By Fabiola G.P. Bierhoffresources.css.edu/academics/his/middleground/... · favoured Socialist Realism as an ideal style for the construction of a socialist utopia. For this ... this

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© 2014 The Middle Ground Journal Number 9, Fall 2014 http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org

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East German artists as political refugees

By Fabiola G.P. Bierhoff

Summary: Analyses of refugees generally focus on political and ethnic refugees; this essay

marks a bold departure by focusing on artists, a group that is generally acknowledged to be

persecuted by totalitarian regimes, but does not often become the focus of academic research.

In the period between 1961-1989 the regulated art system of the German Democratic

Republic (GDR) led to a large scale exodus of at least fifteen hundred artists to the Federal

Republic of Germany (FRG).1 Several young artists, who were born in the post-World War II

period, did so in order to discontinue working according to the rigid confines of the art policy that

favoured Socialist Realism as an ideal style for the construction of a socialist utopia. For this

generation, who experienced the devastating impact of World War II only through the stories of

their parents, the GDR was “a dead corpse, dead to an extent that you could only make fun of it”, as

the performance artist Else Gabriel stated shortly after the collapse of the regime.2 Their utter

disillusionment in the failing socialist society was expressed in autonomous artistic production that

embraced Western modernist approaches such as performance art, and sought legitimation in its

disturbing impact on a closed society.3 However, this nonconformist attitude put artists in the

crosshairs of the secret police (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit/MfS or Stasi), that in turn

criminalized their actions, and ultimately sought to dismantle or destroy artistic groups.4 In order to

continue developing their modernist art practice and being recognized as artists, several artists were

1 Hartmut Pätzke, “Register Ausgebürgert”, in: Eingegrenzt, Ausgegrenzt, Bildene Kunst und Parteiherrschaft in der

DDR 1961-1989, Berlin 2000, pp 557-694. 2 Eckhart Gillen, Das Kunstkombinat DDR. Zäsuren einer gescheiterten Kunstpolitik, Cologne 2005, p 153. Gabriel in a

conversation with Gillen in 1991: “Eine Leiche, so tot, daß man sich nur noch lustigmachen konnte.” 3 In Western Europe and North America performance art developed in part as a response to the commercialisation of the

art object, as artists endeavoured to create works of art that could not be bought or sold. The meaning and significance

of art works created in the East is different, even though they may resemble Western performance art, since it enabled

artists to express ideas outside the official discourse. 4 Hannelore Offner, “Überwachung, Kontrolle, Manipulation”, in: Eingegrenzt, Ausgegrenzt, Bildene Kunst und Parteiherrschaft in der DDR 1961-1989, Berlin 2000, pp 169-275.

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left no other choice than to emigrate, whether through internal migration or fleeing to ‘non-

socialist’ foreign countries.

This exodus occurred despite the fact that the bureaucracy of an emigration application

(Ausreiseantrag) was unyielding and the process could take up to six years. In the mid 1980s, when

the overall problems of the socialist system became more apparent, the application rate increased

significantly.5 For years, applicants literally lived amidst their packed boxes in anticipation of a

definitive answer on their emigration applications. Once in the West, they faced new challenges as

they transitioned from the state-controlled model of artistic production of the East towards the

market-led approach favoured in the West, with marked effects on their work. After all of these

efforts and sacrifices, deserting artists ended up only a few years later in a state where the former

East suddenly became West. This article addresses the numerous problems fleeing GDR artists had

to deal with prior to and after the difficult emigration procedures of the 1980s. It makes use of oral

history to get an understanding of the situation in both East and West Germany. By depicting the

paradox of working as a ‘free’ artist in the West and the role of the émigré artist after the collapse

of East Germany, this essay seeks to contribute to the understanding of the artistic turn in their

oeuvres and the implications of leaving behind their artistic past.

