632
PARTISAN REVIEW
Indeed, some of the reasons leading to the disintegration of the
Communist order in East Germany have not been properly investigated.
For example, the symbolic power of the collapse of the Berlin Wall has
overshadowed the fact that the movement did not begin in Berlin, but
in Leipzig. Berlin was a comparatively privileged city in the GDR, with
a better food supply and better services than the rest of the country. Yet,
until 1973, Walter Ulbricht, then First Secretary of the SED, tended to
favor his hometown of Leipzig, granting a sufficient supply of goods at
least during the International Leipzig Trade Fair, which occurred twice a
year. When Erich Honecker became General Secretary of the Central
Committee of the SED, the preference shifted to Berlin and to more
Prussian traditions. These were not decisive factors, but they should be
taken into account when explaining certain peculiarities of East Ger–
many's Velvet Revolution.
The demonstrators in Leipzig displayed a growing political maturity
and newly developing identity, and this was uplifting to watch. They
maintained their calm despite the many
agents provocateurs
who were des–
perately trying to induce violence in order to provide the authorities
with a reason to use force. Many speeches heard at what was then called
the Karl-Marx-Platz had an almost cathartic effect, and the moral and
spiritual superiority of the demonstrations to the Communist counter–
demonstrations was apparent. Yet, when the Berlin wall was removed,
this spirit weakened. The number of participants dropped by approxi–
mately half, and the boundless energy and inner drive of the demonstra–
tors was lost. The opening of the border also was a cynical act by the
Krenz administration, intended to interrupt the dynamic process of a
growing political consciousness among East Germans.
In
encounters with Western scholars addressing the GDR's past, one
comes across statements which also appear in newspapers and television
programs: that East Germany indiscriminately suppressed women; that the
Wende
in 1989 was initiated by the working class; that it was brought
about by the post-materialistic generation; that it was organized by the
state security itself, and so on. All too often, these assumptions are based
on anecdotal evidence gathered after a short-term visit to the GDR, or
from newspapers. Some intellectuals believed that the East German
Wende
was compatible with a modernized Marxist theory and could
have led to a new, real kind of socialism, and that only West Germany's
interference (demagogically named
Anschluss
by some) prevented such a
desirable outcome of the Eastern experiment. Books like Dirk Philipsen's
We Were the People,
with intentionally selective polling, used leading
questions in order to receive first-hand confirmation that a third way was
