BIERMANN'S
CITIZENSHIP!
On November 16, 1976, the singer, poet, and oppositionist Wolf Biermann was deprived of his East German citizenship by decision of the Political Bureau of the SED. (Sozialistische Einheitsportei Deutschlands -Socialist Unity party of Germany, the Stalinist Communist party of East Germany created in 1946 by the fusion of the CP and SP in East German territory, then occupied by the Soviet army). The decision was taken while the singer was making a four in West Germany. It closes the East German border to him and prevents him from returning to the country, at least for the moment. The Stalinist bureaucracy used a dirty maneuver -granting Biermann permission to leave East Germany and assuring him that he would be able to return - in arder to get rid of its best known and most politically prominent critic. It has thus once again demonstrated the unbridgeable chasm that separates it from real Marxism. The tour Biermann was making when the SED Political Bureau took its decision was sponsored by the West German metalworkers union, IG Metall. If was his First public appearance after an eleven-year ban on exercising his profession which had been imposed on him by the SED bureaucracy. Some 7, 000 people attended Biermann's concert in Cologne. Using their troditional methods, falsifying and distorting the positions of opponents, the Stalinist bureaucrats have tried to present Biermann as an "anticommunist" in order to justity the withdrawal of his citizenship. But the attempt has not at all succeeded. During his appearance in Cologne, Biermann explained more than
RESTORE by WERNER HÜLSBERG once that he was not at all on opponent of the German Democratic Republic, but only of its bureaucratic degeneration, that he was not at all on enemy of socialism but only of the "reactionary Stalinist bureaucrats" who repress freedom of opinion, information, the press, and assembly for the working class. He has not acted as a discouraged man or a deserter, like another Solzhenitsyn (much to the regret of the reactionaries in West Germany) who could be used by the capitalist ruling class for its own purposes. Since there was absolutely no objective basis for its "argumentation," the Stalinist bureaucracy did not hesitate to resort to the most gross falsifications. During the Cologne concert someone in the audience asked Biermann to sing a certain song. Biermann replied sarcastically, "I am prepared for any shameful act." This statement was reported as follows in the West German Stalinist newspaper Unsere Zeit (November 19, 1976): "He insulted the citizens of the German Democratic Republic in the crudest manner, from the workers in the factories to the leadership of the party and the state. He even went so far as to assert: I am prepared for any shameful act. Who is Wolf Biermann? In 1953, at the age of seventeen, Wolf Biermann left West Germany to settle in East Germany, which he henceforth referred to as his "homeland" and as "the better Germany. " He comes from a family of Communist workers in Hamburg. His father, a worker in the shipyards who was active in the resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, was murdered in 1943 in the concentration comp at Auschwitz.
BIERMANN Biermann studied polifical economy at Humboldt University in East Berlin and later joined the Bertholt Brecht theater group (the Berliner Ensemble). In 1960, following the great historical examples of Villon, Heinrich Heine, and Bertholt Brecht, he began writing songs, ballads, and plays that critically treated social reality and the bureaucratic deformations of the German Democratic Republic while at the same time calling for solidarity with struggles in the framework of "the unified process of world revolution. " In 1962 one of Biermann's plays ("Marriage in Berlin") was placed on the index for the first time and performances of it were banned. In 1963 Biermann was expelled from the SED and was forbidden to hold public appearances in East Germany. During the eleventh plenum of the Central Committee of the SED in December 1975 Biermane was the object of a definitive condemnation. It was stated that he had gone over to the camp of the class enemy. His songs were slandered by the cultural bureaucrats of the SED as "exalting skepticism" and "exhibiting an anarchist philosophy" and "the cult of self-indulgence." From that time on slanders and threats against Biermann mounted ceaselessly. In 1966 Horst Sindermann asserted, "Biermann should not be surprised if he wakes up one morning and finds some other people besides the milkman at his door. " Biermann responded in a song called "That makes me popular. " He never let himself be intimidated, and he never took the bait of "unrestricted possibility of travel abrood. " In another song he explained that it would be too much to the bureaucrats' liking if their most annoying critics left on their own 10 initiative; if somebody should take off, he said, it was the bureaucrats themselves. Biermann fully committed himself to defense of the Progue Spring and against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Warsaw Pact states. ("The Paris Commune lives on in Prague/the revolution frees itself/Marx himself and Lenin and Rosa and Trotsky/ stand at the side of the communists. ") Since then he has become the best-known figure of the Marxist opposition in the German Democratic Republic. Through the "involuntary" vehicle of the West German press Biermann has taken positions on nearly all the essential events in East Germany and the international workers movement during the past ten years. In spite of his forced isolation in East Germany and in spite of the fact that he has been cut off from current discussion among Marxists (and in part from historical discussion too), Biermann has formulated surprisingly clear and correct positions on key problems of revolutionary Marxism. For example:
*On the workers states: During each of his public appearances in West Germany Biermann has defended the qualitatively different charocter of the transitional societies as compared to the capitalist countries, particularly when confronted with Maoist arguments. For him, the German Democratic Republic and the other workers states represent societies superior to capitalism since the means of production are state ownied and constitute the basis of a socialist society; nevertheless "red democracy" has not yet been achieved.
