soon-to-be-dissolved apparatus and no successor was appointed. Blessing had counted among the most professionally qualified Central Committee departmental heads, with a sound education and years of practical and leadership experience. He was literally crushed by the competing demands of Mittag and economic reality. His fate therefore stands in sharp contrast to the image of a Party headquarters that had disregarded reality and eventually suffered a reality shock in the late summer of 1989. “We knew exactly how the mood was” on the ground, confirms

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Horst Wambutt, referring to his regular factory visits.36 It is indeed fair to assume that Central Committee economic functionaries were well in tune with economic realities in the late 1980s. Their own sense of reality had largely drifted away from the official discourse with its persistent propaganda of success—assuming there had been much overlap in the first place, at least since the 1960s.

Skeptical Central Committee “Brigadists” It is reasonable to assume that the dissonance between individual perceptions and official discourse was less pronounced in the ideological departments than in the economic ones even into the late 1980s. Yet reports from unofficial collaborator “Renn” as well as from the West German Federal Intelligence Service, each of which had contacts and sources planted in the Propaganda, Agitation and Culture departments, suggest that the differences were matters of degree rather than principle. In the summer of 1977, for example, the Western intelligence agency reported with regard to the discussions around the establishment of Intershop stores in the GDR that the agitation and propaganda measures of Party headquarters have had no effect because even their agitprop functionaries find the arguments unconvincing. Many of them essentially share the qualms and reservations of ordinary Party members, or would preferably like to partake in the benefits of having foreign currency themselves.37 In the early 1980s, the “highly idiosyncratic” policies of East Germany’s Soviet “friends” were also the source of considerable irritation and confusion in the Central Committee’s ideology departments. In April of 1983, the head of the Central Committee’s Propaganda Department, Klaus Gäbler, declared that certain policies of CPSU General Secretary Andropov were “misguided.” It was wrong, Gäbler told unofficial collaborator “Renn,” to try to increase labor productivity by forcing greater order and discipline. The question of “nonsocialist sources of personal property” the way it was being discussed in the Soviet Union was likewise unproductive.38 At any rate, Gäbler confided in “Renn,” the Central Committee’s agitation commission had “created a regime for media in the GDR” to “vet all publications of Soviet media for their ‘publishability’ in the GDR.” Phrases such as “consumer society” or “sources of property” were simply left out when translating from Soviet publications.39 At the same time, employees of the Central Committee’s ideological departments even expressed cautious criticism of the “general-secretary system” of Erich Honecker and its rituals. Honecker, of course, had “correctly and rigorously evaluated questions concerning the working regime in factories” in his speech to first district secretaries in February 1983, said Hermann Lederer from the Central Committee’s Propaganda Department. But then came the evaluation of Honecker’s talk, and “thousands of Party members and functionaries . . . were sent from their workplace to the ‘lecture’ . . ., often traveling hours by train or car, only to learn that the General Secretary said . . . they should actually be at work right now.”40 Though conflicts of this sort may be

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nothing unique to the GDR, in combination with the erosion taking place at the Party’s base they acquired a new dimension in the second half of the 1980s.41 A new experience for Central Committee employees, at least in terms of magnitude, in the second half of the 1980s was that the lower structures of the Party they visited rejected the ruling discourse. This was the case with the basic organizations of the agricultural cooperatives visited by employees of the Central Committee’s Department of Agriculture in the summer of 1988 and whose semi-annual reports were utterly “lacking in political arguments.”42 Another new experience was their being confronted on the ground with what Werner T., a former employee of an ideological department, describes as a “nasty vibe.” In early 1989, he and his departmental head had attended the meeting of a basic organization in Sebnitz. The comrades there, T. says, “really put all their concerns on the table, but different than usual. More offensively and actually more aggressively.” But the departmental head “was actually a real bungler. Because he denied it. Denied their concerns. . . . [B]asically he refused to accept that they were so unhappy.”43 Two lines of conflict become apparent in this meeting of the basic organization in Sebnitz: first, between the Party base and “those in the Central Committee” and, second, between T. and his departmental head, whose perception of reality was different from his own in this situation. And yet, for the time being, the legitimatory discourse of the GDR remained unchallenged in many Central Committee departments, especially the ideological departments. Such was the case in the Neuer Weg Department, where the ban on Sputnik magazine was being discussed in its basic organization in November 1988.44 It was business as usual here. There was never really any discussion, according to Renate Michalik, “everyone just agreed with everyone else that it was right to ban Sputnik.”45 Also at the “Monday briefings” of the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department—attended by each of the fifteen regional commissioners, who all had to travel to East Berlin from their respective regions—it was “simply the custom” in the late 1980s, says Peter F., to “first play the ‘music of socialism,’” i.e., to report on “the positive things” first.46 The fact that it was dysfunctional to hold on to this discourse of legitimation in times of social crisis seems to have ultimately dawned even on Horst Dohlus, the department’s secretary. Because “[t]he more 1989 approached,” says Peter F., the more Horst Dohlus urged his regional commissioners to “speak openly.” “Then, in mid-1989, this question was posed [by Dohlus] in a really brutal way. ‘I don’t want to hear about everything under the sun, I want to hear about the problems we need to solve.’ . . . [B]ut by then it was too late.”47 His regional commissioners could have told him about all the “problems” they were encountering. Rudolf Ortner, for example, could have talked about the first district secretary who, in his desperation, allegedly wrote letters to Erich Honecker at night but then destroyed them. Peter F. could have talked about the factories where supplies did not arrive on time, causing “the comrades [there] to become terribly upset and write letters to the Central Committee,” so that the matter had to be “contained somehow.”48 If they did report on these things, then surely not in the

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open manner Dohlus was suddenly demanding. The things Rudolf Ortner and Peter F. saw in their regions may have been at odds with the legitimatory discourse, but the two men remained—at least for the time being—in the role prescribed to them by the ritualized “Monday briefings”: the heralds of “positive” news. Their behavior is an ideal-typical example of how “sluggish” organizational cultures can become if the pressure to conform is too high within the organization, its predetermined behaviors still running according to the old routine even when they’ve become dysfunctional due to changing circumstances.49 The same goes for the members of Central Committee working groups and “brigades” who, especially in the second half of the 1980s, were venturing more and more frequently out into the regional and district level. They, too, met the demands of their role. But the question is to what extent they inwardly identified with their role of enforcing the Politbüro line. Christian Münter, deputy head of the Central Committee’s Health Department, claimed in June 1988 that “the overwhelming majority of the staff of Central Committee departments has other views” than those held by the political leadership,50 so that the same question applies to them of whether they inwardly identified with their role as enforcers of the Party line. This went for the working group led by the Central Committee’s departments for Party Organs and Culture, which in the summer of 1987 traveled to Dresden to “deal with”51 members of the basic organization of the Dresden State Playhouse who had violated the rule that a Politbüro member was virtually sacrosanct. More specifically, these actors and stagehands in Dresden had written a letter to Kurt Hager and dared to criticize his now proverbial “wallpaper interview” with the West German magazine Stern. The Central Committee brigade had been deployed to discipline these individuals, and did so.52 Lilian Floss, the Party secretary of the basic organization at the State Playhouse, recalls the “unbearable political lectures full of paternalistic platitudes.”53 But disciplining a rebellious basic organization was only one of the deployment’s objectives. More importantly, they were out to prove that the first regional secretary—Hans Modrow, who already had the reputation of being reform-oriented—had been derelict of duty in his “politicalideological work.” Bernd Preusser took part in the operation as a staff member of the Karl Marx Party School. It was “clearly about tripping up Modrow,” he recalls, “which of course they didn’t tell us.”54 Perhaps out of prudence, because at least some of the Central Committee employees, who had just finished harassing the people from the theater, looked with respect, and possibly hope, at the first regional secretary during the closing discussion. “I know,” Preusser recalls about the deployment, that we discussed the affair [Hager’s Stern interview] with Modrow in the big discussion, in his meeting room right next to his office. And he explained to us again in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t see it that way. That you can’t just, with such an offhand remark . . . , he was pretty clear on that.55

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There is no way of knowing for sure what Preusser’s comrades thought of Modrow. It is certain, however, that other Central Committee employees as well who participated in the “punitive expeditions” of the late 1980s did not necessarily return to headquarters feeling “strengthened.” Horst K., for instance, who in the fall of 1988 accompanied his comrades from the Party Organs Department along with some from the Construction Department on a deployment to Lubmin near Greifswald.56 Workers at the construction site of the local nuclear power plant had sent a petition to the Council of State and, using the vocabulary of perestroika, demanded better supplies of food and building materials.57 Horst K. and his comrades played the role of executives from the Politbüro. “We tried,” says K., “by means of strict discussions, let’s say . . . to correct certain attitudes these comrades had.”58 But in this instance as well—according to K.—established behaviors were no longer compatible with the experiences made in Lubmin: “Of course we sensed that the comrades there did not have any ill intentions, and of course I was loath to accuse them of this . . . That the thought crossed our minds was bad enough.”59 The General Secretary himself took an unabashedly hard line against this erosion at the grassroots. In the Politbüro meeting of January 3, 1989, he harangued against the Soviet policy of reform60 and ordered the deployment of a Central Committee working group to the universities in Dresden and Weimar where students and faculty had been calling for reforms.61 And to silence first regional secretary Hans Modrow, if not to bring him down, he sent a veritable “caravan” to Dresden:62 likely more than a hundred employees of the Central Committee apparatus and various ministries. Modrow had had the audacity to complain in a monthly report that the region of Dresden was overburdened with construction work being carried out for Berlin. A Central Committee brigade was now set loose to look for “mistakes” and “backlogs” in residential construction in the region of Dresden so as to pin the blame on Modrow for its being “overburdened.”63 On January 20, 1989, this “caravan of inspectors” poured into the region “like an avalanche,” Modrow writes in his memoirs. In this instance, too, the members of the brigade did a dependable job. They went through yards of files, interrogated the managers of major construction sites in Dresden, and “rummaged” around everywhere, according to Modrow. “It was . . . pretty rough,” attests Horst K., who took part in the deployment for the Department of Party Organs. He acknowledges that the region’s construction policy—i.e., Modrow’s pet project, the reconstruction of Dresden’s city palace—was just a pretext to bring Modrow in line.64 In the end Modrow had no choice but to engage in self-criticism before the Politbüro in February 1989 and listen to Honecker lecture him about how the SED was a “fighting alliance of the like-minded and not of whiners.”65 But even if the deployment was a success from the Politbüro’s perspective, there were some brigade members who balked once again at their role and what was expected of them, as documented in the memoirs of Modrow, the “victim” of this particular deployment. The operation in Dresden ended with a big discussion—essentially the pronouncement of a verdict—in which Günter Mittag informed Modrow, unsurprisingly, that

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the brigade had uncovered a great deal of evidence for “serious political-ideological negligence” on the part of the regional secretary. It was doubtful in this moment whether Modrow would keep his job. But then right after the meeting, Modrow recalls, “my economic secretary, Werner, comes and says: ‘Hans, Wolfgang Junker and Gerhard Trölitzsch are sitting in my office, come with me.’”66 Junker was minister of construction and Trölitzsch head of the Central Committee’s Construction Department. Modrow was on “very candid terms” with both. “They had no interest in burdening our comradely working relations. And, second: they did have an interest in proving that their deployment in Dresden had yielded some results.”67 In other words, personal relationships and shared interests broke through the intended isolation of Modrow which had been the operation’s aim. The “four of us” sat down and made agreements, Junker promising Modrow to supply his Dresden construction combines with “unbudgeted” equipment to “improve your plan fulfillment.”68 It was not the case, however, that the Central Committee employees who took part in this deployment were united in their sympathies for Modrow. Horst K. had felt sorry in the fall of 1988 for having to treat the construction workers in Lubmin like “enemies.” But even today he’s convinced that there was in fact “an ideological problem” in Dresden69 and that Honecker had no choice but to intervene with drastic measures. In the months that followed, though, it became apparent that rigorous enforcement of the Politbüro line had had unintended consequences. While it did succeed in disciplining the Party to a certain extent, it also widened the conflicts within Party headquarters—conflicts that had existed for decades but that only became truly politically significant during the “final crisis.”

Dissolution of the Frame of Discourse It is hard to determine the extent of these conflicts and the degree of internal erosion in the Central Committee apparatus. The fact that criticism of the status quo became more open and strident in the “little public spheres” of Party headquarters is not particularly revealing. Indeed, there was “a lot of discussion going on,” say, in the Department of Basic Industry, where, according to Horst Wambutt, there was, “a very open discussion about the [Party] leadership being too old. This wasn’t a problem for us at all.”70 But there was also “a lot of discussion going on” in the department fifteen or twenty years earlier. The fact that Wolfgang Herger remembers Manfred Uschner “often coming to my table” at lunch where they would “debate many, many things like a couple of dissidents”71 does not signify a change in the Central Committee apparatus as a “communication space.” Many things could be said in private, even in the Stalinist years of building socialism. Change is more evident in the fact that, in the late 1980s, deviant positions were no longer exclusively expressed in more intimate social environments; criticism was now increasingly being voiced in semi-public spheres as well as at public events. At a birthday party, for example, in June 1988, to which the president of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences had invited high-ranking Party and state functionaries,

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among them the head of the Central Committee’s Education Department, Lothar Oppermann. According to a report by an unofficial collaborator of the Stasi, “the discussion about supplying the population of the GDR with consumer goods was the focus of conversations,” the guests being in agreement that “the Politbüro either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know what the people think.”72 A case in point of this aloofness and ignorance had been delivered just months before, in January 1988, when a Politbüro member (identity unknown) held a talk at the Babelsberg Academy of State and Legal Sciences. In the course of his address, the speaker made reference to the “events of January 17, 1988”—the arrest of members of human-rights groups and would-be emigrants who had wanted to take part in the official Liebknecht-Luxemburg demonstration.73 At this point “the audience grew unendingly restless.” Finally the Politbüro member interrupted his lecture, though not before hurling the following defiant words at his audience: “We know you want us old people out of here. But the people, they want us!”74 Soon afterwards, by contrast, Hans Modrow received “spontaneous applause” during a talk he gave at the Karl Marx Party School in February 1988, when he declared that Party cadre aged thirty-five to forty should be capable of taking on leadership positions. The directors of the Party School deemed this applause an “expression of the political immaturity of the audience.”75 These two incidents, at the Academy of State and Legal Sciences as well as at the Karl Marx Party School, thus not only show that the frame of discourse was disintegrating even in supposed “cadre forges”; they also reveal a generation gap, one that was palpable even at Party headquarters itself. Chapter 6 showed that, from 1980 to 1989, the share of thirty-one to forty-year-olds among political staffers had increased from about 12 to 18 percent. This was of course too little to speak of a genuine rejuvenation. But it was enough to make the “reconstruction generation” at the Big House face the fact that the “young ones” weren’t bound to them in a “generational symbiosis.” An at least latent conflict between the reconstruction generation and the one that followed is tangible as early as the 1970s in the context, for example, of the celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of the founding of the GDR. In this case, younger employees grumbled about Party meetings being used as platforms for the “sad monologues” of older functionaries about the “difficult past” and for “strolls down memory lane” about “their own remarkable achievements.” A younger Central Committee employee is said to have remarked sarcastically in response to one such monologue that it was “not as easy [now] as it was twenty-five years ago to become a departmental head.”76 By the same token, the “old ones”—e.g., Hans Baumgart, born in 1919, a longtime employee in the Central Committee’s Department of Culture—complained about the “new generation of comrades who joined the Central Committee apparatus” in the 1970s. In particular the new comrades at the Central Committee’s Institute for Social Sciences were “ruthless, ambitious, and more concerned about their personal advantage, their getting ahead . . . than with competent

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work and comradely conduct,” Baumgart divulged to unofficial collaborator “Renn” in a private conversation.77 These latent antagonisms became increasingly apparent as of the mid-1980s with Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika. Thus, Hans Erxleben, born in 1946, says in retrospect that he returned from his studies at the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1986–87 as an “ardent supporter of Gorbachev”78 who acted “accordingly, [advocating] for transparency and things like that.” This did not resonate well, of course, with his Neuer Weg Department (“Listen, that’s not why we sent you to Moscow”79). Denunciations followed, which was one way apparatus members made sure that nothing changed. One such victim was the deputy head of the Agitation Department, Dieter Langguth, born in 1937, who in 1988 called on employees at Berliner Verlag, the Party’s newspaper and magazine publisher, to take up “taboo topics.”80 The individual who informed Langguth’s “boss,” Central Committee secretary Joachim Herrmann, about the remarks found it “outrageous.” The anonymous stoolie posed the rhetorical question: “Is this a call for glasnost?”81 Renate Michalik, born in 1954 and hence the youngest political employee in the apparatus, was subject to even more serious allegations. In February 1988, she and her two sons spent several days of vacation in Heringsdorf on the island of Usedom, at a vacation home for political employees belonging to the Central Committee. The vacationers staying there generally had lunch together at about half past twelve. One Sunday, however, Michalik came too late, having decided on a whim to attend a religious service—out of curiosity and a certain “affinity.” Her table companions wanted to know why she was late. Michalik told them. “At which point all hell broke loose. I thought I’d committed treason.”82 She reflexively pointed out Honecker’s official acknowledgment of the “Church within Socialism,” to no avail. Among the more harmless accusations was that she couldn’t “expose” her children to such an “ideology.” One of her fellow vacationers was someone Michalik was very fond of, “a woman from the [Central Committee’s] Department of Women’s Affairs. And she said to me, and this really galled me, she said to me: ‘Renate, I’m deeply disappointed.’ But why? ‘You have to set limits and honor certain limits.’ She didn’t talk to me anymore after that.”83 To leave no doubt: even in the late 1980s, it was extremely atypical for political employees of the Central Committee to enter a church (in stark contrast to Poland). It is hard to imagine, though, that something like this—the employee of an ideological department of the Central Committee tells her colleagues at a Central Committee vacation home about having gone to church—could have happened, say, in 1970. In this respect Renate Michalik’s experience is symptomatic of the fact that the mechanisms of exclusion could still be effective in certain situations: a colleague very dear to her, from the Central Committee’s Department of Women’s Affairs, refused to speak to her for the rest of the vacation. At the same time it serves as an indication that, by the late 1980s, certain normative points of reference for Central Committee

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employees, such as the once constitutive distinction between “us” and “them,” had lost their validity. The disturbance at the Party academy caused by the unknown Politbüro member commenting on the Liebknecht-Luxemburg demonstration in January 1988 supports this observation. The response of Party School students, their pushback against the speaker’s hardline comments, suggests that they were no longer prepared to think of “dissidents” as “adversaries.” Another indication of the waning significance of established norms was the fact that the practice of the GDR dissociating itself from the West was crumbling. As early as September 1985, the director of the Office of the Politbüro, Gisela Glende, suggested to Honecker that the apparatus relax its policy of isolation from the West. Central Committee employees had hitherto been categorically forbidden from having any “private relations with the citizens of capitalist states.”84 A new version of the declaration of commitment that every employee was obliged to sign upon being hired at the apparatus stipulated that “non-work-related contacts” were now merely “subject to approval.”85 And “those living in their household” were now supposed to be allowed to travel to the West “in urgent family matters.”86 Presumably this lifting of the total ban on Western contacts was initiated by Glende well knowing that the apparatus was becoming less strict in its practice of dissociating itself from the “imperialist West.” She herself, in the summer of 1979, had taken a vacation in Austria with her husband Günter Glende, who claimed that “the roads are wonderful,” “you can buy everything imaginable in the stores” and the “service was very friendly” on top of it.87 Employees being dismissed for not reporting “NSW contacts,” i.e., contacts with the Nonsocialist Economic Area, met with little understanding in the apparatus.88 A wide-ranging surveillance campaign by MfS Main Department II/6 between 1987 and 1989 ultimately revealed that the Central Committee apparatus was much closer to the West than the rhetoric of “antiimperialism” and “class struggle” suggested. Who ordered these investigations and under what circumstances remains a mystery. But it is hard to imagine the private correspondence of at least several hundred Central Committee employees being monitored without the consent of the head of the Cadre Department, Fritz Müller, if not the General Secretary himself. The results of the operation can be consulted in a volume of files at the BStU archive.89 Apart from brief birthday greetings to relatives—parents, grandparents, etc.—living in the Federal Republic, it contains letters with detailed depictions of family life in East and West Germany. A letter to Modern Talking singer Thomas Anders written by the daughter of a Central Committee employee and describing how unhappy she was about the breakup of this West German band attests to the rudiments of an allGerman youth culture.90 It is a touching document even today, this letter by a distraught sixteen-year-old who “because of her parents work” could “not even contact” her friends who had “gone to West Germany.”91 There are no other instances of political topics being addressed in concrete terms in these letters.

