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Rudolf Bahro
Bahro in 1991
Born	(1935-11-18)November 18, 1935 Bad Flinsberg, District of Löwenberg i. Schles., Prussia
Died	December 5, 1997(1997-12-05) (aged 62) Berlin, Germany
Nationality	German
Occupation(s)	Philosopher and politician

Rudolf Bahro (November 18, 1935–December 5, 1997) was a dissident from East Germany who, since his death, has been recognised as a philosopher, political figure and author. Bahro was a leader of the West German party The Greens, but eventually became disenchanted with its political organization, and, after having left the party, proceeded to explore "spiritual" approaches to sustainability.

Childhood and education

Bahro was the eldest of three children of Max Bahro, a livestock industry consultant, and Irmgard Bahro (née Conrad). Until 1945, the family lived in Lower Silesia, at first in the spa town of Bad Flinsberg, and then in neighboring Gerlachsheim, where Bahro attended the village school. Towards the end of World War II, Max Bahro was drafted into the Volkssturm, and, after his capture, detained as a Polish prisoner. As the Eastern Front approached, the family was evacuated and Bahro was separated from his mother and siblings during the flight (the rest of Bahro's family, with the exception of his father, died of typhoid soon afterwards). Bahro lived with an aunt in Austria and Hesse, spending several months in each location, and eventually re-connected with his father, who was managing a widow's farm in Rießen (as of June 2012, a part of Siehdichum.)(Max Bahro later married the widowed Frieda Reiter Fürstenberg, in 1951).

From 1950 to 1954, Bahro attended high school in Furstenberg. Since it was assumed that all highschoolers there would join the Free German Youth (FDJ), Bahro joined in 1950, albeit reluctantly. This was, as he later commented, the only time he did something under pressure against his will. In 1952 he applied for membership to the SED, which he entered in 1954. Bahro was regarded as extremely intelligent and graduated from high school with honors. He attended Humboldt University in Berlin from 1954 to 1959 and studied philosophy. Among his teachers were Kurt Hager (who later became the ideologist of the SED), Georg Klaus and Wolfgang Heise. The topic of his thesis was "Johannes R. Becher and the relationship of the German working class and its party on the national question of our people."

Until 1956, Bahro was an ardent admirer of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. The revisionist policy shift of Nikita Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956, changed Bahro's views. He followed the imminent unrest in Poland and Hungary with great interest, and he suggested a protest statement against the wall newspaper in which he expressed his solidarity with the insurgents and openly criticized the restrictive information policy of the GDR leadership. As a result of this statement, national security spied on him for two years.

The party workers

After his state examination, the party sent Bahro to Sachsendorf (as of June 2012 a part of Lindendorf) on the river Oder, where he edited the local newspaper called Die Linie (The line), and encouraged the area's farmers to join the cooperative (LPG). In 1959, Bahro married a Russian teacher, Gundula Lembke, and the couple had two girls (one of whom died on the day of birth) and a boy, in addition to a pre-marriage daughter. In 1960, Bahro was appointed to the University of Party Leadership in Greifswald, where he founded the newspaper Our University, of which he was executive editor. In this year his first book appeared, a collection of poems entitled In dieser Richtung ("In this direction"). From 1962 onward, he worked as a consultant for the Corporate Executive Committee of the Union of Science in Berlin, and, in 1965,was appointed deputy chief of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) youth and student magazine, Forum. During Bahro's work with the FDJ, he was hampered by a persistent conflict connected with the increasingly restrictive policies of the SED, a transformation which Bahro criticized. Due to the unauthorized publication of Paul Volker Braun's piece, "Belly Dumper", Bahro was dismissed as deputy chief in 1967.

The way to The Alternative

From 1967 to 1977 Bahro worked in various companies in the rubber and plastics industry in work organization. This confrontation with the actual conditions in the factories soon brought him to the conclusion that the East German economy was in a serious crisis and that the main reason for this lay in that the workers had virtually no say in the workplace. This view he formulated in December 1967 in a letter to the Council of State Walter Ulbricht, and he proposed to transfer the responsibility in the workplace in terms of grassroots democracy to the workers. A few weeks later there were changes in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which ushered in the Prague Spring. Bahro took a lively interest, and supported its development. In May 1968 he was summoned to an interview with a member of the Central Committee, who made it clear that his solidarity with the "counter-revolution" is no longer tolerated. Bahro developed his ideas systematically and published. This decision was reinforced and modified, as on 21 August 1968, the Prague Spring was ended by invading troops. This was, as Bahro later said, "the blackest day" of his life and the reason for the final break with the SED. For tactical reasons, he decided, however, not to make this break in public, so as not to jeopardize his book project.

