Germans seek place in history for 1953 East German revolt

BERLIN -- Fifty years after Soviet tanks crushed a worker-led uprising against East Germany's communist rulers, the revolt is finally coming into its own for Germans -- as an early cry for freedom in eastern Europe.

Television specials, dozens of new books and hundreds of commemorative events have captured the nation's attention ahead of official anniversary events Tuesday to mark June 17, 1953, the day the uprising peaked with street battles in East Berlin.

Overall, more than 1 million people took part in some five days of pro-democracy unrest that swept East Germany. Historians estimate that up to 125 protesters were killed -- shot or crushed by tanks -- and as many as 15,000 arrested.

"The most important thing is that we give this day recognition," former Chancellor Helmut Kohl said recently.

But that has been difficult, even since communism fell and Kohl reunited east and west Germany in 1990.

During the Cold War, the revolt was vilified as a Western-inspired fascist coup by the east, but also faded from memory in the west as the two Germanys grew apart.

After German reunification, the June 17 memorial day still on the books in the west was dropped in favor of Oct. 3, the joyful day on which east and west rejoined.

Now, historians and politicians are making the biggest attempt yet to pay tribute to the 1953 protesters, instill pride about their cause and place it in line with other anti-communist uprisings like the 1968 Prague Spring in then-Czechoslovakia.

"As one of the few democratic mass movements and traditions, the people's revolt of June 17, 1953 represents some of the best of German history," said Marianne Birthler, a former East German democracy activist who manages the archive of the communist-era secret police, the Stasi.

'Everyone was horrified'

Recent research in the Stasi archive has highlighted why the revolt was so explosive.

It showed in previously unknown detail how a strike for better working conditions by East Berlin construction laborers swelled into countrywide calls for free elections and German reunification -- something unwanted by both Moscow and Washington at the time.

East Germany's Stalinist rulers were caught off guard, too.

"Everyone was horrified," said Guenter Schabowski, who was a young editor at a party-line newspaper and later rose to the ruling Politburo. "Nobody expected things to get so out of hand."

On a tape recording found in the Stasi archive, workers at an electrical factory in the town of Wernigerode are heard assailing communist party officials who try to pacify them at a June 18, 1953, meeting.

Workers shout, "We want an all-German government" and, "We won't have enough trees to hang everyone in the party" while the officials try to keep them in check.

Just eight years after the World War II allies defeated and divided Nazi Germany, such a groundswell was hardly welcome outside Germany.

"The Western powers had no interest in provoking a war," historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk told The Associated Press. "Any intervention would quickly have led to a regional war with global repercussions."

In 1961, East Germany put up the Berlin Wall to stop an exodus of its citizens to West Germany. It fell during a peaceful popular revolution in 1989 as the Soviet empire crumbled, paving the way for German reunification.

Schabowski, now 74, played a crucial role with his halting, seemingly offhand announcement at a Nov. 9, 1989, news conference that East Germany was opening its western border in the face of nationwide pro-democracy protests.

Now a member of the conservative party once led by Kohl, Schabowski recently shared the podium with the ex-chancellor during a forum on the 1953 revolt, held in the eastern Berlin boulevard the workers were building when they walked off their jobs to protest 50 years ago.

But giving the event meaning for later generation is harder. At least west Berlin has a thoroughfare leading up to the Brandenburg Gate called 17th of June Street.

"We need to tell our young people more about it," said Fred Ebeling, who joined the protesters as a 20-year-old steelworker. "My grandchildren say: 'June 17? You mean that street?"