By Fabiola G.P. Bierhoffresources.css.edu/academics/his/middleground/... · favoured Socialist...
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East German artists as political refugees
By Fabiola G.P. Bierhoff
Summary: Analyses of refugees generally focus on political and ethnic refugees; this essay
marks a bold departure by focusing on artists, a group that is generally acknowledged to be
persecuted by totalitarian regimes, but does not often become the focus of academic research.
In the period between 1961-1989 the regulated art system of the German Democratic
Republic (GDR) led to a large scale exodus of at least fifteen hundred artists to the Federal
Republic of Germany (FRG).1 Several young artists, who were born in the post-World War II
period, did so in order to discontinue working according to the rigid confines of the art policy that
favoured Socialist Realism as an ideal style for the construction of a socialist utopia. For this
generation, who experienced the devastating impact of World War II only through the stories of
their parents, the GDR was “a dead corpse, dead to an extent that you could only make fun of it”, as
the performance artist Else Gabriel stated shortly after the collapse of the regime.2 Their utter
disillusionment in the failing socialist society was expressed in autonomous artistic production that
embraced Western modernist approaches such as performance art, and sought legitimation in its
disturbing impact on a closed society.3 However, this nonconformist attitude put artists in the
crosshairs of the secret police (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit/MfS or Stasi), that in turn
criminalized their actions, and ultimately sought to dismantle or destroy artistic groups.4 In order to
continue developing their modernist art practice and being recognized as artists, several artists were
1 Hartmut Pätzke, “Register Ausgebürgert”, in: Eingegrenzt, Ausgegrenzt, Bildene Kunst und Parteiherrschaft in der
DDR 1961-1989, Berlin 2000, pp 557-694. 2 Eckhart Gillen, Das Kunstkombinat DDR. Zäsuren einer gescheiterten Kunstpolitik, Cologne 2005, p 153. Gabriel in a
conversation with Gillen in 1991: “Eine Leiche, so tot, daß man sich nur noch lustigmachen konnte.” 3 In Western Europe and North America performance art developed in part as a response to the commercialisation of the
art object, as artists endeavoured to create works of art that could not be bought or sold. The meaning and significance
of art works created in the East is different, even though they may resemble Western performance art, since it enabled
artists to express ideas outside the official discourse. 4 Hannelore Offner, “Überwachung, Kontrolle, Manipulation”, in: Eingegrenzt, Ausgegrenzt, Bildene Kunst und Parteiherrschaft in der DDR 1961-1989, Berlin 2000, pp 169-275.
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left no other choice than to emigrate, whether through internal migration or fleeing to ‘non-
socialist’ foreign countries.
This exodus occurred despite the fact that the bureaucracy of an emigration application
(Ausreiseantrag) was unyielding and the process could take up to six years. In the mid 1980s, when
the overall problems of the socialist system became more apparent, the application rate increased
significantly.5 For years, applicants literally lived amidst their packed boxes in anticipation of a
definitive answer on their emigration applications. Once in the West, they faced new challenges as
they transitioned from the state-controlled model of artistic production of the East towards the
market-led approach favoured in the West, with marked effects on their work. After all of these
efforts and sacrifices, deserting artists ended up only a few years later in a state where the former
East suddenly became West. This article addresses the numerous problems fleeing GDR artists had
to deal with prior to and after the difficult emigration procedures of the 1980s. It makes use of oral
history to get an understanding of the situation in both East and West Germany. By depicting the
paradox of working as a ‘free’ artist in the West and the role of the émigré artist after the collapse
of East Germany, this essay seeks to contribute to the understanding of the artistic turn in their
oeuvres and the implications of leaving behind their artistic past.
