March 7, 1946 is considered the official founding date of the FDJ. With a ceremony in Schwerin a few days later, the youth organization is to become a symbol of hope for German youth. However, the FDJ does not remain "free and non-partisan" for long.
by Siv Stippekohl
In Mecklenburg, the history of the Free German Youth (FDJ) begins at the founding ceremony with the overture from Ludwig van Beethoven's "Egmont". On this Sunday, March 10, 1946, the Schwerin State Theater is completely overcrowded. "Boys and girls from Schwerin, be aware of the size of the hour, Schwerin is the big milestone in the history of the Free German Youth!", Edith Baumann, Erich Honecker's deputy at the time and later second wife, explains in her speech:"And If one day the history of the German youth movement is to be written after the collapse of the Hitler regime, then it will be said that it was the district of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which has always been described as so reactionary, that laid the first milestone for the Free German Youth in its state capital ."
FDJ:"non-partisan, united and democratic"
Groups called "Free German Youth" already existed during World War II. They are founded by German refugees in exile. Just a few weeks after the end of the war, the Soviet military administration approved the formation of "anti-fascist youth committees". At the same time, however, it prohibits the establishment of other youth organizations. On March 7, 1946, the FDJ was formally founded and Erich Honecker was appointed its first chairman. The new youth movement should be "non-partisan, united and democratic".
From impartiality to the "combat reserve" of the SED
But the impartiality of the FDJ will soon be over. The founding of the SED and a few years later the founding of the GDR made a significant contribution to this. Already on the III. Parliament of youth friends 1949, the association describes itself as an active helper of the politically progressive forces. In 1952 the FDJ recognized the leading role of the SED in its statute. In 1957 she was finally committed to her role as "the reliable helper and fighting reserve of the party of the working class".
Hardly any young person in the GDR can avoid the FDJ
The FDJ is banned in the Federal Republic in 1951. Hardly any young person in the GDR can ignore her - from the pioneer organization for the younger generation to "social commitment" at school and university. Formally, membership in the only approved youth organization is voluntary, but in reality there are likely to be disadvantages for those who refuse to become members. It is difficult for schoolchildren, for example, when it comes to admission to the Extended High School (EOS), which either enables or restricts access to the Abitur and university studies. At the end of the GDR in 1989, 88 percent of all young people were members of the FDJ. Pro forma. Because:The GDR Central Institute for Youth Research has meanwhile determined in unpublished studies that criticism of the organization by young people is growing, while real solidarity is dwindling.
Fight for members - and against the Young Community
In the years when it was founded, the FDJ initially had considerable difficulty recruiting members on a voluntary basis and becoming a mass organization. In 1947, even before the GDR was founded, only 16 percent of all young people were members of the youth association. That changes over the years, also due to political and propaganda pressure. Church youth work proved to be a competitor in the post-war period. In particular, the Young Community in the Evangelical Church of the GDR attracts young people - and promptly faces repression. In the early 1950s, Christian students were persecuted. At schools like the Goethe School in Schwerin, there are school assemblies that resemble show trials. Students are criticized, paraded, insulted and expelled from schools. A campaign by the FDJ organ "Junge Welt" on April 1, 1953 stated that the Junge Gemeinde was a "front organization for warmongering, sabotage and espionage on behalf of the USA". Even if the expulsions from school are later revoked, many of the expelled students have long since fled to the West.
Songs should swear by the ideals of socialism
There are also hopes associated with the founding of the youth association shortly after the catastrophe of the war. They find expression in singing, for example, which becomes an essential part of the FDJ. As early as 1946, the first songbook was published with "mass songs for young people" intended to swear young people to the ideals of socialism. "Away with the old, here with the new state! Get rid of the rubble and build something new! We have to take care of ourselves and out against us whoever dares," says the FDJ's reconstruction song, composed by Paul Dessau in 1948 , texted by Bertolt Brecht. Brecht also wrote the text of the solidarity song, which begins with the lines:"Forward, and don't forget where our strength lies, in hunger and when eating, forward and don't forget solidarity!"
Grave songs to the FDJ in Schwerin
Just as the history of the FDJ in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania began with music on March 10, 1946 in the Mecklenburg State Theater in Schwerin, it ends there too - also with music:the director Christoph Schroth thrilled the audience with a legendary evening of songs at the end of the 1980s where 50 to 60 year old actors sing the old FDJ songs from their youth. The singers stand in front of a flag-red background, a mural with their youth photos hangs above them. Memories are awakened again:of the post-war years and of the hope that socialism germinated at the time.
"We stood upstairs and cried, and they sat downstairs and cried," recalled the late Ekkehard Hahn and the actress Ingrid Michalk in a 2006 interview with NDR 1 Radio MV. In the final phase of the GDR, the actors sing about the farewell to the ideals of their youth - ideals that had been proclaimed in the same place more than 40 years earlier. In addition to her stage engagements, Michalk was also known for the 1964 Shakespeare film "Much Ado About Nothing". Hahn knows a larger audience through radio and television appearances. Both actors are also involved in the development of the FDJ song evening:"I remember very well how we viewed all of these songs for this evening," Michalk recounts later. "A piece of youth came up again. Sometimes with great fright - sometimes we burst out laughing." And Hahn added at the time:"When we rehearsed the songs, our eyes kept watering."
"That's actually a great text"
"But the decisive thing was," Hahn summed up in 2006, "that we sang these songs very differently than we sang them back then. Not in marching steps, where you kept hearing:'Rum, rumble, rumble, rumble, the new life must to become different.' You could march to it. We changed that. The songs suddenly got a depth that wasn't there before and that nobody was looking for. You thought:My God, that's actually a great text that we sang there. " The old lyrics have their own effect, even if one line of the song says:"The new life must be different from this life, from this time ... if we all shake hands, new life will also come to our country".
On November 4, 1989, Christoph Schroth brought German folk songs to the stage in Schwerin as a follow-up production for the FDJ song recital. "Where might my Christian be, in Hamburg or Bremen?", it sounds in one of the songs, a tune from the 19th century. Five days later, the Berlin Wall falls and the borders open.
Mourning over bent and lost ideals
On October 3, 1990, the ensemble of the Mecklenburg State Theater is on the Berlin Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz for the celebration of German unity. The actors sing the FDJ songs. On Farewell. In an interview in 2006, Ingrid Michalk tells how much the FDJ song recital took her back to her youth:"I know that we sang some of the songs with fervor, also with the good faith that we lived in the best country in the world permanent question was:'Are you for peace? Yes, then you are for everything.' That tenor resonates in all of these songs." The fact that these ideals had "gone down the drain" over the decades covered her with great sadness. And so this FDJ song recital also did a bit of mourning for others:like in a kind of boomerang movement, the propaganda songs of the FDJ became funeral hymns for the GDR and its failed social plan.