Eastern press comments
In the East Berlin newspaper "Sonntag" of 17.9.1961, Bernt F. Kügelken writes that "a whole people has worked on building the Wall". "Along Bernauer Strasse – to give one example – it is the joint work of historians, philologists, economists and doctors from the Academy of Sciences, of filmmaker from DEFA and pavers from a state-owned road-building company, of journalists and export merchants. As members of the Combat Groups, they learnt in a kind of crash course how to use stone and lime and placed the ashlars one on the other. Even the journalists at 'Sonntag’ helped build the Wall there."
"What is the humanistic task and challenge at the present time?" asks Kurt Hager, the Central Committee Secretary in charge of science, adult education and culture, and SED Politburo candidate. Writing in the organ of the SED district administration in Berlin, the "Berliner Zeitung", on 17.9.1961, he goes on to say: "Heinrich Mann once wrote: 'Humanists are only then of any use when they also take action instead of just talking.’ On 13 August, the worker-and-peasant state acted on the advice of this great humanist and wrecked the plans of the West German warmongers. The 13th of August was a clearing storm. It made it evident once and for all (…) that there is no chance, neither today nor tomorrow nor in future, of re-establishing the rule of capitalism in the GDR. Socialism is stronger and unshakeable. The 13th of August showed that there is a new balance of power in Germany. (…) Of course, the measures that were and are being taken to secure peace call on people’s intelligence for a real assessment of the situation and understanding of the new state of affairs. They demand a reassessment of many beliefs that have turned out to be illusory. They demand from many wanderers between two worlds or historical onlookers a reorientation towards honestly working to promote the establishment of socialism."
In the East Berlin newspaper "Wochenpost" of 23.9.1961, under the headline "Responsibility", the GDR author Stefan Heym welcomes the resumption of Soviet atomic tests: "The great hope of humanity if it is to survive – this needs to be said openly for once - is that the B-52 bombers of the US Air Force belong in the rubbish bin, that 90 percent of its rockets can be shot down and that the Americans lag behind in the most important fields of modern weapons technology. If they sit down at the negotiating table in Geneva, it is with the idea of using this period of toing and froing to make up the shortfall in rockets and advance projects like the neutron bomb, which would be the fulfilment of the dreams of all imperialist strategies, from the chiefs-of-staff in the Pentagon right down to Mr. Franz Josef Strauss. (…) The Soviet tests, announced by Khrushchev, serve to dispel such dreams. They remind such dreamers that it will be their factories, their machines, their lovely mansions that fall prey to destruction, and that no bunker, no cave, no tunnel is deep enough to protect their highly esteemed person. (…), But, someone might object, why now? Wasn’t it possible to wait until the Americans began again with their tests? To pass them the buck? We can assume that Moscow has also thought about the timing. Perhaps we can see matters in a more correct light if we assume that it is not about "passing bucks" and if we see the statement by the Soviet government about the resumption of atom tests in connection with the wall going straight through Berlin and the seventeen orbits of the earth by Major Titov. Then the message is clear: this far and no further."
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