While GBM, GRH and ISOR, as the larger member organizations, represent the core of the OKV network, many smaller groups venture into a host of other activities. In what follows, a discussion of these organizations will shed light on their main concerns, and how these themes connect them to the overall structure of the OKV. These themes include advocacy for antifascism and peace, GDR art and sciences, the preservation of historical memory (including socialist lieux de mémoire), traditions of former GDR state organs as well as the promotion of social justice. The present chapter will pay special attention to the question of how far these and other GDR-related topics can provide the OKV with opportunities for linkage with outside groups and parties, and at the same time, in how far such groups might be restrained in their linkage precisely because of their association with the OKV. From this angle, the OKV appears as a social and political environment that offers its members much more than just GDR elite interest representation.

Antifascism and peace advocacy

A topic that is current in all OKV organizations is antifascism, which was also the central legitimating ideology of the GDR. OKV members generally consider the GDR to have been a real antifascist state, and see this confirmed by current German involvement in military missions. Consequently, the GBM asserts its antifascist peace agenda through protest against Western, and especially German, military interventions.