"From a Dead-End Street of the West to the GDR. Alice Lex and Oskar Nerlinger". (original) (raw)

2020, Cold Revolution. Central and Eastern Europe Societies In the Face of Socialist Realism, 1948–1959. Zachęta – National Gallery of Art Zachęta. 29.-31.01.2020

In the first years after the war, the political future of occupied Germany was by no means a foregone conclusion, and the ideological convictions of the citizens clearly did not coincide with sectoral boundaries. Despite the division into four occupation zones, a common ideological basis was sought for a humanist value-based, just society that had to be rebuilt after the moral and cultural bankruptcy of Germany. The struggle to rule people's hearts and minds continued, and in the political field two alternative models of statehood clashed: the Western concept of democracy and the Soviet people's democracy, with no clear preference for the former in the Allied sectors. In 1946, there were widespread suggestions to combine the socialist (economic) and democratic (political) systems; even the Christian-Conservative CDU party opted in so called Ahlener Programm announced on 3 February 1947 for democratic socialism 1 . However, such ideas collided with American concepts and raised legitimate concerns that the nationalisation of the economy might hamper post-war reconstruction. 2 After the creation of the FRG and the GDR in 1949, the polarisation of antagonistic cultural policies was finally consolidated, which forced German artists to take unambiguous, ideological stances. In the binary arrangement of 'us versus them', there was no space for negotiators seeking dialogue between the East and the West. 3 Artists and intellectuals were expected to be absolutely loyal, both Socialist Realism and abstract art were not so much styles as worldviews and ideological declarations of the artist. The division of German society into two rival states was at the same time reflected in the internal conflict of individual citizens. The search for the 'right Germany' to work and live in was accompanied by mass migrations of Germans, including artists -both voluntary and forced. 4 Contrary to the ideas prevailing in the collective consciousness, the vectors of these migrations were directed in both directions, and the moves to the East were so worrying that in 1956 the US ministry of foreign affairs commissioned a report on the opinion of the Germans from the West about the