The Representation of Academic Institutions in
Literature of the GDR and the New Germany
Submitted by Morven Margaret Creagh, to the University of Exeter as a thesis
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in German, September 2008.
This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and
that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement.
I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and
that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by
this or any other University.
…………………………..
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Abstract
The study is in two parts. The first part examines the representation of the academic
institute and the figure of the academic in GDR literature in the latter half of the GDR
state’s existence. Specifically, it explores the interface between realist critiques of science
and/or GDR academia and metaphorically coded critiques of the GDR state in a selection of
texts by Christa Wolf, Helga Königsdorf and Günter de Bruyn. In this focus on the
relationship between the realist and the metaphorical dimensions of the texts, my study
differs from previous scholarship which has tended to foreground one or other aspect. A
particular focus of this study are the ways in which these writers model the academic
institute as a microcosm of the GDR state, with academic research projects standing for the
GDR socialist project, and institutional dynamics representing social relations in the GDR.
Having explored the relationship between the representation of the academic institute, the
academic world and GDR society, I conclude the first part of this study by arguing that,
perhaps surprisingly, there are similarities between these GDR ‘academia tales’ and the
Anglo-American campus novel.
Part Two of the study begins by examining the post-Wende representation of the
restructuring, or Abwicklung, of the GDR academic establishment in texts by Helga
Königsdorf and John Erpenbeck. This is followed by an overview of a series of texts in
which the post-Wende experiences of east German academics, while treated more
peripherally, nevertheless generate interesting readings. While there have been many
historical and sociological analyses of academic Abwicklung, this is the first to examine
literary treatments of the phenomenon. It explores the representation of academic
Abwicklung both as a social issue in its own right, and as a starting point for broader
political commentaries. Furthermore, by exploring the continued use of the academic
institute as a metaphor for the GDR state, even after the latter’s collapse, this study
supports the view that the Wende did not lead to an immediate reconceptualisation of
political and aesthetic approaches in the literature produced by east German writers.
2
Acknowledgements
This project was made possible by a three-year award from the Arts and Humanities
Research Council for which I am very grateful. My primary debt of thanks goes to my
supervisor, Dr Chloe Paver, whose unfailingly astute insights and careful reading at all
stages of this project’s development have shaped my thinking and writing, and have been
an invaluable source of guidance. In addition, I am grateful to the staff of the Deutsches
Literaturarchiv in Marbach for their efficient assistance during my numerous research trips
to Germany. My Marbach friends deserve special thanks for their stimulating discussions
on topics ranging from GDR literature to the PhD process, as do all the PhD students at
Exeter University whom I have had the pleasure to get to know. Thanks are also due to my
friends in Exeter and the South East and, of course, to my family who have encouraged me
throughout the last four years. In particular, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to
my mother, Janice Creagh, for her unstinting support and encouragement from start to
finish.
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Contents
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Title Page
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Contents
PART ONE
Chapter One:
Introduction
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Social Contexts (I): Wissenschaft und Macht – Higher Education in the
GDR
1.3 Social Contexts (II): Mechanisms of Institutionalisation in the GDR
1.4 Literary Contexts (I): Genre – Satire and the ‘Academia Tale’
1.4.1 The Definition and Material of Satire
1.4.2 The Techniques of Satire
1.4.3 Feinberg’s Analysis of the Effects of Satire
1.4.4 Meyer’s Analysis of the Effects of Satire
1.5 Literary Contexts (II): Theme, Characterisation and Metaphor – From
Worker to Wissenschaftler in GDR Prose
1.5.1 The Displacement of the Worker as a Literary Figure
1.5.2 The Writer as a Literary Figure
1.5.3 The Teacher as a Literary Figure
1.5.4 The Wissenschaftler as a Literary Figure
1.5.5 Theorising Wissenschaft in GDR Prose: Brigitte Rossbacher
1.5.6 Theorising Wissenschaft in GDR Prose: Elizabeth Mittman
1.6 Methodological Issues for Scholars of GDR Literature
1.6.1 Phases of Methodology in GDR Literary Criticism
1.6.2 Re-evaluating GDR Literary Criticism of the 1970s
1.6.3 Re-evaluating GDR Literary Criticism of the 1980s
1.6.4 Where Do We Go from Here?: Finding Ways Forward in GDR
Literary Criticism
Chapter Two:
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Representations of the Academic Institution in the
Pre-Wende Work of Christa Wolf
2.1 Introduction
2.2 ‘Ein Besuch’
2.2.1 Introduction
2.2.2 The Gatersleben Institute and Stubbe as Foils for the GDR State
and its Leadership
2.2.3 Science and Literature: Two Cultures?
2.2.4 Lyssenkoism and Socialist Realism
2.2.5 Closing Remarks
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2.3 ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’
2.3.1 Introduction
2.3.2 Zivilisationskritik versus Gesellschaftskritik
2.3.3 The Metaphorical Dimension
2.3.4 Scientists – GDR Leaders? Scientific Experiment – Socialist
Experiment?
2.3.5 The Scientist as GDR Individual
2.3.6 Science and Literature: Unequal Partners
2.3.7 The GDR Institution and the Production of Knowledge
2.3.8 Closing Remarks
2.4 ‘Selbstversuch: Traktat zu einem Protokoll’
2.4.1 Introduction
2.4.2 The Realist Institution
2.4.3 The Critique of Instrumental Reason
2.4.4 A Feminist Critique of Science
2.4.5 A Feminist Critique of the GDR
2.4.6 The Metaphorical Institution
2.4.7 Literature: Partner or Victim of Science?
2.4.8 Closing Remarks
2.5 Conclusion: A Glance Forward at Störfall
Chapter Three:
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Representations of the Academic Institution in the
Pre-Wende Work of Helga Königsdorf
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Königsdorf’s ‘Academia Tales’
3.2.1 Introduction
3.2.2 Previous Scholarly Approaches
3.2.3 Summary of Stories
3.2.4 GDR Academia – A Literal Critique
3.2.5 The GDR State – A Critique Encoded in Metaphor
3.2.6 Questioning the Inevitability of the Perversion of Socialism
3.2.7 What Now? The Writer as an Initiator of Change
3.2.8 Closing Remarks
3.3 A Glance at Respektloser Umgang
3.3.1 Introduction
3.3.2 Identification
3.3.3 Past and Present
3.3.4 The Academic Institution
3.3.5 Closing Remarks
3.4 Conclusion
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Chapter Four:
Representations of the Academic Institution in the
Pre-Wende Work of Günter de Bruyn
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Preisverleihung
4.2.1 Introduction
4.2.2 Social Satire
4.2.3 A Critique of the Academic Institution
4.2.4 The Akademie
4.2.5 The Institut
4.2.6 The Relationship between the Institutional and non-Institutional
Scenes
4.2.7 The Public-Private Dialectic
4.2.8 Closing Remarks
4.3 Märkische Forschungen
4.3.1 Introduction
4.3.2 The Zentralinstitut für Historiographie und Historiomathie
4.3.3 A Critique of Academia
4.3.4 A Political Critique
4.3.5 A Social Critique
4.3.6 Closing Remarks
4.4 Conclusion
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An Excursus:
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The GDR ‘Academia Tale’ and the Campus Novel
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PART TWO
Chapter Five:
Post-Wende Literature and Academic Abwicklung
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The Post-Wende Restructuring of the East German Academic Landscape
5.3 Helga Königsdorf’s Im Schatten des Regenbogens
5.3.1 Introduction
5.3.2 The Institut für Zahlographie Viewed in Retrospect
5.3.3 A Realist Critique of Academic Abwicklung
5.3.4 A Critique of the Unification Process through the Collapse
of the Institute
5.3.5 Representations of Post-Wende Institutions
5.3.6 Closing Remarks
5.4 John Erpenbeck’s Aufschwung
5.4.1 Introduction
5.4.2 Erpenbeck’s Satirical Approach
5.4.3 The Representation of GDR Academia
5.4.4 The Representation of Abwicklung
5.4.5 Tes Chiros: A Political Commentary Past and Present
5.4.6 Tes Chiros: A Critique of the GDR?
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5.4.7 Tes Chiros: Hybridity and ‘Writing Back’
5.4.8 Tes Chiros: A Critique of the New Germany?
5.4.9 Closing Remarks
5.5 An Overview of the Representation of Abwicklung in Post-Wende East
German Literature
5.5.1 Introduction
5.5.2 Annett Gröschner: Moskauer Eis
5.5.3 Ingo Schulze: Simple Storys
5.5.4 Monika Maron: Stille Zeile sechs
5.5.5 Rolf Hochhuth: Wessis in Weimar: ‘Systemnah’
5.6 Conclusion
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Conclusion
Bibliography
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PART ONE
Chapter One: Introduction
1.1 Introduction
Dixon felt intolerably hot. With a shaking hand he poured himself a glass of water from the carafe
before him and drank feverishly. A comment, loud but indistinct, was shouted from the gallery. […]
Dixon raised his hand for silence, but the noise continued. […] ‘That’ll do, Dixon’, the Principal said
loudly, signalling to Welch, but too late. […] He felt he was in the grip of some vertigo, hearing
himself talking without consciously willing any words. (Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim)
Er greift nach dem Wasserglas, trinkt, stellt es heftig auf die Platte zurück, ohne es loszulassen. […]
Die Pause wird durch Lachen gefüllt. Das Füßescharren wird lauter. […] Der Chef des Hauses hebt die
Hand, um auf sich aufmerksam zu machen, zeigt, als er bemerkt wird, auf die Armbanduhr. Der
Redner redet weiter, sieht dabei auf seine; er redet schon fast eine Stunde, spürt, wie das Blut ihm in
den Kopf steigt, weiß, daß es jetzt nicht mehr darauf ankommt, zur Sache, sondern nur noch zum Ende
zu finden. (Günter de Bruyn, Preisverleihung)
The campus novel has been a recognised subgenre of English-language literary fiction since
the 1950s. It is generally considered a feature of the British and American canon, and has
no established tradition in either German or GDR literary fiction.1 Indeed, the campus
novel (to which I will return later in the thesis) was produced under such different social
circumstances that it makes an unlikely point of reference for literature produced in the
GDR. However, while the likes of Kingsley Amis, David Lodge and Malcolm Bradbury
were penning novels about campus life and university lecturers in the West, GDR writers
such as Christa Wolf, Helga Königsdorf and Günter de Bruyn were playing with similar
themes in their texts featuring the GDR academic institution.
Dietrich Schwanitz’s satirical novel Der Campus (1995) is perhaps the only obvious representative of the
genre in German prose fiction. Like many western ‘campus novels’, it is written by a university English
professor, and represents a satirical commentary on academia in (West) Germany.
1
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This study examines the representation of academic institutions in a selection of GDR and
post-Wende texts. As such, it belongs to what is, as yet, only a small body of scholarship
which brings together analyses of literature produced by East/east2 German writers before
and after the collapse of the GDR state. It is divided into two parts: in the first, I consider
the thematisation of academic institutes, their research projects and their personnel in a
series of pre-Wende texts by Wolf, Königsdorf and de Bruyn, for which I have coined the
term ‘academia tales’. While my underlying approach is thus thematic, my aim is not
simply to provide an inventory of different writers’ treatments of the theme: rather, I am
interested in understanding and defining the interface between the realist and metaphorical
dimensions of the texts in question, the ways in which their realist critiques of science
and/or GDR academia interact with their metaphorically coded critiques of the GDR state.
Where I speak of the ‘metaphorical’ dimension of these texts, I am not using ‘metaphor’ in
the sense of a figure of speech, such as in the sentence ‘to fall through the trapdoor of
doom’,3 or, to use a GDR example, ‘Der Himmel teilt sich zuallererst’. Rather, I am
interested in the way in which my authors use concrete elements of the fictional world –
institutions, characters, scientific experiments, situations – to represent the GDR state as a
whole as well as aspects of GDR life: the political elite, the GDR population, state
socialism and so on. Arguably, the terms ‘symbol’ and ‘allegory’ might also describe what
is going on these texts; certainly, allegory is often associated with GDR literature because
of its potential for introducing codified political critiques. However, I use the term
‘metaphor’ in this study because ‘symbol’ and ‘allegory’ tend to imply a univalent mapping
of one thing on to another, whereas many of the metaphors I examine, certainly those in
Wolf’s texts, are much more polyvalent: I show, for example, how the figure of the
Where I refer to the period before German unification I use the capitalised forms ‘East’ and ‘West’, and
where referring to the post-Wende era I use the lower-case forms ‘east’ and ‘west’.
3
This example of linguistic metaphor is given by the Oxford English Dictionary.
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academic can simultaneously stand for the GDR political elite as well as for the average
GDR citizen.
I conclude Part One of the study with an overview of the Anglo-American campus novel,
considering the points of correspondence and divergence between this staple of the western
literary canon and the GDR ‘academia tale’.
The focus of Part Two is the literary representation of the post-Wende restructuring of the
east German academic establishment – a process which has popularly been dubbed
Abwicklung by those negatively affected by the reforms. Although there is a wealth of
scholarship on the historical aspects of the Abwicklung of east German academia, this is the
first study to look specifically at the literary representation of the process and its effects. I
first discuss two novels – by Helga Königsdorf and John Erpenbeck – in which the
consequences of academic Abwicklung are foregrounded, and then review four other postWende texts in which Abwicklung and/or former GDR academics feature more obliquely.
In all of these analyses I am interested in exploring the ways in which these authors engage
with and respond to the dominant post-Wende discourses and debates of the time, amongst
them the view of the GDR as an ‘Unrechtsstaat’, the perception of unification as a
‘colonisation’ of East by West Germany, and nostalgia – or Ostalgie – for the fallen GDR.4
4
See, for example: Paul Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification: From Colonisation to
Nostalgia (Oxford: Berg, 2005); Claudia Sadowski-Smith, ‘Ostalgie: Revaluing the Past, Regressing into the
Future’, GDR Bulletin, 25 (1998), 1-6; Susanne Ledanff, ‘Trauer und Melancholie. “Weibliche”
Wenderomane zwischen 1993 und 1994’, GDR Bulletin, 25 (1998), 7-20. These debates have been so well
documented by scholars that I do not rehearse them in detail in this Introduction, but reference is made to the
scholarship as appropriate in the chapters that follow.
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By way of introduction to my literary analyses, I outline below a series of historical and
literary contexts which helped to produce the texts included in this study and/or help us as
readers to understand them. Starting closest to my texts, and bearing in mind the theme of
the academic institute in GDR literature, I begin with an overview of a body of scholarship
which details the structure, strengths and weaknesses of the GDR academic establishment.
This is not to imply that this study aims simply to identify correspondences between the
historical reality of GDR academia and its representation in the literature produced there.
Rather, my focus is on what becomes of this historical reality in GDR literary texts. For
example, I am just as interested in understanding the omissions in my authors’
representations of GDR academic institutions as the matches between the reality and its
fictional representation. Accordingly, I seek to understand the use my authors make of
simplified models of academic institutes as vehicles for conveying a range of academic,
social and political critiques. Equally, I draw attention to their use of caricatured models of
academics which, because they pre-date the GDR, are not directly generated by the realities
of GDR academic life. Thus, the historical overview of GDR academia provides a means of
understanding the complex aesthetic models (and not just the fictional world) of my texts.
This is followed by a broader sociological overview of GDR institutional mechanisms
which, while not primarily based on data from academic institutions, helps to illuminate the
fictional representation (or rather adaptation, distortion and distillation) of academic life in
the GDR. In particular, it highlights the forceful presence of the SED within GDR
institutions, a political reality that is conspicuous by its absence from literary
representations of the academic institution, even though more abstract institutional
mechanisms, such as the efforts of those in power to preserve their power at all costs, find
their way readily into the fictional texts in the corpus.
11
From the social context I move on to the literary context. Theories of the genre of satire
help us to identify the mechanisms of my authors’ political and social critiques, most of
which rely on satire for their effect. As we shall see, this genre, though not readily
associated with the GDR and mostly theorised without reference to it, operated in particular
ways within the socialist state. Next I place my corpus of texts in a literary historical
context, arguing that, as workers lost their currency as literary hero(in)es in the 1970s, one
of the range of middle-class social types that filled their place was the academic. I conclude
the chapter with a discussion of the history of scholarship on GDR literature, debating the
various approaches which have been taken to it over the decades and ending with a
consideration of the legitimacy of my own methodology. These contexts, which start close
to my texts and gradually become more abstract, provide a valuable historical and
theoretical framework through which to read, in particular, my three chapters on pre-Wende
literature, though many of the observations made are also pertinent to my analysis of the
post-Wende representation of Abwicklung.