Why would an artist who was the visual translator of the socialist utopia and thus generally

enjoyed a high status and a good income have a desire to flee in the first place? By pointing out the

core limitations artists found themselves confronted with, a better understanding of their motives

for pursuing emigration to the West will evolve. By focusing on the (self-) controlled and regulated

art system of the GDR we can define the artistic constraints and thereby the limitations for the

younger generation. The hierarchal structure of East Germany’s ruling party, the SED

(Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands/Socialist Unity Party of Germany), was reflected in its

5 Anja Hanisch, Die DDR im KSZE-Prozess 1972-1985, Munich 2012, pp 326-371.

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subsidized cultural sector. In order to influence the artistic landscape and promote the official

artistic style, Socialist Realism, the state government founded the Verband Bildender Künstler

Deutschlands (short: VBKD or VBK), the artists’ union, in the early 1950s. Association with this

union was mandatory to pursue an artistic career.6 The union enforced the right to use special food

cards in the early years of the socialist state, supported artists’ efforts to find a studio or apartment,

and most importantly assigned commissions for art works. Simultaneously, the VBK was used as a

political instrument that implemented actual dogmas of the art policy, such as the promotion of the

prototypical function of Soviet art in society. Meanwhile, the cultural department carried out

campaigns against expressionism, formalism, cosmopolitism, abstract art and heavily debated

performance arts in the 1980s.7 Non-conformists, i.e. those who worked in an independent manner,

could continue their work only through private funding or at their own expense. Artists whose art

was not in alignment with the dogma prescribed by the official socialist style were therefore

excluded from art exhibitions and commissions and could even be banned from exhibition and

work.

In order to avoid denunciation by the state (being categorized as antisocial was a serious

matter in the socialist state since it had effects on the prospects of an entire family), some of them

sought other, non-artistic jobs or led an artistic “double-life” in which they served both the official

and unofficial art scenes.8 In the 1980s several young East German artists, who were in their 20s or

early 30s, became active in a dynamic underground scene that had been mainly boosted by new

wave and punk influences and faced the audience with the lethargic artistic cul-de-sac caused by the

conservative character of the SED. Despite the repressive cultural policy attempted to regain artistic

6 Both artists and art historians had to be affiliated with the artists’ union. 7 The main generational schism in the artists’ union appeared in different approaches towards multi-media art. In 1971

the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, Erich Honecker, announced a degree of cultural liberalization in his

Weite & Vielfalt [Breadth and Diversity] program. Yet, despite its progressive sounding name, the program did not lead

to many changes. Artists were still obliged to follow the strict path that the Ministry of Culture had paved for them.

However, within the official art world there were ongoing discussions about the future of socialist art, since new artistic

developments did not remain unnoticed. 8 Fabiola Bierhoff, Hunger for pictures, lust for life and appetite for change: The role of official and unofficial

exhibitions in the art scene of the GDR, between 1971 and 1989, unpublished master thesis, Free University Amsterdam, 2009.

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terrain and regulate the artistic production, the tangible counter-cultural niches were increasing. In

studios, residences and private galleries hidden in courtyards, an art scene flourished which added a

new dimension to the East German artistic landscape. Counter-cultural artists gradually explored

and integrated different art forms, such as Aktionskunst (a German term that comprises multimedia

art involving visual as well as dramatic and musical elements), in their own art practice. Apart from

the reappraisal of performance art, this young generation was also inspired by concepts from

American art, postmodernism, French philosophy (deconstructivism and poststructuralism), and

neoexpressionism. Illegal counter-cultural gatherings can commonly be characterized as cross-over

festivities organized and attended by a mixture of artist union members and autodidacts combining

live punk music, multi-media art, avant-garde fashion and experimental literature.

The heavy state policing of the alternative art scene reflected the overtly political nature of

many of the works presented. In 1985 the enfant terrible of GDR art criticism, Christoph Tannert,

organized the art festival Intermedia in Coswig, a small town in East Germany (Figures 1 and 2).

