The GDR found, like the Nazis, that films with heavy propaganda content rarely were box office successes. DEFA produced a wide range of films for television and the screen.34 Television fell under the purview of the Agitation Department, film under the Culture Department, which in practice provided more flexibility, but even so the best directors encountered problems in dealing with matters from an angle not wholly congenial to those responsible for film. The fall of the GDR in 1989 resulted in the long-delayed release of a number of interesting banned films, such as Kurt Maetzig’s The Rabbit Is Me and Frank Beyer’s Trace of Stones.
As was true of the Nazis, party restrictions on the arts led to criticism.
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itself in the situation of discouraging criticism to a certain degree, though there was nothing similar to Goebbels’s efforts to ban the practice entirely.
Still, Kurt Hager’s discussion of criticism in 1981 is representative. He said there were two kinds of criticism: constructive and destructive. Constructive criticism was allegedly welcome. However, criticism directed against the foundations of socialism was unwelcome: “It always finds a hair in the soup, complains about everything, and therefore contributes to throwing socialism’s splendid constructive work in contempt along with the party that is the motor of this socialist state of workers and farmers.”35 The point was that criticism could be directed only at presumed deviations from the socialist order and needed to reinforce the overall system.
Awkward Art: Humor and Satire
Humor and satire are particularly awkward areas for totalitarian cultural policy. On the one hand, humor is part of human life; on the other, it has a nasty tendency to be directed at those in authority. Humor can be, and satire usually is, a form of criticism. The Nazis certainly did not want to appear humorless, but neither did they want to be its target. The dilemma is shown in two entries in Goebbels’s diaries in 1940. On 7 December 1940
he wrote: “Simplicissimus [a weekly humor periodical] is being checked and censored by too many different authorities. I put a stop to it. One must have room to maneuver in order to make jokes.” Two days later, however, he noted: “Put the manager of the Vienna Werkl, a local cabaret, in his place. This establishment pleases itself with sly subversion and typically Vi-ennese griping. I make the gentleman aware of the dangers of his activities in no uncertain terms. He will be more careful from now on.”36 I shall consider two examples of totalitarian humor: the cabaret and humor magazines.
Come to the Cabaret
The political cabaret had a prominent role in Germany before 1933. The wit was biting and vivid, with little sacred. The Nazi takeover changed things quickly. Many artists were Jewish, leftist, or both, and left the profession or the country.37 Goebbels hoped that the urge for self-preservation would keep the remaining performers in line, but that did not turn out to be the case. The more subtle performers became, the more effective their lines could be. The classic example is Berlin’s Werner Finck, who after his This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:45 UTC
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cabaret reopened after difficulties with a previous show said: “We’re not too open, but we’re open enough to just barely stay open.”38 As the Nazis saw it, Finck was a master of the art of suggesting as much as possible without getting caught.39 Goebbels sent loyal party members to Finck’s cabaret in 1935, only to find that they reached conflicting conclusions.
Some thought the material acceptable, but the majority found audiences too willing to draw conclusions inconsistent with National Socialist thinking. Goebbels considered banning traditional cabaret, replacing it with a National Socialist version.40
As Jelavich points out, the Nazis had a contradictory goal that ensured their cabaret would be unsuccessful: “The ‘positive cabaret’ desired by the Nazis was supposed to attack people who disturbed the homogenous mind-set. Of course, those same individuals were being persecuted by the state’s repressive apparatuses. Far from defending the underdog, Nazi cabaret was supposed to side with the victorious bully. That fact seriously limited the success of the Nazis’ ‘positive’ cabarets. Audiences found little humor in seeing someone already on the ground being kicked gratuitously.”41
Goebbels finally decided to ban political cabaret entirely in December 1937
but lacked the power to make the ban stick. Cabaret continued, rather nervously, into the war years.
