Thursday 19th May am 1 hour

To what extent and in what ways did Communism transform the GDR?

Constitution 1949

• Parliament Volkskammer, representative of the people

• Upper House, Landerkammer, represented the five regions of East Germany or Lander

• President Wihelm Pieck: head of state• Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl: head of

government

Democratic Politics in the GDR?

• SED general secretary Walter Ulbricht.• The Lander were abolished in 1952 and

replaced by smaller and more numerous units the Bezirke

• Upper House abolished 1958

Changes in the GDR...Life on the Land

• 1952: Collectivisation ‘land production cooperatives’

• LPGs: a collective farm often made up of several previously independent farms now joined together

• LPGs unpopular, many farmers fled to the West• Problems with food supply: contributed to

uprising 1953

Uprising 17th June 1953

• Causes: tightening of borders, collectivisation, emphasis on enhanced productivity

• USSR was not happy with the developments in the GDR

• June 1953 key SED leaders summoned to Moscow and asked to make changes: condition of workers would become worse, they were to produce 10% more, but wages the same

Uprising 17th June 1953

• Confusion: Different messages came out in the Communist Party newspaper and Trade Union newspaper.

• Construction on the building work in Berlin halted 16th June, workers marched to House of Ministries

• One worker got to a loudspeaker and announced a general strike for the following day. News spread throughout the GDR

Aftermath of the Uprising

• Ulbricht got help from the USSR and the uprising was crushed by Soviet tanks

• West Germany under Konrad Adenauer didn’t intervene• East Germans felt abandoned• Workers won concessions• Inadequacy of secret security service in noticing signs of

unrest• Ulbricht criticised by party• SED paranoid about views of the people and determined

to crush any signs of unrest

Land Reform

• Ambitious building program: 101,800 new apartment houses were to be built between 1948 and 1950. In the end, however, only 39% built in 1950.

Success?

• Agriculture did become more efficient• Farmers well trained, becoming specialists in

crop or livestock production• Collective farms treated as industrial factories,

a place of work rather than an inherited property.

• Relationship with USSR page 147• What was the Warsaw Pact?• What was the Comecon?