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By the summer of 1989, MfS Main Department II/6 had identified and investigated a total of 102 employees who, or whose immediate family members, had “non-work-related postal contacts to the NSW.” Among them were 42 political employees and several division and departmental heads. One-twentieth of the entire staff might not seem like much, especially considering that these contacts included fan mail from the daughters of employees and birthday greetings to distant relatives. It is doubtful, though, that they screened every last employee. In addition to which only letters were monitored, not telephone calls or in-person meetings, not to mention the contacts made by someone like Manfred Uschner as a member of the “SED-SPD ideology paper”92 working group or Klaus Blessing on his visits to West German industrial fairs. In this respect, the results of the MfS surveillance campaign not only show that hostility towards the West was not a normative point of reference for a significant portion of Central Committee staff in the late 1980s—if it ever had been in the first place. The intercepted letters are proof, more importantly, that a good number of Central Committee employees were not overly concerned about the possibility of getting into trouble for sending or receiving letters. The Party leadership reacted to all this with repressive measures in the Party and the apparatus. In March 1988, a Party memo threatened to expel from the Party anyone who succumbed to “enemy rabble-rousing and demagoguery” as well as “grumblers and perpetual whiners.”93 On January 10, 1989, the Politbüro passed a resolution on “raising the level of political-ideological work” in the Party,94 which was seen as nothing but a disciplinary measure and left many, at least in the Central Committee’s economic apparatus, dumbfounded.95 The Party was now much quicker than it had been in the “calm” years of the Honecker era to crack down on leading cadre if they violated the “line.” In January 1989, for example, the SED district leadership of the Karl Marx Party School expelled a tenured professor from the Party because, according to the recollection of a former colleague, he had “said a little too loudly in a bar . . . that the fellows in the Politbüro are all too old”96—had said, in other words, what many people actually thought. And Manfred Uschner mentions in his memoirs a “list compiled by the MfS, ‘Cadre Müller’ and Horst Dohlus of forty employees in the central Party apparatus who were deemed ‘unreliable’ and were thrown out of the central Party apparatus . . . in February 1989.”97 The present study was unable to confirm the existence of such a list. But Uschner was undoubtedly one of the employees who fell prey to this final wave of repression. As early as 1986 he was anonymously denounced to Erich Honecker for supposedly acting in a manner “hostile to the Party” in talks with SPD representatives.98 By the spring of 1988 at the latest, MfS Main Department II was listening in on Uschner’s private telephone conversations.99 The MfS intensified its surveillance when, in November 1988, at a meeting of his Central Committee basic organization—for employees on the “second floor”—he spoke out against the microelectronics program being pushed by Günter Mittag. On February 18, 1989, members of the Main Department for Personal Security took away his employee badge and his service weapon. A man with the rank of deputy Central

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Committee departmental head, no less, was given an hour to leave the Big House. His boss, Politbüro member Hermann Axen, did not come to his aid.100

From Speechlessness to Loss of Control In the recollections of former Central Committee employees, the months of the summer and spring of 1989 are frequently described as the calm before the storm. According to division head Gerhard U., “we went on vacation” in the summer of 1989 “calm and composed as ever—or not. We didn’t have the faintest idea what was in store for us in the months to come.”101 This utterance of U. surely has a double meaning. They didn’t know what was coming, but the fact that he second-guessed his own words suggests that even before the fall of 1989 Party headquarters was already in crisis mode. The reports of political staffer Gerd Pelikan in the Department of Planning and Finance—a.k.a. IMS “Fritz Schuchardt”—offer atmospheric glimpses of this phase as well. In mid-March 1989 he told his case officer about the attempts of his “finance and prices” division to get the Politbüro to agree to price increases. “Schuchardt” and his comrades had put together a proposal with a list of goods that should no longer be subsidized.102 But Honecker, ever sensitive to issues of price stability, rejected the proposal. The division was asked to make individual proposals “for every commodity/product subject to price changes”—a demand that can only be interpreted as an attempt by the General Secretary to water down the effort to slash subsidies. The first individual proposal, with suggested price increases for “flowers and ornamental plants,” thus became an “acid test” for overall consumer price increases.103 In June of 1989 the continued solvency of the GDR vis-à-vis the Nonsocialist Economic Area was openly questioned within the department.104 “Fritz Schuchardt” and his comrades were also preoccupied with issues of domestic and foreign policy. In a meeting with his handler on May 11th, he mentioned local elections in the GDR and “cadre changes in the Central Committee of the CPSU” as topics105 under discussion in his department. In early June he expressed his disillusionment with the “contradictions in the views of socialist states.” At a meeting of the economic secretaries of COMECON states there was not a trace of the “lively exchange of knowledge” that was constantly being called for. Everyone was simply stating their “own points of view.”106 “Fritz” was “delighted” on the other hand by a gift that his case officer gave him for his thirty-fifth birthday: a book called Der Ertste (The First) by Landolf Scherzer which had caused a minor sensation when it came out in 1987, offering as it did the first credible inside view of the SED Party apparatus, written in the style of documentary journalism. The book was a portent of glasnost in the backward-looking SED.107 Perhaps “Fritz Schuchardt” was able to identify with Scherzer’s “hero,” the first (hence the title) district secretary of Bad Salzungen, Hans-Dieter Fritschler, defier of all manner of real-socialist adversities. But no matter what “Fritz” had set his hopes on—by the summer of 1989 they had probably vanished.

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On July 7, 1989, during the summit meeting of the Warsaw Pact in Bucharest, where Gorbachev again expressly distanced himself from the Brezhnev Doctrine, Honecker suffered an attack of biliary colic. Back in Berlin, he went on vacation after a brief hospital stay.108 His two representatives—first Egon Krenz, then Günter Mittag—refrained from what would have been the dictate of the moment given the wave of East Germans who suddenly began fleeing by way of Hungary: political leadership by means of clear communication. Instead, a new phase began at Party headquarters which contemporaries, in retrospect, have called the “time of speechlessness” and which was characterized by the contrast between a Party leadership that had “fallen silent” and the informal communication among Central Committee employees marked entirely by rumors, fears and half-truths. Inge H., a staffer at the Party journal Einheit, remembers the Big House in the summer of 1989 as a “vacuum, where nothing happened.”109 There was no reaction to criticism from factories and the Party base. “There were Politbüro meetings, there were whispers in the corridors, but nothing ever came of it.”110 This didn’t go unnoticed by the Party base. In the summer months of 1989, “the baskets . . . piled up with paper, with letters, there was a huge wave of letters from the Party organizations to the Central Committee,” according to Inge H. “These letters could only be evaluated very sporadically”—although almost every Central Committee department was put to work answering them. “From a big basket you could only pull out two letters, no more.”111 But the territorial Party apparatus likewise noticed there were no more instructions coming “from above.” “Many district leaderships called us,” recalls Horst K., an employee at the Party Organs Department: “‘Help us out here, give us the lay of the land . . . .’ The calls kept coming, more and more, wanting to speak with our employees: ‘This is unacceptable!’ And it was, wasn’t it. A difficult situation.”112 Things became even more difficult with the exchange of Party documents, a routine procedure affecting all two million or so SED members and which the Ninth Plenary of the Central Committee in December 1988 had scheduled to take place from September through December 1989. The measure was actually intended to consolidate the Party base. It was important, explained one departmental head in the SED regional leadership of Berlin in late August, “not to let it get to you if some comrades leave [the Party]. [. . .] The ones who leave now and get weak in the knees can’t stab us in the back when the going gets tough.”113 Central Committee secretary Horst Dohlus likewise argued in this vein during the meeting of a coordination commission at Party headquarters in mid-August. The exchange, he explained to the second regional secretaries gathered there, was taking place under conditions of “fierce class struggle.” One “shouldn’t lose time with the kind of comrade who doesn’t belong in the Party.”114 But the Party base evidently couldn’t cope with conditions of “fierce class struggle.” In early September the district leadership of Brandenburg observed that many comrades were “reluctant and sometimes even afraid to get involved in political debates.” They found “no answer to many questions—not even for themselves.”115 On

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September 22nd, the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department reported to the Central Committee Secretariat that during the three weeks the exchange campaign had been running more than 8,500 comrades tendered their resignation and more than 1,000 refused the obligatory personal discussion116—which was more than the total number of people who had left the SED in 1988.117 The grassroots of the SED was beginning to fall apart. The Central Committee employees most likely to be directly confronted with this process were those whose task it was to maintain contact with the Party organs in the provinces. Peter F., regional commissioner of the Party Organs Department, mentions a meeting of the district Party organization in Zwickau in September 1989, which for him was like a “seething cauldron.” He elaborates: all this incomprehension came raining down on me, incomprehension about why everything—it was not directed against socialism, mind you— about why so many people could get away with so many things there and the Party did nothing about it, and the Party, of course, . . . was the Central Committee, and in this case it was me. That’s a discussion I’ll never forget.118

Change of Government without a Watershed The paralysis of the Big House visible in the reports about the “time of speechlessness” was by no means complete, however. The summer of 1989 was marked not only by whispers in the corridors, abortive Politbüro meetings and “crippling arrogance,”119 but also by concrete steps to prepare for a change of leadership. These had begun already in June of 1989, as Andreas Malycha has pointed out, and were linked in particular with Politbüro member Egon Krenz and the head of the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues, Wolfgang Herger.120 Herger’s political career was closely tied to that of Krenz. The two had a trusting relationship, and Krenz’s political weight as a Politbüro member and Honecker’s supposed “crown prince” gave Herger a certain margin of maneuver. In the fall of 1989, however, Herger emerged more strongly as a politician in his own right. More singlemindedly than his other fellow departmental heads, he sought to use his position of power—which rested not only on his ties to Krenz but also on his good relations with senior officials in the Stasi, the army and the Ministry of the Interior121—to keep the Party dictatorship alive. Herger was not a reformer in the sense that he envisioned a sweeping transformation of the political system.122 But unlike the others, he saw that the SED could not guarantee its hold on power with the methods used up to that point. The reports on the emigration movement that reached him daily through petitions from the populace and through the security apparatus were to him an indication that a change of policy was necessary and that a new travel law was the key. And yet he didn’t see the fallout that breaking with the “Honecker system” would entail. “We thought,” says Herger in retrospect, “we’ll take out Honecker and create

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a more democratic SED. In reality all we did by taking out Honecker was remove the keystone from a tower . . . and the whole structure came crashing down.”123 One foundation of Herger’s political influence was that his loyalty was beyond question. He did not have the reputation, like Manfred Uschner, of wallowing in “Social Democratic tendencies.” Nor was he, like Hans Modrow, considered a secret supporter of a perestroika-style path. At the same time, however, his political style was distinctly different from that of other leading cadre. His former employees said he had charisma. “Herger,” according to Dieter Mechtel, “was totally different. Herger was a philosopher . . . in his way of thinking.”124 His “otherness” was evident to them in a minor breach of the rules: Herger, “as a rule, ate lunch on the staff floor,” and not on the seventh floor, in the cafeteria for Politbüro members, like most departmental heads did. “Of course, people noticed this,” says Mechtel. Two or three years prior to 1989, says Herger, “we started, Krenz and I, Krenz and [Siegfried] Lorenz, and some others” not just to criticize Honecker. That was normal in the apparatus. They began, and this was new, to talk about his “possible successors.” No real clique was formed, but they knew well enough “who . . . [you] could speak with more candidly and who you couldn’t.”125 Among these “individuals” Herger communicated with openly if “very irregularly” were, apart from the first regional secretary of Karl-Marx-Stadt, Siegfried Lorenz, the departmental heads Johannes Hörnig and Heinz Mirtschin, Klaus Blessing and Günter Sieber. The first regional secretary of Berlin, Günter Schabowski, was not among them. He allegedly “jumped on the bandwagon” “only at the very end.”126 The transition from discussion to action can be pinpointed to July 1989. On June 12th and again on July 4th, Krenz in his role as Central Committee secretary received MfS reports on the mood of the population that did not paint a pretty picture. Unlike earlier reports, these included voices that fundamentally questioned socialism (e.g., “Socialism has proven incapable of solving its economic problems on its own”). Whether Krenz deliberately withheld these reports from Honecker127 or was just being mindful of the General Secretary’s aversion to bad news is an open question. What is certain is that in July 1989, in his capacity as Honecker’s representative, Krenz introduced on his own authority two politically controversial measures. First, he had the Central Committee’s Department of Trade and Supply draw up a report on the supply situation for the general population. This was released on July 28th and, probably not to his surprise, painted an ominous picture. Supply shortages were severe and the people were clearly unhappy.128 Second, he had Wolfgang Herger come up with a Politbüro proposal by early August 1989 listing the causes of the ongoing exodus of East Germans.129 The proposal is notable in particular because it does not place the blame on the “enemy”; instead, Herger noted that one motive of these “emigrants” was their dissatisfaction “especially with what they perceive as insufficient democratic inclusion in the decision-making process.”130 And as if this loosening of established patterns of perception131 were not enough, in mid-August Herger invited Minister of the Interior Lothar Ahrendt and deputy divisional direc-

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tor of the Central Evaluation and Information Group of the MfS, Colonel Günter Hackenberg, to a meeting at the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues. Among other things Herger wanted to know if travel to “socialist and nonsocialist states as well as to West Berlin” could be expanded.132 The attempts of Krenz and Herger to initiate a change of course during Honecker’s absence were promptly put to an end as soon as the latter returned to Central Committee headquarters on August 11th. According to Krenz, he was very worked up about Herger’s proposal, and asked, “who . . . allowed you to compile the number of emigrants?”133 Honecker, always extremely sensitive to real or supposed breaches of trust, felt betrayed. He retracted the Politbüro proposal and, since he now had to undergo surgery, suddenly appointed Mittag as his representative instead of Krenz. This was clearly a demotion for Krenz134—and once again set the rumor mill in motion.135 It is not far-fetched to interpret the proposals of Krenz and Herger on the emigration movement and travel as an attempt to initiate a course correction with Honecker. But in early October Krenz, Herger and the small circle of functionaries communicating on these issues saw clearly “what was resonating two years earlier: we can’t change these things with Honecker.”136 Since early October, Herger played a key role in the ongoing preparations for a transition of power. In light of the escalating crisis—the violent clashes, for example, between a crowd of demonstrators and security forces at Dresden Main Station on October 4, 1989137—Krenz obtained Erich Mielke’s approval and that of other Politbüro members to remove Honecker.138 Krenz and Gerhard Sieber, head of the International Relations Department, arranged a meeting between Harry Tisch, who happened to be in Moscow at the time, and Gorbachev. The latter wished the Germans “good luck” with the transfer of power— which was taken as a sign of approval. The fortieth anniversary of the GDR ended with the beating of demonstrators in the Berlin neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg.139 On October 10th and 11th, the Politbüro met for its “longest and most controversial” meeting under Honecker.140 It passed a declaration, drafted largely by two of Herger’s employees—his deputy Peter Miethe and his division head Werner Hübner141—which broke the Party leadership’s silence about the growing political crisis (“Socialism needs everyone. It has a place and perspective for everyone . . .”). The Politbüro also moved up the Ninth Plenary of the Central Committee, originally scheduled for late November, to October 18th. In the days that followed, Herger made phone calls with a slew of Central Committee members142 whom he wanted to prepare for what would happen at the Central Committee meeting that had been rescheduled to take place earlier than planned: Honecker’s resignation and the election of Krenz as the new General Secretary. Honecker’s removal was carried out at the Politbüro meeting on October 17, 1989, which has been well-documented.143 It began with Willi Stoph’s motion to ask the Central Committee the following day to “relieve Comrade Honecker of his function as General Secretary.” It ended with Honecker along with Günter Mittag and Joachim Herrmann, who were likewise urged to resign, voting for their own removal.

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The next day, directly before the Central Committee meeting where Honecker then declared his resignation “for health reasons,” the Politbüro convened again. During the meeting—and this is characteristic of the “transfer of power” from Honecker to Krenz—all the members of the Politbüro applauded Honecker, which in hindsight he found surprising (“that had never happened in the Politbüro before”).144 And four weeks later, at a meeting of Central Committee departmental heads, Krenz even reprimanded those of them who had taken down the portraits of Honecker in their offices.145 This did not bode well for a Wende, a turn of events and political-watershed moment, that Krenz had already squandered by mid-November.

No Way Back to Civil War In Wolfgang Herger’s estimation and that of his closest colleagues, the escalating “fall revolution” and Honecker’s resignation were a clear if rapid chain of events. From the point of view of the majority of employees in the Central Committee, the course of events of September and October 1989 was nothing but a confusing and undoubtedly daunting succession of rumors, half-truths and misinformation. On September 20th, IMS “Fritz Schuchardt” alias Gerd Pelikan reported to his Stasi officer about the mood in the Central Committee apparatus, saying that, while the discussions about the wave of East German citizens fleeing through Hungary took up a lot of attention, in the end “everyone held back his opinions beyond a certain point.”146 This was definitely not the case at the meeting with his handler two weeks later, on October 5th. In Pelikan’s Department of Planning and Finance, at any rate, the criticism of Party leaders was causing quite a stir. The rationale for deporting embassy refugees was seen by its members as “not very plausible” and as a sign of “weakness in the Party leadership.” The mood in the overall apparatus was described by “Schuchardt” as “very tense and nervous.” In general, he explained to his case officer at this, their final meeting, there was a prevailing sense of despair “about our reticent media.”147 This feeling was shared by Central Committee departmental head Karl Seidel. In a telephone call being monitored by the Stasi, he told a state functionary friend of his in mid-October “that not a single comrade he had seen in the last two weeks failed to criticize” the SED’s press policy.148 But Seidel saw grounds for hope: “What Kant wrote was very good,”149 he explained, and when “Hanna [Wolf ]” wanted to expel him because of it he told her she should cut the crap for once. The Politbüro declaration of October 11th was also a step forward in Seidel’s view. The election of Krenz at the Ninth Central Committee Congress gave him a reason to “buckle down” again for the new General Secretary. Together with health minister Klaus Thielmann he was working at breakneck speed on a Politbüro proposal for reprivatizing doctors’ practices, which was tantamount to “slaughtering the sacred cow” of the GDR’s healthcare policy.150 This bill was in fact one of the few the new Politbüro would pass, being forwarded to the Council of Ministers on October 24, 1989, for implementation. And if that weren’t

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enough, on October 26th a hopeful Seidel was pleased to tell his functionary friend that “we . . . will sit down all weekend and work like Trojans”—on a speech for the new General Secretary. Because the congress—Seidel is apparently referring to the upcoming Tenth Plenary of the Central Committee151—“has to be prepared as well as possible [and] Krenz’s speech like gold.” In the spirit of Krenz’s rhetoric of renewal, he declared that “we have to stick together and work together, because things have to move forward. And we have some good things. . . . With the General Secretary you can tackle anything.”152 Seidel’s commitment can be understood as opportunism. With regard to the question of why Party headquarters were crippled and collapsed so quickly, it is revealing for another reason, however. It shows how a top functionary like Seidel—incidentally, a “highly intelligent,” acknowledged and influential official in his day153—clung tenaciously to the new leadership and every step it took. Because, despite all the horizontal networks, the formal and, especially in Honecker’s “general-secretary system,” informal structures of the Central Committee apparatus were entirely geared towards a central decision-making body. For all his senility and other deficits, Honecker had filled this role. Krenz was incapable of this. It was the weak leadership of the new General Secretary that rapidly accelerated the internal disintegration of a power apparatus whose members anyway no longer exhibited uniform behaviors and perceptions of reality. It was evident already in mid-October, even before Honecker’s resignation, that Krenz would have a hard time keeping his leading functionaries in line. On October 16th, Kurt Hager held a consultation with the ministers for higher and technical education, for culture and for education as well as with the respective departmental heads in the Central Committee in which he offered “no signs of a new approach.” The participants, according to a report of MfS Main Department XX/8, gained the “general impression [that] nothing would change.”154 Appearances of this sort were not beneficial to Krenz, who was elected General Secretary two days later. The same goes for a talk given by Erich Mückenberger at the Karl Marx Party School.155 It was “so absurd” and “so bizarre,” says Bernd Preusser, a research assistant at said institution, because he “explained to us in this situation how terrifically the working people in the GDR all stand by the Party and that everything was going splendidly. . . . That was such a bizarre speech . . . you could only ask yourself afterwards: Come on, where the hell do you actually live?”156 Bernd Preusser found this even more remarkable since his brother, who lived in Leipzig, had “gone along” to the big Monday demonstration on October 9th, which turned out to be the breakthrough for the protest movement. This, too, was a factor leading to the progressive dissolution of patterns of perception of apparatus employees: they could no longer comprehend the boundary between friend and foe, one Mückenberger was still trying to draw, once it began to run through their own families. Peter F., the regional commissioner of the Party Organs Department, admits that “I had my problems” with his wife in the course of 1989. She countered: “You people keep heightening your consciousness and heightening your consciousness . . . and the situation keeps on getting worse!”157

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Krenz was unable to use this brief window of opportunity to rally the apparatus—at this point in time still a potentially powerful governing body with hundreds of highly qualified functionaries—around an objective. To be fair, it is reasonable to doubt that a reorientation of this sort would have even been possible at all in late October 1989. Whatever the case, the “political offensive” Krenz announced to the Central Committee during his inaugural speech effectively fizzled out,158 the majority of apparatus members in late October experiencing little more than a sense of chaos. Horst K., an employee in the Party Organs Department, recalls that the “turbulence” of those weeks was so “improbable that you sometimes couldn’t even follow which steps came next.” There were new tasks from day to day, “along the lines of: Okay, something has to change now . . . , we have to offer something.”159 At the end of October it was the “policy of dialogue,” for example, in which Krenz sought to have a conversation with East Germans (but not with their civil-rights organizations).160 In the midst of this turmoil, the Central Committee departments failed to realign their relationship with the ministries and state organs—potentially abandoning their role as a superstate (though admittedly they had had a good cooperative relationship in the preceding years). At least Johannes Hörnig and Lothar Oppermann, the heads of the Science and Education departments, respectively, made no attempt to keep pace with developments, openly revealing their sense of resignation. According to an MfS report capturing the mood in the Ministry of Higher and Technical Education, “inquiries directed to said Central Committee department were not merely being processed with delay.” “Recently they are not being answered at all.” What’s more, “any influence or effectiveness on the part of Comrades Hörnig and Oppermann is no longer perceptible.”161 Just how rapidly the Central Committee specialist apparatus was losing authority in the state is illustrated by a lecture delivered by Johannes Hörnig on October 22nd to functionaries and instructors at the College of Economics. Hörnig likely spoke just as well as he did on other occasions in the past. But the authority a Central Committee departmental head had enjoyed before as a representative of the Party line no longer counted for much on October 22nd. And so the perception of Hörnig, a hitherto respected man, had changed. He got “no response whatsoever” because—as participants noted—he “spoke in the same old style and in a preachy tone on top of it.”162 To judge by the mood of employees at the Ministry of Higher and Technical Education as described by the MfS, the whole of Party headquarters had lost its mystique during these weeks. State functionaries noted with incomprehension . . . that employees of the Central Committee of the SED are leaving their offices in droves immediately at the end of the workday just like “in peacetime.” They say this underscores in a most grotesque way the aloofness of the Party apparatus in the present situation.163 Perhaps this situation shows most clearly just how far the central Party apparatus of 1989 had strayed from being the “precarious” and at the same time much more belli-

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cose organization it had been in the 1950s. However different the situation may have been, Central Committee employees had huddled on the ground floor of the House of Unity, armed with iron bars and guns,164 on June 17, 1953. Their “grandchildren” in October 1989 left the Big House by the hundreds at 5 p.m. on the dot and headed to the parking lot outside headquarters or towards Spittelmarkt subway station. This contrast shows that, while the Central Committee apparatus may have remained a “special organization” with extralegal powers in the institutional landscape of the GDR, its employees were no longer the “professional revolutionaries” of old. Though not unskilled at political and social steering in peacetime, the premise for the effectiveness of Central Committee departments was the political power that rested with the Politbüro until the ousting of Honecker, or at least until he fell ill in July 1989. After that this power—and with it the viability of the central apparatus—was subject to a number of conditions, in particular that the Party leadership advocate a reform course with its apparatus. But Egon Krenz was never able to convey this in a plausible way. The feeling of being able to “tackle anything” with him was mere autosuggestion on the part of a small group of high-ranking functionaries. The critique of the Central Committee apparatus by employees in the Ministry of Higher and Technical Education indicates that by mid-October 1989 a process of disentangling the Party and state apparatuses had begun which ultimately resulted in the complete and rapid disempowerment of Central Committee departments. This in fact, in combination with the demand for an end to the “privileges” of Party elites, became a core element of political mobilization in the fall of 1989. The Tenth Plenary of the Central Committee from November 8 to 10, 1989, overshadowed as it was by the fall of the Wall, was effectively the swan song of Party rule. Neither could SED leaders around Krenz assert their “cadre supremacy”—the composition of the new Politbüro was dictated “from below”—nor could they present a plausible program for the future. Every attempt was overshadowed by the words of Central Committee departmental head Günter Ehrensperger uttered before the plenary: “Debts have been paid with new debts . . . . And if we want to get out of this situation we have to work hard for fifteen years or more.”165 The election of Hans Modrow as chairman of the Council of Ministers marked the beginning of the separation of the Party and the government, thus rendering the Central Committee specialist apparatus superfluous, at least in its previous form. And yet despite this de facto disempowerment, the Party and especially the Central Committee apparatus remained a symbol of the old order. Abolishing this symbol was still very much on the agenda of the revolutionaries of 1989. The Tenth Plenary had taken this sentiment into account by making the reduction of the apparatus one of the items on its agenda.166 The “program of action” adopted by the congress announced that the “fulltime Party apparatus would be restructured and downsized, beginning at the central level.”167 In the following weeks, the disempowerment of the Party apparatus—increasingly being characterized as “Stalinist”168—became more and more the focus of the SED’s Party base, which was partly

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mobilized and partly disintegrating. The leadership of a departmental Party organization at VEB Turbowerke Meissen demanded that no fulltime employees from the Party apparatus be sent as delegates to the Party congress.169 In a similar vein, the “WF [television electronics plant] platform”—a coalition of Party members from the television electronics plant and other factories in Berlin—announced in their appeal of December 1, 1989, that it would “force the special Party congress [to take place], in opposition to the leadership of transition politicians [Wendepolitiker] and the Party apparatus obedient to them.”170 These criticisms reached a climax on December 3rd. On the evening of that day, Markus Wolf, as a member of the newly formed working committee, demanded that, after the resignation of the Politbüro and the Central Committee, the Central Committee apparatus should also be given a wholesale vote of no confidence. Wolf publicly announced that the working committee would decide the next day which of the Central Committee employees would be allowed to stay and which wouldn’t. No such “purge” took place, however. The new Party leadership-to-be, Gregor Gysi assured Central Committee staff on December 5th, was “utterly opposed to putting thousands of employees out on the streets with no social safety net.”171 At least part of the apparatus would still be needed to help smooth the difficult path to the new political system for the SED’s successor party.

