What have I personally ever learnt about the gigantic uprising in the GDR on 17 June 1953? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I was five years old when the Wall came down. When our history lessons addressed post-war German history at school in the 1990s, we in the East learnt only about the post-war history of the Federal Republic (West Germany). The GDR simply no longer existed. And so, it had disappeared.
What actually happened in the GDR back then is barely remembered. This is mainly due to the fact that, for a good 60 million Germans, the day was either not on their radar at all, has been forgotten, or has never played a role. Commemorating the day of the workers’ uprising has become a ritual of German remembrance culture without anyone knowing what it stands for.
On 17 June 1953, the masses rose up in the GDR and shook the young state. But what really happened? The official culture of remembrance would have us believe that it was a popular uprising against totalitarianism, in favour of democracy and German unity. But this does not hold up under closer scrutiny.
The people rose up against the dictatorship in East Berlin and East Germany – the first revolution in the GDR, with one million protesters in 700 locations. ‘Even if most people don’t care much about the revolution, it is historically necessary,’ Stefan Heym has the thoughtful trade union secretary Witte say in his historical novel ‘Five Days in June’. The uprising was eventually crushed by Soviet tanks; at least 55 people were killed, some of them by summary execution.
‘It’s not enough to lay wreaths every year,’ says Tom Sello, the Berlin Commissioner for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship. ‘Instead, we should look at the entire history of opposition and resistance.’ In fact, the whole country could today learn a lot from this civil movement of the past – including about the high price of freedom.
A memorial in front of the Ministry of Finance in Mitte commemorates the courage and sacrifices made in the centre of the city, which was already divided but not yet separated by a wall.
It is, above all, a place of the perpetrators, whereas the victims of the GDR dictatorship in a united Berlin and Germany seem all too often to only matter on days of remembrance.
