Victor Grossman
The German Democratic Republic’s Engagement with Paul Robeson
When Paul Robeson visited East Germany for the first time in 1960, he said, “I have seen the real Germany, the human Germany, humane Germany. Those who are inheritors, yes, of Beethoven’s ‘Alle Menschen werden Brüder’.” He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Humboldt University (1960), and the German Peace Medal of the German Peace Council (1960) and widely cherished for his music and his political activism. After his health broke down, he sought treatment in East Berlin, where a street was later named for him. The talk considers the relationship between Paul Robeson and the German Democratic Republic, and the place he held in the East German public discourse.
Victor Grossman is a journalist and author of many books. Born in New York City, he studied at Harvard, worked in factories, and defected to the East Bloc by swimming across the Danube while serving in the US Army in Bavaria in 1952. He studied journalism at Karl-Marx-University in Leipzig, and remained working and writing in the German Democratic Republic, and later the Federal Republic of Germany. From 1965 to 1968 he was Director of the Paul Robeson Archive of the Academy of Art. His books include If I Had a Song – Lieder und Sänger der USA (1988), Crossing the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany (2003), Madrid du Wunderbare (2006), A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee (2019) and Rebel Girls: 34 amerikanische Frauen im Porträt (second revised edition 2024). He is currently the author and editor of the monthly Berlin Bulletins.