Editing Socialist realism (section)

==== Overview ====
The earliest ideas of socialist realism in the [[German Democratic Republic]] (East Germany) came about directly after the end of [[World War II]], when the state was formed. While planning to establish a national East German culture, cultural leaders wanted to move away from [[Fascism|fascist]] ideas, including those of [[Nazism|Nazi]] and militaristic doctrines.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hofer |first=Sigrid |date=2012 |title=The Dürer Heritage in the GDR: The Canon of Socialist Realism, Its Areas of Imprecision, and Its Historical Transformations |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41413135 |journal=Getty Research Journal |volume=4 |issue=4 |pages=109–126 |doi=10.1086/grj.4.41413135 |jstor=41413135 |issn=1944-8740}}</ref> Cultural leaders first started clarifying what "realism" entailed. The [[Socialist Unity Party of Germany|SED]] determined that realism was to act as a "fundamental artistic approach that is attuned to contemporary social reality."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hofer |first=Sigrid |date=2012 |title=The Dürer Heritage in the GDR: The Canon of Socialist Realism, Its Areas of Imprecision, and Its Historical Transformations |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41413135 |journal=Getty Research Journal |volume=4 |issue=4 |pages=109–126 |doi=10.1086/grj.4.41413135 |jstor=41413135 |issn=1944-8740}}</ref>

The characteristics of realism became more specified in East German cultural policy as the GDR defined its identity as a state. As the head of the [[Soviet Military Administration in Germany|SMAD's]] cultural division, [[Aleksandr Dymshits]] asserted that the "negation of reality" and "unbridled fantasy" was a "bourgeois and decadent attitude of the mind" that rejects "the truth of life."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hofer |first=Sigrid |date=2012 |title=The Dürer Heritage in the GDR: The Canon of Socialist Realism, Its Areas of Imprecision, and Its Historical Transformations |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41413135 |journal=Getty Research Journal |issue=4 |pages=2–3 |jstor=41413135 |issn=1944-8740}}</ref>

Cultural officials looked back at historical events in Germany that could have acted as the origin points of the eventual creation of the GDR. The works and legacy of [[Albrecht Dürer]] became a point of reference for the early development of socialist realism in East Germany. Dürer created many artworks about the [[German Peasants' War|Great Peasants' War]]. His "support for the 'revolutionary forces'" in his illustrations made him an appealing figure to East German officials, while they searched for a starting point of a new German socialist state.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hofer |first=Sigrid |date=2012 |title=The Dürer Heritage in the GDR: The Canon of Socialist Realism, Its Areas of Imprecision, and Its Historical Transformations |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41413135 |journal=Getty Research Journal |issue=4 |pages=6–8 |jstor=41413135 |issn=1944-8740}}</ref> In Heinz Lüdecke and Susanne Heiland's anthology ''Dürer und die Nachwelt,'' they described Dürer as being "inseparably associated with the two great currents of bourgeois antifeudal progress, namely humanism and the Reformation..."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hofer |first=Sigrid |date=2012 |title=The Dürer Heritage in the GDR: The Canon of Socialist Realism, Its Areas of Imprecision, and Its Historical Transformations |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41413135 |journal=Getty Research Journal |volume=4 |issue=4 |pages=109–126 |doi=10.1086/grj.4.41413135 |jstor=41413135 |issn=1944-8740}}</ref> The authors also stated that Dürer came to mind "both by bourgeois self-awareness and by the then awakening German national sense of identity."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hofer |first=Sigrid |date=2012 |title=The Dürer Heritage in the GDR: The Canon of Socialist Realism, Its Areas of Imprecision, and Its Historical Transformations |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41413135 |journal=Getty Research Journal |volume=4 |issue=4 |pages=109–126 |doi=10.1086/grj.4.41413135 |jstor=41413135 |issn=1944-8740}}</ref> The legacies of Dürer and the Great Peasants' War continued as artists produced their works in the GDR. [[Thomas Müntzer]] was another key figure of historical interest and artistic inspiration for socialist realism in East Germany. [[Friedrich Engels]] revered Müntzer for arousing the peasantry to confront the feudal elite.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Walinski-Kiehl |first=Robert |date=2006 |title=History, Politics, and East German Film: The Thomas Müntzer (1956) Socialist Epic |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20457093 |journal=Central European History |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=31 |doi=10.1017/S0008938906000021 |jstor=20457093 |issn=0008-9389}}</ref>