Art in East Germany (GDR):Exclusion of the East German Field of Art from the Art History Discourse

Abstract: Upon the final collapse of Nazi Germany in May 1945, the Allied forces held control over defeated Germany. Soon after, Germany was divided into different zones of control until its partition towards the end of 1940s into two states – East Germany, the GDR, which was dominated by the Soviets; and West Germany, the FRG, which was controlled by British, American and French forces. The post-World War II Partition of Germany led to a period of political tensions known as "the Cold War". These tensions only intensified in the early 1960s with the construction of the Berlin Wall, which palpably divided the country between the Soviet bloc and the Western bloc. This division was not merely an expression of a territorial division but a political-ideological division as well, which influenced events in various social and economic fields including the design of the German art scene: The division between West German Art and East German Art was accompanied by various political practices outlined by the different governments on both sides of the divide in order to brand the other artistic field as an enemy and as "the Other". So the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989 signifies not only its physical demise and the beginning of the reunification of Germany into a single independent state but also the symbolic fall of the Soviet bloc. In this article I shall attempt to reveal how the artistic space was composed of different layers of activity and how it was sometimes appropriated by the Western hegemony, which succeeded in its attempts to exclude a large part of the Eastern field of activity from the international artistic discourse within the political context of the "Cold War" - which continues to resonate in the years after the reunification as well. First I will review the tension and division into two different art fields: the West Germany field of art and the East Germany field of art. I will address the visible and hidden dialogues which take place between the western and eastern fields of art with an emphasis on the exclusion process of the Eastern art and its branding as inferior. Further on, I will refer the medium of photography in East Germany field of art and its role in the exclusion process. In addition, I will use two photos made by the East German photographer Evelyn Richter, in order to highlight my central argument through the visual space. In this article, I attempt to critically analyze the field of art using an interdisciplinary approach. This is not an analysis of the eastern field of art as an independent field but rather an examination of the attitude towards this field mainly through the western perspective of it.

 

A Binary Division or A Hidden Dialogue?

During the early years after the end of the war, the Allies on both sides of Germany had already followed the same pattern: through reliance upon past events, movies, compulsory tours, re-education, and the Nuremberg trials, the Allies attempted to force the German population to accept responsibility for the crimes of National Socialist regime – until the late 1940s when Germany was finally split into two states[1].

Now, each side controlled the shaping of the memory and did so in a manner which matched its ideology[2], and while German guilt was emphasized in the West in an attempt to produce kind of a "Zero Hour" ("Stunde Null") for starting over, the Soviet victory was given importance in the East. The paradox between establishing the sense of guilt and 1945 as a starting point was felt on both sides with the intention of emasculating any sense of nationhood and nationalism while imposing gratitude towards the new regime, their "savior"[3].

Following the division of Germany, many key pieces in the history of art were now owned by museums on the eastern side and already in the year 1948, under the SED party, the first official debate – the "Formalism Debate", began. The main purpose of the debate was to try to establish a unified artistic model in the east. Although it included a wide variety of opinions, they all spoke out against the "Western modernist decadence".

Artistic individualization was not permitted nor was there much of a private market for art. The discussion itself was accompanied by, among other things, the persecution of artists and only ended officially in 1953, along with the worker demonstrations and the death of Stalin, when "Social Realism" was finally declared as the officially accepted model. The main purpose of the style was to shape the worldview of the worker in a manner which returned the German art to Russia of the 19th century: The Heroic Portrait of the Worker, The Brigade and The Collective.

Though the emphasis was placed on the worker, a uniform model has not actually been established for him at all. Questions, such as 'how will the image of the worker look like?', 'which artists can serve as a model of inspiration [Picasso, Käthe Kollwitz[4]]?', 'what is  Modernism and what is Decadence or Avant-Garde?', 'What about leisure time?', 'nudity?', and so on, repeatedly arose in the party discussions[5].

The Soviet demand for "art which serves", which applied to the artists themselves in practice, only entered into force in 1958 while the Realistic Figurativeness was announced in 1959: proletarian art produced under the "Social Realism" model and which was linked not only to the worker but to the party as well. This demand officially remained in force until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet regime in East Germany in 1989. In addition, the "Bitterfeld Weg" program, which attempted to encourage 'simple' employees to start creating art while expropriating the field from the artists themselves, was also announced in the GDR in 1959 – However, this plan encounter various types of resistance from the workers and the artists[6].