After a preliminary study of literature, Bahro began in 1972 with the part-time work on his dissertation on the development conditions of the high school and technical college job openings in state-owned enterprises of the GDR, which was to bring part of his project in the academic discourse. In parallel, he secretly wrote a thematically broader manuscript from which later became the book The Alternative. In 1973 he filed for divorce Gundula Bahro. Both spouses said later this was as a precautionary measure, in particular to protect the children against the expected government reprisals. Gundula Bahro went further and in 1974 made contact with the state security, to inform them about the secret book project by then her ex-husband, and finally to hand over a copy of the manuscript. From that time Rudolf Bahro was without his knowledge placed under intensive observation and spying.

In 1975 he submitted his dissertation at the Technical University of Merseburg. He was initially evaluated by three reviewers, all very positive. But then the Stasi stepped in, which organized another review opinion thwarting the promotion. The work on the alternative manuscript, however, was observed only on and not hindered. Bahro was, however, convinced that his original intention to spread this actually written book for GDR citizens in larger numbers in the GDR, not to realize it. In December 1976 he learned that one of the specimens that he had distributed for review to friends and acquaintances who had come in a roundabout way into the hands of the Stasi. This prompted him to finish the job quickly to a conclusion. Through middlemen now a contract with the European publishing house in Cologne had been reached. In the musicologist Harry Goldschmidt Bahro was an unsuspecting helpers who smuggled the finished manuscript to West Berlin. It also managed to send several copies of the manuscript by mail to selected individuals in the GDR.

Later, in West Germany, Bahro said that a theoretical basis for The Alternative was Karl August Wittfogel's "Oriental Despotism" and other earlier, Marxist works. He could not refer to Wittfogel, because of Wittfogel's later anti-communist views. Wittfogel also, through his geographical/ecological determinism, influenced Bahro's later ecological writings as well.

The Alternative (Book)

The book is divided into three parts:

1. The phenomenon of non-capitalist path to industrial society
2. The anatomy of real existing socialism
3. The strategy of a communist alternative.

The preceding introduction begins with the premise that the Communist movement did not lead to the theoretically expected ratios, but in fact the capitalist road with only superficial changes continues to carry on. "The alienation, the subaltern of the working masses to take on a new level." The book would analyze the reasons for this development and solutions.

The first main part is a historical analysis of the development of socialism in the Soviet Union. Bahro comes to the finding that there and consequently also in countries like the GDR the theoretically expected socialism had not emerged, but a kind of proto-socialism. The main reason he sees the fact that the Soviet Union at the time of the October Revolution was far from the stage of development, which Marx had assumed in his theory. Nevertheless, the method chosen by Lenin was the right way. The subsequent massive industrialization powered by Stalin was called a necessary development, and the party purge was seen as inevitable.

In the second part Bahro analyzes the really existing form of society which is referred to, in his opinion falsely, as socialism and in fact was still a class society. How this society works, it presents detailed, and he argues that this would provide the reasons for the observed stagnation of the economy. In the third part, he developed solutions, which include the call for a new revolution that would transform not only the social relations, but also the people. In essence, the intention was to overcome the subaltern mentality, the "form of existence and way of thinking 'little people'." The division of labor is to abolish this division, and everyone should participate in science and art as well as lower work.

Responses to The Alternative

On 22 August 1977 the West German magazine Der Spiegel published an extract from the already announced longer book and an interview with Bahro, which he was first publicly known as the author of this book. The next day was Bahro was arrested and taken to the remand prison Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. On the same evening the West German television stations ARD and ZDF broadcast Bahro's interviews, made a few days before.

In early September, the book was on sale. The first edition was sold out prior to delivery, and soon published translations into other languages. The alternative sparked an intense debate in the West European left about real socialism and the ratio of this. For Herbert Marcuse Bahro's book was "the most important contribution to Marxist theory and practice that has appeared in recent decades." Similarly, expressed by the highly respected Trotskyist Ernest Mandel. Lawrence Krader Bahro designated as the "conscience of the revolution, the strength of the truth". Rudi Dutschke was critical, classifying Bahro a Detachment in Leninism and too little respect for human rights accused and his suggestions as "totally unrealistic".

