Awards and other Special Items
by Andreas Michaelis

As well as presents, from home and abroad, to mark personal occasions or specific events, the »Special Inventory« includes a large number of items outside the categories we have already looked at. Among them are commissioned works intended to bolster the status of various organizations or lend prestige to occasions, and gifts presented to labour collectives, industries or institutions to honour their exemplary performance in the establishment of socialism. There are also some individual items concerning which we have no concrete data that could pinpoint their origin or purpose. Wilhelm Pieck, for instance, left presents from Asia that must have entered the President's possession in some way that can no longer be reconstructed. A wastepaper basket made out of an elephant's foot probably originated in India; nowadays, people tend to be revolted or outraged by it, but in the 50s the protection of animals was low on international agendas, and, in any case, the ethical values of a donor country might not coincide with those of central Europe. Much the same applies to one of the most appealing items in the collection, an artistic ivory carving from Vietnam dating from the brief interim period of peace and reconstruction between the war of independence and American intervention. Since this article uses only motifs relating to the everyday life of the Vietnamese, it holds some interest for ethnographers.
The World Festival of Youth held in Havana in 1978 gave the Cuban Party a pretext to make up little sacks of sand. It is a commonplace that Marxism-Leninism had long since become a religion rather than merely a political philosophy - and it therefore needed relics and sacred places. The function that water fromLourdes or dust from Christ's via dolorosa might have for Christians was served by sand from the Bay of Pigs, where Fidel Castro's troops had repulsed an invasion by Cuban exiles and foreign mercenaries in September 1961. Another relic of this kind is soil from Lenin's birthplace, packaged in true souvenir style.
The major figures in leftist political life played an important part in all the rituals of East German social organizations. Marx, Engels and Lenin were of course the indispensable cornerstones of Communist ideology; Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who prompted the foundation of the German Communist Party, and Party leader Ernst Thälmann (the stuff of legend), were likewise invariably at the heart of things; and men and women of the anti-fascist resistance, or from the (inter)national labour movement, also served these ends. In choosing these figureheads, the Stasi ministry preferred those who could be presented as fighters against fascism and imperialism, such as Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet Cheka (Lenin's secret police, a forerunner of the KGB); the German journalist and Soviet counter-intelligence agent Richard Sorge; Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack, the leaders of the Red Chapel, a secret anti-fascist organization; or notorious Soviet spy Rudolf Ivanovich Abel. These people regularly featured on honorifics and status gifts.
The clenched fist was one of the traditional symbols of the workers' movement everywhere, including Germany. At the time of the Weimar Republic, leftist comrades raised it in salute - but also, needless to say, needed their fists for hands-on purposes in fighting SA thugs. The tradition of that Red Front was upheld in East Germany, particularly within the security services. Honecker too liked to strike the pose associated with Thälmann at all manner of parades and ceremonies. Fists of many colours were used to point to »proletarian internationalism«, one of the cornerstones of Marxist-Leninist ideology.
The GDR's leadership echelons liked to stress their own working class roots. Pieck and Ulbricht had trained as carpenters, Grotewohl as a printer, Stoph as a brickbuilder and Honecker as a roofer; and all saw their origins in working class families as a key credential for the leadership of the German workers' and peasants' state. Erich Honecker was forever being reminded by the ruling proletariat that he was one of them. Doubtless in his life as a roofer he never possessed a tenth of the tools he was later given as head of state and Party.
Socialist competitiveness was intended to encourage the workforces of East Germany, and other socialist countries, to greater productivity, in order to close the gap between the leading industrial nations of the West and the Communist bloc. Competitions were held at various levels, and were regularly assessed on the occasion of social highlights such as May Day, the GDR'S anniversary holiday on 7 October, and Party or trade union congresses. Often, productivity competitions were held to mark these events, but there were also special campaigns, complete with flowery slogans. »The work we do today equals the way we live tomorrow,« ran one such slogan in 1953. The Riesa Steel and Rolling Mill's pipe manufacturing force decided that »every mark, every working hour and every gram of material must be made more productive«, and they made a steel piping table set to drive the message home. In this respect too, the bismuth workforce set a good example to workers elsewhere in the GDR. In 1971 they campaigned for more uranium for the Soviet Union. »Honour for the Party and benefit for us all,« ran their motto: »Strength for the GDR, every day at every place of work!«.Another strategy for increasing production was the innovation movement, which drew on suggestions from the workforce for improving work procedures or economizing on time, labour or material. The best ideas were showcased at trade fairs every year, and prizes awarded. In 1985, to mark the 14th GDR innovation exhibition, the Ministry of the Interior offered a special award for innovation within its own ranks, an award that finally turned up in the Berlin headquarters of the Volkspolizei, the German »people's police«. Those who wanted to make a particularly positive impression might choose a tactically favourable moment, such as a reply to a welcome resolution by the SED, to publicize new competition guidelines.If »Neues Deutschland« reported the proposals in its columns, that was sufficient and the goal had been reached: the leadership's ear had been won, loyalty to state and Party demonstrated. Those who took such pains might be rewarded with a new holiday home, a kindergarten, renovation of a works canteen, or at least a new title, »Socialist Work Plant«.