1.2 Social Contexts (I): Wissenschaft und Macht – Higher Education in the GDR
Die Wissenschaft leistet einen ständig wachsenden Beitrag zur planmäßigen
Vervollkommnung der Produktion und zur Entwicklung des materiellen und geistigkulturellen Lebens aller Werktätigen. Sie fördert den Wohlstand, die Gesundheit,
und die geistigen Bedürfnisse der Menschen im Sozialismus.5
This was the SED’s official pronouncement on the centrality of scholarship to the existence
of the GDR and to the realisation of the ideals of socialism. The extent to which the
functionaries of the SED actually believed this statement is unclear; the degree to which
Programm der SED, cited in: Jürgen Kocka, ‘Wissenschaft und Politik in der DDR’, in Jürgen Kocka and
Renate Mayntz, eds, Wissenschaft und Wiedervereinigung. Disziplinen im Umbruch (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 1998), pp. 435-61 (p. 439).
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academics in the GDR internalised its implications is also a matter for debate. What can be
inferred from this quotation, however, is the official elevation of academia in the GDR, and
the assumed closeness between the ideology of socialism and the academics who were
tasked both to justify and further it. The instrumentalisation of scholarship in the GDR has
been well documented. Fred Klinger6 and Mike Dennis7 speak of the emphasis on
scientific-technical innovation which characterised the latter years of the Honecker regime
in its futile quest to keep pace with technological developments in the West. Marianne
Streisand, a GDR academic interviewed in 1991 by Robert von Hallberg in his collection of
interviews Literary Intellectuals and the Dissolution of the State, describes the
instrumentalisation of the social sciences by the SED with the aim of furnishing ‘scientific’
evidence to support the prevailing socialist ideology.8 And Jürgen Kocka, in his
contribution to the study Wissenschaft und Wiedervereinigung, speaks of the ‘dialektische
Einheit’ of academia and politics in the official self-understanding of the GDR.9
To the western observer educated in the importance of the freedom of academia, the above
evidence suggests an uncomfortably close relationship between politics and scholarship in
the GDR. Kocka’s suggestion of ‘ein symbiotisches Verhältnis’10 between the two would
also seem to support this notion of a scholarship dependent on, and inhibited by, the politics
Fred Klinger, ‘Fortschritt im real existierenden Sozialismus: aktuelle Probleme und sozialkulturelle
Hintergründe wissenschaftlich-technischer Innovation in der DDR’, in Margy Gerber et al., eds, Selected
Papers from the Twelfth New Hampshire Symposium on the German Democratic Republic, Studies in GDR
Culture and Society, 7 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1987), pp. 95-114 (pp. 99-103).
7
Mike Dennis, ‘Scientific-Technical Progress, Ideological Legitimation, and Political Change in the German
Democratic Republic’, in Margy Gerber et al., eds, Selected Papers from the Fifteenth New Hampshire
Symposium on the German Democratic Republic, Studies in GDR Culture and Society, 10 (Lanham:
University Press of America, 1991), pp. 1-29.
8
Marianne Streisand cited in: Robert von Hallberg, ed., Literary Intellectuals and the Dissolution of the State:
Professionalism and Conformity in the GDR (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 77.
9
Kocka, ‘Wissenschaft und Politik in der DDR’, p. 438.
10
Kocka, ‘Wissenschaft und Politik in der DDR’, p. 455.
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of the society in which it is rooted. But how accurate a view is this, and how far do other
critics of the academic and educational landscape of the GDR endorse it?
Kocka, Manfred Bierwisch and Wolfgang Raible all identify phases of tightening and
relaxing Party control over academia in the GDR. Specifically, all three critics identify the
academic reform of 1968-9 in East Germany, with its founding of centralised
conglomerates of formerly semi-autonomous institutes, as a defining moment which
ushered in a period of increased state control over the research and educational activities of
academic institutions in the GDR.11 The nature and implications of this control are a focus
of discussion amongst scholars. Raible outlines the lack of autonomy, the over-staffing and
strong affiliation to the SED of GDR research institutes. Bierwisch cites the ineffectiveness
of GDR researchers under SED control as justification for the post-Wende restructuring.
Helmut de Rudder cites centralisation and the sacrifice of academic freedom at the hands of
the as primary failings in GDR academia.12 Finally, Kocka and Renate Mayntz, in their
detailed analysis of GDR politics and academia, conclude that the degree of state control
over scholarship depended upon the academic discipline, and that the relationship between
the state and academia was characterised by a more complex system of bi-directional
control than many critics acknowledge.
Of the charges levelled against GDR academia, centralisation and inefficiency might appear
the least serious weaknesses. Yet most scholars regard them as significant failings. The
See: Manfred Bierwisch, ‘Konflikte der Erneuerung. Die Universitäten der ehemaligen DDR’, in Heinz
Ludwig Arnold and Frauke Meyer-Gosau, eds, Die Abwicklung der DDR (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1992), pp.
40-53 (p. 42); Kocka, ‘Wissenschaft und Politik’, p. 437; Wolfgang Raible, ‘Impressionen beim Evaluieren.
Zur Abwicklung der kulturwissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen der ehemaligen DDR-Akademie der
Wissenschaften’, in Arnold and Meyer-Gosau, pp. 54-63 (pp. 57-8).
12
Helmut de Rudder, ‘The Transformation of East German Higher Education: Renewal as Adaptation,
Integration and Innovation’, Minerva, 35 (1997), 99-125 (pp. 103-4).
11
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foundation in 1968-9 of unwieldy Zentralinstitute, consisting of networks of smaller,
centralised institutes, was in part responsible, Raible and Bierwisch argue, for the
elimination of institutional autonomy, and the final transfer of control into the hands of the
SED. Decisions about every aspect of academic life were made centrally by groups of
faceless civil servants far removed from the realities and needs of scholarship and higher
education.13 Staffing, for example, was decided centrally, and in accordance with the
socialist principle of full employment, leading inevitably to detrimental over-staffing,14
mixed research ability, a lack of performance incentives and inefficiency. Although there is
some tension between the critics’ accounts of the degree of division of responsibility
between research and teaching institutes,15 they are agreed that the general structural
distinction between these two activities, and the lack of collaboration between teaching and
research centres, alienated each from the other,16 thereby decreasing their academic
effectiveness, as well as their power to resist state control.
Kocka, ‘Wissenschaft und Politik’, pp. 441-5.
Bierwisch explains that the Akademie der Wissenschaften employed a staff of over 27,000 permanent
academics, which represented a surplus of 50% over what was necessary and ideal. Klinger writes that in
1985, 200,000 people were employed in the field of Research and Development in the GDR, representing
between 1 and 2% of all those working in R&D worldwide. Furthermore, this figure was to be increased in
subsequent years.
15
Bierwisch writes that, contrary to the Humboldt ideal of a unity between research and higher education
teaching, there was a strict division between the two activities, which were confined either to research
institutes or to teaching universities: Bierwisch, p. 45. Peer Pasternack challenges the ‘cliché’ of such a
division, attributing it to the post-Wende attempts of staff at the Akademie der Wissenschaften to portray
themselves in the most favourable light to the evaluation committees, and also to university lecturers’ injured
insistence on their effectiveness as educators in the face of post-unification allegations of their loyalty to the
GDR state: Peer Pasternack, Geisteswissenschaften in Ostdeutschland 1995. Eine Inventur (Leipzig:
Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 1996), p. 43. Mediating between these two viewpoints, de Rudder explains that
while research was primarily focused in academies and research institutes, more research was undertaken in
universities than is commonly assumed to have been the case: de Rudder, p. 103.
16
Many of the former GDR scholars interviewed by Hallberg attest to a lack of cooperation between the
research institutes and universities. This appears to have been driven firstly by resentment felt by university
lecturers towards the privileged, unburdened research scholars, and secondly by a lack of respect on the part
of researchers towards academics at the universities, who, because of the difficulty of gaining employment
there, were considered to be little more than mouthpieces of the Party, selected not for their academic
credentials but for their SED membership and loyalty.
13
14
15
Not surprisingly, since it can lead to moral judgements about personal responsibility, the
degree to which academics resisted or conformed is a controversial subject in post-Wende
scholarship. Analysts of GDR academia tend to cite total, or near total, Party penetration of
the academic sphere as a mitigating factor. Kocka, Hallberg and many of the latter’s
interviewees outline the nature and influence of the Party shadow structures that ran
parallel to, and strongly influenced, the internal academic decision-making bodies of the
individual institutes,17 which, although largely populated by academics loyal to the Party,18
were effectively robbed of any self-determination. Many of these scholars provide statistics
on the infiltration of academic institutes by the Stasi, and describe the Stasi’s control over
research trips abroad.19
Scholars are divided as to which academic disciplines were most strongly controlled.
Klinger describes the suppression of innovation in the field of technological research and
development. Both Norbert Krenzlin, interviewed by Hallberg, and Kocka agree that the
humanities were a particularly threatened field. Mayntz, meanwhile, provides a well-
See in particular: Kocka, ‘Wissenschaft und Politik’, pp. 441-7.
Kocka provides detailed statistics on the extent of Party membership amongst academic staff, detailing both
the increase in membership as the years progressed, and the differences in membership between the various
disciplines and institutes. He explains, for example, that membership amongst university professors increased
from 29% in 1954 to 61% in 1971, and again to 80% from the mid 1970s onwards: Kocka, ‘Wissenschaft und
Politik’, p. 451.
19
De Rudder explains that 17 permanent Stasi officers controlled the Humboldt University, each of which
controlled 20 Informelle Mitarbeiter chosen from the University staff. He states that of the 780 full-time
academics still employed in 1991, 160 were erstwhile IMs. Kocka explains that the shadowy nature of the
Stasi, and the widespread knowledge that Stasi members operated in the universities and academies,
cultivated a sense of fear and conformity amongst academics. Norbert Krenzlin, interviewed by Hallberg,
refers to ‘a gigantic bureaucracy [which] kept an eye on scholarship’ (Hallberg, p. 40). Numerous other
interviewees document the Stasi control over travel opportunities, and their intrusive systems for thoroughly
debriefing academics on their return from research trips abroad. Hallberg concludes that the Stasi expertly
manipulated GDR academics, playing on their need for recognition and a sense of self-importance.
17
18
16
documented resumé of the influence of politics on GDR academia, which concludes that
there existed a general lack of autonomy across the range of disciplines.20
On the question of the possibility of resistance, Kocka is keen to emphasise the relationship
of interdependence that existed between the academic world and the GDR state. In his
analysis of the impact of Kaderpolitik on the conformity of academics,21 he is sympathetic
to the difficulties of offering resistance in the face of the Party’s manipulation of
institutional politics. Yet, while not denying the influence of the Party, he terms its
relationship with academia ‘symbiotic’, citing the practical help, social recognition and
political influence it offered GDR scholars as examples of the benefits of conforming to the
demands of the regime.22 Thus, he challenges the notion of a straightforward dominance of
academia by the state. Similarly, in his controversial conclusion to his collection of
interviews, in which he contends that professionalisation per se is an inhibitor of dissent,
Hallberg suggests that GDR academics did not sufficiently test the boundaries set by the
state, erroneously assuming the inevitability of the feared consequences of non-conformity.
Mayntz, on the other hand, contends that the extreme selectiveness with which academic
topics were chosen largely exonerates scholars from guilt: the question of academic
dishonesty is more or less redundant, she argues, for only ‘risk-free’ topics were permitted,
allowing scholars to present favourable results in good faith.23
Surprisingly, perhaps, given the bitterness and instability of the post-unification years in
which they were interviewed (see footnote 15 above), Hallberg’s interviewees provide an
Renate Mayntz, ‘Die Folgen der Politik für die Wissenschaft in der DDR’, in Jürgen Kocka and Renate
Mayntz, eds, Wissenschaft und Wiedervereinigung. Disziplinen im Umbruch (Berlin: Akademie Verlag,
1998), pp. 461-83.
21
Kocka, ‘Wissenschaft und Politik’, pp. 452-3.
22
Kocka, ‘Wissenschaft und Politik’, p. 439.
23
Mayntz, ‘Die Folgen der Politik’, pp. 481-2.
20
17
articulate critical appraisal of academic submissiveness. For example, Dorothea Dornhof,
former academic at the Central Institute for Literary History, recognises the dishonesty of
scholars who sacrificed their intellectual integrity by engaging in a process of selfcensorship. However, she also points to the genuine anxiety about the supposed
omnipotence of the Party, which, so academics feared, might simply have closed whole
departments or ended the careers of non-conformists. Dornhof also sympathises with
scholars whose research was devoid of originality and the courage to challenge the
boundaries of received thought, even identifying herself with those who churned out
middle-of-the-road research so as not to rock the boat.24 Interviewees Simone and
Karlheinz Barck also outline the dilemma of compromise versus resistance confronting
GDR scholars, who often acquiesced so as not to endanger the positive function of their
scholarly work,25 a sentiment echoed by Streisand in her assertion that while all research
was permitted, only conformist works would be published.26 Many of these observations
resonate with the idea of ‘loyal dissidence’, a notion which arises in the context of the Geist
und Macht debate.27 Finally, while a number of these interviewed scholars allude to their
excessive timidity, Christa Erbert and Brigitte Burmeister offer unequivocal admissions
that they (a collective ‘they’) could have offered greater resistance to the demands of the
regime, but instead were unnecessarily receptive to the climate of fear cultivated by the
Party, accepting compromise as the cost of enjoying an academic career.
24
Dorothea Dornhof, cited in: Hallberg, p. 100.
Simone and Karlheinz Barck, cited in: Hallberg, ed., Literary Intellectuals and the Dissolution of the State,
pp. 86-7.
26
Streisand, cited in: Hallberg, p. 62.
27
For a discussion of the origin and development of the concept of Geist und Macht, see Axel Goodbody’s
and Dennis Tate’s preface to an edition of ‘German Monitor’ on this subject: Axel Goodbody and Dennis
Tate, eds, Geist und Macht: Writers and the State in the GDR, German Monitor, 29 (1992), 1-3.
25
18
These insights into the realities of GDR higher education were not widely available to
western scholars before the Wende, though one can assume that they were available to
GDR writers, and certainly to those GDR writers with personal connections to academic
institutions. They therefore provide a new means of gauging the reflections, omissions and
distortions in the texts included in this study. In this way, they legitimise a return to reading
GDR texts for what they have to say about the GDR (a trend in scholarship on which I will
comment a little later in this chapter), since our readings can now be enhanced by historical
scholarship that has only recently been carried out. Likewise, post-Wende scholarship on
the dynamics of the GDR workplace (based largely on data from non-academic places of
work but nevertheless germane to the academic institute) can also help us to understand the
representation of GDR academia in these texts. In attempting to identify the causes of the
deficient institutional conditions they describe, post-Wende scholars come to many of the
same conclusions as Wolf, Königsdorf and de Bruyn in their ‘academia tales’. The results
of that scholarship are outlined in the following section.
1.3 Social Contexts (II): Mechanisms of Institutionalisation in the GDR
A decade after the collapse of the GDR, Konrad Jarausch published proceedings from a
Potsdam conference on the socio-cultural history of the GDR.28 Discussions in this volume
include methodological reflections on GDR historiography, analyses of the dynamics of the
GDR workplace, and examinations of the deterioration in the economic status of the state.
Although the focus varies from essay to essay, most of the analyses in Jarausch’s volume
are founded on the assumption that the SED’s repressive hold over its industrial and
academic institutions was an ultimately self-defeating attempt at self-justification: if the
28
Konrad Jarausch, ed., Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR (Oxford:
Berghahn, 1999).
19
SED could force the GDR state to modernise, and thereby to realise its promise to provide
for its citizens and to dominate the technological world stage, its undemocratic rule would
be legitimised. The contributors to Jarausch’s volume agree that the reality of the GDR’s
gradual industrial and economic stagnation attested to the flaws in this reasoning.
Arnd Bauerkämper and Jürgen Danyel’s essay ‘The Pivotal Cadres: Leadership Styles and
Self-Images of GDR-Elites’ takes as its model GDR industrial and academic (specifically,
scientific) institutions. Bauerkämper and Danyel explain that the 1950s saw the
deprofessionalisation of the GDR scientific world. In the very early years of the GDR’s
existence, significant numbers of the most enterprising intellectuals and scientists moved to
pursue careers in the West. This meant that there were opportunities for the upward
mobility of those who stayed in the GDR, many of whom were more passive, amenable
individuals than those who had already left. Although established scientists who chose to
remain in the GDR were allowed to keep their positions because they had crucial expertise,
they were soon outnumbered by new ‘socialist’ recruits, selected and trained in accordance
with the demands and norms of the SED. Those scientists who best conformed enjoyed the
most rapid career rises; by the 1960s these Party ‘yes-men’ constituted the core of the GDR
scientific elite.29
Bauerkämper and Danyel also consider the role played by generational change in the
increasingly technocratic leadership styles of institution directors. They argue that because
recruitment of functionaries by the 1950s was dependent on political loyalty rather than
social identities or personal qualities, and because the younger generations of GDR
Arnd Bauerkämper and Jürgen Danyel, ‘The Pivotal Cadres: Leadership Styles and Self-Images of GDRElites’, in Jarausch, ed., Dictatorship as Experience, pp. 265-81.
