Red Prometheus: engineering and dictatorship in East Germany, 1945-1990

413 Pages·2007·8.691 MB·English

by  Dolores L Augustine

history of science
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2 original study also provides much food for fecting continuity and change, success and in east Germany
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2 thought for other Prometheans who believe failure, in the development of technological In Cold War-era East Germany, the German tradition of science-
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TS that their research can be separated from systems. Augustine’s book thus comple- based technology merged with a socialist system that made tech-
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SE politics and ideology.” ments and extends existing scholarship, not nological progress central to its ideology. Technology became an
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CH V. R. Berghahn, Columbia university only on East German technology, but also on 194 5 –19 9 0 important part of East German socialist identity—crucial to how
Dolores L. Augustine is Associate Professor of History at SA science and technology in the Soviet bloc Communists saw their system and how citizens saw their state.
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St. John’s University. She is the author of Patricians MA “This superb study of the ‘new technical in- more generally.” In Red Prometheus, Dolores Augustine examines the relationship
and Parvenus: Wealth and High Society in Wilhemine Germany. E, telligentsia’ in East Germany analyzes the Ray stokes, author of Constructing P R between a dictatorial system and the scientific and engineering
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TEC Civilization, university of north Carolina, e scientists’ interactions with the East German system, examining
F and senior Fellow, Zentrum für Zeithistorische the effectiveness of their resistance against the party’s totalitar-
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Cover art: Gerd Schnürer, at sunset. Berlin. T engineers who were deported to the Soviet Union after World War
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understand the economic choices made by East Germany, Augus-
tine argues, unless we understand the cultural values reflected in
the East German belief in technology as indispensable to progress
doloRes l. AuGustine
978-0-262-01236-2 0-262-01236-7
and industrial development.
Red Prometheus
Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology
Jed Z. Buchwald, general editor
Dolores L. Augustine, Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany,
1945–1990
Mordechai Feingold, editor, Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters
Larrie D. Ferreiro, Ships and Science: The Birth of Naval Architecture in the Scientific
Revolution, 1600–1800
Sungook Hong, Wireless: From Marconi’s Black-Box to the Audion
Jeff Horn, The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution,
1750–1830
Myles W. Jackson, Harmonious Triads: Physicists, Musicians and Instrument Makers in
Nineteenth-Century Germany
Myles W. Jackson, Spectrum of Belief: Joseph von Fraunhofer and the Craft of Precision
Optics
Mi Gyung Kim, Affinity, That Elusive Dream: A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution
Ursula Klein and Wolfgang Lefèvre, Materials in Eighteenth-Century Science: A Historical
Ontology
John Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe
Janis Langins, Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military Engineering from Vauban to
the Revolution
Wolfgang Lefèvre, editor, Picturing Machines 1400–1700
Staffan Müller-Wille and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, editors, Heredity Produced: At the
Crossroads of Biology, Politics, and Culture, 1500–1870
William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton, editors, Secrets of Nature: Astrology and
Alchemy in Early Modern Europe
Gianna Pomata and Nancy Siraisi, editors, Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early
Modern Europe
Alan J. Rocke, Nationalizing Science: Adolphe Wurtz and the Battle for French Chemistry
George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance
Red Prometheus
Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945–1990
Dolores L. Augustine
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2007 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic
or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and
retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information about special quantity discounts, please email [email protected]
.edu
This book was set in Sabon by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Augustine, Dolores L.
Red Prometheus: engineering and dictatorship in East Germany, 1945–1990 / Dolores
Augustine.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01236-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Engineering—Germany (East)—His-
tory—20th century. 2. Technology—Germany (East)—History—20th century. 3. Germany
(East)—Social life and customs. I. Title.
TA73.1.A94 2007
620.00943′1—dc22
2007000656
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to my husband, Claude LeBrun, and to my children,
André and Caroline LeBrun

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Introduction xi
Abbreviations and Acronyms xxix
1 The “Great Eastward Trek”: German Specialists in the Soviet Union 1
2 Reinventing Professionalism in Soviet-Occupied Germany and the Early
GDR 39
3 Under Siege: Facing Challenges to Professionalism in the Ulbricht Era 77
4 In Pursuit of an Electronic Future: High-Tech Pioneers and Communist
Bureaucracy in the Ulbricht Era 111
5 The Old Guard under Attack: Three High-Tech Research Directors in the
“Reform” Era and Beyond 155
6 Red Prometheus: Technological Fantasies in Popular Culture and
Propaganda 201
7 Careerists and Conformists, Individualists and Technology Enthusiasts:
Engineers and Computer Scientists in the Honecker Era 261
8 High Ambitions: Careerism and High-Tech Research during the New Cold
War 305
Conclusion 343
Bibliography 353
Index 373

List of Illustrations
Figure 1.1 Nikolaus Riehl during his stay in the Soviet Union 14
Figure 1.2 Kurt Berner and Bruno Golecki during their stay in the Soviet Union 20
Figure 1.3 Photo taken by Kurt Berner to the Soviet Union and reproduced in his memoir.
Original caption: “The specialists often thought of loved ones at home” 28
Figure 2.1 Parade, Bergakademie Freiberg. Note the traditional mining officials’ uniforms.
Photo published in a 1965 volume commemorating the 200th anniversary of the founding
of the Bergakademie Freiberg 62
Figure 2.2 Unknown woman in a laboratory, probably in the early 1960s. Photo published
in a 1965 volume commemorating the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Bergakademie
Freiberg 63
Figure 4.1 Werner Hartmann, center, speaking with Minister for Electrical Engineering and
Electronics Otfried Steger, left, and Walter Ulbright, right foreground 112
Figure 4.2 Visit of Nikita Khrushchev to the Vakutronik exhibit in the Leipzig Trade Fair,
1959. Left to right: Khrushchev, Hartmann, unknown 126
Figure 4.3 Herbert Kortum (second from left) at Carl Zeiss Jena, 1960s 133
Figure 4.4 Paul Görlich (standing), 60th birthday celebration, surrounded by
colleagues 138
Figure 4.5 Paul Görlich, 1966 138
Figure 4.6 Paul Görlich (far left) at the Technical University of Dresden 139
Figure 4.7 Paul Görlich with Soviet physicist Petr Petrovich Feofilow, then an officer,
1945 140
Figure 5.1 Visit of Walter Ulbricht and his wife Lotte to Carl Zeiss Jena, 1968. Hans-
Joachim Pohl (far left); General Director Ernst Gallerach (far right) 166
Figure 5.2 Werner Hartmann in the 1970s 178
Figure 6.1 East Berlin television tower on the Alexanderplatz, at sunset 202
Figure 6.2 Poster announcing the Fifth Party Congress of the SED, 1958 207
Figure 6.3 East German cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn with fellow crew member, Soviet cos-
monaut Valery Bykovsky 208