Stages of Unwinding The Tenth Plenum of the Central Committee was supposed to make a fresh start. In reality it marked the beginning of a rapidly accelerating dissolution of the Party and its central apparatus. The new Politbüro and Secretariat members would have been the cause for considerable hope the year before. In addition to Wolfgang Herger, these included the former head of the Central Committee’s Department of International Relations Günter Sieber, the until then much-respected deputy head of the Central Committee’s Science Department Gregor Schirmer, and finally the deputy minister of culture Klaus Höpcke, who had not long ago been engaged in a “culture war” with the Central Committee’s Department of Culture over permission to publish unconventional literary fiction.172 But the political margin of maneuver for the Party’s newly constituted supreme governing body was rapidly diminished not least of all by the mass exodus of SED members. By late November at least 200,000 comrades had left the Party, though the notifications of resignation only trickled into Party headquarters. This dissolution of the Party base corresponded to the disintegration of Party headquarters. The destruction of files, news of which spread like wildfire in the apparatus, played an important role here. As early as November 10th, Heinz Wildenhain, the head of the Central Committee’s Finance Department, had “several bags of archival material brought away for ‘milling,’” the “priority [being] to destroy those files with reference to the allocation of funds to friendly parties.173 In the Department of Transportation,

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Figure 8.1. Demonstrators outside the Central Committee building, November 7, 1989. Source: BStU, MfS, BV Bln, Fo 1014, Bild 0131. too, which for over four decades had aided West German comrades in the KPD, DKP and SEW, departmental head Julius Cebulla instructed his employees to destroy the department’s files entirely.174 The sizable Administration of Party Enterprises Department under Günter Glende probably destroyed the most files. Despite comprising a third of the staff at Party headquarters and maintaining intensive business relations with dozens of domestic and foreign companies, the SAPMO collection at the Federal Archives has only three and a half shelf meters of files from this department.175 Against the figurative background noise of shredders, no resolution, however momentous, of the Central Committee Secretariat was duly noted by employees. This went, for instance, for a resolution of November 15th stipulating that Central Committee employees could now travel to “nonsocialist countries and West Berlin” without prior authorization—the most telling aspect of which is that the Secretariat still thought such a resolution was necessary at all.176 Another resolution passed that day, with regard to the early retirement of apparatus employees, attracted a bit more attention. Women could now enter retirement at the age of fifty-five, men at the age of sixty.177 In the ensuing weeks, the Party leadership also urged Central Committee departmental heads to support their employees when switching from the apparatus to enterprises or state institutions. Severance pay and bridging allowances paid out to departing Central Committee staff did provide a certain cushion—by June 1990,

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the SED/PDS had paid out the equivalent of 41 million deutschmarks in transitional allowances178—but these decisions made unmistakably clear that the vast majority of staff members had no future at the Big House. It is little wonder then that, given the lack of perspectives among instructors, say, in the Department of Agriculture or the Party Organs Department, many “fled to their desks,” escaping the anger of the rank and file and local Party leaderships by burying their heads in the sand at Party headquarters. A good many comrades, complained Wolfgang Holan, an Einheit staff member, at the delegates’ meeting of the Central Committee in early December, were “hurriedly . . . [looking] for other work [rather than] concentrating their efforts on keeping this Party afloat.”179 In early November, Günther R., division head in the Department of Health Policy, expressed “his intention to switch to a bloc party,”180 whereas departmental head Karl Seidel had begun looking for appropriate work outside the Big House in mid-November. Just how far Central Committee employees had internally distanced themselves by early December is indicated by a guideline that “comrades working at Party headquarters” issued to the Central Committee’s “Consultation and Information Center,” a visitor center and press office set up at Party headquarters after the Tenth Plenary: “It is recommended that the large emblem with the Party insignia of the SED on the front of the building be removed in a timely manner lest Western media are given the opportunity to film it in a sensationalist manner.”181 In addition to these centrifugal tendencies there were other parts of the apparatus that, while still holding down the fort, forfeited all political influence between late October and late November 1989. This applied first and foremost to the specialist apparatus, more specifically the departments in charge of the economy. After Mittag’s resignation, and in light of the tendency of state economic managers to blame the Party and its apparatus for the whole miserable state of affairs, it was the employees in these departments who suffered the steepest plunge from the heights of power. According to Horst Wambutt, as of mid-November his staff was practically ignored by the ministries they had cooperated with so intensively until then. When asked about the period after November 9th, Wambutt’s first recollection is of a brigade from Leuna that came to him, “about five or six guys . . . who knew me from Leuna, they came to me and said: ‘Why don’t you do something about it? Why don’t all of you put up a fight to stop these things from happening?’” But all Wambutt could reply was, “what else can I do?”182 The preparations for the special Party congress were made “without us as a department.” Basically, in Wambutt’s view, “no one cared about us anymore.”183

The Breakdown of the Party in Daily News Briefings All of these developments—the passiveness, the disengagement, the loss of influence—were contrasted by a phase of activity that contemporary witnesses frequently refer to as the “time of turmoil.” Some staff members thought that now was precisely the time to be “with the working people in the basic organizations,” even though, according to Hartmut Lorenz, an employee in the Department of Agriculture, “at

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this point we were not exactly being greeted with flowers.” Departmental heads and members of the new Party leadership such as Gregor Schirmer, Helmut Koziolek and Wolfgang Herger who advocated a new course traveled to universities and factories, gave interviews and took part in panel discussions, often pushing themselves to the limits of physical endurance.184 Many employees were involved in the new commissions, working groups and coordination staffs that were founded after the Tenth Plenary of the Central Committee. An investigative committee was set up on November 11th to look into massive allegations of abuse of office and privileges by employees of the Central Committee.185 It was headed by Manfred Wiedemann, division head in the Central Committee’s Department of Education. In the weeks that followed, the committee received several hundred tips and allegations from basic organizations both inside and outside the Central Committee. Its members186 made inquiries, sifted through documents and unearthed evidence that, as Wiedemann put it in his committee report from December 5th to the delegates of the Party organization of the Central Committee, “will shock you in this condensed form.”187 At first glance the abovementioned “Consultation and Information Center of the Central Committee” seems to be a reaction to public pressure for more communication and transparency. The center was opened on November 16th in an annex to Party headquarters. Its director was Gerd Schulz, the head of the Central Committee’s Youth Department, whom Honecker would have preferred to ban from the Big House entirely in early October.188 Dozens of Central Committee employees were henceforth on hand to talk to visitors and telephone callers, whereas a special working group was wholly dedicated to answering the hundreds of letters coming in each day. For the Central Committee employees working there, the discussions and conversations were exhausting but more meaningful “than sitting around in the office,” according to Hans Erxleben.189 Starting on November 20th, there were also public panel discussions with senior functionaries. The first of these, entitled “On the Critique of Political Economy: The SED and Economic Reform,” was attended by two hundred people. The second, “Equal among Equals: The SED in the Political System of the GDR,” with Wolfgang Herger fielding questions, had 350 people in attendance. The majority of these attendees were probably fellow comrades demanding the “unsparing exposure of misconduct detrimental to the Party committed by leading functionaries” and a “renewal of the Party from below.” Still, it was not entirely a Party affair. In its daily news briefings the center proudly noted the presence of television crews from France, Austria and Yugoslavia. The West German weekly Die Zeit was also among the foreign media outlets.190 The Consultation and Information Center was the first real attempt of a foundering state party to conduct some kind of public relations in a pluralistic framework. But in the weeks that followed it primarily served as a complaints and support center for comrades and functionaries, an evaluation of December 5th showing that the visitors and callers predominantly “belonged to the intelligentsia” and were “mainly

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from academic and scientific institutions.” The number of factory workers was “very low.”191 The center’s daily news briefings, a kind of fever curve of the Party’s disintegration, showed that workers in particular were turning away from the SED. On November 21st, the center registered 95 individual visitors and 244 callers who reported signs of dissolution in basic organizations as well as “smear campaigns and hostility towards functionaries.” Two employees of the SED district leadership of Berlin-Mitte had come to find out what would happen to the political employees: “No one talks to us!”192 In addition to which 529 letters had arrived that day, including a “sharp rise” in letters demanding the disclosure of Party finances.193 On November 24th, the center received 748 letters in addition to 95 visitors and 170 telephone calls. Many of the callers were apparently “extremely critical of the way [West German] journalist Pleitgen conducted the conversation,” referring to his interview with Egon Krenz (“An interview is not an interrogation!”) which had taken place the evening before. On November 29th—118 visitors, 238 telephone calls and 372 letters—the “recent revelations regarding the Wandlitz forest settlement” formed the “absolute focus of discussion,”194 the accusations being brought forward “mostly in a highly acerbic tone.” Central Committee employees at the Consultation and Information Center thus had an up-close encounter with the “moral disaster” experienced above all by the Party’s firmest believers upon seeing the (admittedly modest) luxuries enjoyed by Party elites.195 Finally, in early December about five hundred to seven hundred letters were arriving daily, making “abundantly clear the catastrophic condition of our Party.”196 Fulltime functionaries consistently depicted their “desperate attempts . . . to find a new job.” “There are apparently few factories,” concluded the center’s “consultation working group,” “that want anything to do with ‘comrades of this sort’ (an answer from the Nordhausen district: ‘You can become the brigadiers of antisocial factory employees.’)” Already in late October, fulltime Party functionaries at the local and regional level reported that the “Party apparatus has come under indiscriminate fire.”197 Since the first half of November these attacks were increasingly centered on the “privileges” of leading Party cadre. Central Committee employees found themselves confronted with the notion that they belonged to a “lazy-brained, intellectually challenged apparatus . . . that worships the powerful, beleaguers the breakrooms and otherwise accomplishes nothing.”198 A number of employees experienced personal hostilities during the month of November: neighbors no longer greeting them, strangers scrawling graffiti on their apartment doors. In early December, the second secretary of the SED district leadership in Wittstock informed the center about “increasing anonymous threats to blow up the district leadership of the SED,” frightening the employees there.199 Moreover, the Party’s internal investigative committee, tasked with looking into abuse of authority and corruption among SED functionaries, received letters like the following, signed by one Axel S.: “All communists to me are the scum of earth” and “should only be given as much wiggle room as the air between noose and neck.”200 On December 5th, Wolfgang Pohl, first regional secretary of Magde-

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burg as of mid-November, complained about the “peaceful revolution after hours in the form of a merciless war against cadre.”201 He was greeted with a “storm of applause” by the delegates’ meeting of the Central Committee’s Party organization, probably because most employees shared the feeling of now being under threat for their once elevated status. The parallels here are striking with the “general mood of apocalypse” that employees of the MfS perceived as of mid-November 1989.202 Party workers and Stasi members both experienced social isolation, were “afraid they’re going to hang us for things we haven’t done,”203 and were faced with the prospect of massive layoffs. Both came to realize that they shared more than ideological perceptions and beliefs. Unlike the other security organs and unlike all other groups in the socialist service class, Party and MfS employees had no future in the GDR if the SED lost its monopoly on power. It was probably this realization that gave the final impetus to the disintegration of these organizations. On November 18th, the Secretariat of the Central Committee’s Party organization, last headed by its first secretary Fritz Müller, resigned—not least in reaction to the massive critique of the Central Committee’s basic organizations, who felt “left alone for weeks during a critical phase.”204 In its place came the “organization commission.” Initially headed by Roland Deutsch, then by Kurt Schneider from the Construction Department, its main task was preparing the delegates’ meeting slated for December 5th. It initiated the member meetings of the Central Committee’s basic organizations that elected the delegates and endeavored, according to Schneider in his speech to the delegates, to “no longer tolerate any signs of disintegration, to keep the apparatus together.” This, of course, conflicted with the Secretariat resolutions concerning early retirement and transitional contracts for departing staff. By November 20th or thereabouts, the majority of Central Committee employees was likely busy preparing the special Party congress. A number of commissions were set up to this end, including one for receiving Party congress applications which, according to Wolfgang Herger in an interview with Neues Deutschland published on November 27th, dealt with and evaluated forty to sixty applications a day.205 Dozens of Central Committee employees were deployed one last time to support the district Party organizations with the election of delegates—Peter Keller, for instance, from the Department of International Politics and Economics, who was sent to the Bernau district—where the Wandlitz compound was located—and advised: “Play dumb, you don’t know a thing.”206 A working committee, formed on December 3, 1989, set up a variety of working groups, in which mostly Central Committee employees prepared proposals for the Party congress. Horst K. recalls the challenges of organizing a Party congress with three thousand more or less spontaneously elected delegates that no longer followed the old script but, with its “seemingly chaotic sequence of events, . . . was more like an early Party congress of the Greens than the Eleventh SED Party Congress in 1986.”207 The election procedure for the party executive was a particular headache for K. and his comrades in the Party Organs Department. According to K., it was

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very difficult with 3,000 delegates you didn’t know much about. We rehearsed in advance how to count 100 delegates who are spontaneously being called out from among the mass of 3,000 . . . . We sat there all night, 60 of us, and counted 3,000 ballot papers by hand, then we tried to use computers, but because of time constraints, the fact that everything was so impromptu, it pretty much bombed.208 The Central Committee’s chauffeur service was asked to drive Party congress delegates to Berlin by bus, the bus drivers in their hometowns refusing to do so.209 Many employees worked as stewards during the Party congress, and one last time the stenotypists from the Office of the Politbüro were asked to take down the speeches and debates and provide a print version in the coming days. Then, says Horst K., “we at least had the Party congress behind us . . . and then, of course, the . . . unwinding began.”210 The apparatus, or to be more precise: large parts of its staff, adhered to correct form, so it seems. It kept on functioning until the very end, until the special Party congress, until its unwinding. Its employees apparently resigned themselves to their fate, cleaning out their offices, possibly destroying a few shelf meters of files beforehand, entering early retirement or filing for unemployment. They put up no resistance. The Big House, the center of dictatorship, vanished in near silence, without so much as a bang or a whimper. The “paralysis and disorientation,” recalled André Brie, referring to the week he spent at Party headquarters in early December preparing the special Party congress, “was nearly complete.” Even in the daytime he “couldn’t shake the impression of sitting in an empty building.”211 The image of the former power center of the SED dictatorship passively accepting its dissolution emerged because the rush of events effectively pushed this aspect into the background. But this picture was painted by outsiders, André Brie among them, who at the time had been working at the Academy of State and Legal Sciences in the Babelsberg district of Potsdam (and as of 1990 became a campaign manager of the PDS). In the following section this picture will be counterposed by one last glimpse at the inner workings, the “mood” in the apparatus in the weeks before its dissolution, revealing resignation, despair and fear of the future, but also anger and fierce defiance.

One Last Revolt: The Delegates’ Meeting of the Party Organization of the Central Committee on December 5, 1989 A unique resource exists to help reconstruct the mood in the apparatus shortly before its demise: the almost two-hundred-page transcript of proceedings of the delegates’ meeting of the Central Committee Party organization that took place on December 5, 1989, and was attended by 389 staff members of the Central Committee apparatus in the role of delegates.212 The latter included 123 women, almost a third—a belated counterpoint to their marginalized position at Party headquarters over the years. The meeting opened with a speech by Gregor Gysi, the chairman of the meeting’s work-

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ing committee. This was followed by a report from the heads of the organizational and the investigative committees, Kurt Schneider and Manfred Wiedemann. After a discussion and a few remarks, the voting began, with the nearly four hundred representatives of the central Party apparatus electing three delegates to represent the former center of power during the special Party congress. For the first time in the history of the Central Committee’s Party organization there was an open debate and an open election. While the meeting transcript does not give a representative picture of the “mood” and “atmosphere” in Party headquarters shortly before its dissolution—the delegates of its basic organization seem mostly to have represented the younger generation of Central Committee employees, born in the 1940s and 1950s—what they said and what they failed to address nonetheless give an indication of the views and feelings of the “silent majority” of Central Committee employees. Nearly every one of the speeches illustrates the deep uncertainty of these delegates. Kurt Schneider, head of the organizational committee of the Party organization— and with that its de facto first secretary—spoke about the “identity crisis” afflicting the “overwhelming majority of comrades in our collective.” “More so and more painfully than other comrades,” they felt they had “served a leadership . . . that is guilty of criminal acts.”213 According to Schneider: “They felt marked: ‘You served under Honecker.’”214 The emotional community215 Schneider was appealing to here was constituted not least out of fear—the fear that Party headquarters might be occupied by protestors, which appeared to be a likely scenario on November 8th and 10th, when 50,000 and 150,000 SED members, respectively, demonstrated near the congress building in support, e.g., of a special Party congress.216 They were afraid they had no future professionally, were afraid for their families. A statement made by Gregor Gysi at the beginning of the meeting suggests that a new regulation—inspecting the bags of every employee at the entrances of the Big House—made participants anxious (“But I can assure you, mine will be inspected too,” he said). How great the need for recognition was, is reflected in the sustained applause that Gysi and Wolfgang Pohl, who gave the concluding address, received for their ingratiating words (“All comrades in this house are needed, of course, as Communists . . . . I don’t know any better ones . . .”).217 Speeches like this may have given the delegates a boost and a sense of validation. By the same token, however, the pressure on them was even stronger to be held accountable for the reputedly “criminal policies,” for the failures of others. The speeches also lent expression to the anger and rage of those who found themselves standing before the ruins of their career. These contradictory emotions, the combination of intimidation and aggression, the calls for a purge versus the defiant persistence in set ways, characterized the meeting—and in all likelihood the inner workings of the Big House in these final days. It is striking, first of all, that almost all of the speakers fell back on the rhetorical device of criticism and self-criticism. There was hardly a single speaker who did not

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take responsibility, if not the blame, for something or other. Kurt Schneider declared that employees of the Central Committee had “for the most part unquestioningly served” the old leadership (albeit “in good faith”).218 Peter Jureczko, fulltime secretary of the Central Committee’s Party organization until November 18, admitted that “we had no contact with the basic organizations.”219 Finally, Horst Siebeck confessed that he had “lacked the courage to leave the room here when [sic] Fritz Müller opened the ideological training course [Parteilehrjahr] and told us: If you’re not on board, you’re declaring war . . . .”220 Many speakers complained about being “abused” or, like Jutta Ruch from the Construction Department, “abandoned” in the critical days of October 1989.221 Just as frequent were the “calls for a purge”—e.g., by Marion Morgenstern, who had only recently joined the Department of Culture, in 1988, at the age of thirty-six and had been “very proud of it” at the time. Now she was suddenly convinced that “we had to throw all the baggage overboard.”222 Just as pronounced was the need to identify the guilty parties and draw a line between themselves and what was now deemed a “Stalinist” past. Kurt Schneider, effectively the chairman of the Party organization, got a taste of this when he reported on the activities of the organizational committee. His attempts to dodge a discussion about the work of the old secretariat of the Party organization were rebuffed (“You can’t blame everything on [the old Politbüro]”223). Several comrades demanded that members of the old secretariat address their “irresponsibility” before those gathered at the meeting. Two self-critical speeches by members of the old Party leadership—Edwin Schwertner and Walter Lorenz224—accommodated this mood. But the atmosphere remained tense. Things erupted a second time when Manfred Wiedemann, head of the investigative committee, presented his report on the misconduct and abuse of privileges by Central Committee functionaries. It is reasonable to assume that the delegates had been eagerly anticipating this part of the meeting. The names of the accused had been making the rounds in the apparatus ever since mid-October. Not to mention that abuse of office by old leading functionaries had become the straw of legitimacy that political and technical employees were all too keen to clutch at. But it is clear that the accused had gotten a head start with covering their tracks. Wiedemann reported that “a number of comrades” had proved “unhelpful” during investigations,225 and that a lot of material had vanished in the shredders. And yet the committee had made some gains. The most frequent types of misconduct cited by Wiedemann were the “regular use of official cars for private purposes,” “permanent subscriptions to the weekend homes of the Central Committee” and “vacation travel to capitalist countries.” He referred to the “main culprits” by name, first and foremost Günter Glende, whose malfeasance was detailed in chapter 7, then Heinz Wildenhain, head of the Financial Administration and Party Enterprises Department. Wiedemann recommended that Glende be expelled from the Party, which was greeted with “sustained applause” by the delegates—clearly the “secret king of the Big House” had never been popular there.226 Some delegates interjected, wanting to know if Günter Glende and Co. had at least admitted to their

