“The Desire for Peace is ‘Unconstitutional’ in Bonn”: The Free German Youth and Rearmament in West Germany, 1945–19521
Best known as the state youth organization of the German Democratic Republic, the Free German Youth (FDJ) operated widely in West Germany during the early Cold War era. This article provides a brief history of the West-FDJ, as it was known, and concentrates on its prominent efforts challenging Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s rearmament policies in the early 1950s. While the decision to ban the organization in 1951 was justified by concerns about the fragility of the young democratic state, the Adenauer government’s strident response also served as a politically expedient strategy to undermine resistance to West Germany’s remilitarization.
On May 11, 1952, the West German city of Essen prepared for a large protest against the General Treaty being negotiated between Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s government and the western Allies. The Caravan for Peace, as the march was termed by its participants, brought approximately 30,000 young Germans to the city to express their opposition to the rearmament of the Federal Republic. While the organizers portrayed it as a demonstration for peace and unity free from any political agenda, it was in fact a carefully orchestrated event designed to challenge the rearmament policies of Chancellor Adenauer. The most prominent group involved in the march—and the one that had worked behind the scenes to organize it—was the Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth, FDJ) in West Germany. The West-FDJ had been outlawed by the federal government one year earlier, and its involvement undoubtedly played a key role in the last-minute ban issued by local authorities on the march.2 Aware that these prohibitions would not suffice, the city had taken several steps to reduce the number [End Page 253] of participants on the streets that day, including turning away trains and busses arriving that morning. Despite these efforts, the march saw tens of thousands of young protesters march in defiance of city authorities. The peaceful protest spiraled into a violent clash with the police by early afternoon. There were several hundred arrests, approximately one hundred serious injuries, and three protesters were wounded by police.3 One of them, a twenty-one-year-old Bavarian worker and active West-FDJ member named Phillip Müller, was shot in the back and killed.
The FDJ, officially founded in the Soviet zone of occupation in March 1946 was, in fact, first licensed as a youth organization in postwar Germany by British officials in Hamburg in November 1945.4 The movement grew quickly, if unevenly, throughout all four zones of occupied Germany as a nonpolitical association appealing to young, disillusioned Germans living amid the ruins of the Third Reich. Beginning in 1947, the many Free German Youth groups and their affiliated organizations throughout the West increasingly came under the control and coordination of Socialist Unity Party (SED) officials in East Berlin. By the time the two postwar German states were created in 1949, the FDJ in West Germany had essentially become a satellite of the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) state youth organization and a tool for its political agenda in the West. The West-FDJ continued to operate openly until June 1951, when it was banned by the Adenauer government.5 Although greatly weakened in terms of membership and influence following the ban, the group continued to operate illicitly for another decade.
This article concentrates on the history of the FDJ in West Germany from its founding after the war to the fateful 1952 anti-rearmament protest that ended in bloodshed. In so doing, it offers three main arguments regarding the importance of the West-FDJ in the broader context of postwar Germany. First, in studying the West-FDJ’s various activities, most notably a planned referendum on West German rearmament, it argues that the organization became an East German tool to exacerbate widespread anxieties about the western alliance that were not confined to the far left. These fears, meticulously documented in public opinion surveys at the time, transcended party affiliation and were especially strong among the young.6 A majority of West Germans opposed rearmament at the time Adenauer first expressed the idea publicly in December 1949, and a significant minority would continue to remain against it throughout the early 1950s.7 Second, in examining the responses of West German authorities and media, it underscores popular concerns about the stability of democracy and genuine fears about the communist state in the East. Authorities used local and state-level bans, as well as force, to hinder the West-FDJ, and the media regularly exaggerated the threat posed by the organization. Third, the article highlights the unique position of the FDJ in German-German relations during the early Cold War era that served the interests of both states. The group gave Erich Honecker, leader of the FDJ in the East, a foothold in the West and bolstered his [End Page 254] profile in the SED. Even more importantly, the prominent role of the West-FDJ in opposing rearmament made it easier for Adenauer to paint opponents of his policies as conspiratorial, extremist, and even antidemocratic. Under the guise of defending the democratic order, Adenauer’s move to ban the West-FDJ was a political strategy designed to undermine opposition to rearmament.
While historians have paid scant attention to the Essen protest, the event intersects with several important social and political developments underway in the early Cold War Federal Republic. The young protesters on the streets of Essen raised widespread concerns about the renewed politicization of German youth so soon after 1945. Germans reestablished an array of youth organizations during the Allied occupation, of which the largest groups were affiliated with the Catholic Church, labor unions, and sports clubs.8 Much has been written about their important role in creating a stable democracy, yet these groups could also defy political authorities.9 So, too, did the event underscore the widespread opposition to Adenauer’s rearmament policies. Scholars have carefully studied West Germany’s move toward rearmament following Adenauer’s election in 1949 as a strategy to enhance security and achieve sovereignty, yet there has been less consideration of the widespread opposition to his proposals.10 Internal resistance to rearmament came from several quarters, including military advisors, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and even some Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leaders.11 Because of the intense opposition among young Germans, youth organizations played a key role in challenging Adenauer’s rearmament plans. Finally, the reaction of authorities highlights the heavy-handed tactics the fledgling democratic state occasionally employed. In response to challenges such as these, the Adenauer government sometimes displayed a Machiavellian streak that provoked the ire of its critics. While his democratic convictions never wavered, the chancellor was not above employing undemocratic means to achieve his objectives.12
The most prominent youth organization dedicated to opposing remilitarization in the Federal Republic was undoubtedly the West-FDJ. Although there is a vibrant body of literature on the group, it has almost exclusively focused on the FDJ’s development as the official state youth organization of the GDR.13 Perhaps the authoritative work on the FDJ in English is by Alan McDougall, whose research focuses on the youth politics of East Germany at key moments of crisis.14 There has been much less research on its existence in the western occupation zones and early Federal Republic and virtually nothing in English. Examining the FDJ as one group among the many postwar youth organizations in the postwar era, Wolfgang Krabbe explores its role in German-German relations through the 1960s.15 Undoubtedly the most important work on the FDJ in the West is that of Michael Herms, who explores the fluidity of the youth organization scene immediately after 1945, the consolidation of the West-FDJ by the SED that occurred in the late 1940s, and the many activities organized against West Germany’s rearmament in the early 1950s.16 Herms’s overarching claim in his [End Page 255] extensive work on the West-FDJ is that the organization was an integral component of the SED’s propaganda efforts in the West throughout the early Cold War era. Building on Herms’s scholarship, this study connects the actions of the West-FDJ to the broader social anxieties of the early 1950s regarding rearmament and vividly illustrates why the Adenauer government was so concerned about its work. The group’s anti-rearmament message resonated with large sections of the West German population that were otherwise disinterested in—or actively hostile to—the West-FDJ’s political agenda and endangered the chancellor’s ambitious defense plans.