This textual analysis was accompanied by a broad wave of publicly expressed solidarity with Bahro. The climax was a submsision by Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass in The Times from 1 February 1978, also signed by Arthur Miller, Graham Greene, Carol Stern, Mikis Theodorakis and many other celebrities. In the GDR, however, the whole affair was hushed up, and the jailed Bahro told nothing about the reactions to his book and on his arrest. Even the copies that had Bahro sent shortly before his arrest in the GDR and were being intercepted are not already in the mail, was handed over about half of the authorities.

To write and publish such a book was in itself not punishable in the GDR. Therefore designed the prosecution facts, Bahro was compiled from "greed" information (and misinformation fictitious) for the West German intelligence service and this by the publication of the book "transferred". On 30 June 1978 Bahro was sentenced in camera because of "treasonable collection of news" and "betrayal of state secrets" to eight years imprisonment. For the record shows that the sentence was clear even before the trial and the announcement of the ruling for the press was formulated in advance ready. The process, in which Bahro was defended by Gregor Gysi, was therefore only a formality. The subsequent appeal filed by Gysi in the Supreme Court of the GDR was immediately rejected as "manifestly unfounded".

The verdict sparked immediate violent and sustained protests and expressions of solidarity from the west. The highlight of the Committee for the release of Rudolf Bahro organized "International Conference for and about Rudolf Bahro", held 16 to 19 November 1978 in West Berlin and attended by over 2000 participants. The width of the Solidarity movement is illustrated by an appeal to the State Council of the GDR in the Frankfurter Rundschau of 11 May 1979, which was organized by Bahro Committee in 12 countries and signed by numerous celebrities. There were also awards: Bahro was awarded the Carl von Ossietzky of the International League for Human Rights and a member of the Swedish and appointed by the Danish PEN Centre.

11 October 1979 was the occasion of the 30th Anniversary of the founding of the GDR and Bahro received an amnesty from the state. On 17 October, he was deported together with his former wife, their two children and his partner Ursula Beneke to the Federal Republic of Germany. This corresponded to his desire, he had made a request in July, because in East Germany after the end of his detention did not see any opportunities for more meaningful activity.

Work in West Germany

In West Germany, Bahro soon joined the nascent party "The Greens". He has made a commitment to unite socialist and conservative currents in the new party. Given the ecological crisis is a "historic compromise" between these two political directions was necessary. That he formulated in the book elements of a new policy - the relationship between ecology and socialism (1980). A major difference to the position he had held in the alternative, was the fact that he now wanted to overcome the classical Marxism, as it fundamentally changed the environment is no longer appropriate.

Another new major motif in Bahro's thinking was religion. While in custody he had been heavily involved with the Bible, and when confronted with the reality of life in the West, he noticed that people in spite of material prosperity were not happy. He interpreted this as a lack of interiority and transcendence, and thus rejected the traditionally materialistic orientation of socialism. The decisive point is the goal of human emancipation, which had been represented in different ways by Karl Marx and Jesus Christ. In this context, Bahro was referring mainly to the early Christianity and to liberation theology.

Bahro was the beginning of 1980 graduated with Oskar Negt at the University of Hanover with his thesis rejected in Merseyside, which then appeared as a book entitled A Plea for Creative Initiative. In 1983 he gained his habilitation there in social philosophy.

At the Open, where Bahro in 1982 elected as assessor in the national board, he took more radical positions, with whom he soon fell by the wayside. In view of the then economic crisis, he advocated a fundamental restructuring of society in economic, environmental and social policy terms, which should be linked, among other things is a broad retreat from the world market and a move away from the fixation on the capitalist industrial system. He also became involved in the peace movement, where he advocated to overcome the confrontation and a nuclear-free Europe.

"Dare Commune" under the heading of the Bahro mingled in the discussion on alternative communities, led lively in the initial phase of the Greens. He intervened in the already mentioned alternative motive. The transformation of society must begin on a small scale, and that requires a change in the people themselves, which also includes a re-discovery of spirituality. He referred in particular to the Congregation of the Benedictines and the mystical experience of God.

In 1981 he visited the Korean People's Democratic Republic, where he was received as a state guest. This trip, he saw himself as his most important journey: be it a state, "done admirable building power" who had, and there is there a system "to satisfy all the basic requirements of security" in the.

