Dietmar Dath, Maria Wiesner
Dumm dank Dimitroff? Wie dogmatisch marxistisch war der Antifaschismus (in) der DDR?
[Stupid Because of Dimitroff? How Dogmatically Marxist Was Anti-Fascism in the GDR?]
We discuss anecdotes and echoes of the GDR’s education system that Maria experienced firsthand, as well as some GDR film and television productions (barely known in the West), and more generally the question: Is the Western portrayal correct that an image of fascism—inherited, so to speak, from the KPD—prevented the GDR from recognizing forms of injustice and horror in Nazism that had no place in its image of fascism?
Dietmar Dath, born in 1970, is an author and translator. He was editor-in-chief of the magazine Spex and, from 2001 to 2007, arts editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (F.A.Z.); since September 2011, he has also been their film critic. Dath has published several novels, as well as books and essays on academic, aesthetic, and political topics, including the polemic Maschinenwinter (2008) and the BasisBiographie Rosa Luxemburg (2010). More recently, Dietmar Dath has also made a name for himself as a playwright and poet. He lives in Freiburg and Frankfurt am Main.
Maria Wiesner grew up in Brandenburg. After graduating from high school, she studied German, Italian, and journalism, including internships in Dresden, Leipzig, Florence, and Reggio di Calabria. In 2011, she moved to Frankfurt and briefly joined the political editorial department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Since June 2013, she has worked as a freelance journalist based in Frankfurt, reporting on film festivals and writing travel features from trips to Southeast Europe, Asia, and Africa for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin and the F.A.Z. She has also contributed articles to the BBC World Service, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, and various German magazines; she has also taught journalism courses at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. Since June 2016, she has been an editor in the Society section at FAZ.NET. Since November 2022, she has been the coordinator of the Style section at FAZ.NET. Harper Collins published her collection of stories about train passengers (2019) as well as the non-fiction books Alles in Ordnung (2021), in which she examines decluttering as a consumer trend, Radikal selbstbestimmt (2022) about Alexandra Kollontai, and Jil Sander – Eine Annäherung (2023).