Over the years, a constant dialogue, moving between the hidden layers and the visible ones, took place between East and West: and If in the East the debate revolved around 'the form' (formal), the debate which emerged in the West in the early 1950s revolved around the abstract 'non-form' ('informal')[7]. From this reason - the binary division between the "Social Realism" in the GDR, and the German/American Expressionist Abstract in all its various forms in the West is generally an acceptable division[8]. This division was existed especially during the first two decades after the end of the war, when any artist in West Germany who had the slightest affection to the figurative or classicist style, was almost immediately suspected of being sympathetic towards or supportive of the values ​​of the National Socialist regime.

The division was not merely a division of form but was loaded with a hierarchical scale of values ​​on both sides as well: While the West, led mainly by America, perceived the art of East Germany to be outdated and as being recruited under the Soviet regime (political art), the Western art was presented as if it itself was the German and the American Art, the avant-garde, the international, that which represents freedom, the escape into fantasy and the breaking of conventions - which is only possible under a democratic regime[9]. The western field had rushed to identify itself as a versatile field that allowed an individual voice to express itself freely. If this is so, then the western perspective had to portray the art of the East as a reverse image of itself.

But in contrast to the West's artistic contribution which was merely exposed on the eastern side as well, the eastern art had generally remained hidden from the eyes of the West almost until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany, and yet – the Allies continued to brand it as a local and traditional art belonging to the "Old Europe".

The use of figurativeness and the Eastern demand for a clear art carried with it echoes of the dictates associated with the Nazi regime; a situation that made its identification with totalitarian dictatorship and propaganda very simple.

For the first time in art history, the center of gravity for the field of art shifted from Europe to the United States. The City of New York, which served as a focal point for intellectual and artistic refugees from Europe who managed to emigrate to it in previous years, began to figure prominently in the field. And only after the end of World War II and New York's transformation into the "next thing", the terminology of the entire field began to change.

The field of art was no longer perceived as being local. Now, with the strengthening of the consumer society in parallel with the development of new discourses, such as the postmodernist discourse feminist [or gender] discourse and the post-colonialist discourse, the American art was identified as the "international field of art". During the Cold War terms such as "Contemporary Art", "Global Art" and "International Style" had been introduced into the vocabulary. Somewhere between "Global History," "Global War" and "Global Capitalism" the art had come in as well[10]. The new language now represented everything that was not art under the Communist Soviet Union[11] and, in an act of appropriation, West Germany art had also come to be identified with American art as German artists from the West or those who immigrated to it like Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Georg Baselitz were embraced warmly by America.

The choice, of the Allies in general and the US in particular, to strengthen the abstract on the western side via the artistic institutions should be understood as a political-ideological practice. This choice gave rise to a meaning-laden binary division between East and West Germany, the latter taking care to brand the former as the "Other": the enemy of the American field of art which dominated the hegemony. The distinction between the abstract and the figurative was equivalent to the distinction between the two political-economic worldviews and the presentation of the abstract as progressive, avant-garde and more daring succeeded in excluding the eastern art from the discourse and deny it the possibility of being judged by artistic values​​.

The main purpose of the American forces had been to erase any trace of 'Germanism' and to avoid artistic attempts to establish a 'new' national German identity[12]. In order to distinguish the West from the figurativeness that characterized the the Third Reich and the East, the Allies promoted and supported in exhibitions such as the documenta. Throughout artistic collaboration among West Germans artists and Americans and by presenting the works of American artists such as Jackson Pollock, they strengthened the German Abstract and the American Expressionist Abstract. Later on, the Allies will support artists associated with the 'Minimalist' style and the 'Pop Art' in the same manner[13]. Also, through its libraries and schools, the Allies flooded the city with French and American art magazines heralding the new 'individual' style[14].

By contrast, the party in East Germany was careful to brand the art on its side in the exact opposite way, with these shortcomings actually being highlighted as advantages: The eastern art is the proletarian art of the working collective which presents a bright image with a clear interpretation, and does not purport to be 'capitalist art which describes the western decadence, the nonsense and the irrationality of the American bourgeois society'. Therefore, the West did not engaged in a hidden dialogue with the formal happenings in the East by itself – It was reciprocal: for example, while the Performance Art began to blossom in the West in the 1950s [not only in West Germany], the East rushed to respond to it with Site-Specific art displays – held specifically at agricultural farms and industrial plants[15].

