1 Roberto Illiano und Massimiliano Sala, eds, *Music and Dictatorship in Europe and Latin America*, Brepols: Turnhout, 2010.

#### **170 Matthias Tischer**

2 See for example Joachim Lucchesi, ed., *Das Verhör in der Oper: die Debatte um die Aufführung 'Das Verhör des Lukullus' von Bertolt Brecht und Paul Dessau*, Berlin: BasisDruck Verlag, 1993; and Joy Haslam Calico, 'The trial, the condemnation, the cover-up: behind the scenes of Brecht/Dessau's *Lukullus*', *Cambridge Opera Journal*, 14:3 (2002), 313-42.

3 Matthias Tischer, *Komponieren für und wider den Staat. Paul Dessau in der DDR*, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau 2009.

4 The *Volkslieder* were first published in 1950 (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag) in a version for voice and simple piano accompaniment.  Musikalische und musikwissenschaftliche Gesellschaften in der DDR*, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1997; Daniel Zur Weihen, *Komponieren in der DDR. Institutionen, Organisationen und die erste Komponistengeneration bis 1961: Analyse*n, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 1999.

7 Rudolf-Dieter Krämer, *Musikpädagogik in der ehemaligen DDR. Eine Textdokumentation*, Essen: Blaue Eule, 1992; Siegfried Bimberg, *Nachhall. 44 Jahre Schulmusik nach Marx und Lenin*, Essen: Blaue Eule, 1996; Sieglinde Siedentop, *Musikunterricht in der DDR*, Augsburg: Wißner-Verlag, 2000.

8 Bettina Hinterthür, *Noten nach Plan. Die Musikverlage in der SBZ/DDR – Zensursystem, zentrale Planwirtschaft und deutsch-deutsche Beziehungen bis Anfang der 1960er Jahre*, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006.

9 Frank Schneider, 'Remigration in die DDR', in: Horst Weber, ed., *Musik in der Emigration 1933–1945: Verfolgung Vertreibung, Rückwirkung*, Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler Verlag, 1994, pp. 249-59; Karin Hartewig, *Zurückgekehrt. Die Geschichte der jüdischen Kommunisten in der DDR*, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2000; Maren Köster and Dörte Schmidt, *'Man kehrt nie zurück, man geht immer nur fort'. Remigration und Musikkultur*, Munich: Edition Text und Kritik, 2005.

10 See Toby Thacker, *Music After Hitler, 1945-1955*, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, pp. 39-75; and David Monod, *Settling Scores. German Music, Denazification, & the Americans, 1945-1953*, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005, which is much more precise but focuses exclusively on the American zone in occupied Germany.

#### **Music and Discourse 171**

11 Michael Rauhut, *Rock in der DDR*, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2002; and *Bye Bye, Lübben City. Bluesfreaks, Tramps und Hippies in der DDR*, Berlin: Schwarzkopf und Schwarzkopf, 2004.

12 Nina Noeske, *Musikalische Dekonstruktion. Neue Instrumentalmusik in der DDR*, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2007.

13 Peter Schöttler, 'Wer hat Angst vor dem "linguistic turn"?', *Geschichte und Gesellschaft*, 23 (1997), 134-51 (here: p. 141).

14 Paul Veyne, 'Foucault revolutionizes history', in: Arnold I. Davidson, ed., *Foucault and His Interlocutors*, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 146- 82 (here: p. 171).

15 Michel Foucault, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith, *The Archaeology of Knowledge*, London: Routledge, 2004, p. 83.

16 Foucault, *Archäologie des Wissens*, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981, p. 139.

17 Dietrich Busse, *Historische Semantik. Analyse eines Programms*, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987, p. 222.

18 Andrea Seier, 'Kategorien der Entzifferung: Macht und Diskurs als Analyseraster', in: Hannelore Bublitz, Andrea Bührmann, Christine Hanke, and Andrea Seier, eds, *Das Wuchern der Diskurse. Perspektiven der Diskursanalyse Foucaults*, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999, pp. 75-86 (here: p. 77).

19 Foucault, trans. Ian McLeod, 'The Order of Discourse', in: Robert Young, ed., *Untying the Text. A Post-Structuralist Reader*, Boston and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, pp. 48-78 (here: p. 53).

20 *Dispositive der Macht*, Berlin: Merve, 1978, p. 75.

21 See for example, Urs Marti, *Michel Foucault*, Munich: Beck, 1988, p. 75.

22 Foucault, trans. R. Hurley, *The History of Sexuality. Volume One: An Introduction*, New York: Vintage, 1980, p. 100.

23 See, for example, Isabell Lorey, 'Macht und Diskurs bei Foucault', in: *Das Wuchern der Diskurse. Perspektiven der Diskursanalyse Foucaults*, pp. 87-96 (here: p. 91).

24 Andrea Seier, 'Kategorien der Entzifferung', p. 80.

25 See, for example, Franziska Schößler, *Literaturwissenschaft als Kulturwissenschaft*, Tübingen and Basel: Narr Francke Atempo, 2006, p. 46.

26 Foucault, *Was ist Kritik?*, Berlin: Merve, 1992, p. 15.

27 Goldman in an interview with the author. Matthias Tischer, *Das Zeuthener Haus. Oral History Project*, unpublished, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

28 See Solomon Volkov, *Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator*, New York: Knopf, 2004.

29 Matthias Tischer, 'Ästhetische, poetische und politische Diskurse in der Akademie der Künste. "Warum ist das so, daß wir innerhalb der Republik eine Kulturinsel sind?", die 50er und 60er Jahre', in: Matthias Tischer, ed., *Musik in der DDR. Beiträge zu den Musikverhältnissen eines verschwundenen Staates*, Berlin: Kuhn, 2005, pp. 105-26.

30 Foucault, 'The Order of Discourse', p. 55.

31 Paul Thilman 'Eindrücke vom "Warschauer Herbst"', *Musik und Gesellschaft*, 6 (1956), 467-8.

32 Foucault, 'The Order of Discourse', p. 61.

33 The Jewish remigrants to the GDR were not only expected to accept the German unwillingness to come to terms with the past, they were also terrified by the new wave of anti-Semitism emanating from the USSR in the late Stalin era.

34 Foucault, 'The Order of Discourse', pp. 62-3.

35 Foucault, *The Archaeology of Knowledge*, p. 82.

36 See, for example, Rüdiger Brede, *Aussage und Diskurs. Untersuchungen zur Discours-Theorie bei Michel Foucault*, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985, p. 35.

37 Foucault, *The Archaeology of Knowledge*, p. 114.

38 Ibid., p. 115.

39 Foucault, 'The Order of Discourse', p. 69.

40 Concerning the works of the younger generation of composers in the GDR see Nina Noeske, *Musikalische Dekonstruktion. Neue Instrumentalmusik in der DDR*.

41 Franziska Schößler, *Literaturwissenschaft als Kulturwissenschaft*, p. 40.

#### **Music and Discourse 173**

 Bertolt Brecht, *Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe*, vol. 14, Gedichte und Gedichtfragmente 1928-1939, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988, p. 34.

 Paul Dessau, ed. Daniela Reinhold, *'Let's Hope for the Best': Briefe und Notizbücher aus den Jahren 1948 bis 1978*, Hofheim: Wolke, 2000, p. 69.

Foucault, *The Archaeology of Knowledge*, p. 12.

Veyne, 'Foucault revolutionizes history', p. 48.

 Foucault's own political activism, his engagement against war, injustice and suppression show that he was by no means politically indifferent.

See, for example, Dietrich Busse, *Historische Semantik*, p. 247.

Foucault, *The Archaeology of Knowledge,* p. 96.

Ibid., p. 143.

Veyne, 'Foucault revolutionizes history', p. 165.

 Clifford Geertz, 'Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture', in: The *Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays*, New York: Basic Books, 1973, pp. 3- 30 (here: p. 5).

See, for example, Schößler, *Literaturwissenschaft als Kulturwissenschaft*, p. 176.

Dietrich Busse, *Historische Semantik*, p. 271.

### **Nina Noeske**

### **Gender Discourse and Musical Life in the GDR**

This chapter draws on recent developments in gender studies and examines the implications and consequences of gender sensitive approaches for the construction of a music history of the GDR. The chapter begins with a discussion of practical gender relations in the GDR, exploring the marginalisation of the female in a society that prided itself on gender equality but was deeply patriarchal. It then considers the impact of these gendered social constructs on the aesthetics of socialist realism.

Recent developments in gender studies have served as a prominent stimulus for musicologists to rethink fundamental approaches to historiography.1 Most notably, the traditional concept of the cultural canon as a set of masterworks has been challenged. Questions have been asked about the value choices inherent in the canon: why are certain works deemed worthy of continued performance and reflection when others are neglected or lost? What does this reveal about a culture and its self-conception? Which concepts of marginalisation and exclusion are at work and how can alternative cultural memories be constructed? The consequence of this 'rethinking' has been an intensified focus on what is apparently marginal, placed at the periphery of culture. (Similarities can be observed between this approach and postmodern tenets of historiography.) Beginning with the question of why female composers and performers are largely absent from cultural memory, musicologists since the 1970s have begun to explore the relevance of a 'female music history'. There has been a move away from the reified composition and an increased interest in cultural practices, drawing attention to the roles of women as patrons, concert organisers, writers on music and salon hosts. This change of focus has resulted in a new understanding that music as a cultural and social practice can only be analysed in the wider context of human society. In the following essay I want to examine the implications and consequences of gender-sensitive approaches for the construction of a music history of the GDR. I will begin with a discussion of practical gender relations within the state and will then explore the impact of these social constructs on the aesthetics of

socialist realism. Central to this approach is the realisation that there are multiple interrelated gender discourses at play.

#### **Female Composers in the GDR**

In stark contrast to official claims and despite the gender equality that was nominally enshrined in GDR laws, the state was a maledominated one.2 Of course, women were integrated into and accepted within the working world. They were employed in industry and were celebrated by state officials, not least in numerous speeches by Walter Ulbricht.3 Decisions, however, were made almost completely by men; telling in this regard was the notable absence of women in the upper echelons of the GDR's political machine. While women could become crane drivers and technical assistants, men seldom engaged with domestic work or child care. The resulting inequalities have been well documented.4 Similar conditions can be observed in the structures of GDR musical life, where Ruth Zechlin (1926-2007) was the only female composer to enjoy genuine success at both domestic and international levels.5 Professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin and teacher of a master class in composition at the Akademie der Künste, she was inevitably hailed both as a female figurehead and as an alibi for socialist culture. Zechlin was well aware of the role she had to play in confirming the narratives of equality associated with socialism, but it is telling that she believed she had inherited her mathematical combinatorial approach to composition from her father. Her skills, according to Zechlin, were inherently masculine.6 Accordingly, she ascribed the shortage of female composers in the GDR to a 'physiologisches Phänomen',7 maintaining that if women had the faculty to compose, they would have long played a prominent part in musical life. Emancipation, she claimed, was not the issue: 'Das Frauenproblem ist in der DDR weitgehend gelöst. Wer und was aufgeführt wird, ist keine Frage der Emanzipation, sondern allein der Qualität.'8 In a 1988 survey of female musicians in the GDR, published in the journal *Musik und Gesellschaft*, Zechlin explained:

Ich denke, ich bin der lebendige Beweis dafür, daß man als Frau in unserem Lande alles tun kann – vorausgesetzt, daß man mit größter Verantwortung, mit Phantasie und Kühnheit sowie mit echtem handwerklichen Können unverwechselbare und persönliche neue Musik schreibt.9

#### **Gender Discourse and Musical Life in the GDR 177**

Zechlin vehemently refuted the existence of a 'weibliche Ästhetik', demanding that differentiation be made only between 'good' and 'bad' music.10 Key here of course, is her self-identification as a masculine composer, and her tendency to ascribe her entrance into a normally forbidden realm to a caprice of nature, namely the bestowal on her of an inherently 'masculine' gift. She explains: 'Es wäre mir suspekt, als "weiblicher" Komponist zu schreiben, als "weiblicher" Komponist Vorträge zu halten, als "weiblicher" Komponist Verantwortungen zu übernehmen und kulturpolitisch zu arbeiten.'11 This antipathy towards gendered ghettoisation is perhaps inevitable given her fundamentally masculine construct of composition.

