AbstractsCommunication

This thesis examines how the press of the erstwhile German Democratic Republic represented Iran in the years from 1949 – the year of the GDR’s formation – until 1989, the last complete year before its demise on 3 October 1990. The study focuses on key events in Iranian history such as the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in 1953, the White Revolution, the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and the Iran-Iraq war. It will be shown that although news and articles were based on selected facts, they still presented a picture of Iran that was at best distorted, the distortions and misrepresentations amounting to what could be described as 'factual fiction'. Furthermore, clear evidence will be provided that economical and political relations with Iran were a primary concern of the GDR’s leadership, and thus also of the GDR’s press and have therefore dominated the reporting on Iran. Whatever ideological concerns there may have been, they were hardly ever allowed to get in the way of amicable relations with the Shah or later with the Islamic Republic. Only in periods where the two countries enjoyed less amicable or poor relations, was the press free to critically report events in Iran and to openly support the cause of the SED’s communist Iranian sister party, the Tudeh.Despite East Germany’s diametric ideological environment and despite the fundamentally different role that the GDR’s political system had assigned to the press and to journalism, East Germany’s press was as reliant on the input of the global news agencies as any Western media. The at times almost complete reliance on Western news agencies as sources for news on Iran challenged more than just the hermeneutic hegemony the SED and the GDR’s press wanted to establish. After all, which news and information were made available by the news agencies to the media in both East and West was primarily determined by the business interests of said agencies.The study makes a contribution to three fields: Modern Iranian history, (East-) German history and media studies. The most valid findings were certainly made in the latter.