Egon Krenz: “Design and Change”: A book full of blank spaces

Why is part two of Egon Krenz’s memoirs entitled “Design and Change”? What did the author create and change? In the highest SED circle he was responsible for security and defense, for the state and law, for youth and sport. He writes almost nothing about this specific responsibility of his. Neither about his goals and intentions, about success or failure, about disappointments or wrong paths. It’s almost exclusively about his relationship with Erich Honecker, i.e. about his career and the interference from his “colleagues” or “friends” or “comrades” that influence it. Only his ideals were and are unshakable to this day: he still thinks in the “Thälmann spirit”, the Soviet Union is his second home and the GDR his “unique specimen of lasting importance”. He is still proud today that she has lasted 40 years. He no longer has much to do with Marx and Engels.

Now he hopes for communism that China will bring us. For this he gets applause at readings and doesn’t even notice how disrespectful he is towards the former FDJ and SED members, who don’t cheer as much as he does about what used to be “our GDR”, who had their daily worries and annoyances and at some point they got tired of all the bullying from the party, the state and the FDJ and the talk of socialism. He probably still revels in the cheering he organized at FDJ marches past, like in 1979, when he manipulatively had cheers and chants played over loudspeakers on Karl-Marx-Allee.

According to Krenz, studies by the Central Institute for Youth Research in Leipzig have allegedly repeatedly proven that young people were loyal to the GDR. But why did he then order the few who had access to these statements (I was one of them) to lock them in their safes and not let anything out? In January 1988, however, Prof. Dr. Walter Friedrich, the head of the Leipzig Institute, noted an “increasing trend of emphasizing self-employment, personal independence, individuality” at a meeting in the Central Council of the FDJ that I had already called without Krenz’s knowledge. He pointed to a “tendency in weakening of commitment and interest in political goals and tasks as they are conveyed.”

However, when I sent such assessments and evaluations to my “superior” Egon Krenz, I received the answer: “Dear Eberhard! I think it is necessary that the own responsibility of the officials of the Central Council, the district and district managements is repeatedly emphasized. Pointing out that others talk even less to young people is not very productive. At the same time he summoned me to the Central Committee for a discussion. He took on his responsibility in his own way, which he now keeps quiet about in his book.

As in the book “We and the Russians,” he reveals details from the ongoing conflict with the Soviet leadership, which he of course hid from us in the FDJ leadership at the time in the interest of his friendship with the Soviet Union. Would it have saved the GDR if the Russians had let Erich Honecker do whatever came to his mind while hunting or in contact with Western politicians?

Krenz completely ignores a central kink in the GDR; he obviously did not understand it at all: in 1976, on Brezhnev’s orders, the SED finally corrected Ulbricht’s reform concept, and his idea of ​​​​socialism as an independent social formation was disposed of with a new party program. Now things should go smoothly to communism soon. This had a devastating impact on the youth. She should no longer just be raised socialistically, but now communistically. Nobody actually knew what that meant other than party loyalty.

Krenz celebrates this in his book by rejoicing over the red scarves of the pioneers that he initiated. And in his opinion, Biermann’s expatriation from citizenship in the same year was of course a “mistake” that was also allegedly controversial in the Politburo. Not a word about the fact that the best artists left us afterwards and not a word from him about what oaths of loyalty to this decision by the party leadership he demanded from the FDJ officials. And that the GDR was supposed to become an independent German nation at that time, and that even the constitution of the GDR was changed because of this, not a word about that either. Egon Krenz even had the bold idea of ​​having new lyrics written for the GDR national anthem. At least Honecker prevented that.

What a great team it was up there, which I also voted for as a Central Committee member in 1981 and 1986. You don’t have to like the Politburo members Mittag, Schabowski, Mielke, Stoph, Krolikowski, Kleiber, but Krenz’s “obituaries” (all those affected are already dead!) are just indecent. Why didn’t he rehearse the uprising if, in his eyes, they were all just stupid people and careerists? At the end of October 1989 he shouted at me just because I had demanded that some of these troops resign: I had no respect for the anti-fascist resistance fighters!