Other experiences and perceptions of female musicians emerge in the *Musik und Gesellschaft* survey. An alternative model for defining the female self within the musical life of the late GDR was provided by the East German conductor Romely Pfundt. Pfundt perceives the specifically 'female' nature not, as is the case with Zechlin, as an artistic hindrance, but as a source of positive qualities. The unique individuality of a female artist lies, according to Pfundt, in her 'femininity' and its rich emotional world, a topos by no means unique to Eastern Germany. This femininity provides female interpreters with artistic opportunities that are unique to their sex.12 On the contrary, Traude Ebert-Obermeier, the only woman within the GDR to hold a professorship in musicology, was very sceptical about the opportunities available to women in her country. In the *Musik und Gesellschaft* survey she recalls a conference at which she was introduced as 'Herr Prof. Ebert'. As she was making her way to the podium, the organisers declared that since 'Herr Prof. Ebert' was obviously absent they should move on to the next speaker. Ebert-Obermeier recounts that: 'Erst mein Protest und der Hinweis, daß es gelegentlich, wenn auch selten, Professorinnen gibt und sogar solche, die den Mut aufbringen, bei Konferenzen zu referieren, ermöglichte es mir, mein Referat vorzutragen.' She concludes by asking: 'Wie sollen sich Frauen unter solchen Voraussetzungen entwickeln können?'13 Conversely, Ellen Hünigen, a twenty-three-year-old composition student at the time of the survey, did not perceive any disadvantages for women. She recalls that in her childhood composition class, there were many girls and that she herself enjoyed the best education available. In contrast to Zechlin, she observes that a 'geschlechtsspezifische Teilung sowohl des Empfindungsaufbaus als auch des Erkenntnisprozesses in weibliche und männliche Aspekte scheint mir bloße Gedankenkonstruktion zu sein.'14

These different views can be seen as prototypical experiences of gender relations within the musical life of the GDR, with Hünigen reflecting the changing climate that preceded the dissolution of the state. The perceptions of Hünigen and Pfundt are most optimistic (albeit somewhat naïve in the latter case); the sceptical comments of Ebert-Obermeier reflect a more problematic circumstance. Ultimately, however, it is Ruth Zechlin who personifies the most typical experience, mirroring the expectations and presumptions of the socialist society in which she lived. Zechlin's validation as a composer in this society necessitated her constructing herself in the image of a masculine artistic.15 By doing so, she positioned herself firmly in the accepted discourse with its specific practices of exclusion. This was necessary for artistic survival; as Frank Kämpfer suggests: 'Als Überlebensform gab es für die DDR-Musikerin kaum eine Alternative zur Kooperation mit dem männlichen Geschlecht.'16

These observations expose the extent to which the field of composition has been constructed to exclude the female and the feminine. Composition since the nineteenth century has been defined in terms of an aesthetic of genius, one that is difficult to reconcile with the compositional activities of women.17 Similarities can be drawn here to the chasm that existed between official rhetoric and reality in terms of gender equality in East Germany. The much vaunted separation of socialist realism from the bourgeois aesthetics of the nineteenth century was something of a chimera; despite claims to the contrary, socialist realist art was firmly grounded in these aesthetics, and rooted in the established canon of male composers. Thus Kampfer notes, unsurprisingly '[d]ie "Musikpäpste" der kleinen DDR waren bis zuletzt Männer, Vaterfiguren, Überväter.'18 Given the accepted narrative that socialism was synonymous with equality – an effective solution for both the 'class question' and the 'question of women' – it was necessary to deflect attention from the actual state of affairs. Those efforts succeeded; as Kämpfer observed in 1991:

Die Unterpräsenz der künstlerisch tätigen oder vermittelnd tätigen Frau als ein geschichtlich gewachsenes und aktuell unbewältigtes Phänomen findet in der [DDR-] Gesellschaft keinerlei Raum für Nachdenken und öffentliche Diskussion.  […] Gegen die Frauenrechtsbewegung in Westeuropa und den USA,

#### **Gender Discourse and Musical Life in the GDR 179**

gegen alternatives, auch feministisches Denken schottete die DDR ihre Gesellschaft weitgehend ab.19

In everyday speech, the term feminism, as was the case in many other Eastern Bloc states, was laden with negative connotations.20

The interplay of official claims, proclamations, realities, and the perceptions of self and other is complex and often contradictory. Problems associated with gender equality were perceived as nonexistent in the GDR, largely because of the effective assimilation of women into a masculine world, as exemplified by Ruth Zechlin. Hauser observes, '[i]n der DDR verschwand das zweite Geschlecht als werktätiger Mensch in der Ideologie.'21 The same process can be observed in musical life; one can speak of a pervasive and allencompassing social repression. The question arises as to whether this process is similarly manifest in East German musical aesthetics (both official and nonofficial); whether and to what extent connections can be drawn to other social and historical dichotomies in the wider field of aesthetics, and whether those 'epistemes', to use Foucault's terminology, influenced musical production, interpretation and reception. Central here is the impact of gendered discourse on music historiography. The following discussion will be restricted to two points. The first concerns the gender coding implicit in the official state-sanctioned aesthetics of socialist realism. The self image of the socialist state can be viewed in this context from an alternative perspective; in particular, an exploration of these gendered aesthetics can reveal information about the mechanisms of exclusion that operated in GDR society. The second point examines concrete engagement with and responses to gender issues in compositional practice and its reception. To conclude, I will offer some insights on issues which should be considered in the context of a gender-sensitive music history of the GDR**.**

### **Gender and Socialist Realism**

National self image in the early and middle years of the GDR drew heavily on 'jene klassisch-humanistische deutsche Kultur am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, mit der sich Gesellschaftsaufbruch, bürgerlichmännliche Subjektwerdung und zugleich politischer Regreß verband.'22 Such rhetoric is clearly visible in the official celebrations for Beethoven's 200th birthday in 1970.23 The event promoted the belief that the GDR represented the political continuation of ideals anticipated artistically in Beethoven's music.24 In the proceedings of the East Berlin Beethoven Conference that year, Heinz Alfred Brockhaus and Konrad Niemann promoted a strong image of Beethoven using terms such as 'kämpferisch', 'kampferfüllt', 'entbehrungsreich', and, ultimately, 'humanistisch-revolutionär' to describe him. The official image of Beethoven in the GDR was notably one-dimensional and restricted to the ideal of the 'heroic' Beethoven, a prototype of the bourgeois, autonomous subject, who had total control over his compositional content. By installing such heroic genius on an imaginary pedestal, Eastern Germany implicitly decided in favour of a 'masculine' Beethoven.

East Germany's claim as heir to the masculine Beethoven required that West Germany be recontextualised as an artistic other in publications. Musicologists and functionaries argued that the 'imperialistic state of Bonn' had contaminated Beethoven's heritage by allowing, and even encouraging works such as Mauricio Kagel's *Ludwig van* or Karlheinz Stockhausen's *Opus 1970*. Ernst Hermann Meyer notably denigrated Stockhausen's tribute to Beethoven as 'pornographic'.25 Overall, western 'decadence' and its perceived association with 'nihilism'26 stood in opposition to the heroic, revolutionary, forwardlooking, 'brüderlich vereinten Welt' epitomised in the eastern self.27 Western interest in Beethoven's late style, as evinced by Adorno and composers such as Stockhausen and Kagel, was also viewed as symptomatic of western decadence. The neglect of late Beethoven within the GDR resulted in some problems; notably, those aspects of music which are conventionally imbued with feminine connotations – lyrical qualities for example – were disregarded. This was an issue that perturbed the East German musicologist Harry Goldschmidt, who observed in the midst of the 1970 Beethoven festivities: '[W]as nicht in das revolutionäre Beethoven-Bild hineinzupassen schien, wurde beiseite gelassen; der lyrische Beethoven blieb unbewältigt, das Spätwerk – mit einer Ausnahme, natürlich der Neunten – einfach beschwiegen.'28 The withdrawal of a spirit or *Geist* traditionally perceived as masculine in Beethoven's late style,29 rendered this body of music incompatible with state rhetoric. Images of weakness had no place in a historical narrative that was shaped, in both German states, by the demands of the Cold War.

The large-scale proclamations of a masculine Beethoven were symptomatic of wider phenomena in the 1950s; similar patterns can be

#### **Gender Discourse and Musical Life in the GDR 181**

found throughout the body of socialist realist music criticism. The installation of the masculine as a cultural norm is not overtly explicit. Instead, writers draw on specific semantic fields, in which maleness and masculinity is implicitly encoded. Composers, for example, are discussed predominantly in terms of their 'strength' and powerful 'visions'.30 Thus, in Ernst Hermann Meyer's musicological manifesto *Musik im Zeitgeschehen* (1952) one reads that 'realistic' art has to 'progress' (*vorwärtsführen*):

Das Prophetische, das heroische Vorstoßen zu immer höheren Höhen der gesellschaftlichen Einheit und der Naturüberwindung, […] das ist eine notwendige Forderung an jedes echte Kunstwerk. […] So ist realistische Kunst vorwärtsgewandt, prophetisch und kämpferisch.31

Characteristic here, is Meyer's reference to nature. Max Horkheimer and Adorno in their *Dialectic of Enlightenment* notably questioned the traditional feminine connotations of nature,32 and the related implications of the concept that nature must be overcome by mankind in order to achieve progress.33

According to Czech author Antonín Sychra, the socialist composer 'fights' at different 'fronts' for 'seine persönlichen Beziehungen zum sozialistischen Morgen und kämpft gleichzeitig in der Familie um ein neues Verhältnis zur Frau und zu den Kindern.'34 (Notable in this statement is the implicit male gendering of the composer.) The antithesis to this, for Meyer as well as Sychra is music that represents the neurotic, hysteric, nervous, morbid, and the sentimental. So, according to Meyer, one has to fight not only against 'atonal' music but also against some forms of ('western') light music, against 'flache[n], süßliche[n], abgestandene[n] Kitsch,' and against 'schmalzige, schmachtende Salonmusik niedrigsten Niveaus' which circulated among people 'wie schlechte Limonaden oder ordinäres Parfüm.'35 There are some composers who have to be 'rescued' from such associations; Sychra, for example, emphasises the 'Revolutionäre, die Volkstümlichkeit, eine gesunde, unsentimentale Lyrik' of Frédéric Chopin's compositions, and argues that it is 'nur verständlich, daß der sozialistische Künstler gerade diese fortschrittlichen Züge des revolutionären demokratischen Komponisten hervorhebt.'36 The combination of perfume, sweet lemonade, and sentimental parlourmusic clearly conjures up the sphere of the feminine – and, to some extent, the effeminate. The deep-rooted suspicion of this sphere lies in the fact that socialist realism was an implicitly masculine programme; indeed Ernst Hermann Meyer's postulation that each composer must 'harden and purify' himself by writing *Massenlieder* has distinct resonances with male initiation ceremonies, and not just those associated with National Socialism.37 This comparison is not that farfetched given that the battle for 'correct art' was fought within the framework of the Cold War; in this context, aggression in musical aesthetics acts as a symbolic weapon. Anyone entering a war must, to use Sychra's terminology, be 'sound' and 'unsentimental', and must conversely be in no way 'effete'. Although the ideal of peace was one of the most prominent topoi in the GDR, one not refined to political rhetoric,38 the friend-foe mentality underlying aesthetic semantics points to the simultaneous preoccupation with war, be it political or cultural. Indeed the vocabulary favoured on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War recalls concerns prevalent during the First World War: a pervasive antipathy to decadent phenomena such as hysteria and nervousness, which have since the nineteenth century had specific feminine connotations. As a consequence, the desire to disassociate from weakness can be understood as part of a wider drive to strengthen the invulnerability of the national self. From this perspective, the music of socialist realism can be characterised in terms of its military qualities.39

Last but not least in this context is the suspicion in which both the spheres of erotically charged dancing (most notably that prompted by American jazz music of the 1950s) and pure intellectual music (Schoenberg's dodecaphony and the integral serialism of the 1950s) were held.40 Neither sensualism nor intellectualism is conducive for dictatorships: human subordination is undermined by both the overwhelming emotions aroused by so-called erotic music and the critical faculties awakened by intellectual music. The final stigmatisation of music lay in the associations that were drawn between prostitution and the popular light music of western societies, one last link between dubious music and dubious (female) sexuality.41 The rhetorics of the Cold War, which are barely concealed in socialist-realist orientated musical criticism, are situated firmly in the world of Klaus Theweleit's 'Männerphantasien'.42

#### **Gender Discourse and Musical Life in the GDR 183**

#### **Norms and Reality**

The impact of this male-orientated vision of society was by no means restricted to musical aesthetics; the gendered narratives established in the early years of the GDR exerted a significant force on composition, even in the late 1980s when their relevance appeared questionable.43 The discourse of aesthetic norms and ideals operated at many levels within music, affecting not only authorial intent but also the public, critical and scholarly reception of composition. These discourses are particularly apparent in the field of opera. Sigrid Neef, for example, detects 'heroines' that embody a near-utopian format in the operas of Paul Dessau. Especially within his first opera, *Die Verurteilung des Lukullus*, which received its premiere in 1953 in East Berlin, Dessau, according to Neef, integrated female figures that function as a political protest against a lack of important and essential things:44

Dessau schuf mit kommentierender Frauenstimme, Fischweib und Kurtisane, nicht nur bergend-schützende oder mütterliche Gestalten, vor allem entwarf er mit ihnen einen Typus Mensch, der sich in konflikthaften Situationen immer für das einzelne und sei es noch so unbedeutende Leben entscheidet; der dafür eintritt, so zum Antipoden jener wird, für die ein abstraktes Prinzip mehr ist als der konkrete Mensch.45

As Neef notes, the female in Dessau's operas functions as a kind of anti-principle, as an anti-hero and as a fool at the same time:46 'Shakespeare und andere haben für die Gestaltung ihrer Perspektive Narren – Kunstfiguren – geschaffen. Bei Dessau erhalten Frauen diese Funktion.'47 The historical tendency to employ women as a perceived blank space, as an undefined or contradictory 'Non-A' and therefore as a kind of projection screen has been well documented.48 This is not the place to determine the coherence of Neef's interpretation; it is more important to acknowledge that this possible reading of the opera was important to her and many others. Against the background of the aesthetic conditions discussed above, it seems certainly possible that Dessau explores 'die traditionellen Heldenbilder' within his works, but, as Neef observes, he does this in a way that is 'nicht abstrakt, sondern er zielt ganz konkret auf die Antinomie: der Mensch als Instrument fremder Zwecke und der Mensch als sein eigener Endzweck.'49 It is notable that Kunigunde, the female protagonist of Reiner Bredemeyer's opera *Candide* (1981-2), was subjected to a virtually identical musicological reading. The Voltarian figure, like Christa Wolf's *Kassandra* (1983), was interpreted as a kind of visionary and as a representative of a truly humane society.50 There are many more examples which could be mentioned within this context, the most prominent of which are Siegfried Matthus's *Judith* (1985) and Friedrich Schenker's *Bettina* (1984).51 Clear parallels can be drawn here to currents in GDR literature of the 1970s.52 The 'female' represents a viable alternative to the bureaucratic world of socialism, personified in the male gerontocracy of the state's political hierarchy.53

Exploration of gender was not restricted to opera. Friedrich Schenker's chamber piece *Missa Nigra* (1978), a harrowing musical simulation of the atomic war, subtly undermines traditional concepts of masculine identity in its thematic portrayals of nuclear war, destruction and military virtues. The satirical tone is compounded by a parody of the 'Prussian March', something Schenker also does in his Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (1977). In a similar vein Bredemeyer parodied the 'heroic' Beethoven in his *Bagatellen für B.* (1970), and in doing so undermined the official narrative that heralded the GDR as the 'true' successor to the composer's heritage.54 Again, these are only representative examples; composition clearly provided a forum for exploring the disparities between actual power structures and those implicit in the official one-sided political aesthetics of socialist realism. Thus, it seems that composition acted as a venue for the airing of social grievances that could not be addressed openly and directly. Remarkable in this context is the fact that Ruth Zechlin alone abstained from engaging in the aesthetics of parody, keeping her compositions as separate as possible from the political realm, and maintaining their status as 'pure' and 'absolute' art; in doing so, she notably compounded her own position as a masculine East German composer.

