The Berlin Wall divided the city for almost 28 years. In June 1961, just two months before the building thereof, Walter Ulbricht said that no one had any intention to build a wall. In August the same year, the wall was built. Ulbricht, one of the most prominent politicians in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), held a speech 5 days after the building of the wall, as an attempt to defend the actions of his government. This thesis focuses on that speech. In this thesis, Walter Ulbricht’s use of language in his speech is analysed using the theory of conceptual metaphors by Lakoff & Johnson. The aim is to investigate how Ulbricht used language to try to defend the actions that made him be called a hypocrite by many. This is done through exploring how certain words can be understood as metaphors and how this could indicate how a person perceives the world. The words Bruder (eng. brother) and Frieden (eng. peace) are focused on, as these were important and central political words at the time. A central part of this thesis is therefore a discussion of how these words were used in the GDR to be able to later compare this to Ulbricht’s own use.  The conclusion shows that Bruder is used to highlight the German identity, rather than a “West German” or an “East German” one. Furthermore, Frieden is used to call attention to the perceived differences in politics and everyday life. In addition to this, these two words were found to be used intertwiningly, which could be seen through how Ulbricht emphasised that the brothers were the ones fighting for peace. This leads to yet another metaphor that Ulbricht uses in his speech, namely a wall.

Cybernetics, despite being initially rejected in the Eastern Bloc throughout the 1950s for ideological reasons, rose to a high level of institutional prominence in the 1960s, profoundly influencing state philosophy and economic planning. This thesis is an examination of this transition, charting the development of cybernetics from the object of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands’s (SED) opprobrium to one of the major philosophical currents within the party intelligentsia.

The main aim of the thesis is to compare (by diachronic historical comparison) the basic aspects of political, economic and social development of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), between the years 1958 and 1963 with the overlap to the year 1968. The milestone between the two periods is the building of the Berlin wall in 1961. In this context, the thesis examines to what extent the inner development in the GDR after 1961 can be seen as (non)continual. In other words, the questions asked are, whether we can see the change of the political regime and socio-economic realities in the development of the country after 1961 as a natural continuation of the previous development, even while changing its means and reformulating its goals, but retaining its original character and focus, or if we need to approach the change of the political regime as a diversion from the previous development and as such to approach it as a qualitatively different regime.

In 1950, the leader of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Walter Ulbricht, began a policy of connecting foreign threats with domestic policy failures as if the two were the same, and as if he was not responsible for either. This absolved him of blame for those failures and allowed Ulbricht to define his internal enemies as agents of the western powers. He used the state's secret police force, known as the Stasi, to provide the information that supported his claims of western obstructionism and to intimidate his adversaries. This resulted in a politicization of intelligence whereby Stasi officers slanted information so that it conformed to Ulbricht's doctrine of western interference. Comparisons made of eyewitness' statements to the morale reports filed by Stasi agents show that there was a difference between how the East German worker felt and the way the Stasi portrayed their attitudes to the politburo. Consequently, prior to June 17, 1953, when labor strikes inspired a million East German citizens to rise up against Ulbricht's oppressive government, the politicization of Stasi intelligence caused information over labor unrest to be unreliable at a time of increasing risk to the regime. This study shows the extent of Ulbricht's politicization of Stasi intelligence and its effect on the June 1953 uprising in the German Democratic Republic.

Ce mémoire de maîtrise consiste en une analyse des dynamiques relationnelles entre l'État de la République démocratique allemande et ses citoyen·ne·s à travers un échantillon de lettres de plaintes envoyées entre 1953 et 1967 concernant les problèmes liés au logement. Les plaignant·e·s ont adopté des « valeurs socialistes » tout au long de leurs discours pour justifier la légitimité de leurs demandes et ils ont utilisé les mots et les principes mêmes de l'État pour exiger des actions. Ce mémoire met en lumière non seulement ces différentes stratégies en utilisant une approche « par le bas », mais examine aussi examine également la réaction de l'État. On remarque notamment que les réponses envoyées par l’État aux plaignant·e·s étaient en général plus positives dans les années 1960 et 1950, ce qui montre d’une part une évolution dans le rapport entre l’État et la société, mais aussi d’autre part un certain changement quant à l’application même des principes socialistes. On remarque en outre que, dans les années 1960, le gouvernement de l’Est a davantage pris soin d'adapter la gestion de ses politiques intérieures aux besoins de la population. L'analyse de ces lettres se situe à la croisée de deux méthodes ; tout d'abord, une analyse discursive a permis de saisir les stratégies d'écriture récurrentes par lesquelles la population a tenté d’influencer l’État. Puis, une analyse statistique des réponses de l’État croisée à l’évolution des politiques intérieures a permis de saisir les changements d’attitude du gouvernement envers sa population. / This master’s thesis analyzes the dynamics between the German Democratic Republic and its citizens through complaint letters that East Germans sent to the State between 1953 and 1967 regarding housing problems. It argues that the complainants adopted “socialist values” throughout their discourses as a way of justifying the legitimacy of their complaints. In other words, they used the discourse and principles of the state against it in order to demand action and a resolution to their problems or concerns. This thesis not only highlight these various strategies, utilizing a “history from below” approach, but it also investigates the state’s reaction to the complaints of its citizens. It argues that the state responded overall better in the 1960s as it did in the 1950s, showing evolution in the relationship between state and society as well as a shift in the state’s way to understand socialism. By the 1960s the East German government had had time to slowly adapt its domestic politics towards the population’s needs. The analysis of these letters is at the crossroads of two methods: First I employ a discursive analysis that allows me to identify the recurring strategies by which the state and its citizens sought to influence each other. Second, I use a statistical analysis of the State’s responses coupled with an examination of domestic politics that allows me to capture the changing attitude of the government towards its population.