The GDR managed cabaret more effectively. In 1982 cabaret performances attracted 428,000 people.42 There were fourteen troupes in major cities by 1984. Tickets sold out months in advance. In addition, there were many amateur and student cabarets.43 The GDR even established a university program to train cabaret artists in 1987.44
Every cabaret artist realized that there were boundaries, and not always clear ones. Performers knew that the bulk of their material had to be aimed at the enemy, whether at home or abroad. As Ursula Ragwitz, an official in the Agitation Department, wrote in 1983: “The critical material on everyday life in the GDR may not overshadow the most important questions of the class struggle.”45 Cabaret scripts required advance approval from the relevant party office and often from city officials. Even then, performances were sometimes banned. In 1961 the student cabaret in Leipzig, instead of attacking the class enemy, directed some of its satire toward the socialist camp. A typical line ran: “Why does the LVZ [the Leipzig SED newspaper]
print abbreviated versions of speeches by Kennedy and Nehru, but not by Khrushchev? Answer: Well, before you can cut them, you have to read them.” Five cabaret members were arrested, two expelled from the party.46
One was Ernst Röhl, later a longtime staff member of Eulenspiegel, the This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:45 UTC
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GDR’s sole humor magazine, who spent nearly a year in prison. During 1964–1965 Leipzig’s Pfeffermühle cabaret had three shows banned, which was a considerable embarrassment since one fell during the fall trade show that attracted numerous foreign visitors.47
Still, cabaret had more room to criticize than Eulenspiegel. I attended a Pfeffermühle performance in 1988 that suggested that the GDR’s leaders were seeing nothing but little Gorbachevs in their nightmares. Such jokes never appeared in more widely circulated media. The cabaret had a limited audience (the theaters seated several hundred at most), and full performances were almost never broadcast on television (though carefully selected skits appeared at times). West German television reporters regularly asked permission to film cabaret performances, which was always denied. As a GDR report noted in 1983, it would be peculiar to allow West German television to broadcast what East German television could not.48
The Dolt Laughs: Satirical Publications
There were a number of satirical publications published during the Nazi era. Simplicissimus had a long history, as did the Lustige Blätter. 49 The Nazis founded their own Brennessel in 1931.50 Following the Soviet example, the GDR had one publication that had a near monopoly on satire: Eulenspiegel. 51 I shall consider both periodicals, using material from Brennessel in 1934 and 1935 and Eulenspiegel in 1985 and 1986.
Brennessel and Eulenspiegel are most similar in the ways they used satire to comment on international events. In both systems, the government controlled what could be said about other nations and insisted that all publications support the official line. As a result, the international satire of both periodicals was predictable, repetitious, and dull. I shall only briefly consider it, since it is the least interesting material in both periodicals.
Brennessel
found little to appreciate in the rest of the world. Austria, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, England, the United States, Lithuania—all these and more were regularly the point of its satire. In 1934 Hitler, for example, conducted a campaign against Austria, culminating in the assassination of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß on 25 July. Hundreds of Brennessel items, ranging from brief swipes to cover cartoons, from major articles to poems, satirized Austria (though the assassination itself was not mentioned). Dozens of items in 1934 accused other European nations—in particular, France—of armaments-building programs aimed at Germany.
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In 1935 Austria was no longer a major concern. Numerous items now attacked the Soviet Union and the League of Nations. By fall 1935 Lithuania was a major target. The 19 November 1935 issue, for example, carried two cartoons and four brief items accusing the Lithuanian government of assorted misdeeds.
Foreign satire was clearly part of a centrally managed campaign. Brennessel’s office file copies were liberated by an American soldier who donated them to Dartmouth College, his alma mater, after the war. They sometimes include the censor’s corrections, made before the issue was released for printing. The 26 June 1934 issue carried a cartoon titled “Ikarus der Dollfüßige,” a pun that does not survive translation, depicting Dollfuß attempting to escape his foes by flying high in the sky, only to collide with the rainbow. A handwritten comment in the margin notes: “5 Uhr kam Druckerlaubnis [Approval to print came at 5].” An anti-Austrian poem in the same issue was cut.
Although Eulenspiegel never doubted the wisdom of socialist foreign policy, its writers were aware that repeating old stereotypes was dull and ineffective. Peter Nelken, Eulenspiegel’s editor, wrote in 1962: “As important as it is for satire to use artistic means to show the deformation of the human under imperialism and to reveal the hopelessly outdated character of its representatives, not every warmonger looks like an ape and not all monopoly capitalists bite their nails in anxiety. These sorts of clichés do not only minimize the severity of the struggle, they also ignore an important function of satire: to provoke the reader or viewer to thought, to force him to contemplate, to draw conclusions, that will affect his action.”52 His injunctions had little impact.
The major campaign of 1985–1986 was directed against the NATO decision to station intermediate range missiles in Europe. Dozens of items spoke to the topic. Nicaragua was a second frequent theme. Front or back cover cartoons showed Nicaraguan schoolchildren being shot, Contra money flowing to Honduras, Contra soldiers shooting up a milk truck, prosperous Americans worrying that the Nicaraguans wanted to take Dis-neyland away from them, and so on.53 The stereotypes were the ones Nelken denounced twenty years earlier.
Neither periodical said anything negative about its nation’s allies. The proof copies of Brennessel show that even mild Italian jokes were cut. For example, the proof copy of the 14 August 1934 issue included two items mentioning Italy. In one, tourists mistake whirling dervishes for Italian journalists. The proof copy for 25 September 1934 had a cartoon depicting This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:45 UTC
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an ignorant Italian farmer holding a copy of Tacitus upside down. The caption read: “He cannot read Tacitus, of course—but he at least comes from the area where he wrote two thousand years ago.” None of the items appear in the printed editions. The reaction of Eulenspiegel to the Soviet Union can only be described as fawning, with never a suggestion that Soviet policy might in any way be subject to criticism.
