East Germany: Negotiating Conformity and Innovation

This chapter emphasizes the differences between a more creative, pluralistic, and innovative Marxism embodied by an older generation of scholars who were largely educated before the GDR was formed as well as the students that they mentored and trained within the GDR, on the one hand, and the far more formulaic, sterile, and narrow Marxism-Leninism created and propagated by the party apparatus, on the other. The case studies focus, at an institutional level, on the Institute for Economic History and the University of Economics in Berlin. On an individual level, the chapter highlights the contributions of Jürgen Kuczynski, Hans Mottek, and Günther Kohlmey, representing in some ways the most influential members of the founding generation of the GDR’s economic historians. They interacted with some well-connected and well-known Western colleagues, exchanging ideas, collaborating on projects, and lecturing at each other's research and teaching institutions.