Dolores L. Augustine

This paper seeks to situate the history of East German engineering and industrial science in the context of larger debates on the relationship between dictatorship and technology. As perhaps the most technologically advanced East bloc nation after the Soviet Union, and as heir to the German tradition of science-based industrial research, East Germany had tremendous technological potential, and as such presents an extraordinarily interesting case study. This talk will focus on high-tech industrial research (atomic research, semi-conductors, microelectronics, and precision instruments and optics), an area in which considerable resources were invested and that was therefore particularly likely to succeed. My approach is one that emphasizes cultural choices and the values (derived from ideology, historical experience, and institutions) that underlay them. The talk looks at East German engineers and industrial scientists in high-tech research, placing them in the context of professional socialization and ethos, broader cultural values, and position in the institutional structures of East German society.

The culturally dominant position of science played a crucial role in determining the relationship between party/state and technical elite in industry. Not just industrial scientists, but also engineers were exposed to the traditional German academic culture of science during the course of their university education. Science and ideology competed for their loyalty. Their scientific orientation led them to question ideology in some cases. Research personnel in high-tech industry tried to maintain ties with the international engineering and scientific communities. They ran afoul of the party as a result, particularly after the “reforms” and shifting priorities in the late 1960’s (university reform, Academy reform, centralizing tendencies of the SED). Erich Honecker (head of the East German Communist party, the SED, from 1971 to 1989) oversaw SED attempts to destroy whatever remained of the autonomy of the technical elite.

This paper will place the findings of my study, Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945-1990 (which will appear this fall with MIT Press) in the context of the larger debates on the nature of the relationship between technical specialists and Communist leadership. The most important works are those by Karin Zachmann, who in her book Mobilisierung der Frauen. Technik, Geschlecht und Kalter Krieg in der DDR places the rise of women in the East German engineering profession in the center of a consideration of the place of engineering in the Communist state; and Constructing Socialism by Raymond Stokes, who balances an account of the technological failures of East Germany with a appreciation of its successes, and views both in the context of historical contingency. More broadly, this paper will attempt to compare my findings with recent studies on Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and to explain some very striking differences. In particular, my study points to considerable dysfunctionalities in the Honecker era and links these with the increasing role of the secret police. By contrast, recent work on the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany tends to emphasize the compatibility of scientific and technical research on the one hand and dictatorial rule on the other.

My study is based on extensive research in some 14 archives in seven cities, as well as 43 in-depth interviews with former East German engineers and industrial scientists, as well as dozens of informal interviews with a broad array of professionals and scholars. An American, I did my graduate work at the Free University of Berlin, and have an in-depth knowledge of the German culture and language. I have published several articles on East German engineering, many in German.