29
20
functionaries underwent strict socialist training which emphasised the primacy of the
collective, it was only to be expected that their own leadership styles would not place value
on developing and protecting the individual.30 A further consequence of generational
change, they explain, was that while first-generation GDR functionaries were influenced by
ideological perceptions of the fascist enemy without, the growing disillusion amongst
ordinary East Germans with real-existing socialism meant that following generations had to
focus more on threats from within the state itself. They explain that traits such as
‘vigilance, a sensitivity for political intrigue and for threatening groups or coalitions’
became characteristic not only of the political elite, but also of institutional leaders who had
to balance the demands of the Party with those of their institution’s personnel. 31 As a
consequence of all this, they conclude, institutional functionaries became diverted from
what they were supposedly there to do – ensure technological progress – and focused
instead on power preservation in the present. Bauerkämper and Danyel also explain that, in
accordance with the GDR’s strong philosophy of welfare, institutional functionaries were
officially responsible for the social well-being of their workers.32 However, Peter Hübner,
writing in the same volume, casts doubt on the sincerity of this rhetoric of welfare. The
‘uncaring practical application of economic and social policy by the SED’, he says,
undermined this philosophy, with the result that welfare was always secondary to the
security of political power.33
Bauerkämper and Danyel’s analysis of the cadre structure in the GDR offers a political and
sociological explanation for the inefficient and repressive mechanisms of the GDR
30
Bauerkämper and Danyel, p. 276.
Bauerkämper and Danyel, p. 277.
32
Bauerkämper and Danyel, pp. 274-5.
33
Peter Hübner, ‘Stagnation or Change? Transformations of the Workplace in the GDR’, in Jarausch, ed.,
Dictatorship as Experience, pp. 285-305 (p. 297).
31
21
institution. They explain that although the SED-trained cadres who managed GDR factories
and institutions were theoretically autonomous, in reality they were controlled by an
omnipotent shadow structure of Party overseers. Furthermore, these political cadres wrote
detailed reports which accompanied institution officials throughout their careers, thereby
serving as instruments of control. These oppressive mechanisms, Bauerkämper and Danyel
argue, inhibited modern management methods which encourage innovation and risk-taking
as primary ingredients of progress, and led instead to defensive leadership styles aimed at
self-preservation.34
Hübner’s analysis of changes in the GDR workplace primarily addresses the issue of
industrial stagnation. Although he focuses on GDR factories, his analysis is also relevant to
the scientific institution. Hübner explains that until the mid-1970s it appeared that the GDR
could keep pace with western European technological progress, after which it entered a
period of decline. Like Bauerkämper and Danyel, he cites Party control over GDR
industries as a primary cause of their lack of dynamism, which led in turn to industrial
stagnation. He confirms that the rise of a new SED-trained intelligentsia by the late 1950s
contributed to institutions peopled by blinkered Party functionaries. And he highlights
officially accepted institutional practices, such as the manipulation of productivity statistics
by institution managers, to account for the complacent attitudes which characterised GDR
workplaces, and gradually led to the state’s industrial and economic slow-down. At the root
of these problems, Hübner implies, was an inherently contradictory ideology which, despite
officially promoting the need for a scientific-technological revolution, in practice regarded
34
Bauerkämper and Danyel, p. 272.
22
the (industrial) workplace as a site of ideological socialisation rather than of technological
progress.35
Ralph Jessen’s analysis of social mobility, and Detlef Pollack’s discussion of
modernisation blockages in the GDR also take up this question of stagnation: both identify
the Party’s privileging of loyalty over productivity as a primary cause of its failure to fulfil
its modernisation targets. Both highlight the Catch 22 in the conflict between the Party’s
fundamental need to modernise society, and its fear of relaxing its grip on the state’s
institutions and agencies. And both conclude that the inevitable price of short-term stability
was, in part at least, long-term industrial, economic and political instability.36 Pollack also
draws on Jarausch’s concept of the GDR as a ‘welfare dictatorship’37 to account for the
lack of commitment of supposedly loyal GDR workers to the realisation of socialist ideals,
and thus for the stagnation of GDR industry: while benefits such as professional
advancement, power and status depended on conformity to the system, he says, most
workers did not commit themselves any more than was necessary to secure these personal
advantages.38 Finally, Pollack sums up the sentiments of all the contributors to Jarausch’s
volume:
The modification of society was always intended to occur from the top. That meant,
of course, that the system was unreformable, since any reform from the top did not
change precisely that which made the reform necessary in the first place: the
centralisation of all authority decision.39
35
Hübner, p. 286.
Ralph Jessen, ‘Mobility and Blockage during the 1970s’, in Jarausch, ed., Dictatorship as Experience, pp.
341-60 (p. 353).
Detlef Pollack, ‘Modernisation and Modernisation Blockages in GDR Society’, in Jarausch, ed., Dictatorship
as Experience, pp. 27-45 (pp. 30-1).
37
Konrad Jarausch, ‘Care and Coercion: The GDR as Welfare Dictatorship’, in Jarausch, ed., Dictatorship as
Experience, pp. 47-72.
38
Pollack, pp. 31-2.
39
Pollack, p. 40.
36
23
In this, Pollack shows that self-serving circular mechanisms were not just a feature of GDR
institutions, but of the SED political elite as well. The significance of this will become
apparent in my discussion of the metaphorical dimension of the texts in this study.
Given the serious issues embodied in these two aspects of the historical context which feed
into the production of my chosen texts, one could be forgiven for anticipating that they will
involve weighty political and social critiques. On the contrary, however, satire is a primary
feature of many of the texts in this study, and in what follows I introduce two perspectives
– one Anglo-American and one GDR – on the satirical mode and its validity as a vehicle
for instituting political and social change.
1.4 Literary Contexts (I): Genre – Satire and the ‘Academia Tale’
Satire is a common feature of at least half of the texts under discussion here (the exceptions
being Wolf’s ‘Ein Besuch’ and Störfall, Königsdorf’s Respektloser Umgang, and some of
the texts discussed in my review of post-Wende literature and academic Abwicklung).
Leonard Feinberg’s explanation of the mechanisms of satire in Anglo-American literature,
though now a little outdated in tone, provides a useful analysis of the spectrum of devices
commonly used by satirists;40 this general theory of (western) literary satire is
complemented by Barbara Meyer’s discussion of GDR literary satire, which assesses the
possibilities for satire written in a controlled socialist state.41 While Feinberg and Meyer
concur in their basic definitions of satire, and in their descriptions of satirical devices, their
perceptions of the effects of satire are strikingly at odds. These ‘effects’ are of interest
40
Leonard Feinberg, Introduction to Satire (Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1967).
Barbara Meyer, Satire und politische Bedeutung. Die literarische Satire in der DDR. Eine Untersuchung
zum Prosaschaffen der siebziger Jahre (Bonn: Bouvier, 1985).
41
24
because all of the satirical works in this study have in common a dissenting stance towards
the ruling ideology of the GDR.
1.4.1 The Definition and Material of Satire
Feinberg and Meyer agree that the essence of satire is the indirect exposure of the
opposition between a deficient reality and a utopian ideal. They also agree that distortion is
the basic technique of satire, by means of which the satirist achieves distance from reality
without breaking the relationship to it. Thus, they say, satire is wholly dependent on the
understanding between the satirist and the reader; the former consciously appeals to the
latter to decode his or her distorted references to historical reality. Commenting on the
material of satire, Feinberg explains that the two standard objects of satirical critique are
the individual and societal institutions. Economic and political structures, he says, come
under attack less frequently than their effects. Similarly, hypocrisy, rather than vice is
generally the object of attack, with the result that satire is usually directed at the
hypocritical implementation of an ideology, rather than at the ideology itself. He explains
that in order to expose this hypocrisy, the satirist focuses on negative representations of the
status quo. While Meyer agrees that pessimistic evocations constitute one satirical
approach, she adds that satirists often evoke a utopian alternative in order to illustrate the
gulf between existing and ideal conditions, and also to provide a positive blueprint for
change.42
42
Wolfgang Preisendanz argues that the satirical process not only requires a positive counter-image, but
necessitates that the satirist spells out the concrete conditions needed for the realisation of that alternative. If
the positive counter-image is implicit, he says, it becomes overshadowed and tainted by the negativity of the
criticised image. See: Wolfgang Preisendanz, ‘Negativität und Positivität im Satirischen’, in Wolfgang
Preisendanz and Rainer Warning, eds, Das Komische (Munich: Fink, 1976), pp. 413-5.
25
1.4.2 The Techniques of Satire
Both Feinberg and Meyer agree that comedy is a primary hallmark of satire. Meyer says
that the comic exposure of the satirised object is what differentiates satire from
straightforward invective, while Feinberg explains that the crucial difference between satire
and comedy is the former’s critical intention. He goes on to describe the ways in which a
satirist may create humour for satirical effect, highlighting three major techniques.
Incongruity, he says, is the most commonly accepted source of humour which derives from
the discrepancy between what is expected and what is presented: exaggeration, comic
contrast, metaphor, paradox and the mixture of apparently incompatible elements – realism,
satire, sentimentalism, didacticism – are amongst the tools which satirists use to create a
comically incongruous and satirical effect.
For Feinberg, surprise is the second major comic device often used by satirists. Unexpected
honesty, unexpected logic, an unexpected event and unexpected letdown all create surprise
by subverting the reader’s expectations, forcing a shift in the reader’s mindset, and
encouraging reflection on his or her expectations and assumptions. Elements of surprise,
Feinberg says, are often introduced by narrative personae whom the satirist employs to
express his criticism for him.
The use of critical narrative personae is a common feature of what Feinberg identifies as
the third major comic technique employed by many satirists: the technique of pretence. The
mask persona, Feinberg explains, involves the creation of a first-person narrator who seems
to be someone other than the satirist: the picaro, ingénu, naif, moralist, humorist, detached
realist, sophisticated cynic and so on. Typically, the satirist uses the mask persona to
26
express criticism, directly or indirectly, without appearing to endorse this criticism. Parody,
Feinberg says, is another form of pretence, and involves comic imitation which is often
dressed up as serious comment. Finally, Feinberg explains that symbolism and allegory are
not just confined to poetry, but are forms of pretence which, in the sense that they can be
used to misrepresent, distort and expose, can also have a satirical effect.
As well as describing these three major satirical techniques, Feinberg explains that brevity
is a common characteristic of satire: because it challenges the intellect rather than satisfying
the emotions, he argues, satire is most easily absorbed by the reader in short episodes. It is
possibly for this reason that Wolf and Königsdorf choose the short story as a vehicle for
their satirical commentaries, although de Bruyn’s and Erpenbeck’s satires are considerably
longer. What is common to all of these writers is the wealth of satirical features they draw
on. (Since, at this point in my argument, I want simply to illustrate the relevance of
Feinberg’s taxonomy of satirical techniques, I dispense with plot synopses, but these will
be supplied in the relevant chapters). For example, exaggeration is a prominent
characteristic of nearly all of the satirical texts in this study: the scientists and institute
directors are caricatures of egghead academics, political yes-men, institutional bureaucrats
and capitalist entrepreneurs; the scenarios which are depicted often include moments of
slapstick; ideas and themes are pushed to their logical, but absurd, extreme. The contrast
between a utopian socialist state and the ‘real-existing’ GDR is a recurrent theme in most of
Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’, while some of Königsdorf’s stories – ‘Der
unangemessene Aufstand des Zahlographen Karl-Egon Kuller’ and ‘Polymax’ – involve an
incongruous contrast between the serious subject matter and the light-hearted narrative
tone. Metaphor, as I discuss at length below, is a major device in almost all of my selected
texts: the academic institution (and its loss) as a metaphor for the (loss of the) GDR state;
27
the scientific experiment as a metaphor for the socialist experiment; the capitalist venture as
a metaphor for the socialist project; institute directors as metaphors for the political elite;
academics as metaphors for the GDR citizenry. And in ‘Selbstversuch’, the narrator’s
statement that she has to become a man in order to prove herself as a woman is an obvious
example of the kind of paradox which Feinberg sees as a feature of satire.
Elements of surprise to be found in my texts include moments of unexpected letdown, such
as the explosion of a scientist’s invention in Königsdorf’s story ‘Kugelblitz’, and the
sudden deaths of the protagonists in Königsdorf’s ‘Der unangemessene Aufstand des
Zahlographen Karl-Egon Kuller’ and ‘Autodidakten’, as well as in Erpenbeck’s
Aufschwung. The mask persona is a device used by Wolf in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines
Katers’ in which the shenanigans of a group of professors are related from the perspective
of a bourgeois tomcat, who simultaneously exposes and is himself exposed. And the
protagonist of Königsdorf’s ‘Eine kollektive Leistung’ is an example of a well-intentioned
but naïve character who unwittingly reveals to the reader the contradictions of his world,
though he himself fails to comprehend them. Finally, there are also elements of parody in
the stories, which are often tied up with the caricatured characters: they usually involve the
exaggerated imitation of bureaucratic speech and behaviour as exemplified by de Bruyn’s
institute directors in Preisverleihung and Märkische Forschungen, and the Abteilungsleiter
and his successor in Königsdorf’s ‘Eine Idee und ich’. In addition, a chiromancy enterprise
which plays a prominent role in Aufschwung can be read as a parody on a successful
capitalist company.
28
1.4.3 Feinberg’s Analysis of the Effects of Satire
Feinberg is pessimistic about the redemptive powers of satirical literature, arguing that it is
no more effective than other literary genres at instituting social change. He largely
attributes this to the mechanism of identification in literary satire, in particular to the
relationship between satirist and reader. Whereas in most literary genres the reader is
invited to identify with the characters, he explains, satirical literature creates identification
between the satirist and the reader. Feinberg identifies three major factors which account
for this. First, because complex psychological characterisation is not compatible with satire,
which creates exaggerated representative types, the reader can neither empathise nor
identify with its protagonists, and in any case would probably not want to. Second, by
relying on the reader to pick up and correctly interpret the writer’s signals, the satirical
process forges a collaborative relationship between the satirist and reader. The third reason
is more complex: Feinberg suspects that most readers (secretly) want to read literature
which is emotionally satisfying, cathartic, escapist and optimistic. Because satire appeals to
the intellect rather than the emotions, because it expresses unpalatable truths, and because it
refuses to provide comforting happy endings, it has to find other ways of winning the
reader over. It does this by inviting the reader to derive pleasure from a sense of shared
understanding with the writer, with whom he or she unites against a ridiculed protagonist or
institution.43 Satire, says Feinberg, ‘offers the reader the pleasures of superiority and safe
release of aggressions. […] Most people find pleasure in derision and satirists have made
43
In their respective analyses of the mechanism of irony, Rainer Warning and Dieter Wellershoff similarly
identify the solidarity between writer and reader against a ridiculed other as an essential ingredient of ironic
critique. See: Rainer Warning, ‘Ironiesignale und ironische Solidarisierung’, in Preisendanz and Warning, pp.
416-23 (pp. 416-17); Dieter Wellershoff, ‘Schöpferische und mechanische Ironie’, in Preisendanz and
Warning, pp. 423-5 (pp. 423-4).
29
the most of it’.44 Thus, he explains, the appeal of satire for the reader lies in its
entertainment rather than its didactic value. And as long as the reader identifies with the
‘good’ satirist rather than with the criticised character, the reader’s attitudes and behaviours
are affirmed.
In Feinberg’s view, the perpetuation of the status quo should not, however, be seen as a
failure in the satirical process, for the modification of individual and societal behaviours is
rarely the satirist’s aim. He insists that, while satire may encourage the reader to reevaluate
his or her internalised beliefs, it does not seek to change the reader or prompt him or her to
action.45 Most satires, Feinberg says, are diagnostic, not therapeutic. In other words, while
they may point out man’s or society’s deficiencies, they ‘offer no solace, no panacea, no
positive alternative’.46 Thus, his argument continues, unlike comedy, which ends on a
conciliatory note, and even tragedy, which often finds inspirational value in the
protagonist’s failure, most satires consciously and deliberately present a pessimistic world
view.47
1.4.4 Meyer’s Analysis of the Effects of Satire
Unlike Feinberg, who glosses over the distinction between satire which is produced in a
democracy and satire produced under totalitarian conditions, Meyer differentiates between
44
Feinberg, pp.5-6.
Feinberg, p. 7.
46
Feinberg, p. 60.
47
John Klapper’s analysis of Heinrich Böll’s use of satire partly concurs and partly conflicts with Feinberg’s
view of the impotence of satire. Klapper explains that it was Böll’s sincere desire to change the reader through
his short satirical stories of the 1950s, but that he abandoned the mode of satire in favour of a more realist
mode because he finally concluded that satire is not aggressive enough to motivate people to change. See:
John Klapper, ‘The Art of Aggression and its Limitations: The Early Satires’, in Michael Butler, ed., The
Narrative Fiction of Heinrich Böll. Social Conscience and Literary Achievement (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), pp. 70-88 (p. 86).
