Abstract

The meaning of the arts for the project of state socialism is also a key for understanding the different phases of the history of the GDR – from the beginning, when utopia of a “better Germany” and the overcoming of class societies went along with dictatorship and oppression, until the end, when the Soviet Union dissolved. Artists in the 'cultural feudalism' of the GDR were privileged and controlled, directed and headstrong. In the 'consensus dictatorship' of the late 1970s and 1980s, the 'power balance' moved in favor of artistic form inventions – not only in the opposition scenes of non-conformist art and without a programmatic liberalization. From the beginning, the hope for renewal and its failure led to an ambivalent relation between the political elites and the artists: both sides were never absolutely satisfied with each other. Moreover, the arts show the German double escape from the historical continuity (with the Nazi-dictatorship and the defeat of 1945): West Germany chose the connection towards the west (also culturally), while the GDR chose the (Marx-inspired) emancipation history of mankind. Thus, under the conditions of the Cold War and the confrontation of both states, it came to a onesidedness of the official arts: abstraction in the West and (socialistic) realism in the East. The German-German „Bilderstreit" (Art Controversy), launched in 1990, became a substitute discourse about the reunion process of the country and therefore went far beyond the “art system”. In this respect, the sociology of arts opens perspectives for the analysis of society.