Creation: The Foundation of the FDJ, 1945–1947
Among the many youth organizations established in occupied Germany following the war was the FDJ. Founded throughout Germany under different names—Free German Youth, Free Youth, Volksjugend—these groups were licensed by the respective occupation powers in each zone. Consistent with the expectations of the occupying powers, these free groups affirmed their commitment to being nonpartisan despite the fact that many were typically organized by communists.17 Never as large as the confessional or sport youth groups, many of which built upon strong links extending back to the pre-Nazi era, the free youth organizations participated in activities and conferences with their peers and received equal treatment from the western Allies. Far from a coordinated auxiliary of the Soviet occupiers, these free groups in the West initially had only sporadic and informal links with the Soviet zone for several reasons. First, these groups were local, loosely connected regionally, and barred from interzonal affiliations by the occupying powers. Second, youth organizations believed to have broken the ban on political involvement were disbanded by the authorities. Third, and importantly, many early members, likely a majority, did not wish to engage in politics or communicate with the Soviet zone.18 In the first two years after the war, the FDJ in the Western zones, much like other groups, offered its members cultural activities and social opportunities without any overt political agenda. Indeed, one early member recalled years later that he had enjoyed his time in the organization in the postwar years and never noticed any political influence.19
The FDJ remained one of the smaller youth organizations—or collection of youth groups—during the late 1940s but attracted members across western Germany. While it existed throughout the occupation era in all three Western zones, its heartland was unquestionably the Ruhr area in the British zone. Membership in what would become the West-FDJ peaked in this period at approximately 40,000 members.20 The number of FDJ members in the American zone in 1947 was relatively modest, with 4,000 in Hesse, 2,500 in Bavaria, and presumably even fewer in Wuerttemberg-Baden, which did not report data.21 Membership in the French zone was also limited with no area reporting more than a few thousand members. The British zone easily contained the most FDJ members, yet even here the organization grew unevenly. In Lower Saxony, [End Page 256] the number of FDJ members in 1947 was approximately 4,000. This number seems respectable until one considers that the Catholic and Protestant youth groups each claimed about 35,000 members, the sports clubs had 90,000, and labor union youth groups another 45,000.22 The FDJ was by far the smallest youth organization in the state. Almost half of the FDJ’s contingent in the West came from North Rhine Westphalia, and more specifically, the industrial Ruhr area. This is where the links with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) were strongest; it is also where there were large numbers of young people—most notably, young miners—receptive to the FDJ’s political orientation. The cities of Dortmund (3,600 members), Bochum (1,500 members), and Essen (1,200 members) were all strongholds praised by FDJ leaders as possessing strong organizational infrastructure and active local chapters.23
The records of the FDJ reveal the two levels upon which the organization was already operating just two years into the occupation. On the surface, the FDJ offered its members cultural events, social activities, camping and other outdoor adventures, and even educational opportunities. These were portrayed as apolitical and indeed rarely brought the group into conflict with the occupational authorities during this period. Yet at the same time, FDJ leaders were quietly beginning to create instructional workshops for committed members, recruiting actively to grow the organization, and building a network of local, regional, and zone-level operatives. They also began to come into conflict with other youth groups in the western occupation zones. The FDJ was especially concerned with the Falken, who were affiliated with the SPD and outnumbered them virtually everywhere except in the Ruhr. According to FDJ leaders in the West, the Falken were “anti-Soviet,” “antidemocratic,” and viewed the FDJ as “its greatest opponent.”24 Furthermore, although the Falken were viewed by many to be apolitical in name only, their organization constituted a return to the pre-1933 period regarding its organizational structure, cultural activities, and political agenda. Nevertheless, FDJ leaders saw the opportunity to recruit from the lower and middle level ranks of its competitor and hoped to plan future events together to poach members.25
The emerging tensions between the FDJ in the West and other groups boiled over at an interzonal conference of youth organizations hosted in the British zone at Haus Altenberg near Cologne in November 1947. Representatives from the Catholic, Protestant, sport, FDJ, and bündische youth organizations met for two days to discuss their respective situations, update each other on their work, and explore future interzonal collaboration.26 The FDJ delegation was led by Honecker, who first provided detailed statistics on youth organizations in the Soviet zone of occupation. Unsurprisingly, the FDJ was the dominant group with almost 500,000 members. Following other organization reports, conversation turned to an FDJ proposal for greater unity in the form of a new national level organization that would include youth groups from all four occupation zones. After receiving support from the bündische [End Page 257] and sports groups, the FDJ proposal encountered vocal opposition from Josef Rommerskirchen, representative of the Catholic youth organization and Erich Lindstaedt of the Falken.27 They highlighted the undemocratic policies of the Soviet zone and accused the FDJ of capitalizing on the lack of freedom for organizing youth groups in the East.28 The meeting concluded with an optimistic communiqué for the press that all of the organizations were committed to a unified and peaceful Germany and would continue discussions about collaborating to achieve this goal. This promise, however, went unfulfilled as planned meetings with all the western youth organizations in early 1948 did not occur. Significantly, the Haus Altenberg meeting suggested that the East was beginning to tighten its grip on the FDJ in the West and made clear that the (much larger) groups of the western occupation zones were deeply skeptical of collaborating with Honecker.
