Women as Promoters of Peace in the GDR

Research on women’s peace activities in Germany has thus far focused on the West during the postwar period and the 1970s and ’80s.1<p>Dreier, Helke: Frauen und Frieden nach 1945. Eine Annäherung an den Diskurs in Ost- und Westdeutschland, in: Wissenschaft &amp; Frieden, Vol. 35, 2017, no. 1, 15.</p> For the GDR, the focus has been on the peace networks of the 1980s and the Women for Peace (Frauen für den Frieden) groups acting within and in opposition to the “peace state GDR.”.2Vgl. Miethe, Ingrid: Frauen in der DDR-Opposition. Lebens- und kollektivgeschichtliche Verl&auml;ufe in einer Frauenfriedensgruppe, Opladen 1999,299 S. Very little attention has been paid to peace activities by women in the DFD, which was the GDR’s main official organization for women.3<p>I became interested in this topic after wondering about the title of the founding conference and the many documents over the years that contained the word “peace” in their titles.</p> 

The First Women’s Committees

In 1945, it was mainly women who began to repair the material damage of the war and to reflect on its causes. This culminated in a sense of obligation to prevent any further wars and to regain the rest of the world’s trust4<p>Frauenausschüsse erstreben für Deutschland das Vertrauen der Welt!Losung auf demFoto von der ersten Delegiertenkonferenz der Frauenausschüsse vom 13.-14.7.1946, in: Genth, Renate / Schmidt-Harzbach, Ingrid: Die Frauenausschüsse. Das halb gewollte, halb verordnete Netz, in: Genth, Renate et al. (Ed.): Frauenpolitik und politisches Wirken von Frauen im Berlin der Nachkriegszeit 1945-1949, Berlin 1996, 67.</p>. In conjunction with the work committee movement, a diversified movement by women arose in the four occupation zones, which not only addressed social welfare but also advocated for peace. This network had a “structure … doubtless … growing ‘from below’ and born of concrete need.“.5<p>Schröter, Ursula: Die DDR-Frauenorganisation im Rückblick, in: Schröter, Ursula / Ullrich, Renate / Ferchland, Rainer: Nachträgliche Entdeckungen in DFD-Dokumenten, DEFA-Dokumentarfilmen und soziologischen Befragungen, Berlin 2009, 17.</p>

Antifascist women’s committees formed in the district administrations of Berlin, beginning with those in Schöneberg and Köpenick. They were later supported by a directive from the Soviet military administration on October 30, 19456<p>Also in the Berlin districts of Friedrichshain, Tiergarten, Wilmersdorf, Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte, Wedding, Kreuzberg, and Biesdorf; order no. 080 of October 30, 1945 from the supreme head of the Soviet military administration in Germany on the organization of antifascist women’s committees in the district administrations, in: Frauen- und Gleichstellungsbeauftragte der Landesregierung Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Ed.): Scholz, Hannelore: Die DDR-Frau zwischen Mythos und Realität. Zum Umgang mit der Frauenfrage in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone und der DDR von 1945-1989, Schwerin 1997, 54.</p>. Women’s committees also started up in the western occupation zones in mid-19457<p>In Hamburg, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Hannover, and Frankfurt am Main. See article in: Kuhn, Annette (Ed.): Frauen in der Nachkriegszeit, Vol. 2, Düsseldorf 1986, 94‒156.</p>, and were tolerated by the Western Allies. These were the seeds that led to the founding of the DFD on March 8, 1947, as a Germany-wide women’s organization. It was later relaunched on local levels in the FRG in early 19508<p>Nödinger, Ingeborg: „Mitwissen, mitverantworten und mitbestimmen“. Zu den Anfängen des Demokratischen Frauenbundes Deutschland, in: Kuhn, Annette (Ed.): Frauen in der deutschen Nachkriegszeit. Vol. 2, a.a.O., 125; Schröter, Ursula: Die DDR-Frauenorganisation im Rückblick, a.a.O., 31.&nbsp;</p>.

