The Textbook Factory

by Helmut Roske

ON THE leveled rubble patch ot the former Spittelmarkt (“Hospital Market”), once a landmark in the heart of the old Berlin, there stands today a huge gray stone building, six stories high, with long corridors and innumerable editorial offices; this is the home of the Yolk und Wissen (“People and Knowledge”) publishing house, which manufactures all the textbooks used in East Germany and is the largest textbook factory in Europe. Here the three R’s, the sciences, and the humanities for all grades are packaged in book form well adulterated with Communist propaganda; here everything to be learned by millions of children and adolescents in the East zone and throughout East Germany is first examined and corrected, then expanded, and finally approved in accordance with the political doctrine. The revisions of these texts go on year after year in an atmosphere of suspicion emphasized by the fact that a detachment of the People’s Policemen has long been quartered on the ground floor.

At 7:45 A.M. a shrill school bell sounds the start of the workday, and shortly before this the four hundred employees have trooped out of the subway and up the stairs to their desks. Here comes a young editor, who will be nameless, who has been working only a few months. After finishing his studies, he spent a year teaching. Now he is editing his first manuscripts. He has already had his first taste of author-editor relationships, and is discovering to his astonishment just what it means to officiate in this publishing house. He, not the author, is the chief cog in the textbook process. Instructors and professors who only yesterday were his teachers must now accept his written instructions, suggested changes, and general directives. The manuscript, although it may have been written by an expert, serves only as a kind of factual substratum; where it fails to tally with the official Party line, the text must be altered once, twice, a dozen times. Here the “house rule” is the law; and the realization that the finished product will eventually be printed in thousands of copies, and that each sentence will be taught and memorized as authoritative dogma, is enough to make a young editor’s head swell.

Now over the Gertrude Bridge comes a black car with an elongated hood — one of those EMW’s (Eisenach Motorwerke) reserved for Party officials. The driver is “Professor” Becher, the Pedagogical Director of the publishing house, who is privately and contemptuously referred to as the “Profi.” The Party promoted him to his “professorship,” and he signs even the smallest, most trifling office memo “Prof. Becher.” In reality, he is a former East Berlin high school counselor who was expelled from the Party’s ruling circle and kicked upstairs with the rank of “Pedagogical Director.”

A Party administrator incarnate, Professor Becher has remained a stiff dogmatist, ever at loggerheads with those who have to deal with the kinds of knowledge which simply will not yield to ideology. His one aim in his new post is to solve all problems single-handedly, with little regard for the factual knowledge involved, and this has further alienated his old Party comrades as well as the employees in the factory. So, when Comrade Professor Becher steps out of his car in the morning, he is greeted perlunctorily by most, coldly by a few.

Now the professional specialists of long standing begin turning up — the old foxes who listen to the young editor’s enthusiasm with a wariness born of wide experience. They know all the tricks of the trade and are the real pillars of the publishing house, for only they have acquired sufficient experience and competence to be able to steer an author’s manuscript through the shoals of the ever-shifting Party line. They are pedagogic specialists who have been shorn of all illusions and who wax cynical each time they hear talk of the great new goals set up for the socialist education of the young. They do not believe in the radiant future promised by the textbooks in a pseudoscientific jargon. These old hands are at once the mainstay of production and an insurmountable obstacle. They do not let the Party functionaries get away with the more outrageous political impositions. Most of them, in subtle ways, combat the restrictive taboos, water down the political content, and take liberties within the all too narrow rules of speech.

IN THE German Democratic Republic — the D.D.R., as it is more simply called — there is a tendency to divide people up into officially designated groups: some will be designated to teach, others to administer; some will be comrades of the SED or, conversely, noncomrades (Nichtgenosse). People speak of a “habitation community” (Wohngemeinschaft), an “editorial collective,” a union group, a work brigade. Seldom are these voluntary associations. The official groups, the running of which is entrusted to so-called “reliable” comrades, are simply compulsion structures through which the Party forces its hold upon the population.