#### **Conclusion**

Aesthetical thought, like music, is inherently political: both are concerned with power and with validating accepted norms. This is particularly the case where gender is concerned; as Joan Wallach Scott observes: 'gender is a primary field within which or by means of which power is articulated.'55 Thus, for music historiography there is a particular need to read documents multi-dimensionally, to acknowledge these sources as 'monuments' in the Foucauldian sense in the battle for power. An engagement with gender narratives in this context

#### **Gender Discourse and Musical Life in the GDR 185**

allows potential interconnections between (aesthetic) norms and 'real' power structures within society to emerge. Foucault's concept of constructed realities plays a central role here. It is essential to acknowledge the constructedness of aesthetic standards, and to be sensitive to that which is absent from such discourses, to be aware of that which is not said, not thought, and not composed. Voices and events that fail to adhere to the rules of the discourse, which, to quote Foucault, are not 'in the true',56 are no less part of reality than those at the centre of hegemonic narratives. They emerge if one is attentive to mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion that operate, in this context, on musical aesthetics, sociology, composition, and interpretation.

Thus, it is essential not to take the GDR's internal master narratives at face value, even those originating from a critical perspective such as Frank Schneider's *Momentaufnahme. Notate zu Musik und Musikern in der DDR*. 57 Ultimately it would be useful to dispense with diachronic historiography, with its implicit concepts of success and autonomy, in favour of synchronic history, which allows each event to be explored in terms of its interaction with others. Musical life in the GDR was not confined to Berlin or Leipzig, nor did it consist only of male protagonists. In order to construct the most comprehensive picture of the GDR's musical life, one which includes the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion associated with politics and gender, it is necessary to look beyond the beaten track, and to stray into musical territories that were considered irrelevant prior to 1989. Potential areas include semi-private meetings of musicians and intellectuals, such as those that took place in the house of Paul Dessau in Zeuthen, and music in everyday life, for example in schools and festivals.

Perhaps the most productive way to construct a music historiography of the GDR is by conceiving of it as a social biotrope. Central institutions such as the Akademie der Künste and the Verband Deutscher Komponisten und Musikwissenschaftler, for example, could be usefully examined as 'places' on an imaginary map, a map which contextualises their location and significance within the musical life of the GDR. Such a map could illuminate the actual status of these institutions, examining their reception in other spheres of society, and determining how, and the extent to which, they related to other groups. On a broader level, a 'map' (or several of them) of the different temporal stages of the GDR's musical life, would allow for a more focused analysis of the music-historiographical discourse, of which gender represents an important, but by no means the only category. Interconnected thought process are crucial for music historiography; only by considering individual historical threads as part of a wider connected sphere, can the full dimensions of a musical society emerge. Such an approach allows for an examination not only of that which is 'in the true' in any given discourse, but also of that which is not.

#### **Notes**

1 'Gender history is at the forefront of discussion about methods, periodisation, the role of metanarratives, and the epistemological foundations of the discipline – in short, just about every general issue of concern to historians today.' Lynn Hunt, 'The Challenge of Gender. Deconstruction of Categories and Reconstruction of Narratives in Gender History', in: Hans Medick and Anne-Charlott Trepp, eds, *Geschlechtergeschichte und Allgemeine Geschichte. Herausforderungen und Perspektiven*, Göttingen: Wallstein, 1998, pp. 59-97 (here: p. 59).

2 See for example Herta Kuhrig, *Die Gleichberechtigung der Frauen in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik*, *Schriften des DDR-Komitees für Menschenrechte 5*, Berlin: Druckerei Fortschritt, 1973.

3 Walter Ulbricht, *Frauen – Miterbauerinnen des Sozialismus. Aus Reden und Aufsätzen*, Leipzig: Verlag für die Frau, 1968.

4 'A new work world has opened up to them but women have not gotten rid of the old world in the kitchen and in the children's rooms.' Christel Sudau, 'Women in the GDR', *New German Critique*, 13, Special Feminist Issue (1978), 69-81 (here: p. 72).

5 A younger generation of female composers born in the 1960s, including Annette Schlünz and Ellen Hünigen, came to prominence only as the state was disintegrating.

6 Ruth Zechlin, in: Ursula Stürzbecher, *Komponisten in der DDR. 17 Gespräche*, Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1979, p. 154.

7 Ibid., p. 153.

8 Ibid., p. 152. She continues: 'Wenn eine Frau etwas zu sagen hatte, dann durfte sie es auch sagen, und es wurden ihr niemals Schwierigkeiten gemacht. Und wenn Clara Schumann oder Alma Mahler-Werfel sich ihrem Mann unterwarfen und sich selbst in den Schatten stellten, so war das allein ihre persönliche Entscheidung […].' (p. 153)

9 Zechlin, 'Qualität der Werke zählt', *Musik und Gesellschaft* (hereafter *MuG*), 38:3 (1988), 116-7 (here: p. 117).

#### **Gender Discourse and Musical Life in the GDR 187**

10 Zechlin, *Komponisten in der DDR*, p. 155, and Zechlin, 'Qualität der Werke zählt', p. 116.

11 Zechlin, 'Qualität der Werke zählt', p. 116.

12 Romely Pfundt, 'Leistung und berufliches Ethos', *MuG*, 38:3 (1988), 117-8.

13 Traude Ebert-Obermeier, 'Bewährungschancen eröffnen', *MuG*, 38:3 (1988), 115- 6.

14 Ellen Hünigen, 'Wege der Selbsterprobung', *MuG*, 38:3 (1988), 120.

15 Susan E. Reid describes similar issues with regard to the arts of the Soviet Union in the 1930s: 'The official precepts that women were already equal and that "there is no such thing as masculine and feminine art" meant that their success and very survival as artists depended on proving their capacity to conform to masculine norms.' Susan E. Reid, 'All Stalin's Women: Gender and Power in Soviet Art of the 1930s', *Slavic Review*, 57:1 (1998), 133-73 (here: p. 171).

16 Frank Kämpfer, 'Sozialer Freiraum, ästhetische Nische: Frauen und Musik in der ehemaligen DDR', *Neue Zeitschrift für Musik*, 152:10 (1991), 25-8 (here: p. 26). See also Pierre Bourdieu, trans. Richard Nice, *Masculine Domination*, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001, pp. 27-8**.** This was obviously not the case in the field of literature in which authors such as Christa Wolf, Monika Maron, and Irmtraud Morgner explicitly cultivated a specifically 'female' genre of writing.

17 Marcia J. Citron, *Gender and the Musical Canon*, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press**,** 1993, p. 143.

18 Frank Kämpfer, 'Sozialer Freiraum, ästhetische Nische', p. 26.

19 Ibid.

20 Dorothee Schmitz-Köster, *Trobadora und Kassandra und … Weibliches Schreiben in der DDR*, Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1989, p. 22. See also Nina Noeske and Melanie Unseld, eds, *Jahrbuch Musik und Gender*, vol. 2, Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 2009.

21 Kornelia Hauser, *Patriarchat als Sozialismus. Soziologische Studien zu Literatur aus der DDR*, Hamburg: Argument, 1994, p. 24.

22 Kämpfer, 'Sozialer Freiraum, ästhetische Nische', p. 26.

23 For a detailed discussion see Matthias Tischer, 'Ulbrichts Beethoven? Die Konzeption des Beethovenjubiläums in der DDR 1970', *Deutschland Archiv*, 41:3 (2008), 473-80.

24 Ernst Hermann Meyer announced that: '[W]as für Beethoven geniale Antizipation und Zukunftsvision war, vollendet der wissenschaftliche Sozialismus und Kommunismus unseres Jahrhunderts in der Wirklichkeit.' See 'Das Werk Ludwig van Beethovens und seine Bedeutung für das sozialistisch-realistische Gegenwartsschaffen', in: Heinz Alfred Brockhaus and Konrad Niemann, eds, *Bericht über den Internationalen Beethoven-Kongress 10.-12. Dezember 1970 in Berlin*, Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, 1970, pp. 581-92 (here: p. 586).

25 Ibid., p. 583.

26 Werner Rackwitz, 'Die Bedeutung Ludwig van Beethovens für die sozialistische Nationalkultur der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik', in: *Bericht über den Internationalen Beethoven-Kongress*, pp. 9-20 (here: p. 16).

27 Willi Stoph, 'Festansprache auf dem Festakt zur Beethoven-Ehrung der DDR am 16.12.1970', in: *Bericht über den Internationalen Beethoven-Kongress*, pp. 1-8 (here: p. 1).

28 Harry Goldschmidt, 'Der späte Beethoven – Versuch einer Standortbestimmung', in: *Bericht über den Internationalen Beethoven-Kongress*, pp. 41-58 (here: p. 44).

29 Theodor W. Adorno, *Beethoven. Philosophie der Musik*, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004.

30 See Joan Wallach Scott, 'Über Sprache, Geschlecht und die Geschichte der Arbeiterklasse', in: Christoph Conrad and Martina Kessel, eds, *Geschichte schreiben in der Postmoderne. Beiträge zur aktuellen Diskussion*, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994, pp. 283-309 (here: p. 300). For a fundamental text about the philosophical sources of sexand gender-dualisms' conventional semantics see also Cornelia Klinger, 'Feministische Theorie zwischen Lektüre und Kritik des philosophischen Kanons', in: Hadumod Bußmann and Renate Hof, eds, *Genus. Geschlechterforschung/Gender in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften. Ein Handbuch*, Stuttgart: Kröner, 2005, pp. 328-64.

31 Ernst Hermann Meyer, *Musik im Zeitgeschehen*, Berlin: Henschel Verlag, 1952, p. 175.

32 Klinger, 'Feministische Theorie zwischen Lektüre und Kritik des philosophischen Kanons', pp. 338-9.

#### **Gender Discourse and Musical Life in the GDR 189**

33 Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, *Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente*, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2003.

34 Antonín Sychra, trans. Bruno Liehm, *Parteiliche Musikkritik als Mitschöpferin einer neuen Musik. Eine Einführung in die Musikästhetik des sozialistischen Realismus*, Berlin: Henschel Verlag, 1953; Czech original, 1951, p. 10.

35 Meyer, *Musik im Zeitgeschehen*, p. 163.

36 Sychra, *Parteiliche Musikkritik als Mitschöpferin einer neuen Musik*, pp. 124-5.

37 Klaus Theweleit, *Männerphantasien*, 2 vols, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Roter Stern, 1977-8.

38 See, for example, Stefan Weiss, '"Die Hand am Gewehr, und der Frieden wird sein": Friedensklänge aus der DDR', in: Susanne Rode-Breymann, ed., *Krieg und Frieden in der Musik*, Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 2007, pp. 103-32.

39 The affinities drawn between civilians and soldiers from the outset in socialist realist rhetoric are fundamental here.

40 Uta G. Poiger observes that 'this insistence on specific norms of male and female respectability found one of its most powerful articulations in official rejections of jazz as a music associated with gangsters and prostitutes. […] East German authorities could not relinquish their own association between female sexual passivity, "civilisation", and "whiteness".' 'Rock'n'Roll, Female Sexuality, and the Cold War Battle over German Identities', *The Journal of Modern History*, 68:3 (1996), 577-616 (here: p. 593). For a description of the connection between intellectuality and femininity through 'lacking realism and irresponsibility', see Bourdieu, *Masculine Domination*, p. 182.

41 Poiger notes with regard to both German states, that 'the consumption of American popular culture was connected to female sexual expressiveness, male hyperaggression, and fascist behavior and was therefore incompatible with respectable German femininity and masculinity.' Poiger, 'Rock'n'Roll, Female Sexuality, and the Cold War Battle over German Identities', p. 593. See also Andreas Huyssen, 'Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other', in: Andreas Huyssen, ed., *After the Great Divide. Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism*, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987, pp. 44-62, especially p. 47.

42 Klaus Theweleit, *Männerphantasien.*

43 See Nina Noeske, *Musikalische Dekonstruktion. Neue Instrumentalmusik in der DDR*, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2007.