The GDR's top sportsmen and women were particularly well taken care of. Every success, and especially the Olympic medals, became a plus point to be used for all it was worth in the ideological contest. The eastern bloc might be lagging behind the West economically, but at least it could triumph in the sports arena.
Year after year, millions were invested in sport, and in return the athletes usually succeeded in outdistancing their West German opposite numbers in terms of medals. After the Olympic Games there would be bombastic receptions at which the political leaders and the sporting elite lavished congratulations on each other. After the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, ice skater Katharina Witt had the honour of conveying the sportsmen and women's thanks to Honecker for the state's generous support, and presented him with a felt hat autographed by all the medallists. The hat, part of the GDR's official Olympic rig, was made in London.
The problem of disarmament ranked very high in the GDR. Any Soviet proposal or initiative was backed up to the hilt by East German propaganda. When both sides in the Cold War were reducing their medium range missile stockpiles, the Soviet army evacuated a number of sites in 1987 and 1988, and one of these was converted into a holiday home and made over to the FDGB (Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund: the Independent German Trade Union Federation) in March 1988. To mark the occasion, Defence Minister Heinz Kessler presented FDGB chairman Harry Tisch with a symbolic key, which was presumably in the possession of the FDGB committee until the federation was dissolved. A facsimile was exhibited at the GDR's 40th anniversary show.
East Germany's declared commitment to the peace process and disarmament was matched by unceasing demands for further strengthening of the country's defences and securing of its borders. The National People's Army (Volksarmee) took regular part in Warsaw Pact manoeuvres; this participation was documented in a variety of showy items. Given the GDR's strategic position, not to mention its domestic and economic circumstances, securing the borders with the Federal Republic and West Berlin was the highest priority. Many who tried to cross those borders paid with their lives or with long gaol sentences. Awards given to frontier guards in honour of »outstanding achievements« thus strike us, inevitably, as macabre, since they prove that the brutality required of those guards was seen through the rose-tinted spectacles of official ideology.
The items in this book were chosen because they seemed the most curious or revealing. There are of course a great many more table sets from the Soviet forces, mineral and coal samples in honour of Party congresses or birthdays, or wall plaques in the Wilhelm Pieck holdings alone - but the motifs, symbols and overall approach of these items are distinctly repetitive. By no means all of the items are useful when it comes to illustrating the distinctive style evolved in the GDR and SED through ideological differences with the West. Many presents from abroad foreground ethnic aspects which lie outside the province of this book - as does the question of where the dividing line between art and kitsch must be drawn, where the home presents are concerned. Nor is it our brief to speculate about the motives behind the giving - doubtless they ranged from diplomatic protocol to personal esteem, idle habit to well-calculated ulterior motive. We need only note that, as these dutiful, ritually presented gifts piled up in the GDR, any meaning attaching to them was steadily eroded. It was not until the East German state collapsed that a new interest (fuelled by curiosity, nostalgia, and other less easily defined factors) suddenly arose.
The »Special Inventory« is a unique epitome of East German history; indeed, it conveys a whole episode in European history, and documents a key stage in the history of an ideology and movement that changed the entire world. It is widely agreed that socialism, as a practised societal structure complete with dogmas and rituals, has failed; still, it is already apparent that the global order fixed by the dominant bourgeois democracies of our age is itself in urgent need of reform if humankind are to see a way forward, socially and ecologically. New modes of societal co-existence amongst states, parties, institutions and individuals will arise, and new ideas, aims and feelings will govern future exchanges of gifts. And, in the course of time, History will consign those presents to the museums as well. The »Special Inventory« collection, formerly in the Museum für Deutsche Geschichte and now in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, fulfils a special task: it is a storehouse of relics from a culture that is no more.