*The bureaucracy: Biermann characterizes the ruling layer in the German Democratic Republic as "the reactionary Stalinist bureaucracy" which has usurped power and seeks to prevent or roll back social progress: "The smallest bureaucrat/the meanest bureaucrat/cries for his post./ Socialism has triumphed/as soon as he has his iob/as soon as he has his cash. "
*Workers democracy: As he has explained during each public appearance in West Germany, Biermann fights for the "red democracy" of Rosa Luxemburg as she developed it in her writings on the October Revolution: "Without general elections, without unlimited freedom of the press and assembly, without the free struggle of opinions, life dies out in all public institutions; it is transformed into a fictitious life wherein only the bureaucracy remains the active element. • A dictatorship no doubt; not the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is, a dictatorship in the purely bourgeois sense of the term."
*Defense of the workers states: Biermann defends the bases of the deformed workers state and the successes achieved by the sacrifices and energy of the working class: "Never before have I defended with such clarity, passion, and argument how valuable and Important the experience of the German Democratic Republic is for all Germany and for the German workers movement." (Interview with Der Spiegel, No. 48 in
*Deformed workers states and the revolution in West Europe: Biermann does not limit himself to faking positions on the German Democratic Republic. He aims at a universal socialist revolution. He appreciates the importance and tasks of the Marxist opposition in the workers states. "What makes a serious obstacle for the left in West Germany, apart from its own stupidities, is the repugnant example of a bureaucratically deformed society that calls itself socialist. The West German vorking class, the major part of the population, will make a judgment of the chance for a socialist transformation of its own society not on the basis of the study of theoretical writings, but rather on the basis of observing reality as it is and as it appears through the mass media. " (Interview with Der Spiegel.)
*Other oppositionists: Biermann does not ignore his differences with the non-Marxist opposition in East Germany. He defends the democratic rights of this opposition, recognizes that its criticism is based on real social ills (as in the case of the writer Reiner Kunze, who was expelled from the writers' association in East Germany). But he draws a line of demarcation: "The problem is that in telling the sod truth about the societies that call themselves 'socialist' you can also spread dangerous lies about the only chance humanity has, which is socialism. " (Quoted from the tape of the Cologne concert.) And this "chance, socialism" does not necessarily have to take the distorted road of the German Democratic Republic and the other bureaucratized workers states: "No, I would be something like an enemy of the human race if I were to wish that on other peoples and if I tried to impose it on them, even in the form of a general law of societies. " (Interview with Der Spiegel.)
