Rituals of Commemoration – Identity and Conflict: The Case of Die Linke in Germany

Abstract

For social groups, as for individuals, memory is an important part of their identity. Therefore political parties usually have an instrumental relation to their own party's history whose function is to enhance party identity. The ‘official’ party history normally is inclusive, designed as a composition of party heroes and villains as well as of party achievements which all members and ideological wings can agree upon or, at least, where they can find themselves represented. But sometimes it is hard to agree on history. All wings and currents of Die Linke can agree on Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht as symbols; their assassination in January 1919 is commemorated by a demonstration every year. Unexpected intra-party conflicts arose when in December 2006 a stone was placed at the cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin near the graves of Luxemburg and Liebknecht commemorating the ‘victims of Stalinism’.

Notes

Richard Jenkins, Social Identity (London et al.: Routledge, 1996), p.6.

Elmar Wiesendahl, Parteien in Perspektive. Theoretische Ansichten der Organisationswirklichkeit politischer Parteien (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1999), pp.189–211.

Bettina Schulze, ‘Weil mich Inhalte mehr interessieren als Personen’, Die Zeit, 19 June 2008, p.4.

Torsten Oppelland, ‘Historische Identitätskerne von Parteifamilien’, in Uwe Jun and Benjamin Höhne (eds), Parteifamilien – Identitätsbestimmend oder nur noch Etikett? (Opladen: Barbara Budrich Verlag, 2012), pp.52–67.

For instance Claudia Fröhlich and Horst-Alfred Heinrich (eds), Geschichtspolitik. Wer sind die Akteure, wer sind die Rezipienten (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 2004); the only article on political parties in this collection is on the mythology of the extreme right: Michael Kohlstruck, ‘Fundamentaloppositionelle Geschichtspolitik – Die Mythologisierung von Rudolf Heß im deutschen Rechtsextremismus’, pp.95–110. The exception is French historiography where the study of mémoire has a much longer tradition than in Germany; in France the collective memory of political parties was studies in depth, for instance, in the impressive collective, three-volume work directed by Jean-François Sirinelli, Histoires des droites, vol. 2: Cultures (Paris: Gallimard, 1992).

When professional historians use the term (or something similar) this distinction is often somewhat blurred; Margaret Macmillan, in The Uses and Abuses of History (London: Profile Books, 2009), for instance, displays a keen sense of the different functions of history (e.g. comfort and identity) but also seems to put herself in the position of a judge as to what are the ‘abuses’ of history, i.e. the forgeries and fabrications of history by nationalists and others.

Edgar Wolfrum, Geschichtspolitik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Der Weg zur bundesrepublikanischen Erinnerung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1999), p.26 (my translation).

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), p.31.

Henry Rousso, ‘La Seconde Guerre mondiale dans la mémoire des droites françaises’, in Sirinelli, Histoire des droites, vol. 2, pp.551–2, claims that only the memory of the past, i.e. (invented) tradition, is able to lend durability to a political project.

MacMillan, Uses and Abuses, p.116.

When historians become involved in this kind of work for parties they may well become actors in the politics of history instead of being ‘neutral’ professionals; Bernd Faulenbach, who is both historian and president of the SPD's historical commission, seems to be quite aware of the fact, see Bernd Faulenbach, ‘Rosa Luxemburg als Mythos? Zur Bedeutung der historischen Rosa Luxemburg für die heutige Sozialdemokratie’, in Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen 29 (2003), pp.75–89.

To some extent even in the neighbouring countries: Gerrit Voerman, ‘The Formative Years of the Communist “Moral Community” in the Netherlands 1917–30’, in Kevin Morgan, Gidon Cohen and Andrew Flinn (eds), Agents of the Revolution (Oxford et al.: Peter Lang, 2005), p.228.

Faulenbach, ‘Rosa Luxemburg als Mythos?, pp.75–89.

See the description on the website of the Friedrichsfelde cemetery, http://www.sozialistenfriedhof.de/revolutionsdenkmal.html (accessed 1 October 2011).

