EAST GERMANY
Posters and pamphlets from the Wende Museum
Maple (1958), 213 kt. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
In the 1950s, citizens of both the United States and East Germany came to realize that the technologies developed during World War II had mounted an assault on the natural world. The Americans realized this shortly after their first nuclear tests in the at Bikini Atoll in 1946. Scientists assessing radioactivity levels in the surrounding waters noted that some fish species had accumulated so many radioactive particles from the explosions that their bodies could be used to create images on a photographic plate. Soon after the first thermonuclear tests of the early 1950s, scientists and citizens began to speak of an entire planet covered in a fine radioactive dust, destroying everything natural that still existed on the planet. How did this differ in socialist East Germany, a state created as part of Europe’s postwar reorganization that did not have nuclear technology but that nevertheless witnessed the horrific fire bombings inflicted on its cities?
Pamphlets from the East German state
"Peace: The decision is ours" (1952). Booklet published by the Office for Information of the Government of the German Democratic Republic. The Wende Museum (Culver City, CA).
In East Germany, new war technologies seemed to violate the natural order in a different way: they prevented peace, and peace was intimately tied with an image of unspoiled nature. The front cover of a 1952 pamphlet circulated by the Office for Information of the Government of the German Democratic Republic features two photographs stacked on top of one another and separated by a blue band. The top image depicts a group of vivacious-looking youths enjoying a walk though a clearing next to a pine forest. The bottom image shows a group of soldiers, in the remains of a charred and desecrated forest, fighting a battle. Two soldiers at the center of the image carry a third figure, presumably injured, between their arms. In the upper left-hand corner of the top image is the word “peace,” and the blue band separating the photographs contains the phrase “the decision is ours.” The placement of the word “peace” in the upper image is auspicious: peace is to be found, quite literally, in the forest, the very thing the soldiers seem to have destroyed in the lower image.
"Who wants peace?" (1951). Booklet published by the Office for Information of the Government of the German Democratic Republic. The Wende Museum (Culver City, CA).
Another pamphlet, published in 1951 by the same office, uses a similar visual strategy to define the urgent crossroads at which East Germans currently find themselves. An upper photograph shows a man standing in between the gun barrels of two tanks, each of which is in front of a shipping vessel labeled “American Importer.” The photograph has an aggressive orange tint. The lower image, lacking a tint, shows individuals strolling on a promenade built on top of a dam. In between the photographs is the question: “Who wants peace?” Again, the word “peace” is distinguished from the rest, as it is the only word that lies in a white background formed by a triangle. The arrangement recalls, with a reversed color scheme, El Lizsisky’s famous Beat the whites with the red wedge poster of 1920.
El Lissitzky, Beat the whites with the red wedge (1920). Color lithograph. Municipal Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
This pamphlet recasts the issue of peace as an issue of choosing between two kinds of technology for East German society: confrontational machines of war with a potential to destroy, or enjoyable engines of peace that produce energy for the benefit of civilians. (The pamphlet does little to acknowledge that even peacetime technologies, such as dams, can be extremely detrimental to natural ecosystems.)
Nuclear sketch, Ulrich Forchner
Ulrich Forchner, Nuclear power plant (1982). Sketch. The Wende Museum (Culver City, CA).
A 1982 sketch by East German artist Ulrich Forchner (whose sketches and cartoons often appeared in East Berlin newspapers and magazines) captures many of the same conflicting feelings that plague Americans about civilian nuclear reactors. In the center of the sketch is an atomic sun rising over the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant. The rising sun conveys a sense of hope, the dawn of a new age brought on by nuclear technology, while the three large black dots in its center that make it look like the nefarious international symbol for radioactivity. The dots at the center of the sun might also be three subatomic particles, constituents of the atoms whose fission and fusion powers both the nuclear plant and the sun itself. The splatter ink shading, evoking the spontaneous and meditative splatter-ink paintings of seventeenth-century Zen masters, also recalls the random nature of radioactive decay. Far from a study in nuclear fear, the sketch evokes the hopes, fears, and inevitability of nuclear technology on the world at large.
Deepest thanks to Joes Segal and Nicole Carroll of the Wende Museum (Culver City, CA) for their help in conducting research for this gallery.