The 1960s were primarily identified with the construction of the Wall. Over the years to come and until the end of the 1980s, many art departments and schools were closed down in the East, yet paradoxically, it is in this very period that the field of art experienced greater liberalization. Stalin had already died in 1953 and the search for German identity had only begun to intensify.

Throughout those same three decades, until the final collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, both Germanys experience a massive construction of museums on and a multitude of exhibits due to political considerations. At the same time, Europe and the United States began to experience greater economic stability after the harsh years of war, and the abstract began to give way to new movements that cried out critically in favor and against the transformation of the art into a product within the consumer society.

These problems began to arise among artists from both Germanys – West and East alike, but in fact it was the hegemony which dominated West Germany who continued to dictate the narrative of the victors. The division had essentially created a sort of 'Cultural Embargo', as Claudia Mesch called it, which was reflected in the concealing of information from the audience and in the absence of communication between the two Germanys[16], and if until the 1960s a covert dialogue was still being conducted between the two sides, the construction of the Wall transforms it into a one-sided Western monologue.

In practice, the young generation of East German artists that operated during the 1970s and the 1980s and was educated primarily by the older artists, had already enjoying the fruits of this partial freedom: Despite attempts by the West to exclude the eastern art during the 1970s, many members of the younger generation were exposed to international trends and in addition to the government institutions, an extensive art scene of private galleries began to develop in East Germany in addition to the government institutions[17]. The flourishing of these galleries and the alternative exhibition spaces strengthened further during the 1980s and great many magazines dealing with art began to be published as well[18].

 

In this section I attempted to track the occurrences in the western and eastern field of art. The division between east and west is not a neutral or unilateral division between the "right" western perspective and the repressive east. This was an ongoing struggle which constantly took place between the two sides, and was fueled by dueling economic-political interests originating from two divergent ideological concepts. However, within all of this freedom we must not forget that various artists were persecuted in the East and the censorship of the party many times was enforced by force.

 

The Place of Photography in East German Art

In recent years, there are few attempts to correct the exclusion of Eastern art from the art history discourse. Many of these attempts continue to place the most of the focus on photography. While the place occupied by the painting in East Germany art was relatively known to the West, the artistic contribution of photography remained mostly hidden from it.

Although the beginning of the photographic revolution and the mechanical reproduction era evolved almost parallel to the Bolshevik Revolution, the attitude towards this medium in East Germany was very ambivalent and the regime in the east had not yet made up its mind in regards to photography: On the one hand, even in the late 1970's photography was not fully considered as art[19], and on the other hand as a medium, it matched to some extent values ​​of the Bolshevik Revolution as well as the party while the camera served as a document tool that enable to display a figurative and "objective" presentation of reality, which the result can be reproduced many times.

Photography was a relatively new medium and therefore it was more difficult for the party to design clear lines for it as was done in older mediums, and while sculpting, painting, poetry, literature and theater were closely monitored by the Party - photography was scrutinized much less[20].

To understand the field of art in the East it is important to understand its economic system as well. Expenses such as health insurance, social benefits for families with children and rent were very low and often subsidized by the party, a reality which enabled many artists in the east to work as freelancers. By virtue of their work as freelancers, the artists gained greater autonomy and therefore during the "overtime hours" a large part of the duties and limitations of the party did not apply to them – a situation which indirectly encouraged artistic freedom (relatively speaking). A few hours of work were enough to cover most of the expenses, which left some free time for personal projects. The state subsidies also made it possible for mothers and women to engage in art and therefore the eastern field was actually more egalitarian, gender-wise, than the western field of art, which was still largely dominated by male artists.