But in the underground, where the individual reveals his real sentiments and behavior, natural groups are formed, and this is as true in the publishing house as anywhere else in the zone. Comrades who develop a high degree of skepticism toward the Party tend to drift together spontaneously. These groups — usually small — may be marked by a general tone of irony and humor or by a tendency toward open discussion; above all, they are distinguished by an absence of that oppressive fear, indignation, and climate of terror which typify the compulsory organizations. They alone make the hardships of collective life endurable, and if it were not for membership in one of these “unofficial” groups, the individual would become a prisoner in a large enterprise.

It is impossible to appreciate the spiritual terror reigning in the D.D.R. unless one understands how these interhuman relationships, so important for people employed in the professions, are constantly tracked down by Party sleuths, infiltrated by “reliable" comrades, and rendered politically suspect. Three or four people cannot converse or even lunch together occasionally without having watchful comrades scent a hostile gathering. When such suspicion is intensified the morale at work deteriorates, output drops, and the quotas, utopian to begin with, grow even more impossible. To combat this strain on morale the SED places its hope in specialists who have a gift for leadership and who can arouse the enthusiasm of the socialist worker. “Wie die Leitung, so die Leistung” — “As leadership goes, so goes output” — the slogan says.

Such a leader was Heinz Frankiewicz, one of the foremost administrators in Volk und Wissen. No one who has known him would question his capacity. A member of the Party, Frankiewicz directed Department Six of the publishing house, with its six editors, each responsible for a subsection, and some forty subordinates. That Frankiewicz could produce the kind of fruitful work so seldom found in the D.D.R. is a tribute to his genuine ability. He lacked the dogmatic severity of the arrogant officials, and he did not underestimate the scientific disciplines. Like every intelligent functionary, he had a highly equivocal attitude toward “the highest of the sciences” — that is, toward ideology and political doctrine. At the outset he got on well with his editors, winking as he tossed off bold political slogans during closed-door discussions. He did allow spontaneous associations, maintained a cordial atmosphere, and trained his department methodically, giving close attention to the qualitative and stylistic improvement of the books. Lip service to ideology was paid with a few flourishes in the preface, in the opening pages of each chapter, and in the conclusion, but that was all.

As a department chief, however, Frankiewicz also frequently conferred with functionaries from the Volksbildungsministerium (“People’s Education Ministry”). Brimful of ideas, a brilliant talker, a mine of original suggestions, he inevitably aroused fresh hopes for the spirited revision of the textbooks put out by his department. These expectations he could not afford to disappoint, for it was his wish to be an innovator in East German teaching methods, a promising official in the eyes of the Party as well as a tolerant and respected colleague of the senior editors and the staff.

Bit by bit, however, his editors were required to water down the strictly scientific exposition of natural laws, twisting their presentations more and more toward political ends. It was no longer sufficient for students to be taught that hydrogen and oxygen ions join together under certain conditions to form water. The chemical law had to demonstrate that a special link existed between the socialist and nature. “Study science, then you will be almighty!” Laboratory experiments, instead of illustrating a particular theory, must be used to instill faith in science and to exploit the naïve astonishment of youth. “You see, you dominate nature! This is what socialism offers: it understands everything, it can do everything, it gives everything. So believe in it, and do everything the Party says!”

Now, the few elementary examples needed in a high school textbook are neither highly sophisticated nor a scientific premise for a poliiical system. The editors protested but were overriden by Frankiewicz. Thenceforth all attempts to square the text with the truth were abandoned. Philosophical affirmations, political opinions, economic arguments, theories of considerable complexity had to be dressed up in sweeping generalizations and linked to elementary bits of knowledge in order to dazzle students with the phantom masquerading of the Communist superman lording it over nature, technology, history, society — a superman who, far from being subject to law, lays down the law to the world.

