If you believed the official line, East Berlin in 1953 was a relatively happy place. Governed by a benevolent party under a people’s democracy, its inhabitants were building a happier future for everyone from the ruins of war. The city was used to proletarians in the street marching under red banners, shouting in chorus, and displaying pride in their achievements. Still, the crowd of construction workers that assembled on the grand, newly built Stalinallee to march to their union headquarters and the seat of government were not what the Politbüro had in mind. They were angry, and for good reasons.
Some revolts are large. but get little mention history books except maybe as a comedic anecdote. Others are small, but take on legendary status. What happened in East Germany in June of 1953 was big, and it was immediately seized on by both sides of the Cold War to make it fit their respective narratives. Much of this was created in West Germany, where a propaganda of official commemoration arose that quickly obscured what actually happened.
The story is by now well researched and too complex to recount in detail. What makes it interesting is that a chain of events that nearly toppled one of post-WWII Europe’s Communist dictatorships began in small, private frustrations building up to uncontainable anger. It was indeed a spontaneous uprising of, in the broadest sense, the working class.
Life in the newly founded German Democratic Republic was not easy for anyone. The destruction of World War II still crippled many areas of public life: food and clothing were rationed, electricity intermittent, and housing scarce. The government had just embarked on a drive to impose Soviet-style economic reforms on its citizenry which angered both the middle class who lost their farms or workshops to collectivisation and the workers who saw no improvement in their standard of living as a result. Hundreds of thousands left for West Germany, where living standards were higher and democracy more tangible. The government was worried by these developments and decided to address the loss of skilled labour by raising the required work quotas by 10%.
Surely, the workers would understand that the good of the Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat required them to work 10% more for the same pay? Not really. Through much of 1953, the government received worrying reports of resistance and protest. At least one party official explaining the benefits of collective farming ended up dumped in a cesspit. On 16 June, building workers on two of the most prestigious projects in the capital downed tools and marched to the Gewerkschaftshaus to call on the labour unions supposedly representing them to do a better job. Their protest was joined by thousands and ended in front of the government headquarters.
Later, the East German state claimed all of this was a coup orchestrated by nefarious Western agents, but in reality, nobody had seen it coming. The people simply had had enough. They lived in cramped quarters, often lacking basic amenities, and found that their wages could not buy them the things they needed because they simply weren’t there. True, things had improved since the catastrophic Hungerwinter of 1947, but nowhere near as much as the state’s propaganda claimed.
Cookbook writing was a very particular genre of fiction in the Soviet bloc. Publishers walked a fine line between providing a useful product and preparing the people for a future free from material needs, a world of collective hedonism that was just around the corner. The East German Verlag für die Frau (gender roles were considered immutable even in Communist Germany) published a number of works that managed to stay relevant for decades despite changing circumstances. One of them, Unser Backbuch published in 1953, includes a recipe that would, by the standards of the mid-1950s, be a modest luxury, maybe a Sunday meal.
Bacon Cake (Speckkuchen): 500g flour, 50g margarine, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/4l milk, 1 egg, 30g yeast. Topping: 125-250g bacon, 25g butter, salt, caraway, 1/8l thick sour milk (Sauermilch) or sour cream, 4 eggs, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 teaspoon salt.
Sift the four into a bowl, shape a well in the centre, distribute the margarine along the edge and sprinkle 1 teaspoon of salt over it. Beat together the milk, egg, and crumbled yeast. Stir in the liquid starting from the centre and work the dough very thoroughly, then let rise in a warm place for about 1 hour. Then punch down the dough, work it again, and roll it out on a greased baking sheet. Wedge a piece of wood into the open side and press the dough upwards (to raise an edge) on all sides of the sheet. Leave in a warm place to rise for about 20 minutes. In the meantime, fry the finely cubed bacon in the butter until transparent (glasig), distribute them on the dough, and sprinkle lightly with salt and caraway. Mix the sour milk, eggs, flour, and 1 teaspoon salt in a tall pot and beat in a water bath until the mass begins to thicken. Pour over the bacon, spread out, and bake for 45 minutes at a medium heat. You prepare onion cake (Zwiebelkuchen) like bacon cake, but cover it in 500g of sliced onions fried in bacon fat.
