Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Plum, Catherine

Titel

Stories of Resistance Fighters

Ist Teil von

• Antifascism After Hitler, 2015, p.94-140

Ort / Verlag

United Kingdom: Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In 1986 a park in East Berlin inherited an enormous statue featuring a massive head and the signature clenched fist of communist martyr Ernst Thälmann, measuring fourteen meters high and fifteen meters wide as executed by Soviet sculptor Lew Kerbel. Erich Honecker was up to his old tricks again, trying to prop up his own legitimacy by supporting a Thälmann cult that lacked willing adult followers. Compared to early images of Thälmann, the artistic style of this sculpture followed a trend to depict the communist leader as larger than life, as god-like, and, in this case, in a disembodied form. 1 A few years later, in 1993, in what seemed like a world away, city authorities planned to destroy the bust, but demolition crews were never allowed to finish it off. It was simply too expensive to destroy. 2The efforts of aging leaders in the final years of the GDR lead us to question the strategic use of the story of communist resistance. How does one teach young people about the struggle against an inhuman dictatorship like the Nazi regime? How does one depict those men and women who fought against fascist forces, wielding both the pen and the machine gun? Which antifascist activists should one select as role models? Should one depict resistance fighters as exemplary figures-more courageous, daring and talented than their peers-or as average citizens who found themselves in an impossible situation and improvised? East German historians, writers and educators faced these very questions, and their solutions tell us much about the portrait of the antifascist resistance movement that the regime and its employees wanted to pass down to school children and teens. Decades after the demise of the GDR and its classrooms, textbooks and youth literature, it is important to reflect on how the East German antifascist narrative developed as students matured through their course of studies and involvement in extracurricular activities. As with any act of storytelling, one can also ask whether the tale could have been told in a different manner. As the official narrative predominated, what other stories and themes were marginalized and ignored in the wake of the GDR brand of antifascism?