FRANKIEWICZ would summon an editorial group to a private session in his office, start by being friendly and sympathetic, and then suddenly begin to tear a finished manuscript into ribbons. The editors would listen in silence while he read out a perfectly correct sentence from the text and then proceeded to smother it beneath a mountain of objections. For instance, he would read: “ ‘Because the German Democratic Republic is poor in hard coal resources, soft coal is used here in great quantities.’ This is what you have written,” he would say, “and let me quote further. ‘Soft coal contains a high water content, very little hydrogen, and its heat potential is limited.’ This kind of thing could be found in any book, even in a capitalistic one. And what is the student supposed to infer? That the German Democratic Republic is weak? That we are unable to build up any industry, or what? Teaching material must serve to instill patriotic feelings and political conviction. A textbook like this might just as well be published in West Germany. It is false and useless.”

It had originally been a matter of pride with Frankiewicz to get books published under license in the Federal Republic. Now, however, he said: “We are political beings and are educating young Communists. Where is there anything here about the Ruhr barons? Where is there anything about the warmongering monopolies in West Germany? Why are the tables for water content in soft and hard coal placed right next to each other? So that the student can instantly compare them? Why don’t you take the tables breaking down the coal content into chemical elements? Use the tables in which water doesn’t appear and which build up a more favorable picture. It all sounds different when you say, ‘The German Democratic Republic has the greatest soft coal output in the world.’ Then list the collectivized enterprises we have treating soft coal. Show pictures of the works. Quote figures from the plan, describe the activists in these various concerns!”

“But this is a book on chemistry,” the editors protested.

“No,” said Frankiewicz. “This is a textbook whose job it is to work up student enthusiasm over the Party’s output. It must show the teachers how and with what methods to instill this enthusiasm. Take a look at Neues Deutschland, our Party’s paper.”

“But a newspaper,” objected the editors, “is no source for a scientific textbook.”

“Not a newspaper — this newspaper! It’s the organ of the SED,” said Frankiewicz. “In it Walter Ulbricht outlines the prospects for our chemical industry, which today lives off coal but which tomorrow will be fed by petroleum supplied from our Soviet friends. That’s what we mean by science.

“When you describe the high-oven blast-furnace process,” said Frankiewicz, “remember, there are high ovens and high ovens. Link crude iron to output in the D.D.R. Tie these basic elements of knowledge to real experience on the production sites of our peace-loving state. Show up the crimes of Krupp and his consorts. Show how in Stalinstadt our Free German Youth brigades have enthusiastically been fulfilling the Party’s instructions.”

Frankiewicz knows that this is not education or technical instruction but confessional schooling of the most blatantly political kind. But it pleases him to posture in front of his silent subordinates. So he tears a whole book to pieces and then laughs. Never mind, it will be patched up again. A couple of half-musing queries to thaw the ice a bit, then he says: “The deadline remains. The plan must be carried out with these latest revisions. At least two socialist examples must be introduced on every page, deliberately, you understand. I’ll see you in three weeks’ time.” With that he dismisses the team.

SUCH editorial pressure would come in waves, now soft and beguiling, now hard and unsparing. These commands induced crises of conscience in even the most determined Party-line editors. One such editor was Heinz Siegel, who worked on history textbooks. He was responsible for a series called Geschichte der Neuzeit (History of the Modern Age), in which he repeatedly stressed the blessings of socialism. One morning Siegel failed to turn up. At an editorial meeting the editors were informed that Heinz Siegel had been summarily dismissed from the publishing house’s Parteigruppe and sent to work in a state factory. Here he would have to work for a number of years as an unskilled worker and thereby “prove himself.” Why? Because he had been overheard in a bar complaining drunkenly about the wretched conditions of life in East Berlin.

