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The Uprising of 1953 in East Germany started with a strike by East Berlinconstruction workers on 16 June 1953. It turned into a widespread uprising against the German Democratic Republic government the next day. In Germany, the revolt is often called People's Uprising in East Germany (Volksaufstand in der DDR).[3] It involved more than one million people in about 700 localities.[4] 17 June was a public holiday in West Germany up until reunification, and is still a Gedenktag. Strikes and working class networks, particularly relating to the old Social Democratic Party of Germany, anti-fascist resistance networks and trade unions played a key role in the unfolding of the uprising.[5] In Soviet history up to the fall of the Soviet Union the uprising was poorly highlighted.[6]
Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage, caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when mass labor became important in factories and mines. In most countries, strike actions were quickly made illegal, as factory owners had far more power than workers. Most Western countries partially legalized striking in the late 19th or early 20th centuries.
East Berlin was the de facto capital city of the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as West Berlin. From 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989, East Berlin was separated from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall. The Western Allied powers did not recognise East Berlin as the GDR's capital, nor the GDR's authority to govern East Berlin.
A construction worker is a tradesperson, laborer, or professional employed in the physical construction of the built environment and its infrastructure.
The uprising in East Berlin was violently suppressed by tanks of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany and the Volkspolizei. In spite of the intervention of Soviet troops, the wave of strikes and protests was not easily brought under control. After June 17, there were demonstrations in more than 500 towns and villages.
The Western Group of Forces (WGF), previously known as the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany (GSOFG) and the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSFG), were the troops of the Soviet Army in East Germany. The Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany was formed after the end of World War II from units of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts. The group helped suppress the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany. After the end of occupation functions in 1954 the group was renamed the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. The group represented Soviet interests in East Germany during the Cold War. After changes in Soviet foreign policy during the late 1980s, the group shifted to a more defensive role and in 1988 became the Western Group of Forces. Russian forces remained in Eastern Germany after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the German reunification until 1994.
The Deutsche Volkspolizei, commonly known as the Volkspolizei or VoPo, was the national police force of the German Democratic Republic from 1945 to 1990. The Volkspolizei was a highly-centralized agency responsible for most civilian law enforcement in East Germany, maintaining 257,500 personnel at its peak.
A protest is an expression of bearing witness on behalf of an express cause by words or actions with regard to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations. Protesters may organize a protest as a way of publicly making their opinions heard in an attempt to influence public opinion or government policy, or they may undertake direct action in an attempt to directly enact desired changes themselves. Where protests are part of a systematic and peaceful nonviolent campaign to achieve a particular objective, and involve the use of pressure as well as persuasion, they go beyond mere protest and may be better described as cases of civil resistance or nonviolent resistance.
In July 1952, the second party conference of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) took place in East Berlin. In SED General SecretaryWalter Ulbricht's words, there was to be the "systematic implementation of Socialism" (planmäßiger Aufbau des Sozialismus); it was decided that the process of Sovietization should be intensified and the importance of the state expanded. The party was acting on demands made by Soviet premier Joseph Stalin.[4]
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany, established in April 1946, was the governing Marxist–Leninist political party of the German Democratic Republic from the country's foundation in October 1949 until its dissolution after the Peaceful Revolution in 1989.
The political leadership of East Germany was in the hands of several offices.
Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht was a German communist politician. Ulbricht played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later in the early development and establishment of the German Democratic Republic in East Germany. As the First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971, he was the chief decision maker in East Germany. From President Wilhelm Pieck's death in 1960 on, he was also the East German head of state until his own death in 1973.
This meant for example the division of the five Länder into 14 regions (Bezirke) plus East Berlin. This division marked an assault on the remaining middle stratum of the GDR: farmers who owned land and small business owners/tradesmen were being forced to give up their independence through raised charges.
Germany is a federal republic consisting of sixteen states. Since today's Germany was formed from an earlier collection of several states, it has a federal constitution, and the constituent states retain a measure of sovereignty. With an emphasis on geographical conditions, Berlin and Hamburg are frequently called Stadtstaaten (city-states), as is the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, which in fact includes the cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven. The remaining 13 states are called Flächenländer.
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic, was a country that existed from 1949 to 1990, when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. It described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state", and the territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces at the end of World War II — the Soviet Occupation Zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it; as a result, West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.