The International Women’s Peace Movement

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DFD documents from the 1950s describe the organization’s actions for peace as part of the international peace movement or the women’s peace movement. This was based on the DFD having joined the ‘Internationale Demokratische Frauenföderation’ (Women’s International Democratic Federation, IDFF). Founded in Paris on November 29, 1945,9<p>Haan, Francisca de: Hoffnungen auf eine bessere Welt. Die frühen Jahre der Internationalen Demokratischen Frauenföderation (IDFF/WIDF) (1945-1950), in: Feministische Studien, Vol. 27, 2009, no. 2, 241.</p> the IDFF was “the first international organization in the history of the women’s movement to unite women of different political and religious persuasions and different occupations and social classes.“10<p>10 Jahre IDFF, in: Lernen und Handeln, Düsseldorf, Vol. 6, 1955, no. 11, 3.</p>. It arose in the wake of women’s most recent experiences of fascism and the worldwide struggle against it, 11<p>Haan, Francisca de: Hoffnungen auf eine bessere Welt, a.a.O., 244.</p> “especially on the initiative of resistance fighters and survivors of fascist concentration camps.”As such, “its political orientation and attitude toward Germany were already set. The IDFF’s symbol was, and still is, a globe with a dove of peace. Not surprisingly, the DFD … was initially viewed in the IDFF with distrust.“12<p>Schröter, Ursula: Die DDR-Frauenorganisation im Rückblick, a.a.O., 50 ff.</p> A DFD survey of its members in 1948 found that 98.5 percent were in favor of applying to join the IDFF. The DFD was therefore the first German women’s organization to become part of the international women’s movement after 1945. It promoted policies for peace and gained acceptance from its critics.13<p>Ibid., 56.</p>

One of the first joint peace actions by DFD members in East and West Germany consisted of collecting signatures for the worldwide campaign in 1950 to ban nuclear weapons.

Informational material from the DFD entitled Warum führen wir unser Friedensaufgebot durch? (Why do we take action for peace?) posed the question: “What do we as German women have to do?” In response, it listed concrete tasks and the following goal: “Every woman who wants peace must join the DFD.”14Zum Schulungsthema des Monats. Warum f&uuml;hren wir unser Friedensaufgebot durch?, in: Lernen und Handeln, Berlin, 1. Jg., 1950, H. 5, S. 8.

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The Struggle for Peace in the Cold War

By 1946, the Western Allies were already pushing for the militarization of Western European countries. When the two German states were founded in 1949—the FRG in May and the GDR in October—ideological Cold War rhetoric hardened and influenced the respective positions and actions of DFD groups in the East and West—which remains a topic for research to this day15<p>Cf.: Stoehr, Irene: Kalter Krieg und Geschlecht, in: Ziemann, Benjamin (Ed.): Perspektiven der Historischen Friedensforschung, Essen 2002, 133–145.</p>. The DFD’s magazine, Frau von heute, and its internal publication for functionaries, Lernen und Handeln, reported on the different activities: in the West on actions against the Paris Conventions (1954) and military recruitment16<p>Aktionen gegen die Rekrutierung, in: Lernen und Handeln. Mitteilungsblatt des Demokratischen Frauenbundes Deutschlands, Düsseldorf, Vol. 6, 1955, no. 1,10‒12.</p> (1955), iin the East on pride in sons who wanted to serve with the national police force (1953)17<p>Wir sind stolz auf unsere Söhne, in: Lernen und Handeln. Funktionärsorgan des Demokratischen Frauenbundes Deutschlands, Berlin, Vol. 4, 1953, no. 6, 12 f.</p> (1953). Eastern issues often highlighted legal action against women peace activists or DFD members imprisoned in the FRG, while Western issues printed reports by Western DFD groups that had visited the GDR. In 1957, the DFD was banned in the FRG as a communist and anti-constitutional organization.

The Conception of Peace

Discourse on the underlying conception of peace in the DFD, preserved in its media and publications and in the holdings of relevant archives,18<p>These include files from the Archive of the German Women’s Movement (Archiv der deutschen Frauenbewegung) in Kassel and the Dresden Regional Women’s Archive (FrauenStadtarchiv Dresden), and publications from the MonaLiesA feminist library in Leipzig and the Gender Library of the Humboldt University Berlin’s Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies, among others.</p> still needs to be studied. Right from the beginning, the experiences of World War II reinforced the idea that women as mothers had a special responsibility to promote peace. This view, already familiar from the first women’s movement, was used successfully by the DFD in its activities to support a ban on nuclear weapons.