Why would an artist who was the visual translator of the socialist utopia and thus generally
enjoyed a high status and a good income have a desire to flee in the first place? By pointing out the
core limitations artists found themselves confronted with, a better understanding of their motives
for pursuing emigration to the West will evolve. By focusing on the (self-) controlled and regulated
art system of the GDR we can define the artistic constraints and thereby the limitations for the
younger generation. The hierarchal structure of East Germany’s ruling party, the SED
(Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands/Socialist Unity Party of Germany), was reflected in its
5 Anja Hanisch, Die DDR im KSZE-Prozess 1972-1985, Munich 2012, pp 326-371.
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subsidized cultural sector. In order to influence the artistic landscape and promote the official
artistic style, Socialist Realism, the state government founded the Verband Bildender Künstler
Deutschlands (short: VBKD or VBK), the artists’ union, in the early 1950s. Association with this
union was mandatory to pursue an artistic career.6 The union enforced the right to use special food
cards in the early years of the socialist state, supported artists’ efforts to find a studio or apartment,
and most importantly assigned commissions for art works. Simultaneously, the VBK was used as a
political instrument that implemented actual dogmas of the art policy, such as the promotion of the
prototypical function of Soviet art in society. Meanwhile, the cultural department carried out
campaigns against expressionism, formalism, cosmopolitism, abstract art and heavily debated
performance arts in the 1980s.7 Non-conformists, i.e. those who worked in an independent manner,
could continue their work only through private funding or at their own expense. Artists whose art
was not in alignment with the dogma prescribed by the official socialist style were therefore
excluded from art exhibitions and commissions and could even be banned from exhibition and
work.
In order to avoid denunciation by the state (being categorized as antisocial was a serious
matter in the socialist state since it had effects on the prospects of an entire family), some of them
sought other, non-artistic jobs or led an artistic “double-life” in which they served both the official
and unofficial art scenes.8 In the 1980s several young East German artists, who were in their 20s or
early 30s, became active in a dynamic underground scene that had been mainly boosted by new
wave and punk influences and faced the audience with the lethargic artistic cul-de-sac caused by the
conservative character of the SED. Despite the repressive cultural policy attempted to regain artistic
6 Both artists and art historians had to be affiliated with the artists’ union. 7 The main generational schism in the artists’ union appeared in different approaches towards multi-media art. In 1971
the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, Erich Honecker, announced a degree of cultural liberalization in his
Weite & Vielfalt [Breadth and Diversity] program. Yet, despite its progressive sounding name, the program did not lead
to many changes. Artists were still obliged to follow the strict path that the Ministry of Culture had paved for them.
However, within the official art world there were ongoing discussions about the future of socialist art, since new artistic
developments did not remain unnoticed. 8 Fabiola Bierhoff, Hunger for pictures, lust for life and appetite for change: The role of official and unofficial
exhibitions in the art scene of the GDR, between 1971 and 1989, unpublished master thesis, Free University Amsterdam, 2009.
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terrain and regulate the artistic production, the tangible counter-cultural niches were increasing. In
studios, residences and private galleries hidden in courtyards, an art scene flourished which added a
new dimension to the East German artistic landscape. Counter-cultural artists gradually explored
and integrated different art forms, such as Aktionskunst (a German term that comprises multimedia
art involving visual as well as dramatic and musical elements), in their own art practice. Apart from
the reappraisal of performance art, this young generation was also inspired by concepts from
American art, postmodernism, French philosophy (deconstructivism and poststructuralism), and
neoexpressionism. Illegal counter-cultural gatherings can commonly be characterized as cross-over
festivities organized and attended by a mixture of artist union members and autodidacts combining
live punk music, multi-media art, avant-garde fashion and experimental literature.
The heavy state policing of the alternative art scene reflected the overtly political nature of
many of the works presented. In 1985 the enfant terrible of GDR art criticism, Christoph Tannert,
organized the art festival Intermedia in Coswig, a small town in East Germany (Figures 1 and 2).
Intermedia was conceptualized as an experimental playground for all ephemeral, processual,
experimental and performative arts. Over a thousand like-minded artists (super-8 filmmakers, punk,
jazz and tape musicians and performance artists) from all over the republic joined this event. One of
the most contentious exhibits was by experimental media artist Lutz Dammbeck, who presented his
media collage Herakles (Figures 3 and 4), in which he combined film projection, painting, poetry,
music and dance, a new phenomenon in the East German art world that still heavily relied on the
classical genres of painting, sculpture, and graphics. Dammbeck’s collage deliberately questioned
the role of the German national socialist past in the socialist state, which went against the ruling
party’s claims to have no connection to national socialist influences. Dammbeck’s initial idea had
been to make an art film on these topics but following the rejection of this plan by the state-owned
film studio DEFA he decided to turn it into a multi-media project, which he could only perform
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during underground (illegal) exhibitions, such as Intermedia. Intermedia was meant to last seven
days, but after the second day the state security service shut it down.