A more naïve victim was an editor named Schmelzer. He too was a member of the Party and turned out books which unmasked the rotten, superannuated capitalism of the West, which he compared unfavorably with the progressive, forward-looking socialism of the East. His work was marked by such exemplary loyalty to the official line that the Party sent him as a delegate to a congress of textbook experts in Hamburg. The congress proceedings included visits to a number of major West German factories. Schmelzer returned to the publishing house visibly impressed by the West German workers’ high standard of living and the modern production methods he had seen in operation. “We must change our texts immediately,” he insisted. Many of us who were his colleagues warned him not to say so out loud if he wanted to keep his job. But Schmelzer was convinced that the Party was unrealistic in demanding a fallacious picture of life in the West, and at Party meetings he argued that the textbooks should be made to tally with the real conditions he had seen with his own eyes. Schmelzer was dismissed from the publishing house, and later we heard that he had tried to commit suicide.

The editing of the texts on history and geography could be done only by Party members, with predictable results. Here are some excerpts from a manual for the use of ten-year-olds.

On Bremen and Bremerhaven at the mouth of the Weser:

Ever since 1945 the ports of Bremen and Bremerhaven have been misused for war preparations. Here are unloaded the troops, atomic rockets, guns, and tanks with which the American warmongers of West Germany threaten the camp of Socialism and thus the peace of the world. The workers of both cities have protested with mighty demonstrations against this misuse and this threat.

The area between the Elbe and the Weser, sandy soil covered by heather and juniper, is described as fertile soil which British troops destroyed in war maneuvers.

For some years the heath farmers have not been able to reap the fruits of their toil. NATO troops hold their war exercises here. British tanks lay waste the fields. They churn up acres of carrots, wreck streets and roads, and even destroy houses. The tanks do not even respect the wildlife preserve in the neighborhood of Wilseder Mountain. The West German government does nothing to prevent these destructions; it leaves the British occupation troops an entirely free hand! The heath farmers must grimly stand by and watch the fruits of their hard work being ground under.

On the port of Kiel:

Kiel, with its port and its docks, is NATO’s largest military base in the North Sea. Here the West German warmongers are building warships equipped with atom rockets. NATO warships gather in Kiel Bay for war exercises.

The Rhineland-Palatinate area is described as a warren of NATO armament, and the Lorelei cliffs, one of the most famous scenic spots in all of Germany, are depicted as follows:

The NATO generals have, moreover, included these cliffs in their criminal war preparations. Caves have been hollowed out in the stone and filled with dynamite.

In ease of war the huge cliffs are to be blown up and the rocks tumbled into the Rhine. The water level of the Rhine will thus be made to rise, completely flooding the upper Rhine Valley. A second demolition of the cliffs is to open the way for the blocked waters to flood the lower Rhine Valley. Immeasurable havoc would be inflicted on the inhabitants by the resultant tidal wave. Courageous patriots sealed the dynamite caves in the Lorelei cliffs with concrete; for this they were arrested by the French occupation authorities. However, their exploit focused the attention of the population in both German states on the immense threat posed by the warmongers.

This manual on geography ends with a glowing report on the freedom-loving, economically booming East Germany, in which there are no more social conflicts and in which all men are provided for by the state and live happily.

Political indoctrination reaches down even to the elementary readers. The following story, entitled “The Foreigner,” is designed to stimulate distrust of foreigners.

