Morality, Law, and The Socialist Sexual Self In The German Democratic Republic, 1945-1972

E.G. Huneke

Abstract: While many existing accounts attribute the emergence of a new sexual sensibility in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to the liberalization of laws regarding contraception and abortion that accompanied the beginning of Erich Honecker's tenure as First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the early 1970s, "Morality, Law, and the Socialist Sexual Self in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-1972" revisits the 1950s and 1960s as a crucible for sexual change. In the absence of Western-style civil society and the overt commodification of sexuality, the presence or absence of a "sexual revolution" in the GDR must be assessed with different yardsticks. Despite the depredations of Stalinism and Nazism and the conservative moral climate of the early Cold War years, the spirit of Weimar-era progressive sex reform continued to inform the tenor of sexual change in the legal realm and in marital counseling, albeit in a muted fashion.