ABSTRACT
The concept of a GDR-nation that was socialist but not German had clearly been a desperate attempt to prove that nothing linked the state to its western neighbour, and that the GDR was a legitimate entity in itself. At the 13th plenum of the Central Committee in December 1974, Erich Honecker first distinguished between nation, nationality and citizenship, which finally put an end to the paranoia regarding the word ‘German’. In fact the distinction between nation, nationality and citizenship, which appeared to make them compatible, was originally devised by the theorists, Alfred Kosing and Walter Schmidt. By 1976, the Party Programme was 13 years old, and both the party’s objectives and the reality of socialism in the GDR had changed dramatically. A Commission chaired by the First Secretary himself was formed to draw up a proposal and there appears to have been little input from the rest of the politburo.