45
30
the two. Her perception of the intentions of satire that is written in non-totalitarian countries
is much more optimistic than Feinberg’s. The satirist’s aim, she believes, is to expose and
critique the object in order to change it: ‘Satire steht nicht für sich selbst, sondern ist
entlarvende Kritik an ihrem Gegenstand zum Zwecke seiner Veränderung oder
Aufhebung’.48 Unlike Feinberg, Meyer also believes that satire has restorative potential,
and that this is due to, rather than despite, its negative and uncomfortable images:49
Das Objekt ihres Angriffs wird als verkehrt, wertlos und demzufolge als
vernichtenswert betrachtet. Es liegt in ihrer Intention, den Gegenstand erst der
Lächerlichkeit preiszugeben, um ihn dann aufzuheben. […] In diesem Sinne ist sie
kritisch, desillusionierend, destruktiv.50
Like Feinberg, Meyer believes that the impact of satirical critique is dependent on the
relationship between writer and reader: ‘Wie kaum eine andere literarische Kategorie ist die
Satire von der stillen Übereinkunft zwischen Autor und Leser abhängig’. 51 However,
turning to the question of satire written in the GDR, she complicates Feinberg’s analysis of
the reader-satirist relationship, which relies on the assumptions that the satirist does not
intend to alter conditions through his or her critique, and that the radical potential of
satirical critique is, in any case, undermined by the identification between satirist and
reader. Explaining that the GDR saw a range of different types of satire, with preservative
comedy at one end and destructive invective at the other, Meyer argues that the intention
and effect of satire varied according to the satirist’s ideological perspective.52
48
Meyer, p. 6.
Ulrich Karthaus’s explanation of the distinction between humour and satire endorses Meyer’s belief in the
utopian potential of satire. Karthaus argues that satire is characterised by optimism that the exposed
deficiencies can be overcome. See: Ulrich Karthaus, ‘Humor – Ironie – Satire’, Der Deutschunterricht, 23/6
(1971), 104-20 (p. 108).
50
Meyer, p. 6.
51
Meyer, p. 4.
52
Klapper also writes that the intensity of satirical attack varies, with laughter at one end of the scale and
bitterness at the other. Thus, he too suggests that the general terms in which Feinberg speaks of satire are
inadequate to the task of really understanding the genre’s potential. See: Klapper, p. 70.
49
31
Meyer explains that, following two decades during which satire was strictly prohibited in
the GDR, in the 1970s it became an officially accepted and endorsed mode of literary
expression.53 Official theories of satire postulated that, when properly employed, it could
help to realise socialist ideals by gently exposing ‘non-antagonistic’ contradictions in social
reality. However, despite the liberal rhetoric, the educational function of satire was limited
to the ‘exposure’ of minor shortcomings which were already officially acknowledged, and
the representation of which did not present a threat to the political elite or system. The
following statement by Werner Neubert, literary theorist in the GDR, sums up the
affirmative stance which was officially expected of the satirist: ‘Hier empfindet sich der
Satiriker zum erstenmal als Glied einer Gesellschaft, die er im Innersten bejaht’.54 Meyer
labels this affirmative mode of satirical expression ‘angepasste Satire’, positive satire which
aimed to confirm readers’ expectations and consolidate GDR state socialism. It is not, she
says, deeply critical or threatening, and it ends on a reconciliatory and confident note. The
overall mood is of affectionate light-hearted comedy which affirms the reader’s
expectations and beliefs. Because the reader is not called upon to decipher the writer’s
critique, ‘angepasste Satire’ neither demands nor fosters a collaborative relationship
between satirist and reader.
At the other end of the scale from ‘angepasste Satire’, says Meyer, is ‘vernichtende Satire’,
a bitingly sarcastic approach which consciously desires to destroy the system in its entirety,
rather than simply correct minor shortcomings. ‘Vernichtende Satire’, so the argument runs,
is openly polemical, aims not at the symptoms but at the roots of real-existing socialism,
53
54
Meyer, p. 26.
Werner Neubert, cited in: Meyer, p. 15.
32
features recurring motifs of persecution, imprisonment, alienation and loss of identity, and
precludes the possibility of any positive counter message. The subject is always the
alienated individual who stands alone in a world dominated by the collective; his or her
apparently disturbed behaviour turns out to be a normal reaction to abnormal conditions.
The satirist intends that the reader should feel strong solidarity with both the persecuted
protagonist and the satirist, all of whom are in some way victims of the GDR state’s
distortions. And although satirical techniques may be used to deliver the satirist’s exposé,
the comic is not a hallmark of ‘vernichtende Satire’, and the mood is ultimately resigned.
Between these two extremes, Meyer explains, is ‘kritisch-aufbauende Satire’, practitioners
of which measured real-existing socialism against the utopian images of Marxist-Leninist
ideology. Where they identified significant contradictions, they sought to highlight these
and, as loyal supporters of socialist ideology, encourage constructive change within the
existing system. The prevailing mode of expression of ‘kritisch-aufbauende Satire’ lies
somewhere between the comedy of ‘angepasste Satire’ and the polemic of ‘vernichtende
Satire’. Writers of ‘kritisch-aufbauende Satire’ did not criticise the status quo to the extent
that the belief in its improvement became obscured; the possibility of positive change
constantly lurks in the background.
While it is clear that Feinberg and Meyer have fundamentally differing perceptions of the
function of satire in its most general sense, the points at which their theories diverge are
also undoubtedly informed by their respective standpoints: an American literary theorist,
Feinberg is primarily writing about Anglo-American literature written in capitalist
democracies, while Meyer is predominantly interested in satire produced under the
conditions of GDR state socialism. So, when Feinberg argues that readers have low
33
tolerance thresholds for satire, that they prefer to identify themselves with the satirist rather
than with the protagonists, that they resent overly negative or critical representations, that
satire is ineffective at instituting change, and that satirists do not, in any case, write with
this intention, these assumptions are based on his understanding of the western reader only.
They cannot apply to the same degree to readers living in a state in which satirical critiques
were relatively rare, in which literature functioned as a substitute for a critical press, in
which the protagonists’ situations would have resonated with many readers, and in which
many writers did hope positively to influence social and political conditions. This is not to
suggest that Meyer’s approach is unproblematic: for example, while she writes sensitively
of satirists’ intentions, her assumption that readers are guided by writers overlooks the fact
that, even in the GDR, some readers would, for whatever reason, have been resistant to
some satirists’ critiques. Nevertheless, read in conjunction with Feinberg’s description of
satirical techniques, Meyer’s three-model outline of GDR satire provides a useful context in
which to discuss the political and social critiques of my chosen texts.
A second literary context is provided by the tradition, in GDR literature, of writing about
the workplace. In the following literary-historical summary of the theme of the workplace
in GDR prose fiction, I trace the development from ubiquitous (and generally non-satirical)
representations of workers in GDR literature to texts which foreground scientists and
academic figures.
34
1.5 Literary Contexts (II): Theme, Characterisation and Metaphor – From Worker to
Wissenschaftler in GDR Prose
1.5.1 The Displacement of the Worker as a Literary Figure
For the purposes of this section GDR literature is treated as a fairly stable, ‘knowable’
entity, although my later discussions of scholarship about the GDR will problematise the
supposed objectivity of any readings of GDR literature. The figure of the worker, that
staple of Socialist Realist writing, dominated literary plots until the late 1960s. In the 1970s
it was gradually displaced not, as it might have been, by characters in the private sphere,
but by figures from the educated professions (the so-called Intelligenz), notably the writer
and the teacher: and since these two social types are both more numerous in fiction and
better studied than the scientist/academic, it makes sense to approach the latter via these
close cousins.
The change of focus from worker to educated professional can partly be explained by
developments in the political landscape of the GDR. By the early 1970s the GDR had
gained international recognition and a degree of economic stability. When Honecker
succeeded Ulbricht as First Secretary of the SED in 1971 he declared a policy of no taboos
in art and literature. Although this represented something of an overstatement – in reality
censorship remained an active and influential force – it marked the dawn of a period of a
certain artistic liberation. Significantly, though, despite this relaxation in cultural demands,
elements of the Socialist Realist aesthetic remained. The foregrounding of the writer and
teacher demonstrates an enduring interest amongst GDR writers in the figure of the worker
and the conflicts he/she encounters, the difference being that, by the 1970s, the worker is
represented in the form of the embattled professional. However, this implied parallel
35
between professional and manual workers in the GDR does not accurately reflect GDR
social relations: teachers and writers in the GDR were professional, university-educated
figures whose life experiences were different from those of most workers. Mary Fulbrook
explains that, despite official claims to the contrary, there was a distinct class structure in
the GDR (of which GDR citizens were highly conscious) which was rooted not in
differences in income and material wealth as in the West, but in the educational background
and occupation of the individual. Thus, unless they were important political functionaries,
members of the Intelligenz, which constituted about 15% of GDR society, were often less
materially well-off than other types of worker, but their greater status set them above these
other groups.55 One of the tasks of the following chapters, then, will be to gauge how far
writers obscure the social stratification that characterised the GDR, particularly in their use
of academic characters to stand for the ordinary East German citizen, and how far, on the
contrary, they acknowledge the complexity of social relations.
1.5.2 The Writer as a Literary Figure
In his essay ‘Vom Schreiben und dem Schreibenden. Der Schriftsteller als literarische
Gestalt in Prosawerken der DDR-Literatur der 70er Jahre’, Klaus Kändler describes the
first of the developments outlined above. He observes that, having appeared only
occasionally in GDR fiction during the first twenty years of the state’s existence, the figure
of the writer and the theme of writing were then taken up so widely that the phenomenon
was mentioned at the 7th Writers’ Conference:
Innerhalb der Weite und Vielfalt der Gesamtproblematik ist als gesonderter
Gegenstand auszumachen […] , daß und wie Schreibende als Gestalten (und damit
Mary Fulbrook, The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven & London:
Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 195-212.
55
36
das Schreiben als Thema und als Problem) ins Zentrum zum Teil sehr umfangreicher
Werke rücken, entweder indem von ihrer Arbeit gehandelt wird, oder indem sie als
erzählendes Ich darüber reflektieren.56
Kändler identifies a range of themes: the calling of the writer, the process and difficulties of
writing, the contradiction between literature and socialist reality, and the relationship of
reality to the written word.57 The authors he cites include Wolf, Morgner, de Bruyn and
Strittmatter, and his analysis reveals that the questions they explore are closely bound up
with their GDR context: rather than simply expressing an interest in the writer per se, all
the authors he mentions are concerned with questions surrounding writing in a socialist
state.
Norbert Schachtsiek-Freitag suggests that the potency of the writer/artist figure for authors
lay in the fact that it provided a vehicle through which questions of individuality and
freedom could be explored, issues central to the existence of the lay individual, as well as to
the artist or writer himself: ‘die Figur […] des Künstlers gewann immer mehr an
Bedeutung, weil an diesen […] Produzierenden die emanzipatorischen Interessen des
einzelnen exemplarisch verdeutlicht werden konnten’.58 Schachtsiek-Freitag’s use of the
term ‘dieser Produzierende’ makes the connection between the writer who produces
literature and the worker who produces goods in the factory. Although he does not probe
the tenability of this parallel, his observations suggest that the figure of the writer has
become a substitute for that of the worker.
Klaus Kändler, ‘Vom Schreiben und dem Schreibenden. Der Schriftsteller als literarische Gestalt in
Prosawerken der DDR-Literatur der 70er Jahre’, Weimarer Beiträge, 30/4 (1984), 575-92 (p. 576).
57
Kändler, p. 576.
58
Norbert Schachtsiek-Freitag, ‘“Ich werde unbequem sein müssen”. Lehrer-Porträts in neuerer DDR-Prosa’,
in Gisela Helwig, ed., Die DDR-Gesellschaft im Spiegel ihrer Literatur (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und
Politik, 1986), pp. 113-32 (pp. 113-14).
56
37
While the GDR political elite assumed that the way to reach the broad public was for
writers to write about workers as a de-individualised type, in reality, it emerged that the
concerns of the GDR populace (as well as of writers themselves) could be better addressed
if writers wrote about themselves. This foregrounding of the self was officially dismissed as
individualist, and therefore as unhelpful to the socialist cause, and yet, paradoxically, the
more writers distanced themselves from stereotypical representations of the worker, the
more, it appeared, they appealed to the GDR public.59 In western society literature which
focuses on what it is to be a writer is often felt to be overly introspective and inaccessible;
in the socialist society of the GDR, on the other hand, the control exercised over workers,
professionals and everyday individuals alike bound them together. Thus, the concerns of
writers and ordinary people converged in a way not seen in the West.
Of course, the situation may be more complex than this: although the parallels between
writers and the general population might be closer in the GDR than in capitalist countries,
even in the GDR there were, of course, fundamental differences between these groups in
terms of up-bringing, education, social culture and horizons. To suggest that the
progression from writing about the lives of workers to writing about the writer was a
response to the interests of GDR readers is perhaps to overstate the power of the reading
public, the ‘consumer’ in the GDR. The increasing interest in the figure of the writer might
have had more to do with writers’ interest in the question of writing and in imagining the
convergence of writers and ordinary people in a socialist state. That GDR readers were
happy to engage with explorations of writers’ tribulations may indeed have been partly
attributable to the symbolic parallels between the lives of these literary protagonists and
59
Wolfgang Emmerich explains that, from the mid-1960s, literature written in the GDR gained more
acceptance amongst GDR readers. See: Wolfgang Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR, rev. and
expanded edn (Berlin: Aufbau, 2000), p. 175.
38
their own experiences. However, the fact that the GDR had a larger reading populace than
the Federal Republic (even if, as Wolfgang Emmerich argues, the case for it being a
‘Leseland’ has been overstated)60 was no doubt also due to the fact that, in the absence of a
critical press, literature served an Ersatzfunktion, that is, it provided a substitute public
sphere which offered the only opportunity, however private, to engage with social debate.61
1.5.3 The Teacher as a Literary Figure
Merle Krueger and Carol Poore come to similar conclusions to Schachtsiek-Freitag in their
article ‘“Ein Schaffender am Menschen”: The Image of the Teacher in Recent GDR
Fiction’.62 They note that, in contrast to the proliferation of texts about teachers in
Wilhelminian literature, pupils in GDR fiction are not represented as rebelling against
oppressive teachers, but as benefiting from their inspiring instruction. Furthermore,
interaction between pupils themselves is infrequently depicted.63 This suggests that writers
not only see the teacher as a positive force, but that they are more interested in the travails
of the teacher figure than in the pupil’s perspective. Indeed, Krueger and Poore note that
there is usually strong authorial identification with the embattled teacher’s perspective,
goals and conflicts. They also argue that the increasingly ubiquitous depictions in GDR
literature of conflicts between teachers, and particularly between teachers and head
teachers, have a relevance beyond the realm of contemporary GDR pedagogical debate, and
60
Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR, pp. 47-8.
The notion of the Ersatzfunktion of literature in the GDR has been widely discussed. See, for example:
Helga Königsdorf, ‘Das Spektakel ist zu Ende’, in Aus dem Dilemma eine Chance machen. Reden und
Aufsätze (Frankfurt am Main: Luchterhand, 1990), p. 33; Elizabeth Mittman, ‘Locating a Public Sphere:
Some Reflections on Writers and Öffentlichkeit in the GDR’, in Jeanette Clausen and Sara Friedrichsmeyer,
eds, Women in German Yearbook, 10 (1995), 19-37; Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR, p. 48.
62
Merle Krueger and Carol Poore, ‘“Ein Schaffender am Menschen”: The Image of the Teacher in Recent
GDR Fiction’, in Margy Gerber et al., eds, Selected Papers from the Ninth New Hampshire Symposium on the
German Democratic Republic, Studies in GDR Culture and Society, 4 (London: University Press of America,
1984), pp. 199-212 (p. 205).
63
Krueger and Poore, p. 207.
61
39
seem also to represent the wider conflict between the individual and the collective and/or
state.64 They go on to observe that an idealistic teacher is often represented in conflict with
colleagues who in principle subscribe to the same ends, but who have contrasting
methodological approaches. Many of these teacher protagonists, they explain, are
confronted with the lose-lose alternatives of conforming to the inflexible pedagogical norm
or facing expulsion and thereby the loss of the opportunity to effect change.
In Der geteilte Himmel, for instance, Wolf alludes to the conflict between teachers and to
opposing pedagogical approaches through the contrasting representation of sympathetic
teachers such as Rita and Schwarzenbach, and dogmatic pedagogues such as Mangold. The
opposing pedagogical methods of the two student teachers Rita and Mangold suggest that
conflict between teachers would have been common within the GDR staffroom. This is
further underlined by Mangold’s public condemnation and rejection of the timid student
teacher Sigrid as a Staatsfeind because she concealed the flight of her family from the
GDR. The relationship between Mangold and Sigrid subsequently becomes the catalyst for
explicit discussion of the relationship between the GDR state and the GDR individual:65
Wolf depicts a meeting at which discussion about Sigrid’s insubordination leads to a fiery
debate between Mangold and Schwarzenbach concerning GDR social relations. This
mapping of political on to schoolroom relations anticipates the use, in Wolf’s later work, of
the academic institute as a metaphor for GDR society.
