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“Fight like Thälmann:” The April 1986 Dedication of the Ernst Thälmann Memorial,Political Memory and Legitimacy in the German Democratic Republic
| On 15 April 1986 the leadership of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) dedicated one of its largest and most important political memorials. Surrounded by hundreds of brand new apartment units, not to mention one of the largest green spaced in the East German capital, Berlin’s Ernst Thälmann National Monument was supposed to show the link between the glorious antifascist past and the accomplishments of the new, consumer-oriented, “real-existing socialism.” The massive, fifty-ton, bronze likeness of Ernst Thälmann giving the antifascist salute commemorated the life, death and legacy of the former leader of the German Communist Party (KPD), whom the Nazis murdered in 1944. SED (Socialist Unity Party) chief Erich Honecker and the rest of the party officials who oversaw the design and dedication of the monument hoped it would contribute to the supposed link between the antifascist heritage of the KPD and the alleged accomplishments of the GDR. This “antifascism myth” was a central motif in the legitimizing narrative of the East German state from its inception.
In my proposed paper, I hope to show how Honecker and the SED, in the final years of the GDR, sought to legitimize their policies by appeals to the past. What role did this neo-Stalinist monstrosity and what it represented play in the “master narrative” of the East German state? Can, as anthropologist Katherine Verdery claims, one view such dedications as substitutes for funerals? Did the monument serve as an ersatz corpse, something to be venerated by the communist faithful in light of the fact that Thälmann’s lifeless body had been cremated at Buchenwald? If this was the case, what effects did it have upon the legitimizing narrative of the GDR? In short, I plan to use the methods of anthropology to analyze this last major event in the propagation of East Germany’s legitimizing narrative. My sources will consist of documents found in German archives on the construction and dedication of the monument, newspaper accounts and published works (books, pamphlets, magazines, etc.) My paper will be based largely upon primary sources.
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