Research in Germany at the Crossroads of Cold War History and Current Events
By Luke Moderhack, MALD 2023 Candidate, The Fletcher School
Thanks to support from Fletcher’s Russia and Eurasia Program, I spent a month this summer in Germany doing archival research for my capstone project. I’m studying the East German iteration of the advanced optics manufacturer Zeiss and its connections to the Soviet defense industry during the 1970s and 1980s. I wanted to combine my interest in Cold War history with my Fletcher focus areas of Russian studies and international economics. I hope the project will also be relevant to today’s discussions on sanctions, technology transfer, and German-Russian relations.
The Zeiss company was founded in Jena, Germany in 1846, and became a world leader in microscope and lens production under the leadership of Carl Zeiss and Dr. Ernst Abbe in the latter half of the 19th century. Decades later, Zeiss was expropriated by the Soviet Union during its initial occupation of Germany, but not before the Americans managed to take many of the firm’s key figures to their own occupation zone. The company was reestablished in the West in the small town of Oberkochen, while the new leaders of the German Democratic Republic also rebuilt the company as VEB (Volkseigener Betreib) Carl Zeiss Jena. In the east, Zeiss grew to become one of the GDR’s national champion Kombinat firms, with many other industrial and scientific subsidiaries under its umbrella.
Beginning in the late 1970s, Carl Zeiss Jena became a key cog in the Soviet and Warsaw Pact supply chain for advanced weaponry, including optics for the T-72 tank and the Soviet clone of the Western air-to-air “Sidewinder” missile. At the same time, my archival research shows that Carl Zeiss Jena became increasingly unable to meet centrally-planned targets for exports of its core scientific instruments and optical machinery to “non-socialist economies,” largely due to the economic distortions at the core of the East German economic system. In May 1983, the Politburo of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) committed to investing in Carl Zeiss Jena’s weapons export programs and deemphasizing sales to the West, acknowledging that both initiatives could not coexist. In terms of János Kornai’s work on trade within Socialist economies, East Germany gave in to the “export aversion” inherent in the system, and committed to producing advanced “hard goods” that the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies could not obtain anywhere else.
I spent most of my time in the German Federal Archives in Berlin, including the Stasi archives, and the private Zeiss archives at the company’s former headquarters in Jena. I would especially like to thank Dr. Wolfgang Wimmer at the Zeiss archives for his generous help and friendship during my time in Jena. My work uncovered internal economic plans, correspondence between top GDR officials and Zeiss leadership, and Stasi reports detailing the progress of the Zeiss weapons programs. Being able to study historical events in the places where they occurred and handle the physical documents that my research subjects used in their work was a fascinating experience, and I believe it will add significantly to my final project.
Given Germany’s key role in the international response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, my visit was also relevant to my Fletcher studies focused on modern Russia. Clashing commemorations and protests against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at Soviet monuments in Berlin, the Ukrainian flags covering many public buildings in the city, and the signs in Ukrainian publicizing refugee services and conveying messages of solidarity emphasized the importance of studying history to make sense of our world today.