At the same time, even the Eastern artists themselves benefited from the fact that photography was a relatively new medium. The non-perception of photography as a real form of art had frequently allowed it to pass "under the radar" of the party censorship. Some eastern artists removed the obvious scandals but kept the iconographic allusions or the critical dimension, which were more or less hidden from the party yet mostly understood by the audience. They search for creative solutions and found alternative spaces to exhibit their art, or hold job strategies of "double message", especially in photography: officially - serving the party, but at the same time – investigating the medium itself or criticizing the party and its domination. On the surface some artists produced archetypes images that fit the general party's spirit, but beneath the surface some of the photographs included images that radicalized which included social critic[21]. As commented upon by East German artist Gundula Schuze-Eldowy:

"They [the party] couldn’t read the iconography, the rally subversive pictures stayed on the wall, and the audience, in general, understood this"[22].

As an example working in this tactic one can often found in photos took at formal events such as funerals and memorial ceremonies. There, those artists chose sometimes to document the emotional moments or expressions or criticizing, and not only to take propaganda photographs that will serve the party[23].

 

Photograph no. 1

Evelyn Richter, Vor der Nationalgalerie Berlin um 1958 / In front of The National Gallery, Berlin ca. 1958

(Reproduction by: Harald Richter, Hamburg)

© Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig

 

 

While in Photograph no. 1 one can still find the documentary element, he can already feels the hidden criticism: the mother and the her children are standing on the stairs between two massive pillars. On the right side, two more female figures are standing. All the characters are looking away in the same direction - out of the piece itself and in such a way that the outside viewer will always be the opposite of the occurrence on Unter den Linden Street.

Richter presents the allegedly east Berliner family, but the lack of adult male figures is noticeable. All family members imprisoned between the two pillars while behind them the German past that failed and collapsed: from the statue of the emperor through the bombed national gallery's pillars as evidence from the last war. They are all watching towards the unknown future, but while the outside viewer is standing in this "future space", the characters in the photo belong to this failed past and so – the GDR itself[24].

The most significant change occurred in the years following construction of the Wall in the 1960s of the previous century: If in the 1950s anyone who was not loyal to formalism was charged with subjectivity and his career could be terminated in a heartbeat, in the 1970s and 1980s the attempts to reflect artistic freedom and emancipation in the east actually suited the Party which was attempting "the loosen the reins' and provide a sense of variety that would benefit the Soviet totalitarian branding in western eyes and the problematic reality of a divided Germany which was surrounded by a wall[25].

Slowly gathered some groups and individual artists working as freelancers, which dared to challenge the conventions of the dominant ideology in the east. Schultze Eldowy nudes  photographs series of people from the margins of the society, the monuments photographs of Sibyle Bergemann, the impressive portraits taken by Arno Fischer and the neglected houses photos that took Helga Paris in order to protest against the neglecting and the absence of the conservation of the urban space – are just a few examples. 

Unlike the official photographs that presented a utopian ideal model of the proletariat worker or the family, under the GDR, some eastern artists, especially in the seventies and eighties, continued to present the situation 'as it is' while they actually found ways to bypass the censorship in a visual way.

 

Photograph no. 2

Evelyn Richter, Eingang zum  Pflegeheim, Leipzig 1985 [!] / Entrance to the Nursing Home, Leipzig 1985

(Reproduction by: Harald Richter, Hamburg)

© Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig

 

 

Almost thirty years separate between Photograph no. 1 to Photograph no. 2, in the period when photography had experienced relatively grater emancipation. Richter presents the empty bed, covered with a white sheet, in the nursing home. At the background appears the peeling wallpaper and the famous Lenin's photo is hang on the wall. While Richter is allegedly only documented the situation, it can be very difficult to ignore the morbid and depressing feelings. In this way one can feel the two dimensions that the piece holds – the hidden and the visible: officially Richter even included an iconic image of a very important figure such as Lenin, but not officially - the death sense is indicating the end of the GDR.

The works of artists such as those mentioned before, are offering grater richness than only the critic aspects. Not only is the dual message important but so is the reinvestigation of many of them in search for different points of view, in search for questions of documentation versus art and an investigation of the photographic medium itself.

In Photograph no. 2 one can find also the interesting composition. Only as an example: the comparison between the vector that pulls to the right/up inside the Lenin's photo, to the position of the bed, and the contradiction to the vertical that separate in between; and the whiteness of the sheet on the bed that emphasize the peeling wallpaper.

In fact, the understanding of photography as the central medium in the Eastern Art where only there 'real art' could have existed is a central concept even today.

