Loyal subversion: East Germany and its neo-humanist Marxist intellectuals

This dissertation examines the dynamics of intellectuals' conformity, accommodation, and dissent within the context of socialist East Germany (1949--1990). The conditions offer an ideal laboratory for this analysis, given that the GDR, both geographically and culturally, constituted a major fault-line in the Cold War. While there are various studies on East German dissidents, there is far less material on public intellectuals as of yet.;I focus on the role of a few key, middle and upper-middle-class Marxist intellectuals of assimilated Jewish background, belonging to the generation born between 1900 and 1920. They opted for East Germany after World War II, as the "better" German state, despite misgivings about the gap between the GDR's humanist ideals and repressive realities. These "bourgeois Marxists" were steeped in Marxist-Leninist ideology, the cultural traditions of an educated, central-European middle class (the Bildungsburgertum ), as well as the rational universalism of the humanist European Enlightenment.;They struggled to add their unique mixture of utopianism and humanism to East Germany's socialist project and advocated diverse methodological positions, intellectual independence, and public debate---albeit within the parameters of Marxism. This performance of a, however limited, scholarly and artistic pluralism counteracted conformist pressures in East German society, mediating between what was officially condoned and alternative personal and cultural expressions. None of my dramatis persona became dissidents. Instead, they practised what I term "loyal subversion," which grew out of their attempt to balance loyalty to the Communist party, a more critical Marxism, as well as neo-humanism.;My study concentrates on how the economic historian Jurgen Kuczynski, the writer Stephan Hermlin, and the journalist Hermann Budzislawski "loyally" subverted the regime's attempts to construct a uniform socialist culture. Belonging to those intellectuals who embraced the Communist movement in the hope that it would defend and build upon the ideals, principles, and values of humanism and social justice, they inadvertently added to the pressures that undermined the rigidity of the Communist regime. Their intention was only to reform the GDR's socialist system---not see it destroyed. The primary responsibility for two World Wars and the horrors of Nazism disqualified traditional German elites from determining the fate of post-war Germany. Thus, Kuczynski, Hermlin, and Budzislawski saw the East German Communist regime as the only way to rebuild society. Yet their strong commitment to the tenets of humanism led them into confrontations with a regime that denied intellectual freedom. While my dramatis persona considered themselves loyal citizens of East Germany and faithful adherents of Marxism-Leninism, their definitions of loyalty were not always identical with the views of the regime.