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wrongdoings. Wiedemann said no in Glende’s case, “he denies everything, despite solid evidence.” One delegate called for speeding up the investigations “so we’re not overtaken by the state prosecutor.”227 The discussion also revolved around the question of which parts of the apparatus had been cooperative during the investigation and to what extent. Wiedemann praised the comrades “in particular from the chauffeur service and from other areas of the Administration of Economic Enterprises.” They “came to us . . . and laid it all out on the table, no holds barred”—which once again underscores the difference between technical and political staff. On the other hand, the Department of Transportation with its guesthouses and access to foreign-currency funds crystalized into a kind of epicenter of the purported corruption of the apparatus. “Not a single comrade” from this area had approached the committee, said Wiedemann when asked. He declared that it was the commission’s “next task” to “firmly crack down on them now.”228 Evidently alarmed by this, a delegate from the Department of Transportation reported on “reprisals in our department from the older comrades . . . [and the fact that] no one in our department . . . has agreed yet to take a stand against [them]. I think we’ll hear more about this tomorrow, including from the comrades in the room. I wanted to emphasize that here.”229 Such remarks at least give a hint of what the climate in the Big House must have been like in the final weeks of the SED: defensiveness, silence, the pressuring of dissenters. The impulse to self-purge had its limits, and the appeal of delegates for more transparency and democratic procedures should not mislead us into thinking that the organizational culture at Party headquarters had taken a turn for the better in just a matter of weeks. The old patterns of perception persisted at least in parts of the apparatus, being stabilized by groupthink—even at the delegates’ meeting of the Party organization on December 5, 1989. It was the very openness of the political situation that to some extent forced even the younger apparatus members to rely on the old organizational culture rooted in Stalinism as an anchor of stability.230 This is seen in the talks delivered at the meeting in which the delegates expressed their defiance, their self-determination, their rage. Many speakers, such as Kurt Schneider, insisted that “a lot of useful things have been done for our country in the central Party apparatus,”231 and others repeatedly posed the question, “when . . . we would [finally] go on the political offensive.” Thomas Kreuzer, born in 1960 and an employee in the chauffeur-service division, even quoted Felix Dzerzhinsky: “What we need now is people with cool heads, warm hearts and clean hands,”232 before railing against a “freedom of speech” that allowed “every guy who comes along . . . to stand in front of a microphone and, without the slightest qualm, dump buckets of filth and garbage and spread lies about our Party and its comrades.” Kreuzer concluded with the remark that “we don’t want the future of our children to be drug addiction, crime, prostitution, neofascism and xenophobia.”233 The applause that the twenty-nine-year-old received, repeatedly interrupting his speech, shows that his angry defiance in the face of the possibility of German reunification struck a nerve among those present.

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Wolfgang Grützmacher, too, from the basic organization of the Department of International Relations declared that “a dog-eat-dog world in unified Germany is out of the question for us,”234 while likewise warning about the “growing voice of German nationalism here among the populace of the GDR.”235 Above all, however, Grützmacher thought that “we have to do everything in our power, in the present situation, not to back down even more.” This thread was picked up by Wolfgang Pohl. As the final speaker at the meeting he exclaimed that “this land can only be saved if this party, our Party, does not give up,” urging that “we, the SED, don’t always let them sling mud at us, that we sometimes pay them back in kind.” His ostentatious battle cry was likewise greeted with applause.236 Around 10 p.m., after various debates, motions and votes, Erich Wappler thanked the delegates on behalf of the organizers for their “constructive discussion and great discipline,” wishing “you and your collectives a pleasant journey home.” It is easy to imagine that groups of people stayed behind talking, that the congress hall on the ground floor only emptied gradually, and that it took a while until the last employees of the Big House left the building through the main entrance, which was still guarded by Stasi sentries.237 This evening marked the end of the organizational history of the SED’s Central Committee apparatus, an organization which for its members—however divided they felt on the inside—had formed something of a shared frame of reference. The delegates’ meeting of the Central Committee’s Party organization on December 5, 1989, was probably the last time apparatus members were invoked as a collective “we.” But this “we,” as combative as it may have sounded, had in a matter of days become a thing of the past, at the latest with the special Party congress, which sealed the end of the old state party founded on a central apparatus. On December 17th, the last day of the Party congress weekend, the Consultation and Information Center of the Central Committee counted a mere three visitors,238 a clear indication that not even Party members expected any help from Party headquarters. On December 31, 1989, the SED-PDS party executive dissolved the departments of the erstwhile Central Committee of the SED.239

After Reunification The notion of Party headquarters dissolving without a trace comports with the image of rapid downsizing, which did in fact set in during November 1989. Horst Wambutt recalls telling his employees in December, “Save yourself if you can! Everyone’s looking for work!”240 Lines were forming again outside the Consultation and Information Center of the now former Central Committee—made up this time of Central Committee employees looking for a job, the focus of the center’s work now being to offer them assistance. But the Big House didn’t empty overnight. In February 1990, there were supposedly still over eight hundred employees working at Party headquarters.241 In May 1990, Gregor Gysi reported at a closed-door meeting of the Party executive that of the 44,500 fulltime employees working for the SED in October 1989 there were still 8,500 working for the “Party apparatus in the narrow sense,” 7,500

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of these in the regional and district leaderships.242 Gysi didn’t specifically state how many of the remaining thousand were working at Karl Liebknecht House, which the PDS made its new party headquarters in May. In November 1990 there were still 220,243 most of whom had probably been Central Committee employees until the end of 1989.244 Marion Morgenstern in the media-policy commission of the PDS party executive was one such individual, whom Darnton counted among the supposed “ideological watchdogs” in Ursula Ragwitz’s Department of Culture. The same goes for Peter F., who until the end of 1989 had been a regional commissioner in the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department. He subsequently worked in the PDS party executive until 1991, responsible for work with senior citizens—the “last job I was able to get,” he says, with a mixture of bitterness and self-irony.245 Other former Central Committee staff played a key role in the attempts of the PDS to “salvage” the SED’s legacy assets. Among them was Wolfgang Langnitschke, who had served as deputy head of the Central Committee’s Finance Department until December 1989, responsible among other things for the Party-owned building contractor “Fundament.” As director of finances in the PDS party executive, Langnitschke was one of the brains behind the project to save the Party’s assets, together with Wolfgang Pohl. Their activities became known to a wider public through the so-called Putnik Deal in the summer of 1990, a complicated transaction in which Langnitschke and Pohl had attempted to launder over 107 million deutschmarks into foreign accounts, which ended with the arrest of both men after investigations by the Federal Criminal Police Office.246 One of Langnitschke’s close allies was Gerd Pelikan, who in 1988–89, as noted above, reported to the Stasi from the Central Committee’s Department of Planning and Finance as IMS “Fritz Schuchardt.” On December 21, 1989, the thirty-five-year-old Pelikan became chairman of an elevenmember working group for the “protection of SED-PDS assets.”247 In this function, as of April 1990 he was primarily concerned with “entering escrow [Treuhand] and loan agreements and making all declarations required for this on behalf of the party executive of the PDS.”248 According to a report in Spiegel magazine, in the spring of 1990 Pelikan and his men “wheeled and dealed like in the heyday of the economic miracle.”249 Pelikan and his comrades founded Belvedere Hotel GmbH, for example, to operate two properties of the Central Committee’s Department of Transportation—used to house DKP functionaries until 1989—and several Central Committee guesthouses as hotels. To this end Pelikan, acting on behalf of the party executive of the PDS, provided the new limited liability company with an interest- and repayment-free loan to the tune of 50 million East German marks in early May. Belvedere Hotel GmbH, like many of the other startups, preferably employed former Party workers.250 By July 1990 Pelikan and his comrades had already handed out 214 million deutschmarks in loans, 100 million of which the Independent Investigative Committee later deemed “irretrievable.”251 If any proof were needed that the technocratic financial experts of the SED could thrive in a market economy, Langnitschke and Pelikan provided it.

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The question of to what extent the fulltime staff of the PDS was comprised of erstwhile Central Committee employees and which areas of the Central Committee apparatus they came from cannot be exhaustively answered here. This will be the task of future studies. Here we will merely take a look at the subsequent careers of those whose service at Party headquarters had ended by April 1990 and for whom a new chapter in their lives was beginning in a rapidly changing world. For most East Germans, the period of transformation from late 1989 to early 1990 was associated with painful adjustments, a sense of alienation, and great uncertainty. This was especially true for those who had worked in the Central Committee. Like many other East Germans, they had lost not only their jobs but the very social order and frame of reference on which their previous professional and personal development had hinged. Added to this was the “heated mood,” as Horst Wambutt describes the situation in Berlin in the winter and spring of 1990, a situation that was “no longer normal.”252 But worse than the occasional hostilities they faced was for many of them the awareness that public opinion—in itself a novelty after four decades of the Party-state’s monopoly of opinion—had branded them as perpetrators, bigwigs and the guilty party. Many former Party workers had to bear the burden of society being united against them, the society in whose interests they had always claimed to act (and possibly even believed they were acting in). In this situation, starting a new career was a challenge, one that many of them had no choice but to face. Only a small proportion of former Central Committee employees, about 20 percent, was in fact sixty or older in early 1990. And only those former Party workers over the age of sixty were entitled to early retirement benefits, according to a law passed by the Modrow government in March 1990. Almost a third of political employees, however, were between the ages of fifty and fifty-nine.253 These individuals were too old to start a new career but too young for early retirement. Not to mention that many former Central Committee staff members—probably the reconstruction generation in particular— were loathe to collect unemployment benefits. “I mean, you can’t even imagine,” says Horst K., a longtime employee in the Party Organs Department who happened to be fifty-nine in 1990, “you have to remember that there were no unemployed in the GDR, and now you were supposed to be out of work. Impossible.”254 And so, as of 1990, dozens of former senior cadre from the apparatus of the Central Committee were looking for a job in Berlin. Their success depended on their qualifications, but in general tended to be modest. As far as Horst K. was concerned: “I’ll be a doorman if I have to.” His first stop, thanks to a tip from the Consultation and Information Center of the Central Committee (which as of January 1990 was solely dedicated to finding work for redundant Central Committee staff), was with the “cadre director” of the Grand Hotel on Friedrichstrasse, where they were in fact looking for a night porter. “She said: ‘Yes, if you like, three-shift system, goes without saying.’”255 But then chance got in the way. The tabloid Bild reported that Werner Müller, the former deputy chairman of the Central Party Control Commission, was working in the kitchen of the very same hotel. And so the “cadre director” explained

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to him: “Hiring another one from the Central Committee as a doorman, that won’t do.”256 Horst K.’s next attempt was more successful: the post office on Rathausstrasse hired him as a window clerk. “Of course they wondered why a guy . . . like that wants to work at the post office.” But K. passed the test, and is proud to report that “in no time flat” he completed a computer-training course as well as one for cashiers, and that the Federal Post Office eventually took him on, where he was even appointed postal secretary. “The other employees were a little surprised that someone . . . from there was adapting here. And I have to admit I enjoyed it.”257 Indeed, the experiences reported by former Central Committee employees in the interviews conducted for this study about their first career moves after 1989 are characterized less by bitterness than a certain sense of satisfaction. They had proved themselves once again as workers, or so the subtext of their narratives. A range of sometimes former senior employees were suddenly déclassé after 1990, working for months or even years at unskilled jobs, under conditions that can only be described as “precarious”: low pay, short-term contracts, and sometimes hard physical labor. What the narratives about this difficult period never mention, however, are the transitional allowances paid out by the PDS, generally for a period of twelve months, which conveniently cushioned their fall. This money was calculated as the difference between the lower take-home pay of their new jobs and their previous salaries as Party employees. The adverse working conditions of a postal clerk were thus a little easier to bear. All of this notwithstanding, former senior functionaries, who had previously been on an equal footing with ministers and state secretaries, had some radical adjustments to make. Fritz Brock, for example, who had served as head of the Central Committee’s Trade Unions and Social Policy Department as of 1965, was likewise hired by the post office, but rather than working as a window clerk had to deliver packages all day. Helmut Müller, second secretary of the SED’s regional leadership in Berlin until 1989, found work as an unskilled laborer in a shoe warehouse. Carl-Heinz Janson, the former head of the Department of Socialist Economic Management and one-time advocate of the New Economic System, did a number of odd jobs—“cardboard presser, doorman and cashier”—before entering retirement and devoting himself entirely to his personal reckoning with Günter Mittag (“The Gravedigger of the GDR”). Wolfgang Herger, too, a member of the last SED Politbüro no less and aged fifty-five in 1990, for years held a number of jobs for which he was clearly overqualified: from May to July 1990 as a doorman at the Institute for Marxism-Leninism, then as an employee at several trading companies, and most recently as a recreational coordinator in a community-service school.258 There were some Central Committee employees who had different, by Western standards more successful career developments in reunified Germany. But these individuals tended to belong to a younger generation and had worked in specialist rather than ideological departments. Christa Bertag, born in 1942 and a former employee in the Department of Basic Industry, was mentioned above. Into the 2000s she served

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as managing director of Berlin Kosmetik GmbH, whose predecessor, VEB Kosmetik Kombinat Berlin, she had headed as general director for a number of years prior to the events of 1989. Renate Michalik, born in 1954 and until 1989 a staffer at Neuer Weg, briefly worked in the party executive of the PDS before founding her own company that operates Germany-wide and is specialized on placing women as qualified professionals and executives. Bernd Preusser, a former research assistant at the Karl Marx Party School, was able to put his Russian skills to good use, having learned the language at the Party school of the CPSU. In the early 1990s, he worked for several years as the coordinator of a program of the German federal government in Russia that financed the training and retraining of Russian soldiers.259 Horst Wambutt, the longtime head of the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry, even managed a modest career advancement after being let go by the apparatus in January 1990 and falling into unemployment. His case shows that loyalty to the old system did not necessarily rule out a successful career in the new Germany.260 Wambutt actually got off to a bad start—the mood in Berlin was very “worked up” in the winter of 1990, there were “a lot of rumors circulating about all kinds of things that supposedly happened,” and “anyway no one gave me any work.” “By sheer coincidence” he then got a job as a warehouse worker with a machine-building company, “they needed someone to keep track of things a little.”261 But unlike his comrades from the ideological and cross-functional departments, Wambutt, a trained plant engineer and former division head in the Central Committee’s Machine Building Department as well as head of the Department of Basic Industry, had know-how—technical expertise and knowledge of East German factories, however dramatically they were being restructured. And so he didn’t stay in the warehouse for long: “It came to pass that I became the purchasing manager there . . . . Then I became purchasing manager and sales manager, and then the acting manager of the machine-building company, and then [in mid-1991] I handed over this machine-building company to a Western firm.” Wambutt was taken on by this Western concern. And though he lost his managerial position—“I realized, of course, that it wouldn’t work, that an old SED functionary couldn’t manage a company like that”—he was treated “reasonably” and stayed on till 1997 as a sales representative. “So I basically got some practical experience in simple commodity production—as a blacksmith from 1945 to 1950—then came the attempt at socialism, and then back to capitalism again.”262 It is almost an optimistic conclusion that Horst Wambutt draws from his life, despite having worked for twenty-five years at SED party headquarters, trying to ensure that “the GDR system hangs on.” The fact that Wambutt became integrated in the post-unification job market surely helped. He did not remain on the sidelines like many of his former comrades in the apparatus, watching helplessly as East German society transformed before them. But even employees from the Party Organs Department, such as Horst K. and Peter F., or from the editorial offices of Einheit, such as Inge H., who were not employed after 1990 did not withdraw into the solidarity of a post-communist milieu like many

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of the longer-serving employees of the MfS did. While it is true that some former Central Committee staffers joined the newly formed KPD in 1990—Werner Müller, for example, formerly deputy director of the Central Party Control Commission— and wrote dogmatic articles for Rotfuchs magazine, Central Committee headquarters and its apparatus did not live on as a reference point, a “place of remembrance” or mental community the way the “apparatuses” of the armed forces—the MfS and National People’s Army—did. The frame of reference of former Central Committee employees was and remains their former colleagues from their departments, whom they continued to meet after 1990, to celebrate birthdays263 or, according to Peter F., to discuss “current issues.” Having contacts outside one’s department was rare—and nothing has changed about that. The fragmentation of the apparatus into areas with their own distinct subcultures has continued even after 1990. Perhaps this almost parenthetical finding that, after 1989, “the apparatus” disappeared and became history almost as quickly as most East German ministries is no less instructive with regard to the guiding questions of this study than the insights gained from entire chapters. A brief review of the latter will now follow.

Notes 1. Information A 7776/86/133/89, Bd. 63142, 2.12.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 2041, fols. 261f. 2. MfS, Abteilung 26/7 an MfS, HA II/6, Leiter: [. . .] Information A 7776/86/ / 109–110/89, Bd. 61873, 26.10.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 2041, fols. 261f. 3. Süß, Politisch missbraucht?, 241. 4. The argument is adopted by Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, Endspiel. Die Revolution von 1989 in der DDR (Munich, 2009), and from a comparative perspective by Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of 1989 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague (New York, 1990). 5. Kotkin and Gross, Uncivil Society. 6. Martin Sabrow identifies as the decisive cause of the downfall of the GDR the “dissolution of a specific frame of discourse in which” up to that point in time “one’s own world of real socialism and the non-socialist outside world had been perceived and evaluated.” Martin Sabrow, “Der Konkurs der Konsensdiktatur. Überlegungen zum inneren Zerfall der DDR aus kulturgeschichtlicher Perspektive,” in Weg in den Untergang. Der innere Zerfall der DDR, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch and Martin Sabrow (Göttingen, 1999), 83–116, here 92. In a similar vein, Jens Gieseke posits the dissolution of “divided patterns of perception and behavior” with respect to State Security. Jens Gieseke, “Der entkräftete Tschekismus. Das MfS und seine ausgebliebene Niederschlagung der Konterrevolution 1989/90,” in 1989 und die Rolle der Gewalt, ed. Martin Sabrow (Göttingen, 2012), 56–81, 67. The present book argues that the center of dictatorship was also affected by this process of dissolution. 7. Interview with Bernd Preusser, July 15, 2011, 20, author’s transcript and audio recording. 8. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 20, author’s transcript and audio recording. 9. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, December 2, 2010, 34, author’s transcript and audio recording. 10. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 52f., author’s transcript and audio recording. 11. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 212. 12. Quoted in ibid., 216. 13. Ralf Ahrens, “Außenwirtschaft in der Schuldenfalle,” in Revolution und Vereinigung 1989/90. Als in Deutschland die Realität die Phantasie überholte, ed. Klaus-Dietmar Henke (Munich, 2009), 104–12, here 106; Hans-Hermann Hertle, “Die Diskussion,” 314. 14. Ibid.

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15. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 259, 288. 16. The seminars took place twice a year starting in 1978, always a few days before the opening of the Leipzig Spring and Autumn Trade Fairs. Ibid., 299. 17. Hertle and Lepsius, “Innovationen—nur gegen den Plan,” 55. 18. In the beginning, according to Krömke, the seminars were rather mixed, with the general directors of a wide variety of industries sitting together and swapping ideas. Later the directors were grouped together according to their respective industrial ministers—in order to better exert pressure by way of the formal hierarchy and “get approval for unresolved planning tasks.” Ibid. 19. “I told myself back then that if I were a combine director I would never go there if I didn’t have at least 1 percent plan overfulfillment to show.” Interview with Inge H., December 19, 2011, 3, author’s transcript and audio recording. 20. Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,” 9.9.1988, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 116f., here fol. 116. 21. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 283. 22. Quoted in ibid., 346. 23. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 14, author’s transcript and audio recording. 24. Wambutt says that “basically . . . as a departmental head I was in a factory every two weeks at the least . . . holding talks at different levels. At the management level, with scientists or with technical employees, or with brigades, witnessing brigade meetings in person or one-on-ones on the shop floor, that was completely normal.” Ibid., 21. 25. Ibid., 17. 26. Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,” 26.1.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 124–27, here fol. 125. 27. Ibid., fol. 126. 28. Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,” 16.3.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 132–35, here fol. 132. 29. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 297. 30. Interview with Klaus Blessing, September 4, 2012, 6, author’s transcript and audio recording. 31. Ibid. 32. Siegfried Leiterer, “Maschinenbau zwischen Weltspitze und Mittelmaß. Das Dilemma eines Wirtschaftszweiges mit Tradition,” in Das Große Haus, ed. Hans Modrow (Berlin, 1994), 148–54, here 154. 33. Interview with Klaus Blessing, September 4, 2012, 20, author’s transcript and audio recording; see also Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 88. 34. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 43, author’s transcript and audio recording. 35. Interview with Klaus Blessing, September 4, 2012, 7, author’s transcript and audio recording. 36. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 21, author’s transcript and audio recording. 37. BND, III B 3, betr. DDR: Bevölkerungsmeinung zu Intershopläden, 3.8.1977, BArch, B 206, 470, fols. 77–82, here fol. 81. 38. HA XX/2: Abschrift: IM-Bericht “Renn” vom 11.4.1983, 12.4.1983, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 15396/ 89, Bd. 14, fols. 211–13. 39. Ibid., fol. 213. Michael Gierke, an employee in the Central Committee’s Administration of Economic Enterprises Department, also had an irritating experience on a “friendly visit” to Poland with an FDJ delegation of the Central Committee in the fall of 1982. All the planned discussions with Polish youth had been cancelled “at the last minute,” he told unofficial collaborator “Renn,” allegedly due to organizational glitches. In casual conversation, however, the Poles had emphasized that “they were more interested in ‘Western consumer goods’—from jeans to music—than having discussions with German communists.” Ibid. 40. IM-Bericht “Renn,” 9.3.1983, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 15396/89, Bd. 14, fols. 167–71, here fol. 169. 41. On the details of this process, see Pannen, “Wo ein Genosse ist, da ist die Partei?” 42. ZK-Abteilung Landwirtschaft: Information für Genossen Felfe über die Teilnahme der Genossen der Abteilung an der Halbjahresversammlung der LPG und VEB der Land-, Forst- und Nahrungsgüterwirtschaft, 23.8.1988, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/22, no folio numbers.