Bahro spent in summer 1983 as part of a lecture tour of the United States a few weeks in the municipality of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) in Rajneeshpuram (Oregon). About this experiment he was very complimentary. Even during this lecture tour, and then also in the green environment in Germany, he looked so serious hostility. Rajneeshpuram was dissolved soon after it and Bhagwan left the United States had to Bahro indicated as a key reason for the failure of this project, the unreflective power structures.

After the Green Party in March 1983 for the first time entered the Bundestag, the question arose whether they would in the medium term join a coalition with the government (the SPD) or remain in opposition. Bahro was strongly committed to the latter option and was thus especially in conflict with Joschka Fischer. There was so Bahro said, no need for green reforms, but for a fundamentally new policy. In this context he used in his sensational "Hamburg speech" in December 1984 to make a comparison with the political and social situation in the Weimar Republic: At that time there had also been a broad movement in society, which was dissatisfied with the prevailing conditions and wanted to change this. What matters now, given the expected escalation of the crisis to prevent the former error and thus a renewed political disaster. In the Weimar Republic had the "brown" pole of the political spectrum (the Nazis) add the system-critical activity can because the left with the "Nationalist mythology in the guise, therefore, coming resistance to the alienating capitalist development" could not start. This could extend the expected Bahro "popular uprising" this time without violence, it was important that the Greens "are not lost" by being part of the system. Bahro also called for the overcoming of the right-left scheme: To get out of the minority position, the Greens should also "penetrate into the territory of the Bavarian CSU". Bahro's Hamburg speech culminated in the allegation that the "realos" to Joschka Fischer would seek out of greed for power, a situation that could lead to civil war and subsequent dictatorship, sparking violent protests by the addressee. But the competing "fundamentalists" or eco-socialist order Ditfurth were surprised.

In the summer of 1985 Bahro left the party and focused on the work on a new book published in 1987 under the title Logic of Salvation. In it he described a "logic of self-extermination", the consequences to humanity at present, and presented the a "logic of life" moment, which need substantially in a "leap in consciousness" exist, if the destruction of mankind should be avoided. required a radical conversion and a far-reaching withdrawal from the industrial "mega-machine" is. It was important to conduct an appropriate "rescue policy" in the way, before the worsening environmental crisis in a state of emergency and thus inevitably leads to an emergency government. As a feature of this policy called rescue Bahro Others the orientation toward long-term goals, the withdrawal of short-term tactics and the decentralization of sovereignty. But had to be found a majority of the population, and this policy must be supported by a movement that called Bahro as "Invisible Church" which he emphasized in his opinion necessary spiritual dimension. Useful approaches to such a policy, he expected more from a conservative on the left, noting in particular took up the CDU politician and critic Kurt Biedenkopf growth reference. Inspired by Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika Bahro was hoping for a "Prince of environmental change", and he suggested the establishment of a consensus-oriented, similar to the individual interests related to the British House of Lords before. The book first met with only limited and mostly negative response. Bahro's speech was criticized, especially by a prince and a turn of the invisible church.

Bahro 1986 held at his home in Worms so-called learning workshops, where people discussed his ideas and was meditating. Then he met Beatrice Ingermann, who in the Lower Town area (Eifel) had bee operating since 1983 a similar project that was also a community. Bahro joined in this project. In 1988 he married Beatrice Ingermann, with whom he soon had a daughter.

In Berlin after the fall

Given the rapid decay of the GDR, Bahro went at the end of 1989 to East Berlin to the dreaded "sellout of the GDR," their "absorbed" by the FRG are to face. He would work to ensure that the regime could keep their autonomy and preserve the most important political development in his view, the primacy of politics over the economy.

Bahro on 16 December 1989 to the Special Congress of the 16th Sedam December 1989, Bahro opportunity to speak before the delegates of the Extraordinary Congress of the Socialist Unity Party, whose chairman was a week ago has become his former legal counsel Gysi. The main theme of the congress was the question of whether the party would continue, or dissolve, we finally decided on the continued existence under the new name, "SED-PDS. The request to speak Bahro, a guest speaker, found only a slight majority (54%), and granted him only 30 instead of the requested 45 minutes. Bahro was angry and had to improvise. After a reading of the names of all persons who had helped him in the alternative, he criticized the previous speaker to the prime minister and deputy party chairman, Hans Modrow, more than Karl Marx, Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Subsequently, he presented his vision of a just "social ecological" reconstruction of the GDR. His radical environmental ideas, which at that time in the GDR were not well known were far away from the issues raised by the delegates moved, and the polemical introduction aroused fierce resentment. Bahro came to the conclusion that it no longer bound by that party.