This decision was made amid the background of the catastrophic economic situation in the country. In the course of the militarisation pushed by Soviet authorities, direct and indirect military expenditures rose and already made up around 11% of the national budget in 1952. Together with reparation payments, this totaled over 20% of the budget. The economic policies of the SED favored the development of heavy industry at the expense of the production of food and consumer goods, all of which resulted in a severe crisis in supplying the public with goods. Electricity was turned off in factories and public buildings at the onset of darkness every evening (during peak period).
Heavy industry is industry that involves one or more characteristics such as large and heavy products; large and heavy equipment and facilities ; or complex or numerous processes. Because of those factors, heavy industry involves higher capital intensity than light industry does, and it is also often more heavily cyclical in investment and employment.
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. In early days, electricity was considered as being not related to magnetism. Later on, many experimental results and the development of Maxwell's equations indicated that both electricity and magnetism are from a single phenomenon: electromagnetism. Various common phenomena are related to electricity, including lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electric discharges and many others.
The dramatic increase of emigration (Republikflucht, brain drain) in the first half of 1953, already high since the establishment of the GDR, constituted a serious economic and social problem. Another factor that contributed to an already complicated political situation was the high number of political prisoners in the GDR. Suppression of the illegal organisation Junge Gemeinde (Young Congregation), wrongly perceived as the central youth organisation of the Evangelical Church, played a role here. Numerous trainee pastors were brutally beaten and imprisoned (e.g. Johannes Hamel and Fritz Hoffmann). Ecclesiastic recreation centres were closed and taken over by the FDJ (e.g.: Schloss Mansfeld and Huberhaus Wernigerode). High school students who belonged to a church were often brutally beaten and expelled by the school authorities, sometimes even shortly before school graduation.
Within this complicated background, the decision to raise the work norms (in short the principle 'more work for the same salary') was perceived as a provocation, which would conceivably lead to the deterioration of living standards. The Central Committee decided to address the economic difficulties with a package of changes, which included higher taxes and higher prices, and—most significantly—an increase of the work quotas by 10%.[7]
These changes were coming into force by 30 June 1953, Ulbricht's 60th birthday. Issued as a suggestion, it became in effect a direction that was introduced in all the state-owned enterprises (so-called volkseigene Betriebe) and if the new quotas were not met then workers would have to face a reduction of salaries. The decision was taken on 13–14 May 1953, and the Council of Ministers approved it on 28 May.
Following Stalin's death on March 5, 1953 and the massive increase in emigration, the new Soviet government decided to ease the policies Stalin had demanded. On 4 June 1953, the Soviet government, alarmed at reports of unrest, summoned East German leaders to Moscow. Georgy Malenkov warned them that if policy direction were not corrected immediately, there would be a catastrophe.[8] After intense discussion the East German party eased policies and publicly admitted that mistakes had been made. However, according to the historian of East Germany, Manfred Wilke, that admission may have had the unintended effect of inflaming public opinion rather than easing tensions.[4]
16 June
On the morning of 16 June, 300 East Berlin construction workers went on strike and marched down Stalinallee, now Karl-Marx-Allee, towards government buildings after their superiors announced a pay cut if they did not meet their work quota. Things started with a discussion by shop stewards as regards how to respond to recent increase in their work quotas. However, this soon turned into a mass demonstration, which gathered more workers from construction sites as they marched first to the headquarters of the Free German Trade Union Federation. However, dissatisfied with the response there, the protest swelled to over ten thousand as they marched to House of Ministries on Leipziger Strasse, the home of the Council of Ministers of East Germany.[5] They bore banners with such slogans as "We demand a quota reduction!"[5] However soon more political demands were developed such as "Workers join us!" "Unity is Strength!" "We want free elections!" and "We want to be free, not slaves."[5] They then demanded that Walter Ulbricht come out to speak to them. When a minor official informed the crowd that their original demand about quotas had been met, this failed to satisfy the protestors who started developing other demands until a young engineer made the suggestion that they put out a call for general strike the next day.