64
In Nachdenken über Christa T. (1967), the episode in which Christa T. meets with the headmaster of the
school in which she teaches presents the head teacher-teacher relationship very much in terms of the
hierarchical relationship between state and individual. Christa T. is young, idealistic and unconventional; the
male headmaster is an old socialist who has lost the drive and vision of his youth. However, although he
disapproves of Christa T.’s emotional approach, he respects her enthusiasm and passion. While he seeks to
curb her, he does not oppress her in the way described by authors who foreground the GDR teacher.
65
Anna Kuhn, Christa Wolf’s Utopian Vision: From Marxism to Feminism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), p. 39.
40
While Krueger and Poore’s analysis of the institutionalised teacher has implicit echoes of
the issues confronting writers and writing in the GDR, Norbert Küpper explicitly draws the
parallel between writers and teachers, and argues that in foregrounding the experiences of
teachers, writers were actually also talking about their role in GDR society, and the
difficulties they encountered in trying to fulfil this:
Wenn Literaten also von Lehrern schrieben, schrieben sie zugleich auch von sich
selbst – zwar vermittelt, indirekt, aber die Themen Erziehung, Verantwortung und
Persönlichkeit der Erziehenden, Ziele und Wege der Erziehung sind doch einbezogen.
Es muß uns bei unseren Untersuchungen also immer auch die Frage begleiten, in
wieweit Literatur über Lehrerfiguren nicht auch eine Möglichkeit der Selbstreflektion
der Literaten war.66
Schachtsiek-Freitag also makes this connection when he cites Anna Seghers’ comment,
‘Wer ist denn so wichtig wie ein Lehrer unter den Schaffenden? Er schafft ja am
Menschen’.67 He argues that the similarities lie partly in the idea that both groups are
concerned with the moral education of their respective audiences, and partly in the more
abstract notion that both professions involve creation: while teachers shape, or create,
young minds and personalities, writers create texts and shape their readers’ consciousness.
1.5.4 The Wissenschaftler as a Literary Figure
At around the same time that western critics Schachtsiek-Freitag, Krueger and Poore were
exploring the motif of the teacher in GDR fiction, scientist and author, John Erpenbeck,
was seeking, from within the GDR, to close what he saw as a gap in literary scholarship by
identifying and analysing a corpus of literature in which the Wissenschaftler, in many
66
67
Norbert Küpper, Lehrerfiguren in der erzählenden Literatur der DDR (Aachen: Shaker, 1996), p. 30.
Schachtsiek-Freitag, p. 114.
41
senses a professional relation of the teacher, is foregrounded. 68 His analysis forms the
conclusion to an anthology of excerpts from GDR texts (mostly published in the 1970s and
1980s) in which Wissenschaft is thematised. I retain the German terms Wissenschaft and
Wissenschaftler throughout this section because the English words ‘science’ and ‘scientist’
have a more restricted meaning. By convention they exclude the arts and they do not
generally evoke the secondary meanings, ‘academia’ and ‘academic discipline’ which, as
will become clear, play a role in studies of the topic. Erpenbeck argues that thematisations
of Wissenschaft are especially prominent amongst writers of the so-called ‘middle’
generation which was comprised of authors such as Wolf who were coming of age when
the GDR was founded. Conceding that the centrality of science and technology to socialist
ideology might have led to uncritical assessments of the scientific-technological revolution,
he states that the authors he has chosen provide analytical and nuanced evaluations of
science.
Although Erpenbeck is at pains to define his conception of Wissenschaft as encompassing
the entire spectrum of academic disciplines, his analysis is rather biased towards the natural
sciences. In part in an effort to redress this imbalance, and in part because they represent
the scholarship closest to my own, I turn now to two contrasting post-Wende US
approaches to the thematisation of Wissenschaft in GDR prose fiction. The second of these,
in particular, interprets Wissenschaft in its broadest sense, and confirms that, if the
institutionalised existence of the teacher serves as a mirror for the similarly, albeit less
visibly, controlled existence of the writer in particular and of the East German populace in
The twenty-five texts included in Erpenbeck’s anthology range from short stories such as Helga
Königsdorf’s ‘Der unangemessene Aufstand des Zahlographen Karl-Egon Kuller’ (which I discuss in Chapter
Three of this study), to extracts from novels such as Irmtraud Morgner’s Amanda, to essays on the philosophy
of science such as Christa Wolf’s ‘Krankheit und Liebesentzug. Fragen an die psychosomatische Medizin’.
For Erpenbeck’s evaluation of these texts, see: John Erpenbeck, ‘Näherungen’, in John Erpenbeck, ed.,
Windvogelviereck (Berlin: Buchverlag Der Morgen, 1987), pp. 319-49.
68
42
general, representations of the academic and/or scientist working within GDR institutions
can also function as a reflection of these wider social relations beyond the academic
institute.
1.5.5 Theorising Wissenschaft in GDR Prose: Brigitte Rossbacher
Unlike Schachtsiek-Freitag, and Krueger and Poore, who argue that the teacher can
substitute for the worker in a critique of relations between the individual and the state,
Brigitte Rossbacher’s study Illusions of Progress: Christa Wolf and the Critique of Science
in GDR Women’s Literature does not argue that the scientist substitutes for the worker.69
Nor does she see the scientist as a cipher for the writer. For Rossbacher, in her study of
works by Wolf, Königsdorf and Maron, the scientist is a scientist, and his or her role is to
embody a critique of the dangers of unfettered scientific pursuit. If there is a metaphorical
level to the texts it takes the form not of substitution, but of synecdoche: the instrumental
rationality which drives the work of scientists stands pars pro toto for socialist ideology.
Rossbacher draws parallels between Wolf’s, Königsdorf’s and Maron’s criticisms of
instrumental rationality in the GDR, and Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of the
perversion of Enlightenment ideals in Dialektik der Aufklärung. She also outlines the
various responses to GDR writers’ critiques of progress, which ranged from the view that
such criticism represented a subversive attack on the ideology of socialism and the GDR
state, to the more liberal view (in the context of the GDR) that the exposure of the
discrepancy between socialist ideals and real-existing socialism constituted essential and
constructive criticism, and sprang from a desire to keep the socialist flame burning.
Brigitte Rossbacher, Illusions of Progress: Christa Wolf and the Critique of Science in GDR Women’s
Literature (New York: Lang, 2000).
69
43
While Rossbacher’s exploration of the intersection between gender and the ‘Dialectic of
Enlightenment’ lends her study a complexity to which my necessarily compressed account
here does not do justice, her literal thematic discussion provides less fertile ground for the
present study than Mittman’s analysis of the symbolic potentialities of her chosen texts.
Moreover, in its focus on scientific activity, on what is known, in the English-speaking
world, as R&D (Research and Development), Rossbacher’s approach does not foreground
the scientific institution, which is a particular concern of this study. Nevertheless, the value
of her study lies in its demonstration that the critique of scientific development has
implications both for the political system which supports that development and for modern
civilisation at large. This view, as we will see, has particular significance for Wolf’s
‘academia tales’.
1.5.6 Theorising Wissenschaft in GDR Prose: Elizabeth Mittman
In its assertion that the symbolic meanings opened up by the critique of Wissenschaft in the
works of Wolf, Königsdorf and Maron are at least if not more important as the critique of
scientific practice itself, Elizabeth Mittman’s study ‘Encounters with the Institution:
Woman and “Wissenschaft” in GDR Prose Fiction’ contrasts with Rossbacher’s analysis of
the representation of science in works by the same authors, and provides a better model for
my own work.70 Mittman interprets the term Wissenschaft in three ways. Its primary and
straightforward denotation in Wolf’s, Königsdorf’s and Maron’s texts, she argues, is that of
‘science’ as an academic discipline. Secondly, by linking the term Wissen-schaft with the
English terms ‘creation of knowledge’, ‘academia’, ‘academic discipline’, ‘organisation of
Elizabeth Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution: Woman and “Wissenschaft“ in GDR Literature’
(unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Minnesota, 1993).
70
44
knowledge’, Mittman also reads it as a cipher for the institutional structures within which
knowledge is organised. Wissenschaft, then, represents both pure (scientific) knowledge,
and the directing, or disciplining, of that knowledge by the institutional environment in
which it is produced. Furthermore, Mittman argues that the term Wissenschaft is used as a
cipher for the institution in general, be that the scientific or academic institution, or the nonknowledge-seeking institution, which encompasses all social structures. In its different
manifestations, she continues, Wissenschaft occupies both positions in the binary
male/female, reason/emotion structure theorised by Hélène Cixous: taken to mean science it
occupies a dominant male position in opposition to nature; as knowledge organised by the
institution it occupies a female position vis-à-vis that institution; and taken as a cipher for
the institution it again occupies a male position with regard to those who work within it and
the knowledge they produce.
This final understanding of Wissenschaft as a metaphor for the institution is the main focus
of Mittman’s thesis. Seeing in the hierarchical, organising and disciplinary nature of the
(scientific) institution a parallel with the GDR state, she argues that, by understanding
Wissenschaft in this way, we can apply a prominent model in the discussion of GDR
literature, namely the opposition between the individual and the state. Here the scientist
represents the individual; the institution the GDR state.
Mittman sees the representation of Woman in her chosen texts as a counterpoint to
Wissenschaft. On a literal level, the authors Mittman examines are women, and many of
their scientific and academic protagonists are also women, negotiating the complex maledominated scientific and institutionalised worlds in which they find themselves. Mittman
argues that on a metaphorical level, the opposition set up between Woman and
45
Wissenschaft can signify a range of gendered oppositions: that between the objectified, or
feminised, male scientist and the institution; between the feminised citizenry and the GDR
state; and, more abstractly, between other signifiers of the female/male opposition,
including literature/science, writers/scientists, literature/the state, and even the literary
genres of prose fiction/the essay. However, this is a set of gendered oppositions with a
twist: Mittman’s conception of the female/male divide eludes the essentialism which
weakens Cixous’ theory. For just as Wissenschaft can occupy both a dominant and a weak
position, so, Mittman suggests, Königsdorf, Maron, and to some extent Wolf, show
Woman, the individual, science, the scientist, literature, the writer, the institution, and even
the GDR state as shifting from one side of the divide to the other, depending on whom or
what they are pitted against.
Mittman’s concept of the term Wissenschaft leans rather heavily on the dual meaning of the
English word ‘discipline’ in the sense of ‘academic discipline’ and ‘disciplinarian’.
Nevertheless, her analysis offers a fruitful way into the multi-layered thematics of Wolf’s
‘Ein Besuch’, ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’, ‘Selbstversuch’ and Störfall, as well as
into Königsdorf’s and, to a lesser extent, de Bruyn’s ‘academia tales’. The more
sophisticated level of Mittman’s analysis is at least partly attributable to the fact that she is
writing nearly a decade after Schachtsiek-Freitag, Krueger and Poore and, crucially, from a
post-Wende perspective. Following the collapse of Communism, the pre-Wende western
liberal tendency to focus on the plight of the GDR Jedermann, and to celebrate the courage
of oppositional writers, became less prevalent. Furthermore, the vigorous re-evaluation of
GDR literature conducted in the Literaturstreit rendered affirmative analyses of this type
less fashionable. Western scholarship began to question just how powerful the GDR
political elite really was; as a result, many writers who had previously been celebrated for
46
their oppositional stance were criticised for not having done more to oppose the GDR
leadership and bring about unification. In accordance with this trend, abstract analysis
began to replace descriptive accounts of literary themes. While Mittman does not jump on
the band-wagon of those who denounced GDR writers and their work – she is still
concerned with the different models used by GDR authors to figure opposition to the state –
her analysis is certainly more abstract than pre-Wende discussions such as Krueger and
Poore’s. Taking Wissenschaft to mean not only an academic discipline, but also the
institutionalisation of academic knowledge, Mittman introduces the idea that the academic
institute can serve as a microcosm of the GDR, and that the conflicts and power relations
operating within the fictional institution can be read as representative of the real-life
dynamics of the GDR state.
As Mittman’s view that the academic institute can function as a metaphor for the GDR state
forms the starting-point of this study, I now consider the legitimacy of a methodology
which, in part at least, seeks to define the use of metaphor in GDR literature. Both before
and since the collapse of the GDR much has been written about the ‘politics of reading’ and
the value of different approaches to GDR literature. In what follows I summarise these
debates, and suggest why, nearly twenty years after the GDR’s demise, an examination of
the use of metaphor as a vehicle for political critique can be considered a valid approach.
1.6 Methodological Issues for Scholars of GDR Literature
In the tumultuous year of 1990, Jurek Becker, who had left the GDR for the Federal
Republic in 1977, wrote a polemical article in which he contemplated the future of
47
literature in a unified Germany.71 His argument is polemical not just because he asserts that
literature produced in the FRG is solely written to entertain; its polemical character also lies
in his reflections on the benefits of censorship to the GDR writer. In particular, Becker
argues that censorship in the GDR provided writers with a compass which guided them to
success at home and, just as importantly, in the West: because readers and critics in both
East and West Germany read GDR literature specifically for expressions of opposition to
the GDR regime, indeed, because a text’s success in the FRG was dependent upon its
oppositional stance, GDR writers, Becker argues, enjoyed a sense of direction and certainty
which was alien to their western counterparts. Becker’s argument draws heavily on the
notion of the Ersatzfunktion of literature in the GDR. While innumerable critics have
discussed the potential for opposition in GDR literature, Becker goes further than most
when he suggests that the only reason for writing in the GDR was to pass comment on the
politics of the GDR state:
Man wird kaum ein in der DDR geschriebenes Buch finden, dessen Autor nicht
versuchte, ein politisches Anliegen zu transportieren oder, wie der Fachausdruck
lautet, ‘gesellschaftlich relevant’ zu sein. Andere Schreibanlässe, als Entwicklungen
in der DDR-Gesellschaft zu befördern oder zu kritisieren, existierten kaum. […]
Andere Aspekte des Schreibens wie, sagen wir, Leichtigkeit oder Kunstsinn oder
Phantasie hatten ihre Bedeutung vor allem darin, daß sie das Eigentliche zur vollen
Geltung bringen sollten, das Anliegen.72
In so doing, Becker appears to legitimise the standard pre-Wende reductive approach to
literature produced in the GDR, which, as we shall see, focused unduly on what was
perceived to be a text’s ideological message to the neglect of both its universal relevance
and its aesthetic value.
71
72
Jurek Becker, ‘Die Wiedervereinigung der deutschen Literatur’, German Quarterly, 63/3 (1990), 359-66.
Becker, p. 360.
48
If Becker expected that this approach to GDR literature would remain unchallenged he was
mistaken. In the aftermath of unification many scholars returned to the drawing-board,
reflecting, often self-consciously, on the rights and wrongs of previous attempts to
historicise the GDR and its cultural products. In what follows I chart the developments in
methodological approaches to the GDR and its literature, and problematise the methods
which characterised GDR scholarship73 prior to as well as following the collapse of the
Eastern Bloc. I then discuss post-Wende proposals advanced by western scholars
concerning alternative ways of reading GDR literature, and ask what implications these
debates have for those who are working on the GDR nearly twenty years after its demise.
1.6.1 Phases of Methodology in GDR Literary Criticism
GDR scholar David Bathrick identifies three main phases in the pre-Wende western
reception of GDR literature.74 In the 1950s, he says, GDR literature was generally
dismissed in both the US and West Germany as official propaganda, as literature in the
service of the newly formed GDR state. Bathrick points out that while the Aufbaujahre
were indeed characterised in the cultural sphere by an insistence on the tenets of Socialist
Realism, conditions outside of the GDR were equally, if not more, responsible for the
western suspicion of the newly formed state and its literature: on the level of politics, Cold
War tensions between East and West contributed to the western rejection of the GDR’s
claim to legitimacy, and subsequently to its claim to have created a uniquely East German
literature. On a more remote level, the doctrine of New Criticism, which emphasised the
autonomy of art, also influenced western scholars, particularly in the US. Bathrick explains
Throughout the thesis I use the terms ‘GDR scholarship’, ‘GDR literary studies’ etc. to refer to scholarship
about the GDR and its literature, rather than that produced within the GDR.
74
David Bathrick, ‘Productive Mis-Reading: GDR Literature in the USA’, GDR Bulletin, 16/2 (1990), 1-6;
David Bathrick, ‘The End of the Wall before the End of the Wall’, German Studies Review, 14/2 (1991), 297311 (pp. 300-2).
73
49
that these aesthetic values also shaped the second stage in the reception of GDR literature:
when, in the 1960s, a small number of GDR texts did capture the imagination of the US
literary establishment, they were read independently of their GDR context, and were judged
by an international aesthetic norm.