Internal migration was a frequent method to continue practicing various art forms too, even
though with the direct consequense of never receiving general public recognition.9 Some artists
were convinced of the principles of the workers’ and peasants’ state, albeit not by its practical
outcome, and chose to withdraw from or adapt to the rigid cultural policy by means of isolation or
self-censorship rather than seeking to leave the country. Due to the experimental nature in the
artistic production of Carlfriedrich Claus, for example, his works of art could not been shown to
public. He worked from the early 1960s onwards in an isolated mountain town close to Karl-Marx-
Stadt (now Chemnitz) in close collaboration with other unofficial artists, from whom he gained
recognition. As an unwanted artist, whose pacifist attitude and non-conformist art practice did not
fit in the socialist uniformity, the state repeatedly offered him the option of emigrating to West-
Germany. However, the stoic artist refused because believed in the principles of socialism.10
Although the official art policy was not immediately accepted, the majority of artists had
no choice other than to either adapt their art to fit in the artistic landscape, or to flee to West
Germany or to other Eastern European states, such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, where
the art scene was fairly liberal compared to the East German situation. Thus, the main reason for
leaving the GDR was an outright political rejection caused by the rigid art policy which prevented
artists from working freely. It must be mentioned here, though, that not all artists were leaving of
their own accord. The state’s secret service used its migration policy to exclude unwanted citizens.
By persuasion and sometimes even by force, several undesirable artists, such as Claus, were obliged
to apply for an exit permit.
9 Christian Saehrendt, “Grundlagen der Auswärtigen Kulturpolitik der DDR”, in: Kunst als Botschafter einer
künstlichen Nation, Stuttgart 2009, p 86. 10 Fabiola Bierhoff, “Carlfriedrich Claus. Geschrieben im Nachtmeer”, in: De Witte Raaf (151) May/June 2011, http://www.dewitteraaf.be/artikel/detail/nl/3652#!, accessed October 3, 2013.
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Despite the fact that counter-cultural artists were acknowledged during events like
Intermedia by some of their colleagues and young art critics, who were commited to debating the
offical art policy on an higher level, the fact that they were not recognized as artists caused
existential problems. Furthermore, the decline of the socialist state and the associated supply
shortages, limited consumption opportunities and housing shortage resulted in an emigration wave
of artists seeking professional acceptance and development. Among the fifteen hundred artists who
left for the Federal Republic of Germany, about two hundred born in the post-World War II period
left in the 1980s.11
Despite the extremely undemocratic and untransparent process, an exit permit
was still the most common way to exit the real-socialism. Prisoner redemption by the Federal
Republic,12
not returning after a short legitimate trip to the West, and fleeing by crossing the border,
which were categorized as Republikflucht (desertion from the republic), were hazardous options
most artists avoided.
In order to diminish the mass exodus of young artists the Ministry of Culture attempted to
appease artists with privileges and high positions within the organized art world (VBK).
Conversely, state officials exerted heavy political pressure on artists who applied for exit permits,
subjecting them to discrimination, intimidation, and ostracism. The artists’ union instantly
dismissed any members who applied for emigration, denying them any commissions, and even
denounced them as traitors.13
Complete prohibitions on the applicants’ participation in exhibitions
and appearance in publications took every artistic opportunity from them.14
The editorial
department of the only East German art magazine, Bildende Kunst, registered the names of all
11 Harmut Pätzke, “Register Ausgebürgert”, in: Eingegrenzt, Ausgegrenzt, Bildene Kunst und Parteiherrschaft in der
DDR 1961-1989, Berlin 2000, pp 557-694. 12
Prisoner redemption can be defined as one of the unofficial economical activities between the GDR and the Federal Republic. The government of the Federal Republic paid the GDR a certain sum foreign exchange or goods in order to
redeem in response political prisoners (averaging about 40,000-100,000 Deutsche Mark per person). Between 1964 and
1989 33,755 political prisoners and 250,000 exit applicants were released and expatriated into the Federal Republic for
about 3,5 billion Deutsche Mark in total. The GDR was increasinly depending on extra money from the West. For the
Federal Republic this process was an attempt to provide humanitarian aid, though the underlying goal might have been
to morally legitimize its increasing economical relations with the GDR. 13
Lutz Dammbeck, Besessen von Pop, Hamburg 2012, p 89. 14 Hannelore Offner, “Überwachung, Kontrolle, Manipulation”, in: Eingegrenzt, Ausgegrenzt, Bildene Kunst und Parteiherrschaft in der DDR 1961-1989, Berlin 2000, p 254.
