Classe

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Although the liberals at The Guardian try to dismiss her with snide anti-communism, Comrade Margot Honecker’s words are well worth reading.

Margot Honecker, 84, who as education minister of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) served alongside her husband, describes her homesickness for a “lost nation” and calls its demise a tragedy in an interview due to be broadcast on German television on Monday evening.

The documentary, which was years in the making due to Honecker’s dogged insistence she would never give an interview to “West German” media, shows her at home in Chile where she escaped to with her husband after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in the early 1990s.

“It is a tragedy that this land no longer exists,” she tells the interviewer, Eric Friedler, adding that, while she lives in Chile “my head is in Germany”. She does not, however, mean united Germany, rather the “better Germany” of the GDR.

“Margot Honecker showed no remorse, or discernment, she expressed no word of regret or apology,” he said.

“She might be in Chile, but she is very well connected to a whole guard of old comrades. She regularly spends hours reading the internet, knows exactly what’s going on in Germany, but says her desire for Germany is restricted to … the GDR.”

Honecker predicted the socialist Germany for which she and her husband, who died of cancer in 1994, fought for, would have its chance again. “We laid a seed in the ground which will one day come to fruition,” she says. “We just didn’t have enough time to realise our plans.”

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

On Aug. 13, 2011, the 50th anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall, this article was the front-page lead in the daily newspaper, Junge Welt; the translator, John Catalinotto, thought it should be shared with non-German readers.

At this time, all we can say is:  

Thank you 

for 28 years of peace in Europe  

for 28 years without any German soldiers participating in wars  

for 28 years without Hartz IV unemployment [Workfare] and 

for 28 years without homelessness, soup kitchens and leftovers 

for 28 years supplying places for all infants and children in nurseries and kindergartens (child care) 

for 28 years without neo-Nazi posters saying ‘give GAS’ in the German capital 

for 28 years of scientific history instead of fairy tales 

for 28 years Club Cola and DKK  

for 28 years without hedge funds and private equity parasites 

for 28 years without a consultation fee and two-tier health care 

for 28 years without Hohenschönhausen Hubertus Knabe [a professional anti-communist] 

for 28 years of good sex without ‘Wetlands’ and photo-shopping bodies 

for 28 years of education for all

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Berlin, Aug 6 (ANI): Architect and hardline Communist Heinz Kessler still takes pride about building the Berlin Wall, which according to him, was a triumph of socialism. 

The Berlin Wall was built nine years after the East German Government decided to erect an ‘Iron Curtain’ between East and West Germany, and Kessler oversaw its construction about 50 years ago. 

The wall cut off the Allied controlled West Berlin from Soviet- administered East Germany and closed the city as an escape route from East to West. 

Kessler still wishes that the wall, which began to fall from 1989 in the wake of citizens’ protest, would have been erect. 

“The wall was our protection. It was a fantastic experience for me to be part of it! Sure, now it’s gone, I hear about the new freedom that people are enjoying in eastern Europe. But how do you define freedom?” Kessler said. 

“Millions of people in eastern Europe are now free from employment, free from safe streets, free from health care, free from social security. While the wall was standing, there was peace. Today there’s hardly a place that isn’t in flames. Were you ever in East Germany? It was a wonderful country! “, he added. 

Kessler describes the re-united Germany as “callous and unjust”. 

Being a hardline communist, Kessler has been barred from being a member of the Party of Democratic Socialism, which is striving to convey a moderate, democratic image. 

He was also convicted of manslaughter and was jailed for seven years and a half for ordering a shootout order at refugees. 

“On some matters I cannot change my position. I refuse to sacrifice my Communist beliefs to the fashion of the day. I am and remain a believer in democratic centralism and a revolutionary socialist party “, mirror.co.uk quoted Kessler, as saying. 

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

By Leslie Feinberg

Articles appeared in many newspapers advocating the elimination of Paragraph 175. In Saxony, which later became a part of East Germany, the legislature endorsed repeal of the Paragraph.

One communist in particular deserves credit for these efforts: Dr. Rudolf Klimmer.

As a medical student in Dresden during the Weimar Republic, Klimmer, a gay man, had traveled to Berlin many times to follow developments within the homosexual emancipation movement. He particularly developed an association with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld’s Scientific-Human itarian Committee.

Klimmer was a member of the Communist Party. So was the committee’s secretary and later chairperson, Richard Linsert.

During 12 long years of fascism, Klimmer kept his political views and sexuality under wraps, marrying a lesbian for mutual protection. After the Nazis were defeated, he chose to live in the Soviet Occupied Zone and joined the Communist Party once again.

Steakley noted, “He launched a one-man campaign which aimed at repealing all laws against homosexuality, re-establishing Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science, and agitating with Soviet and local authorities for the full equality of gay people.”

More by Leslie Feinberg on LGBT rights in East Germany:

Same-sex rights in East Germany: Legal and material progress

East Germany in the 1970s: Lesbian & gay movement blossoms

East Germany: Forming of gay groups ignites church struggle  

Lesbians and gay men: Great gains in 1980s East Germany

Late 1980s East Germany: Gay/lesbian clubs in Party, state

Gains cut short by 1989 counter-revolution