Intermedia was conceptualized as an experimental playground for all ephemeral, processual,

experimental and performative arts. Over a thousand like-minded artists (super-8 filmmakers, punk,

jazz and tape musicians and performance artists) from all over the republic joined this event. One of

the most contentious exhibits was by experimental media artist Lutz Dammbeck, who presented his

media collage Herakles (Figures 3 and 4), in which he combined film projection, painting, poetry,

music and dance, a new phenomenon in the East German art world that still heavily relied on the

classical genres of painting, sculpture, and graphics. Dammbeck’s collage deliberately questioned

the role of the German national socialist past in the socialist state, which went against the ruling

party’s claims to have no connection to national socialist influences. Dammbeck’s initial idea had

been to make an art film on these topics but following the rejection of this plan by the state-owned

film studio DEFA he decided to turn it into a multi-media project, which he could only perform

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during underground (illegal) exhibitions, such as Intermedia. Intermedia was meant to last seven

days, but after the second day the state security service shut it down.

Internal migration was a frequent method to continue practicing various art forms too, even

though with the direct consequense of never receiving general public recognition.9 Some artists

were convinced of the principles of the workers’ and peasants’ state, albeit not by its practical

outcome, and chose to withdraw from or adapt to the rigid cultural policy by means of isolation or

self-censorship rather than seeking to leave the country. Due to the experimental nature in the

artistic production of Carlfriedrich Claus, for example, his works of art could not been shown to

public. He worked from the early 1960s onwards in an isolated mountain town close to Karl-Marx-

Stadt (now Chemnitz) in close collaboration with other unofficial artists, from whom he gained

recognition. As an unwanted artist, whose pacifist attitude and non-conformist art practice did not

fit in the socialist uniformity, the state repeatedly offered him the option of emigrating to West-

Germany. However, the stoic artist refused because believed in the principles of socialism.10

Although the official art policy was not immediately accepted, the majority of artists had

no choice other than to either adapt their art to fit in the artistic landscape, or to flee to West

Germany or to other Eastern European states, such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, where

the art scene was fairly liberal compared to the East German situation. Thus, the main reason for

leaving the GDR was an outright political rejection caused by the rigid art policy which prevented

artists from working freely. It must be mentioned here, though, that not all artists were leaving of

their own accord. The state’s secret service used its migration policy to exclude unwanted citizens.

By persuasion and sometimes even by force, several undesirable artists, such as Claus, were obliged

to apply for an exit permit.

9 Christian Saehrendt, “Grundlagen der Auswärtigen Kulturpolitik der DDR”, in: Kunst als Botschafter einer

künstlichen Nation, Stuttgart 2009, p 86. 10 Fabiola Bierhoff, “Carlfriedrich Claus. Geschrieben im Nachtmeer”, in: De Witte Raaf (151) May/June 2011, http://www.dewitteraaf.be/artikel/detail/nl/3652#!, accessed October 3, 2013.

http://www.dewitteraaf.be/artikel/detail/nl/3652

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Despite the fact that counter-cultural artists were acknowledged during events like

Intermedia by some of their colleagues and young art critics, who were commited to debating the

offical art policy on an higher level, the fact that they were not recognized as artists caused

existential problems. Furthermore, the decline of the socialist state and the associated supply

shortages, limited consumption opportunities and housing shortage resulted in an emigration wave

of artists seeking professional acceptance and development. Among the fifteen hundred artists who

left for the Federal Republic of Germany, about two hundred born in the post-World War II period

left in the 1980s.11

Despite the extremely undemocratic and untransparent process, an exit permit

was still the most common way to exit the real-socialism. Prisoner redemption by the Federal

Republic,12

not returning after a short legitimate trip to the West, and fleeing by crossing the border,

which were categorized as Republikflucht (desertion from the republic), were hazardous options

most artists avoided.

In order to diminish the mass exodus of young artists the Ministry of Culture attempted to

appease artists with privileges and high positions within the organized art world (VBK).

