Heather L. Gumbert. Envisioning Socialism

The pioneers of television in East Germany (GDR) worked out the possibilities and limitations of the medium as they went along. They were an eclectic bunch, some influenced by Bertholt Brecht's theater. Much of what became standard as the language of television had to be worked out by trial and error. Initially they only broadcast for a few hours a day to a population largely without receivers. The very small screens of the early television sets reduced the scope of what could be shown and made long shots unworkable; certain colors produced ghastly gray tones. In addition, bulky, expensive cameras meant that the producers were shackled to the studio, but the purchase of outside broadcast trucks revolutionized the medium. Heather L. Gumbert provides a very interesting, close reading of Fetzer's Flight (broadcast in December 1962), which told of a teenager's flight from East to West Germany and back again. The drama was expected to be highly influential, but its jarring modernist features and disjointed narrative proved unpopular with the audience, and it was heavily criticized in the East German press. This raises the question: could the hostile reaction to Fetzer's Flight have been deliberately orchestrated? Although Gumbert finds no “smoking gun,” such a move would fit with Walter Ulbricht's modus operandi. He was in the habit of making quite radical cultural interventions on a whim (one time in response to a children's television program he had happened to watch). On a number of occasions angry workers—supposedly representing the “healthy instincts” of ordinary people—were bussed in to beat up artists and intellectuals (in jazz aficionado Reginald Rudorf's case quite literally, dislodging teeth). Those who skated onto cultural thin ice were liable to be smeared by the East German media as part of a mini “moral panic” (the most infamous example being the Eleventh “Kahlschlag” Plenum in December 1965). Although Gumbert is right to look for evidence of orchestration, such groundswells of criticism and condemnation would hardly have been possible without a tacit green light from above. As she perceptively notes, it was often the believers who got caught out in this way. They were so busy trying to move socialism forward and to reach out in new ways to ordinary people that they did not spend enough time hedging their bets and protecting themselves.

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