Male Identity, the Military, and the Family in the Former German Democratic Republic

Abstract

This article examines relationship between militarization policies, gender, and family in former German Democratic Republic (GDR), :md serves as an overview of ideological and legal aspects of militarization of masculinity ill GDR. 1 In this overview, militarization is understood as the contradictory and tense social process in which civil society organizes itself for production of violence (Gillis 1989:1). As such, this article examines some of salient features of militarization of gender roles in former GDR, and will seek to show that development of militarized gender roles is an explicit project on part of state (see for example Arkin and Dobrovsky 1990; Berger et al 1995; Connell 1995; Cornwall and Lindisfame 1995; Enloe 1993; Gehler 1998; Gehler and Keil 1992; Gill 1997; Seifert 1996, 1996a). My focus is primarily on years 1978-1990 in GDR, and lives of former Nationale Volksarmee (:.iational People's Army NVA) soldiers and their families. I focus on these years in particular because of introduction of \\'ehrerziehung (Military Education) in schools in 1978, and passing of Wehrdienstgesetz (Military Conscription Law) of 1982, most draconian of all GDR conscription laws. Drawing on oral history interviews, archival research, and participant observation in a community of former soldiers and officers of )NA, I examine relationship between state ideals of male identity as promUlgated through military and paramilitary training, and ways in which state programs for militarization and national identity articulated with household, divisions of labor, and traditional, patriarchal forms of German identity (Borneman 1992; Heineman 1999; Kracht 1995; Ostner 1993). I also examine how GDR attempted to create legitimacy and reconstitute male identity after W orid War II by forging a symbolic link between men, military, and state predicated on tropes of Peace and Defense (see for example Jeffords 1998; Mosse 1990, 1996).

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