Mar 09
East Germany and The Declaration of Independence
Quoted in countless stirring speeches and stuffed into the pockets of soldiers across centuries and countries, the Declaration of Independence has been a touchstone for liberty. The persuasive (and even poetic) lines have inspired freedom movements seeking equality, “certain unalienable rights,” and “the consent of the governed.” From Haiti in the early 19th century to Hungary in the mid-20th century and beyond, Thomas Jefferson’s argument stirs hearts and minds. One important example is tied to my own family history. As the granddaughter of a naturalized American citizen born in 1956 in West Germany, I look to the example of the struggle for true “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” in Cold War Germany.
After World War II, Germany was divided between East and West with a fault line of communism versus representative democracy. With contradictory political and economic systems, divided Germany was also at odds in interpreting the Declaration of Independence. In the East’s German Democratic Republic (GDR) propaganda machine, communism was promoted and defended. Jefferson’s vision was shared to be that of only white wealthy men of class and not an expression of any greater view of humanity. To control East Germans, the communist leadership twisted the Declaration of Independence words in academic settings and in publications to show only the limits of America’s past revolution. The GDR insisted it had not created an America of political equality at all but one of just class privilege. The Declaration, they argued, was propaganda used to promote capitalism.
Ironically the preamble to East Germany’s criminal code read like a paraphrase of the Declaration of Independence, noting the criminal code’s goal was “to safeguard the dignity of humankind, its freedom and rights…” Yet, this convenient “truth” was easy for West Germans (and East Germans longing for liberty) to notice. Life in communist East Germany, after all, was repressive. People lived in a constant state of surveillance and fear of government authorities. The Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, infiltrated the lives of East Germans in their places of work, schools, and even homes. The communist leadership encouraged informants to turn in their co-workers, neighbors, friends, and even family for being against the regime. East Germans also were denied free access to information. Censorship of anything determined to be “western” or “capitalist” was the rule. There was no freedom for East Germans to move or travel. In fact, the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 was political and economic differences made into a physical barrier to keep East Germans apart from anything critical of the communist party line. Lives were lost when East Germans challenged communist authorities on thought, association, or action. Given these realities, it was clear “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” were altogether missing in communist East Germany.
Possibility to live these Revolutionary ideals existed, however, in the West. Look to the graffiti and murals painted on the western side of the Berlin Wall from the Sixties to its fall in 1989 as evidence of this promise. The Berlin Wall art expressed the ideas (if not also the language) of Thomas Jefferson. It advertised the language of human rights. In one famous West Berlin mural, graffiti artist Dennis Kaun’s work “Kings of Freedom” shows an East German side that is blank gray concrete while the West is bold and colorful with kings in crowns with one like the United States’ Statue of Liberty. In 2014, Thomas Jefferson’s own University of Virginia (UVA) exhibited Kaun’s historic Berlin Wall panels. A UVA administrator emphasized the through line between the fall of communism in East Germany and the fall of monarchy in the United States as such: “In the shadow of the [University] Rotunda and near the Special Collections Library—which has one of the original copies of the Declaration of Independence—there’s this incredible installation that commemorates freedom.”
Though separated by over two centuries, a fight for freedom in East Berlin that begged for a government that offered its people a voice echoes the one expressed in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Both the American colonists and East Germans became convinced “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” In 2021, then German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke at an anniversary celebration of Germany’s unification. Merkel, who had been born, grown up, and educated in the communist GDR, reminded the audience of the hard-fought road to true East German freedom. Merkel credited the West and used the language of the Declaration in her speech: “…without…the support of our partners in the West…that [freedom] was by no means self-evident.”i
In my family’s dining room, there is a small piece of the Berlin Wall that can be held in my palm. This treasured artifact of personal family and historical significance is from my great-grandmother. She pocketed it from the rubble in 1989 as the Berlin Wall came down. It is a reminder of the brief but powerful text of the Declaration of Independence’s that people “are, and of Right ought to be Free.”
Cora Stumpf, a student at Central Carolina Academy, authored this article as part of VOC’s Student Essay Contest.