Consolidation: Honecker Takes Control of the West-FDJ, 1947–1949
As the FDJ in the Western zones developed in the final years of the occupation, the organization employed a carefully calculated strategy to pursue its aims. Publicly, it continued its outspoken support for the creation of a nonpartisan youth movement throughout all of Germany dedicated to unity and freedom. Behind the scenes, however, East Berlin worked to unify the disparate FDJ groups and consolidate its control over the organization. As mentioned above, this frustrated the leaders of many youth groups who accused the FDJ of hypocrisy and increasingly sought to isolate the group in the West.29 Furthermore, Honecker and his loyal subordinates in the West ratcheted up the group’s political activities, turning meetings, conferences, discussion evenings, and even camping trips into thinly veiled propaganda sessions. The FDJ initiated new weeklong training courses during this period and began planning for dedicated FDJ functionary schools in the West to train the group’s leaders. Thus, while the West-FDJ called for collaboration and unity, it exerted tremendous efforts to tighten control over the organization and instill its political agenda in its young members. The result of these contradictory stances was an organization that declined significantly in size but now contained a more ideologically committed core membership.
There may be no better indication of the increasing role of the East in the affairs of the West-FDJ than the physical presence of Erich Honecker at its events. The leader of the FDJ in the Soviet zone traveled extensively throughout the western zones in this period and reported his findings in both formal meetings and a series of reports detailing his observations.30 In an October 1947 FDJ meeting in East Berlin, Honecker reported that he had met with FDJ groups in the Saar, Ruhr, and Lower Saxony on his last visit to the Western zones. More importantly, Honecker informed his colleagues that the situation in the West should henceforth receive their greatest attention and recommended that more seats in FDJ schools in the East be reserved for [End Page 258] members from the Western zones. Following up on this recommendation, he traveled to Stuttgart, Mannheim, and Ulm in spring 1948 to deepen the connections between the western groups and East Berlin.31 There can be little question that Honecker was hard at work centralizing the organization under his leadership by this point, and that he envisioned the group as a political tool to influence events in the West.
Building links between East Berlin and the West-FDJ required the creation of a more formalized organizational structure for the western groups. Without such a rigid hierarchy, it would be difficult for Honecker to exert influence on western members. Accordingly, the FDJ Secretariat in East Berlin established an Arbeitsgemeinschaft (working association) for all western FDJ groups and a Verbindungsbüro (liaison office) in Frankfurt in May 1948.32 While this decision sounds mutually beneficial, the arrangements were decreed in East Berlin and then ratified by leaders in the West a month later, which illustrates the dynamic of this relationship. These connections were formalized the following year through the creation of a Zentralbüro (central office) in Frankfurt. A new charter written in 1949 suggests that the office had operational independence and conducted business according to democratic principles.33 The paragraphs that follow detail the mission of the organization, the selection of local-level representatives, the role of the Secretariat, the processes for voting and decision making, the financing of activities, and the publication of the Freie Jugend newspaper for members.34 Behind the veneer of this democratic charter were Honecker and the FDJ leadership in East Berlin, who now felt confident that the loyal leaders in Frankfurt would mean control over potentially tens of thousands of members throughout the Federal Republic.
At precisely the same time that Honecker was tightening his grip over the West-FDJ, the organization was rapidly shrinking in size. From a peak of 40,000 in late 1946, membership continued to decline precipitously as the organization became increasingly politicized and controlled from East Berlin. By summer 1949, that number had declined to 13,000.35 There are multiple external explanations for these developments such as the currency reform in 1948 and the deepening political divisions cemented in 1949. There was also a slight bump in 1950 due to large recruiting events such as the first Deutschlandtreffen event that brought tens of thousands of West German youth to the East for several days of activities. Yet the central office in the West informed Honecker of the frustration many older members felt about the increasing control from East Berlin, as well as the heightened tensions with the KPD, which did not appreciate the SED’s influence.36 In the face of these declining numbers and increasingly disillusioned members, leaders in both East and West sought to organize high profile events that would attract attention and bring new recruits into the ranks of the organization. [End Page 259]
Confrontation: Challenging Adenauer, 1949–1951
With the founding of the two German states in 1949, the West-FDJ emerged as a thorn in the side of the Adenauer government as the organization engaged in relentless opposition to the chancellor’s political ambitions. One of the earliest of these overt political challenges occurred in 1950, when the FDJ publicly humiliated Federal President Theodor Heuss during a speech in Bochum. Speaking to 20,000 young miners in the Ruhr, Heuss was interrupted by a group of FDJ members heckling him and singing songs. The young protesters criticized the Adenauer government’s positions on rear-mament, German unity, and its alliance with the West. Among their chants specifically referenced in the Eastern newspapers the following day were: “We don’t want to be soldiers; Theodor, you can go yourself!”; “Bonn on the beautiful Rhine is much too small to be a capital!”; and “Ami go home, our coal should be used for peace!”37 The western media reported on the incident as well, although it portrayed it as a failure and used it to highlight the communist threat from the East.38 Interestingly, neither the West German or East German press drew attention to the fact that FDJ members living in the Federal Republic had been involved in the disruption. Hoping to make the disturbance appear spontaneous, the Eastern press omitted any comment about organized youth groups in attendance. The Western press referenced the FDJ having been bussed in from the “East zone,” arguably to delegitimize their opposition and link the incident to the enemy across the border. This strategy would soon change, however, as the media would come to focus on—and often sensationalize—the role of the West-FDJ in its opposition to the Adenauer government.
A few months later, the West-FDJ helped organize an expedition to Heligoland, a pair of small islands in the North Sea that had been taken from Germany after World War II that remained in the hands of the British. This followed unauthorized civilian landings in the previous months that had drawn attention to the loss of German sovereignty as well as the use of the islands as a bombing range and testing ground. The February 1951 event brought a delegation of students, fishermen, and youth group members from the unions, sports clubs, and FDJ.39 Unsurprisingly, these “brave young patriots,” as their supporters called them, were arrested after hoisting German, Heligoland, and world peace flags. Notably, seven members of the delegation, including young FDJ members from Braunschweig, received short prison sentences that provided even more propaganda material for the organization and the GDR.40 The West-FDJ capitalized on the Heligoland landing for months afterward, publishing flyers and reports praising the action, arguing against the use of German land for military purposes, and criticizing the Adenauer government’s acquiescence to continued Allied military occupation. The group even participated in the founding of a cultural organization committed to aiding the residents of the island and, more broadly, to national unity.41 [End Page 260]
The Heligoland incident made clear that the FDJ was able to mobilize youth against the Adenauer government and generate media coverage. Moreover, in this case, they had attached the organization to a national cause that already had a great deal of public interest. The Adenauer government was aware of popular concerns about the islands and had requested their return a month before the landing.42 At the same time, the media also sensationalized the event, thus generating attention but also diminishing the impact of the organization’s efforts. For instance, Hubertus Prinz zu Loewenstein wrote in Die Zeit that the communists used their occupation of the island for a “propaganda victory” that would only serve as an incitement and “sow unrest between Germany and Britain.”43 A succinct front page headline in the Offenburger Tageblatt described the expedition as a “Communist Invasion on Helgoland.”44 The involvement of the West-FDJ in the Heligoland landing offered it a chance to act for German sovereignty and against rearmament, yet it also underscored the link between opposition to Adenauer’s policies and communism. Ever the astute political observer, Adenauer recognized that the communists sought to use the rearmament issue for their purposes and asserted that there was “no point in shutting one’s eyes to the effects of such communist agitation.”45 To the contrary, the chancellor would respond directly in the months ahead.