Although the two publications’ general approach to international issues was similar, there was a major difference. Brennessel regularly printed caricatures of foreign statesmen, Eulenspiegel rarely did.54 The Nazis did not particularly care what the world thought of them, whereas the GDR was assiduous in seeking foreign recognition and avoided harsh personal attacks on most foreign leaders. Its caricatures were usually generalized capitalists, generals, or politicians rather than specific foreign leaders.
International satire was seldom even slightly amusing, since it so clearly was part of the general propaganda campaign and since there was so little variety. The satirists had no room to say anything outrageous or provocative. Repetitive international satire vanished from Eulenspiegel after the Wall came down and the staff gained greater freedom to choose what to write about.
Although their approaches to international satire were similar, Brennessel and Eulenspiegel took different approaches to domestic matters. Brennessel rejected any domestic criticism, whereas Eulenspiegel allowed more room for criticism than any other leading periodical in the GDR, although, as we shall see, that criticism stayed within carefully defined boundaries.
Brennessel spent considerable effort supporting Goebbels’s propaganda campaign against Germans who complained about shortages, corruption, or inefficiency.55 Many cartoons, poems, and articles denounced the Mies-macher and the Meckerer, those who found the slightest thing to complain about or who lacked full confidence in the Third Reich. A typical cartoon in 1934 was captioned “Those who don’t want to see will have to feel.” In the first frame, two men complain that nothing is happening, while two other men are at work in the background. In the second frame, one of the workers directs the handle of his shovel at the chin of the complainer, apologizes profusely, and comments in the final frame, “Well, something happened after all.”56 Another cartoon has a complainer entering a shop asking for butter. When the clerk informs him that there is none, he replies: “I knew it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have asked.”57 Many items made the same point. To complain was to be disloyal.
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Other items attacked Germans who failed to behave in expected ways.
Those less than eager to contribute to the party’s annual Winter Relief campaign came under scrutiny. A typical cartoon showed a prosperous couple in a large automobile contributing a penny to the Nazi Winter Relief charity.58 There were complaints about the 110 percenters, those Germans who discovered an attraction to National Socialism after 30 January 1933.
One article took the form of a letter to a bureaucrat who survived the transition to National Socialism by taking on the necessary political coloration but complained that having to spend six months in the labor service would cost him 1,000 marks in lost wages.59
The message was that all was well with Germany and that to complain was to exhibit lack of faith in the Führer and Fatherland. Whatever problems there were could be solved by those in authority. There was no need for meddling by the masses.
Eulenspiegel’s pages, on the other hand, were filled with complaints about the indignities of life in the GDR. Nelken’s 1962 essay outlined the appropriate targets of domestic satire: “What negative things stand in the way of our path to socialism? Above all they are the manifestations of ego-tism nourished by capitalism that still influence people’s thoughts and actions. Absenteeism, the attempt to get as much as possible from society without producing a corresponding amount, hoarding, listening to NATO
stations to spread rumors, alcoholism and rowdyism, domineering natures and envy, the mistreatment of women in the family and workplace—all these are damaging remains that need to be eliminated.”60 In contrast to Brennessel, Eulenspiegel sometimes suggested that there were problems in the GDR, problems that citizens could appropriately complain about. Domestic satire’s goal was to help overcome the growing pains of socialism.
Socialism’s growing pains, however, increased as time went on. Eulenspiegel had no shortage of topics. One issue complained about the miserable food at ra
ilroad station restaurants, the filthy toilets, and the limited hours facilities were open. Cartoons in the same issue depicted toilets closed because of the danger of plague and a station kiosk loaded with alcohol:
“Here you can find everything you need to forget the late trains.”61 Other issues revealed the tricks GDR taxi drivers used to extort higher than al-lowable fares, the difficulties in getting spare parts, and the poor quality of consumer goods.62 Frequent absenteeism was the theme of a cartoon showing six work stations, five of which are vacant. The supervisor comes by to ask where everyone is. The one worker present replies: “Paula’s child is sick, Dieter is getting coal, Max some furniture, Hein is at driving school, This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:45 UTC
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and Else is just shopping.” The foreman replies: “Have a word with Else.
The others don’t have a choice.”63 Recognizing the strains of life in the GDR, the cartoon accepted absenteeism for good cause.
Each issue carried articles and cartoons that directly addressed the daily difficulties that GDR citizens faced but rarely saw mentioned in other mass-circulated periodicals. Unlike Brennessel, Eulenspiegel expressed people’s frustrations. Sometimes specific culprits were mentioned, sometimes it was enough to make a general complaint.
There were also items that dealt with deeper problems of socialism.
Gentle fun was poked at the constant citation of Marxist leaders, as, for example, in the following poem:
I have a burning wish to know
And so I just ask plainly,
The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic Page 17