Previous studies have affirmed a consensus on peace policy between women in the East and West,19<p>Schmidt-Harzbach/ Stoehr: Friedenspolitik und Kalter Krieg. Frauenverbände im Ost-West-Konflikt, in: Frauenpolitik, 229‒254.</p> while others have refuted this primarily because all advocacy for peace in the West was already being denounced as communist by 1946.20<p>Bouillot, Corinna / Schüller, Elke: „Eine machtvolle Frauenorganisation“ - oder: „Der Schwamm, der die Frauen aufsaugen soll“. Ein deutsch-deutscher Vergleich der Frauenzusammenschlüsse der Nachkriegszeit, in: Ariadne, Vol. 11, 1997, no. 27, 52.</p>

Discussions on pacifist behavior were held in the DFD in the early 1950s in connection with Marxist argumentation on “just” versus “unjust” wars.21<p>Lewin, Friedl: Was bedeutet Pazifismus, und warum bekämpfen wir pazifistische Einstellungen?, in: Lernen und Handeln, Vol. 4, 1953, no. 3, 6–8; 2. Teil: dieselbe, in: Lernen und Handeln, Vol. 4, 1953, no. 5, 5–7.</p> Postwar pacifism by most women in the West was linked with a resurgence in traditional gender ideology,22<p>Kuhn, Annette: Frauen suchen neue Wege der Politik, in: idem (Ed.): Frauen in der deutschen Nachkriegszeit. Vol. 2, Düsseldorf 1986, 26.</p>,in addition to anticommunism23<p>See the presentation by Theanolte Bähnisch on the tenth anniversary of the Deutscher Frauenring in Bonn on November 5, 1959, in: Deutscher Frauenring e.V. (Ed.): Weil es sich lohnt! Sechs Jahrzehnte Einsatz von Frauen für Frauen. 1949-2009, Berlin 2009, 23.</p>. 

Alongside its international activities, the DFD’s advocacy for peace revolved around the world of work: “In a socialist country, all good labor and every effort to develop and defend socialist democracy and to teach children and the next generation to value good relations among nations and to strengthen international anti-imperialist solidarity serve to support the worldwide struggle for peace.”24<p>Oeser, Edith: Wenn du den Frieden willst …, Berlin 1980, 131.</p>

The DFD thus combined the two lines of argument: “The special disposition of women qua gender for peace, plus their social and political equality, laid the foundation for discourse that promoted peace.”25<p>Dreier: Frauen und Frieden nach 1945, 15.</p> Based on this position, the DFD made numerous appeals for peace at conferences and was especially active in contributing to UN documents.26<p>„Deklaration über die Teilnahme der Frauen an der Förderung des Weltfriedens und der Internationalen Zusammenarbeit“ von der UNO angenommen, in: Lernen und Handeln, Vol. 34, 1983, no. 3, 36 f.; vgl.: Hörz, Helga: Zwischen Uni und UNO. Erfahrungen einer Ethikerin, Berlin 2009; Hörz, Helga: Nein zu Atomwaffen - Ja zum Atomwaffenverbot, in: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Vol. 60, 2018, no. 2, 111–125.</p> For example, it was a co-initiator of the Declaration on the Participation of Women in Promoting International Peace and Cooperation, which became UN resolution 37/63 in 198227<p>Prpic, Jasmina: 30 Jahre UN-Frauenrechtskonvention (CEDAW) in Deutschland. Eine Bilanz. Abschlussarbeit im LL.M.-Studiengang an der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg Rechtswissenschaftliche Fakultät WS 2011/2012, Freiburg 2012.</p>. Sources from the time leave the impression that “the discourse on peace was shaped largely by the East.”.28<p>Dreier: Frauen und Frieden nach 1945, 15.</p>

Consistent promotion of a peaceful society was based on economic principles,29<p>„Weil der Sozialismus den Krieg nicht braucht, …, kann er alles bekämpfen, was dem Krieg dient und somit als selbstproduzierende Friedensmacht wirken.“ Staufenbiel, Nikolai: Zum Zusammenhang von Familie und Frieden, in: Informationen des Wissenschaftlichen Rates „Die Frau in der sozialistischen Gesellschaft“, Vol. 21, 1985, no. 3, 72.</p>, the Marxist vision of a new society “whose international principle will be peace because every nation is subject to the same principle of labor,”30<p>Marx, Karl: Erste Adresse des Generalrates über den Deutsch-Französischen Krieg, in: Marx, Karl / Engels, Friedrich: Werke, Vol.17, Berlin 1962, 7.</p> and the need to achieve equality in accordance with the maxim that the more equal its members are, the more peaceful a society will be. Whether this decades-long agitation for peace did in fact foster a particularly peaceful mentality in the GDR has yet to be studied, 31<p>Wette, Wolfram: Ernstfall Frieden. Lehren aus der deutschen Geschichte seit 1914, Bremen 2017, 581 and 505.</p>, and the question of what role women might thereby have played has not even been raised.