Building on its biggest media success to date, the West-FDJ intensified its work on a new and even more politically charged project in the months that followed: a popular referendum on rearmament in the Federal Republic. In association with several different organizations linked to the KPD, the FDJ endeavored to conduct a popular referendum on rearmament that had the potential to significantly undermine Adenauer’s plans for sovereignty and integration into NATO. The referendum contained only one question: “Are you against the remilitarization of Germany and for a peace treaty with Germany in 1951?”46 Many Germans were anxious about rearmament so soon after 1945, and the FDJ recognized how widespread these fears were. Furthermore, the FDJ believed that utilizing one of the most basic tools of direct democracy—a popular referendum—would bolster its legitimacy and make it difficult for the West German government to continue its political course in the face of what was expected to be significant resistance. The initial data that the FDJ collected in the West, by no means a representative example of the entire population, confirmed that many Germans were strongly opposed to rearmament.47
In conjunction with the referendum project, the West-FDJ organized a series of activities designed to generate increased opposition to rearmament in the Federal Republic. Asserting that rearmament without the explicit support of the West German population contradicted the Basic Law, the West-FDJ undertook an array of resistance efforts in the form of protests, conferences, rallies, and meetings with other youth organizations. For instance, the West-FDJ planned large protest events in mid-April [End Page 261] 1951 throughout West Germany that would, whenever possible, be combined with the activities of other youth organizations. To take place in weeks that followed, the group scheduled state-level congresses across the country to coordinate referendum activities and motivate those young Germans involved. Acutely aware of the importance of winning over “nonorganized youth,” the West-FDJ held a variety of cultural events in April and May 1951 to garner support for their cause.48 All of these public events coincided with county-level conferences against rearmament hosted by the group in almost two dozen locations throughout the Federal Republic.49 Building on the success of these activities, the West-FDJ staged a rally with more than 2,000 supporters near the headquarters of the Allied High Commission at the Hotel Peters-berg overlooking Bonn on June 17, 1951. This event turned into a brawl between FDJ members and the police and led to eighty arrests.50 Thus, the referendum was part of a larger program designed to undermine public support for the Bonn government’s remilitarization policies.
The referendum, however, was never completed. Seriously worried about the outcome, the Adenauer government took decisive action and formally prohibited the referendum in late April 1951. By this point, thousands of the West-FDJ’s members had been arrested and hundreds had received fines and short prison sentences. Even this did not stop the West-FDJ and its allies, however, since they sensed the government’s fear and believed they could win majority support for their view. The illegal continuation of the referendum was simply too much for the Adenauer government to permit, and on June 26, 1951, a week after the confrontation on the Petersberg, it outlawed the FDJ.51 In a seven page document detailing the FDJ’s links to the KPD, the involvement of Honecker and the SED in its affairs, the bans of the FDJ that had already been issued in several West German states, and its continued involvement with the referendum, Adenauer and his Interior Minister, Robert Lehr, banned the FDJ as a danger to the constitutional order. While the group had contravened previous state-level bans in North Rhine Westphalia, Hessen, and Bavaria, Adenauer believed that a federal ban would finally end the group’s activities in the Federal Republic.
Crisis: From the Ban to Bloodshed, 1951–1952
While Adenauer’s 1951 ban on the FDJ was ultimately upheld by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1954, the timing of his move is intriguing. The Adenauer government felt compelled to outlaw the West-FDJ, a shrinking organization that struggled to maintain members, while the German Communist Party continued to compete in elections for several more years. Undoubtedly, the Adenauer government had legitimate concerns about the influence of the West-FDJ on the youth of the Federal Republic and its effects on the young democracy. It is difficult to contend, however, that the West-FDJ posed a greater threat to democracy than other groups continuing to operate in the Federal Republic, most notably the KPD. This is especially clear [End Page 262] when one considers that the Adenauer government’s own justification for the ban was based in part on the group’s links to the Communist Party.52 The timing of the ban suggests it has more to do with the threat the West-FDJ posed to Adenauer’s political agenda than the democratic order of the Federal Republic.53 Banning the organization as inconsistent with the Basic Law allowed Adenauer to portray the West-FDJ’s public anti-rearmament efforts as part of a political program wholly orchestrated in East Berlin. The link between the West-FDJ and East Germany was already widely known in the Federal Republic thanks to the media, and so banning the organization served to delegitimize anti-rearmament efforts. Furthermore, the ban meant that the West-FDJ’s anti-rearmament activities were now illegal, thus allowing Adenauer to use the authority of the state to combat this political opponent.
The coinciding of the ban with the proposed referendum is indeed no accident; the chancellor had good reason to fear the outcome of the proposed plebiscite. The West-FDJ was acutely aware of this fact, asserting that the ban was directly connected to plans to reconstruct a West German military against the will of the German people.54 Regular polling conducted by the US High Commission for Germany (HICOG) indeed documented widespread resistance to remilitarization. At the time of Adenauer’s initial statements on rearmament in December 1949, 62 percent of respondents in the American zone were opposed to the creation of any army in West Germany. The Korean War softened opposition to remilitarization after 1950, but a slight majority still opposed German participation in the defense of western Europe as late as February 1952.55 Popular resistance to rearmament stabilized at about 40 percent for the next year, then fluctuated between 30 and 40 percent until the creation of the Bundeswehr in 1955. Additionally, many prominent voices spoke out against rearmament, including President Heuss and Adenauer’s CDU colleague (and future Federal President) Gustav Heinemann, whose resignation led to Lehr’s appointment as Interior Minister in 1950.56 Widespread popular opposition to rearmament in the early 1950s from across the political spectrum reveals how strongly the West-FDJ’s messaging resonated.