 Even now, some twenty years after the reunification of Germany and still many exhibitions that are attempting to correct the exclusion of the Eastern art from the discourse, continue to place most of the focus on photography. The relatively freedom given to photography continues to serve the Western political practice to this day. The assumption, namely that photography was not fully entered under the template of "Social Realism" or the critical dimension that arose on the part of the artists, continues the branding of the medium as an [almost] lone tool in the East Germany field of art so that even when the medium enjoys recognition and renewed presentations in museums and galleries as an expression of modernism, it is not fully tested under the same critical artistic values that are still valid for artists from the West yet are still loaded with all those assumptions that were part of the Cold War era and were responsible for the exclusion of the Eastern artists from the discourse.

The attempt to treat the eastern art as merely political art is fundamentally flawed and does not entirely reflect the artistic scene which existed in practice. This experience usually derived from the West's appropriation of "their" art as the "proper art" versus the branding of the eastern art as outdated, lacking in freedom and creativity while being subject to the rule of the SED, out of a political interest as part of the Cold War propaganda.

the understanding of photography as a realistic tool actually still fit the West's political interests since the medium made it possible to present the East as more inferior – not only in the ideology manner but also in the artistically one: because in the hands of the conceptual artists in the West, the camera served as a tool regarding the question of 'truth' and 'reality', when realistic photography had not yet been fully perceived as an art form and made it easy for the West to ignore the eastern art[26].

 

"people have said we photographed the way we did because of our incestuous relationship and because we weren't allowed to travel, meaning we had to turn the camera on ourselves and our immediate environment, and yet when I was finally able to travel, on an official commission to mark the fourth anniversary of independence in Equatorial Guinea, I photographed in exactly the same way".

Arno Fischer[27]

 

Conclusions

In order to evade the criticism and persecution of the Party, many artists were required to come up with creative solutions such as the use mediums of that were not really perceived as art such as photography and work with "double messages". Despite the art being many times political served in the east, some of the artists did not succumb to the concept by which the artist must only serve the party ideology and so they continued to create many artistic creations, which investigated the mediums ​​through artistic values such as work with unusual camera angles, through compositions and visual iconography. Many artists continuously expressed social, political and economic criticism. Nor did they shy away from confronting and clashing with German history, the trauma and the question of national identity. Even when they created documentary art, they could not ignore, of course, the restrictions of censorship and nor the fear of persecution by the party, yet most of them did not forget that they were, above all else, artists.

Did the abstract, which dominated the West in the early years after World War II actually derive from a free and individual choice of the artists themselves or was it in fact a political practice of the Western control mechanism?

Due to the West being deeply concerned with the resurgence of a German national identity there was an attempt to "reset" the German art and split it into a binary division: either it is associated with the repressive totalitarian East or it was 'international' and thus supported and sponsored by the United States.

We must begin to examine the East German art under the same Western artistic values ​​ in photography and to give it the proper respect it deserves, but beyond that – we must also understand that the choice to continue to brand photography alone as an art by virtue of its enjoying greater artistic freedom relative to other mediums, presents only a partial picture. The concepts of "East" and "West" are not neutral just as it is not a one-sided dialogue from the free West to un-free East, and both sides chose in practice how to present the narrative of the art field through choices that were motivated by economic-political considerations of the two diverging political ideologies. To do this, it is important to try and expose not only the works of art but also the interests that drive the field.

As I have attempted to demonstrate, the art in East Germany was rich and diverse and had refused to reduce itself to just one model of "Social Realism". However, further research should first examine even this style with critical eyes.

Second, we must examine why artists who made ​​use of "Social Realism" as a style, such as Diego Rivera or Picasso's famous piece from 1937 - Guernica, managed to win recognition in the Western field of art while many artists from East Germany did not.

Finally, after the reunification of Germany the art continued to be displayed ostensibly under a single wholeness although most of it was western art - meaning West Kunst, even if in practice it already included within it artists from the former East[28].

Only recently has this subject gained a deeper consideration in the field with new exhibits that exposing German art from the former East to a new audience. However, even today, more than two decades after the reunification of Germany, the 'simple' binary division of abstraction in West versus figurativeness in East, or photography only as a tool of resistance in the east, still continues to resonates in most of the exhibitions which attempt to deal with the divided art.