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artists who either applied for an exit permit or had already emigrated on a black list. Their names
were not to be mentioned in the magazine anymore, nor were they to be the subject of any articles.15
Even the state-owned art dealer, Staatlicher Kunsthandel, excluded art works of émigrés in its
auctions.
Until the end of its regime the government remained opposed to emigration and sought to
discourage applicants. It decided in favor of only a quarter of the applications, and the visa process
remained an arbitrary and very bureaucratic procedure.16
Artists who got invited to exhibit in other
countries were considered unsuitable to represent the GDR abroad because of the risk of flight.17
Once emigrated, one lost all rights of citizenship in the GDR. The émigré forfeited the rights of
residency, work, pension scheme, return and the disposal of his property, as well as political
rights.18
In addition to the abrupt disconnection from friends and family – who in many cases were
not informed about the exit application in the first place due to safety reasons, since an expressed
intention to emigrate could have consequences for other family members too – émigrés took the risk
of losing their entire oeuvre. Whilst performing during the Intermedia festival, Dammbeck’s
immigration application was going through the bureaucratic emigration procedure. In a recently
published biography, Besessen von Pop, he wrote about his experience exiting East Germany.
Dammbeck’s story mirrors emigration stories from several artists in the last decade of the socialist
state. Dammbeck, who had been trying to emigrate for four years, recalls:
“…The emigration itself was short and painful. One morning my girlfriend and I sat in our
living room planning an exhibition for the artists gallery Eigen+Art [an autonomous artist
gallery in Leipzig]. All of a sudden the letter slot of the apartment door opened and a letter
slowly sailed on the door mat. I can evoke what the exact letter looked like until today, and
how it gradually landed on the floor after an elegant bend. For a while we both looked
15 Interview with art historian Barbara Barsch, who worked for Bildende Kunst, Berlin August 27, 2013. 16 Anja Hanisch, Die DDR im KSZE-Prozess 1972-1985, Munich 2012, pp 405-408. 17 Christian Saehrendt, “Grundlagen der Auswärtigen Kulturpolitik der DDR”, in: Kunst als Botschafter einer
künstlichen Nation, Stuttgart 2009, p 87. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East German-born photographer Thomas
Florschuetz enjoyed an outstanding reputation in West Germany. He was asked to organize a show at the embassy in
Paris, but this couldn’t take place because he had already applied for an exit permit and was banned from international
travel. 18 Anja Hanisch, Die DDR im KSZE-Prozess 1972-1985, Munich 2012, pp 326-371.