44 Sigrid Neef, '"Alles was ist, ist um seiner selbst willen da." Zum Bild der Frau in Dessaus Opern', *MuG*, 39:6 (1989), 291-6 (here: p. 291).

45 Ibid., p. 293.

46 Dessau himself occasionally played the role of a madman-composer within the musical life of the GDR; see Tischer's essay in this volume for some more discussion of this.

47 Neef, 'Alles was ist, ist um seiner selbst willen da', p. 293.

48 Cornelia Klinger, 'Feministische Theorie zwischen Lektüre und Kritik des philosophischen Kanons', pp. 352-3.

49 Neef, 'Alles was ist, ist um seiner selbst willen da', p. 296.

50 Nina Noeske, 'Die beste aller möglichen Welten: Bredemeyers Candide (1981/82)', in: Michael Berg, Albrecht von Massow and Nina Noeske, eds, Zwischen Macht und Freiheit. Neue Musik in der DDR, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2004, pp. 141-56.

51 Antje Kaiser, 'Leben oder Sterben "Hand in Hand". Musikalische Frauencharaktere in Friedrich Schenkers *Bettina*', *MuG*, 38:3 (1988), 135-7.

52 See for example Wolfgang Emmerich, *Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR*, Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, rev. edn, 2000.

53 Relevant here is Volker Braun's brilliant parody of the GDR parliament in *Hinze-Kunze-Roman*. He describes a meeting of 'die tüchtigen Glieder unserer Gesellschaft', which ends up in an erotic, fleshly, sensuous utopia. Volker Braun, *Hinze-Kunze-Roman*, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000; 1st edn, 1985, p. 143: 'Es war eine große Versammlung in der geschmückten Sporthalle, es waren ausgesuchte, delegierte Schwänze, die alle der Bewegung SCHNELLER LÄNGER TIEFER angehörten, tüchtige Glieder, Mitglieder unserer fleißigen Gesellschaft.' See also Roderick H. Watt, 'Sex and Socialism in Volker Braun's *Hinze-Kunze-Roman*', *The Modern Language Review*, 91:1 (1996), 124-37 (here: p. 136): 'In this extended sexual allegory of the actual weaknesses and potential strengths of contemporary socialism the language of socialist political theory and practice is consistently applied to sexual activity and vice versa. The result is an entertaining and telling satire emphasising the shortcomings of the GDR's patriarchal, phallocentric brand of socialism, which not only denies women their rights but demands from its male citizens personal selfnegation in the interests of ideological orthodoxy.'

54 Noeske, *Musikalische Dekonstruktion*, pp. 147-67.

#### **Gender Discourse and Musical Life in the GDR 191**

55 Scott, 'Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis', *The American Historical Review*, 91:5 (1986), 1053-75 (here: p. 1069).

56 Michel Foucault, trans. Ian McLeod, 'The Order of Discourse', in: Robert Young, ed., *Untying the Text. A Post-Structuralist Reader*, Boston and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, pp. 48-78 (here: p. 61).

57 Leipzig: Reclam, 1979.

### **Laura Silverberg**

### **'Monopol der Diskussion?': Alternative Voices in the Verband Deutscher Komponisten und Musikwissenschaftler**

Post-reunification scholarship on music of the GDR has extensively documented the relationship between party bureaucrats and music professionals, and most studies have advanced a top-down model of power relations between state and composer. Although few aspects of East German culture were free from party oversight, such stereotypical representations reduce East German music to a mere outgrowth of a political system. In many cases, alternative voices sought to reform working conditions for musicians and expand the range of compositional styles deemed acceptable by the party. This chapter describes an episode in which composers challenged the authority of the leaders of the Verband Deutscher Komponisten und Musikwissenschaftler in a public forum: the weekly paper *Sonntag*. Their ensuing exchange demonstrates that those outside of the upper echelons of musical bureaucracy could have a profound influence on East German aesthetic debates.

The ideological goals of the SED dominated East German musical life and defined the professional obligations of composers and musicologists. SED officials formulated artistic policies, instituted socialist realism as official aesthetic doctrine, and insisted that new music build from national traditions and convey a positive socialist message. Party loyalists at the helm of the Verband Deutscher Komponisten und Musikwissenschaftler (VDK) ensured the SED's hegemony in aesthetic matters by leading the charge against composers who deployed modernist techniques redolent of the enemy West. With an editorial board controlled by party members, the VDK mouthpiece *Musik und Gesellschaft* monopolised public discourse about music and was instrumental in advancing the artistic ideals of the SED.

Drawing from an impressive array of archival materials, musicologists and historians in recent years have repeatedly and meticulously described instances of the SED's abuse of power in musical matters, including campaigns against Hanns Eisler's *Johann Faustus* and Paul Dessau's *Die Verurteilung des Lukullus* in the early 1950s; Heinz Alfred Brockhaus's work as a Stasi informant; and Paul-Heinz Dittrich's Stasi-facilitated dismissal from the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin.1 And in documenting the relationship between party bureaucrats and music professionals, most such studies have

© LAURA SILVERBERG, 2011 | DOI:10.1163/9789401200400\_011 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. advanced a top-down relationship between state and composer.2 Yet one questions whether this model has been the conclusion of research or the starting point.

Although few aspects of East German culture were free from party oversight, a methodology that dwells on the SED cultural apparatus risks viewing East German music as the mere outgrowth of a political system. Such an approach obscures individual efforts to propose alternatives to the rigid aesthetic preferences of party officials and VDK leaders. Because so many of these reformers were socialists or even party members, these alternative voices should not be characterised as dissident or oppositional in a political sense. Rather, they sought to expand the range of acceptable compositional practices in East Germany and reform working conditions within the VDK. Contrary to what one would expect in a state with severe limitations on freedom of speech, challenges to SED aesthetic dogma were voiced openly and surfaced at times in party-run newspapers and journals. The conditions of these musical debates echo David Bathrick's observation that, in contrast to the underground realm of Samizdat literature in other Eastern Bloc countries, dissenting views in the GDR 'appeared in official publications or were written in hopes of being published.'3 Even as composers and musicologists holding alternative views suffered severe rebuke from colleagues and party bureaucrats, their efforts eventually prompted the VDK to revisit its earlier policies.

This essay describes a specific episode in which alternative voices challenged the authority and aesthetic preferences of VDK leaders: the 1956 publication of a series of articles in the weekly paper *Sonntag*. The authors of these essays publicly criticised a number of conditions that they believed hampered musical development and constrained discourse about music. While some articles addressed matters of technique and musical language, others focused on obstacles to open debate within the Verband. This episode is striking not simply for the frankness (and even biting sarcasm) with which the participants expressed themselves, but also for the VDK's earnest reaction to these opposing views. Although the *Sonntag* articles defied the authority of VDK leaders, the publications still compelled the Verband to reevaluate its reception of modern music and ability to foster discussion among composers and musicologists. The *Sonntag* episode thus demonstrates that those outside the upper echelons of the musical bureaucracy could have a profound effect on East German aesthetic debates.

### **Prologue: The 'Mighty Handful' and New Music in the 1950s**

At the time the *Sonntag* articles appeared in 1956, a group of five musicologists collectively known as the 'mighty handful' led East Germany's premiere musical institutions. Nathan Notowicz served as general secretary of the VDK, Eberhard Rebling as editor-in-chief of *Musik und Gesellschaft,* and Ernst Hermann Meyer as professor of musicology at Humboldt University and VDK president. Georg Knepler and Harry Goldschmidt both worked at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, in the capacity of rector and musicology professor, respectively. Although everyone in the 'mighty handful' except for Goldschmidt had spent the Second World War in western exile, they uniformly subscribed to the narrow anti-modern views of music that Stalin and Zhdanov advanced in the Soviet Union.4 After the war, these musicologists advised party bureaucrats in musical matters, helping the SED craft a music policy that mirrored that of the Soviets.5

Although Meyer was the only member of the group who actually composed music, this 'mighty handful' showed little restraint in advising East German composers about their creative work. A representative speech in this regard was delivered by Rebling in November 1955 and published under the title 'Tradition und Neuerertum' in *Musik und Gesellschaft*. (The term 'Neuerertum,' broadly defined as the quality of being new and innovative, seems to be a particular East German coinage that emerged during the aesthetic debates of the immediate post-war years.) Disparaging the radical compositional experiments associated with the West, Rebling argued that truly new music should develop from Germany's greatest traditions, which he vaguely defined as 'alle die Erscheinungen der Vergangenheit […] die als eine *Norm des Humanismus* gelten können.'6 Rebling limited his pantheon of classic composers to 'alle bedeutenden Komponisten in der Zeit des Aufstiegs des Bürgertums, von Schütz über Bach, Händel bis zu Beethoven und auch die großen Meister des 19. Jahrhunderts.'7 Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Max Reger lacked Rebling's unequivocal support because he believed that the humanist element of their music mingled too closely with the naturalism and subjectivism of the late nineteenth century. Ever hostile toward modern music, Rebling also excluded the accessible Paul Hindemith and modernist Arnold Schoenberg from this line of German tradition.

Rebling did little to explain how East German composers ought to build from their musical heritage. Rather than discuss specific compositional techniques, he focused on what he identified as a broader humanist attitude of composers from the past.  While attempting to limit the appropriation of tradition to a nebulous humanist attitude, the tradition he suggested composers adopt remained that of the symphony and the sonata, of tonal harmony, and of Handel, Schubert, and Brahms.

Drawing a sharp contrast between music of the GDR and the 'sogenannte neue Musik' of the West, Rebling offered this more straightforward condemnation of western modernism:

Seit Schönbergs Opus 11 und Strawinskis 'Petruschka' und 'Sacre du printemps' wurde es üblich, von der neuen, von der modernen Musik zu sprechen, die angeblich heute bis zur konkreten Musik und den wildesten Experimenten mit präparierten Klavieren und der elektronischen Erzeugung von Klängen den *einzig* richtigen Weg in Neuland darstellen soll. Gegen welches Alte nun richtet sich diese sogenannte neue (oder besser gesagt modernistische) Musik? […] Nun, ganz verschiedene Richtungen des Modernismus seit 1911 sind sich trotz verschiedenster Gegensätzlichkeiten in einem einig: in der radikalen Ablehnung der gesamten Tradition. […] Man sucht das Neue also ausschließlich in neuen Klängen oder Klangkombinationen. Diese Art falschen Neuerertums will das Neue also nur auf der formalen Ebene, im musikalischen Material suchen.10

In Rebling's opinion, new music ought to build from the national heritage, and the radical experiments favoured by western modernists were therefore neither legitimately new nor appropriate for East German music. This conservative, classicising vision of new music dominated VDK policies and publications. In the 1950s, articles in *Musik und Gesellschaft* dismissed most composers of the twentieth century (with the exceptions of Eisler, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich) as late bourgeois and unworthy of serious attention. Not surprisingly, the majority of East German composers during this period turned to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music for inspiration, and western modernist techniques remained virtually absent from East German new music.

#### **Act I: The** *Sonntag* **Articles**

While Rebling's 1955 speech reinforced the old anti-modernist stance of Stalin and Zhdanov, other areas of East German culture and politics had begun a process of de-Stalinisation. Under orders from the Kremlin, SED officials ushered in the 'New Course' shortly after Stalin's death in 1953. Although the reforms were chiefly economic, East Germans also enjoyed a general expansion in freedom of expression. Consequently, many members of the intelligentsia began to reassess the Stalinist dogma that had driven East German cultural life. For example, at the Fourth Writers Congress in January 1956, East German poet Stephan Hermlin and others advocated greater engagement with modern writers from the West such as Sartre, Beckett, Hemingway, and Faulkner.11

The gradual increase in expressive freedom and engagement with western modernism gained momentum in February 1956, when, at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev denounced Stalin's personality cult and acknowledged the crimes of Stalin's regime. Khrushchev's revelations shocked those East German intellectuals who had been sympathetic to the ideals of socialism and loyal to the SED. Already emboldened by the party's tolerance for public criticism, the cultural intelligentsia openly debated aspects of Stalinism that they had long taken for granted. This process of revisionism was itself institutionalised; for the next couple of years, party bureaucrats and cultural organisations published statements rejecting the dogmatism of the Stalin years while reaffirming their commitment to Marxism-Leninism.12

Conceived in late 1955 and published in January 1956, the first *Sonntag* articles are noteworthy because they preceded the Twentieth Party Congress. Although the instigators of the *Sonntag* controversy benefited from the general thaw following Stalin's death, their willingness to question established music policies well before the Congress made it appropriate to do so reflects considerable courage and initiative. Even as the *Sonntag* debate continued to unfold during the months following the Congress, no published or archival records indicate that the VDK leaders or *Sonntag* authors explicitly engaged at this point with the news coming from the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, one can hardly doubt that Khrushchev's revelations influenced the participants in the *Sonntag* episode, and one must be mindful of the Congress when reading and interpreting musical documents from the spring of 1956.

Run by reform-minded socialists, the Kulturbund's weekly paper *Sonntag* was less beholden to party politics and provided intellectuals with a relatively open platform for cultural and political discussion. It was therefore *Sonntag,* rather than *Musik und Gesellschaft,* that initiated the first public critique of East German musical life. Gustav Just, editor of *Sonntag,* recalled that he had long wished to publish a series of articles on the backwardness of East German music, but the real impetus came from a 1955 meeting he had with Paul Dessau in Halle, in which Dessau 'began to swear furiously at our "Music Tsars", who so unfortunately opposed modernism and with their doctrinaire Zhdanov dogma were impeding rather than supporting the development of socialist music.'13 Just encouraged Dessau to write on the matter, and Dessau agreed to do so, as did composers Kurt Schwaen and Gerhard Wohlgemuth. Hanns Eisler also expressed interest in contributing, but agreed to remain 'in reserve' should they later need the support of a more prominent composer.