In the spring of 1990 he began building a temporary "Institute for Social Ecology" at the Humboldt University. Unlike the standard approach to the ecological crisis should think holistically at that institution and studied especially the deeper social and cultural causes of the crisis and practical alternatives are developed. Bahro reasoned that its own social and human sciences school, which is not to be confused with others who are also known as social ecology.

On 16 June 1990, Bahro was rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of the DDR again represented by Gysi. On 15 September, shortly before the end of the GDR, the Minister of Education and Science appointed him associate professor of social ecology at the Humboldt University. From winter semester 1990/1991 Bahro held regularly lectures on issues of environmental crisis, in which he's developed further in the logic of the rescue raised theses. The lectures, to which he invited many cases, guest speakers, is aimed at students of all semesters ( General Studies) and also found great interest among non-academic audience. In the first years of the lecture hall of the university was consistently full, and in this context is also sold the book logic of life much better than before. The Institute remained a temporary arrangement, that could only exist thanks to financial support from the Schweisfurth Foundation. Only in 1995 was it included in the university as a working group of the Agriculture and Horticulture Faculty.

In 1990 came the accusation that Bahro was striving for "eco-dictatorship". Especially argued aggressively he was the founded in Zurich Association for the Advancement of psychological knowledge of human nature, under the title The fascism of the New Left, a "ökofaschistische dictatorship" Bahro designated as the destination computer. Bahro was contrary to the indignant, but soon found himself confronted with further such accusations. These assumptions were based on quotes from his book Logic of salvation. 1992, switched his former party colleague Ditfurth into the debate by him in their polemic fire in the hearts of a trend towards esoteric, authoritarian and nationalist ideas accused.

In addition to his activities in Berlin until 1991, Bahro was still active in the learning workshop in Lower Town area, and he was planning similar experiments with new sustainable living and economic systems in the former GDR. From a conversation with the Prime Minister of Saxony Kurt Biedenkopf in the summer of 1991 led to the socio-ecological future research project in LebensGut Pommritz in Bautzen. There, that was begun at the Humboldt University of holistic and ecological research will be continued .

In September 1993, Bahro's wife Beatrice took her life following a marriage dispute. He was so shocked that he had to cancel a semester of lectures. In the spring of 1994 he suddenly fell physically ill, and a rare form of blood cancer (non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) was diagnosed in the fall of that year. Bahro was convinced that his illness was the consequence of traumatic experiences such as the suicide of his wife and he resisted conventional therapy. Instead, he made several alternative 'methods of diagnosis and therapy in right and moved temporarily to a monastery. It was not until his condition deteriorated dramatically there, he settled down again to chemotherapy. In May 1995 he married his girlfriend Marina Lehnert on his sick bed, who took care of for some time about his daughter.

After a year break due to illness Bahro was in summer 1996 to start its teaching again, but only to a limited extent. His last lecture he gave in July 1997. Then he caught pneumonia and cancer broke out again.

Rudolf Bahro died on 5 December 1997 in Berlin. He was buried in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery there.

Some years after Bahro's death came on the suspicion that his cancer and those of two other former political prisoners may have been triggered by X-ray radiation during secret detention.

Publications available in English

• The Alternative In Eastern Europe, New Left Books/Verso, ISBN 0-86091-006-7
• Socialism and Survival
• From Red To Green
• Building The Green Movement
• Avoiding Social & Ecological Disaster: The Politics of World Transformation

Selected publications

• "Rapallo? Why Not? Reply to Gorz". TELOS 51 (Spring 1982). New York: Telos Press

References

1. This could refer to any of the three villages Ober Gerlachsheim (Grabiszyce Górne), Mittel Gerlachsheim (Grabiszyce Średnie), or Nieder Gerlachsheim (Grabiszyce Dolne, all in then )

External links

• Criticism of Bahro's claimed ecofascism
• Answer to this criticism and general analysis of Bahro's ideas Template:En icon

Template:Persondata

• 1935 births
• 1997 deaths
• People from Świeradów-Zdrój
• German socialists
• German politicians
• People from the Province of Lower Silesia