Offering his own analysis of German opposition to rearmament at the time, Chancellor Adenauer conceded that his position was politically unenviable. In his memoirs, Adenauer stated that “a German defense contribution was certainly unpopular” and that he was “very disturbed” by the views of his fellow Germans.57 Furthermore, he repeatedly commented on “the agitation of the Communist Party” in 1950 and his struggle to “overcome the negative attitude of the German people.”58 Just two months before his government issued the FDJ ban, Adenauer minimized popular opposition to his rearmament policies in a conversation with US High Commissioner John J. McCloy and claimed that the “mood of ‘Ohne-mich’ (Without Me) is on the wane.”59 Yet McCloy may well have known that this was a bluff, as HICOG surveys conducted in spring 1951 indicated that support for German participation in the defense of Western [End Page 263] Europe was eroding, reaching a low of 43 percent at the time of their meeting in late April.60 Furthermore, HICOG polled West Germans in May 1951 about the proposed referendum on rearmament and discovered that while only 37 percent were familiar with the idea, a whopping 76 percent of those supported it.61 Thus, it is clear that Adenauer had good reason to worry about the FDJ and the rearmament referendum.
The weeks that followed the issuing of the ban saw significant media coverage in both East and West, with the stories adhering closely to the contours of the divided Germany. In the West, newspapers detailed the Adenauer government’s defense of democracy and stressed the fact that such action was long overdue. One West Berlin newspaper article referred to the FDJ as the “red HJ” (Hitler Youth) and celebrated the fact that the ban would also apply to West Berlin.62 Others published a few weeks later expressed frustration that the FDJ continued to operate illegally in the West and cited examples of police confrontations with the group in Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, and Essen.63 In the East, the media coverage focused on Adenauer’s desire to remilitarize the country and his close collaboration with the United States.64 These articles emphasized the commitment of West German youth to peace and that even a ban would not prevent their efforts. Notably, some of the Eastern press coverage also challenged the legality of the ban, specifically suggesting that it violated the Basic Law.65 The Eastern media also celebrated the high-profile acts of protest against the ban including the hoisting of blue FDJ flags from a factory in Hamburg and even a window in the Bundestag in July 1951. The news coverage of the FDJ ban on both sides of the border makes clear that the FDJ did not cease its activities after the ban; indeed, the policy seems to have emboldened the group to organize larger, more ambitious events.
Hoping to mount a strong public response to the ban and to take advantage of Adenauer’s vulnerability on rearmament, the West-FDJ jumped at the opportunity to work with politically “clean partners” on a march planned for the following spring.66 Portrayed as a nonpolitical youth rally for peace in the Ruhr’s industrial heartland, the Caravan for Peace saw 30,000 protesters march on the streets of Essen on the second Sunday in May 1952. The young protesters hailed from a variety of West German youth organizations and included representatives from unions, nature clubs, and confessional groups, as well as the FDJ. The remarkable size of the protest reveals how strongly concerns about rearmament resonated throughout the West. The number of protesters who marched—and thousands were turned away by police at the last minute—was more than three times the entire membership of the West-FDJ. As local authorities had prohibited the march shortly before it was scheduled to begin, and the West-FDJ was operating in clear defiance of its ban, the Essen police confronted the protesters and, a little after 2 p.m., opened fire on them. As noted above, hundreds were arrested, three protesters were wounded, and Müller was killed. [End Page 264]
The death of Philipp Müller drew a great deal of attention to the event and its participants, and it served as a valuable propaganda tool for the FDJ in the time that followed. The organization portrayed Müller as a martyr for peace and used his name as a propaganda tool for myriad purposes.67 The West-FDJ documented his life for months afterward in its publications and held various fundraising campaigns using his name. It also petitioned the Bundestag to criticize the use of “fascist” police violence.68 It even attempted to convince citizens to rename streets and squares after the slain youth in several western cities.69 Furthermore, FDJ publications trumpeted the fact that so many organizations had participated in the march and used their involvement to further legitimize its role and magnify the death of Müller.70 Yet these efforts were largely in vain, as it failed to influence Adenauer’s political agenda regarding rear-mament. Indeed, the episode served as a propaganda tool for the chancellor as well, and the Allies finalized the General Treaty just two weeks later. News coverage in West Germany sensationalized the event, even claiming that the FDJ had triggered the confrontation by firing on the police.71 Furthermore, despite its supposed propaganda value, the protest failed to win the organization many new recruits. Quite the opposite was true, in fact, with the West-FDJ continuing to hemorrhage members in the year following the protest. This was due to both the tightened control and heightened politicization from East Berlin, as well as the fact that Müller’s death vividly demonstrated the dangers of involvement with illegal underground organizations.
A year before the Caravan for Peace march, the West German Minister for All-German Affairs, Jakob Kaiser, had called the FDJ “the most dangerous cover organization for world communism in Germany.”72 Undoubtedly an exaggerated statement in 1951, it became even more far-fetched in the years following the 1952 event in Essen. The organization struggled to keep consistent records due to the ban, but its files indicate high member turnover and significant financial concerns because of unpaid dues. Indeed, the West-FDJ maintained a secret ledger of members and had implemented a plan to move documents regularly to keep the identity of its membership safe. No amount of secrecy, however, could prevent East Berlin from recognizing the continuing decline in members. Whereas leaders in the West claimed the organization had preserved 85–90 percent of its membership eighteen months after the federal ban, East Berlin called these estimates “unreal.”73 A 30 percent decline in membership by January 1953 seems more likely. A year later, the West-FDJ publicly proclaimed a membership of 25,000 when the actual number was approximately one-tenth as large.74 By this point, the organization received little, if any, attention in the Western media and struggled to organize any sort of major event. It is safe to say that by the mid-1950s, the FDJ no longer posed any meaningful threat to the democratic order of the West, if such fears had ever been justified. It had also proven wholly unsuccessful in its attempt to prevent Adenauer’s plans for remilitarization. [End Page 265]
Conclusion
In 2012, the SPD-led Essen city council debated how to commemorate the tragic events of the youth protest that had occurred there sixty years earlier. The first proposal, naming the bridge where the confrontation took place after Philipp Müller, was widely criticized and openly opposed by the city’s mayor, Rolf Fliss, a member of the Green Party. As a compromise, the council proposed placing a historical marker at the site of Müller’s death. At the request of the city council, the director of Essen’s history museum and archive, Dr. Klaus Wisotzky, prepared the language of the plaque and specifically concentrated on the event that brought Müller to Essen that day in May 1952.75 While Mayor Fliss supported the marker and language it contained, vocal opposition emerged from CDU and Free Democratic Party (FDP) members of the council. Their concerns hinged on the fact that the plaque omitted mention of Müller’s membership in the KPD. One CDU member stated that it was questionable that the city should honor a communist and expressed her concerns that the plaque would become a Heimat (home) for socialists and communists. A colleague from the FDP criticized the “one-sided assessment” of the historical events of that day.76 Defending the historical marker, an SPD council member stressed the massive resistance to rearmament in West German society in the early 1950s and, notably, that the protest reminds citizens of their democratic right to demonstrate.