In the early 1980s, the NATO Double-Track Decision and the stationing of Soviet missiles in the GDR aggravated ideological confrontation and heightened the threat of international war. The ’Women in the military? We say NO!’ initiative arose in many West German cities at this time. The West German military justified its attempts to recruit women with reference to both equality and a declining population.32<p>Bieschke, Anne: Die unerhörte Friedensbewegung. Frauen, Krieg und Frieden in der Nuklearkrise (1979-1983), Essen 2018, 38–41.</p>

Similar reasons lay behind East Germany’s new military service law of 1982. A commentary in Lernen und Handeln at the time does not mention that ‘female citizens’ could then be conscripted and mobilized if needed for defense, and therefore registered for this purpose at any time.33<p>Kommentiert. Im Dienste der Friedenssicherung, in: Lernen und Handeln, Vol. 33, 1982, no. 6, 36‒39.</p>

Just as official accounts of women in the German military fail to mention women’s initiatives even today, so too were media in the GDR silent about women’s advocacy for peace. Female peace activists were persecuted as communists in the FRG, and as enemies of the state in the GDR. Submissions to Erich Honecker from peace activists in the East34<p>Bohley, Bärbel: Eingabe an Erich Honecker vom 12.10.82, in: Bildungswerk für Demokratie und Umweltschutz (Ed.): Genau hingesehen, nie geschwiegen, sofort widersprochen, gleich gehandelt. Dokumente aus dem Gewebe der Heuchelei 1982-1989. Widerstand autonomer Frauen in Berlin Ost und West, Berlin 1990.</p> and letters to him from those in the West35<p>Cf.: Münnerstädter Frauen schreiben Bitt-Brief an Erich Honecker, 3.2.1988, in: ibidem; Frauen für den Frieden, Kreis Böblingen. Ein offener Brief an Erich Honecker, in: Quistorp, Eva (Ed.): Frauen für den Frieden, Bensheim 1982, 56 f.; Kelly, Petra K.: Mit dem Herzen denken. Texte für eine glaubwürdige Politik, München 1990, 200–206.</p> called for overcoming confrontational thought in geopolitical blocs and for finding shared approaches to disarmament. Honecker was not able to follow this line of reasoning. In his response to Petra Kelly, he emphasized the necessity “not only of ploughshares but also of swords.”36<p>Ibid.: 206.</p>. 

The idea that arms were needed to secure peace was also held by the leadership of the DFD as well as by many women who sincerely sought to promote peace, as shown by other articles published in Lernen und Handeln in the 1980s. Actions by West European women against ’first-strike nuclear weapons from the USA’ were explicitly compared to peace demonstrations by women in socialist countries in an article under a shared title.37<p>Frauen kämpfen gegen den friedensgefährdenden Kurs der USA, in: Lernen und Handeln, Vol. 34, 1983, no. 9, 40–43.</p> This suggests an accord evident only with respect to the United States. Even if the USSR did not view disarmament as a weakness, it too was dominated by the determination to guard against any change in the military/strategic balance of power.38<p>Argumente aktuell, in: Lernen und Handeln, Vol. 38, 1987, no. 2, 41.</p>

Freda Brown’s call at the ninth IDFF conference in Moscow in 1987 to “enter the year 2000 without nuclear weapons!”39<p>Ibid., 29 f.</p> was highly relevant. Women around the world are still fighting against weapons and wars today. “The children of my generation should be relentless in asking especially their mothers: What are you doing to oppose this?”40<p>Morgner, Irmtraud: Gewissensfragen, in: Krüger, Ingrid (Ed.): Mut zur Angst. Schriftsteller für den Frieden, Darmstadt/Neuwied 1982, 160 f.</p>Or in the words of another author, “You can tell when a war starts—but when does the prewar start?”41<p>Wolf, Christa: Kassandra, Darmstadt 1982, 76.</p>