Harich Group

Harich Group (Gruppe Harich) was the originally derogatory name given by the East German justice and media establishments to the defendants in a high-profile 1957 criminal trial against a "circle of like minded persons".

Wolfgang Harich was a leading member of The Group: he was also a man whose name had been on the list of potentially helpful supporters that Walter Ulbricht brought with him from Moscow on 2 May 1945 when he arrived on his nation building mission. Two days later, invited to join Ulbricht's team, Harich had firmly declined, while nevertheless expressing his willingness to make his contribution in the cultural field and in journalism.

During the de-Stalinization period, and particularly after First-secretary Khrushchev's "secret" speech of February 1956, in which he criticized Stalin, discussion groups developed spontaneously in Poland, Hungary and in East Germany, comprising Marxist intellectuals, and calling for reforms from within The Party that were, for the most part, aligned with the national objectives of the communist states.

The "Bloch circle" (focused on Ernst Bloch), met together in Leipzig. In Berlin there was a "circle of like minded persons" centred on Walter Janka and Gustav Just. There was also a "Thursday circle" around Fritz J. Raddatz and there was another group around the sculptor Fritz Cremer.

The most important of these discussion groups was identified as the "circle of like minded persons", which for the most part comprised employees and authors of the country's leading publishing house, Aufbau-Verlag, and of the weekly newspaper "Sonntag" ("Sunday"). Contacts existed between Georg Lukács in Hungary, Ernst Bloch in Leipzig, and Johannes R. Becher (known as the author of East Germany's recently adopted national anthem). Wolfgang Harich was mandated to summarize the discussion groups' conclusions on paper. In this way Harich composed the "Platform for the special German route to Socialism". Key demands were as follows:

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