Although they lacked the power of the 'mighty handful', Dessau, Schwaen, and Wohlgemuth were no outsiders to East German political and musical life. All were members of the VDK; Schwaen had served as secretary since 1953, and Wohlgemuth was a member of the executive committee. Moreover, Dessau's and Schwaen's impeccable political credentials made it nearly impossible for the VDK or SED to dismiss them as sympathetic to the western bourgeoisie. Schwaen, a member of the KPD since 1932, had served a three-year prison sentence under the Nazis for his political activities. Following the war, he composed a number of works for children and amateur ensembles. A staunch socialist and advocate of western modernist techniques, Dessau strove to reconcile his progressive politics with progressive compositional methods. He learned the twelve-tone technique from René Leibowitz and greatly admired Arnold Schoenberg, with whom he was acquainted while in exile in Los Angeles during the Second World War. While many members of the VDK considered Dessau misguided in his attempts to use avant-garde techniques to express a socialist message, few questioned his political sympathies.

The articles that Dessau, Wohlgemuth, and Schwaen published in the 29 January 1956 issue of *Sonntag* reflect not a wholesale rejection of the VDK and socialist music culture, but rather a genuine effort to reform East German musical life. Wohlgemuth's contribution focused principally on the bureaucracy within the VDK, which, in his opinion, impeded the expression of alternative views. In particular, he observed the following:

viele Probleme werden in ihr [*Musik und Gesellschaft*] gar nicht behandelt, oder wenn, dann in oberflächlicher Weise. Auch finden sich in ihr ästhetische Urteile solcher Art vertreten, daß man nur allzu deutlich den persönlichen Geschmack eines Einzigen oder einer Gruppe aus ihnen heraushört. […] Es fehlt aber unserer Zeitschrift *Musik und Gesellschaft* der Meinungsstreit, wie uns auch im Verbandsleben das wohlvorbereitete Streitgespräch fehlt.14

Schwaen's essay lambasted the narrowness of East German music, concluding, 'der Reiz des Klanges ergibt sich aus den Obertönen, die zu dem Grundton hinzutreten.  The title, 'Einiges, worüber wir Musiker nur wenig oder gar nicht sprechen,' suggests frustration with not only musical life itself, but also the lack of discussion about the conditions facing composers, performers, and audiences.16 Though caustic in tone, the article expressed Dessau's concern that East German concert and radio culture pandered to petitbourgeois tastes by promoting light entertainment music. Instead, Dessau argued, East Germans needed to hear high quality music, particularly music of the twentieth century.  Man spielt fast nur Walzer und schwache Intermezzi.  Aber ich höre es tagesüber, sogar des Abends. Und wer rasiert sich schon den ganzen lieben langen Tag?17

Dessau's reference to the Congress of Vienna was pointed. Rather than simply decry East German radio as backward, he associated it with a time in which absolutist powers redrew the map of Europe and stifled the liberalism and civil rights inspired by the French Revolution. According to Dessau, if radio stations must offer light music, they should at least broadcast lighter works by Mozart, Haydn, or Beethoven.

Dessau was no less scathing in his assessment of East German contemporary music, which he considered even more reactionary than radio programming:

Wenn man die Augen schließt, glaubt man bei einigen Werken unserer Zeitgenossen, man lebe im 18. Jahrhundert. Wir leben aber glücklicherweise im 20. Jahrhundert, dem großen Jahrhundert der gesellschaftlichen Umwälzungen. Im großen Jahrhundert des aufblühenden Sozialismus. In der Morgenröte einer neuen, gesünderen, echteren Menschheit! Wo klingen in unseren Werken diese Töne auf?  Jahrhunderts am Platze?! Unsere Komponisten wissen fast alle, daß die 'Kadenz' […] sich seit dem Entstehen des 'Tristan' (das sind fast 100 Jahre her) emanzipiert hat! Bei Schostakowitsch z.B. findet man keine derartigen Anachronismen mehr, nicht in der 10. Sinfonie noch im 5. Streichquartett (um von zwei seiner wichtigen Werke der Letztzeit zu reden).18

Finally, Dessau railed against the 'mighty handful' of musicologists, who,

läuft geschlossen Sturm gegen die vielseitige Entwicklung unserer Musik, orientiert sich lieber an Händel als an den großen Musikern unseres Jahrhunderts wie Schönberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Bartók, Schostakowitsch und Prokofjew und vergißt dabei, daß nur in ständiger Wechselwirkung mit dem neuesten zeitgenössischen Schaffen unsere klassische Musik zu echtem Leben erwachen kann.19

Dessau principally framed his advocacy of modern music in political terms: a new, progressive, socialist society needed new music. SED bureaucrats and VDK leaders could hardly argue with his insistence that the public be exposed to high quality classical music. Nor did they disagree with Dessau that traditional music ought to be renewed in a manner relevant to the present day. But Dessau's rejection of

#### **'Monopol der Diskussion?' 201**

bourgeois models and advocacy of the modernist twelve-tone technique conflicted with the established position of the VDK.

Gustav Just recalled that the set of articles 'hit like a bombshell, for so many taboos were violated, so much was expressed publicly that had hitherto been thought only in private.'20 Readers responded more or less positively, with one letter to the editor exclaiming: 'Die eine Seite Ihres SONNTAG […] gehört zum Bedeutendsten und zum Allernötigsten, was in unserer Deutschen Demokratischen Republik über Musik je gedruckt wurde!'21 Composers Max Butting, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, and Fritz Reuter, along with critic Ernst Krause, contributed articles for later issues, though their assessments were far from unanimous. Reuter, for example, encouraged composers to reject modernist experimentation and return to the roots of folk music, claiming that their goal should be to bring into the world 'gesunde Kinder, und nicht nur […] interessante Kinder.'22

But most articles echoed Dessau's opinion that there had been too much emphasis on music of the past. Chief among these was Krause's 'Tradition und Neuerertum', a likely response to Rebling's speech of the same title discussed earlier. Rebling's speech had appeared in *Musik und Gesellschaft* only weeks before Krause's article, and Krause explicitly countered Rebling's insistence that East German composers find inspiration in music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Tradition und Neuerertum? Daß unsere Komponisten ans klassische Erbe anknüpfen müssen, ist doch wohl eine Binsenweisheit. Aber ich könnte mir auch vorstellen, daß sie sich dabei nicht ausschließlich an den Ausdrucksidealen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, sondern an der Musiksprache dieses Jahrhunderts orientieren: also an Janáþek, Bartók, Hindemith u.a. Ist es nicht ein bedenkliches Zeichen, daß Menschen von heute (denen ja der letzte Krieg wahrlich kein Geräusch erspart hat) nicht vor den zerrissenen Klangexpressionen des 'Wozzeck' erschrecken, sondern vor den idealisierenden Schönheitsfluten des Violinkonzerts von Spies, dem gepfefferten Pathos des Klavierkonzerts von Goerner oder den Romantizismen Meyerscher Lyrik? Was hilft der progressive Inhalt, wenn die Form nicht als musikalische Aussage dieser unsrer Zeit mit ihren mächtig vorwärtsdrängenden Ideen empfunden wird!23

Not only did Krause reinforce Dessau's critique of the VDK's backwardness, but he also offered a veiled criticism of Rebling, editor-inchief of *Musik und Gesellschaft.* Already quite critical of East German music, Krause's article thus held particular significance for readers of *Musik und Gesellschaft* and for Rebling in particular.

#### **Act II: The VDK Responds**

Having challenged the monopoly of *Musik und Gesellschaft* on discussions of East German music, the *Sonntag* articles set off a flurry of activity within the VDK. Gustav Just recalled in his memoirs that:

the Composers' Union counterattacked, held meetings and advised its obedient members not to continue the discussion in *Sonntag* because such matters belonged to the Union mouthpiece *Musik und Gesellschaft.* Eberhard Rebling, who had previously sought my friendship and of whom I was quite fond, treated me with emphatically cool contempt. […] As I jokingly tried to bridge the gap between us, he said: 'Your discussion has served a good purpose. It has created publicity for *Musik und Gesellschaft*.' I was no slouch, and admittedly not very tactful; I promptly printed this comment as the quotation of the day. That really did it.24

Over the ensuing months, a public battle unfolded on the pages of *Sonntag* and *Musik und Gesellschaft. Sonntag* attacked *Musik und Gesellschaft* quite directly; editorials in *Musik und Gesellschaft* countered these criticisms only indirectly and avoided explicit references to its antagonist. By refraining from mentioning the rival paper, the editors of *Musik und Gesellschaft* hoped to avoid legitimising the claims of their opponent and thus downplay the actual effect that the articles had on the VDK.

The VDK's first public response to *Sonntag* appeared in the opening editorial to the March 1956 issue of *Musik und Gesellschaft*. The editorial appeared to observe the fifth anniversary of the Verband by reflecting on their accomplishments – in particular, what they perceived as growing participation in their increasingly sophisticated debates. As reports on VDK activities typically focused on quantifiable accomplishments such as the number of new compositions, new music concerts, or concert attendance, the celebration of something so abstract as improvements to the discussion climate is striking:

War es anfänglich nur ein recht kleiner Kreis von führenden Komponisten und Musikwissenschaftlern, so schlugen die Auseinandersetzungen allmählich immer höhere Wellen, und immer mehr Kollegen beteiligten sich daran. […] Der Verband und seine Zeitschrift waren der Schauplatz vieler und heftiger Auseinandersetzungen über Fragen der Musikästhetik, des sozialistischen Realismus, des echten und falschen Neuerertums, über neu entstandene Werke, über Probleme des Inhalts, der Form und des Handwerks unserer Kunst.

[…] Unsere Zeitschrift wird auch in der Zukunft, ja in noch stärkerem Maße als bisher, das Forum unserer Auseinandersetzungen über die brennenden Probleme unseres Musikschaffens und Musizierens, über neue Aufgaben und Erkenntnisse sein. Wenn in der letzten Zeit in einigen Publikationen, wie im *Sonntag*, in Aussprachen innerhalb des Verbandes solche Probleme angeschnitten und gegensätzliche Meinungen zutage getreten sind, so werden sie in aller Offenheit und bei aller Achtung der Persönlichkeit des Gesprächpartners in unserer Zeitschrift zur Sprache kommen, soweit es um wesentliche Fragen unseres Musiklebens handelt und die Argumente auf einer sachlichen Grundlage beruhen. Die Streit der Meinungen ist eine unabdingbare Notwendigkeit in unserem Wachstumsprozeß.25

By only mentioning *Sonntag* in passing, *Musik und Gesellschaft*  rebutted the paper's criticisms without appearing to engage them directly. The editorial's claim that discussion had grown from a small circle of composers and musicologists to a larger group of colleagues countered the pointed accusations of Dessau and Wohlgemuth, who accused the 'mighty handful' of dictating judgments for the entire VDK. In a common posture of self-criticism, the editorial acknowledged that these debates had not always been fruitfully resolved, but that it was the duty of *Musik und Gesellschaft* (and, presumably, not *Sonntag*) to do so.

A few weeks later, the following response, entitled 'Monopol der Diskussion?' appeared in *Sonntag*:

Nein, ihr lieben Freunde von der Redaktion *Musik und Gesellschaft*, von schöpferischen Auseinandersetzungen, von tiefgehenden Meinungsverschieden-heiten quillt eure Zeitung nicht über. Aber in den Kreisen der Musiker und in der musikinteressierten Öffentlichkeit wird heiß gestritten, und deshalb gerade haben wir die Diskussion begonnen!  Wo auch immer wir Anzeichnen der Selbstgenügsamkeit und der Stagnation feststellen, werden wir eine Diskussion eröffnen.

Wir würden uns sehr freuen, wenn nun in *Musik und Gesellschaft* ein lebhaftes Gespräch zustande kommt – hoffentlich über noch wesentlichere Fragen, als sie bei uns gestellt wurden – und sehen deshalb mit Spannung dem Aprilheft entgegen. Das Märzheft enthält leider noch keine Ansätze dazu.26

Indeed, the remainder of the March issue of *Musik und Gesellschaft*  kept to its usual format, eschewing heated debate in favour of concert reviews, reports from worldwide celebrations of Mozart's 200th birthday, and discussions of folk music and worker songs.

#### **Act III: Hildburghausen**

Taken at face value, the March editorial of *Musik und Gesellschaft*  could easily lend the impression that the *Sonntag* articles were of little concern to the VDK. Yet the unpublished protocol of a meeting of the Verband's executive committee in Hildburghausen, held on 17-18 March 1956, indicates that the *Sonntag* articles prompted a great deal of anxious discussion.27 Three key issues emerged during the gathering: first, the specific role of *Musik und Gesellschaft* in giving voice to VDK members; second, the ability to express opinions that opposed the SED and leaders of the VDK; and third, the need to reassess modern music from the West.