The little girls gather in the ditch. They are worn out from playing. Siegfried climbs a tree and looks at the church steeple clock. “It’ll soon be noon,” he calls. A little later: “Someone’s coming. . . !” The stranger saunters closer. He stops in front of the three and lights up a cigarette. “Well, children, what are you playing at?” He comes closer. “Nothing,” answers Gisela. “We’re resting a bit.” “How about some candy . . . ?” The man lets the children dig into the bag. Siegfried tries to decipher the lettering, but he can’t make out a word. It’s not German, then! A foreigner! it occurs to Siegfried. Maybe even a criminal? Siegfried recalls what his teacher and the officer of the Border Police told them in the Young Pioneer class. . . . Breathless, Siegfried runs to the building of the German Border Police. He stands excitedly in front of Lieutenant Traustein, and the sentences come tumbling out. “He gave us candy. . . . It wasn’t German that was written there. . . . He’s catching the train . . . noon. . . . And then he spoke in such a peculiar way.” The officer sends out messengers. The hinterland group is concentrated around the village. The lieutenant sends the four best Border Policemen to the station. He proceeds there himself with Siegfried and sits down in the canteen with the young man. . . . The clock ticks on, minute after minute. . . . It is now twenty-three minutes past twelve. Still four minutes to go before the train leaves. Siegfried and the lieutenant look tensely out of the window. Suddenly Siegfried jumps up from his chair. “There! There! He’s moving fast!” The foreigner runs up to the barrier, has his ticket punched, and hastily sticks his identity card under the Border Policeman’s nose. ... A soldier bars the way. The foreigner shakes a fist at him. He is determined to break through by force. The soldier leaps aside. The second one seizes the man from behind and bends his arm up his back. At the same moment other Border Policemen rush up and grab the foreigner. The three Young Pioneers stand in front of all the schoolchildren of their school. The company commander of the German Border Police speaks: “We owe a great debt of thanks to Monika, Gisela, and Siegfried. They helped us seize a man. . . . Investigation revealed that it was a case of crime, of espionage. ... He wanted to bring important information to West Berlin. . . .” Monika, Gisela, and Siegfried embrace each other. The schoolchildren congratulate them.

The older, more experienced editors with graduate degrees have found the pressure to conform to the Party line unendurable. During a particularly offensive session, Jutta O. sprang to her feet and threatened to throw herself out the window if Frankiewicz went on tormenting her. Another senior editor, Comrade H., fled to the West. Comrade Karl Heinz S., Frankiewicz’s favorite victim, developed stomach ulcers. Engineer Heinrich M., a member of the Party whom Frankiewicz had brought from Zwickau at the publishing house’s expense, was so browbeaten that he developed a neurosis and was seized with a fit of vomiting every time he saw the publishing house. He fled to the West. Ruth B., an editor who had a degree in economics and who worked on books in the economics field, suffered a heart attack. The senior editor for the economics department, Hans D., though a member of the Party, fled to the West. Frankiewicz himself became increasingly moody. He would praise three chapters but end up by tearing a manuscript to pieces. Or on rare occasions he would praise a manuscript, but when it came back from the Ministry of Education with a rejection slip, he would quickly change his decision. A small memorandum war would ensue. The editors insisted that each of Frankiewicz’s directives must be set down in writing. They themselves kept the minutes of every conversation with him, with the authors, with the Ministry of Education’s censors. It was a nerve-racking game of hide-and-seek.

After four years of terrorism the department was so demoralized that the editing broke down completely. Out of forty people who had originally begun working with Frankiewicz only nine remained. All the rest had fallen ill or fled.

The State Security Police at last intervened. Frankiewicz was not held personally responsible. Today he directs the television program School and Life in East Berlin. But his ambitious program was at an end. Despite four years of terror, betrayal, and political pressure he had not succeeded in founding a “socialist editorial collective.”

Overheard in East Berlin

Ulbricht, in a speech to factory workers: “After all, we lost an imperialist war; all the war damage had to be repaired and houses rebuilt; there were shortages of material; but even so, the standard of living here is double what it is in the Soviet Union.”

Worker’s voice in the background: “That’s natural, you’ve been in power only half as long.”

Two East Berlin Vopos are standing near the Wall at Checkpoint Charlie. One of them asks: “What would you do if the Wall suddenly came down?”

“I’d climb the nearest tree,” says the other.

“The nearest tree? What for?”

“To escape being trampled underfoot in the stampede.”

A comment on Ulbricht’s speeches, of an unbearable tedium: To the traditional units in electronics, the ampere, the volt, and the ohm, a new measurement is added — one Ulb, the amount of electricity saved when a listener turns off the radio while Ulbricht is speaking.

Question: What is a tapeworm?

Answer: An elephant which has lived through socialism.

Two collective farmers are talking things over. “How will the harvest pan out this year, comrade?” one of them asks.

“Middling,” answers the other.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Worse than last year, but better than next.”