Conversely, state officials exerted heavy political pressure on artists who applied for exit permits,

subjecting them to discrimination, intimidation, and ostracism. The artists’ union instantly

dismissed any members who applied for emigration, denying them any commissions, and even

denounced them as traitors.13

Complete prohibitions on the applicants’ participation in exhibitions

and appearance in publications took every artistic opportunity from them.14

The editorial

department of the only East German art magazine, Bildende Kunst, registered the names of all

11 Harmut Pätzke, “Register Ausgebürgert”, in: Eingegrenzt, Ausgegrenzt, Bildene Kunst und Parteiherrschaft in der

DDR 1961-1989, Berlin 2000, pp 557-694. 12

Prisoner redemption can be defined as one of the unofficial economical activities between the GDR and the Federal Republic. The government of the Federal Republic paid the GDR a certain sum foreign exchange or goods in order to

redeem in response political prisoners (averaging about 40,000-100,000 Deutsche Mark per person). Between 1964 and

1989 33,755 political prisoners and 250,000 exit applicants were released and expatriated into the Federal Republic for

about 3,5 billion Deutsche Mark in total. The GDR was increasinly depending on extra money from the West. For the

Federal Republic this process was an attempt to provide humanitarian aid, though the underlying goal might have been

to morally legitimize its increasing economical relations with the GDR. 13

Lutz Dammbeck, Besessen von Pop, Hamburg 2012, p 89. 14 Hannelore Offner, “Überwachung, Kontrolle, Manipulation”, in: Eingegrenzt, Ausgegrenzt, Bildene Kunst und Parteiherrschaft in der DDR 1961-1989, Berlin 2000, p 254.

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artists who either applied for an exit permit or had already emigrated on a black list. Their names

were not to be mentioned in the magazine anymore, nor were they to be the subject of any articles.15

Even the state-owned art dealer, Staatlicher Kunsthandel, excluded art works of émigrés in its

auctions.

Until the end of its regime the government remained opposed to emigration and sought to

discourage applicants. It decided in favor of only a quarter of the applications, and the visa process

remained an arbitrary and very bureaucratic procedure.16

Artists who got invited to exhibit in other

countries were considered unsuitable to represent the GDR abroad because of the risk of flight.17

Once emigrated, one lost all rights of citizenship in the GDR. The émigré forfeited the rights of

residency, work, pension scheme, return and the disposal of his property, as well as political

rights.18

In addition to the abrupt disconnection from friends and family – who in many cases were

not informed about the exit application in the first place due to safety reasons, since an expressed

intention to emigrate could have consequences for other family members too – émigrés took the risk

of losing their entire oeuvre. Whilst performing during the Intermedia festival, Dammbeck’s

immigration application was going through the bureaucratic emigration procedure. In a recently

published biography, Besessen von Pop, he wrote about his experience exiting East Germany.

Dammbeck’s story mirrors emigration stories from several artists in the last decade of the socialist

state. Dammbeck, who had been trying to emigrate for four years, recalls:

“…The emigration itself was short and painful. One morning my girlfriend and I sat in our

living room planning an exhibition for the artists gallery Eigen+Art [an autonomous artist

gallery in Leipzig]. All of a sudden the letter slot of the apartment door opened and a letter

slowly sailed on the door mat. I can evoke what the exact letter looked like until today, and

how it gradually landed on the floor after an elegant bend. For a while we both looked

15 Interview with art historian Barbara Barsch, who worked for Bildende Kunst, Berlin August 27, 2013. 16 Anja Hanisch, Die DDR im KSZE-Prozess 1972-1985, Munich 2012, pp 405-408. 17 Christian Saehrendt, “Grundlagen der Auswärtigen Kulturpolitik der DDR”, in: Kunst als Botschafter einer

künstlichen Nation, Stuttgart 2009, p 87. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East German-born photographer Thomas

Florschuetz enjoyed an outstanding reputation in West Germany. He was asked to organize a show at the embassy in

Paris, but this couldn’t take place because he had already applied for an exit permit and was banned from international

travel. 18 Anja Hanisch, Die DDR im KSZE-Prozess 1972-1985, Munich 2012, pp 326-371.