Because the *Sonntag* articles had prompted the special meeting of the executive committee, one purpose of the discussion was to determine why members of the VDK had published in *Sonntag* rather than broach their criticisms in *Musik und Gesellschaft* or at meetings of the Verband. For at least some of those present at Hildburghausen, the *Sonntag* articles came as an unwelcome surprise. Composer Leo Spies complained that those who claimed they could not voice their opinions only rarely attended VDK meetings; then 'plötzlich erschien alles im *Sonntag.*' 28 Others countered that a general stagnation of discussion in *Musik und Gesellschaft* had led VDK members to lose interest in the journal. Wohlgemuth reiterated his observation that *Musik und Gesellschaft* did not publish differences of opinion. The protocol similarly noted that one member criticised the journal for only relaying the standpoint of the editor-in-chief and silencing those with other opinions.29

But Ernst Hermann Meyer suggested that the perceived inability to speak freely might hinder VDK members:

Man glaubt sicher, mancher von uns, daß das, was in *Musik und Gesellschaft* steht, nicht die Meinung des Vorstandes ist, sondern die Meinung der SED ist und da hat man Angst, etwas dagegen zu sagen. Ich möchte mit aller Deutlichkeit erklären, daß stimmt nicht, Kollegen. Es ist nicht im Interesse der SED, der ich angehöre, eine bestimmte festgesetzte Meinung gerade in solchen ideologischen Fragen zu vertreten, zu der die anderen schweigen müssen. Immer wieder sagt unsere Partei, wir bitten euch mitzuarbeiten, denn einen wirklichen Fortschritt kann es nur geben, wenn Diskussionen bestehen, wo eine kollektive Leistung besteht.30

Despite Meyer's declarations to the contrary, a number of those present at Hildburghausen cited a general apprehension about contradicting the views of the SED and VDK leadership, what Wohlgemuth described as a 'Geschmacksdiktatur'.31 Even Knepler admitted that fears of party oversight could impede free expression and he related his experience at a meeting he had attended:

#### **'Monopol der Diskussion?' 205**

Der Leiter sagte zur Abstimmung: wer dagegen ist, erhebt sich von seinem Platze, wer einverstanden ist, verharrt in seiner Position. Nun, ich brauche nicht zu sagen, daß alle in ihrer Position verharrten und alle Beschlüsse einstimmig gefasst wurden […]. Warum haben sie es nicht gewagt?  Aber das entspricht nicht den Tatsachen […]. Nun gut, der Komponistenverband lebt nicht im Vakuum, sondern in dieser Situation. Solch eine Auffassung, man darf nichts sagen, ist ja verbreitet.32

Even though Meyer had tried to dismiss such concerns, the fact that even Knepler – one of those in the 'mighty handful' – broached the matter of SED dominance suggests that it was a pressing concern for more than a few.

Those in attendance at Hildburghausen also revisited the dogmatic, anti-modern interpretations of socialist realism that pervaded the evaluation of new music. Although many in the executive committee found Dessau's promotion of twelve-tone technique deeply problematic, some members agreed with the *Sonntag* articles on at least one point: the need to grapple with the variety of achievements in western modern music. Rather than discount it as unsuitable for a socialist message, Knepler advocated a more refined view of bourgeois music and less entrenchment in the classics:

Ferner glaube ich, haben wir zu sehr dazu geneigt, die bürgerliche Musik in einen Topf zu werfen und nicht genug zu differenzieren. Z.B. ist Hindemith ganz was anderes als die Zwölftonmusik. Ein Beispiel. Man müsste sicherlich mit anderen Maßen messen. Das haben wir eigentlich noch nicht getan – sie haben recht – wir sind zu sehr historisch. Wir haben zwar viel über Bach und Beethoven gesagt, aber sehr wenig oder nichts über Hindemith.33

Wohlgemuth similarly advocated a closer look at Stravinsky's music, and Notowicz acknowledged that music was often treated in the past 'zu undifferenziert und undialektisch als geschlossenes Ganzes'.34 This decision to evaluate modern music and composers on a case-bycase basis was a critical step toward later, more nuanced engagements with modernist techniques.

#### **Epilogue**

The sting of the *Sonntag* publications appears to have worn off by May of that year. Except for *Musik und Gesellschaft* reports on the Hildburghausen meeting, neither *Sonntag* nor *Musik und Gesellschaft* explicitly mentioned the incident again. *Musik und Gesellschaft* continued to provide a bare minimum of articles on aesthetic matters. Gustav Just published one more editorial in *Sonntag,* which criticised the unwillingness to debate important matters in the GDR:

Wie oft kommt das vor: Ein Bürger unserer Republik liest in einer Zeitung einen Artikel, eine Meinung, eine Notiz, womit er absolut nicht einverstanden ist – und er schweigt dazu! […] Ist das eine eines demokratischen Staatsbürgers würdige Haltung, Fehler, Unrecht, Unstimmigkeiten in der Umgebung zu bemerken und statt mit ganzen Leidenschaft für ihre Beseitigung zu kämpfen, zu schweigen, als ginge es ihn nichts an?35

By the early spring of 1957, the answer to Just's question became clear. In a series of show trials against intellectuals that began following the Hungarian Revolution, Just and his colleagues Wolfgang Harisch and Walter Janka were tried and imprisoned for 'counterrevolutionary activities' – that is, for proposing a platform of reform socialism.

And yet, the VDK continued to debate the significance of modern western music for East German compositional practice. Just as the Twentieth Party Congress rejected Stalin's authority while upholding the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism, the VDK now scrutinised the meaning of socialist realism under Zhdanov. In a pair of articles published in the February 1957 issue of *Musik und Gesellschaft,* the VDK finally grappled publicly with the musical ramifications of Khrushchev's speech. Published under the title 'Zwischen Dogmatismus und Modernismus', the articles reflect a drive to re-evaluate without revolutionising.36 The editorial preface remarks that 'wie auf allen Gebieten des sozialistischen Aufbaus haben sich seit dem XX. Parteitag der KPdSU auch in der Musik die Diskussionen über dogmatische Einengungen und Überspitzungen der letzten Jahre erfreulich belebt,' but warns against the impulse 'das Kind mit dem Bade auszuschütten und sich wieder mit offenen Armen den modernistischen Strömungen auszuliefern.'37 Condemnations of Zhdanov's judgments as too dogmatic or unjust mingled with reaffirmations of socialist realism. While many in the VDK demonstrated increasing openness toward modern music of the West, they still instituted boundaries between what was acceptable (the accessible, quasi-tonal, and often folk-like music of Hindemith, Britten, Kodály) and what was not (Schoenberg's modernist twelve-tone method).

Many elements of the *Sonntag* controversy reappeared in later musical debates. Already in 1956, the principal split in the VDK was between composers and musicologists, rather than between party members and non-members. For example, SED member Dessau had far more in common with non-member Wohlgemuth than with musicologist and party comrade Rebling. This divide grew more pronounced in the 1960s, as composers in increasing numbers deployed modernist techniques while the majority of musicologists condemned these compositional practices. Composers largely stood back from aesthetic discussions, even when their own works were the source of contention. Wohlgemuth's dodecaphonic ventures in his First String Quartet (1961) provoked the ire of music critics and prompted lengthy debate within the VDK, but few composers – Wohlgemuth included – participated in the conversation.38 Despite his unquestionable support for the socialist cause, Dessau's use of the twelve-tone method in works such as *Appell der Arbeiterklasse* (1960- 1) reliably elicited harsh criticism from musicologists. As in the *Sonntag* episode, however, members of the VDK found common ground in the belief that music is connected to society, not autonomous from it.

The *Sonntag* articles constituted the most direct affront to VDK leadership until the mid-1960s. They also remained one of the most public challenges to the SED's rigid aesthetic preferences in the GDR's entire short history. Transcripts from meetings of the VDK reveal that, after 1956, VDK members contested the opinions of their leaders with growing frequency. Yet published reports from VDK gatherings still emphasised conformity in aesthetic matters, not lively debate, and dissenting views usually remained behind closed doors. One of the most significant aesthetic controversies of the mid-1960s – a document by aesthetician Günter Mayer known as the *Problemspiegel* – prompted months of heated debate within the VDK, eventually leading the Partei der Arbeit der Schweiz to intervene on behalf of Mayer's teacher Goldschmidt. Offering a nuanced Marxist argument for deploying modernist techniques, the *Problemspiegel*  played a critical role in reshaping attitudes toward musical modernism within the VDK. Nonetheless, unlike the interchange between *Sonntag* and *Musik und Gesellschaft,* the *Problemspiegel* was never published, and its attendant controversy barely reached the public eye.39

1956 marked a key turning point in East German musical life. A strictly top-down model of the relationship between state and composer would attribute this shift principally to the Twentieth Party Congress, with political reforms trickling down to the activities of music professionals. Without dismissing the role of the Congress in convincing VDK leaders to reformulate their position on modern music, it was the specific efforts of Just, Dessau, Schwaen, Wohlgemuth, and other *Sonntag* contributors that set the VDK on the initial trajectory for reform. Although it may be tempting to view the SED and VDK as monoliths, a surprising amount of discord existed within this official realm. It is therefore critical that scholarly investigations into East German musical life look beyond the apparent uniformity of party, state, and professional organisations to examine the diversity of individual opinions and actions. While the SED had established an immense bureaucratic apparatus aimed at ensuring its hegemony in musical matters, East German composers and musicologists still questioned the ideas and authority of those in power. Rather than remain at the periphery of official East German musical life, these alternative voices inspired changes from within.

#### **Notes**

1 For more on the controversies surrounding Eisler's and Dessau's operas, see Maren Köster, *Musik–Zeit–Geschehen: zu den Musikverhältnissen in der SBZ/DDR 1945 bis 1952*, Saarbrücken: Pfau Verlag, 2002; Joachim Lucchesi, *Das Verhör in der Oper: die Debatte um die Aufführung 'Das Verhör des Lukullus' von Bertolt Brecht und Paul Dessau*, Berlin: BasisDruck, 1993; Joy Haslam Calico, *Brecht at the Opera*, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. The relationship between the Stasi and individual members of the VDK is described in Lars Klingberg, 'IMS "John" und Schostakowitsch: Zur Stasi-Karriere von Heinz Alfred Brockhaus', in: Günter Wolter and Ernst Kuhn, eds, *Dmitri Schostakowitsch, Komponist und Zeitzeuge*, Berlin: Ernst Kuhn, 2000, pp. 194-226. Daniel Zur Weihen details the Stasi's surveillance of Dittrich in '"Ich versprach, mein Möglichstes zu tun" – Komponisten im Blick des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit', in: Matthias Tischer, ed., *Musik in der DDR: Beiträge zu den Musikverhältnissen eines verschwundenen Staates*, Berlin: Verlag Ernst Kuhn, 2005.

2 Lars Klingberg, *Politisch fest in unseren Händen: musikalische und musikwissenschaftliche Gesellschaften in der DDR: Dokumente und Analysen*, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1997; Daniel Zur Weihen, *Komponieren in der DDR: Institutionen, Organisationen und die erste Komponistengeneration bis 1961*, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 1999; David Tompkins, 'Composing the Party Line: Music and Politics in Poland and East Germany, 1948-1957', Ph.D. Diss, Columbia University, 2004; Toby Thacker, *Music after Hitler, 1945-1955*, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

3 David Bathrick, *The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR*, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995, p. 60.

#### **'Monopol der Diskussion?' 209**

4 A Swiss citizen, Goldschmidt remained in Switzerland during the war.

5 Particularly during the immediate post-war years, occupying Soviet officers also played an important role in crafting East German music policy. See Köster, *Musik– Zeit–Geschehen*.

6 'Tradition und Neuerertum', *Musik und Gesellschaft* (hereafter *MuG*), 6 (1956), 18. The italics are in the original.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid., p. 19.

10 Ibid.

11 Jost Hermand, 'The "Good New" and the "Bad New": Metamorphoses of the Modernism Debate in the GDR since 1956', *New German Critique*, 3 (1974), 73-92 (here p. 74).

12 Shortly after the Congress, Walter Ulbricht glibly remarked that Stalin 'no longer belonged to the classics of Marxism-Leninism.' See Hermann Weber, ed., *DDR. Dokumente zur Geschichte der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik: 1945-1985*, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986, p. 225.

13 Gustav Just, trans. Oliver Lu, *Witness in his Own Cause: the Fifties in the German Democratic Republic*, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1995, pp. 13-14.

14 Gerhard Wohlgemuth, 'Musikwissenschaft und musikalische Praxis', *Sonntag*, 29 January 1956.

15 Kurt Schwaen, 'Fundament ohne Obertöne', *Sonntag*, 29 January 1956, 12. The essay is also available in Ulrich Dibelius and Frank Schneider, eds, *Neue Musik im Geteilten Deutschland: Dokumente aus den fünfziger Jahren*, Berlin: Berliner Festspiele, 1993, pp. 244-5.

16 Paul Dessau, 'Einiges, worüber wir Musiker nur wenig oder gar nicht sprechen', *Sonntag*, 29 January 1956, p. 12. The second half of the article is reprinted in Dibelius and Schneider, *Neue Musik im Geteilten Deutschland*, pp. 242-4.

17 Dessau, 'Einiges, worüber wir Musiker nur wenig oder gar nicht sprechen.'

18 Ibid.

Ibid.

 Stenographic transcript from meeting of the VDK executive committee in Hildburghausen, 17-18 March 1956. Available in the Stiftung Archiv Akademie der Künste (SA-AdK), VDK Archiv 83.

Ibid., p. 5.

 Ibid., p. 12. The member is identified in the report only as 'Kolleague Dr. Glücksmann'.

Ibid., p. 13.

Ibid., p. 41.

Ibid., pp. 19-20.

Ibid., p. 21.

 'Schöpferische Atmosphäre oder Selbstgenügsamkeit: Fortsetzung des Berichtes über die Diskussion des VDK-Zentralvorstandes in Hildburghausen', *MuG*, 6 (1956), 11.