These events were reported by the West Berlin-based Radio in the American Sector which helped spread news of the intended strike: “The uprising actually began on June 16, 1953, when construction workers in East Berlin marched down what was then Stalinallee to the seat of the Communist government, demanding that it rescind an increase in work hours and calling for a general strike the next day.” [4] RIAS, however, was initially controlled by the U.S. Information Control Division, with the ICD itself as a department of the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS). Formed on May 12, 1945 from the Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF (PWD/SHAEF), the ICD was led by Robert A. McClure. The PWD itself had its roots in U.S./U.K. intelligence organizations using staff of the US Office of War Information (OWI) and Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE). Also independent networks which had been formed within the old Social Democratic Party of Germany, which had been forcibly merged into the SED, the trade unions and the Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – which had recently been dissolved by the authorities - were an element in this self-organisation.[5]
17 June
A Soviet T-34/85 tank in East Berlin, 17 June 1953.
Early on 17 June 40,000 protesters had gathered in East Berlin, with more arriving throughout the morning. Many protests were held throughout East Germany with at least some work stoppages and protests in virtually all industrial centers and large cities in the country. Joint strike committees were established in Hennigsdorf, Görlitz, Cottbus, and Gera.
The original demands of the protesters, such as the reinstatement of the previous lower work quotas, turned into political demands. SED functionaries took to the streets and began arguing with small groups of protesters. Eventually, the workers demanded the resignation of the East German government. The government decided to violently suppress the uprising and turned to the Soviet Union for military support. In total, around 16 Soviet divisions with 20,000 soldiers as well as 8,000 Kasernierte Volkspolizei members were used to quell the uprising.
In East Berlin, major clashes occurred along Unter den Linden (between the Brandenburger Tor and Marx-Engels-Platz), where Soviet troops and Volkspolizei opened fire,[9] and around Potsdamer Platz, where several people were killed by the Volkspolizei.[10] It is still unclear how many people died during the uprising or were sentenced to death in the aftermath. The number of known victims is 55;[11] other estimates put the number of victims at least 125.[12]
Earlier West German estimates of the number of people killed were considerably higher: according to the West German Ministry for Inter-German affairs in 1966, 513 people (including 116 "functionaries of the SED regime") were killed in the uprising, 106 people were executed under martial law or later condemned to death, 1,838 were injured, and 5,100 were arrested (1,200 of these were later sentenced to an average of 5 years in penal camps). It also was alleged that 17 or 18 Soviet soldiers were executed for refusing to shoot demonstrating workers,[13] but these reports remain unconfirmed by post-1990 research.[14]
Reaction by the East German leadership
Former building of the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Reich Air Ministry) which then was the site of the House of Ministries. This is the site of the most important memorial to the 1953 Uprising
On 18 June 1953, Neues Deutschland, the official party publication of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and the daily national newspaper, published an article on its front page titled "Was ist in Berlin geschehen? (What occurred in Berlin?)" that explained the strike and subsequent uprising to be a direct result of the attempts by "western agencies" to disrupt the national stability and legitimacy of the SED.[15]
Other archived editions of Neues Deutschland document similar comments made by party officials that condemned the influence of American popular culture on German youth. The prominence of American films and music in both East and West Berlin influenced the rise of a subculture of youth commonly known as Halbstarke (lit. half-strengths). American films of the era like The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause were viewed by the GDR as romanticizing public disobedience and rebellion, as well as encouraging violent crime. Continued occurrences of crime and uprisings by German youths would eventually lead to the decision by SED party officials to begin construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.[16]
Other prominent GDR authors who dealt with the uprising include Stefan Heym (Fünf Tage im Juni / "Five Days in June", Munich 1974) and Heiner Müller (Wolokolamsker Chaussee III: Das Duell / "Volokolamsk Highway III: The Duel", 1985/86).
West German group Alphaville mention the date explicitly as "the seventeenth of June" but without reference to the year in their 1984 song "Summer in Berlin," from the album Forever Young. When the compilation album Alphaville Amiga Compilation was assembled for release in East Germany in 1988, the song "Summer in Berlin" was submitted for inclusion, but rejected "for political reasons."[17]
The Straße des 17. Juni, is a street in central Berlin, the capital of Germany. It is the western continuation of the boulevard Unter den Linden. It runs east–west through the Tiergarten, a large park to the west of the city centre. At the eastern end of the street is the Brandenburg Gate, it then passes the Soviet War Memorial before passing either side of Victory Column (Siegessäule) in the middle of the park, and out of the park through the Charlottenburg Gate, terminating about half a kilometre later at Ernst-Reuter-Platz. The street is a section of the main western thoroughfare radiating out from the centre of Berlin so the road continues to the west of Ernst-Reuter-Platz, the first section of which is called Bismarckstraße.