No clear position on Eurocommunism Many Marxist oppositionists in the workers states take a euphoric attitude toward the Italian, French, and Spanish Communist parties and the "Eurocommunism" they represent. "I see a gratifying and remarkable transformation which has occurred recently, especially in the course of the last year, It is linked to ..• the Berlin conference of workers parties in June 1976, that is, to the fact that the Communist parties of France, Italy, Spain, and other countries have taken a 'clear step" toward "socialist democracy. "" (Interview with Der Spiegel.) Buf Biermann's position on Eurocommunism is in fact contradictory, for if scarcely takes account of the present role of these CPs in the class struggle in their respective countries, nor does it draw out the concrete evolution of these Stalinist parties (their "Social Democratization"), In the bureducratized workers states, however, the declarations of the "Eurocommunists" have a totally different dynamic and import than they do in capitalist West Europe, which does not make them any more attractive. Their criticism of the crushing of the Prague Spring and their pleas for more "democracy" as a social goal are inevitably understood in the workers states as an orientation toward more workers democracy and are used as arguments in this direction, undeniably, they also create illusions. The "Eurocommunists" have renounced the dictatorship of the proletariat in their programs in the name of "democracy in general" rather than giving the dictatorship of the proletariat its meaning as an orientation toward full workers democracy in the real sense. Biermann does not share this position. During his Cologne concert he defended the dictatorship of the proletariat as an alternative to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In his "Ballad of the Comerman" he criticized the policy of the Unidad Popular in Chile precisely because of its legalist tactics oriented toward the "peaceful road to socialism." "Ah, power comes from the fist/ And not from the smiling face/ Power grows out of muzzles/ And not out of mouths. Response in West Germany Solidarity with Biermann in West Germany has spread with striking rapidity. Initially, all the parties condemned the removal of his citizenship, albeit for different reasons, and this gave great publicity to the Biermann case. This solidarity has been carried out mainly by the non-Stalinist left and by the youth and student organizations under socialist influence. The strength of this movement of solidarity is expressed particularly in the fact that the Sozialistischer Hochschulbund (League of Socialist University Students), which generally collaborates very closely with the CP's student organization, also decided to adopt a protest motion. All the intellectuals not tied to the CP
BIERMANN have protested the measures taken against Biermann, even those who usually work closely with the CP and called for a CP vote in the elections, such as Professor Wolfgang Abendroth. The concerts Biermann gave in West Germany after he was deprived of his East German citizenship were transformed into impressive demonstrations of solidarity with his fight to regain citizenship. The trade-union bureaucracy, however, has limited itself to adopting quite lukewarm resolutions. Oskar Vetter, president of the Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB - German Trade Union Federation), of which the metalworkers union which invited Biermann to West Germany is a member, even said that he saw no reason to take any initiatives toward the trade unions in East Germany in regard to the anti-Biermann measures. The bureaucrats understand one another and do not throw obstacles in each other's paths. But it took only a few days for the movement of solidarity with Biermann to separate the fake friends From the real ones. The Social Democrats limited themselves to lukewarm statements. Even those who had signed an appeal supporting Biermann's right to visit West Germany a few weeks before preferred to keep silent once Biermann had spoken in such a forthright manner. The conservative parties, the CDU and CSU, lost patience after a few days. They protested that the "spectacle around the Biermann case is developing excessively" and complained that the radio and television "were constantly intoxicating people with communist ideology. " These protests were unfortunately only echoed by the West German Stalinists, who also complained about "all the noise being made about the Biermann case. " So it was not Biermann — accused by the West German Communist party of having provided grist for the anticommunist mill and of having given ammunition to those who support the Berufsverbot* in West Germany - who concluded a traitorous and revealing alliance, buf rather the Stalinists themselves. The fear of the ruling class was expressed in its reactions. It is no exaggeration to say that the clear positions taken by Biermann and the unexpected publicity he has received have contributed to spread -ing revolutionary ideas in West Gemany. Biermann has served these ideas mainly because he has remained faithful to Marxism in spite of his bitter experiences and because he agitates for real socialism. The critique Biermann has made of prevailing conditions in East Germany and the bureaucratic deformation in that country has been accompanied by an even more severe critique of the capitalist system. The West German copitalists are afraid because what is involved here is not merely solidarity with Biermann as an individual, but also the attractive power of his ideas in a society racked by an overall crisis. The November 24 issue of the leading bourgeois daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had this to say in an editorial: "The friends of liberty and pluralism in Germany naturally prefer the kind of communists who cannot attract anyone, such as the three parties faithful to Moscow- the SED, the West German CP, and the SEW (the SED's affiliate in West Berlin). Up to now, we have these parties to thank for preventing any development of left socialism or communism in Germany. If they are no longer able to fulfill this function, and if an apparently respectable left socialism along with a 'clean' communism should raise its head in this country while also basing itself on a broad layers of cadres in the German Democratic
Republic, then the political landscape of West Germany, even on the left, would become unrecognizable."
Apart from the terminological gibberish, it is a very concrete prediction.