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bewildered at the sheet of paper: it was a writing of the Ministry of Interior stating that my
family and I had to leave the state territory of the German Democratic Republic within 48
hours.19
(...) After six months the first moving boxes came from Leipzig. My attempt to
smuggle a few film reels, audiocassettes and negatives via a different transport from Leipzig
to Hamburg was betrayed by a unofficial collaborator of the state security service (Stasi)
and thus failed. Customs flagged down the truck at the border and condemned the smuggled
goods. In 1989 the customs warehouse of the GDR was cleaned up and all materials
including almost all my 8mm films had been disposed on a trash dump...”20
The story of the painter Cornelia Schleime, who had been banned from exhibition and work in the
GDR since the early 1980s, also reflects the loss of artistic property many artists had to put up with
as the price of emigration.21
She was excluded from the artists’ union in 1982. In addition to
participating at illegal exhibitions, Schleime started singing in a punk band and worked as a
ceramics painter under the pseudonym CMP to gain some attention, before she ultimately applied
for an exit visa. After five attempts within three years she was finally able to leave the GDR in
1984. Twenty-four hours before her departure to West Germany, the secret police removed
Schleime’s entire collection of work (consisting at that time of about 100 oil paintings and 1000
drawings) from her apartment, never to be recovered.22
When Schleime arrived in the West without
any paintings, she was forced to start her oeuvre completely anew. In an interview she admitted this
was her artistic life-saver: “To start over my artistic career had an interesting effect. It rebuilt my
self-confidence. I can re-invent myself over and over again.”23
One might expect that escaping from the restricted art world of the GDR to settle in the free
and liberal West would bring prosperity to the lives and careers of young artists. However,
19 Lutz Dammbeck, Besessen von Pop, Hamburg 2012, pp 89-90. 20 ibidem, pp 97-98. 21 The reason for Schleime’s work ban originated in her drawing of a tired model whose hair was covering her face.
Apparently, Schleime, who could only pursue her art studies in the evening since her child was still young, had been
sent this model, who worked in a factory during the day and therefore had an exhausted appearance in the evening. This
art work was immediately taken off the wall during an exhibition by the official committee with the argument that it
showed an inappropriate representation of women in a socialist society. 22 Zersetzung (literally “decomposition”) was a method to side-track and eliminate ‘feindlich-negative’ (hostile-
negative) persons in order to let them discontinue their undesirable activities that were ‘damaging’ the socialist society.
Usually Zersetzung entailed the disruption of the victim’s private or family life, which involved psychological attacks
such as breaking into homes and sabotaging the contents. In the case of Cornelia Schleime her complete oeuvre was
stolen from her house, before she could leave for West-Germany. 23 Deutsche Welle, Typisch Deutsch, interview: Hajo Schumacher and Cornelia Schleime on March 17, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYTfMca_S9E, accessed May 25, 2013.
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integrating into a new art system dominated by the free market turned out to be extremely
challenging. Admittedly, there were not many linguistic and cultural barriers, , and connections
existed either with relatives and friends who had already immigrated or through arranged sham
marriages that accelerated the emigration process. Nontheless, émigrés had to deal with general
financial problems caused by the lack of social security as there was no an artists’ union in the
West, and sometimes ongoing paranoid anxiety of being bugged by the secret police even outside
the GDR. Moreover, young East German artists faced difficulties caused by the art itself. The
underlying messages of their art works, which drifted into disposition and subtle political critique at
times, could perhaps only be understood and appreciated in the local context of East Germany.
Nontheless, the most common criticism they were subject to was working in a imitative, outdated
style that would only be controversial in the GDR. The East German perception of modernism,
which relied on appropriation, was dismissed as second-hand modernism. When Lutz Dammbeck
sought to contribute at an art gallery, for instance, he was told: “Mmm, your work looks like
Rauschenberg, I don’t know what to do with it. It is too outdated to be relevant to us….You would
have been better off staying in the East.”24
As a consequence, in West Germany a general rejection
of emigrant GDR artists in gallery shows emerged. Furthermore, institutions and private art
collectors were afraid of losing their official contacts with the GDR art world and therefore ignored
the artist-émigrés. Thus, émigrés not only had to seek (again) employment in other (mostly non-
artistic) jobs but had to deal with social decline and disregard as the cost of living in a democracy.
Most GDR artist-émigrés faced a struggle to come to terms with their personal past. After
having arrived in the West several artists were coping with the past by assembling their personal
experiences in narrative art works, visually translating the trauma of their application struggles,
separation from their friends and family, and arrival in the West. In the pen and ink drawing
‘Malstrom versiegt, Germania Wüste’ from 1985/1986 (Figure 5) painter Ralf Kerbach points out
24 Lutz Dammbeck, Besessen von Pop, Hamburg 2012, p 102.
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the situation of his exile friends: Cornelia Schleime, Thomas Florschuetz, Wolfram Adalbert
Scheffler, Hans Scheib and Sascha Anderson (who turned out to be an unofficial informant for the
GDR), who had all emigrated to West Berlin in the mid 1980s. The lyric poet Bert Papenfuß-Gorek
was about to cross the border, leaving behind the famous bohemian neighborhood Prenzlauerberg in
Berlin - the last station in the GDR before they emigrated for the majority of the artists.25
In
drawing only one painter is left in East Germany, Reinhard Sander, who chose internal migration.