The 1970s, according to Bathrick, saw a third development in western attitudes towards
GDR literature. The gradual relaxation in the GDR cultural sphere under Honecker, as well
as the diplomatic détente between East and West Germany under the western policy of
Ostpolitik, led to a greater willingness amongst western scholars to read GDR literature on
its own terms. These political developments coincided with academic shifts in the US
scholarly world: in general, approaches which focused on the historical and social context
of the work of art were replacing the hitherto dominant paradigms of New Criticism. All
these changes combined to result in the radical recontextualisation of GDR literature.
Reading GDR literature as a product of its political and social environment, most western
scholars tended to focus on it as a source of information about the clandestine socialist
state. Thus, western approaches to the GDR were characterised by an obvious paradox:
despite the improvement in political relations between the two Germanies, and the official
acceptance of the GDR state in the FRG, oppositional writers in the GDR were celebrated
in the West as heroic resistors of an oppressive regime.
Patricia Herminghouse adds a fourth phase to Bathrick’s three stages of development in the
field of GDR literary studies. She explains that the 1980s saw a departure from approaches
which rooted GDR literature in its political context, and which thereby consciously or
unconsciously emphasised its difference from literature produced in the West. This
methodology was gradually displaced by a new focus on the commonalities between East
50
and West German literature, particularly on thematic elements of Zivilisationskritik in GDR
texts. Herminghouse argues that, while the relaxation of GDR cultural norms in the last
decade of the state’s existence meant that GDR literature began to share western aesthetic
qualities, developments outside the GDR also prompted this change: the universal threats of
the arms race, of nuclear power and of environmental destruction, she says, caused western
readers and critics to acknowledge the issues which united, rather than divided, the two
states and their literatures.75
In the wake of the collapse of the GDR and the unification of Germany, the affirmative
attitude which had characterised much western GDR literary scholarship of the 1970s and
80s gave way to a highly charged re-evaluation of GDR literature and writers. The
controversial publication of Christa Wolf’s Was bleibt and a string of highly
sensationalised Stasi revelations led to allegations in some camps that GDR writers were, as
had been asserted in the 1950s, little more than mouthpieces of a repressive regime. Many
critics who had previously celebrated the moral courage of those they perceived to oppose
the GDR regime now condemned those same individuals for their collusion with the
political elite, their isolation from the citizenry they claimed to represent, and the privileges
they enjoyed as prominent figures in a state which recognised their power to influence the
general population. As a consequence, many western critics dismissed the entire corpus of
literature produced in the GDR. A glance at this ‘fifth stage’ reinforces the impression of
the fickle nature of international scholarly approaches to the GDR; it confirms that
interpretations of GDR literature have been determined less by qualities which inhere in the
Patricia Herminghouse, ‘Whose German Literature? GDR Literature, German Literature and the Question
of National Identity’, GDR Bulletin, 16/2 (1990), 6-11 (p. 6).
75
51
texts themselves, than by the culture, politics and expectations of their recipients. 76
However, does awareness of the subjectivity of reading render previous methodologies
entirely redundant? In the following section I examine the merits and demerits of some of
the developments described above, with a view to seeking an appropriate methodology for
contemporary analyses of GDR literature.
1.6.2 Re-evaluating GDR Literary Criticism of the 1970s
My project’s focus on the significance of academic and scientific institutions for GDR and
post-Wende literature naturally excludes texts written much before the 1970s, since
thematisations of academic and scientific institutions only became commonplace in GDR
literature in the latter half of the socialist state’s existence. In other words, it is the theme,
rather than my conscious or unconscious bias, which determines my selection of texts.
Nevertheless, while the project may guide the selection of texts, there is of course an
agenda which informs the choice of project itself. Like most project proposals, the decision
to examine the literary representation of GDR institutions was rooted in an awareness of the
central debates in the field, and was driven by the desire to answer a pre-existing set of
questions: does the fictional institution serve as a metaphor for the GDR? Do GDR writers
employ the figure of the institutionalised academic to represent their own semiinstitutionalised lives within the GDR? Is there a development from metaphorical to realist
thematisations of the institution, and does this mirror the relaxation and ultimate cessation
of GDR cultural policy? These questions indicate a system-immanent methodology similar
to that which characterised GDR literary studies in the 1970s. In particular, they indicate an
interest in the possibilities for, and attempts at, oppositional writing in the GDR.
Patricia Herminghouse and Peter Hohendahl, ‘On the Reception of GDR Literature: Introduction’, GDR
Bulletin, 16/2 (1990), p. 1.
76
52
As post-Wende discussions of previous approaches to GDR literature have demonstrated,
there are a number of objections to system-immanent methodologies of this type. Broadly,
these can be broken down into objections which are based on political factors, and those
which are concerned with aesthetics. The most commonly expressed political objection can
be summed up by Marilyn Sibley Fries’ rhetorical question, ‘whose world, which texts?’,77
and the title of Herminghouse’s analysis on the topic: ‘Whose German Literature?’. Both
Fries and Herminghouse draw attention to the appropriation of GDR literature by western
critics and historians with their own agendas. Herminghouse argues that, influenced by the
suspicion of the GDR as an illegitimate Unrechtsstaat, West German scholars have sought
in its literature expressions of opposition to what they perceive as a repressive political
system. Conversely, Fries argues that many first-generation GDR scholars in the US were
guided by an ideological, sometimes sentimental, attachment to the socialist state. As a
result, she says, US contextual readings of GDR literature were often characterised by selfidentificatory acts of wish-fulfilment.78 Thus, both Herminghouse and Fries attest to the
impossibility of objectivity in the reception of literature, particularly where the conditions
of its production and reception are as highly politicised as in the case of literature produced
in the GDR. At best, they suggest, the scholar is guided by unconscious conditioning and
desires; at worst, he/she consciously manipulates the text to serve a pre-existing agenda.
A further problem of ‘the politics of reading’, as outlined by many post-Wende scholars, is
that it fallaciously reduces the literary text to a realistic reflection of social reality. This
reduction has political as well as aesthetic implications. Significantly, the most vociferous
Marilyn Sibley Fries, ‘A View from a Distance: Thoughts on Contemporary GDR Studies’, Monatshefte,
85/3 (1993), 275-83 (p. 283).
78
Fries, ‘A View from a Distance’, p. 281.
77
53
critics of mimetic readings are women: to varying degrees, Mittman, Herminghouse and
Fries all observe that the concept of mimetic literature is driven by the desire to ‘know’ the
GDR, a desire, they suggest, which recalls the patriarchal assumption that the female body
can be interrogated for knowledge of woman’s essential difference. For example, Mittman
argues that whether we seek to identify with GDR literature on transcultural grounds, or
whether we ‘mine’ it for knowledge about the ‘truth’ of the GDR, we are caught in
patriarchal structures of reading that involve ‘othering’.79 She concludes that we have to
find reading strategies that avoid identification on the one hand and exoticising on the
other. Similarly, Herminghouse draws a parallel between the reduction of GDR literature in
the West to an object to be known, and the dubious assumptions of Orientalism as defined
by Edward Said.80 Fries rejects the endeavour of seeking literary evidence of GDR social
reality on two counts: she argues firstly that this does not constitute egalitarian dialogue
with GDR writers as we like to think, but an appropriation of their words to suit our
purpose. Secondly, she states that a text is not a reflection of the world, but the author’s
interpretation of it. This, she says, is all too often forgotten.81
While Mittman, Herminghouse and Fries object to mimetic reading strategies on feminist
grounds, other critics have pointed out that reading any literature, but particularly GDR
literature, as an archive for a single historical truth represents an anti-intellectual
simplification of an inevitably more complex set of sociological mechanisms. David
Bathrick testifies to the shades of grey in GDR socio-political relations when he writes of
the complex position inhabited by authors in the GDR. To pigeon-hole them as either
Staatsdichter or as dissidents, he shows, is symptomatic of the western desire to ‘know’
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, p. 18.
Herminghouse, ‘Whose German Literature?’, p. 9.
81
Fries, ‘A View from a Distance’, pp. 282-3.
79
80
54
GDR literature and its creators, and overlooks the fact that writers often occupied both
positions simultaneously.82 Herminghouse, on the other hand, sees an interesting paradox in
the fact that the attempt to mine GDR literature for the ‘truth’ of the state’s repressive
policies is self-defeating because this very endeavour lends legitimacy to the mimetic
aesthetic of Socialist Realism and thereby also to the political functionaries who promoted
it.83
The final objection to reading strategies which seek to contextualise GDR literature
concerns the consequent lack of attention to the text’s aesthetic qualities. Bathrick explains
that a disadvantage of the 1970s shift towards reading GDR literature in the context of its
socio-political background was that a text became reduced to its political message, a
reduction illustrated above by Becker’s analysis. In an attempt to read GDR literature on its
‘own terms’, many critics negated the egalitarian potential of this approach in that they
judged GDR literature by a separate set of values from those applied to ‘mainstream’
western literature. On a political level, this was part of what some critics have recently
identified as the tendency outlined above to ‘other’ literature produced in the GDR. On an
aesthetic level, it overlooked the formal aspects of GDR literature which, by the 1970s,
were increasingly exhibiting the creativity displayed by western writers at this time.
Bathrick observes the paradox inherent in these developments when he states that, having
rejected New Criticism in favour of a more open-minded contextual approach to GDR
literature, western scholars merely ended up affirming 1950s stereotypes (largely created by
proponents of New Criticism) that GDR literature constituted politics rather than art.84
Bathrick, ‘The End of the Wall before the End of the Wall’, p. 305.
Herminghouse, ‘Whose German Literature?’, p. 8.
84
Bathrick, ‘The End of the Wall before the End of the Wall’, p. 308.
82
83
55
1.6.3 Re-evaluating GDR Literary Criticism of the 1980s
To a certain extent, the increasing emphasis in the 1980s on the commonalities between
GDR literature and its western counterparts can be considered an improvement on 1970s
contextual GDR literary criticism: the personal and political bias of GDR scholars was less
likely to drive the analysis of GDR literature; and as it was slowly accepted into the
international literary canon, the danger of ‘othering’ literature produced in the GDR was
also reduced. However, just as the system-immanent approach of the 1970s has been
problematised, so too have readings which focus on elements of Zivilisationskritik in GDR
literature.
It is an interesting paradox that many of the objections to approaches which contextualise
GDR literature also apply to those which decontextualise it, despite their apparent
opposition. As outlined above, one of the problems with contextual readings is that the
experiences and expectations of the reader can determine a text’s reception more
fundamentally than any qualities which the text itself possesses. If a reader is ill-disposed to
the ideology of socialism or what s/he perceives to be the realities of the GDR, s/he may
seek evidence of difference or deficiency in the GDR text. Conversely, if s/he is
sympathetic to the socialist cause, s/he may seek excessively to identify with what s/he
identifies as the text’s positive message. Angelika Bammer contends that the same can be
said of decontextualised approaches. She argues this through the example of readings
which emphasise a text’s feminist agenda, explaining that western feminist critics have
often appropriated GDR ‘feminist’ texts, and incorporated them into their own cultural
56
sphere.85 The result, as Mittman confirms, is that the universal, humanist ideals of GDR
feminist writers have become a point of reconciliation between East and West. Productive
though this is, Mittman says, if we ignore the differences in experiences of womanhood in
East and West, we erase the voice of women writers in the GDR. The gesture, although
well-intentioned, is ultimately controlling and reductive.86 Bammer and Mittman argue with
specific reference to feminist readings of GDR literature, but their point is a general one:
the sense of shared cause which western readers and critics may feel with GDR writers
inevitably leads to identificatory readings in which the search for commonalities can
obscure the particular experience the writer is seeking to express.
Bathrick observes that the desire amongst many western critics not to be anti-communist,
not to focus on literary expressions of Gesellschaftskritik, sometimes resulted in the
suspension of their critical faculties, in an intellectually dishonest reluctance to relate
problems presented in GDR literature to their political context.87 Similarly, Corey Ross
observes frustration amongst some post-Wende GDR historians who complain that research
conducted in the 1980s was overly determined by the political spirit of détente at this time,
and exhibited an excessively liberal methodology which failed to emphasise the totalitarian
aspects of GDR state socialism.88
Thus, it is evident that for every objection to contextualised readings of GDR literature
there is also an objection to approaches which emphasise its universality. Whether critics
have sought to emphasise the difference or similarity between GDR literature and literature
Angelika Bammer, ‘The American Feminist Reception of GDR Literature (with a Glance at West
Germany)’, GDR Bulletin, 16/2 (1990), 18-24 (p. 20).
86
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, pp. 17-18.
87
Bathrick, ‘The End of the Wall before the End of the Wall’, p. 302.
88
Corey Ross, The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR
(London: Arnold, 2002), p. 17.
85
57
produced in the West, the objections outlined above suggest that they failed to get it right.
So what is the alternative? The blanket dismissal of GDR literature such as that seen in the
1950s, and again in the heated post-Wende years, is hardly to be recommended. In the
following section I summarise the suggestions that have been offered since 1990 by
scholars seeking the answer to this question, and, with my own project in mind, I consider
whether there is justification for a return to contextual readings of GDR literature.
1.6.4 Where Do We Go from Here?: Finding Ways Forward in GDR Literary
Criticism
In his assessment of the future of GDR studies, in which he condemns both the pre-Wende
elevation of GDR writers to the status of heroes and their post-Wende vilification, Thomas
Fox makes several suggestions for more productive ways of reading GDR literature.
Foremost amongst these is his proposal that scholars should cease reading GDR literature
for signs of the author’s intention, and should focus instead on a text’s reception. He
suggests the usefulness of reception theory to the study of GDR literature, and promotes
Hans Robert Jauß’s insistence that literary critics should reconstruct the horizon of
expectations which different readers in different places and at different times brought, and
bring, to a literary text.89 Fox makes clear that this emphasis on the reader does not mean
that the author is unimportant in the sense of Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’. It simply
means, he says, that there may be a difference between the author’s intention and the
reader’s interpretation. He concludes that it is more productive to consider what happens to
texts as they cross borders and with the progression of time than it is to seek in them a
Hans Robert Jauß, ‘Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft’, in Hans Robert Jauß,
ed., Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), pp. 144-207.
89
58
single historical truth which will inevitably elude us.90 Fries and Mittman are both
sympathetic to this view, arguing that we must recognise the ways in which our variety of
backgrounds shapes the range of conclusions that individual readers draw about a text,
conclusions which may differ from those intended by the author.91
In my own analysis I attempt to account for what contemporary GDR readers could have
understood, given the traditions in which the writer was writing. Equally, I am careful to
locate critical readings in the various phases of scholarship identified by Bathrick.
Nevertheless, in so far as the responses of actual GDR readers will always remain elusive,
scholars are inevitably obliged to base their readings largely on the text. Mittman
acknowledges this, and seeks to resolve the dilemma by advocating differentiated readings
which avoid the tendency to homogenise ‘GDR literature’ in ways not dissimilar to the
GDR elite’s attempts to standardise it, and which thereby respect the multiplicity of literary
voices which spoke there.92 In a similar vein, Bathrick argues against the tendency to
periodise GDR literature, to pin literary developments to political turning points in a way
which ignores individual texts and voices. Instead, he argues, we should focus on the
varieties of discourse used by GDR writers to encode, reject, speak and survive. 93 Fox
concurs with Bathrick in that he suggests discourse analysis and intertextual exploration as
potentially productive methodologies which locate GDR texts in their historical context
while preserving their individuality.94 We might also draw on New Historicism, whose
relevance to the GDR was underlined by Anton Kaes shortly before the fall of the Wall. It
rejects the notion of authorial authority in favour of seeing the text as a communal product
Thomas C. Fox, ‘Germanistik and GDR Studies: (Re)Reading a Censored Literature’, Monatshefte, 85/3
(1993), 284-94 (p. 286).
91
Fries, ‘A View from a Distance’, pp. 280-3; Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, pp. 10-20.
92
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, p. 25.
93
Bathrick, ‘Productive Mis-Reading’, pp. 5-6.
94
Fox, ‘Germanistik and GDR Studies’, pp. 287-90.
90
59
which must be connected to all the discourses and forms of cultural representation around it
and at play within it.95
What is interesting about these suggestions is that most of them rehabilitate a contextual
approach. The difference between pre- and post-Wende contextual methodologies is that
while pre-Wende critics thought they were reading GDR literature on its own terms, postWende critics acknowledge that the attempt to locate a political truth in GDR texts has
more often than not undermined that very endeavour. In an attempt to fuse the best of all
methodologies, they call for a text-based approach which reads each work on its own terms,
rather than as part of a homogeneous literary corpus, but which also acknowledges the
specific conditions under which it was produced. These critics’ emphasis on value-free,
neutral readings should be emulated. However, I sense in their analyses a conflict between
their desire to contextualise GDR literature and the tentativeness with which they suggest
this. The vocabulary of earlier debates, for example, is carefully avoided; ‘dissidents’,
‘oppositional writers’, ‘conformists’, ‘Staatsdichter’ are no longer readily spoken of.