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43. Interview with Werner T., December 19, 2012, 29, author’s transcript and audio recording. 44. Sputnik was a Soviet monthly comparable to Reader’s Digest. Its German edition printed articles from the Russian press and, with the onset of perestroika, became a coveted source of information for reform sympathizers within and outside the SED. On the fallout of the Sputnik ban at the grassroots of the SED, see Pannen, “Wo ein Genosse ist, da ist die Partei?” 45. Interview with Renate Michalik-Erxleben, January 18, 2016, 30, author’s transcript and audio recording. 46. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 19, author’s transcript and audio recording. 47. Ibid. 48. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 19, author’s transcript and audio recording. 49. Sackmann, “Organisationskultur,” 404. 50. Jaeckel, HA XX/1: Vermerk, 7.6.1988, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 41, fols. 293–95, here fol. 293. 51. See also Niemann, Die Sekretäre der SED-Bezirksleitungen, 318–22; Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 311. 52. Information über die politisch-ideologische Situation am Staatsschauspiel Dresden und die Führungstätigkeit der Bezirks- und Stadtleitung Dresden der SED, 10.9.1987, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/50/30, no folio numbers. 53. “One sentence in particular stuck with me: ‘The questions you pose are not the ones our people ask.’” Quoted in Nieman, Die Sekretäre der SED-Bezirksleitungen, 319. 54. Interview with Bernd Preusser, July 15, 2011, 25, author’s transcript and audio recording. 55. Kurt Hager, in his interview with Stern magazine, had reacted to the journalist’s question about the importance of perestroika for the GDR with a question of his own: “By the way, would you hang new wallpaper in your apartment just because your neighbor is doing it?” This is the “offhand remark” Modrow was referring to. Interview with Bernd Preusser, July 15, 2011, 26, author’s transcript and audio recording. 56. Michael North, Geschichte Mecklenburg-Vorpommerns, (Munich, 2008), 109. 57. Ibid. 58. Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 36, author’s transcript and audio recording. 59. Ibid. 60. Quoted in Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 316: “If we want to lower production and consumption,” he explained to the Politbüro, “then we have to do perestroika.” 61. At the College of Architecture and Civil Engineering in Weimar. Ibid. 62. Hans Modrow, Ich wollte ein neues Deutschland (Berlin, 1998), 246. 63. On the following, see ibid., 246; see also Bergien, “Activating the ‘Apparatchik,’” 793f. 64. “They assessed what was going on in Dresden,” says Horst K. “On top of this . . . there were carnival processions going on . . . with slogans: Gorbachev this, Gorbachev that. That was the way the winds were blowing. And this, of course, provided the political-ideological justification, I would say, to put a lot of pressure on there and say: there you go, Dresden, take care of these things and not so much those.” Interview with Horst K., April 27, 2011, 2, author’s transcript and audio recording. See also Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 318. 65. Quoted in Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 317. 66. Interview with Hans Modrow, March 4, 2010, 23, author’s transcript and audio recording. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 6, author’s transcript and audio recording. 70. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 20, author’s transcript and audio recording. 71. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, May 27, 2010, 23, author’s transcript and audio recording. 72. MfS, HA II/1: Operativinformation, Informations-Nr. 033084/16/88. o. D. [Juni/Juli 1988], BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 375, fols. 19f. The informer also reported that “Comrade Neuner”—the president of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences—“and Oppermann” subscribed to this criticism of the Politbüro. 73. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition, 696–700.

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74. MfS, HA II: Information zu Diskussionen an der Parteihochschule “Karl Marx,” März 1988, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 104f., here fol. 104. 75. Ibid., fol. 105. 76. The comments of employees at the Central Committee’s Administration of Economic Enterprises Department are taken from Bericht IM “Renn,” 4.10.1974, BStU, MfS, AIM 15396, 89, Bd. 7, fols. 99f. 77. Meinungen und Diskussionen von Mitarbeitern im ZK der SED zu politisch-ideologischen Problemen und Kaderfragen, 30.04.1976, BStU, MfS, AIM 15396, 89, Bd. 8, fols. 174f. 78. Interview with Hans Erxleben, April 12, 2013, 20, author’s transcript and audio recording. 79. Ibid. 80. Anonymous and Joachim Herrmann, undated [1988], BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 69, Teil 2, fol. 137. 81. Ibid. 82. Interview with Renate Michalik-Erxleben, January 18, 2016, 15f., author’s transcript and audio recording. 83. Ibid., 16. 84. They were also forbidden to visit capitalist countries with anyone “living in their household.” Verpflichtung, undated, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9159, fol. 327. 85. In practice this seemed to mean getting the approval of one’s departmental head. 86. Glende found it important, however, that this easing of the rules was not misunderstood as a policy of liberalization. The release of the new declaration of commitment should therefore “not be carried out as a special offer but incrementally in connection with the renewal or issuance of new IDs.” Gisela Glende an Erich Honecker, mit Anlagen, 11.9.1985, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9159, fols. 322–26, here fol. 322. 87. MfS, HA XVIII/7: Informationsbericht vom 20.7.1979, 4.8.1979, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 45, fols. 146–49, here fol. 147. 88. One example is the dismissal of Helmut Trienat, an employee in the Department of Basic Industry, in 1984 because his wife had met with her sister from West Berlin. 89. The letters are contained in BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 375, passim. 90. BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 101, fol. 44. 91. Information zu der DDR-Bürgerin R. Z., 20.6.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 101, fol. 21. 92. Pannen, “Wo ein Genosse ist, da ist die Partei?” 93. Parteiinformation Nr. 245 vom März 1988, quoted in Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 316. 94. Beschluss des Politbüros zur weiteren Erhöhung des Niveaus der politisch-ideologischen Arbeit der Partei, Anlage Nr. 2 der Sitzung des Politbüros vom 10.1.1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2/2310, fols. 14–26. 95. Unofficial collaborator “Fritz Schuchardt” reported from the Central Committee’s Department of Planning and Finance the view held “in small circles” that “this resolution was primarily intended to discipline comrades.” Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,” 26.1.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 124–27, here fol. 127. 96. Curiously enough, the professor was expelled from the Party but kept his job as professor at the Party school. Interview with Bernd Preusser, July 15, 2011, 9, author’s transcript and audio recording. See also Bernd Preusser, “Parteihochschule im Umbruch,” in Die Parteihochschule der SED—ein kritischer Rückblick, ed. Uwe Möller and Bernd Preusser (Schkeuditz, 2006), 232f. 97. Uschner, Die zweite Etage, 93. 98. Auswertungsbericht zur Expertise Nr. 88.0122, betr.: Maschinenschriftuntersuchung, 25.1.1988, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 96, Teil 2, fol. 142. 99. Information, 12.4.1988, BStU, MfS, HA II, Nr. 255, fols. 113f. 100. Ibid., 93f. 101. Interview with Gerhard U., February 5, 2010, 24, author’s transcript and audio recording. 102. The division was implementing the guidelines established by the “subsidy policy working group” set up by the Politbüro after the Seventh Central Committee Congress and which included the likes of Günter Mittag and departmental head Ehrensperger along with Gerhard Schürer, Heinz Klopfer, Walter Halbritter and Ernst Höfner.

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103. Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,” 21.3.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 132–35, here fol. 134. 104. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 365. 105. Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,” 16.5.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 137f., here fol. 138. 106. Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,” 25.7.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 145f., here fol. 146. 107. Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt,” 16.5.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 137f., here fol. 138; Landolf Scherzer, Der Erste. Eine Reportage aus der DDR (Cologne, 1989); Hans-Dieter Fritschler, “Erfahrungen des ‘Ersten’ im Kreis Bad Salzungen,” in Die Ersten und Zweiten Sekretäre der SED, ed. Heinrich Best and Heinz Mestrup (Weimer, 2003), 325–56; see also Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 321f. 108. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 377. 109. Interview with Inge H., December 19, 2011, 31, author’s transcript and audio recording. 110. Ibid. 111. Ibid. The interviewee goes on: “But there was so much of it the situation became palpable, visible, from all this mail coming in.” 112. Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 13, author’s transcript and audio recording. 113. Quoted in Pannen, “Wo ein Genosse ist, da ist die Partei?”; see also Sabine Pannen, “Austreten, abwarten oder protestieren? Der letzte Umtausch der Parteidokumente und der innere Zerfall der SED-Parteibasis in Brandenburg an der Havel,” in Agonie und Aufbruch, das Ende der SED-Herrschaft und die friedliche Revolution in Brandenburg, ed. Jutta Braun and Peter Ulrich Weiß (Potsdam, 2014), 106–27. The exchange campaigns were conducted periodically, about once a decade, and involved the Party leadership holding “discussions” with each comrade, addressing potential “weaknesses” such as lack of participation in Party life. On the practice of exchanging Party documents, see also Michel Christian, “Ausschließen und disziplinieren. Kontrollpraxis in den kommunistischen Parteien der DDR und der Tschechoslowakei, “ in Die ostdeutsche Gesellschaft. Eine transnationale Perspektive, ed. Sandrine Kott and Emmanuel Droit (Berlin, 2006), 62–65. 114. Ausführungen des Genossen Erich Postler, 2. Sekretär der BL, zu Punkt 1 der Tagesordnung, Anlage des Protokolls der 22. Sitzung des Sekretariats der SED-Bezirksleitung Schwerin am 21.9.1989, 22.9.1989, LHA Schwerin, Bezirksleitung der SED Schwerin, 4305, fols.°173–79, here fol. 178. 115. Quoted in Bahr, Parteiherrschaft vor Ort, 322. 116. Pannen, “Wo ein Genosse ist, da ist die Partei?” 117. Though some of the 6,155 individuals who had their membership “revoked” should be added to the 8,748 formal resignations in 1988, since Party leaderships tried to preempt the latter by expelling them first. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 301. 118. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 25, author’s transcript and audio recording. 119. Walter Süß, Die Staatssicherheit im letzten Jahrzehnt der DDR, published by the BStU (Berlin, 2009), 99. 120. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 377–89. 121. Ibid., 400. 122. “Scholars,” Wolfgang Herger responded to this question, “always try to put this into some sort of category. This isn’t possible in this case, it’s not possible to apply categories like reform wing or reform group, or even just group. Because these groups didn’t exist, because they were out of the question. These were individuals, Party members, who communicated with each other, very irregularly.” Interview with Wolfgang Herger, December 2, 2010, 20, author’s transcript and audio recording. 123. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, December 2, 2010, 16, author’s transcript and audio recording. 124. Interview with Dieter Mechtel, June 10, 2013, 7, author’s transcript and audio recording. 125. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, December 2, 2010, 20, author’s transcript and audio recording. 126. Ibid., 19f. 127. As assumed by Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 377f. 128. Ibid., 378.

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129. Ibid., 379. 130. ZK-Abteilung Sicherheitsfragen: Informationen und Schlussfolgerungen zu einigen aktuellen Fragen der feindlichen Einwirkung auf Bürger der DDR, undated [August 1989], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/ IV 2/2.039/309, no folio numbers. See also Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 379. 131. On the analogous dissolution of patterns of perception in the MfS, see Gieseke, “Der entkräftete Tschekismus,” 67f. 132. W. Süß, Die Staatssicherheit im letzten Jahrzehnt, 99. 133. Egon Krenz, Herbst ‘89 (Berlin, 1999), 54; also quoted in Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 380. 134. Ibid. 135. Karl Seidel, who was being bugged by the MfS, told a state functionary in late September 1989 that since July “Comrade Mittag’s ‘leadership ambitions’ have become more pronounced.” Seidel went on to say that there was simply “no uniformity in the Party and state leadership of the GDR.” Information, undated [late September, early October 1989], BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 2041, fols. 156f. 136. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, December 2, 2010, 20, author’s transcript and audio recording. In light of Herger’s recollections, it seems unlikely that Krenz hoped to persuade Honecker to change course before the Politbüro meeting on October 10, 1989. This was suggested by Walter Süß “Der Untergang der Staatspartei,” in Revolution und Vereinigung, ed. Klaus-Dietmar Henke (Munich, 2009), 284–306, here 286. 137. Gieseke, “Der entkräftete Tschekismus,” 61; Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 388. 138. Hans-Hermann Hertle and Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan, eds., Das Ende der SED. Die letzten Tage des Zentralkomitees (Berlin, 1997), 50. 139. Gieseke, “Der entkräftete Tschekismus,” 62. 140. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 392. 141. “The famous Politbüro declaration, we prepared that one too. Hübner did most of it, together with Miethe.” Interview with Wolfgang Herger, April 29, 2014, 23, author’s transcript and audio recording. 142. Interview with Wolfgang Herger, December 2, 2010, 18, author’s transcript and audio recording. 143. For the most recent account, see the relevant section in Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 401–4. See also the still very useful depiction in Hans-Hermann Hertle, “Der Sturz Erich Honeckers. Zur Rekonstruktion eines innerparteilichen Machtkampfes,” in Widerstand und Opposition in der DDR, ed. Klaus-Dietmar Henke (Cologne, 1999), 211–40. 144. Quoted in Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 404. 145. Janson, Totengräber der DDR, 254. Krenz’s reprimand harked back to the memory of the transition of power from Ulbricht to Honecker, when, at the behest of the new First Secretary, Ulbricht’s portraits were removed from office walls immediately after his resignation, which some employees in the Central Committee found disconcerting. Communicated verbally by Wolfgang Herger on May 29, 2016. 146. Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt” am 20.9.1989, 4.10.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 153f., here fol. 153. 147. Treffbericht IMS “Fritz Schuchardt” am 5.10.1989, 6.10.1989, BStU, MfS, AIM, Nr. 1825/89, fols. 162f., here fol. 163. A subsequent meeting was set for October 26th but apparently never took place. 148. MfS, Abteilung 26/7 an MfS, HA II/6, Leiter: Information A/7776/86/99/89, Bd. 37564, 15.10.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 2041, fols. 278–82, here fol. 279. 149. On October 9th, Junge Welt published an open letter by the president of the Writers’ Union, Hermann Kant, in which he candidly addressed a number of grievances in the GDR (e.g., “this miserable sense of complacency”). Hertle and Stephan, Das Ende der SED, 49. 150. S. Süß, Politisch missbraucht? 237f. 151. On October 24, 1989, the Politbüro of the Central Committee convoked its next congress, to take place from November 8 to 10, 1989. 152. “Händler”—Information A 7776/86/ / 109–110/89, Bd. 61873, 26.10.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 2041, fols. 261f.

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153. As described by S. Süß, Politisch missbraucht? 182. 154. Information der HA XX/8 über die kritische bis ablehnende Haltung zur Arbeitsweise des Apparates des ZK der SED, 30.10.1989, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 3987, fols. 252f. The report continues: “The ministers and Central Committee departmental heads said absolutely nothing during the consultation, nor were they asked to.” I would like to thank Andrea Bahr for pointing out this source to me. 155. “Vortrag an der Parteihochschule,” Neues Deutschland, October 13, 1989, 2. 156. Interview with Bernd Preusser, July 15, 2011, 30, author’s transcript and audio recording. 157. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 20f., author’s transcript and audio recording. 158. W. Süß, “Der Untergang der Staatspartei,” 187. 159. Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 42, author’s transcript and audio recording. 160. W. Süß, “Der Untergang der Staatspartei,” 288f. 161. Information der HA XX/8 über die kritische bis ablehnende Haltung zur Arbeitsweise des Apparates des ZK der SED, 30.10.1989, BStU, MfS, HA XX, Nr. 3987, fols. 252f. 162. The report goes on: “An academic from Karl Marx University in Leipzig virtually had to impose himself to explain his thoughts about the future shape of media policy in the Agitation and Propaganda Department.” Ibid., fol. 253. 163. Ibid. 164. See chapter 2, “Power and Authority,” of the present work. 165. Quoted in W. Süß, “Der Untergang der Staatspartei,” 292. 166. Rudolf Winter, general director of VEB “Fritz Heckert” in Karl-Marx-Stadt, had declared during discussions that it was “possible to reduce by 50 percent the cadre working in the fulltime Party apparatus.” Rudolf Winter, “Mit der politischen auch die wirtschaftliche Wende,” Neues Deutschland, November 10, 1989, 7. 167. “Schritte zur Erneuerung—Aktionsprogramm der SED,” Neues Deutschland, November 11, 1989, 2. 168. Volker Schmilinsky, “Neue Partei mit neuem Namen,” Neues Deutschland, December 12, 1989, 4. 169. “Gedanken vor einer Versammlung,” Neues Deutschland, November 22, 1989, 3. 170. “Radikale Erneuerung der SED gefordert,” Berliner Zeitung, December 2, 1989, 2. 171. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, Rede des Gen. Gregor Gysi, 5.12.1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 13f. Added to this was the fact that the apparatus was still a power base in early December and had massive amounts of documents that were better kept under wraps if the Party wanted to survive. 172. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 416f. 173. Bundestag 1994, 284. 174. Given the sensitive nature of the Department of Transportation’s activities, its files from the late 1940s and 1950s were never deposited in the Central Party Archive of the SED. See also Amos, Die SED-Deutschlandpolitik, 13, n. 6. 175. By way of comparison, eighty shelf meters of files from the much smaller Department of International Relations ended up in the SAPMO archive. 176. Edwin Schwertner: Büro des Politbüros, an alle Leiterinnen und Leiter der ZK-Abteilungen, 15.11.1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/9229, fol. 239. 177. Büro des Politbüros, 30.11.1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/7737, no folio numbers. 178. UKPV 1998, 143. In addition, the SED/PDS spent 119 million deutschmarks on severance pay and redundancy packages for Party members between October 1989 and August 1991. Ibid. 179. Holan admitted, however, that it was not only “existential fears” but “structures” persisting in the apparatus that caused these comrades to “lose courage.” Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, Beitrag des Gen. Wolfgang Holan, GO Einheit, 5.12.1989, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 143. 180. Major Krüger, MfS, HA II/6, Aktenvermerk über ein Gespräch mit der Genn. Winkler, HA Kusch/ Meldewesen, 14.11.1989, BStU, MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 2041, fol. 354. 181. Konsultations- und Informationszentrum: Tagesinformation vom 12.12.1989, ADS, PDS-PV, Alt-Signatur 2003-A-001, Bd. V, no folio numbers. 182. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 53, author’s transcript and audio recording.

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183. Ibid. 184. See, e.g., “Ab heute Abend: Podiumsgespräche im Hause des ZK,” Neues Deutschland, November 20, 1989, 1. 185. This likely had the double objective of having something to show the Party base while getting an overview themselves of the extent of the problem. 186. Apart from Wiedemann, the commission included Horst Heiser, Günter Pappenheim and Lutz Körner, all three employees of the Central Party Control Commission, as well as Günter Thalheim. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18528, fol. 61. 187. Ibid. 188. In early October, the first secretary of the Central Council of the FDJ Eberhard Aurich, the chairman of the Pioneer organization Wilfried Possner, and Gerd Schulz had prepared a proposal for the Politbüro that portrayed the mood among East German youth in fairly unvarnished fashion. It culminated in the observation that the prevailing opinion in general was that Party leaders were “too old and not dynamic enough.” The proposal was supposed to be discussed in the Politbüro meeting on October 19, 1989. Honecker blocked it, however, suspecting Krenz of having initiated the proposal. Malycha, Die SED in der Ära Honecker, 391f. 189. Interview with Hans Erxleben, April 12, 2013, 32, author’s transcript and audio recording. 190. Konsultations- und Informationszentrum des ZK der SED: Tagesinformation vom 22.11.1989, ADS, PDS-PV, Alt-Signatur 2003-A-001/Teil 1, Bd. IV, no folio numbers. I thank Sabine Pannen for pointing out this source material. 191. Arbeitsgruppe Konsultationszentrum: Tagesinformation vom 5.12.1989, ADS, PDS-PV, Alt-Signatur 2003-A-001/Teil 1, Bd. V, no folio numbers. 192. Arbeitsgruppe Konsultation (KIZ): Tagesinformation vom 21.11.1989, ADS, PDS-PV, Alt-Signatur 2003-A-001/Teil 1, Bd. IV, no folio numbers. 193. It is worth noting in passing that, according to a daily briefing of November 21, 1989, many of the letters were from the “wives of Party functionaries, comrades in the National People’s Army, and State Security” who “express their complete lack of understanding for the measures introduced, portraying what they themselves had to endure, sometimes for decades, so their spouses could fulfil their duties.” Ibid. 194. On November 24, 1989, the “ELF 99” program for younger viewers on East German television broadcast its first report on the residential compound for Politbüro members. The following days brought reports on the hunting lodges set up in restricted areas by Harry Tisch and Willi Stoph as well as the estate of Hermann Axen. See Peter Kirschey, Wandlitz / Waldsiedlung—die geschlossene Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1990). 195. W. Süß, “Der Untergang der Staatspartei,” 297f. 196. Konsultations- und Informationszentrum des ZK: Tagesinformation vom 1.12.1989, ADS, PDS-PV, Alt-Signatur 2003-A-001/Teil 1, Bd. IV, no folio numbers. 197. A. an Werner Eberlein, 7.11.1989, LHASA, MD, Rep. P 13, vorl. Nr. 22307, fol. 94–96, here fol. 95. 198. Or so complained Horst Siebeck, an employee in the Department of International Relations, during the delegates’ conference of the Party organization of the Central Committee on December 5, 1989. Siebeck countered this image of the apparatus with the words, “Here we worked, here we fought hard and intensively for a good cause, for Socialism.” Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 100. 199. Arbeitsgruppe Konsultationszentrum: Tagesinformation vom 5.12.1989, ADS, PDS-PV, Alt-Signatur 2003-A-001/Teil 1, Bd. V, no folio numbers. 200. Or so the committee quotes the letter verbatim. Zwischenbericht der Untersuchungskommission an den außerordentlichen Parteitag, in: ND, 21.12.1989, 5. 201. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, Beitrag von Wolfgang Pohl, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 154. 202. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 516–19.