Ibid.

http://www.sozialistenfriedhof.de/gedenkstaettesoziali.html

Klaus Taubert, Generation Fußnote. Bekenntnisse eines Opportunisten (Berlin: Schwarzkopf und Schwarzkopf, 2008).

Rainer Gries, ‘Der Tag der Republik’, in Martin Sabrow (ed.), Erinnerungsorte der DDR (München: Beck 2009), pp.159–70.

Faulenbach, ‘Rosa Luxemburg als Mythos?’, p.81.

Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, Endspiel. Die Revolution von 1989 in der DDR (München: Beck, 2009), pp.262–70; Jens König, Gregor Gysi. Eine Biographie (Berlin: Rowohlt 2005), pp.263–7.

Andreas Malycha and Peter Jochen Winters, Die Geschichte der SED. Von der Gründung bis zur Linkspartei, (München: Beck, 2009), ch.8.

Hannes Bahrmann/Christoph Links, Chronik der Wende 2. Stationen der Einheit: Die letzten Monate der DDR (Berlin: Chr. Links Verlag, 1995), p.56.

There are actually two different demonstrations, the one of militant Berlin leftist groups being more ‘noisy’ and occasionally violent than the one organised by the PDS or Die Linke; but even though the cultural habits of the demonstrators are completely different, both demonstrations take place in the name of the socialist martyrs.

Oskar Niedermayer, ‘Parteimitgliedschaften im Jahre 2010’, Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 2 (2011), p.369.

Viola Neu, ‘Linkspartei.PDS (Die Linke)’, in Frank Decker and Viola Neu (eds), Handbuch der deutschen Parteien (Wiesbaden: VS, 2007), p.315.

In fact, the PDS borrowed much of its new statute from the direct democratic party constitution of the Greens, Gero Neugebauer and Richard Stöss, Die PDS. Geschichte, Organisation, Wähler, Konkurrenten (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1996), pp.126–35.

Neugebauer and Stöss, PDS, pp.67–70.

Eckhard Jesse and Jürgen P. Lang, Die Linke – der smarte Extremismus einer deutschen Partei (München: Olzog, 2008), pp.60–73.

Franz Walter, ‘Eliten oder Unterschichten? Die Wähler der Linken’, in Tim Spier, Felix Butzlaff, Matthias Micus and Franz Walter (eds), Die Linkspartei. Zeitgemäße Idee oder Bündnis ohne Zukunft? (Wiesbaden: VS, 2007), pp.325–43.

The historical commission of the PDS, which consisted exclusively of historians from the GDR, was quite frank about the reasons, mainly the concentration of power in the hands of a few who abused this power as they felt legitimised by the Marxist monopoly of truth, the lack of democracy and pluralism, the hierarchical organisation of state and economy; ‘“Neu beginnen” Thesen der Grundsatzkommission/Historischen Kommission für den 2. Parteitag, 21./23. Juni 1991’, excerpt in Handreichung zur Geschichte. Aus Dokumenten der Linkspartei.PDS 2009, p.3 (http://www.die-linke.de/partei/geschichte/handoutzurgeschichte).

In the words of the newly elected leader, Gregor Gysi: ‘We need a complete break with the failed Stalinist, i.e. administrative-centralist socialism in our country [the GDR] … [We need] especially social-democratic, socialist, non-Stalinist communist, anti-fascist and pacifist traditions … We want a new party’. Quoted from: Lothar Hornbogen, Detlef Nakath and Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan (eds), Außerordentlicher Parteitag der SED/PDS. Protokoll der Beratungen am 8./9. und 16./17. Dezember 1990 in Berlin (Berlin: Dietz, 1999), p.51 (my translation).

This view had never been fully accepted by all Marxist groups in the PDS; particularly Sahra Wagenknecht, one of the most prominent leaders of Communist Platform in the PDS and vice chairwoman of both, Die Linke party and Bundestag fraction, today, was severely criticised by the reformers when she dared to justify some of Stalin's policies; Sebastian Prinz, Die programmatische Entwicklung der PDS. Kontinuität und Wandel der Politik einer sozialistischen Partei (Wiesbaden: VS, 2010), p.291.