Becker’s suggestion that GDR texts are defined by their authors’ political message may
well be overstated. However, it cannot be preferable that we engage in self-censorship by
skirting questions of Gesellschaftskritik, dissidence and state control in our discussions of
GDR literature.
Perhaps Bathrick offers a way out of this Catch 22 when, as early as 1983, he proposed that
we focus on the question of Öffentlichkeit in the GDR. He problematises the notion that the
author is either inside or outside, for or against the GDR, and suggests that seeing GDR
Anton Kaes, ‘New Historicism and the Study of German Literature’, German Quarterly, 62/2 (1989), 21019 (pp. 210-12).
95
60
authors as embodying an alternative public sphere offers a more accurate insight into their
complex status as both dependants and critics of the state. This approach, he argues, avoids
the binary structures of readings which seek to identify the text as either a Gesellschafts- or
Zivilisationskritik, and, even less productively, which label the author as either dissident or
Staatsdichter.96 Linked to this is Bathrick’s insistence on the analysis of a text’s linguistic
features:
[This is] the most vital aspect of the contextual question itself: namely, the specific
functions and modalities of language and metaphor in the organisation of public
discourse and in the empowering of speech – both as modes of control and as
subversive voice. In the so-called ‘historically oriented’ or narrowly contextual
readings […] literary texts were simply taken at face value, as transparent
articulations on the subject of ecology, family, women’s experience, gays or life in
the factory, regardless of the narrative strategies or linguistic codes they had
employed to communicate such.97
In examining the ‘metaphorical potential’ of academic institutions in GDR literature (that
is, the propensity of the academic institution to generate a range of metaphorical figures) I
build on Bathrick’s understanding that an analysis of metaphor in GDR texts can serve to
contextualise GDR literature without reducing it to a reflection of historical reality.
Certainly, I do not want to fall into the trap of intentional fallacy: in exploring what I
identify as a range of metaphorical models in the texts included in this study I do not want
to suggest that the simple act of reading allows us to reconstruct an author’s thoughts.
Instead, the metaphorical readings I suggest are based on a knowledge of common narrative
strategies – allegory, symbolism, metaphor – for encoding political critique in GDR
literature, rather than on any certainty about my authors’ intentions. In his study which
applies recent historiography on varieties of dissent in the Third Reich and the GDR to
David Bathrick, ‘Kultur und Öffentlichkeit in der DDR’, in Peter Hohendahl and Patricia Herminghouse,
eds, Literatur der DDR in den siebziger Jahren (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), pp. 53-81.
97
Bathrick, ‘The End of the Wall before the End of the Wall’, p. 308.
96
61
literature produced under these regimes, Matthew Philpotts acknowledges the difficulties
inherent in identifying the intentions of an author, and argues for an approach to literary
texts which explores their dissenting effect, rather than the author’s oppositional intention.98
According to this view, the critical potential of the metaphors I identify becomes more
important than whether or not my authors deliberately set out to construct them (even if, for
ease of expression, I must sometimes write as if the authors intended their potential
criticisms, and even though I am occasionally explicitly interested in their stated
intentions). Finally, while any analysis of metaphorical modes of critique inevitably
involves discussion of the nature of the criticism expressed, my interest lies more in the
complexity of the aesthetics which are used to deliver a range of political and social
critiques.
Nearly two decades after the collapse of the GDR, we are sufficiently distanced from the
fraught political atmosphere of the Cold War era to be able to read GDR literature more
objectively than ever before. Perhaps it is time to go back and fill in the gaps which were
missed by earlier critics who, in their laudable identification of the over-arching
significance of later GDR texts, did not quite complete their analysis of the aesthetic
models employed by writers to express their GDR Gesellschaftskritik. In so doing we may
risk falling back into old structures of thinking, and it may prove difficult to overcome the
tendency, albeit unconscious, to read selectively and subjectively. Since, as Herminghouse
notes, Wolf is typical of those GDR writers whose texts have been over-read as universal
critiques of modern society, as if they have nothing to say about local conditions in the
GDR, I begin by revisiting some of Wolf’s (relatively) less well studied texts in which
98
Matthew Philpotts, The Margins of Dictatorship: Assent and Dissent in the Work of Günter Eich and
Bertolt Brecht (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 153-66.
62
academic institutions play a role.99 Any examination of the thematisation of GDR
institutions will inevitably involve elements of those methodologies which have been
problematised above; in the case of Wolf it will certainly involve discussion of her
‘oppositional’ status. However, we may also find that by probing her political critique we
make other, unexpected, discoveries, especially if, as Bathrick recommends, we focus on
the text’s aesthetic qualities as much as on its political dimension. For example, Wolf’s use
of the institution as a metaphor for the GDR state opens out into general observations on
the role of the writer in the GDR, the parallels between writing and science, the similarities
between the writer and the scientist and so on. By embracing rather than rejecting the GDR
context we can see how its influence stretches far beyond simple definitions of the text as
either pro or anti the GDR regime.
Finally, while analysis of the institution in Wolf’s work may yield as much insight into her
thoughts on the GDR as on universal issues, it is possible that the representation of the
institution in the work of other authors will not. While Wolf uses the institution as a
metaphor for the GDR’s failings, others may write more literally about institutional life in
the GDR. As long as we read with an open mind, and with an awareness of the expectations
we bring to a text, we will hear all of these possibilities, which must, after all, be the aim of
any literary analysis.
99
Herminghouse, ‘Whose German Literature?’, p. 4.
63
Chapter Two: Representations of the Academic Institution in the Pre-Wende Work of
Christa Wolf
2.1 Introduction
Wolf first addressed the scientific institution in her semi-fictional essay ‘Ein Besuch’,
which was published in 1969, some years before the proliferation of fictional
representations of the writer and teacher outlined above. Here, Wolf represents the
founding and development of a real-life GDR centre for the genetic engineering of plants.
One year later, the academic institution is depicted in rather less concrete terms in the
satirical science story ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ (1970); it is foregrounded again
in 1973 with the sex-change story ‘Selbstversuch’. More than a decade then passes before
Wolf returns to the idea of the institution in Störfall. Here, however, it is very much in the
background and the institution is not located in the GDR.
In the following literary analyses I examine how, in her ‘academia tales’, Wolf constructs
the fictional scientific institution in such a way that it can serve as a metaphorical model of
the GDR state, generating critical perspectives on the GDR political elite, real-existing
socialism, and the relationship between the Party and the GDR citizenry. Since, as I
indicated in the Introduction, the texts in my corpus generally combine a realist with a
metaphorical dimension (they are generally ‘about’ science and academic pursuit as much
as they are ‘about’ politics), I also consider the evolution of Wolf’s interest in the notion of
production. In her analysis of Der geteilte Himmel, Anna Kuhn observes that Wolf is less
interested in the technical side of work than in the ‘various possible human constellations
within the world of labour’.100 While Kuhn is right to focus on Wolf’s representation of
100
Kuhn, p. 28.
64
social interactions in the workplace, this comment overlooks the importance of the
development in the representation of the process of production in Wolf’s work. Informed
by Wolf’s Marxist convictions in 1963, Der geteilte Himmel foregrounds the GDR factory
which produces socially useful goods such as train carriages and their components. By
1969 the factory has been replaced by the academic institute; the train carriage by the less
tangible ‘product’ of scientific knowledge. This progression is accompanied by an
increasingly vocal questioning of the aims and merits of scientific production. For example,
although she does not dismiss the value of nuclear power in Störfall, Wolf interrogates its
benefits and dangers, and the motivations of those who produce and promote it, in a way
that is absent in her representation of the train factory in Der geteilte Himmel. A key word
for Wolf is ‘vision’: she is interested in the beneficial social application of production, and
rejects production for its own sake. This partly accounts for her growing suspicion of the
scientific-technological revolution. The emphasis on unfettered progress in the GDR
inevitably led to the transgression of what Wolf felt to be the limits of socially useful
production, often resulting in scientific pursuit which was guided only by the selfperpetuating impulse to carry on producing. Because she is interested in the humane
application of knowledge, she is also interested in the means and context of its production.
Thus, she is concerned with the institutional environment in which knowledge is produced.
Similarly, the notion of the production of literature is introduced through the parallels
which are drawn between science and writing in all of the texts under discussion.
Interestingly, Wolf’s intensifying reservations about scientific endeavour are matched by an
increasing emphasis on the responsible production of literature: in ‘Ein Besuch’ she
highlights the importance of socially engaged writing for the healthy development of
mankind; in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ the uncritical consumption of indulgent
thriller novels is satirised; and Störfall expresses deep-seated unease about the damaging
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potential of unreflective literary production. Unlike their scientific counterparts, writers do
not generally work within the confines of an academic institution. This chapter explores the
thematisation of the production of knowledge both within the concrete institution, and in
the larger social institution that is the GDR
2.2 ‘Ein Besuch’
2.2.1 Introduction
Six years after the publication of Der geteilte Himmel, a programmatically Socialist Realist
novel which conformed to the demands of the 1959 Bitterfeld conference, Wolf wrote up in
essay form her discussions with Hans Stubbe, Director of an agricultural genetics
institution, the Institut für Kulturpflanzenforschung, in Gatersleben near Magdeburg, and
her observations on a convention of scientists and writers which took place during this
visit.101 She called the essay quite simply ‘Ein Besuch’.
The following analysis covers two broad aspects of the text: first, the construction of the
academic institute and the figure of the scientist as positive alternative models of the GDR
state and its political elite, whose failings are thereby highlighted, and, secondly, the
relationship constructed by Wolf between scientists and writers and the disciplines of
science and writing. The neat resolution of the opening conflict between science and
writing, and the enthusiastic agreement in the final part of the essay that writers and
Arnd Bohm observes that ‘Ein Besuch’ does not lend itself to straightforward classification as either essay,
interview, documentary report or polemic, and attributes the lack of interest it has aroused amongst GDR
scholars to this problem of form and genre. For the purposes of this analysis I refer throughout to ‘Ein
Besuch’ as an essay, without wishing to imply that it is simply an objective piece of non-fiction. See: Arnd
Bohm, ‘Seeds of Doubt: Science and Politics in Christa Wolf’s “Ein Besuch”’, Seminar, 36/3 (2000), 326-42
(p. 326).
101
66
scientists must collaborate to build a better future, evoke the spirit of Bitterfeld ’64.
However, the form of ‘Ein Besuch’ is non-linear and associative, the setting is not a
factory, and if we read the essay through the filter of Mittman’s notion of Wissenschaft a
range of more abstract interpretations is opened up.102
2.2.2 The Gatersleben Institute and Stubbe as Foils for the GDR State and its
Leadership
Rossbacher’s and Mittman’s studies create the expectation that the fictional institution and
its senior management must be employed to critical ends, that depictions of the institution
in critical GDR literature must be intended as a critique of the perversions of real-existing
socialism, its practitioners, and the (scientific) activities it sponsors. However, by and large,
the Gatersleben Institute and its Director are presented positively. This does not necessarily
suggest that Wolf is equally admiring of the GDR state and political elite: rather than
functioning as a flattering metaphor for the GDR and its leadership, the Gatersleben
Institute and Stubbe are representative of positive alternative models. They function as foils
for the state and the elite, by means of which their deficiencies are exposed.
One indication that the text may be read metaphorically is that Stubbe’s reflections on the
birth of the Gatersleben Institute recall the birth of the GDR state. In the National Socialist
years, Stubbe was a young scientific researcher who, unwilling to subordinate himself to
the demands of the state, was dismissed from the Institut für Züchtungsforschung in 1936.
With the birth of the GDR in 1949, Stubbe was finally granted the freedom to realise his
Bohm goes as far as to label ‘Ein Besuch’ a parody of a Bitterfeld work. He comments that the choice of
an educated senior scientist and director, rather than a factory worker, as the object of the narrator’s
observation, playfully exposes the existence of elitism and hierarchical division in the GDR, which promoted
itself as an egalitarian classless society. However, given the essayistic genre of ‘Ein Besuch’, and its
associative form, Bohm possibly overstates the case for the essay passing itself off as a piece of Bitterfeld
writing when it is really something else. See: Bohm, ‘Seeds of Doubt’, p. 335.
102
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dream: to build a revolutionary centre for the independent study of multiple agricultural and
scientific disciplines, thereby gaining autonomy from external political control, and
countering the over-specialisation which was blinkering science at this time. Stubbe
recollects that the Institute’s small band of visionary founders subjected themselves to
heroic self-deprivation in their dedication to realising their utopian goal. He describes how,
led by their idealistic vision, they built up the Institute through hard graft and patience,
taking endless small steps towards their goal in the unshakeable conviction that they were
slowly fulfilling a long-harboured dream. In answer to the narrator’s question, ‘Herr
Professor – ging es Ihnen mit diesem Institut eigentlich von Anfang an um die
Verkörperung einer Idee?’, Stubbe responds, ‘Ja, von Anfang an. Einer Idee, die mir schon
lange zu schaffen machte’ [p. 144].
Not only does this account have strong echoes of the founding of the GDR state in the wake
of National Socialism, but Stubbe’s romantic vocabulary – ‘die Pionierzeit’, ‘die
Anfangszeit’, ‘die herrlich schwere Zeit’, ‘der Schöpfungsakt’ – demonstrates Wolf’s
awareness of the way that beginnings are retrospectively mythologised. Later on we are
told that genetics teaches us that pre-cultivated wild fruits are small and bitter, meaning that
the beautiful sweet apple eaten by Eve in the biblical creation myth is a piece of
retrospective spin. It is not that Wolf is cynical about the GDR’s beginnings. However,
these comments suggest an awareness that beginnings are later often idealised, sometimes
in an effort to defend the imperfect present-day reality.
The imperfect reality of GDR state socialism in the late 1960s, when ‘Ein Besuch’ was
conceived and written, is highlighted, ex negativo, by the positive characterisation of the
Director, who, with his skilful leadership style, acts as a positive foil for his political
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counterparts. Just as Wolf’s description of the founding and expansion of the Gatersleben
Institute parallels the history and development of the GDR state, the Director’s biography
(his opposition to Nazism, his uncompromising vision of an alternative system, and his
establishment in 1949 of a pioneering and idealistic organisation) has a strong affinity with
that of the GDR leaders. While Stubbe cannot display either of the principal badges of
honour of the Nomenklatura, a Moscow exile or a period of imprisonment in a
concentration camp, having expressed his opposition to Nazism in rather quieter ways, this
in itself suggests that Wolf values qualities in him that may not be found in the political
elite. She is therefore operating not with a straightforward mapping of one figure on to
another, but with a same-but-different model which invites the reader to make critical
comparisons. In characterising Stubbe as a principled leader, an enduring idealist, a
reflective champion of the arts, and a committed advocate of scientific responsibility and
world peace, Wolf uses his exemplary qualities to serve as a foil for the failings of his
political contemporaries, and by demonstrating the possibility of retaining one’s ideals
against all odds, he effectively highlights the failure of the GDR leadership to do the same.
Wolf provides relatively little information about the internal workings of the Gatersleben
Institute. What she does tell us is that Stubbe places great store by the free development of
both young talent and original scientific ideas, however unorthodox. For example, despite
Stubbe’s personal rejection of Lyssenkoism (a subject to which I return below), he did not
deny a young researcher the opportunity to pursue Lyssenkoist theories. The risk paid off:
having shed his naïve enthusiasm for the discredited Soviet agronomist, the student grew
into a successful scientist and valuable colleague. Similarly, Stubbe describes how he twice
sponsored a farmer’s experiment which sought to determine the sex of chickens in the egg.
Rather than sitting in his ivory tower, Stubbe is prepared to engage in dialogue with a
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farmer and to see nature on his terms, even though these are non-scientific. Furthermore,
although the hypothesis turned out to be unfounded, Stubbe has no regrets: the slim
possibility that the farmer was right, he insists, justified the time and expense. These
episodes demonstrate that Stubbe’s selection of his researchers and his support of scientific
projects are informed by real academic integrity, which includes a tolerance of dissent and
short-term failure. In the background lurks the suggestion that this integrity is lacking in the
GDR state’s ideologically-driven efforts to control scientific and cultural production.
Projecting herself into the young Director’s position, the narrator imagines the human
negotiations involved in seeking to realise a vision such as Stubbe’s:
Die endlosen Sitzungen mit der Kaderleitung in irgendwelchen wahrscheinlich noch
primitiven, verqualmten Räumen, Aussprachen mit Unzufriedenen, Mahnungen an
Nachlässige, zähes Verteidigen von Leuten, auf die man baut und die einen dann
ordentlich halten. Dazwischen immer Aufbegehren. Was bin ich denn eigentlich:
Wissenschaftler oder Seelsorger, oder was? [p. 157].