 Gustav Just, 'Schweigsame Partner – oder über den Nutzen von Diskussionen', *Sonntag*, 27 May 1956.

 The term 'dogmatism' emerged after the Twentieth Party Congress as a code word for anything connected to the views of Stalin and Zhdanov.

 'Zwischen Dogmatismus und Modernismus', *MuG*, 7 (1957), 66. The preface was unsigned but likely written by Rebling.

#### **'Monopol der Diskussion?' 211**

38 See Siegfried Köhler, 'Zu Gerhard Wohlgemuths Streichquartett 1960: Gehemmt von engstirniger Theorie', *MuG*, 11 (1961), and Walther Siegmund-Schultze, 'Technik: weder gut noch böse', *MuG*, 11 (1961).

39 Laura Silverberg, 'Between Dissonance and Dissidence: Socialist Modernism in the German Democratic Republic', *Journal of Musicology*, 26:1 (2009), 44-84.

# **Curating the GDR**

### **Jonathan Osmond**

### **German Art Collections and Exhibits since 1989: the Legacy of the GDR**

This chapter examines several pivotal exhibitions of GDR art that took place within Germany around the turn of the twenty-first century. Unification has occasioned a thorough reappraisal of the German visual art tradition, partly because of the practical problems of reintegrating public collections, but also extending to broader questions about figurative and historical art. Naturally, this raises questions about the modes of presenting art in the twenty-first century, particularly in light of the two German dictatorships of the last century. Should the cultural products of a forty-year period – which had always maintained strong connections with their earlier German 'heritage' – be subsumed into longer-term narratives, set apart as historical curiosities of little aesthetic value, or removed altogether?

In the twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall the enlarged Federal Republic of Germany achieved remarkable success in maintaining political and social stability in the centre of Europe. In the process it witnessed and fostered a renewed cultural self-confidence, which drew upon the German past but which was also in the international contemporary vanguard. A component of that past is the forty-year cultural production of the German Democratic Republic, and contributing to Germany's international profile are a number of visual artists whose careers at least began in the GDR. Prices for contemporary work at salerooms around the world confirm that living German artists – such as Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer – are amongst the most sought-after. There may be a number of reasons for this, but not least amongst them are that many German artists confront difficult historical topics and that they do so in a primarily figurative manner. The contribution of the visual art of the GDR to this situation is evident, but also complex.

In Germany since the collapse of the GDR there have been many twists and turns in the approaches taken towards its cultural legacy. The state-sponsored visual arts faced an initial period of outright rejection – certainly in western Germany, and to an extent in the East too – which has been followed by a shifting set of interactions between present-day concerns and the visual heritage of the GDR. Aesthetic, political, ethical, pragmatic, economic, and personal con-

© JONATHAN OSMOND, 2011 | DOI:10.1163/9789401200400\_012 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. cerns entered into a long-running debate in Germany, called from time to time – with no great originality – the *Bilderstreit*. 1 At its narrowest, the discussion has been about whether the artists and artistic products of a dictatorship should be accorded legitimacy and credibility within a democratic society. At its broadest, it has involved a major reappraisal of the history of German art. This reappraisal has three principal dimensions: the German artistic canon; the art of the Cold War years; and an aesthetic evaluation of what remains from the art of the GDR. Although its focus has been primarily within Germany itself, it is part of broader international debates about German visual culture and about art in the post-Cold War world more generally. Major exhibits of German art from many periods have been staged in unprecedented numbers in Great Britain since the mid-1980s, opening up new perspectives on post-National Socialist and post-Cold War Germany.2 The United States hosted an exhibit of GDR art just as the regime was fracturing, and since then there have been many individual and thematic shows, which have often explicitly addressed questions of German history and identity. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in particular has placed significant emphasis on the difficult history of German art in the twentieth century, most recently in the 'Art of Two Germanys' exhibit, which subsequently travelled to Nuremberg and Berlin.3 More broadly on the post-Cold War theme, Soviet and Chinese painting have been opened up to the markets and to the viewing publics.4 The specific links between Germany and Russia were explored in two giant, multi-media shows in Berlin and Moscow in 1995-6 and 2003-4.5

This discussion of collection and exhibition strategies in Germany since 1989 takes place, then, within a much wider international context. Many of the larger exhibits are co-operations between institutions in two or more countries; the art market operates across national boundaries, and in many countries, museum and gallery development is seen as an important economic driver, in addition to its cultural functions. Nonetheless, the emphasis here will be upon the changes which have taken place in Germany itself since German unification. It will be seen that the partial incorporation of the visual legacy of the GDR is only one component of a bigger picture.

#### **Reconfiguring Germany's Art Galleries**

The reappraisal of the German visual art tradition has several facets related to the end of Germany's division. It is in part a means of addressing the practical problems of redesigning, reinterpreting and reintegrating the public collections of the two German states. The challenge has been most acute in Berlin, where huge public investment has been made in a realignment of the city's museums and the Preussischer Kulturbesitz. One by one the major international institutions on the museum island in the heart of the old 'capital of the GDR' are being closed, renovated and reopened: the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode-Museum, and most recently, the Neues Museum.6 The nearby Deutsches Historisches Museum, which used to culminate its documentary displays in the sunny uplands of real existing socialism, has been completely reconfigured and extended. Ambitious plans are also in train for the partial re-creation of the Hohenzollerns' city palace, the Schloss, as an international cultural meeting-point, the Humboldt-Forum. Meanwhile, in what had been West Berlin, the post-war developments of the Dahlem museums and of the Kulturforum on the Potsdamer Strasse (including the Neue Nationalgalerie from the 1960s and the Gemäldegalerie, housing the paintings of the old masters, from the 1990s) have needed to be rethought in the context of the coherent distribution of Berlin's treasures across the city. Other developments include the establishment in 1996 of the contemporary art exhibition space in the converted Hamburger Bahnhof, the opening in 2001 of the Jüdisches Museum, the new wing of which was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, and the rehousing nearby of the Berlinische Galerie in 2004. Not all of these initiatives could be described as parts of a grand strategy for the city, and some of them have their origins well before 1989. Nonetheless, they are all testimony to serious attempts both to commemorate and to celebrate, connecting the traumatic past with Germany's prolific artistic heritage. No museum in Berlin – whether primarily historical or cultural – escapes the need to position itself in relation to the Third Reich, World War II and the Cold War, even if they are not its prime focus.

It is not only in reunited Berlin, however, that there have been changes. Throughout Germany museums and galleries have wrestled with matters directly or indirectly connected with the demise of the GDR and German unification: how to present figurative and historical art; how to deal with the pre-twentieth-century past in the light of the two German dictatorships of the last century; and the modes of presenting art in the twenty-first century. It is striking that in the 1990s there were three primary reorganisations in German public art galleries: of the art of the nineteenth century; of contemporary art; and of the GDR art in the galleries of eastern Germany, at first removing most of it from the walls and only later coming to a more considered position.

Major institutions in both the old and the new Federal States – in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hanover and elsewhere – closed their nineteenth-century galleries for refurbishment or complete rebuild. Both nineteenth- and twentieth-century collections were redesigned in a major extension of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg also in the 1990s, and in September 2000 the extraordinary Georg Schäfer collection of nineteenth-century paintings moved into its own purpose-built museum in Schweinfurt, twenty-five years after the death of Schäfer himself. Germany's presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2007 was marked by an exhibit in Brussels and then Munich entitled pointedly 'Views on Europe: Europe and German Painting in the 19th Century'. A series of galleries linking German art to most of the countries of Europe in turn culminated in a display of Adolph Menzel as the epitome of both German particularity and cosmopolitanism.7

This apparent rediscovery of the nineteenth century is not just a German phenomenon. Recent decades have seen that era given much more attention in Britain (the Pre-Raphaelites) and the United States (the Hudson River school), while French academic work by artists such as Bouguereau has become more visible and popular again since the 1980s. Nineteenth-century portraiture and landscape from Russia have also been exhibited in the Netherlands, Britain and elsewhere.8 In the German case, however, there are issues at stake which give the nineteenth-century works a particular resonance. Both the National Socialists and the promoters of socialist realism in the GDR accorded nineteenth-century German artists such Menzel and Wilhelm Leibl special status, both for their realism and – in Menzel's case – for their portrayal of German history. Throughout the years of the GDR the work of these artists was explored, in particular in the Frederick the Great paintings of Bernhard Heisig.9 The romanticism of the earlier Caspar David Friedrich (of whom there was a huge retrospective in Essen and Hamburg in 2006-7) was especially prized by the National Socialists, and has more recently influenced Wolfgang Mattheuer in the East and Anselm Kiefer in the West of Germany.10 In other words, the re-display of German nineteenth-century portraiture, landscape and history painting poses some uncomfortable questions about the relationship of modern united Germany to nationalist discourses of the nineteenth century and the uses to which they were put in the twentieth. These questions were certainly asked before 1989, though within certain constraints in the GDR, but they now feature more prominently in the political context which has developed since then. As in other countries, there is an element of rehabilitation of the non-Impressionist nineteenth century, but also a confrontation with the more difficult history of German visual art over the last two centuries. Meanwhile, vast new spaces for contemporary art have also opened in a number of cities. The Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin was followed a year later, in 1997, by the Galerie der Gegenwart of the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, and in 2002 by the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. Next door to the latter, a public-private initiative, the Museum Brandhorst, followed in 2009. This institution, like the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, opened in 2004, derives from a private collection of the modern and contemporary. In all these cases the prominent figures of the post-1945 West German art scene (including those, like Gerhard Richter, who had migrated from the East) are displayed alongside their famous international counterparts, primarily from the United States. Here too there is a sense of the rehabilitation of the German within the international, a connection which had been so brutally ruptured by the National Socialists and which had been tested during the Cold War. In one instance, the historical linkages caused major controversy. The Hamburger Bahnhof displays derive in large part from the private collection of Friedrich Christian Flick, and the association of his family's considerable fortune with both the National Socialist regime and with the corruption of the political parties of the Federal Republic led to protests about the housing of the collection in Berlin. The argument that Flick was thereby making amends for the past did not convince all commentators.11

There were, of course, many different factors involved in this dramatic overhaul of collection and exhibit venues – cultural tourism and new technology amongst them. Parallel developments can also be observed in Britain, France, Spain and the United States. Nonetheless, German unification in 1990 played a particular part in the way in which German galleries and museums now came to show the present and the past of German art in an international context. An especially troublesome feature was the reassessment of the art of the GDR. Should the cultural products of a forty-year period – which had always maintained strong connections with the earlier German 'heritage' – be subsumed into longer-term narratives, set apart as historical curiosities of little aesthetic value, or junked altogether? Since unification, all three things have happened, in varying degrees.

#### **Exhibiting GDR Art**

Before 1989, the works of at least some artists from the GDR were known in the Federal Republic. The quartet of Heisig, Mattheuer, Willi Sitte and Werner Tübke, plus a small number of other practitioners approved by the GDR authorities, exhibited in the West, notably at the sixth Documenta in Kassel in 1977. And several West German private collectors and gallery-owners made a speciality of exposing GDR art to connoisseurs. Peter and Irene Ludwig built up their collection in Oberhausen,12 and Galerie Brusberg displayed such works on the Kurfürstendamm in West Berlin. Rather than necessarily showing any political sympathy with the GDR, this niche market appealed because of the figurative subject matter and the painterly styles – expressionist in the case of Heisig and Sitte, old-masterly in the case of Tübke, and with touches of *Neue Sachlichkeit* and surrealism in the case of Mattheuer. These approved artists from the GDR also benefited from being permitted to travel and to exhibit abroad: in Italy, Britain, France, and eventually the United States. This was part of a deliberate foreign policy strategy, which also favoured this cultural outreach as a means of generating hard-currency income.13

The relatively privileged world of the most prominent artists of the GDR was thrown into immediate disarray by the events of 1989-90. These so-called 'Painter Princes' came under attack from several quarters, notably from Georg Baselitz, who described them succinctly if impolitely as 'Arschlöcher'. In an interview in 2005 he made it clear that his controversial comment had only ever applied to the usual four suspects:

Die Arschlöcher-Bemerkung betraf nur die Staatskünstler Heisig, Mattheuer, Tübke und Sitte.  Sie waren abhängig von der Stasi und schlechte Maler noch dazu. Mit diesen Leuten kann man nicht Frieden schließen.14

In this viewpoint come together two of the most crucial accusations made about the prominent artists of the GDR: that they were collaborators with a dictatorship *and* that they were bad painters. An attack on the role of individuals, however, did not in itself address the question of what was to be done with their works and those of others in the holdings of the museums and other institutions of the GDR. Article 35 (2) of the Einigungsvertrag did specify that: 'Die kulturelle Substanz in dem in Artikel 3 genannten Gebiet [i.e. the GDR] darf keinen Schaden nehmen.'15 However, this was scarcely a specific enough statement about what 'cultural assets' might include, or of what would count as 'damage'.

