Commemorative Albums of the Higher Communist Schools of the GDR in the 1950s (Based on Materials from the Personal Fund of Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences A. I. Lepeshkin)

Abstract

Historic artifacts speak to the fact that various cultural forms existed in different historical periods. The recently discovered works presented in this article are unique artifacts of the cultural history of post-war Europe. Alexey Lepeshkin, who was a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union and a specialist in the field of Soviet public law, was presented with two commemorative albums of the higher communist schools of the GDR (1952). As of today, these albums are part of Lepeshkin’s personal fund, and are stored in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (f. No.2004). This article gives the first scientific account of these items. The complex study of commemorative albums is relevant due to the lack of research in the area of handwritten commemorative albums of that period. A comprehensive analysis of the historical and cultural context of the interaction among the socialist countries after the end of the Second World War as exemplified by the relations between Russia and Germany in the example of two commemorative albums of German communist institutions of higher education gives researchers an opportunity to bring these manuscripts into a wider cultural and political context. The genre of hand-made folklore albums has a number of distinctive features in both form and content. This article is devoted to a formal and meaningful description and analysis of these memorial artifacts, both in terms of the texts contained in them, and in terms of visual anthropological analysis of photographs, drawings, and calligraphic features. On the basis of this material, we can draw conclusions about the preservation of folklore pragmatics and forms of existence by such albums, regardless of the change in the social structure in Russian and German culture.