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bewildered at the sheet of paper: it was a writing of the Ministry of Interior stating that my

family and I had to leave the state territory of the German Democratic Republic within 48

hours.19

(...) After six months the first moving boxes came from Leipzig. My attempt to

smuggle a few film reels, audiocassettes and negatives via a different transport from Leipzig

to Hamburg was betrayed by a unofficial collaborator of the state security service (Stasi)

and thus failed. Customs flagged down the truck at the border and condemned the smuggled

goods. In 1989 the customs warehouse of the GDR was cleaned up and all materials

including almost all my 8mm films had been disposed on a trash dump...”20

The story of the painter Cornelia Schleime, who had been banned from exhibition and work in the

GDR since the early 1980s, also reflects the loss of artistic property many artists had to put up with

as the price of emigration.21

She was excluded from the artists’ union in 1982. In addition to

participating at illegal exhibitions, Schleime started singing in a punk band and worked as a

ceramics painter under the pseudonym CMP to gain some attention, before she ultimately applied

for an exit visa. After five attempts within three years she was finally able to leave the GDR in

1984. Twenty-four hours before her departure to West Germany, the secret police removed

Schleime’s entire collection of work (consisting at that time of about 100 oil paintings and 1000

drawings) from her apartment, never to be recovered.22

When Schleime arrived in the West without

any paintings, she was forced to start her oeuvre completely anew. In an interview she admitted this

was her artistic life-saver: “To start over my artistic career had an interesting effect. It rebuilt my

self-confidence. I can re-invent myself over and over again.”23

One might expect that escaping from the restricted art world of the GDR to settle in the free

and liberal West would bring prosperity to the lives and careers of young artists. However,

19 Lutz Dammbeck, Besessen von Pop, Hamburg 2012, pp 89-90. 20 ibidem, pp 97-98. 21 The reason for Schleime’s work ban originated in her drawing of a tired model whose hair was covering her face.

Apparently, Schleime, who could only pursue her art studies in the evening since her child was still young, had been

sent this model, who worked in a factory during the day and therefore had an exhausted appearance in the evening. This

art work was immediately taken off the wall during an exhibition by the official committee with the argument that it

showed an inappropriate representation of women in a socialist society. 22 Zersetzung (literally “decomposition”) was a method to side-track and eliminate ‘feindlich-negative’ (hostile-

negative) persons in order to let them discontinue their undesirable activities that were ‘damaging’ the socialist society.

Usually Zersetzung entailed the disruption of the victim’s private or family life, which involved psychological attacks

such as breaking into homes and sabotaging the contents. In the case of Cornelia Schleime her complete oeuvre was

stolen from her house, before she could leave for West-Germany. 23 Deutsche Welle, Typisch Deutsch, interview: Hajo Schumacher and Cornelia Schleime on March 17, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYTfMca_S9E, accessed May 25, 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYTfMca_S9E

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integrating into a new art system dominated by the free market turned out to be extremely

challenging. Admittedly, there were not many linguistic and cultural barriers, , and connections

existed either with relatives and friends who had already immigrated or through arranged sham

marriages that accelerated the emigration process. Nontheless, émigrés had to deal with general

financial problems caused by the lack of social security as there was no an artists’ union in the

West, and sometimes ongoing paranoid anxiety of being bugged by the secret police even outside

the GDR. Moreover, young East German artists faced difficulties caused by the art itself. The

underlying messages of their art works, which drifted into disposition and subtle political critique at

times, could perhaps only be understood and appreciated in the local context of East Germany.

Nontheless, the most common criticism they were subject to was working in a imitative, outdated

style that would only be controversial in the GDR. The East German perception of modernism,

which relied on appropriation, was dismissed as second-hand modernism. When Lutz Dammbeck

sought to contribute at an art gallery, for instance, he was told: “Mmm, your work looks like

Rauschenberg, I don’t know what to do with it. It is too outdated to be relevant to us….You would

have been better off staying in the East.”24

As a consequence, in West Germany a general rejection

of emigrant GDR artists in gallery shows emerged. Furthermore, institutions and private art

collectors were afraid of losing their official contacts with the GDR art world and therefore ignored

the artist-émigrés. Thus, émigrés not only had to seek (again) employment in other (mostly non-

artistic) jobs but had to deal with social decline and disregard as the cost of living in a democracy.