Kerbach himself raises a picture depicting a figure with a heavy load on his back and a walking
stick, perhaps a self-portrait in which he is crossing both political systems as a pilgrim.26
After the fall of the Berlin Wall the artists’ efforts to come to terms with their former lives
continued. Cornelia Schleime’s art work “Bis auf weiter gute Zusammenarbeit No. 7284/85”/Here’s
to further fruitful cooperation No. 7284/85 (Figure 6), is one of the most important artistic
reckonings regarding the East German political system. In the early 1990s the artist was allowed to
look at the files the State Secret service of the GDR had kept on her for years. Schleime felt they
had “stolen her past” and took away the “innocence” of the counter-cultural scene. She developed a
personal art work depicting her experience of being spied on for years, even by her best friend,
Sascha Anderson, at the time. The ironic cycle consists of the actual Stasi reports which are
enlarged by silk-screening. Schleime has glued reenacted photos into the report that the situations of
the files soberly describe. While the report reads that “Sch. appears to earn well in her profession”
and “wears Western clothing,” she lies sexily in her bed with a phone to her ear. The unique art
work is running in two directions, both showing an ironic, absurd self-representation of a bohemian
lifestyle and revealing the trauma that the ruthless totalitarian, bureaucratic state apparatus caused
in Schleime’s personal life and artistic circle.
25 Paul Kaiser, Claudia Pechtold, “Facettenreicher Mythos: Der Prenzlauer Berg als Zentrum und Transitraum einer von
den Rändern nach Berlin drängenden Subkultur”, in: Boheme und Diktatur, Gruppen, Quartiere, Konflikte 1970-1989,
Berlin 1997, http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/boheme/katalog_zentren/berlin/, accessed May 25, 2013. 26 Gwendolin Kremer, “‘Zeitheimat’ - eine bildgewordene Reminiszenz”, in: Ohne Uns: Kunst und Alternative Kultur in Dresden vor und nach ’89, Dresden 2009, pp 200-202.
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The subtle sometimes agitating function alternative art had in the socialist state seemed to
deteriorate in the art system dominated by the free market. Apparently, other rules counted here.
Even though the émigrés were in some ways avant-gardists compared to socialist-realist painters in
their home country, they had to develop new approaches to fit into the commercialized art world.
To quote Dammbeck here once again: “The West was tougher, more direct and closer to the
essential. For better or for worse. Staying in the GDR would have been humiliating. We actually did
not go to the West, we rather wanted to leave the German Democratic Republic.” Art historian
Christoph Tannert argued that only a few were able to adjust to the harsh rythm of the free market,
whereas the majority abandoned their efforts to work as professional artists and switched to doing
something completely different, or working as art educators.27
Artists who could reposition their art
and sometimes radically change their style within the new scene, and thus differentiate themselves
from other artists, were often encouraged to go abroad on scholarships.28
Subsequently, they
achieved significant sales and exposure on a structural basis before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The
situation even got more complicated after the fall of the Berlin Wall: the appearance of their old
colleagues on the same art stage resulted in intense competition and political jockeying for position.
After the reunification, several artists constructed new biographies in which they intentionally left
out their career in the GDR. The most famous artist of the New Leipzig School, Neo Rauch,
intentionally leaves out paintings made before 1993, which reflected his deep roots in the traditions
of socialist-realism painting.29
Since the collapse of the GDR, several different approaches towards East Germany's
cultural legacy have emerged. In the early 1990s the discussion about visual heritage reached its
zenith. The question was raised as to whether state-sponsored visual arts could be accorded
legitimacy and credibility within a democratic society. The official art expressions were a direct
27 Interview with art historian Christoph Tannert, Berlin May 22, 2013. The classical training with an emphasis on
painting and drawing that artists enjoyed in the East helped them to find work in the West. 28
In the early 1990s both Schleime and Florschuetz were awarded stipends to spend time in the USA. 29 Frank Zöllner, paper: “Neo Rauch, die Leipziger Schule und die Eroberung des globalen Kunstmarktes”, Symposium: Die andere Moderne - Bildwelten in der DDR, Perspektiven einer Neubewertung, Weimar October 18, 2012.