The West German Communist party (DKP) once again demonstrated whose offspring it is when it unconditionally supported the withdrawal of Biermann's citizenship. In 1956 the old Stalinist Communist party of Germany (KPD) was banned in West Germany. If continued to work underground, which strengthened its dependence
*The Berufsverbot is the decree prohibiting "extremists"
from employment in the public services in West Germany.
on the SED organizationally, financially, politically, and in terms of personnel. The conditions under which the CP legally reemerged in 1968 c learly showed this dependence. Up to one year before the reemergence, the leaders of the SED and the illegal KPD spit fire and poison against any attempt at legal reemergence that would entail abandoning the traditional name, KPD (Communist party of Germany. Then, a few months later, there was a 180 degree tum. The new DKP (German Communist party) was founded bureaucratically, on the basis of an agreement between the West and East German: governments in the context of the new "Ostpolitik" initiated by then Chancellor Willy Brandt. The leading posts of the new party were occupied by a layer of functionaries trained for years, if not decades, in East Germany. The financial resources of the workers state did the rest. It thus logical that the leadership of the DP not only covered for the SED measure ogainst Biermann but even played an active role in paving the way for the dirty maneuver. Vicious attacks and slanders poured from the pens of the editors of the DKP's organ Unsere Zeit concerning Biermann's first concert, in Cologne, and were reprinted as "news articles" in Neues Deutschland, the organ of the SED, The following day the SED Political Bureau issued its decision, which hod thus been prepared propagandistically. Nevertheless, the DKP leodership had additional jobs to carry out during subsequent days, beyond the distribution of SED propaganda, In fact, the wave of protest even reached the members of the DKP, even if only in an embryonic manner. Important sympathizers and even some members of the DKP allowed themselves to drift into "prematurely" signing crotests, Then, apparently under the pressure of the party leadership, they withdrew their names. The "explanations" for this were generally far-fetched. The Deutsche Friedensgeselischaft (German Peace Society), a group of conscientious objectors strongly influenced by the DKP, characterized the withdrawal of Biermann's citizenship as "an incredible measure." The Deutsche Friedensunion (German Peace Union), a sort of mini-popular-front party set up by the illegal KPD during the 1960s, fell into an internal crisis. One of its leading members, Arno Behrisch, took his distance from the SED leadership and accused it of having taken an "infamous" measure and of having "trampled the rights of man. " Many members of various "broad front* type organizations, as well as members of groups of fellow travellers and intellectuals presented os "progressive" by the DP leadership, also took their distance. Fissures emerged even among the rank and file of the DKP, whose members cannot be identified with the bureaucrats and who have often been in the party only a short time. Particularly in the university sector, some local groups of the DKP's student organization differentiated themselves from the leadership's position, under the pressure of the solidarity movement and out of fear of isolation. In Marburg twenty-nine members of the DKP pronounced themselves against the mesure and the position taken by the party leadership, writing, "We cannot agree with the two charges mode (that Biermann had acted as an enemy of socialism and that he had supported anticommunist forces - INPRECOR). During his concert in Cologne, officially cited as the justification for depriving him of his citizenship, Biermann demonstrated that fundamentally he considered socialism and the first German socialist state as 'some -thing of great value. ' Even if we cannot share his criticism of the political system that exists in the German Democratic Republic in some of its aspects, it is impossible to attribute a counterrevolutionary orientation to him. Anyone who attended the Cologne presentation will be able to confirm this. "Something has begun to move within the DKP, even if still very timidly. And the motion is in a good direction. Solidarity and repression in East Germany The reactions in East Germany give still greater cause for rejoicing. The withdrawal of Biermann's citizenship has had unexpected consequences for the bureaucracy in this country. For the first time in more than twenty years, since the workers uprising was crushed in June 1953, the bureaucracy is confronted by g public opposition that goes well beyond a few well-known personalifies, If is true, however, that for the moment the opposition movement is led by intellectuals and not workers, unlike what happened twenty-three The decision to take the measure against Biermann had certainly been made before he left East Germany on his tour. Regardless of what he may have said or sung at his first concert, he would have lost his East German citizenship anyway. The fact that the East German bureaucracy had tried to stamp out the internal opposition without taking reprisals so long as Biermann remained in East Germany reflects a modified political situation as well as the difficulties with which the SED must contend. These difficulties were manifested even during the ninth party congress in the spring of 1976 (when measures were taken to increase minimum wages and retirement benefits). The economic difficulties are accompanied by growing self-confidence among the working class and other layers of the population. The previous five-year plan (1971-75) had further encouraged this trend, Frightened by the revolt of the Polish workers in the Baltic ports and seeking to start fresh by getting rid of Walter Ulbricht, the bureaucracy had based this plan on an accelerated rise in the living standards of the workers. Although investments were planned to increase only 3.6% a year, the standard of living was to rise 5.1% a year. But the new plan (for 1976-80) calls for a complete turnabout in these proportions, The German Democratic