Most GDR artist-émigrés faced a struggle to come to terms with their personal past. After

having arrived in the West several artists were coping with the past by assembling their personal

experiences in narrative art works, visually translating the trauma of their application struggles,

separation from their friends and family, and arrival in the West. In the pen and ink drawing

‘Malstrom versiegt, Germania Wüste’ from 1985/1986 (Figure 5) painter Ralf Kerbach points out

24 Lutz Dammbeck, Besessen von Pop, Hamburg 2012, p 102.

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the situation of his exile friends: Cornelia Schleime, Thomas Florschuetz, Wolfram Adalbert

Scheffler, Hans Scheib and Sascha Anderson (who turned out to be an unofficial informant for the

GDR), who had all emigrated to West Berlin in the mid 1980s. The lyric poet Bert Papenfuß-Gorek

was about to cross the border, leaving behind the famous bohemian neighborhood Prenzlauerberg in

Berlin - the last station in the GDR before they emigrated for the majority of the artists.25

In

drawing only one painter is left in East Germany, Reinhard Sander, who chose internal migration.

Kerbach himself raises a picture depicting a figure with a heavy load on his back and a walking

stick, perhaps a self-portrait in which he is crossing both political systems as a pilgrim.26

After the fall of the Berlin Wall the artists’ efforts to come to terms with their former lives

continued. Cornelia Schleime’s art work “Bis auf weiter gute Zusammenarbeit No. 7284/85”/Here’s

to further fruitful cooperation No. 7284/85 (Figure 6), is one of the most important artistic

reckonings regarding the East German political system. In the early 1990s the artist was allowed to

look at the files the State Secret service of the GDR had kept on her for years. Schleime felt they

had “stolen her past” and took away the “innocence” of the counter-cultural scene. She developed a

personal art work depicting her experience of being spied on for years, even by her best friend,

Sascha Anderson, at the time. The ironic cycle consists of the actual Stasi reports which are

enlarged by silk-screening. Schleime has glued reenacted photos into the report that the situations of

the files soberly describe. While the report reads that “Sch. appears to earn well in her profession”

and “wears Western clothing,” she lies sexily in her bed with a phone to her ear. The unique art

work is running in two directions, both showing an ironic, absurd self-representation of a bohemian

lifestyle and revealing the trauma that the ruthless totalitarian, bureaucratic state apparatus caused

in Schleime’s personal life and artistic circle.

25 Paul Kaiser, Claudia Pechtold, “Facettenreicher Mythos: Der Prenzlauer Berg als Zentrum und Transitraum einer von

den Rändern nach Berlin drängenden Subkultur”, in: Boheme und Diktatur, Gruppen, Quartiere, Konflikte 1970-1989,

Berlin 1997, http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/boheme/katalog_zentren/berlin/, accessed May 25, 2013. 26 Gwendolin Kremer, “‘Zeitheimat’ - eine bildgewordene Reminiszenz”, in: Ohne Uns: Kunst und Alternative Kultur in Dresden vor und nach ’89, Dresden 2009, pp 200-202.

http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/boheme/katalog_zentren/berlin/

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The subtle sometimes agitating function alternative art had in the socialist state seemed to

deteriorate in the art system dominated by the free market. Apparently, other rules counted here.

Even though the émigrés were in some ways avant-gardists compared to socialist-realist painters in

their home country, they had to develop new approaches to fit into the commercialized art world.

To quote Dammbeck here once again: “The West was tougher, more direct and closer to the

essential. For better or for worse. Staying in the GDR would have been humiliating. We actually did

not go to the West, we rather wanted to leave the German Democratic Republic.” Art historian

Christoph Tannert argued that only a few were able to adjust to the harsh rythm of the free market,

whereas the majority abandoned their efforts to work as professional artists and switched to doing

something completely different, or working as art educators.27

Artists who could reposition their art

and sometimes radically change their style within the new scene, and thus differentiate themselves

from other artists, were often encouraged to go abroad on scholarships.28

Subsequently, they

achieved significant sales and exposure on a structural basis before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The

situation even got more complicated after the fall of the Berlin Wall: the appearance of their old

colleagues on the same art stage resulted in intense competition and political jockeying for position.