As secretary of the Central Committee, he was also responsible for the SED’s youth policy. There is no evidence of this in this book. Why doesn’t he write anything about youth and the FDJ? As head of the FDJ from 1974 to 1983, he initiated the central youth object “Drushba-Trasse” and the “FDJ Initiative Berlin”. Thousands made their way from their hometowns to Berlin or the Soviet Union. The FDJ sent friendship brigades to Africa and Latin America. Has he forgotten all these committed young people? During his time, the FDJ organized friendship meetings with young people from socialist countries and in 1978 helped Cuba to organize wonderful world festivals for youth and students at the gates of the USA.

In 1982/1983 demonstrations against the NATO missile decision also took place in the GDR. In 1987, the FDJ organized the world’s largest peace seminar by communist and social democratic youth associations from all over the world and the Olof Palme Peace March took place across the GDR. The FDJ was the first to establish contacts with China again in 1986. Forget everything? Why doesn’t he honestly admit that he is partly to blame for the fact that the FDJ’s statistics hardly corresponded to the truth and that he disapproved of attempts to show honest success and failure? And why doesn’t he write anything about the fact that he finally banned the Forum, the newspaper for the spiritual problems of young people, in 1983? Why did you, as FDJ boss, have to wait anxiously for a call from Egon in the morning to hear his criticism of the current issue of “Junge Welt” or to answer his question about why the magazine “Neues Leben” once again had so many naked people? and other less prudish articles.

Why did he forbid me from showing the honest Defa film “Appear Obligation” at the youth festival in 1984? And why did he dictate a review of the film “Island of the Swans”? He still believes the criticism of the anti-Stalin film “Repentance” is correct today. I’m still waiting for his answer as to whether we should print a critical letter from Hermann Kant in the “Junge Welt” in 1989, but that hasn’t stopped him from claiming in the “UZ” (Our Time) that it was printed happened through his doing. The editor-in-chief and I decided this out of anger on the evening of October 7th in the Palace of the Republic without his consent.

Egon Krenz was my superior in various capacities from 1974 to 1989, first secretary of the Central Council of the FDJ, member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee, but not my friend. I wasn’t one of Krenz’s fans. He was the dominant opinion, rarely really listened, preferring to declaim in phrases, whether at central council meetings, youth forums or the FDJ cultural conference. At times he told me that I wasn’t really doing it and left it unclear what he meant by that. He scolded us in the Central Council if, in his opinion, we weren’t dressed properly or if we modified his former study a little.

He demanded vassal loyalty to Erich Honecker from us in the Central Council. He was very careful to ensure that the FDJ did not give Honecker any reason to criticize them and therefore also Egon. When the “Junge Welt” asked in 1988 why we in the FDJ wore blue shirts, that was already a reason to doubt the loyalty of the FDJ leadership. When I wrote an article in the “Junge Welt” in 1987 about the workers who stormed the Krupp Villa Hügel in Essen and compared them to the Silesian weavers, he did not criticize my illusionary ideas about socialism, but rather said that Erich Honecker was put in a bad light just because he had recently dined there with the capitalists. Is he now afraid of us who are still alive and could contradict him in his judgmental memories?

In 1982, together with Wolfgang Herger, he edited the final version of the “History of the FDJ” up to 1979. Not a word from him about what is truth in it, what is whitewashing or adulation of Honecker. In any case, I had already banned another edition in 1988. Even our attempts in the 1980s to accommodate young people’s cultural wishes and ideas more play no role in his book. He himself was a guest at the rock concerts in Berlin-Weißensee. But it was also he who finally banned the Lindenberg tour of the FDJ in 1988, which he had promised in 1983, had already rejected in 1984, but which we in the FDJ had already fully prepared after Honecker’s visit to the Federal Republic of Germany.

It was he who asked me in 1988 to ask the Ministry of Culture to ban Soviet films, which I vigorously rejected, but that didn’t stop him from ensuring the ban anyway. At least he let Honecker know our critical opinions on the “Sputnik” ban. But it was also him who asked me in 1988 to attack Culture Minister Hoffmann at the then Central Committee meeting because of his convergence ideas in a West German theater magazine. For him, none of this is worth a self-critical reminder. I could continue the list.

In my 2019 book, I addressed the question of why socialism collapsed in the GDR. I would be interested in Krenz’s opinion on my arguments. I took the view that it was not the fault of the people who ruled, but that there were important objective reasons. I still think so after reading Krenz’s book. But Krenz obviously wants to prove the opposite. He probably even managed to do that, because nothing could be saved with this leadership. But doesn’t he even notice what judgment about the GDR he is confirming?