Die Humboldt-Universität und die Hochschulpolitik der DDR, 1960–1985

The generation of the GDR

“…Instead, he received a letter informing him that he was to become the university’s second party secretary for the next three years – again a full-time job. At the end of this period, in 1964, he became involved in the so-called Havemann affair – a professor of chemistry who held revisionist ideas about the limited use of Marxism for solving problems of the natural sciences (see Middell, 2012: 300–10). Havemann was expelled from the party, lost his chair and was put under arrest.…”

“…The young assistants, nearing 30 years of age, were at the tipping point of their careers, with clear prospects of being promoted to professorial status. ‘The wall provided the security of planning one’s career and private life for all those who accepted the conditions of the GDR’ (Middell, 2012: 274*). However, the wall also increased the pressure of responsibility: ‘Now, we could no longer blame someone else if something went wrong in the GDR’ (interview Apelt).…”

“…Indeed, the remainder of their professional lives involved ongoing attempts to implement reforms, with the imperative of increasing their practical relevance for contributing to the further evolution of the socialist state. GDR science represented one big ‘construction area of reforms’ (Middell, 2012: 291 ff. ; also J.…”

“…Their professors’ lives had indeed begun with a major reform, the so-called ‘third reform of higher education’ (see Middell, 2012: 310 ff.). The general idea, as conceived by the party, meant breaking with the traditional organization of academic disciplines, in order to increase the university’s productive forces.…”

“…His economic policy increased the existing contradiction between ideological loyalty and pragmatic prudence, a contradiction that could be resolved only by neutralizing reform efforts through a huge bureaucracy, while moving the strategically relevant but ideologically less acceptable activities into secrecy. It is for this reason that the 1970s and 1980s, in spite of the reformist spirit, appear in hindsight to be a long ‘grey continuum…The scientific landscape dawned inactively towards its own erosion’ (Middell, 2012: 331 f.*). Participating in both bureaucracy and secrecy, the Humboldt’s economists experienced Honecker’s regime as a turn inwards to their own ‘collective’ defined (and redefined) by specific responsibilities and bearers of vital secrets – far from anything that resembled the intellectual life of a bourgeois professor.…”