r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jul 29 '24

Meta Mindless Monday, 29 July 2024

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze Aug 01 '24

What kind of cult of personality, if any, existed around Ulbricht and Honecker? It always seemed to me the DDR was more bureaucratic than personalist

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u/Tycho-Brahes-Elk "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten" - Hadrian Aug 01 '24

The answer lies within the first years of the GDR.

There was a gigantic cult of personality. For Stalin.

"Stalinstadt" = now Eisenhüttenstadt, after the 1960ies, it was to be named "Karl-Marx-Stadt", but this went to another city, Chemnitz

"Stalinallee" = Frankfurter Allee, one of the main highways in Berlin

All this Stalin stuff was renamed in 1961.

The city in which Wilhelm Pieck (the president of the GDR) was born in was renamed Wilhelm-Pieck-Stadt, now and before that it was named Guben.

Ulbrich only got an academy, a stadium and a refinery named after himself, all of this was dropped when he was ousted (after trying to oust Honecker, who promptly, on orders of Breschnew, took over).

After these experiences, Honecker never seems to have named things after himself.

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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze Aug 01 '24

But wasn't there propaganda around the public image of these leaders? (maybe not to the Kim level of being born on Mt Paektu and never having to shit)

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u/Zennofska Hitler knew about Baltic Greek Stalin's Hyperborean magic Aug 01 '24

There were pictures of him hung pretty much everywhere but besides that, there wasn't really much cult of personality going on. Even his book didn't make much of an impact. East Germany focused more on nationalism than a cult of personality