If you are familiar with the bourgeois cookbooks of pre-war Germany, this recipe provides a striking contrast. No fresh herbs, no exotic spices, no ample portions of meat and enticing decoration. A meagre half pound of fat bacon and five eggs must make to for a family, and the only butter, a single tablespoon, goes towards frying the bacon cubes. The equipment is similarly basic: A baking sheet, open at one end but closed with a handy length of wood, and a bain marie improvised with two cooking pots are all that is required. These are instructions for what shocked middle class families after 1918 called the ‘servantless household’, life in an urban apartment small kitchen, but in 1953, even that was a fond dream for many Germans living in cellars, sharing communal apartments, or still housed in displaced person camps. Finding five eggs, half a pound of fat bacon, and a whole cup of milk could also pose a challenge in the state-controlled retail environment of East Germany.
Under such circumstances, and especially in contrast with the faster growing economy of West Germany, it becomes understandable that people throughout the country readily took to the streets. As early as 12 June, village communities kicked out their party organisers. By 16 June, East Berlin’s streets were dominated by a crowd of angry building workers. The next day, demonstrations took off in almost every city and town. People demanded better working conditions, lower prices, and free travel to the West. In some places, they stormed police stations and jails to liberate prisoners and destroyed party offices. The police initially did not intervene much as the government expected to bring the situation back under control with a few concessions. They revoked the increase in work quotas and some ministers actually went to meet the protesters with that announcement, probably expecting them to cheer and walk away. That did not happen – by midday, the East German government was losing control of its population. Protesters came close to storming its administrative headquarters the Haus der Ministerien (everyone knew the parliament had no significance). They fled to the protection of the Soviet occupation forces.
That was how it should have ended; A people had lost patience with its authoritarian government and ousted them from power to take control of its destiny. But this was the Cold War, and though Stalin was dead, Moscow was not going to accept such a blatant display of democracy. Martial law was declared, Red Army troops took to the streets, and the protests in Berlin were brutally repressed. That night, East German police arrested more than 10,000 people. The next morning, armed police and Soviet tanks ensured quiet on the streets. Freedom was over.
The aftermath was surprisingly restrained by Soviet standards, though that is not saying much. About 1800 people were sentenced to prison terms and seven to death. The government, deeply shocked, responded by building a system of mass surveillance and tightening border controls to staunch the flow of unhappy people leaving for West Germany. The famous Communist playwright Bertolt Brecht bitterly remarked that it might be best if the government simply dissolved the people and elected another.
More broadly speaking, though, East Germany preferred not to speak of these events ever again. The government put out the official line that the uprising had been provoked by foreign agents collaborating with domestic fascists and ended through the heroic actions of the party apparatus. West Germany meanwhile spun its own heroic legend about 17 June. Here, the narrative focused on the desire by Germans on both sides of the border to be united, casting the protesters as patriots opposing the unnatural divide between east and west – and the territorial losses following the Second World war which the Federal Republic only formally accepted in 1990. The anniversary of the uprising was made a national holiday, the Day of German Unity, which continued to be observed until reunification. Western politicians and retailers used it to call on their citizens not to forget the unfortunate brothers and sisters in the East and send them gifts of all the good things they missed. The Westpaket full of coffee, chocolate, cosmetics, clothing, and other luxuries, became a feature of intra-German relations and part of East German folklore. East Germans would grumble at the state of their shops, but no further large-scale revolt took place until 1989.
The Communist state had won. Yet in a pattern we see a lot in history, the demands of the defeated were accounted for by the winners. Work quotas were not raised again. Wages rose while prices remained fixed. Industrial policy shifted towards an increased focus on consumer goods. By 1959, Secretary General Walter Ulbricht announced a new five-year-plan with high hopes:
Our table will be set with the best nature has to offer: High-quality meat and dairy products, fine vegetables and the best fruit, the earliest strawberries and tomatoes at a time when they do not yet ripen in our fields, grapes in winter, not just in times of their glut. As Socialists, we are aware that by 1965, a superfluity of food is expected in the Socialist camp. What the retailers are facing is an ever growing wave of foods and delicacies from all over the world!
Not least because resources had to be invested in building walls, this did not exactly come to pass, but the German Democratic Republic was remarkably successful at feeding its people. Per-capita consumption of meat, milk, eggs, butter and sugar reached unprecedented heights, though things like coffee, cocoa, bananas and oranges remained rare till the end. The government had learned a key lesson: Democracy, national unity and freedom of speech were inspiring ideals, but in the end, it was the ability to live with dignity and sufficiency that decided the future of nations; All they needed to do was pay people enough to live.