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object of disapproval. The public debate surrounding the political repression of artists in East
Germany was so polarizing that many even asserted that no significant or authentic art could ever
have been produced there. Thus, whether official or unofficial, all East German art was deemed an
undesirable product of a bygone regime and was categorically rejected. This, among other facts, led
to a political struggle in the 1990s, the so-called deutsch-deutsche Bilderstreit, which could be seen
as a proxy conflict underlying the reunification measures to integrate the GDR within the capitalist
Federal Republic of Germany. This discussion as to whether visual arts originating during a
dictatorship could find support within a democratic society boosted a fundamental argument about
the reappraisal and canonizing of Germany’s art history after the Second World War.30
From our
Western perspective, art historians tend to conclude that East German art practices were not really
innovative, nor did they follow a linear development. Such a patronizing attitude has resulted in
deriding this art as derivative or mimetic.31
Perpetuating a Western hierarchical approach towards
East German performance art presumes the artists’ victimization under totalitarianism, and denies
their artistic agency. For that reason these modern developments should be seen within the context
of East German site-specific cultural and political conditions in order to recognize and accentuate
the plurality of GDR art, resulting in a differentiated and evolved understanding of East German art
before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
30 Jonathan Osmond, “German art collections and Exhibits since 1989: the legacy of the GDR”, in: Elaine Kelly and Amy Wlodarski (ed.), Art outside the lines, Amsterdam 2011, pp 215-236. A concise survey of the deutsch-deutsche
Bilderstreit is due to be published this year: Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, Paul Kaiser (e.a.), Bilderstreit und
Gesellschaftsumbruch. Die Debatten um die Kunst der DDR im Prozess der deutschen Wiedervereinigung,
Berlin/Kassel 2013. 31 Eckhart Gillen, “Gesinnungsästhetik contra Beliebigkeit. Der deutsch-deutsche Bilderstreit”, in: Glaser, H., Was
bleibt – was wird, der kulturelle Umbruch in den neuen Bundesländern, Bonn 1994, pp 160-173; Karl-Siegbert
Rehberg, “Diskurs-Facetten, einleitende Bemerkung zur Debatte über Kunstpolitik und bildende Künste in der DDR
sowie über den Umgang mit einem Nachlaß”, in: Paul Kaiser, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, Enge und Vielfalt, Auftragskunst
und Kunstförderung in der DDR, Analysen und Meinungen, Hamburg 1999, pp 529-532; Paul Kaiser, Karl-Siegbert
Rehberg, 'Was war, was ist, was bleibt? Ein Brief und Antworten auf den Brief von Künstlern und Kunsthistorikern, in:
Paul Kaiser, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, e.a., Enge und Vielfalt, Auftragskunst und Kunstförderung in der DDR, analysen und Meinungen, Hamburg 1999, pp 573-634.
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© 2014 The Middle Ground Journal Number 9, Fall 2014 http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org
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[Figure 1]
[Figure 2]
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© 2014 The Middle Ground Journal Number 9, Fall 2014 http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org
See Submission Guidelines page for the journal's not-for-profit educational open-access policy
[Figure 3]
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© 2014 The Middle Ground Journal Number 9, Fall 2014 http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org
See Submission Guidelines page for the journal's not-for-profit educational open-access policy
[Figure 4]
[Figure 5]
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© 2014 The Middle Ground Journal Number 9, Fall 2014 http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org
See Submission Guidelines page for the journal's not-for-profit educational open-access policy
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© 2014 The Middle Ground Journal Number 9, Fall 2014 http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org
See Submission Guidelines page for the journal's not-for-profit educational open-access policy
[Figure 6]