One of the first effects of German unification on the reception of East German art was, according to Bernd Lindner, an immediate slump in visitor numbers to museums and exhibits. He also detected a change in the social profile of visitors, with a fall in the number of 'workers' involved. Neither of these developments was surprising, in the light of all the other concerns and distractions facing the population of eastern Germany in 1989-91. Furthermore, as the economic infrastructure collapsed or was reshaped, the social and cultural roles of enterprises disappeared, and many smaller exhibition spaces closed for financial reasons. There was some attraction, though, in new experiences from the West. In 1991, again according to Lindner, the most successful show in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden was of Andy Warhol.16

In the course of the 1990s, several large exhibits and conferences were held in the old GDR and Berlin about various aspects of official art under the SED. For the most part the shows documented state art policy and the collections of the parties and mass organisations. In other words, the emphasis – particularly in the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin – was on the *historical* dimension, rather than on questions of the intrinsic aesthetic merit, if any, of the works on display.17 Even this 'documentary' aspect came to be one of considerable controversy, attached in particular to the name of Burg Beeskow, south-east of Berlin. This had been one of several collecting points for the art of the GDR, others being at Festung Königstein in Saxony and in Halle. The collapse of the SED regime had entailed, in some cases almost immediately and in others over a longer timeframe, the dismantling of an infrastructure of public art. As political parties, mass organisations, and agricultural and industrial enterprises were dissolved and their premises disposed of, vast quantities of officiallysponsored artwork found itself without ownership. This was for the most part not the more prestigious material, which was already to be found in museums and galleries, but – with some exceptions – the day-to-day stuff, with particular reference to the working population. Some examples were from the early days of socialist realism in the 1950s, but far more was derivative material from the later decades. Much of it had little obvious political relevance, and included innocuous landscapes, portraits and still lifes, plus all kinds of handicraft kitsch, political busts and so on. Herbert Schirmer, CDU Minister of Culture in the de Maizière government of 1990, was instrumental in creating the Dokumentationszentrum Kunst der DDR for the new Federal States of Berlin, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, an enterprise which occasioned much debate in the 1990s.18 There were those, like the artist Hans-Hendrik Grimmling, who argued that the material collected was just rubbish to be disposed of.19 A visit to the storage rooms at Burg Beeskow certainly reveals a lot of dross, which in most other countries would never have been retained at public expense.20 Nonetheless, there is a powerful historical argument that since such a collection of 23,000 artefacts has been amassed, it would now be irresponsible to let it be lost. It need not be *Ostalgie* (though it can be), which suggests that future research on GDR culture and society would be damaged if this resource were to be abandoned. There have been some interesting thematic exhibits from the collection, but the designation 'documentation centre', rather than 'art collection' is undoubtedly the more appropriate.

The Weimar exhibit of 1999 was a special landmark in the debate about the art of the GDR. Weimar, European city of culture in that year, witnessed a tri-partite show on the theme of 'Aufstieg und Fall der Moderne'.21 The curator Achim Preiss used a variety of techniques to draw a line under what he saw as the historic art of the twentieth century.22 The first part of the show, in the Schloss, concentrated on the development of the 'modern', particularly in its Weimar context. Its temporary hanging of works in front of the old masters collection was not without its critics, but this was as nothing compared to the reception of parts two and three. These dealt respectively with the Third Reich and the GDR and were housed provocatively in the decrepit post-war Mehrzweckhalle on one side of the unfinished National Socialist Gauforum. On the ground floor, works bought by or on behalf of Adolf Hitler were propped up against boards. Classicised erotica on the one hand and peasant genre scenes on the other were presented in this tawdry setting, deliberately to denigrate them. This treatment, redolent to many of the ways in which the Nazis themselves had displayed rejected art in 1937 and beyond, coupled with what was happening on the floor above, led to a deluge of criticism. Because of the way in which the space on the second floor was organised, it appeared that GDR art was being equated to the art of the Third Reich. Through the use of heavy grey tarpaulin, the main area had been converted into a sort of rotunda evocative of Tübke's *Frühbürgerliche Revolution in Deutschland* panorama at Bad Frankenhausen. The paintings, in no very obvious order, were hung closely together and two or three deep. The effect was of an amateur show or flea market. There were two other main spaces: the corridor which led into the rotunda, flanked on one side by monochrome photographs of drab daily life and on the other by giant canvases from the Palast der Republik in Berlin on the theme of 'Wenn Kommunisten träumen'. Leaving the central space, there was then a 'wedge' of a room displaying the work of artists – such as Gerhard Altenbourg – less to be described as 'official'. Although in the press and, more often, in the visitors' books there were expressions of interest in and support for the provocative exhibit concept, the overwhelming response from artists, politicians and the general public was that of outrage. Described in retrospect as 'das unsägliche Sammelsurium, das ein Architektur-Professor von phantastischer Inkompetenz 1999 in der Kulturhauptstadt Weimar hatte veranstalten können,'23 the show was accused of taking a West German attitude towards the whole of GDR art and in the process trashing and ridiculing it. Legal proceedings were launched by several artists to have their paintings taken out of the exhibit, and on one occasion two artists physically removed their works. There was a re-hang in an attempt to placate the critics, but then the exhibit closed six weeks earlier than intended.24

If Preiss had intended to provoke, which he surely did, then he was entirely successful. However, the exhibit was undoubtedly a gross misjudgement. This was not because it was critical of major and minor figures in the GDR art world, nor because it raised questions about the equivalence of Nazi and GDR art (without giving any serious answers), but because it flouted the conventions of how to treat the works of living artists, because it failed to take account of a potential similarity with the pillorying character of 'Degenerate Art' in 1937, and because it treated (almost) all painting produced in forty years of the GDR as if it were the same. In a sense, though, Weimar 1999 had a longer-term therapeutic effect. So much vitriol had been thrown and so much debate about the worth of GDR art had been had that subsequent discussion could be more measured. Several conferences followed – for instance, in Leipzig in May 2000, in Schloss Neuhardenberg in August 2003, and in Bonn in May 2007 – which brought together critical partners from all sides of the debate.

The next major exhibit after Weimar, 'Kunst in der DDR' in 2003, could not have been more different in its approach, nor in its reception.25 First shown in the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and revived in 2004-5 at the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn, 'Kunst in der DDR' was, if anything, over-reverential in its approach. Unlike the Weimar extravaganza, it was curated by two East Germans, Eugen Blume and Roland März, whose careers had been in the GDR. They divided the galleries in part chronologically and in part thematically, missing out almost all stereotypical socialist realism from the 1950s and including some, if not many, artists who had been thorns in the side of the GDR authorities. One such was A.R. Penck. The overall impression was that there had been expressive, abstract, and conceptual strands in the art of the GDR, in addition to the undoubted prevalence of figurative, realist and historicising tendencies. The Leipziger Schule received solemn attention, including such works as Mattheuer's *Ausgezeichnete* (1973-4), an image which has long been used to illustrate social disillusionment and tension in later GDR society. Documentary aspects of the exhibit and the catalogue confronted questions about state control and lack of artistic freedom, without retreating from the basic premise that GDR art changed over time, was various in style and scope, and had serious things to say about modern society and German history.

Beyond the stand-alone exhibits, museums in eastern and western Germany have found various ways of handling the artistic legacy of the GDR. Examples may be taken from four cities. The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, after coming under fire for its initial inclusion in a re-hang of works by Sitte and others, has a small sample from the major quartet and a few others. The preliminary 1:10 version of Tübke's Panorama is amongst them. Though the GDR is covered in rooms of its own, there is otherwise no particular distinction, positive or negative, from the way in which the other twentieth-century galleries are handled. In the extraordinarily spacious new build of the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig, there is a more-or-less permanent exhibit in the lower ground floor given over to art from both German states 1949-89. This gives the opportunity for viewing 'East' and 'West' German works alongside each other, and throws up some illuminating parallels. Before it closed for renovation, the Albertinum in Dresden reduced the number of GDR works on its walls; in its reopened splendour in 2010, large spaces are devoted to Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz, and Mattheuer and others are still on display. The re-opened Stadtmuseum on the other hand concentrates on Dresden art, not making a particular distinction between works produced before or after 1949. Of particular interest – both because it was located in the old Federal Republic and not in the GDR, and because of a particular controversy which will be elaborated below – is the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. There the twentieth-century collection is displayed so as to include art from both the Third Reich and the GDR. However, both are shown in small side-rooms as if to emphasise that the art is problematic and should not be viewed as a natural part of the German canon. From the Third Reich are Adolf Ziegler's *Akt* (1942) and Sepp Hilz's *Die rote Halskette* (1942), both much reproduced images from the Great German Art Exhibit. From the GDR were displayed in 2006-9 Sighard Gille's less than socialist realist *Gerüstbauer – Brigadefeier* (1975-7) and Wolfgang Peuker's disturbing portrayal of sexual violence, *Wände* (1981). The main galleries, on the other hand, follow the 'normal' pattern of expressionism, *Neue Sachlichkeit*, and then postwar international abstraction and conceptual art.26

The display ethos of the Nuremberg museum is that it takes a documentary, rather than an aesthetic or art historical approach to modern German art, and it was this contention which lay behind the controversy in 2000 and beyond over the planned Willi Sitte exhibit. The headline news at the time was that the showing of 'Willi Sitte – Werke und Dokumente' had been called off because of protests about the honouring of an artist who had played a major part in the power structures of the GDR art establishment. In fact, as the volume which emanated from a symposium on the subject in Nuremberg in 2001 makes plain, the debate was rather more complicated than that. Since the project had a 'documentary' focus, it had always been intended that the show of Sitte's work would be accompanied by political materials, some of which raised questions about his role as President of the Verband Bildender Künstler der DDR. When allegedly new revelations came to light in 2000, the board of the museum decided to undertake further research before permitting the exhibit to be staged. In the event, subsequent debate between the museum, Sitte himself, and other interested parties meant that the show never took place at all.27 This has not prevented Sitte's works from being displayed in a fine new gallery in Merseburg, which also houses the Willi-Sitte-Stiftung für realistische Kunst.28 There are similar private foundations for the late Werner Tübke and Wolfgang Mattheuer in Leipzig, both associated with the gallery of Karl Schwind, established in Frankfurt am Main in 1989 and specialising in figurative works from the former GDR.29

Another approach to the art of the GDR has been to reassess groups of works which were either on the fringes of acceptability to the regime or were produced more-or-less in private. These aspects were present in the 2003 'Kunst in der DDR' exhibit but are also very effective both aesthetically and commercially in smaller galleries. The 1950s have been fertile ground in this respect, where figurative – but in GDR official terms 'formalist' – works have been shown alongside documentation of interference and suppression by the authorities. The Kunstverein 'Talstrasse', a private gallery located in Halle on the other side of the river Saale from the shade of the Burg Giebichenstein art school, has shown such works in 'Verfemte Formalisten' (1998) and 'Meisterschüler vom Pariser Platz' (2007). In the works of Manfred Böttcher, Harald Metzkes, Ernst Schroeder and Werner Stötzer, the latter show conveyed a powerfully bleak and reflective 1950s atmosphere, which bears comparison with contemporaneous works in Britain and elsewhere.30 The international dimension – in this case French, rather than British – is also to be found in Sigrid Hofer's exposition and analysis of abstract Art Informel in Dresden. This show – in Marburg, Dresden and also at the Kunstverein 'Talstrasse' – was a reminder of all the work which was created in the GDR outside the official channels.31 It also suggested that there should be more consideration of those artists who switched between figurative and abstract modes when circumstances suggested. Although not included in the exhibition, Hans Kinder in Dresden was one such artist; his abstract works of the Weimar Republic and of the 1970s and 1980s are now stressed more than his ultra-socialist realist contribution to the 1953 Dresden exhibit: the Freie Deutsche Jugend carrying aloft a portrait of Stalin.32

The twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall occasioned numerous ceremonies and exhibits in Germany and abroad, which reflected on the events of 1989-90 and also on the world as it has changed so dramatically since that time. As far as the visual arts were concerned, the major event was 'Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures' or, in its German version, 'Kunst und Kalter Krieg: Deutsche Positionen 1945-89'. This exhibit, in three variants in Los Angeles, Nuremberg and Berlin, benefited from joint American-German curation by Stephanie Barron and Eckhart Gillen, which to a certain extent distanced it from the internal German debate since 1989, as discussed in Justinian Jampol's essay in this collection. For a show which stressed its Cold War location, the displays were remarkable for downplaying the explicitly political. In a broadly chronological format, the works from East and West Germany were shown intermingled, emphasising the thematic, particularly the 'German', connections. In a significant departure from 'Kunst in der DDR' from 2003-5, socialist realism was properly represented with a number of works by Rudolf Bergander, Heinz Löffler, Otto Nagel, Heinz Drache and Heinrich Witz. The Los Angeles version was in an art museum, whereas the German variants were displayed in the 'documentary' context of the Nuremberg venue and in the historical museum in Berlin. This difference serves to highlight the ambiguities of how East German art is to be presented, even twenty years after the demise of the GDR.33

### **Reconsidering GDR Art**

What, then, are the main issues which lie behind the chequered history and sometimes acrimonious disputes around the visual art of the GDR? In some respects, but only in some respects, there are similarities with the discourses surrounding the Salon and the Impressionists in late nineteenth-century France, the academies and the secessions in the German Kaiserreich, National Socialist art and expressionism, and, of course, socialist realism and 'formalism' in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and the GDR in the 1950s. Put a little simplistically, the official art of the GDR came to represent figurative and recognisable art attuned to popular taste, but sufficiently connected to the longer western canon to allow for intellectual art historical debate. Opposite of this and its precursors was the uncontrollable, 'unfinished' and speculative, which – if it referred to real life at all – did so in critical and disturbing ways. But this dichotomy refers primarily to the early decades of the GDR, and even then not completely. Though it is clear that in some respects the implementation of socialist realism *did* connect visual art with the working people, there is also no doubt that the more disturbing images of Heisig, Tübke and Volker Stelzmann and the fleshy nudes of Sitte were off-putting rather than inviting. On the other hand, in the 1970s and 1980s some of the rather more bleak everyday images from the Leipziger Schule did strike a chord with their public.34