ND History | Raise the newspaper's flag

In 1951 they were still talking to each other on the same level: Ulbricht and Herrnstadt (r.) Photo: wikimedia/Bundesarchiv On August 20, 1953, Bertolt Brecht wrote in his work journal: "June 17th alienated the entire existence." The workers' uprising on June 17th had shaken Brecht, as it had widened the gap between the GDR leadership, which saw itself as a workers' government, and the working people revealed. When Brecht was still thinking about the uprising in August, Rudolf Herrnstadt, the editor-in-chief of “Neues Deutschland,” the central organ of the SED, had already “disappeared into political obscurity,” as the West German “Neue Zeitung” reported. He shouldn't emerge from there again. He is one of those historical figures who have almost disappeared from public memory.

He was a reporter and editor-in-chief, foreign correspondent and secret service agent, bourgeois intellectual and convinced communist - but above all he was one of the few leading SED officials who found the courage to publicly criticize their own party. He never saw journalism as simply transmitting official announcements, but rather as a political practice that was intended to make grievances visible and enable social debates. On July 26, 1953, he was expelled from the Politburo and Central Committee for "forming factions that were anti-party," and a short time later he was deposed as "ND" leader and expelled from the SED at the beginning of 1954. From then on he worked in Merseburg, in a branch of the GDR State Archives. On August 28, 1966, he died of lung disease in Halle.

Born in 1903 in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, the son of a Jewish lawyer who was a social democratic city councilor, he first studied law in Berlin and Heidelberg until he decided in 1922 to become a writer, working first as a proofreader and then as an editor. He joined the KPD in 1928 as a foreign correspondent for the liberal Berliner Tageblatt in Prague. With the party's approval, he began working for Soviet military intelligence. His journalistic work gave him access to political information and diplomatic circles - he didn't see a contradiction in this. When the Germans invaded Poland, he fled to the Soviet Union. His parents were murdered during National Socialism, and his former partner Ilse Stöbe was executed as a member of the “Red Chapel” resistance group in Berlin-Plötzensee.

In exile in Moscow, in the infamous Hotel Lux, Herrnstadt developed into one of the most important journalistic minds of the German communists. As editor-in-chief of the National Committee's newspaper “Free Germany,” he was involved in the political preparations for a Germany after Hitler. Together with Wilhelm Pieck, Walter Ulbricht, Anton Ackermann and Johannes R. Becher, he was one of the cadres who were supposed to build up the GDR after 1945.

Nevertheless Herrnstadt remained an outsider. Unlike Ulbricht, he was not a classic party man, but a bourgeois intellectual with journalistic training and knowledge of Russian. In his Hernnstadt biography published in 1991, Helmut Müller-Enbergs describes him as a "side entrant" who lacked the "stable smell" of the old KPD elite, something he was repeatedly accused of. Wolfgang Leonhard later remembered Herrnstadt's bourgeois manners and also his "ironic undertone."

But his journalistic skills were needed - and Herrnstadt put himself fully into the service of the cause. And that meant: defending the Soviet Union and building a new, socialist Germany. As early as May 1945, Herrnstadt returned to Berlin on a party assignment and, as editor-in-chief, set up the “Berliner Zeitung”, the first issue of which appeared on May 21, 1945. The GDR journalist Kari-Heinz Gerstner later remembered him as a journalistic “stroke of luck”. The editorial conferences he led were an experience. Herrnstadt characterized the international situation and the current domestic political problems in just a few sentences. The topic of the editorial was carefully selected, the political concept was outlined and authors were chosen. If Herrnstadt wrote editorials himself, he was not allowed to be disturbed all afternoon. “That’s where the newspaper’s flag is raised,” as he put it.

Unlike Ulbricht, he was not a classic party man, but a bourgeois intellectual with journalistic training and knowledge of Russian.

In 1949 Herrnstadt moved to the head of the “New Germany”. Unlike many leading SED officials, he was a trained journalist and saw the newspaper as more than just a mouthpiece for the party. He caused a stir, for example, with his full-page article "The Russians and Us" in November 1948. Herrnstadt wrote openly about the behavior of Soviet soldiers at the end of the war, about German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union, as well as about dismantling, reparations and current Soviet foreign policy - without, however, giving up his claim to solidarity with the Soviet Union.

As a convinced communist, Herrnstadt began to increasingly criticize the development of the SED in the early 1950s. He warned of the “creeping disease of petty-bourgeois arrogance,” denounced bureaucratic arrogance and called for more democracy within the party. He is convinced that the party is increasingly distancing itself from the people in whose name it governs.

Herrnstadt combined this criticism with his own understanding of journalism. The press should not only disseminate resolutions, but also provide the party with feedback from society. He trusted in the “initiative of the masses” and was convinced that socialist politics could only work if criticism from companies and the party base was allowed to be publicly articulated. He wanted a party that allowed criticism and a journalism that not only organized the public, but listened to it. He therefore wanted to expand the “New Germany” into a forum for political debates. Together with the “Hamburger Freie Presse”, he initiated the short-lived “German Conversation”, which was intended to promote journalistic exchange about everyday life in both German states.

Herrnstadt opposed personality cults and the isolation of the party apparatus. He did not see the public as a danger, but rather as a prerequisite for a party capable of learning. Journalism should identify grievances, initiate reforms and establish a connection between the intelligentsia and the workforce. It was precisely this understanding that made him suspicious of the old party cadres around SED General Secretary Walter Ulbricht, whose harshest critics he was within the Politburo. Together with State Security Minister Wilhelm Zaisser, he advocated collective party leadership and denied the General Secretary the ability to carry out necessary reforms. After the uprising of June 17, 1953, this position even seemed to find short-term support in Moscow.

But the Soviet leadership ultimately chose Ulbricht. Herrnstadt and Zaisser were accused of “forming anti-party factions” and were defamed as “Trotskyists” and “enemies of the German people and the party of the working class” through a journalistic campaign orchestrated by Politiburo member Karl Schirdewan. Herrnstadt lost his position, was transferred to the Merseburg archive and was largely excluded from the press. His opponent Schirdewan was also eliminated in 1958 and transferred to an archive. Herrnstadt devoted himself to historical studies of the workers' movement and the emergence of the concept of class. His name was hardly allowed to appear publicly anymore.

In 1961, the SED offered him readmission to the party - but in return he had to take a kind of vow of silence. Herrnstadt refused and instead demanded his public rehabilitation, which he was denied. As was every official tribute when he died in 1966. It was not until the end of November 1989 that the Central Party Control Commission officially lifted his exclusion from the party.

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