Handreichung zur Geschichte, p.4. The balance between criticism and partial apologia of the GDR had been there right from the start, Neugebauer and Stöss, PDS, pp.81–9.

Viola Neu, Das Janusgesicht der PDS. Wähler und Partei zwischen Demokratie und Extremismus (Baden-Baden: Nomos 2004), and Patrick Moreau and Rita Schorpp-Grabiak, ‘Man muss so radikal sein wie die Wirklichkeit’. Die PDS: Eine Bilanz (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002).

The different views are documented in the 13 August edition of Junge Welt; the theses were debated controversially at the party congress of Die Linke in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania where there were elections in September 2011 (see the speech of regional party leader who tried to defuse the issue that threatened the party's performance at the polls when the goal was to come out stronger than the CDU in order to return to the coalition with the SPD, available from http://www.originalsozial.de/fileadmin/lv/Dokumente/LPT08_2011/beschluesse/Rede_Bockhahn_LPT_13-8-2011.pdf [accessed 1 October 2011]).

Programme of DIE LINKE Party. Resolution of the Party Congress, Erfurt, 21 to 23 October 2011, approved through a vote by the party membership on December 2011 (official English language version: http://www.die-linke.de/fileadmin/download/dokumente/englisch_die_linke_programm_erfurt.pdf [accessed 1 October 2011]).

All coalition agreements of PDS/Die Linke and SPD contained some reference in which this admission was ratified, see e.g. the preamble of the Vereinbarung zur Zusammenarbeit in einer Regierungskoalition für die 5. Wahlperiode des Brandenburger Landtages 2009 bis 2014, p.3 where Die Linke conceded that the SPD had been ‘repressed and persecuted by the SED since 1946’ (my translation).

Jan Assmann, ‘Kollektives Gedächtnis und kulturelle Identität’, in Jan Assmann and Tonio Hölscher (eds), Kultur und Gedächtnis (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1988), S.9–19.

http://www.sozialistenfriedhof.de/gedenkstein.html (accessed 1 October 2011).

The district mayor of Lichtenberg, Christina Emmerich (PDS), quoted in her speech from the SED extraordinary congress of December 1989 where one of the speakers had coined the phrase ‘Wir brechen unwiderruflich mit dem Stalinismus als System’ (We irrevocably break with Stalinism as a system), ibid.

http://www.parlament-berlin.de/pari/web/wdefault.nsf/vHTML/C12_4-00073?OpenDocument&darstellung=druck

The quotations that follow in this paragraph are taken from Anne Höpfner, Geschichtspolitik einer Partei. Die Linke und der Gedenkstein ‘Den Opfern des Stalinismus’ (unpublished MA thesis, University of Jena, 2010), pp.86–92 (my translations).

For the debate on the term Stalinism in the PDS, see Prinz, Programmatische Entwicklung, pp.287–92.

Höpfner, Geschichtspolitik, p.86.

Although again the wording is revealing: Stalin's crimes were called ‘Repressalien’ (reprisals), Höpfner, Geschichtspolitik, p.89.

Ibid., p.87.

Ibid., p.89.

Ibid., p.91.

Ibid.

Ibid., p.95.

What happened exactly is hard to say because media reports differed widely over the extent to which any violence had occurred, see ibid., pp.84–5, n.290.

Ibid., p.96.

Quotation ibid., p.97.

Declaration of the National Executive of Die Linke, 28 Jan. 2008, http://die-linke.de/index.php?id=1559 (accessed 1 October 2011).

Programme of the DIE LINKE Party 2011, p.11.

All quotes ibid., p.12.

The former party leader Oskar Lafontaine as much as admitted this fact in a review article in Neues Deutschland (13 July 2001, p.13): ‘die Aufarbeitung des Stalinismus, deren Notwendigkeit den aus dem Westen kommenden Mitgliedern der Partei nur noch schwer zu vermitteln ist’ (roughly translated as: ‘coming to terms with Stalinism, the necessity of which is difficult to convey to party members coming from West Germany’).