East German letters to Angela Davis: from myth to solidarities unfolding

ABSTRACT

This essay applies the lens of myth to convey new insight in the well-documented historical context of the National United Campaign to Free Angela Davis (NUFCAD) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It seeks to interpret and offer meaning to the thousands of letters and postcards written in support of Angela Davis while she was on trial in the US between 1971–1972. A reading with Roland Barthes’s theory of myth as an operative form of power uncovers the ways in which the NUFCAD turned “Angela Davis” into a metadiscourse to discipline representations of racial politics as well as stymy radical politics in the GDR. But once the letter campaign reaches the US, it indeed becomes valuable in the fight to secure Davis’s freedom. Often perceived as universal, myth is shown here to be audience-specific. Presented in this essay is the urgency to both scrutinize and ultimately understand this campaign and its convoluted trajectory, as they are shaped by myth.

KEYWORDS:

• Angela Davis
• German Democratic Republic
• letter campaign
• myth
• Roland Barthes

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Kathleen Smith from Stanford Libraries for introducing me to the letters, working with me on an earlier version of this paper, and providing the images. Thanks also to the reviewers for their careful reading of the piece and insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The National United Committee to Free Angela Davis records, circa 1971–1972 (M0262), Department of Special Collections, Stanford Libraries. These records provide documents to which I will refer directly here.

2. It bears noting that Lamberz, who was a high-ranking member of the SED and potentially in line to succeed Erich Honecker, had a well-documented Nazi past.

3. The documentary work of American Belgian artist Vincent Meessen is of particular relevance here. In his 2009 film Vita Nova, he uncovers both the absent story of Diouf Birane and Barthes’s own family history of colonialism. Barthes’s grandfather, Louis-Gustave Binger, was a key figure in French colonialism in Western Africa.

4. In its April 3 1972, issue, Time published a rather scathing article about the abundant popularity of Davis in the GDR, titled “East Germany. St. Angela,” in which it referred to the “Angelamania” in the GDR.

5. “Die untersuchungsleitende These lautet dabei, dass Angela Davis aus Sicht der SED-Führung das Potential einer Integrationsfigur hatte, die für außen- und innenpolitische Ziele instrumentalisiert werden konnte.” (My translation).

6. “eine Form der ideologischen Propaganda […] der Bevölkerung ein spezifisches Welt-, Feind- und Selbstbild vermitteln und diente letztlich dem Machterhalt des Parteiregimes.” (My translation.)

7. At the talk “Remembering and imaging revolutionary struggle” on May 24 2018 at Stanford University, Davis was asked about the meaning of the letter-writing campaign to her; she responded that she owed her life to the letters and the international solidarity that came from all over the world.

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Notes on contributors

Olivia Landry

Olivia Landry is Assistant Professor of German at Lehigh University, whose research focuses on contemporary and transnational film, theater, and performance. She has recent articles in Black Camera, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Film-Philosophy, Women and Performance, Discourse, and New German Critique. Her first book, Movement and Performance in Berlin School Cinema, appeared in 2019 with Indiana University Press. E-mail: [email protected]