BIERMANN Republic depends in part on imports from the West, and the trade deficit is constantly rising. The generalized inflation in the West has repercussions for East German economic development in that the unit prices of imported goods are going up at an average of 20% a year. To this must be added the institutionalized disadvantages the "people's democracies" suffer in the Comecon compared to the Soviet bureaucracy. The supplementary charges the Soviet bureaucracy has imposed on East Germany can be compensated for only by an expansion of exports. But this implies an accentuation of investments with a view to introducing new techniques, That is why the new five-year plan calls for a 5.8% annual increase In investments, while the standard of living is to rise only 3.7% a year. What the bureaucracy cannot predict is whether this tumabout can be carried through without open conflicts. The new strike wave in Poland has taught the value of caution. That is why an example had to be made on the intellectual front. But this example has hod a boomerang effect. Biermann and his ideas are now probably more popular than ever in East Germany. Through the vehicle of West German television he has had an opportunity to address East Germans and ask for their support: "The growing solidarity of my friends and comrades in the German Democratic Republic has encouraged me, for who else can win my right to return to the GDR?" he asserted just before a four-hour presentation of a Biermann concert was rebroadcast in full by West German television. Even before this broadcast, events had moved rapidly. For the first time in more than two decodes in East Germany, thirteen writers resorted to collective protest, sending a resolution to the leaders of the party and the state. Writers who are known beyond the borders of East Germany - such as Sarah Kirsch, Stefan Heym, Christa Wolf, Stefan Hermlin, Heiner Maller, Jurek Becker, and others — declared in part: "Biermann himself has never left any doubt about which of the two German states he considers his own, in spite of all his criticism. We protest against the withdrawal of his citizenship and we osk you to reconsider this measure." The sculptor Fritz Cremer, who has received the national prize of East Germany on several occasions, withdrew his signature from this resolution only when his son-in-law was arrested in connection with the solidarity campaign. In spite of this repression, the appeal has been signed so far by several hundred writers, arfists, actors, and even singers. The leadership of the SED has tried to respond with a counter publicity compaign by writers loyal to the party. But this has amounted to a drop in the bucket. On the one hand, some well-known artists have abstained, preferring silence. On the other hand, many of the "counter-statements" have had an effect opposite to that expected among a population which is used to "reading between the lines, " for there have been few direct approvals of the party leadership's 14 accusations against Biermann. Finally, the countercompaign was suddenly halted on the eve of the normal session of the Political Bureau, of which five members reportedly voted against the measure depriving Biermann of his citizership. Then the repression was intensified. The writer JUrgen Fuchs was arrested, as well as the singers Pannach and Kunert in Leipzig. The bureaucracy was especially annoyed about the efforts of some oppositionists to collect signatures for the appeal in the factories. Some students from the University of Jena, along with the writer Jurek Becker, collected several hundred signatures at the Zeiss factories in a very short fime. The latest blow was dealt against the well-known oppositionist Professor Robert Havemann, who was placed under house arrest on November 26. Spontaneous and anonymous expressions of protest have also spread. Every day masses of Flowers turn up at certain places in East Berlin often mentioned in Biermann's songs, such as the Weidam bridge over the River Spree in front of the "Prussian Eagle" and the cemetery of the Huegenots. It is not certain whether the East German bureaucracy will further intensify the repression. One thing, however, is certain: without an intensification of the movement of solidarity in West Germany and elsewhere, the developing opposition in East Germany is in danger. It is our duty to support this opposition with all our strength. Free all the arrested comrades! Restore Wolf Biermann's citizenship! November 27, 1976
Several hundred artists, writers, and poets in East
Germany have signed the following statement protesting the withdrawal of Wolf Biermann's citizenship:
"Wolf Biermann was and remains an uncomfortable poet he shares this quality with many poets of the past.
Our socialist state, in conformity with what Marx said in "The Eighteenth Brumaire' about the proletarian revolution's tendency to constant self-criticism, should be able to tolerate such discomfort, considering it calmly, contrary to what occurs in anachronistic societies. We do not identify with every word and action of Wolf Biermann. We take our distance from all attempts to use the events around Biermann against the German Democratic Republic. Even in Cologne,
Biermann has never left any doubt about which of the two German states he considers his own, in spite of all his criticism. We protest against the withdrawal of his citizenship and we ask you to reconsider this measure,"