Articles related to East Germany include:
Willi Stoph was an East German politician. He served as Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic from 1964 to 1973, and again from 1976 until 1989. He also served as chairman of the State Council from 1973 to 1976.
East Germany had a centrally-planned economy similar to the one in the Soviet Union and other Comecon member states. The state established production targets and prices and also allocated resources, codifying these decisions in comprehensive plans. The means of production were almost entirely state-owned.
The Combat Groups of the Working Class was a paramilitary organization in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1953 to 1989.
Manfred Gerlach was a German jurist and politician (LDPD). He served as Chairman of the Council of State and was thus head of state of East Germany from 6 December 1989 to 5 April 1990.
Wilhelm Zaisser was a German communist politician and the first Minister for State Security of the German Democratic Republic (1950–1953).
Alfred "Ali" Neumann was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, and for a short time, he was East German Minister of Materials Management.
The New Economic System, officially the New Economic System of Planning and Management, was an economic policy that was implemented by the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1963. Its purpose was to replace the system of Five-Year Plans which had been used to run the GDR's economy from 1951 onwards. The System was introduced by Walter Ulbricht to try to improve the performance of the existing central planning, so that the economy might be run in as efficient a manner as possible.
The German Democratic Republic (GDR), German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), often known in English as East Germany, existed from 1949 to 1990. It covered the area of the present-day German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, and Thüringen.
The Ulbricht Group was a group of exiled members of the Communist Party of Germany, led by Walter Ulbricht, who flew from the Soviet Union back to Germany on April 30, 1945. Composed of functionaries from the KPD and ten anti-fascist prisoners of war, their job was to seek out anti-fascist individuals and prepare the groundwork for the re-establishment of communist organizations and unions in postwar Berlin. There were two additional regional groups, the Ackermann Group in Saxony and the Sobottka Group in Mecklenburg. Many of the group's members later became high-level officials in the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Heinrich Gottlob "Heiner" Rau was a German communist politician during the time of the Weimar Republic; subsequently, during the Spanish Civil War, he was a leading member of the International Brigades and after World War II an East German statesman.
The Economic System of Socialism (ESS) was an economic policy implemented in East Germany between 1968 and 1970, which was introduced and led by the country's autocratic leader, Walter Ulbricht. It focused on high technology sectors in an attempt to make self-sufficient growth possible. Overall, centralized planning was reintroduced in the so-called structure-determining areas, which included electronics, chemicals, and plastics. Industrial combines were formed to vertically integrate industries involved in the manufacture of vital final products. Price subsidies were restored to accelerate growth in favored sectors.
Rudolf Herrnstadt was a German journalist and communist politician – most notable for his anti-fascist activity as an exile from the Nazi German regime in the Soviet Union during the war and as a journalist in East Germany until his death, where he and Wilhelm Zaisser represented the anti-Ulbricht wing of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the 1950s.
Karl Maron was a German politician, who served as the interior minister of East Germany. He also assumed different posts in East Germany's government.
Franz Dahlem was a German politician. Dahlem was a leading official of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and, after 1945, of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED).
Elli Schmidt was a German political activist with links to Moscow, where as a young woman she spent most of the war years. She returned in 1945 to what later became the German Democratic Republic where she pursued a successful political career till her fall from grace: that came as part of a wider clear out of comrades critical of the national leadership in the aftermath of the 1953 uprising. She was formally rehabilitated on 29 July 1956, but never returned to mainstream politics.
↑ Neues Deutschland, Do. 18. Juni 1953, Jahrgang 8
↑ Poiger, Uta G. Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany. Berkeley, CA: U of California, 2000. Print. Page 180
Ostermann, Christian F. "" Keeping the Pot Simmering": The United States and the East German Uprising of 1953." German Studies Review (1996): 61-89. in JSTOR
Ostermann, Christian F. The United States, the East German Uprising of 1953, and the Limits of Rollback (Working Paper #11. Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1994) online
Richie, Alexandra. Faust's Metropolis: a History of Berlin. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1998, ch 14
Sperber, Jonathan. "17 June 1953: Revisiting a German Revolution" German History (2004) 22#4 pp 619–643.
Tusa, Ann . The Last Division: a History of Berlin, 1945-1989. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1997.
Watry, David M. Diplomacy at the Brink: Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden in the Cold War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014.
Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: 17. Juni 1953. Geschichte eines Aufstands. Beck, München 2013.
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