Antifascist founding

Myths and the mythmaking of current and historical events can guide collective processes of creating meaning and identity. As a result, they also have a legitimising effect on constructs such as nations. Intensive research has been conducted on this since the 1990s – also specifically in relation to the German nation state (e.g. Wülfing, Bruns, Parr, 1991; Münkler, 2009). To be effective in this way, historical events or events that are collectively considered relevant must be selected and integrated into a memory. In their research on collective memory, Jan and Aleida Assmann were able to show that myths could become interconnected and be integrated into collective memory as sources of meaning and plausible narratives (e.g. Assmann, 1988; Assmann & Harth, 1991). With regard to the GDR, Raina Zimmering (2000), among others, has examined the extent to which myths were used to create identity, meaning, and plausibility in GDR politics.

Against the backdrop of the previous decades, in which the German population had been intensively taught to belong to a nation and to prioritise the idea of a fatherland (Vaterland, e.g. Kuby, 1959, p. 104), it was necessary to overwrite old ideas with new ones and to contribute to the formation of a new national identity. This type of identity creation was realised in the GDR via the founding justification (Zimmering, 2000, p. 38) of antifascism, for which established patterns could be taken up and developed as new, now antifascist ideology (e.g. Dietrich, 2020, p. 797).

The antifascist founding myth was installed in service of consolidating power as well as the political system and disseminated through corresponding – constant and new – narratives and iconographies (Zimmering, 2000, p. 38). Consequently, not only the founding of the GDR state, but also a whole series of other historical events were understood as antifascist, including the German Peasants' War, German classicism, the workers' movement and the Russian October Revolution, which would lead to a better society through their continued existence in the GDR and would establish the turning point in German history (ibid.). By selecting and overweighting facts in favour for and in line with the narrative, historiography also contributed to the constitution and consolidation of myths that underpinned a self-image of the GDR as a nation independent of the former German nation state.

While the teaching of political and ideological content was part of many different subjects (e. g. civic education, military education and training, science education, etc.), elements of the antifascist founding myth were taught particularly in literature and history lessons. At the end of 1945, just a few months after the end of the Second World war and in accordance with Order No. 40 of the Soviet Military Administration from August 25 of the same year (Sowjetische Militäradministation, SMAD, Befehl Nr. 40 “Vorbereitung der Hochschulen auf den Beginn des Unterrichts”, 25.08.1945), the first textbooks were made available which were intended to provide plausible narratives for an antifascist founding. Suitable literary works for these studies were initially found primarily in 1920s Soviet literature (e.g. von Brand & Koebe, 2022, p. 2), but increasingly also among German writers who had critically examined the Hitler regime from their respective exiles. At the same time, teaching work with mythmaking literary texts went hand in hand with an ostensibly purely scientific, but on closer inspection also mythmaking, teaching of history and civics lessons (e.g. Dietrich, 2020; Zimmering, 2000).

History and civics lessons fulfilled a legitimising role here, i.e. they had the task of clarifying the historical anchoring of the literary narratives, which could thus be read as quasi-exemplary descriptions of real fates from narrated periods. Literature lessons also played a decisive role from the outset, because it was here in particular that emotions could be evoked and linked to antifascist convictions through stories and narratives. Contradictions between claims to a more just and free society associated with antifascism on the one hand, and the GDR elites' self-interested approach to ruling, which produced injustices and lack of freedom on the other, did not emerge as openly here as they did in history lessons (Zimmering, 2000, p. 43). For this analysis, a set of GDR curricula was examined and themes from myths were extracted which constituted the narrative of an antifascist founding (cf. Zimmering, 2000, p. 44–55; Münkler, 2009, pp. 79–81 as well as pp. 93–95) and which were firmly embedded in socialist (→ socialism) or Marxist-Leninist (→ Marxism-Leninism) interpretations of historical developments surrounding the Second World War. This was accompanied by an exaggeration of the Soviet Red Army as the only real victorious power of the Second World War, legitimised by its casualty figures, its tough battles on the war’s Eastern front as well as its socialist-antifascist stance. At the same time, the achievements of the other Allied forces were neglected and Soviet war crimes in Germany were denied.

The narrative was initially based on a compelling connection between capitalism and fascism, following an understanding that saw capitalism as the breeding ground for fascist ideology and the framework conditions for its establishment – accompanied by a consistent failure to address other forms of dictatorship. Accordingly, the founding of the GDR was identified as a necessary consequence of an imperative demarcation from capitalism and fascism, thus producing a transfer of the enemy image from fascism to West German capitalism and imperialism. This goes hand in hand with the contouring of a threatening situation by the Western forces actively fighting an antifascist workers' and peasants' state (Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat). At the same time, identity and a sense of community are strengthened through an image of the enemy (one of the core principles of mythmaking – see among others Wülfing, Bruns, Parr, 1991).

Against this backdrop of a fundamental antagonism between socialist and capitalist forces (→ competing political systems), the working class was positioned as fundamentally antifascist and the greatest opponent of Hitler during his reign and the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) was categorised as the only true leader of all German antifascists (Lehrbuch der Geschichte, Klasse 10, 1976, p. 49; quoted from Zimmering, 2000, p. 48) in contrast to the SPD, which was seen as penetrated by right-wing forces and collaborators. The communist party was incontestably regarded as the leading, unifying force within Germany, representing the working class in its entirety, in overcoming the national socialist past and building an antifascist social order (thus legitimising its claim to leadership and that of its successor party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED). The establishment of an antifascist, socialist GDR state was presented as a process that was primarily carried out by the people's own efforts and with their own initiative, which was largely supported by the now older generation (and generally absolved them of responsibility for Hitler era crimes).

In German lessons, according to guideline curricula and instructions from teaching aids, the antifascist founding myth as well as themes from myths briefly outlined here were to be conveyed more strongly through emotionalising narratives that were more likely to instil conviction than knowledge: in a somewhat coarsened way, it can be stated that German lessons were designed to convey an emotional attachment to antifascism that was not further differentiated politically and to arouse sympathy for those who had resisted the Nazi regime (Münkler, 2004, p. 88).