After the reunification, several artists constructed new biographies in which they intentionally left

out their career in the GDR. The most famous artist of the New Leipzig School, Neo Rauch,

intentionally leaves out paintings made before 1993, which reflected his deep roots in the traditions

of socialist-realism painting.29

Since the collapse of the GDR, several different approaches towards East Germany's

cultural legacy have emerged. In the early 1990s the discussion about visual heritage reached its

zenith. The question was raised as to whether state-sponsored visual arts could be accorded

legitimacy and credibility within a democratic society. The official art expressions were a direct

27 Interview with art historian Christoph Tannert, Berlin May 22, 2013. The classical training with an emphasis on

painting and drawing that artists enjoyed in the East helped them to find work in the West. 28

In the early 1990s both Schleime and Florschuetz were awarded stipends to spend time in the USA. 29 Frank Zöllner, paper: “Neo Rauch, die Leipziger Schule und die Eroberung des globalen Kunstmarktes”, Symposium: Die andere Moderne - Bildwelten in der DDR, Perspektiven einer Neubewertung, Weimar October 18, 2012.

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object of disapproval. The public debate surrounding the political repression of artists in East

Germany was so polarizing that many even asserted that no significant or authentic art could ever

have been produced there. Thus, whether official or unofficial, all East German art was deemed an

undesirable product of a bygone regime and was categorically rejected. This, among other facts, led

to a political struggle in the 1990s, the so-called deutsch-deutsche Bilderstreit, which could be seen

as a proxy conflict underlying the reunification measures to integrate the GDR within the capitalist

Federal Republic of Germany. This discussion as to whether visual arts originating during a

dictatorship could find support within a democratic society boosted a fundamental argument about

the reappraisal and canonizing of Germany’s art history after the Second World War.30

From our

Western perspective, art historians tend to conclude that East German art practices were not really

innovative, nor did they follow a linear development. Such a patronizing attitude has resulted in

deriding this art as derivative or mimetic.31

Perpetuating a Western hierarchical approach towards

East German performance art presumes the artists’ victimization under totalitarianism, and denies

their artistic agency. For that reason these modern developments should be seen within the context

of East German site-specific cultural and political conditions in order to recognize and accentuate

the plurality of GDR art, resulting in a differentiated and evolved understanding of East German art

before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

30 Jonathan Osmond, “German art collections and Exhibits since 1989: the legacy of the GDR”, in: Elaine Kelly and Amy Wlodarski (ed.), Art outside the lines, Amsterdam 2011, pp 215-236. A concise survey of the deutsch-deutsche

Bilderstreit is due to be published this year: Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, Paul Kaiser (e.a.), Bilderstreit und

Gesellschaftsumbruch. Die Debatten um die Kunst der DDR im Prozess der deutschen Wiedervereinigung,

Berlin/Kassel 2013. 31 Eckhart Gillen, “Gesinnungsästhetik contra Beliebigkeit. Der deutsch-deutsche Bilderstreit”, in: Glaser, H., Was

bleibt – was wird, der kulturelle Umbruch in den neuen Bundesländern, Bonn 1994, pp 160-173; Karl-Siegbert

Rehberg, “Diskurs-Facetten, einleitende Bemerkung zur Debatte über Kunstpolitik und bildende Künste in der DDR

sowie über den Umgang mit einem Nachlaß”, in: Paul Kaiser, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, Enge und Vielfalt, Auftragskunst

und Kunstförderung in der DDR, Analysen und Meinungen, Hamburg 1999, pp 529-532; Paul Kaiser, Karl-Siegbert

Rehberg, 'Was war, was ist, was bleibt? Ein Brief und Antworten auf den Brief von Künstlern und Kunsthistorikern, in:

Paul Kaiser, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, e.a., Enge und Vielfalt, Auftragskunst und Kunstförderung in der DDR, analysen und Meinungen, Hamburg 1999, pp 573-634.

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Documents

By Fabiola G.P. Bierhoffresources.css.edu/academics/his/middleground/... · favoured Socialist Realism as an ideal style for the construction of a socialist utopia. For this ... this