Ultimately, the city installed the historical marker in 2012 to commemorate the protest and the death of Philipp Müller, albeit several months after the actual anniversary. The plaque, however, offers an intriguing explanation of the events that transpired there six decades earlier and forgets as much as it remembers. It makes no mention of the KPD or of the West-FDJ, which both played important roles in the event. Instead, it references the diverse political, religious, and labor backgrounds of the protesters that came to the city to oppose the rearmament of the Federal Republic so soon after World War II. And in acknowledging that the police used deadly force against Müller, the plaque recognizes him as “the first—and for a long time, the only—protester in the Federal Republic to be killed by police.”77 In a fascinating twist, Müller, the longtime martyr of the FDJ, appears to be transformed here into the first member of West Germany’s nascent peace movement to die at the hands of the state.
Shrinking in size for years before the 1952 protest, the West-FDJ operated in relative obscurity with a membership in the hundreds through the late 1950s. While it continued to publish newsletters and meet in small groups, it would never again pose a meaningful threat in the eyes of the West German government.78 Yet the organization’s activities during the occupation and early years of division underscore several significant developments in early Cold War Germany. The responses of West German authorities and media illustrate popular concerns about the stability of democracy and genuine fears about the communist state in the East. Significantly, the group’s activities underscore the fears many West Germans had about rearmament—and [End Page 266] Adenauer’s broader political agenda—that transcended party lines. The federal ban on the FDJ also reveals how anticommunism became a means to bolster rearmament efforts. Finally, as the 2012 controversy in Essen makes clear, the politics of Cold War memory remain contentious well into the twenty-first century, as Germans continue to grapple with how to remember and commemorate their recent past. The politically charged debates surrounding the monument underscore the longevity of Adenauer’s strategic conflation of opposition to rearmament and communism. They also highlight continuing discomfort in remembering the political diversity of the early Federal Republic and the widespread opposition to one of Adenauer’s most enduring political legacies. For a largely forgotten youth organization that enjoyed only a brief existence in West Germany, the West-FDJ reveals a great deal about the tensions of the divided nation in the early Cold War world.
brian m. puaca (bpuaca@cnu.edu) is a professor of history at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia (USA). His monograph, Learning Democracy: Education Reform in West Germany, 1945–1965, received the New Scholar’s Book Award from the American Educational Research Association. He has published several articles and book chapters on school reform, history instruction, democratization, and German memory.
Notes
1. “Für Bonn ist Friedenswille ‘verfassungsfeindlich,’” Das Junge Deutschland 3, no. 8, 1951, 2.
2. “Beschluss der Bundesregierung betr. Freie Deutsche Jugend – vom 25.6.1951,” Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (hereafter BA-SAPMO) DY 24, no. 3811, Bundesarchiv Berlin.
3. Michael Herms, Hinter den Linien: Westarbeit der FDJ, 1945–1956 (Berlin: Metropol, 2001), 262–74.
4. Recognition of FDJ by British authorities and Landesjugendamt Hamburg, November 27, 1945, BA-SAPMO DY24, no. 23207.
5. The West-FDJ continued its legal appeals against this decision all the way to the Constitutional Court, which upheld the ban in 1954. For a detailed study of the FDJ ban, see Karl Heinz Jahnke, 26. Juni 1951 – Das Verbot der Freien Deutschen Jugend (Essen: Neuen-Impulse, 1996).
6. A survey conducted by the US High Commission in September 1950 indicated declining support for a German army among young adults aged fifteen to twenty-four years. A November 1950 survey showed that less than 10 percent of survey respondents would volunteer to serve in any army, and almost 40 percent would refuse even if drafted. See Anna Merritt and Richard Merritt, Public Opinion in Semisovereign Germany: The HICOG Surveys, 1949–1955 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), 82–83, 90–91.
7. Chancellor Adenauer first publicly raised the possibility of West German remilitarization in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer in December 1949. While expressing his opposition to all rearmament in principle, he conceded that he could imagine West German forces serving in a European army under joint command. See Konrad Adenauer, Memoirs, 1945–1953, trans. Beate Ruhm von Oppen (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1965) 267–70.
8. On youth organizations and reconstruction in the West after 1945, see Jaimey Fisher, Discipling Germany: Youth, Reeducation, and Reconstruction After the Second World War (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2007); Mark Ruff, The Wayward Flock: Catholic Youth in Postwar West Germany, 1945–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Heather Dichter, “Game Plan for Democracy: Sport and Youth in Occupied West Germany,” in Transforming Occupation in the Western Zones of Germany: Politics, Everyday Life and Social Interactions, 1945–1955, eds. Camilo Erlichman and Christopher Knowles (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 133–50. See also Ulrich Herrmann and Joachim Petzold, eds., Protestierende Jugend: Jugendopposition und politischer Protest in der deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte (Weinheim: Juventa, 2002).
9. For such an example in education, see Brian M. Puaca, “The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword?: Student Newspapers and Democracy in Postwar West Germany,” in Different Germans, Many Germanies—New Transatlantic Perspectives, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch, Harald Wenzel, and Karin Goihl (New York: Berghahn, 2017), 137–57.
