Good Socialist Entertainment

I try to steer clear of legal issues on this blog, but I thought I'd link to an interesting piece by Regina Rauxloh in the German Law Journal called Goodies and Baddies: The presentation of German Police and Criminals in East and West Television Drama.  You will doubtless not be surprised to hear that television in East Germany (the GDR) was not particularly interesting. 

Take, for instance, Der schwarze Kanal (The Black Channel).  This show featured Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler (note the glasses!) a son of the nobility turned fervent Communist, commenting on the events of the day from a Party perspective.  He specialized in explaining to East German viewers that everything portrayed on West German TV (which many could pick up) was a hideous capitalist lie.

In 1970, East German leader Erich Honecker determined that there was a "certain boredom" of East German television, so he started a process that resulted in Polizeiruf 110, an East German cop-show that was actually so good that it survived the reunification.  Even episodes from the Socialist era are still shown to this day.

Those of you who know your way around Marxism are probably spitting your coffee onto the computer screen about now: "Crime in the socialist utopia?!  There is no such thing -- crime is the product of the decadence and exploitation of capitalism!"  Indeed, it was a delicate problem:

In the first years after the founding of the German Democratic Republic in 1949 it was believed according to Socialist ideology that crime was bound to die out in the GDR, since the new social order would delete any need for or inducement to crime. With full employment, free education, a sound health system, the possibility of political participation and equality of opportunities, the modern rational citizen – so it was thought - would not make the irrational decision to commit a crime. Indeed, compared to Western legal systems, the GDR had incredibly low crime rates. Factors underlying crime such as unemployment, homelessness, poverty, or drug taking were nearly non-existent.  [Incidentally, this last remark is not propaganda; although the East German regime cooked the statistics, most scholars and former residents of the GDR would agree that crime there was extremely low].

Nevertheless, there was of course still some crime in the former GDR, and not all of it could be blamed on agitators from the West.  How to admit that fact without doing too much damage to the popular morale was not at all simple:

Since crime in a socialist society was bound to die out, it was presented much more harmless and less violent in Polizeiruf 110 than in its West German counterpart, Tatort. Instead of only homicides, the team in East Germany had also to deal with break-ins, alcohol abuse, embezzlement, fraud, and forgery. Interestingly for the viewer today, there were also crimes that are not labelled as such in West Germany, such as [skipping] work, hooliganism or neglecting one’s children. Environmental crime or crime at higher social and political levels (such as tax evasion or other white-collar crime) was a taboo, and of course corruption or even attempt of corruption was never shown on screen. In only very few cases were there any planned cold-blooded murder. In most cases of killing, there was an unexpected argument or fight, when the victim was beaten and fell awkwardly. Usually, crime was shown as self-breeding, i.e. one crime was only committed to cover up another. The presentation of smaller crime taught the viewers that every criminal act violated the socialist society even if the results were not horrendous. Another reason for presenting smaller rather than violent crime was the aim to be realistic and authentic.

The whole thing is pretty interesting; I recommend giving it a read if you've got a few spare minutes.  And almost no legal discussion, I promise!

Hat Tip to Sebastian, who told me about Der schwarze Kanal.