Mobilizing East German Youth

Abstract

Of all the social groups the party leadership wanted to ‘win over’ for the socialist cause, the greatest expectations of all were placed on young people. Whatever misgivings there might have been about the political educability of the so-called ‘sceptical generation’¹ of youths after the war, the generation growing into adulthood in the early 1950s carried many of the hopes of the ideologues and pedagogues in the SED. This age group was regarded as relatively untainted by the evils of Nazi socialization, and thus especially capable of becoming socialized in the values and goals of socialism. But in the bipolar Cold War universe of the early 1950s, the cultivation of young ‘socialist citizens’ also meant driving back other contemporary influences that were seen as threats: above all that of the churches, the western media and the widespread secular pacifism predominant in Germany at the time, which in the SED’s view obscured the military threat from the ‘imperialists’ in the West. The younger generation was thus at the centre of efforts both to mobilize East German society against the West as well as to curtail the influence of the Christian churches. The main tool for accomplishing this was the ‘Free German Youth’ (Freie Deutsche Jugend, or FDJ), the official organization for youth which came firmly under SED control in 1948–49.