A specter was haunting the German Democratic Republic in the 1970s and 1980s: the specter of right-wing violence and a resurgence of neo-Nazi activity. Despite the most extensive denazification measures having been pursued in the Soviet occupation zone after 1945, there was more continuity than the authorities would have cared to admit. The founding myth of the GDR as an antifascist state and the repressions of the Stalinist period meant that the GDR’s reckoning with Nazism had its limits. The reintegration of low-level Nazis took precedence over radical transformation, and some former Nazis became leading functionaries, not only in the Federal Republic but also (to a lesser extent) in the GDR. Jan Foitzik estimates that, in 1954, 32.2 percent of all civil servants in the GDR were former members of National Socialist organizations. Ideologically, the SED drew on a Marxist-Leninist reading of fascism, which understood it as an economic problem resulting from capitalism; they believed mistakenly that, having nationalized industry and reeducated their citizens, they had eliminated fascism and racism in the GDR. This was not the case. Among other things, the official designation of the Berlin Wall as an “Antifaschistischer Schutzwall” (antifascist defense wall) meant that the existence of right-wing extremism in the GDR was taboo. However, racist violence erupted in Erfurt in August 1975. Algerian contract workers were attacked in their residence by a mob of between 150 and 300 people; the Stasi arrested 57 of them. Whenever such racist attacks occurred, the East German authorities would claim that the perpetrators were a small minority of “criminal” or “antisocial” elements who were acting under the influence of Western media or agents. In the 1980s, however, the GDR authorities observed an increase in right-wing extremist activity. On November 13, 1985, swastikas were found painted in a barracks of the NVA and on October 17, 1987, thirty neo-Nazis attacked a punk rock concert at the Zionskirche. In 1988, right-wing militants in East Berlin set up “Bewegung 30. Januar” (Movement of January 30), the date of the Nazi power seizure in 1933; and on February 1, 1990, the neo-Nazi “Nationale Alternative” party was founded in East Berlin. The end of the GDR saw a surge in right-wing activity, which culminated in the Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots of August 1992.

The GDR’s incomplete reckoning with the legacy of National Socialism was explored by canonical authors such as Heiner Müller and Christa Wolf.