I can only report from my own experiences as a student in East Berlin after the Second World War:

There was not an abundance of different representations of historical and dialectical materialism, but few central works. Probably the earliest work that played a role in the Soviet-occupied zone in Germany and from October 1949 in the GDR was a German translation of the (original Russian) book "Geschichte der KPDSU (B)" ("History of the KPDSU (B)"), which was completed in the Soviet Union (SU) in 1938 and translated into German shortly afterwards.

Another important work became:

Autorenkollektiv (Ed.): Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Textbook for the Marxist-Leninist Basic Studies. Dietz, Berlin 1986.

Note: DiaMat is a Western (shortened) terminus, it was in GDR taboo.

The German Wikipedia entries inform relativiely well about positive (GDR) and negative (Western authors) eception of the marxist standard literature, used in schools and universities.

These are valuable pointers. Thanks! What I was after was not the texts themselves but how it _felt_ for a student (if at all) to encounter the concepts.

Dear Daniel,

The fact that the GDR did not offer the paradise promised by the SED with the construction of socialism is shown by the high proportion of refugees who arrived in the West via those who had not yet been strictly controlled (until the Wall was built in 1961). But: There were many people who had suffered under Hitler, and who were fully convinced of the party slogan: "Never again fascism!" At the same time, however, it was clear that the still predominant bourgeoisie was being disadvantaged, for example by the planned economy and the transfer of larger enterprises to state ownership (as were farmers through forced collectivization). Worker families were given opportunities for education and social advancement.

The West remained the consumer paradise on the one hand, while on the other many Nazis remained active in West Germany without being called to account. (There were a few cases where even in the GDR those who confessed in time to the "new order" got off with impunity).

In order to answer the question about the effect of ideology, from the textbooks, one has to consider the overall situation of the youth and the population in East Germany. I myself was a top youth athlete for 2-3 years (then the flight to the West came because my father was arrested as a "capitalist"). There all devoloped its own identity, that applies also to the working class.

The promises of the SED were tempting. Only later did it become apparent that they were quite hollow. Of course, one knew exactly what one was saying in public and what one was saying among friends about "socialism".

Our family only had the most outrageous experiences when we were in the West. My father was a small merchant and tried to set up a shop with washing machines. He was lied to and cheated by competitors.

From the second half of the sixties, I myself worked as an assistant and lecturer in the university sector. There were the Neo-Marxists, today called "68ers", who thought they had an idea of Marxism and the scientific literature in the Humanities lived from terms like "emancipation". This was a socialist utopianism that could only be seen with a shake of the head by those who had learned Marxism well from its sources in GDR. There was no serious Marxist research in the West. Western Neo-Marxist ideologization was even more utopian than what the East provided.

Some years for many people in the West, the GDR was a real model because it had a unified educational system and polytechnics - after the Sputnik shock of 1957.

A long topic, what are you working on?

Regards, Hein

I can add that in the excited mood of the '68ers', who drove thousands of young people into the streets in West Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, and many other West German university towns to protest against the US-Vietnam War, capitalism, etc., there are also very left-wing groups. These so-called K-groups have read the Soviet Marxist literature published in East Berlin in German like the Bible. Here I had the impression of a real ideologization, and wondered if they didn't feel more comfortable in the GDR. But that was not the case at all. These groups behaved relatively normally towards the oppression of human rights in the GDR and SU, in which they were not very interested, they sought new impulses from Karl Marx and his followers. Here Western democracy was put to the test.

Dear Hein,

It follows from what you have written about DiaMat - that you did not like this subject and the "Soviet Marxist Literature" as well. But for Soviet students, this was just one of the subjects included in the curriculum at the University. The item to be turned in. It has always been a difficult test for me. DiaMat, IstMat, Political Economy all these subjects I managed to pass on the second or third attempt. But all this has long been left behind...

Leonid V Vladimirov

Dear Leonid, What you say is true: I have expressed myself critically against Marxism as a world view and scientific doctrine. Then Marxism was the only science that was valid in the GDR (probably also in the SU).

But the life situation and criticism/approval of Marxism, as I learned it as a student, was more complicated. I was a teenager. In puberty one likes to play one side against the other. When the teacher at school told me how fundamental Marxism was, I knew that he was only three lessons further in his own political training course than we learned from him. It was the same with the Russian teacher; they all had to learn Marxism themselves - and that the "great Stalin" was telling the truth. I enjoyed learning Russian and was quite good, which helped me when I joined the SU in 1990. But when I came to the West 1953 - I told it once before on RG - the West Marxists seemed really stupid to me - and there I defended my solid Marxist training in the GDR.

It was already the case that Marxism, as I learned it, awakened hope in us for a completely new, changed situation in "building socialism. In the summer we as students had to harvest sugar beet or potatoes a few times during harvesting operations. That was normal, and it was always associated with a better future. Berlin was a largely destroyed city at the beginning of the 1950s.

Thanks, for your comment!