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203. Ibid., 519. 204. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, Beitrag des Gen. Georg Mücke, Abt. Landwirtschaft, 5.12.1989, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 46. 205. “Schon jetzt liegen 1500 Anträge an den Parteitag vor,” Neues Deutschland, November 27, 1989, 3. 206. It would have certainly “become even more complicated” had he heeded this advice, said Keller. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, Beitrag des Gen. Peter Keller, 5.12.1989, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 144. 207. W. Süß, “Der Untergang der Staatspartei,” 300. 208. Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 43, author’s transcript and audio recording. 209. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, Beitrag des Gen. Wolfgang Pohl, 5.12.1989, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fols. 153f. 210. Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 43, author’s transcript and audio recording. 211. André Brie, Ich tauche nicht ab. Selbstzeugnisse und Reflexionen (Berlin, 1996), 146f. 212. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192. I would like to thank Andrea Bahr for pointing out this source to me. 213. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/18528, fol. 25. 214. Here we see once again that employees of the SED party apparatus and members of State Security shared a range of interpretations of reality in this situation. Thus, members of Line IX of the regional administration for State Security in Rostock confessed in a letter to the Council of Ministers: “We were tools in the attempt to solve political problems with the law.” Quoted in Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 513f. 215. The term is found in Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Worrying about Emotions in History,” The American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (2002): 821–45, here 842f.; see also Ute Frevert, “Was haben Gefühle in der Geschichte zu suchen?” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 35, no. 2 (2009): 198. 216. W. Süß, “Der Untergang der Staatspartei,” 293. 217. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/18528, fol. 154. 218. Ibid., fol. 28. 219. Ibid., fol. 56. 220. Ibid., fol. 99. Müller was likely referring to the rejection of mandatory indoctrination sessions even among employees at Party headquarters. His likening it to a declaration of war was an invitation to forcing their participation through disciplinary measures. 221. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/18528, fol. 47. 222. Ibid., fol. 95. 223. Ibid., fol. 46. 224. Ibid., fols. 48–52. 225. Ibid., fol. 84. 226. Just how deeply this topic preoccupied the delegates, how much they wished for a reckoning, is evident in the discussion after Wiedemann’s report. After naming names of some of the guilty departmental heads, Wiedemann said he would refrain from naming any more—and was met with opposition. Ibid., fol. 63. 227. Ibid., fols. 85f. 228. Ibid., fol. 79. 229. Ibid., fol. 82. 230. Bernhard Miebach, Soziologische Handlungstheorie. Eine Einführung, 3rd ed. (Wiesbaden, 2010), 343. 231. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18528, fols. 1–192, here fol. 29. 232. Ibid., fol. 104. 233. Ibid., fols. 103–9. 234. Ibid., fol. 124.

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235. Grützmacher sounded a note of regret when he said, “it might be the case that we no longer have parts of the press under our control. But we do have a . . . ‘central organ of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.’” Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/18528, fol. 124. Functionaries were essentially witnessing the media develop an independent existence, which for them was a disconcerting experience. Already on the second day of the Tenth Plenary of the Central Committee Egon Krenz ranted about the media with its “ties to the opposition” and which in his view was making a name for itself at the expense of the Party. Hertle and Stephan, Das Ende der SED, 69. 236. Protokoll der Delegiertenkonferenz der Parteiorganisation beim ZK der SED, 5.12.1989, SAPMOBArch, DY 30/18528, fol. 150. 237. As recalled by Brie, Ich tauche nicht ab, 146f. On November 20, 1989, Wolfgang Herger had informed the head of the Main Office for National Security (HA PS), Schwanitz, that the Central Committee building would no longer be secured by the Main Department for Personal Security but by the Central Works Security [Betriebsschutz] Commando in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But in the turbulent days of early December, apparently neither the HA PS nor the Stasi guard regiment were withdrawn. Herger an Schwanitz, 30.11.1989, BStU, MfS, HA PS, Nr. 11736, fol. 11. 238. Tagesinformation vom 16. und 17.12.1989, ADS, PV-PDS, Alt-Signatur 2003-A-001, Bd. V, no folio numbers. 239. No formal resolution dissolving the Central Committee was found in the course of this study. See, however, Manfred Gerner, Partei ohne Zukunft? Von der SED zur PDS (Munich, 1994), 199. See also Vernehmungsprotokoll Wolfgang Herger, 15.9.1992, StA II beim LG Berlin, 26 JS 1002/93, Bd. IV, fols. 1–17, here fol. 5. 240. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 58, author’s transcript and audio recording. 241. Gero Neugebauer and Richard Stöss, Die PDS. Geschichte, Organisation, Wähler, Konkurrenten (Opladen, 1996), 119. 242. Gerner, Partei ohne Zukunft? 198. 243. Ibid., 199. 244. Peter Christ, “Begehrte Altlasten,” Die Zeit, November 2, 1990, http://www.zeit.de/1990/45/begehr te-altlasten (retrieved on May 19, 2016). 245. Interview with Peter F., May 19, 2011, 26, author’s transcript and audio recording. 246. Hansgeorg Bräutigam, “Die Verschleierung von SED-Vermögen,” Deutschland Archiv 4 (2010): 628–34, here 631. 247. Bundestag 1998, 205. 248. Ibid. 249. “Der Schatz der Arbeiterklasse,” Der Spiegel, December 10, 2001, S. 40–56. 250. This support function was a goal explicitly outlined in a resolution of the SED-PDS party executive on December 21, 1989. UKPV 1998, 204. 251. Bundestag 1998, 202. 252. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 53, author’s transcript and audio recording. 253. Author’s estimate based on the year of birth of the 327 political employees working in the apparatus in 1989. 254. Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 45, author’s transcript and audio recording. 255. Ibid. 256. Ibid. 257. Ibid., 44. 258. Protokoll der Vernehmung von Wolfgang Herger, 15.9.1992, Archiv der Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin bei dem Landgericht Berlin, 26 JS 1002/93, Bd. IV, fols. 1–17, here fol. 7. 259. Interview with Bernd Preusser, July 15, 2011, 5f., author’s transcript and audio recording. 260. Karl Ulrich Mayer and Heike Solga, Lebensverläufe im deutsch-deutschen Vereinigungsprozess (Berlin, 2010), 9f. 261. Interview with Horst Wambutt, November 7, 2012, 58, author’s transcript and audio recording. 262. Ibid., 59.

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263. “People from the same department,” says Horst K., “still get together today. Many of them meet once a year, . . . it’s customary for us, too, that four or five of the instructors get together whenever there’s an important birthday.” Interview with Horst K., January 19, 2010, 25f., author’s transcript and audio recording.

Conclusion The Assimilated “Superstate”

“I’ve seen leading people in the apparatus there being witty and full of humor,” said an almost astonished Günter Gaus, the first head of the Permanent Representation of the Federal Republic of Germany in East Berlin, in his attempt to describe the GDR in 1983. At the same time it was a mystery to him the way the central apparatus of the SED would adopt and transmit the will of the General Secretary.1 In Gaus’s account, the power system of the SED appears Curia-like and impenetrable, a perception that has not been entirely dispelled even after three decades of scholarly research on the GDR, making extensive use of the files. This perception and a certain disinterest in the actors and patterns of state-socialist policy below the Politbüro level evidenced by the more recent literature were one impetus for the present study, aimed as it is at bringing light into the black box of the Central Committee apparatus and thereby engaging in an in-depth analysis of its inner working, its employees and its practice of rule. At this point I would like to tie together the various findings of this study. I will evaluate how the functional differentiation that characterized much of the organizational development of the SED’s Central Committee apparatus stood in relation to the political homogenization identified by scholars as a core element of East German society.2 The aim is to highlight certain patterns of organizational development that have been described as instances of the apparatus “growing into” the state and society. I will also elucidate what constituted the specifically communist aspects of the Central Committee departments and their political practice in the 1980s. How were the employees of Central Committee departments different than the state secretaries and departmental heads they worked with? And what were the limits, if any, of the central apparatus’s “growing into” the state-socialist institutional order?

The Long Road to the “General Staff of the Party” The literature to date has often presented the picture of a small group of Moscowtrained cadre “marching their way” to power after the war with the help of a politically homogeneous and strong-willed apparatus. The present study, by contrast, has

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endeavored to show how fitful this road to power was. It was an arduous beginning when, in the summer of 1945, a few dozen Old Communists scattered throughout the world gathered in war-torn Berlin to form the task force of a provisional Party leadership. Behind them lay imprisonment in concentration camps and emigration, the fear of death, the loss of people close to them, and in some cases behaviors that could have been interpreted as “betrayal,” “cowardice” or “sectarianism.” Living and even just surviving in postwar Berlin was a chore—and it is not second-guessing the motivations of these functionaries of the “first hour” by pointing out that employment at Party headquarters in the difficult months and years after the war was first and foremost a guarantee of survival. It meant a relatively good and secure income, food packages, preferential treatment when it came to the allocation of an apartment, and not least of all a certain of protection from the bullying and harassment of the occupiers, who only slowly were referred to as “friends.” Finally, work in the actual apparatus itself was hard to begin with. Its formal structure was long underdeveloped, partly on account of the tensions between former Social Democrats and Communists, which made it difficult to establish procedures and rules. Thus, the internal hierarchy remained unclear in many areas, and even explicit work regulations did not exist until 1953. To be sure, the day-to-day political practices of the Central Secretariat departments already comprised those elements that were characteristic of its operations right down to 1989: its employees wrote draft resolutions for the Party leadership, telephoned with Party and state organs and, most importantly in this early phase, with the Soviets in Karlshorst. But however important the “gatekeeper” role of the central Party apparatus, the latter had no real power before 1948. Even within the Party itself, Central Secretariat departmental heads were more like the office managers of their Central Secretariat secretaries than autonomous political actors. The collective consciousness of belonging to a powerful and influential elite was still far off. An esprit de corps of this sort was lacking, not least because the Old Communists, despite their high numbers in the apparatus, did not share a coherent ideological frame of reference nor a common objective with regard to the German path to socialism. This heterogeneity of experiences was reinforced by the differentiation of the apparatus into specialized departments beginning in the summer of 1945 and harking back to developments prior to 1933. It followed a basic developmental tendency of formal organizations and was the prerequisite to a minimum of organizational efficiency. It promptly aroused hostility, however, in parts of the Party leadership that resented the “bureaucratism” and “departmentalism” it gave rise to and ultimately demanded a more homogeneous apparatus that would function as a campaign-oriented mobilizing organization. This conflict between homogenization and differentiation accompanied Party headquarters into the 1960s. Only with the end of Ulbricht’s Party reforms was the model of the apparatus as a large, functionally differentiated organization no longer openly challenged, though latently the conflict smoldered until 1989.

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The correlation between differentiation and formalization—the attempt to compensate for the divergence of subdivisions in the apparatus with an even more distinct formal system of rules—can be seen in various instances in the history of the Central Committee apparatus. The first of these occurred in the years after 1947 when, in the course of Stalinization, formal membership requirements were first formulated and enforced. Hitherto a “weak” organization, the Central Secretariat now became a “greedy” one, demanding exclusive loyalty and establishing rules about what could be said. “Speaking Bolshevik,” to use Stephen Kotkin’s term, had won the day. Part of enforcing these stricter membership requirements was the “hunt for oldguard Social Democrats.” By 1951, all formerly Social Democratic departmental heads in the apparatus had been fired or forced to flee. The Party purges of 1950–51, in the course of which employees at Party headquarters were rigorously screened, can also be interpreted as an—admittedly extreme—instance of enforcing membership requirements as described by Niklas Luhmann. In the late 1940s and early 1950s employees who would later be denounced as “renegades”—Wolfgang Leonhard, Hermann Weber and Fritz Schreiber among others—left the Party apparatus or other key Party institutions, leaving behind those functionaries who were prepared to implement a Stalinist style of politics. Apparatus employees probably came closest to the ideal of a Stalinist Party cadre in the years after 1948. Yet the founding of the GDR and the decision to “build socialism” in the summer of 1952 resulted in new tasks for the central Party apparatus, putting an end to its temporary integration by way of exclusion. In other words, while the Stalinization of the apparatus had enabled Party leaders to keep the uncertainties and contingencies of the initial years in check, the expansion of power in the wake of Stalinism produced new uncertainties within the apparatus.3 In the early 1950s, uncertainty (in the sense of unintended side effects of transformation) was created in the apparatus first and foremost through renewed staff expansion. In a matter of years, the number of political employees at Party headquarters more than doubled. Moreover, in 1955 more than 30 percent of political staffers in the Central Committee were under the age of thirty. Their defining life experiences were not emigration, concentration camps and resistance, but Nazi organizations, the Wehrmacht, captivity and, increasingly, having studied at a new East German institute of higher education. In the 1950s, these young new employees were busy putting into practice the reorganization of East German society. But their one-year training courses at state Party schools or, at best, the central Party academy did not prepare them for the resistance this project encountered. They were incapable of meeting the expectations placed on them by the Party leadership: “proactively” solving problems, preferably before they even emerged; providing comprehensive information about everything at all times; and making sure that the will of the Politbüro became the guiding principle of individuals, even in the smallest basic organization. These requirements were unfulfillable in several respects. It was impossible, for example, for Central Committee instructors on the ground—in factories or even

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in a ministry—to implement the Party line and obtain comprehensive information through informal channels at the same time. As the years went by, “regional commissioners” and similar Central Committee employees increasingly satisfied the contradictory expectations inherent to these “outpost” positions by giving priority to information procurement over ideological transfer. The Party leadership, furthermore, ignored the fact that, had it been fully informed about all the problems in the territories, it would have been utterly overwhelmed. From the perspective of decisionmaking bodies, a system of information filtering is not at all dysfunctional if it helps absorb uncertainty. In the SED, however, information filtering was considered a fundamental evil of the Party’s reporting system, as shown in chapter 3. As if structural problems of this sort weren’t enough, for years Party leaders prevented their employees from developing routines and gaining crucial practical experience. In the 1950s, they regularly inverted the principle of functional differentiation by combining specialist departments into large general departments. This reveals an inner contradiction of apparatus rule under communism: on the one hand, the Party leadership needed an efficient and hence differentiated power apparatus in order to implement its objectives; on the other hand, its bias—rooted in Communist Party culture—against supposedly “bourgeois” bureaucratism repeatedly gained the upper hand. The decisive factor, however, for SED leaders in the 1950s was the fact that Khrushchev was playing this very tune in an effort to reactivate the CPSU. Yet despite such regressive tendencies, the principle of differentiation eventually prevailed in the Party apparatuses of the CPSU and the SED. This shows another basic developmental tendency of Party rule under state socialism: at the latest after consolidating their grip on power, the central apparatuses of the state parties had to strongly interact with their environments—the state-socialist societies with their political and economic fields—if they wanted to go beyond mere mobilization and have a steering influence on policymaking. This meant that alternative organizational models—suffice it to mention the “simplification of Party work”—could not be implemented by the power apparatuses even if the Party leaderships decreed them. In fact, communist power apparatuses, despite an increasing habitual remove between their employees and parts of society during the 1970s, were organizations open to their respective environments. This can be seen not least of all in the fact that political fault lines running through the respective parties were also visible in the apparatuses. This goes for the opposition to Ulbricht in the SED’s Central Committee apparatus of the 1950s, but also for the clashes between Old Communists and employees belonging to the reconstruction generation. The latter included former Nazi Party members, who, comprising a good 9 percent of the political employees in the apparatus during the 1950s, were more numerous than former Social Democrats. Future studies will have to bear in mind that, even when joining the SED, these former Nazis by no means left behind the formative influences imprinted on them prior to 1945. Walter Borning, head of the Department of Security Issues from 1960 to 1971, provided one indication of this when he drunkenly railed at soldiers during

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an exercise of the National People’s Army, holding up to them the Wehrmacht as a model worth emulating.4 Borning’s indiscretion, which together with a series of other slips eventually cost him his job, is a powerful illustration of an important methodological finding of this study: that the reports, drafts and proposals produced by Central Committee departments, and which nowadays line the filing shelves of the SAPMO archive, tell us precious little about the mentalities and convictions of their authors. A hypothesis of Ralph Jessen, on the other hand, was able to be confirmed by this study: that the Party apparatus as a communication space was strongly characterized by a culture of orality.5 Seen in this light, the still all too common tendency in the literature to view ideology as the key frame of reference and the main motivation for the behavior of apparatus employees appears somewhat problematic. It is possible, of course, that many Central Committee members “believed” what they wrote in their reports or advocated in their presentations. But it’s just as plausible that they championed the official discourse because everyone else was doing it—an instance of Luhmann’s “consensual fiction”—or because upholding the official discourse in the Party apparatus was simply a performative practice (as Alexei Yurchak argues with regard to the Soviet Union). Employees, in this case, would have carried out this practice without any deep conviction and without the intent to deceive others; they were merely going through the motions, their references to Marxism-Leninism essentially fulfilling a membership requirement of employment in the Central Committee apparatus. This culture of orality furthermore points to a second aspect: that political processes cannot be described on the basis of Politbüro or Council of Ministers resolutions. Even in state socialism they were often conflict-ridden, were sometimes—within the prescribed limits of the Party line—open-ended, and subject to the influence of a multitude of different actors. Indeed, especially in the 1950s, the influence of Central Committee departments was heavily dependent on which minister, state secretary or other senior official they were dealing with. It was the specific power figuration and less so the abstract “leading role” of the Party—which was only useful to a limited extent against an in-the-flesh SED minister—or the official authority of a Central Committee departmental head that decided over his power or lack thereof. There were therefore no uniform patterns of rule during the 1950s. The departments vacillated between cautious efforts to influence “the state” and the direct exercise of power with a heavy reliance on coercion. The latter variant was sometimes favored by Party leaders but sometimes condemned (under the influence of Soviet anti-bureaucratism) as “patronizing.” Routines and set decision-making procedures were unlikely to relieve the apparatus in this situation. From the late 1950s on, the authority and political influence of Central Committee departments began to grow, however. This was not because the departments continued to rely on their political exclusivity nor because the state and economy no longer offered any resistance once the “building of socialism” had been completed— an interpretation suggested by Sigrid Meuschel with her much-discussed notion of the homogenization of East German society. Rather, a key finding of this study is that

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Central Committee departments increased their power and influence because they adopted the internal logic of the policy fields and institutions they were responsible for, because they developed “local rationalities” that relieved them of the contradictions and coordination problems afflicting the overall apparatus, and because they “imitated” the behavioral patterns and structures of state institutions.

The Expansion of Power as “Institutional Isomorphism” The process of Central Committee departments expanding their influence and power confirms a mechanism which organizational research refers to as “institutional isomorphism.” This means that organizations adapt structurally, culturally and behaviorally to other organizations in their environment, creating “isomorphic structures.” They do this especially under the pressure of uncertainty or when they are dependent on the organizations they are adapting to.6 The Central Committee departments experienced considerable uncertainty in the 1950s given the crisis-ridden internal development of the GDR and sometimes massive criticism of the apparatus. At the same time, it was becoming successively apparent that the economy and society could not be steered by working against but only in collaboration with the state apparatus, that the Party apparatus, in other words, was indeed dependent on the state—which did not in the least rule out Central Committee departmental heads insisting on their political exclusivity and being tough on the supposed “failure” of the state especially in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The prerequisite of this “assimilation” of the Central Committee apparatus—or at least its state- and economic-steering departments—into state institutions was the professionalization of its staff. Even in the late 1940s it was the stated aim of the Party leadership to recruit “expert functionaries,” but only in the late 1950s did this begin to show results, and not until the late 1970s was the point reached where, say, the staff of the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry was made up of 80 percent geologists, chemists and engineers with doctorates. One result of this institutional isomorphism at the staff level was that state functionaries eventually stopped criticizing the apparatus (or did so more quietly). But the more Central Committee specialist departments in particular ventured out of the apparatus and into their “environments”—their respective policy fields, each with its own internal logic—the more visible the boundaries became between different areas of the apparatus, especially the more ideological versus the more economically-oriented departments. These internal boundaries sometimes turned into barriers, making it difficult for the apparatus to find a common orientation. This division of the apparatus into subsystems, with some focused more on ideological and others more on economic policy (but not necessarily more “ideological” or “pragmatic” as a result), was fostered and made more visible by the reforms Walter Ulbricht introduced in the early 1960s with the aim of modernizing the Party, society and especially the economy. Central Committee employees were indeed miles

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away from forming a monolithic block in opposition to Ulbricht’s liberalization of youth policy and the NES. Rather, a new generation of economic-policy departmental heads in the Central Committee emphatically supported the economic reforms, sometimes in the face of opposition from state steering organs. Moreover, with the Eleventh Plenary of the Central Committee in December 1965, the “clean-sweep plenary” as it became known, several employees from ideological departments of the Central Committee were removed from the apparatus for “liberalist tendencies.” Not only the heads of Central Committee ideological departments acted as “hardliners” in their opposition, e.g., to the new youth policy; even economic functionaries of the “NES generation” left their reform euphoria far behind them after 1971. It is important to note here that, on the one hand, the reform meant a phase of uncertainty for members of the SED’s central power apparatus, where changing power figurations sometimes demanded a high degree of flexibility. On the other hand, the reform years clearly demonstrated to all employees in the apparatus that different “local rationalities” existed in its different areas and departments. In this respect, the reforms were a catalyst for the inner disintegration of the apparatus, the roots of which, in turn, pointed to a fundamental contradiction of apparatus rule: the aspiration of the Party leadership to steer a differentiated modern society by way of a central executive staff and to use this staff to generate information from all areas of society.