10. On Adenauer’s domestic political strategies and foreign policy decisions regarding rearmament, see David Clay Large, Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). See also Donald Abenheim, Reforging the Iron Cross: The Search for Tradition in the West German Armed Forces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
11. On internal resistance to remilitarization, see Gordon Drummond, The Social Democrats in Opposition, 1949–1960: The Case Against Rearmament (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982); James S. Corum, “Adenauer, Amt Blank, and the Founding of the Bundeswehr, 1950–1956,” in Rearming Germany, ed. James S. Corum (Boston: Brill, 2011), 29–52; Michael Geyer, “Cold War Angst: The Case of West German Opposition to Rearmament and Nuclear Weapons,” in The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968, ed. Hanna Schissler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 376–408. Interestingly, Geyer relies on public opinion data collected by two German sources (a group affiliated with the Chancellor’s Office and the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach) and finds even greater resistance to remilitarization than documented in the HICOG surveys.
12. Ronald Granieri makes precisely this point in his assessment of Adenauer’s rearmament efforts. See Granieri, The Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, The CDU/CSU, and the West, 1949–1966 (New York: Berghahn, 2003), 44. For a more charitable view of Adenauer’s leadership, see Dennis Bark and David Gress, A History of West Germany, vol. 1, From Shadow to Substance, 1945–1963 (Oxford: Blackford, 1989). Hans-Peter Schwarz’s authoritative two-volume biography of Adenauer offers a balanced assessment of his leadership. See Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer: A German Statesman and Politician in a Period of War, Revolution, and Reconstruction, trans. L. Willmot (New York: Berghahn, 1995).
13. See Ulrich Mählert and Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan, Blaue Hemden—Rote Fahnen: Die Geschichte der Freien Deutschen Jugend (Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1996); Michael Walter, Die Freie Deutsche Jugend: Ihre Funktionen im politischen System der DDR (Freiburg: Arnold Bergstrasser, 1997); Peter Skyba, Vom Hoffnungstraeger zum Sicherheitsrisiko: Jugend in der DDR und Jugendpolitik der SED 1949–1961 (Cologne: Boehlau, 2000); Alan Nothnagle, Building the East German Myth: Historical Mythology and Youth Propaganda in the German Democratic Republic, 1945–1989 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1999).
14. Alan McDougall, Youth Politics in East Germany: The Free German Youth Movement, 1946–1968 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
15. Wolfgang Krabbe, Was für ein Deutschland soll das künftige Deutschland sein?: Die Jugend und die Frage der Wiedervereinigung (1945–1972) (Münster: Lit, 1998).
16. Michael Herms, Hinter den Linien. See also Michael Herms, “Zur sowjetischen Einflussnahme auf die ‘Westarbeit’ der FDJ 1947–1949,” in Die DDR – Analysen eines aufgegebenen Staates, ed. Heiner Timmermann (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2001), 255–69. See also Michael Herms and Karla Popp, eds., Westarbeit der FDJ, 1946–1989. Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Metropol, 1997).
17. Michael Herms, “Zur Gründung der Freien Deutschen Jugend in den Westzonen,” in Deutsche Teilung – Deutsche Wiedervereinigung, ed. Helga Gotschlich and Edeltraud Schulze (Berlin: Metropol, 1996), 138–47.
18. A 1948 US military government survey indicated that approximately 15 percent of youth in the American zone belonged to youth organizations. While they mentioned various leisure activities that they enjoyed as members, large majorities stated that they disliked lectures and their answers indicated that they were no better informed on political issues than their peers. See Merritt and Merritt, Public Opinion in Occupied Germany, 208–209.
19. Herms, “Zur Gründung,” 142.
20. Herms, “Zur Gründung,” 148.
21. “Persönliche Besprechung mit Hans Singer am 11.5.47 in Berlin ueber die Entwicklung der FDJ in der amerikanischen Zone,” undated (likely May 1947), BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 11931.
22. “Jugendorganisation in Niedersachsen,” undated (likely September 1947), BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 18608.
23. Hermann Axen, “Bericht über die Reise in die britische Zone vom 20. bis 28.08.1947,” September 5, 1947, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 11931.
24. Untitled report on relations between FDJ and other groups in the West, June 1949, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 3829, p. 5.
25. Untitled report on relations between FDJ and other groups in the West, June 1949, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 3829, p. 5.
26. “Bericht über die Zusammenkunft der Vertreter deutscher Jugendorganisationen am 4./5.November 1947 in Haus Altenberg Bez. Koeln,” undated (likely mid-November 1947), BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 23207.
27. “Bericht über die Zusammenkunft der Vertreter deutscher Jugendorganisationen am 4./5.November 1947 in Haus Altenberg Bez. Koeln,” undated (likely mid-November 1947), BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 23207, p. 6, 8.
28. “Bericht über die Zusammenkunft der Vertreter deutscher Jugendorganisationen am 4./5.November 1947 in Haus Altenberg Bez. Koeln,” undated (likely mid-November 1947), BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 23207, p. 12–14.
29. The Falken, who certainly had their own political motivations, formally called for all other youth organizations in the new Federal Republic to cut ties with the FDJ in June 1949. For the FDJ’s talking points for its members in response, see “Rundschreiben 01/4/49,” June 20, 1949, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 22955.
30. Protokoll von der Sekretariatssitzung am 9.10.1947, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 2424.
31. Michael Herms, “Zur Stalinisierung der West-FDJ 1949 bis 1952,” in “Links und links und Schritt gehalten...”: Die FDJ: Konzepte – Ablauefe – Grenzen, ed. Helga Gotschlich (Berlin: Metropol, 1994), 97–113, here 99.
32. Herms, “Zur Stalinisierung,” 99.
33. “Richtlinien für die Bildung und die Arbeit des Zentralbüros der Freien Deutschen Jugend in Westdeutschland als leitendes Organ des gesamtes Verbandes in Westdeutschland,” November 1949, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 18608.
34. The publication would soon become Das Junge Deutschland and later Junges Deutschland.
35. Michael Herms, “Zur Gründung,” 146.
36. Herms, Hinter den Linien, 194–96.
37. “Ami Go Home! Unsere Kohl soll dem Frieden dienen,” Junge Welt, September 26, 1950; “Deutschlands Stimme liess Heuss verstummen,” Berliner Zeitung, September 26, 1950. Both articles are located in BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 23207.
