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Abstract
Using the example of the German Democratic Republic, the present article argues that communist leadership established a non-public communication channel between politics, administrations, industry and the population that took on most of the functions of the non-existent public sphere: letters to the editor. By law, those letters were considered petitions. The editorial offices had to register and answer them in a timely manner or transmit them to the authorities for consideration. This policy of focusing on individual cases while avoiding public sphere levels of mass communication and public meetings had two advantages for the ruling communist party: Critics were satisfied and “kept quiet” and other people were left in the dark unless they heard rumours during “encounters”. Those in power accepted that the absence of a critical discursive space hampered the process of innovation and social change—setting the German Democratic Republic apart from countries with autonomous media systems. The petition “solution” could only work as long as the number of critical readers’ letters remained within a reasonable limit, something that became impossible during the crisis of the late 1980s.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Federal Archive Berlin, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.037/23: 17.
2. Excluding about 762,000 incomings for the Best Athletes Award and about 37,000 letters of protest and solidarity, there is still an enormous amount of debate contributions and “real” letters to the editor.
3. Federal Archive Berlin, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.037/23: 9–11.
4. Letter from 12 November 1979. Federal Archive Berlin, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.037/32: 195.
5. SED's Central Commission of Revision: Report (see note 1).
6. Letter to Für Dich, 22 August 1966, Federal Archive Berlin, SAPMO-BArch, DC 9/107.
7. Federal Archive Berlin, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.037/14: 1–5 and 7–8.
8. Federal Centre of Stasi Documents, BStU, MfS, HA XXII, No. 793/3: 1–2, 8 and 10.
9. Federal Centre of Stasi Documents BStU, MfS, HA XXII, No. 10778, 2: 327–328.
10. Federal Centre of Stasi Documents BStU, MfS, HA XXII, No. 10778, 2: 424–425.
11. Federal Centre of Stasi Documents BStU, MfS, HA XXII, No. 10778, 2: 407.
12. Federal Archive Berlin, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.037/37: 100–101 and 146–147.
13. Federal Archive Berlin, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/IV 2/2.037/50: 159 and 162–165.
14. Federal Centre of Stasi Documents, BStU, MfS, ZAIG, No. 14922: 13–14.
15. Federal Archive Berlin, SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/2590: 1–9 and 106–116.
Additional information
Anke Fiedler (corresponding author) is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Information and Communication, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
Michael Meyen is full professor in the Institute for Communication Science and Media Research, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany. Email: [email protected]