Introduction

This exhibition is about the newspaper reporting of the East German uprising on June 17, 1953: The Western press sees the events as a long overdue popular uprising against the dictatorship of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). This interpretation is what ultimately finds its way into history books. The Eastern press, on the contrary, sees this as a provocation by the West and a fascist coup attempt. It condemns the demonstrations as an attack by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the USA on the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and as an attempt to trigger World War III. Traces of this anti-American propaganda can be found in the present.

What happened 70 years ago

The accelerated establishment of Stalinist communism in the GDR led to tensions in society. Resentment against the GDR government was growing because it criminalized the churches, forcibly collectivized agriculture, dispossessed farms and small business and raised work norms (i.e. demanded more work for the same wages). Although the SED announced the less strict „New Course“ on June 11, 1953, it was too little, too late. On June 17, a strike broke out in East Berlin. It was initially directed against the poor working and living conditions, but quickly morphed into a popular uprising that spread throughout the GDR. The citizens demanded free and fair elections, the removal of the current government and the unification of Germany. With the help of the Soviet army, the GDR government brutally crushed the uprising.

Cold War in the Press: East versus West

In our exhibition, we examine how the following newspapers reported on this historical event from June 17 to July 1, 1953: Das Volk (SED newspaper for Erfurt), Neues Deutschland (SED central newspaper), Pravda (central organ of the Soviet State Party), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Le Monde and the New York Times. By „language“ we mean not only German, Russian, French and English, but also visual language and word choice as instruments of political power. We are interested in the criminalistic and accusatory nature of these articles, which seeks to prove that the opposing side has committed a crime against the German people. We ask about the agents as presented in the print media: who is made responsible for the popular uprising? How is guilt or innocence proven in the newspapers? And what aspects of Cold War rhetoric are still influential today?

The students from the seminar „The Languages of June 17, 1953“