Factors of Integration This functional differentiation of the apparatus was reinforced in the 1970s and 1980s by social differentiation. This was partly a consequence of the functional differentiation of the apparatus and partly a reflection of the transformation of East German society, in particular the self-recruitment of a socialist service class. Added to this was the dichotomy between political and technical staff and the partly open, partly latent discrimination against women, whose share among political employees consistently sank between 1946 and 1989. Given these lines of conflict, it is little wonder that the inner workings of the apparatus seemed on the verge of crumbling into countless networks of intimate social relationships, the immediate circle of colleagues at the division level that created a sense of cohesion and security especially in the Honecker era. An “esprit de corps,” an emotional connection to the apparatus is only barely discernible, or at least did not exist in the form of an attitude capable of integrating large parts of Central Committee staff. Integration took place less through shared basic assumptions or emotions than it did through the deepening and consolidation of its formal structure. The strict regime of Fritz Müller, the first secretary of the Central Committee’s Party organization, which many of his staff suffered under was therefore not just an expression of the stagnation and “calcification” of the “Honecker system.” The greater importance, in some cases, attached to discipline and formal rules compared to the Ulbricht years was in other words also a reaction to the differentiation of the apparatus into relatively

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distinct subsystems. Another means of integration for political employees, especially for departmental and division heads, was their desire to share in political power—the main motive, for example, behind Karl Seidel’s move to Party headquarters from his position as the director of the Charité clinic. Added to this was status consciousness and the awareness of belonging to an elite, reflected in the talk of Central Committee employees being like “gods occasionally descending to earth” to meet with comrades on the ground. Yet another important means of integration was the system of material incentives, which admittedly could not replace the “ideological cement” that allegedly began to crumble after 1956. To argue that ideological incentives were replaced by material ones would be misleading, as the relatively good pay of Central Secretariat employees played an important role even in the late 1940s. Corruption in the functional departments, moreover, especially in the Administration of Economic Enterprises Department, was widespread as early as the 1950s. But even if the SED’s system of material incentives was not an indication that the Party was “disintegrating” or “de-ideologizing,” it is clear that Party leaders prioritized it beginning in the 1960s, offering Party workers an elaborate system of benefits and perks—even imported prefabricated homes from a West German mail-order company. Central Committee employees were no more privileged by this system of incentives than other functional elites in the GDR were. But in their case these material incentives were distinctly at odds with their self-image of needing to appear modest as the representatives of an egalitarian regime. To be sure, the more extreme cases of personal enrichment and abuse of office need to be carefully put into context. A good many of these involved functionaries who, like Günter Glende, were involved by dint of their office in the GDR’s shadow economy and its manifold barter systems. In this respect, even the corruption of functionaries like Glende and Co. is less an indication that SED elites formed part of a kleptocratic “uncivil society” than evidence of the differentiation of the apparatus into subsystems, some of which were closely linked with the economy and state; it was only by virtue of these links that employees were in a position to misuse their offices for purposes of personal gain. These practices, however, were very much a part of the specific state-socialist culture of elites. As the possibilities for translating this merely temporary status conferred on them by the Party into more permanent capital—a process described by Bourdieu—were limited under state socialism, the temptation was huge to violate the rules and secure illicit advantages whenever possible, which was all the easier in the absence of effective control mechanisms. The MfS, which documented many of these cases, seldom intervened.

The Practice of Rule The harmonization of the Central Committee apparatus with state and society became more pronounced during the Honecker era. The relationships between Central Committee staff and state functionaries were on the whole less conflicted and asym-

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metrical than they had been before or were sometimes depicted after 1989—though long-running conflicts, like the one between the Main Administration of Publishers and the Book Trade in the Ministry of Culture and the “ideological watchdogs” in the Central Committee’s Department of Culture, did indeed still exist. One prerequisite for the generally cooperative practice of rule was the progressive professionalization of the Central Committee’s specialist apparatus. This not only lead to the harmonization of staff profiles in the Party and state apparatuses, but also had the secondary effect of allowing personnel to move more easily from a state ministry to a Central Committee department or vice versa than had been the case in the years of building socialism. The literature to date has generally assumed that career channels in the state and Party apparatuses were relatively isolated from each other—except temporarily in the 1960s, when Ulbricht increasingly recruited external experts for the Party apparatus. In fact, “cadre fluctuation” in both directions persisted and even intensified in many policy fields during the Honecker era. In the end the Party and state apparatuses were fairly intertwined, with Central Committee departments even serving as “career accelerators” for state functionaries. After the 1960s, the Party executive—i.e., the Central Committee apparatus— no longer presented a unified front to push through major policy projects such as the NES or a change of course such as the tightening of youth and cultural policy. In the Honecker era, the individual specialist departments found themselves in the more limited role of making sure that their respective policy fields did not cause any problems. This resulted in a partial identity of interests between Central Committee departments and “their” ministries, but also to a certain extent between Central Committee cultural or even economic functionaries and actors in their respective fields. Central Committee departments acted as “lobbyists” in their policy fields more distinctly than they had before. They fought for resources or reductions in plan targets on behalf of “their” factories and they provided senior cadre with telephone connections or permits to travel outside the Eastern bloc. These lobbying and—with respect to access to the Party leadership—gatekeeper functions of the Central Committee departments translated into political influence. Apart from this, the most important power resource of Central Committee departmental heads was their influence on cadre policy in their respective policy fields. This even included the ability to “make” their own ministers, as well as helping general directors and state secretaries, professors and army generals into their posts. Yet another form of influence involved the flow of information, departmental heads being able to pass on information to the Party leadership or withhold certain information. They could also initiate policy programs together with state functionaries or an SED regional secretariat. Though these power resources of the apparatus rarely resulted in a direct influence on strategic decision-making affecting the overall development of the GDR, they did have a considerable influence on the implementation of such strategies, to the point that it was up to a Central Committee department whether they ultimately supported the implementation of a Politbüro or Secretariat resolution

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or allowed it to languish and be disregarded. An example from the computerization of the SED Party apparatus speaks volumes. The “resolution storage” database was set up in the early 1970s with the explicit aim of preventing resolutions of the Party leadership from simply being forgotten. Predictably, the database was discontinued in 1972 because none of the Central Committee departments used it. All of these forms of exercising power, mostly covert and subtle, reveal that Central Committee departments were highly integrated in the state-socialist institutional order. By the 1980s, Rudolf Bahro’s so-called “superstate” had conformed to state and social institutions to such an extent that in the day-to-day political affairs of the GDR there was little left to remind one that it had originally been an organ explicitly designed to work against state institutions and consolidate the Party’s grip on power. Just as employees in the Central Committee’s specialist departments had been absorbed by the socialist service class, the Central Committee apparatus had grown into the state. This is directly reflected in its relationship with State Security. It can thus be argued that the partial surveillance of the Central Committee apparatus by the Stasi is a sign that the apparatus, in the Stasi’s view, had sunk to the rank of a “normal” decision-making center—admittedly an especially interesting one in its role as a staff of “leading representatives,” and one in need of special protection, but otherwise no more exclusive than, say, the State Planning Commission. And the fact that the Stasi was conducting operational measures against several Central Committee departmental heads and had even planted an officer on special assignment, Heinz Lübbe, as departmental head would also seem to suggest that the Stasi did not particularly look up to Party headquarters. At the same time, however, the present study found no evidence that the MfS was ever able to actively influence the appointment of any individuals apart from Lübbe to key positions in the Central Committee apparatus. Rather than steering the apparatus, MfS departmental heads accepted investigative orders from the Big House coming directly from deputy departmental heads of the Central Committee and hence flouting the officially prescribed channels. Finally, the fact that several MfS units observed the highly corrupt practices of senior Central Committee functionaries for years without intervening would at least indicate a certain “bite inhibition” towards the general staff of the Party. It is this relationship to State Security that reveals the limits of “institutional isomorphism” in the GDR, of the Central Committee apparatus’s willingness or ability to “grow into” the state-socialist institutional order. At no time did the Party leadership ever abandon the absolute primacy of Party rule. The primacy of Party rule was surely also—and this reveals an inherent contradiction of apparatus rule—the most important raison d’être of the apparatus even after its professionalization in the 1970s and 1980s. While it may have been this professionalization alongside the structural and habitual convergence of the apparatus with the state and other areas of society such as science and culture that gave departmental heads the leeway to exercise political influence in the first place, without the absolute

422 | inside party headquarters

power of the Party leadership at their back, without the ability to, if need be, end the career of a wayward state functionary, this leeway was virtually useless. Without this primacy of Party rule, the central axis of power in GDR, the Central Committee apparatus, was nothing more than a superfluous parallel structure—as would become apparent in October 1989.

The Dissolution of Party Headquarters The internal lines of conflict and the disintegration of the Central Committee apparatus intensified during the final crisis of the GDR in the fall of 1989. The existence of such lines of conflict and internal differentiations did not distinguish the apparatus from other power and security apparatuses in the GDR. Even the MfS evinced generationally determined fracture lines in the late 1980s. Yet the signs of dissolution at Party headquarters greatly exceeded what one would have expected in this situation from the members of a Party elite who were part of an “uncivil society.” The 200 employees who, according to an MfS investigation in 1987–88, maintained Western contacts without reporting them (or did not prohibit such contacts among their next of kin) were a sizable group indeed. This stands in sharp contrast to the image of an insular Party elite that was anti-Western in its orientation for reasons of self-interest alone, i.e., the desire to retain its privileged status. There was also a latent generational conflict, as seen in the growth of the number of employees between the ages of thirty-one and forty. This generational conflict was frequently expressed in opposing views on perestroika. Like these younger employees, many members of the Central Committee’s economic-policy departments were likewise favorably disposed towards perestroika, even more so, in fact, than the younger generation. But even “producers of ideology,” such as deputy head of the Agitation Department Dieter Langguth, called on newspaper editors to take up “taboo topics.” And most of the departmental heads that Wolfgang Herger spoke to “candidly” in the fall of 1989 in preparation for a change of leadership were not from the technocratic economic departments at all, whose members, incidentally, according to MfS reports, had been doubtful (and despondent) about their leaders ever since the early 1980s. In the 1970s, the Central Committee apparatus may have been differentiated primarily along the lines of specialist versus ideological departments, as well as along generational lines. In the fall of 1989, the apparatus was by all appearances an entity that, faced with the great uncertainty of the moment, did not retreat into its own canon of values and norms as might have been expected—its communist organizational culture, which in fact no longer existed as a behavior-guiding framework. Instead, the apparatus literally fell to pieces. Faced with the fall revolution, the thought that in this moment of crisis the Central Committee should take the initiative in its capacity as a central steering organ was neither uttered nor served as a guide to action. It seems that this power organization gave up its leading role of its own accord. An

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organization that, while perhaps “precarious,” was clearly oriented towards holding on to and expanding its power in the early 1950s progressively “cooled down” over the decades in response to its social embeddedness and functional differentiation. The end of this development was an image captured in October 1989: “Just like in peacetime,” bemoaned staff at the Ministry of Higher Education, the employees of the Central Committee left their workplace at Party headquarters at 5 p.m. on the dot. What, then, to come back to the question posed at the start, was specifically communist about the apparatus in the fall of 1989? Perhaps most of all its employees’ experience of being rejected by society at large as the members of a ruling class, the fact that despite their prominent position they were not held in high regard by their own people, and probably never had been. The defiant mood at the delegates’ meeting of the Party organization of the Central Committee on December 5, 1989, may have been little more than a reflection of the state of isolation they suddenly found themselves in. It was hardly an expression of the communist bellicosity that existed the 1950s, much less the 1920s. The history of the Central Committee apparatus of the SED is thus the history of a political steering organization that, implemented in the late 1940s in a modern industrial nation (or part of one), was strongly characterized by the tension between integration and differentiation. The principal finding of this study is that, after consolidating its grip on power, Party headquarters—and with it the Party itself—could only retain its hold on power by means of its functional differentiation and its mimetic convergence with state and social institutions. At the same time, the “assimilation” of the Party and its apparatus into society and the state deprived it of its political exclusivity and legitimacy, the very source of its self-defined “leading role.” The things that had served and been handed down as badges of exclusivity in the 1980s still— brigade deployments and the handguns issued to senior Central Committee employees, the meetings of Party activist groups and the cult of the “Big House” celebrated within the ranks of the Party—had either acquired a different function or suddenly become relics of the past. And since employees of the Central Committee not only perceived this transformation or, rather, depletion of their organizational culture through the lens of their dissonant experiences but—by way of their educational background and their involvement in various areas of society—embodied it as well, the apparatus as a power organization broke down in the fall of 1989. The departments of the Central Committee ultimately failed for fulfilling the very task they were repeatedly criticized for after 1989: the “apparatus-like” enforcement of the Party line as the well-functioning instrument of an isolated power elite.

424 | inside party headquarters

Notes 1. Günter Gaus, Wo Deutschland liegt, 123. My thanks to Martin Sabrow for bringing this to my attention. 2. See, esp., Pollack, “Wie modern war die DDR?” 186–88. 3. The argument that every absorption of uncertainty in autopoietic systems leads to the regeneration of uncertainty—to the restoration of the gap between certainty and uncertainty at a higher level—is found in Luhmann, Organisation und Entscheidung; see also Apelt and Senge, Organisation und Unsicherheit, 8. 4. Anlage Nr. 14 zum Protokoll der Politbürositzung vom 29.2.1972, Veränderung der Funktion des Abteilungsleiters für Sicherheitsfragen des ZK der SED [. . .], SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/J IV 2/2/1381, fols. 134–36, here fols. 135f. 5. Jessen, “Diktatorische Herrschaft.” 6. See esp. Mark C. Suchman, “Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches,” Academy of Management Review 20, no. 3 (1995): 571 – 610; see also Peter Walgenbach and Renate Meyer, Neoinstitutionalistische Organisationstheorie (Stuttgart, 2008).

Interviews Cited Twenty-nine interviews with twenty-three individuals were conducted over the course of this study. In addition, three other interviews conducted by Andrea Bahr and Sabine Pannen were also used in the present study. The following short biographies comprise sixteen of the twenty-six individuals cited above. The names of contemporary witnesses who asked to remain anonymous have either been changed or replaced with fictitious initials. Moreover, their biographies have been written in such a way as to make it impossible to identify them. No biography was provided for the other individuals as this would have revealed their identity.

Blessing, Klaus, born 1936; son of a commercial clerk; Karl Marx University, Leipzig; business economist at VEB Maxhütte (1958–66); departmental head at VEB Eisenerz-Roheisen (1966–68); joined the SED in 1967; head of division at VEB Eisenhüttenkombinat (1968–70); head of Planning and Economy Department (1970–79) and state secretary in the Ministry of Ore Mining, Metallurgy and Potash (1980–86); head of the Central Committee’s Machine Building and Metallurgy Department (1986–89); January 1989, sick leave; deputy minister of heavy industry (December 1989–March 1990). Interviewed on September 4, 2012. Erxleben, Hans, born 1946; high school; joined the SED in 1964; degree in journalism from Karl Marx University, Leipzig (1965–68); research studies in journalism and doctorate at Karl Marx University (1968–71); political employee at the Institute for Public Opinion Research of the Central Committee of the SED (1972–79); political staffer at the editorial office of Neuer Weg in the Central Committee of the SED (1979–89); publishing representative in field sales and direct sales for Weltbild, Brockhaus, Bertelsmann (1993–2003); private employment agency (2003–9). Interviewed on April 12, 2013.

426 | interviews cited

F., Peter, born 1936; primary school; service in the People’s Police in Barracks (KVP); foundryman in a steel foundry; Foundry Engineering School in Leipzig; manager of a foundry; first secretary of an FDJ district leadership; Party Academy of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1967–70); first secretary of an SED district leadership (1970–75); political employee in the Central Committee’s Party Organs Department (1975–89); staff member of the party executive of the PDS (1990–92). Interviewed on May 19, 2011. G., Paul, born 1940; son of a farmer; primary school; agricultural training; Central Komsomol School in Moscow; secretary and first secretary of an FDJ regional leadership (1960s); secretary of an SED regional leadership (1980s). Interviewed on May 20, 2011. Gross, Harald, reconstruction generation; early to mid-1950s several local and regional functions in the FDJ; Central Komsomol School in Moscow; mid-1950s to mid-1960s secretary in the Central Council of the FDJ, then until the early 1970s secretary in an SED regional leadership. Interviewed by Andrea Bahr on June 7, 2010. H., Inge, born 1933; Karl Marx Party School (1960s); editor of a company magazine; editor at an SED regional leadership (1960s and 1970s); employee in an ideological department of the Central Committee (1980s). Interviewed on December 19, 2011, and April 15, 2012. Herger, Wolfgang, born 1935; son of a worker; Friedrich Schiller University, Jena (1953–58), PhD in 1963; joined the SED in 1957; secretary and second secretary of the Central Council of the FDJ (1964–76), head of the Central Committee’s Department of Youth (1976–85); head of the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues (1985–89); chairman of the National Defense Committee (1987–March 18, 1990); member of the Politbüro of the Central Committee of the SED and Central Committee secretary for law and security (November 8–December 3, 1989); 1990 unemployed; doorman; employee at various trading companies. Interviewed on February 2, May 27, and December 2, 2010, March 6, 2013, and April 29, 2014. K., Horst, born 1930; son of a carter, road maintenance worker; primary school, various FDJ functions, Karl Marx Party School (second half of the 1950s); Party secretary in a regional council, second secretary and first secretary (1960s) of an SED district leadership; Party Organs Department of the Central Committee (1970s and 1980s); employed by the postal service as of 1990. Interviewed on January 19 and 27, 2010, and April 27, 2011. Krämer, Heinrich, reconstruction generation; FDJ, trade-union and Party secretary at a factory in the 1950s, briefly first secretary of an SED district leadership; three

interviews cited

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years of study at the Party Academy of the CPSU in Moscow in the early 1960s, then an employee at the Central Committee’s Construction Department; mid-1960s to 1989 functionary in the SED district leadership of Brandenburg. Interviewed by Andrea Bahr on November 23, 2010, and April 5, 2011. L., Bernhard, born 1939; departmental head in the Central Council of the FDJ (1970s); political employee in the Central Committee’s Youth Department (1970s and 1980s); subsequently employed by Deutscher Fernsehfunk. Interviewed on June 15, 2010. Mechtel, Dieter, born 1944; high school; joined the SED in 1962; Officer Candidate School of the People’s Police (1962–64); undergraduate studies and PhD at the Journalism Department of Karl Marx University, Leipzig (1965–71); head of the Editorial Department in the Ministry of the Interior (1978–86); political employee in the Central Committee’s Department of Security Issues (1986–89); independent PR consultant (1993–2007). Interviewed on June 10 and 13, 2013, and March 25, 2014. Michalik-Erxleben, Renate, born 1954; high school; trainee and editor at the factory newspaper of VEB Messelektronik (1973–83); business section of Berliner Zeitung (1983); Karl Marx Party School (1984–87); political staffer at the editorial office of Neuer Weg in the Central Committee of the SED (1987–89); staff member of the party executive of the PDS (1990–91); founded and worked at a company specialized in placing women as qualified professionals and executives (as of 1992). Interviewed on January 18, 2016. Modrow, Hans, born 1928; son of a worker; primary school; training as a machinist (1942–45); war captivity in the Soviet Union until 1949, Antifa school; various FDJ functions; member of the Central Council of the FDJ (1952–61); first secretary of the regional leadership of Berlin and secretary of the Central Council of the FDJ (1953–61); first secretary of the SED district leadership of Berlin-Köpenick (1961– 67); secretary for agitation and propaganda at the SED regional leadership of Berlin (1967–71); head of the Central Committee’s Agitation Department (1971–73); first secretary of the SED regional leadership of Dresden (1973–89); member of the Politbüro of the Central Committee of the SED (November 8–December 3, 1989); chairman of the Council of Ministers (November 13, 1989–April 12, 1990). Interviewed on March 4, 2010. Preusser, Bernd, born 1939; high school; Karl Marx University, Leipzig (teacher training in mathematics and physics); school teacher; basic military service; research assistant at Karl Marx University, Leipzig (1962–65); joined the SED in 1965; Party Academy of the CPSU in Moscow (1971–74); employee at the SED regional leader-

428 | interviews cited

ship of Leipzig (1974–75); research assistant; senior researcher; assistant professor at Karl Marx University, Leipzig (1976–89); teacher and IT instructor at the Academy of Vocational Development and Retraining (1990–2002); project coordinator for the German federal government in Saint Petersburg and Moscow (1992–94). Interviewed on July 15, 2011, and April 20, 2012. U., Gerhard, born 1932; son of a KPD functionary; high school; instructor at the Central Council of the FDJ; university; post-graduate work; assistant at a university (1950s); academic career (1960s); senior function at a ministry (1970s); Central Committee Science Department (1980s). Interviewed on February 5, 2010. Wambutt, Horst, born 1932; son of a metal worker; primary school; apprenticeship and work as a blacksmith (1946–50); departmental head in the FDJ regional leadership of Cottbus (1952–54); joined the SED in 1953; research assistant at the Institute for Social Sciences (1956–61); head of department at Wilhelm Pieck FDJ School, Bogensee (1956–61); 1964 doctorate in economics; political employee and division head in the Central Committee’s Machine Building and Metallurgy Department (1964–69); head of the Central Committee’s Department of Basic Industry (1969–89); warehouse employee; sales manager and representative at a machinebuilding company (1990–97). Interviewed on January 7 and November 7, 2012, and May 20 and June 3, 2013.