38. “FDJ stört Heuss Rede,” Neue Zeitung, September 26, 1950, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 23207.
39. “Wir landeten auf Helgoland,” FDJ Manuscript no. 2, February 27, 1951, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 23207.
40. Herms, Hinter den Linien, 215. See also BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 23207.
41. “Deutsche Bewegung Helgoland gegründet,” Pressedienst der Freien Deutschen Jugend, Nr. 3, March 8, 1951, located in BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 23207.
42. The British would agree in March 1951 to return the islands within a year and did so in 1952.
43. Hubertus Prinz zu Loewenstein, “Helgoland – 2. Akt,” Die Zeit, no. 9, March 1, 1951. Loewenstein was a student at the University of Heidelberg who had been involved with a previous landing with two fellow students in December 1950 intended to force the return of Heligoland to West Germany, as well as a statement against rearmament. The first landing was unconnected to the FDJ.
44. “Kommunistische Invasion auf Helgoland,” Offenburger Tageblatt, February 26, 1951, 1.
45. Adenauer, Memoirs, 1945–1953, 300–301.
46. “Plan für die aktive Unterstützung und Teilnahme an der Volksbefragung gegen die Remilitarisierung und für den Abschluss eines Friedensvertrages noch im Jahre 1951,” March 30, 1951, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 21906, 1.
47. “Ergebnisse über durchgeführte VB in den Ländern in der Zeit vom 1.6.-13.6.1951,” BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 13451.
48. “Plan für die aktive Unterstützung und Teilnahme an der Volksbefragung gegen die Remilitarisierung und für den Abschluss eines Friedensvertrages noch im Jahre 1951,” March 30, 1951, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 21906, p. 1, 3–6.
49. “Termine für die Durchführung von Kreiskonferenzen gegen Remilitarisierung,” undated (likely spring 1951), BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 21906.
50. Patrick Major, The Death of the KPD: Communism and Anti-Communism in West Germany, 1945–1956 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 214.
51. “Beschluss der Bundesregierung betr. Freie Deutsche Jugend – vom 26.6.1951,” in the Bundes- Anzieger 3, June 30, 1951, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 3811.
52. “Beschluss der Bundesregierung betr. Freie Deutsche Jugend – vom 26.6.1951,” in the Bundes- Anzieger 3, June 30, 1951, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 3811.
53. The Adenauer government would file a petition to ban the KPD in 1951, which was only enacted by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956. Yet this petition was not even filed until five months after the West-FDJ ban was announced. See Major, Death of the KPD.
54. “Adenauer verbietet FDJ – gebt ihm die Antwort!” Junge Welt 5, no. 48, June 29, 1951, 1.
55. Merritt and Merritt, HICOG Surveys, 19–23.
56. Ulricht Albrecht, Die Wiederaufrüstung der Bundesrepublik. Analyse und Dokumentation (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1980), 38–39.
57. Adenauer, Memoirs, 1945–1953, 300.
58. Adenauer, Memoirs, 1945–1953, 302.
59. Adenauer, Memoirs, 1945–1953, 354.
60. Merritt, HICOG Surveys, 119–20.
61. Merritt, HICOG Surveys, 120.
62. “Das Verbot der roten HJ,” Volksblatt, June 28, 1951, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 3811.
63. “Verbotene FDJ bleibt aktiv,” Düsseldorfer Nachrichten, July 9, 1951, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 3811.
64. “Terror als Mittel der Aufrüstung,” Tägliche Rundschau, June 29, 1951, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 3811.
65. “Kein Adenauer kann der Jugend verbieten, das Leben zu lieben,” Neues Deutschland, June 28, 1950, BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 3811.
66. Herms, Hinter den Linien, 263. While the FDJ was not publicly disclosed as one of the organizers beforehand, the idea of such a major event had originated in East Berlin the year before. FDJ leaders had been searching for young leaders in the West untainted by any political links to the KPD or FDJ for months.
67. For a discussion of how artists from both East and West Germany presented Müller’s death in visual media, see Heather Matthews, “Formalism, Naturalism, and the Elusive Socialist Realist Picture at the GDR’s Dritte Deutsche Kunstausstellung, 1953,” in Edinburgh German Yearbook 3 Contested Legacies: Constructions of Cultural Heritage in the GDR, ed. Matthew Philpotts and Sabine Rolle (Rochester: Camden House, 2011), 1–18.
68. Letter from FDJ Landesverband Niedersachsen Sekretariat to Bundestag, May 15, 1952, BA-SAPMO DY24, no. 22955.
69. The organization undertook these renaming campaigns in areas where they believed they had significant popular support. Among the cities where they pursued these efforts in 1952 are: Ludwigshafen, Dortmund, Bremerhaven, Duisburg, Munich, Hannover, and Wolfenbüttel. See BA-SAPMO DY 24, no. 2737.
70. “Vorwärts zu neuen Siegen!” Das Junge Deutschland 7, special edition for May 11, 1952. This emphasis on the diverse composition of protesters continued in the West-FDJ publication for months following Müller’s death. The FDJ publication in the East, Junge Welt, also stressed the many groups involved in the protest but inflated the number of young people in attendance for its readers.
71. “Getarnte FDJ schiesst auf Polizei in Essen,” Die Welt, May 12, 1952.
72. Herms, “Zur Stalinisierung,” 101.
73. “Entwicklung der Mitgliedschaft,” January 26, 1953, SAPMO-BA DY 24, no. 11864.
74. Herms, Hinter den Linien, 297 (see footnote 321).
75. Jennifer Schumacher, “Gedenktafel für erschossenen Philipp Müller stiftet Kontroverse,” Der Westen, August 27, 2012, https://www.waz.de/staedte/essen/sued/gedenktafel-fuer-erschossenen-philipp-mueller-stiftet-kontroverse-id7032573.html.
76. Schumacher, “Gedenktafel.”
77. Mahntafel zur Erinnerung an den Tod von Philipp Müller (5.4.1931–11.5.1952), Essen, https://geschichte.essen.de/historischesportal_orte/denkmalpfad/denkmalpfade/denkmalpfad_1461293.de.html.
78. While Herms cites the ban of the KPD in 1956 as the death knell of the organization, the West-FDJ continued to send members to events in 1957 and published its newspaper until at least 1960.
