Learning How to Read: Solidarity and Antiracism in Late East German Socialist Realism

Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis

Abstract

During decolonization and the Cold War, African students traveled to East Germany for education. Supporting these students, their decolonial ambitions, and development in their home countries was central to East German solidarity. Yet in the process, the students were drawn into a second educational task: reshaping how the East German public perceived race. Images of international students were published alongside newspaper articles about race as part of the state’s agenda to implement a new racial system, composed of distinct racial groups, defined as equals in terms of intelligence and capacity to learn and read. Also in the late 1950s, East German cultural policy shifted toward the notion of the socialist personality, directing figurative art to engage with the psyche. East German artists depicted foreign students in the style of Socialist Realism, reflecting the convergence of the political and aesthetic pressures of the time. This essay discusses how solidarity and antiracism entered the style of late Socialist Realism in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Contrary to the rationalistic, authoritative, and universalizing nature of the new racial system, paintings from this period demonstrate how solidarity and antiracism were differentiated in opinion, contradictory, and variable over time.