The Antifascist Classroom: Education in Soviet-occupied Germany 1945-1949

Benita Blessing

After twelve years of exposure to National Socialist (Nazi) teachings, young people in the Soviet occupation zone of postwar Germany found themselves confronted with a new kind of education: antifascist, democratic reeducation. Begun with the reopening of schools in October 1945, it lasted until the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949. The reform’s architects, German educational administrators who had resisted Nazism, blamed a socially divisive, class-based school system for the failure of educators and pupils to resist Nazi ideology. The postwar “new school,” as its planners called it, was to equip pupils with a new, antifascist sense of their nation and their place within it. Against a politically tumultuous background of rising Cold War tensions, educational administrators in the Soviet zone gradually filled in the framework for the “new school” with clear pedagogical guidelines. Three reform ideas dominated their plans: replace the three-tracked secondary school with a comprehensive “unity school” model, eliminate religious instruction, and introduce coeducational classrooms. This break with German pedagogical tradition, they believed, would result in the creation of a truly antifascist citizenry. At the same time, this commitment in the Soviet zone to a revolutionary new school system highlighted and contributed to the emerging differences between eastern and western Germany. An evaluation of the development of antifascism in Soviet zone schools, attended by over two and a half million young people a year, is overdue. My project examines the evolution of this antifascist, democratic reeducation program of the Soviet occupation zone from 1945 to 1949. Much of the research for this manuscript stems from my dissertation of 2001; the present study, however, will focus more on children’s voices during this time period. Thus drawing on scholarship from education and history and evaluating a representative sample of young people’s schoolwork, I analyze educators’ plans for the new school system as well as pupils’ experiences in the antifascist classroom. This study contributes to a dialogue between educational and social history scholarship for postwar Germany. The “new school” became the physical and ideological space where official memories and traditions met with group and individual experiences, creating an antifascist consciousness. By analyzing the Soviet zone school from the perspective of young people’s role in nation-building within the school community, this study offers a unique approach to the historiography of postwar Germany and the relationship between school and state. It demonstrates how the experiences of pupils in the classrooms of the “new school” affected young people’s relationship to the Soviet zone community and to the German past, showing how educators and parents also shaped and were shaped by antifascist lessons. Schools are not perfect instruments of social control, and the “new school” was no exception. Its influence did not extend to indoctrinating citizens, but antifascist education did uniquely influence how individuals and groups saw themselves and the new Germany.

About Benita Blessing

Dr. Blessing earned a B.A. in German and French at Trinity University, an M.A. in International Policy Studies and German from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and a joint Ph.D. in History and Educational Policy Studies from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is assistant professor for European women’s and gender history at Ohio University. She was previously a fellow at the Institute of European History in Mainz, Germany; at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy; and at Humboldt University in Berlin. She has also studied and worked extensively in France and Sweden. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of Western Europe. Currently, she is finishing a manuscript on gender differences in the antifascist democratic education programs of the German Democratic Republic.