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Presseamt beim Vorsitzenden des Ministerrates der DDR DC 9/711 Staatliche Plankommission DE 1/ 47999, 48758, 52827, 53355, 54878 DO 1/26.0/35612 Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (BStU) Allgemeine Sachablage (AS) MfS, AS, Nr. 148/83 Archivierte IM-Vorgänge (AIM) MfS, AIM, Nr. 1282/71; Nr. 12860/77; Nr. 1825/89, Bd. I/1; Nr. 1825/89, Beifügung, Bd. 1 (IMS »Fritz Schuchardt«); Nr. 194/89; Nr. 195/89; Nr. 7052/74; Nr. 15143/89; Nr. 15396/89, Bde. 7, 14 und 15 (IM »Renn«); Nr. 20223/80 Archivierte operative Vorgänge (AOP) MfS, AOP, Nr. 429/56; Nr. 438/56; Nr. 553/55; Nr. 7208/76 Archivierte operative Personenkontrollen (AOP) MfS, AOPK, Nr. 12782/74; Nr. 12792/74 Allgemeine Personenablage (AP) MfS, AP, Nr. 4698/60; Nr. 489; Nr. 489/73; Nr. 7323/60; Nr. 79033/92; Nr. 81607/92 Archivierte Untersuchungsvorgänge (AU) MfS, AU, Nr. 146/56, Bde. 1 und 12 Sekretariat des Ministers (SdM) MfS, SdM, Nr. 306; Nr. 313; Nr. 320; Nr. 407; Nr. 1092; Nr. 1351; Nr. 1442; Nr. 1992; Nr. 2377 Hauptabteilung II (Spionageabwehr) MfS, HA II, Nr. 45; Nr. 255; Nr. 2041; Nr. 14192; Nr. 14250; Nr. 23541; Nr. 30577 MfS, HA II/6, Nr. 69; Nr. 101; Nr. 278; Nr. 375; Nr. 766; Nr. 960; Nr. 1016; Nr. 1059; Nr. 2041; Nr. 2514

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MfS HA II/19, Nr. 14192 MfS, HA II/MF, Nr. 37 Hauptabteilung VI (Passkontrolle, Tourismus, Interhotel) MfS, HA VI, Nr. 3911 Hauptabteilung VII (Ministerium des Innern, Deutsche Volkspolizei) MfS, HA VII, Nr. 1359 Hauptabteilung VIII (Beobachtung, Ermittlung) MfS, HA VIII, RF, Nr. 1760/12 (5619/71); RF, Nr. 1760/36; RF, Nr. 1774/34 Hauptabteilung IX (Untersuchungsorgan) MfS, HA IX, Nr. 21699; Nr. 24130; Nr. 24134; Nr. 24140; Nr. 24434; Nr. 24823 Hauptabteilung XVIII (Volkswirtschaft) MfS, HA XVIII, AP, Nr. 28072/92; AP, Nr. 55774/92; AP, Nr. 5835/92 MfS, HA XVIII, Nr. 15324; Nr. 15924; Nr. 4692 Hauptabteilung XX (Staatsapparat, Kultur, Kirchen, Untergrund) MfS, HA XX, Nr. 527; Nr. 2691; Nr. 6630; AP, Nr. 71848/92; AP, Nr. 72328/92; AP, Nr. 80369/92; AP, Nr. 82055/92 MfS, HA XX, Nr. 5751; Nr. 12485; Nr. 14164; Nr. 15110; Nr. 15111; Nr. 15112; Nr. 15113; Nr. 15456; Nr. 15611; Nr. 15612; Nr. 82055/92 Archivmaterial der Hauptabteilung Kader und Schulung (KS) MfS, KS I, Nr. 18/89; KS, Nr. 15493/90 Hauptabteilung Personenschutz MfS, HA PS, Nr. 1032; Nr. 1690; Nr. 2094; Nr. 2691; Nr. 6323; Nr. 6772; Nr. 10634; Nr. 11040; Nr. 11736; Nr. 11736; Nr. 11526; Nr. 50174 SED-Kreisleitung im MfS MfS, SED-KL, Nr. 5215 Zentrale Auswertungs- und Informationsgruppe (ZAIG) MfS, ZAIG, Nr. 2094; Nr. 2691; Nr. 6772; Nr. 11526; Nr. 50174 Archivierte GMS-Akte (AGMS) MfS, AGMS, Nr. 2476/86; Nr. 4370/75

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Index A Ackermann, Anton, 52–53, 87, 328 Adameck, Heinz, 169 Adenauer, Konrad, 141 Adler, Hilmar, 285 Ahrendt, Lothar, 380 Altenkirch, Ernst, 342–344 Apel, Erich, 101, 203–204, 365 Arlt, Eberhard, 78, 101, 106 Axen, Hermann, 14, 42–43, 107, 142, 169, 251, 280, 321n210, 377 B Bahro, Rudolf, 49, 91, 266 Baier, Adolf, 101, 254 Baumgardt, Willi, 238 Beater, Bruno, 1 Beling, Walter, 68n48 Belke, Rudolf, 55, 69n69 Berg, Helmut, 325n293 Bieler, Manfred, 207–8 Biermann, Wolf, 207–8 Blessing, Klaus, 297, 300, 303, 308, 367, 376, 380 Böhm, Siegfried, 204 Borning, Walter, 45, 86, 189, 235–38, 259n60, 336, 348, 356n65, 415–16 Brack, Gustav, 55, 58–59 Brezhnev, Leonid, 3, 12–13, 32n82, 32nn85–86, 91, 289, 294, 319n171, 339, 341, 343–44, 359n115 Briksa, Gerhard, 221n197 Bürger, Max, 58, 73n150 Buschmann, Werner, 221n197 C Cebulla, Julius, 254–255, 288, 346, 387

D Dahlem, Franz, 39–40, 63, 116 Danisch, Hans-Jürgen, 194 Deutsch, Roland, 391 Dickel, Friedrich, 148, 151, 280, 316n105 Dohlus, Horst, 154, 167, 207, 211n18, 340–341, 358nn102–103, 369–70, 376, 378 Dzerzhinsky, Felix, 395 E Eberlein, Werner, 340–41 Egemann, Hubert, 195, 366 Ehrensperger, Günter, 10, 248, 270, 278, 297, 301, 319n160, 340, 365–66, 385, 404n102 Eichler, Gerhard, 101 Erxleben, Hans, 135, 142, 374, 389 F Fechner, Max, 42, 57, 59 Feist, Manfred, 174, 214n70, 340–341, 345, 348 Fensch, Eberhard, 141, 308–309 Field, Noel, 61 Fischer, Erich, 14, 202–3, 229–30, 294–295, 308, 321n194 Fischer, Oskar, 221n197 Fritschler, Hans-Dieter, 377 Fuhrmann, Bruno, 57, 72n139 G Gäbler, Klaus, 168, 195, 308, 368 Gagarin, Yuri, 144 Ganse, Robert, 211n28 Geggel, Heinz, 174, 340–41 Gierke, Michael, 402n39

466 | index

Glende, Gisela née Trautsch, 145, 159n97, 232, 240, 258n33, 276–77, 293, 320n188, 340–42, 346, 348, 358n103, 375, 404n86 Glende, Günter, 102, 123n126, 145, 178– 79, 189–90, 196, 232, 250–52, 258n37, 263nn153–54, 273, 281, 288, 314n49, 318n149, 344, 346–48, 352, 359nn133– 34, 365, 375, 387, 394–95, 419 Glöckner, Elli, 303, 323n259 Gniffke, Erich, 8, 41, 46, 51, 59–60, 70n88 Goede, Arno, 168–69 Gregor, Kurt, 112, 126n190 Grimmer, Reginald, 207, 225n292 Gross, Harald, 134, 141 Grossmann, Walter, 272 Grotewohl, Otto, 55, 59–60, 62, 68n57, 110, 131 Grümmer, Hans, 208–9 Grützmacher, Wolfgang, 396, 410n235 Gyptner, Richard, 9, 30n57, 49, 61, 68n48, 68n57 Gysi, Gregor, 358n112, 386, 392–93, 396 Gysi, Klaus, 319n164 H Häber, Herbert, 11, 159n97, 240, 252, 263n159, 270, 309, 325n294, 338–40 Habesatt, Günther, 165 Hackenberg, Günter, 380–81 Hacks, Peter, 206, 208 Hafrang, Josef, 105, 115, 119n50, 126n196, 197 Hager, Kurt, 80, 102, 108, 115–16, 119n27, 148, 150, 199, 202, 206–8, 225n294, 241, 253, 264n167, 295–96, 298, 300, 308, 319n164, 370, 383, 403n55 Halbritter, Walter, 204, 404n102 Handwerker, Berthold, 211n21 Hansch, Ernst, 35n144, 64–5 Hanusch, Gerhard, 153 Harig, Gerhard, 116, 128n212 Harnisch, Gerhard, 254, 264n173 Heine, Arno, 228, 250–251, 256, 258n37 Heinitz, Walter, 261n111 Heinze, Dieter, 328

Heldt, Peter, 270 Hellmann, Rudolf, 168–69, 301 Hengst, Adalbert, 87, 102 Hengst, Karl, 100, 142, 159n100, 206, 220n191 Herber, Richard, 211n18, 272–73, 313n45, 340, 351 Herger, Wolfgang, 5, 136, 141, 144, 196, 239, 253, 260n75, 279–80, 282, 291–93, 298, 301–3, 307, 309, 316n105, 316nn115–16, 317n122, 320n184, 322n242, 323n250, 340–41, 347, 351, 364, 372, 379–82, 386, 389, 391, 399, 405n122, 406n136, 406n145, 410n237, 422 Hering, Werner, 36n156, 150, 168–169, 202–203, 205, 211n21, 224nn262–263, 241, 271–73, 278–79, 293–296, 299–300, 302, 308–309, 313n47, 340, 348–49 Hermlin, Stephan, 208, 296 Herrmann, Frank-Joachim, 11, 137–38, 374, 381 Heym, Stefan, 208 Hilbig, Wolfang, 296 Hockarth, Paul, 52, 86, 328, 344–45 Hockenholz, Willi, 60, 73n166 Hoernle, Edwin, 55 Hoffmann, Ernst, 67n35 Hoffmann, Hans-Joachim, 221n197, 296, 319n164 Hoffmann, Heinz, 260n79, 322n242 Hoffmann, Herbert, 191 Holan, Wolfang, 388, 407n179 Holm, Hans, 61–62 Honecker, Erich, 7, 9–11, 13–14, 22, 26, 39, 42–43, 46, 54, 133–37, 143–44, 148, 157n32, 157n50, 158n61, 159n97, 166– 67, 169–70, 173–74, 179, 184, 193–97, 199–200, 202, 206–7, 209–10, 214n70, 223n238, 229, 235–38, 240, 249–51, 253–54, 256, 263n153, 264n176, 265–67, 269–273, 278, 280–81, 284, 286–96, 298–306, 309–10, 311n6, 312n20, 313n31, 317n135, 319n160, 319nn171–172, 320n184, 320n186, 320n188, 321n194, 321n210, 322n241,

index | 467

325nn293–294, 326–327, 336, 339–46, 348, 350, 352, 359n133, 365, 368–69, 371–72, 374–83, 385, 389, 393, 404n86, 406n135, 406n145, 408n188, 418–20 Honecker, Margot, 21, 144, 199, 296 Höpcke, Klaus, 299–300, 307, 386 Hörnig, Johannes, 115–16, 127n211, 159n97, 199, 233n233, 295, 340, 380, 384 J Jamin, Erich, 254, 264n172 Janson, Carl-Heinz, 14, 174–75, 197, 280, 316n110, 317n119, 399 Jendretzky, Hans, 109 Junker, Wolfgang, 372 Jura, Bruno, 326 Jureczko, Peter, 272, 394 Just, Gustav, 110, 336 K Keilson, Margarete, 44, 59, 68n48, 68n57 Kern, Louis-Heinz, 211n28 Khrushchev, Nikita, 12, 88–91, 117, 152, 166–67, 166–71, 212n41, 237, 247, 415 Kiefel, Josef, 249 Kienberg, Paul, 230, 241–42, 244, 247–248, 252, 308–9 Kiesler, Bruno, 159n97, 305–6, 340 Klein, Dieter, 199, 223n233 Klein, Matthäus, 74n193 Kleinert, Fritz, 94, 162n147 Köhler, Bruno, 48–50, 52, 68n48, 68n50 Kohler, Harald, 194 Köhler, Willi, 209 Korb, Robert, 80, 108 Körting, Otto, 63–65, 74n192 Koziolek, Helmut, 289, 319n161, 340–41, 389 Krämer, Heinrich, 178, 191, 215n102, 313n46 Krankemann, Rudolf, 41, 46, 60–61, 68n57, 72n145, 102–3, 109, 143–44, 314n65, 345, 348 Kratsch, Günther, 249, 252–53, 255, 262n140 Krebaum, Walter, 108 Kreuzer, Thomas, 395

Krolikowski, Werner, 270, 289, 319n160 Krömke, Claus, 279, 402n18 Kühn, Herbert, 232 Kühn, Lotte, 52 Kuhrig, Heinz, 221n197, 305, 324n271 Kunath, Erhard, 191 Kurella, Alfred, 206–8 L Lamberz, Werner, 135, 174, 251, 290 Lange, Ernst, 105, 112, 223n240, 305, 347 Lange, Ingeburg, 169, 276–77 Langhoff, Wolfgang, 206 Langnitschke, Wolfgang, 283, 397 Laude, Horst, 298, 322n224 Lederer, Hermann, 368 Lehmann, Helmut, 46, 52–55, 58, 68n59, 71n123, 72n131, 137 Leonhard, Wolfgang, 6, 8, 39, 44–45, 54, 68n53, 74n193, 102, 414 Leonhardt, Werner, 199, 288 Leube, Heinz, 151 Leuschner, Bruno, 73n157, 114 Lewin, Willi, 209 Liebing, Gertrud, 160n119, 175, 178, 227–228, 232, 240, 243, 250, 256, 276–78, 315n87, 341 Lorenz, Hartmut, 388 Lorenz, Siegfried, 340, 380 Lorenz, Walter, 273, 394 Lösche, Alexander, 45–46, 59–60, 68n48, 68n57, 73n166 M Markowski, Paul, 267, 289, 340, 347 Matern, Hermann, 60, 65, 68n58, 73n175, 236 Matern, Jenny, 58, 105–7, 201 Mechtel, Dieter, 196, 239, 247, 262n126, 278–79, 298, 380 Mecklinger, Ludwig, 201, 203, 205, 294–95, 300, 308, 320n182, 321n194, 321n201, 324n288, 362 Meier, Otto, 57 Mellentin, Franz, 94, 113, 127n199 Merker, Paul, 49, 55–56, 58–59, 63–64, 69n71, 72n135

468 | index

Mewis, Karl, 57, 81, 101, 111, 156n18 Meyer, Heinz, 348–49, 351–52 Meyer, Peter, 241 Meyer, Willi, 120n52, 87 Michalik-Erxleben, Renate, 178, 222n212, 272, 274, 277, 280, 369, 374, 400 Mielke, Erich, 1, 10, 21, 136, 141, 197, 228, 233, 235–41, 248, 251–53, 255–56, 259n69, 263n153, 263n159, 263nn176– 177, 309, 349–50, 381 Miethe, Peter, 283, 317n122, 381, 406n141 Miller, Josef (Sepp), 60–61 Misgeld, Gerhard, 211n28, 212n32 Mittag, Günter, 10, 14, 96, 134, 136–38, 144–45, 172, 174, 191, 204–5, 220n181, 251, 265, 270, 281, 289, 294–98, 300, 312n20, 321n218, 234n285, 340, 365–67, 371, 376, 378, 381, 388, 399, 404n102, 406n135 Modrow, Hans, 14, 142, 148, 152–53, 155, 293, 320n183, 370–73, 380, 385, 398, 403n55 Morgenstern, Marion, 282, 394, 397 Mückenberger, Erich, 113, 126nn195–197, 241, 249, 383 Mückenberger, Joachim, 263n143 Müller, Fritz, 189, 242, 252, 255–56, 264n176, 273, 281, 291, 295, 311n6, 313nn46–47, 391, 394, 418 Müller, Heiner, 176 Müller, Helmut, 399 Müller, Werner, 351, 398, 401, 409n220 Münter, Christian, 203, 205, 370 N Naumann, Konrad (Conny), 145, 164n174 Neumann, Alfred, 59, 143, 198 Norden, Albert, 170, 174, 183, 190, 280, 316n107 Nowak, Fritz, 191 O Oelssner, Alfred, 84 Oelssner, Fred, 46, 53, 84, 90, 110, 114, 120n70, 127n200 Oppermann, Lothar, 30n61, 373, 384, 403n72

Ortner, Rudolf, 369–70 Ossig, Horst, 147, 221n204 P Paterna, Erich Franz, 42 Pelikan, Gerd, 248–249, 262n139, 263n141, 282, 366, 377, 382, 397 Pieck, Wilhelm, 39–40, 55–56 Pohl, Wolfgang, 390, 393, 396–97 Polak, Karl, 45, 68n45 Pöschel, Hermann, 108, 143, 159n97, 174, 206, 281, 322, 340–41, 365 Possner, Wilfried, 408n188 Preusser, Bernd, 150, 364, 370–71, 383, 400 Pries, Peter, 76 R Raab, Karl, 41, 80, 86, 98, 102, 145, 316n115, 328, 332–33, 335, 343–45 Rädel, Walter, 1–2, 4, 19, 27n1, 27n3, 337 Ragwitz, Ursula, 159n97, 241, 276–77, 296, 300, 307, 322n227, 340, 397 Rapoport, Samuel Mitja, 211n28 Rätz, Kurt, 102 Rau, Heinrich, 73n157, 80, 114–15, 119n34, 119n48 Reissmann, Otto, 341 Renckwitz, Fritz, 235–236, 259n69, 261n111 Rentzsch, Egon, 111 Rettner, Gunter, 338, 358n95 Reutter, Rudolf, 46, 51–54, 68n59, 131, 156n14 Röbelen, Gustav, 86, 109–10, 125n175, 234–35, 336 Rothe, Werner, 298, 306 Ruch, Jutta, 394 Ruge, Wolfgang, 2, 166, 210n2 Rüscher, Hans-Joachim, 172, 213nn57–58, 213n63, 304–5 Ruthenberg, Fritz, 41–42 S Sandtner, Johanna, 44 Schabowski, Günter, 292, 380 Scheele, Günther, 42, 68n25

index | 469

Scheibe, Herbert, 238–239, 260, 271, 340 Schellhorn, Fritz, 84, 89 Schenk, Fritz, 6, 110, 114, 125n165, 125n168 Scheweleit, Emil, 57, 61, 72n145, 101 Schirdewan, Karl, 39, 43, 76–77, 90, 94, 109–10, 120n70, 125n171, 339 Schirmer, Gregor, 300, 386, 389 Schneider, Gerhard, 220n193 Schneider, Kurt, 121n78, 391, 393–95 Scholz, Ernst, 80–81, 86, 104, 119n48, 197 Scholz, Paul, 107, 113, 126n195 Schön, Otto, 105–106, 124n140, 147, 176, 218n153 Schreiber, Fritz, 46, 59–60, 68n48, 68n57, 70n105, 414 Schuchardt, Fritz, 248–249, 262nn136– 137, 262nn139–140, 278, 297, 366–67, 377, 382, 397, 404n95 Schulz, Gerd, 389, 408n188 Schürer, Gerhard, 110, 221n194, 221n197, 225n278, 293, 323n243, 365, 404n102 Schuster, Erich, 168 Schwanz, Alfred, 105, 115, 197, 199 Schwertner, Edwin, 240, 273, 394 Seibt, Gustav, 349 Seibt, Kurt, 352, 354n19 Seidel, Karl, 140, 143, 203, 241, 246, 252– 53, 262n121, 264n167, 271, 295–96, 308, 349–51, 353, 358n95, 360nn146–147, 362–363, 382–383, 388, 406n135, 419 Semyonov, Vladimir, 56, 124n145 Siebeck, Horst, 394, 408n198 Siebold, Klaus, 221n197 Siewert, Robert, 302, 323n250 Sindermann, Horst, 43, 108, 168, 209, 340 Sölle, Horst, 221n197 Sorgenicht, Klaus, 86, 100, 123n117, 241, 250, 316n111, 341 Spalteholz, Herbert, 197 Stahlmann, Richard, 9, 30n57, 59, 61, 65, 253 Stanislawski, Rüthard, 347 Steidl, Josef, 174, 214n74, 247, 254–55, 264n176, 277, 345–46, 348 Stern, Carola, 6, 18, 35n137 Stern, Heinz, 45, 68n46

Stern, Viktor, 45 Steuer, Karl-Heinz, 180–81, 216n125 Stoph, Willi, 60, 381, 408n194 Streubel, Johannes, 86 T Tautenhahn, Gerhard, 305–6, 340, 346 Thälmann, Ernst, 45 Tiedke, Kurt, 272–73, 340 Tisch, Harry, 381, 408n194 Trautzsch, Gisela siehe Glende, Gisela, 161n132, 211n18, 216n119, 251 Trölitzsch, Gerhard, 197, 199, 206, 340–41, 372 Tyulpanov, Sergei, 49, 56, 59, 69n79 U Ulbricht, Walter, 7, 9, 31n65, 40, 52, 56, 59–61, 63, 72n135, 74n187, 76, 87–90, 94, 102, 105–9, 115, 117, 120n63, 124n142, 124n145, 129–30, 132–33, 135, 137, 144, 152, 155n2, 157n31, 157n48, 165–69, 171, 173, 179, 191–92, 199, 203–4, 206–7, 209, 211n18, 212n42, 223nn237–238, 234–237, 250, 259n52, 265–67, 272, 287, 289–92, 299, 303, 319nn171–172, 320n184, 336–37, 340–341, 345, 365, 406n145, 413, 415, 417–18, 420 Uschner, Manfred, 14, 142, 193, 196, 221n203, 273, 279–80, 289, 306, 372, 376, 380 V Verner, Paul, 9, 30n57, 61, 68n48, 313n32 Vieweg, Kurt, 110 W Wagner, Siegfried, 30n61, 199, 208, 302 Wambutt, Horst, 136–38, 191–92, 204–6, 210, 225n277, 243–44, 270, 279, 281, 288–89, 298–301, 304–8, 315, 318n148, 318n153, 323n263, 324n278, 325n293, 326, 337, 340, 356n73, 358n96, 364–66, 368, 372, 388, 396, 398, 400, 402n24 Wansierski, Bruno, 151, 27n1 Wappler, Erich, 396

470 | index

Weber, Rudolf, 201–202, 211n21, 212n32, 285 Wetzel, Rudi, 61 Wiedemann, Manfred, 360n156, 389, 393–95, 408n186, 409n226 Wierschke, Harry, 228, 256, 314n49 Wikorski, Siegfried, 205, 225n278 Wildenhain, Heinz, 331–32, 335, 351, 386, 394 Wilke, Walter, 113, 126n197, 127n199 Winkler, Heinz, 105, 115, 124n137 Witteck, Günter, 191 Wloch, Karl, 169 Wolf, Günter, 233, 258n33, 258n43 Wolf, Hanna, 87, 147, 221n203, 382 Wolf, Herbert, 204 Wolf, Konrad, 296

Wolf, Markus, 236, 248, 259n69, 386 Wollweber, Ernst, 120n70, 157n48, 231, 234–35 Wunderlich, Helmut, 108 Wyschka, Arthur, 41, 66n17 Wyschofsky, Günther, 169, 191, 193, 211n21, 221n197 Z Zeiler, Friedrich (Fritz), 220, 257n16 Zetkin, Clara, 55, 358n103 Zetkin, Maxim, 55, 58, 71n123, 71n128, 73n150, 104 Ziller, Gerhart, 112, 114, 126n190 Zimmermann, Hans, 101, 123nn117–118, 205 Zweiling, Kurt, 45, 67n44