Her description is at once a realistic portrayal of the mundane reality of leading a team of
diverse personalities (a measure of that realism being that this is one of only a few
occasions in my corpus of texts that the Kaderleitung is explicitly mentioned, despite its
being understood by post-Wende scholars, as we saw in Chapter One, as central to all GDR
institutions), and a romantic portrayal of a heroic figure who is prepared to work through
uncertainty and human weakness in an effort to realise his vision. Wolf seems to be
conceding that many people are not natural visionaries, that they need to be encouraged to
work towards an idealistic goal. While creeping institutionalisation in the form of meetings,
hierarchies and competitiveness might threaten to detract from its original core ideals, the
Gatersleben Institute nevertheless takes account of and negotiates with the individuals who
work within it. It might be institutionalised, but unlike the GDR state, it is not a totalising
70
institution. Wolf seems to be suggesting that, while a degree of institutionalisation is
unavoidable, unlike his political counterparts, Stubbe has retained his ideals and integrity.
As the narrator observes, ‘die Vision, die er von seinem Leben hatte, muß stark gewesen
sein: sie hat überdauert’ [p. 153]. A symbol of what the GDR could have been, and could
yet be, Stubbe demonstrates that the perversion of the original socialist vision was not, and
is not, an inevitability.
The text offers further evidence for this idea that the institution, however powerful its
structuring mechanisms, need not entirely suppress individual vision and morality.
Reflecting on the restrictions on scientific researchers throughout the ages, including his
own experiences as a young scientist during the era of National Socialism, Stubbe
concludes that it was preferable to be the Director directing research rather than the
objectified researcher controlled from above: ‘Aber er kennt auch den Preis – wer, wenn
nicht er, sollte ihn kennen? –, den der Forscher an den Wissenschaftsorganisator zahlt’ [p.
153]. The solution to the minor individual’s lack of autonomy might appear to lie in his
promotion to a position of leadership. Yet even this is not without peril. As Stubbe asserts,
the cost of immersion in the organisation of science is the stifling of one’s creativity:
‘Gewisse Quellen in mir sind durch jahrelange Verwaltungsarbeit verschüttet; es gibt keine
Garantie dafür, daß sie wieder aufspringen werden’ [p. 153]. Bearing in mind Mittman’s
theory that the interactions within the institution can be read as representative of the
relationship between the state and the individual, this institutional double-bind applies
equally to GDR conditions: as a subordinate one’s ideals are denied the freedom to flourish;
as a leader one’s youthful ideals risk becoming deadened by institutionalisation. That
Stubbe, unlike his political counterparts, has nevertheless retained his principles is a tribute
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to his integrity, and demonstrates once again that it is possible, if not easy, to live out an
idealistic vision within an institutionalised space.
It is important to note that, while the GDR is an obvious referent in ‘Ein Besuch’, it is not
the only target. The allusions to Darwin and Mendel’s difficulties, and the insight given
into Stubbe’s even more restricted war-time career, demonstrate that the double-bind
described above transcends political and geographical borders. In addition, the
institutionalisation which, as suggested through the parallels Wolf constructs between the
Institute and the GDR, afflicts the GDR state, is shown to characterise the world of science
as a whole. Stubbe reflects with frustration on the systemic bureaucracy which undermines
the fundamental principles of scientific pursuit:
Aber wo treffen wir uns denn? Auf Sitzungen mit fester Tagesordnung. Für
Gespräche haben wir doch gar keine Zeit mehr. Die Organisation der Wissenschaft,
die natürlich nötig ist und immer nötiger wird und unsere Hilfe braucht – sie müßte
schneller und reibungsloser gehen und uns weniger belasten [p. 169].
Wolf seems to suggest that while control and bureaucracy are common not only in the GDR
state but in all large organisations, reform is possible. Her GDR Gesellschaftskritik is thus
still fairly forgiving.
2.2.3 Science and Literature: Two Cultures?
From very early on in ‘Ein Besuch’ Wolf sets up a running commentary on the parallels
between the worlds of writing and science in the GDR. Even before it reaches its climax in
Part Five, the theme of the relationship between the ‘two cultures’ reveals itself to be
central to the essay’s concerns. In two senses, the disciplines of science and writing are
initially constructed as opposites: first, although the narrator, a writer, and the scientific
72
researchers are unnamed and ungendered, Wolf’s voice can clearly be heard in the
comments of the narrator. At the same time, the reader assumes that the scientists are male,
not least because the Director, Stubbe, is a man, and because the narrator speaks of the
scientists’ wives suffering from cabin fever in the isolated town of Gatersleben. Thus, the
gendering of the activities of science and writing seems to reinforce the view that these
‘two cultures’ are binary opposites,103 an idea which is further underlined by the narrator’s
early reference to Stubbe as ‘mein Gegenüber’. In the histoire (rather than the nonchronological discours) the most oppositional moment between the two worlds takes place
before the meeting between the narrator and Stubbe. Although we only learn a little about
the writers’ and scientists’ conference which preceded the narrator and Stubbe’s tête-à-tête,
it is clear that the two groups do not understand one another: the scientists laugh at the
writers’ misconceptions about science; some of the scientists imply that art is of little value
compared to science, economics and power; the writers resent what they see as the
scientists’ belief in their superiority, and take pleasure in provoking them; and both groups
confirm, rather than overcome, their stereotyped prejudices towards one another.
By placing this encounter in the past the narrator implies that the antagonism has already in
part been overcome, and so it proves: whereas the organised commitment to bringing
science and literature together proves unproductive, the narrator’s personal encounter with
Stubbe provides a model of how the two worlds might be reconciled. ‘Ein Besuch’ is
103
Other writers and theorists were thinking about some of the same problems as Wolf at around the same
time. A decade before Wolf wrote ‘Ein Besuch’, C. P. Snow gave his controversial lecture ‘The Two
Cultures’, in which he contemplated the reasons for the perceived gulf between the two disciplines
(concluding that writers were particularly intolerant towards scientists), and discussed the commonalities
between them. See: C. P. Snow, ‘The Two Cultures’, in The Two Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993), pp. 1-51. Just a few years before Wolf’s meeting with Hans Stubbe, Helmut Heissenbüttel wrote
a less polemical, more theoretical analysis of the changing relationship between science and writing since the
sixteenth century. See: Helmut Heissenbüttel, ‘Dreizehn Hypothesen über Literatur und Wissenschaft als
vergleichbare Tätigkeiten’, in Heissenbüttel, ed., Über Literatur (Olten and Freiburg: Walter, 1966), pp. 195204.
73
divided into five parts, and the progression through them represents the narrator’s journey
from cynicism towards the scientific world to an understanding of and identification with it.
Although Stubbe is from the outset quite open towards the arts, he too acquires a deeper
appreciation of the parallels between science and literature, and of the powerful potential of
the combined forces of the two disciplines.104 Thus, ‘Ein Besuch’ portrays a metaphorical
journey from darkness into enlightenment in which, through dialogue, the writer and
scientist educate one another, and demonstrate to the reader that the perceived gulf between
literature and science is not only artificial, but also unproductive.105
In Part One, references to the restrictions on pioneering scientific researchers recall the
difficulties encountered by non-conformist writers in the GDR. Ostensibly throw-away
remarks about Darwin’s fear of rocking the boat of received scientific thought with his
revolutionary theory of evolution, and the obstruction of Mendel’s discoveries by
contemporaries with their own political agendas resonate with significance for the highly
controlled GDR literary scene. In Part Three the Director observes that most scientists
acknowledge they will not achieve recognition for their research in their lifetime, but are
nevertheless driven by a utopian vision and the belief in the importance of their
104
This suggestion that the writer is more hostile towards science than the scientist is towards literature
echoes Snow’s reflections in the ‘The Two Cultures’ in which he labels writers ‘natural luddites’. In her later
texts, as we will see, Wolf is less generous towards science and scientists. Even in the contemporaneous essay
‘Lesen und Schreiben’ (1968), Wolf expresses some ambivalence towards science and scientists. On the one
hand she suggests that scientists are uncultured, ruthless pursuers of knowledge at any cost; on the other she
says that literature is still clinging to old traditions, and ought to emulate the experimental and revolutionary
example of science. See: Christa Wolf, ‘Lesen und Schreiben’, in Sonja Hilzinger, ed., Christa Wolf. Essays /
Gespräche / Reden 1959-1974 (Munich: Luchterhand, 2000), pp. 238-82 (pp. 246-8).
105
This idea of a journey echoes Kuhn’s observation that Wolf’s guiding concept of ‘subjective authenticity’
involves a commitment to showing the process of artistic creation, of self-exploration through writing. See:
Kuhn, pp. 61-2. However, while Wolf’s voice is clearly heard in that of the narrator, the theme of exploration
in ‘Ein Besuch’ is more constructed than Kuhn’s understanding of Wolf’s subjectivity suggests. Although
‘Ein Besuch’ thematises the narrator’s journey of (self-)understanding, Wolf seems very much in control of
her material; there is no real sense that she is learning about herself through the process of writing the essay.
Indeed, ‘Ein Besuch’ is characterised by a didactic tone. The same can be said of the stories ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’ and ‘Selbstversuch’, which, along with ‘Ein Besuch’, were written in the years
between Christa T. and Kindheitsmuster, Wolf’s most famous novels characterised by the mode of subjective
authenticity.
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contribution. The similarity with the occupation of writing is clear, particularly in noncapitalist societies in which the absence of market forces means that the desire for fame and
financial rewards is less likely to motivate the writer (although, of course, there were other
incentives in the GDR, such as travel privileges, which would have motivated many
writers, particularly those prepared to toe the Party line). In Part Four Stubbe comments
that the biologist’s interrogation of phenomena which most people take for granted is
driven by a need to distil the truth. This observation again reveals similarities to the
motivation of the questioning and critical writer. Stubbe’s sadness at the susceptibility of
science to exploitation by regimes which recognise its powerful potential, and his
suggestion that at such times scientists must choose between safe submissiveness and risky
rebellion are loaded with implicit reference to writing in the GDR. Finally, in Part Five the
parallels between science and writing are overtly discussed. Reference is made to scientists’
and writers’ shared dependence on creative thought and imagination;106 Stubbe recognises
that both groups are essentially concerned with the question of what humanity wants to
make of itself; both protagonists insist on responsibility as the key to each discipline; and
they agree that literature and science must cooperate to save mankind from selfdestruction.107 Furthermore, the scientist is also shown to be a writer of books – not just
detached scientific texts, but works which display emotion and humanist values.
This comment echoes Wolf’s observations in ‘Lesen und Schreiben’ concerning the similarities between
science and literature. There she says that science and writing both depend on imagination, and that scientists
and writers share the need to explore hunches through their work, which can only become certainties through
the act of articulation. See: Wolf, ‘Lesen und Schreiben’, pp. 267-8.
107
The notion of the importance of cooperation between science and literature which is expressed in ‘Ein
Besuch’ echoes Christa T.’s comment that the combination of imagination and conscience is indispensable for
the survival of humankind. In ‘Ein Besuch’ and Wolf’s other ‘science texts’, imagination is represented by
science, while conscience is represented by literature. According to Stubbe and the narrator, literature – the
voice of conscience – teaches mankind the maturity which is necessary if science is to be safely pursued.
106
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While the GDR had presupposed a unity of purpose between science and literature in the
sense that literature was meant to champion the scientific-technical revolution,108 the
narrator’s progression from scepticism about scientific endeavour to an understanding and
acceptance of it shows that this unity of purpose was not a given; it needed first to be
negotiated. The final sentence of the essay, in which the narrator cites an unexpectedly
romantic line from Stubbe’s most recent scientific publication, is somewhat contrived. Yet
it demonstrates that the disciplines of science and art are not mutually exclusive, and that
although their unity cannot be taken for granted, it can be achieved through a process of
honest reflection and negotiation. Thus, the Gatersleben Institute functions as the unlikely
scene of a reconciliation between the disciplines of science and art. Wolf seems to suggest
that Stubbe achieves a unity between the ‘two cultures’, which his complacent political
counterparts erroneously assumed had been established in the GDR state.
2.2.4 Lyssenkoism and Socialist Realism
Although the writer and the scientist find common ground, the discussion of genetics and
Lyssenkoism shows that, inasmuch as both groups are vulnerable to state oppression, this
does not necessarily provide grounds for celebration. The production of scientific
knowledge, specifically of genetics, within the GDR state and within the Gatersleben
Institute is a prominent theme of ‘Ein Besuch’, and also of the two existing analyses of
Wolf’s essay, one a post-Wende scholarly article, the other a contemporary review in a
West German newspaper. In both discussions ‘Ein Besuch’ is specifically viewed in terms
of its relevance for the theme of literary production in the GDR.
108
For an explanation of the official view on the role of literature in the self-realisation of the GDR, see:
Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR, pp. 113-18.
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In his discussion of the Lyssenkoist dimension of Wolf’s essay, Arnd Bohm persuasively
argues that Stubbe’s apparently jocular dismissal of fallacious Lyssenkoist scientific theory
conceals a biting critique of the similarly outmoded aesthetics of Socialist Realism. It is no
coincidence, he maintains, that the scientist in ‘Ein Besuch’ is a geneticist, for the study of
genetics has a complex history in Marxist-Leninist thought: in contrast to the scientifically
inaccurate, but ideologically unthreatening theories of Lyssenko, who rejected the influence
of non-environmental factors on plant growth, the principles of genetics were considered to
be contradictory to those of dialectical materialism. Thus, to the detriment of scientific
progress, which was central to the ideology of socialism, the study of genetics was hindered
in the Soviet Union until state-sponsored Lyssenkoism was finally discredited in the mid1960s. Unsurprisingly, Stubbe is scornful of Lyssenko’s irrational science and the official
legitimation it enjoyed. More crucially, though, Bohm proposes that Stubbe’s critique of
Lyssenkoism can also be read metaphorically as a veiled denunciation of the aesthetics of
Socialist Realism:
Equally clear are the implications for aesthetics. Those who are doctrinaire in
defending Socialist Realism as it had been in the 1930s and 1940s and who refuse to
let the theory be corrected by praxis, by experimental evidence, are comparable to
Lyssenkoists whose views are irrational and unscientific. Clinging loyally to outdated
or false theories was an obstacle to genuine progress.109
In line with my observations regarding the commonalities between science and writing in
‘Ein Besuch’, Bohm draws the parallel between the Soviet rejection of ‘otherness’ in
science and its rejection of ‘otherness’ in literature by examining the symbolism of the
scientist’s interest in the particular discipline of genetics:
Nothing could have been more unacceptable [to Marxist-Leninists] than the insight of
geneticists that for reasons they did not yet understand fully the process of
109
Bohm, ‘Seeds of Doubt’, p. 337.
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reproduction did not always produce exact replicas but could produce mutations. […]
Again, the parallel to the situation of literature is obvious. Whereas Socialist Realism
had insisted upon the depiction of endless replications of the one version of the
positive hero, that expectation was contrary to the reality of society and of human
beings.110
Just as scientists were supposed to produce nothing but positive, predictable results, so
writers were expected to create strings of two-dimensional socialist heroes. However true to
life they might have been, scientific results and literary characters which deviated from the
officially sanctioned norm threatened the GDR leadership and were officially prohibited.
Seen in this light, Stubbe’s assertion that the apparently defective plant is often genetically
superior to its ‘conformist’ predecessor can also be read on a literary level: not only is the
insistence on stereotypical positive heroes untruthful, but it denies the possibility that
‘deviant’ individuals might contribute to the realisation of the socialist state in ways that the
Socialist Realist hero cannot. This also works on an aesthetic level: the novel which is
original ought to be valued above its derivative Socialist Realist counterparts (valued by the
socialist state, that is, not by opponents of socialism in search of a dissident voice).111
That this reading was already available to Wolf’s western contemporaries is suggested by
the title of Wolfgang Werth’s 1973 article ‘Christa Wolfs Plädoyer gegen eine Erstarrung
der Literatur’, which sums up his reading of ‘Ein Besuch’ as a demonstration against the
inhibition of aesthetic originality. Werth reads ‘Ein Besuch’ in terms of its position in
Wolf’s collection of essays, Lesen und Schreiben. Noting that ‘Ein Besuch’ directly
precedes the title essay, he argues that it anticipates and underlines the latter’s assertion that
‘der Autor muß um die Bedingungen für seine Arbeit kämpfen’, because ‘niemand [tut] das
Bohm, ‘Seeds of Doubt’, p. 339.
Bohm comments that this discussion of genetic deviance could be read as a swipe at those who criticised
Wolf’s atypical characterisation of Christa T. in her 1968 novel Nachdenken über Christa T. See: Bohm,
‘Seeds of Doubt’, p. 339.
110
111
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für ihn’.112 Like Bohm, Werth sees in ‘Ein Besuch’ a direct connection between scientific
liberation from the destructive sovereignty of Lyssenkoism, and the need to free literature
from the uncompromising tenets of Socialist Realism. And he interprets Wolf’s account of
the revolutionary founding of the Gatersleben Institute as a plea to writers to follow
Stubbe’s courageous and visionary example:
Sie [Wolf] kämpft – nicht, indem sie aufsässig gegen die überängstlichen, aus
Unsicherheit auf scharfe Worte scharf reagierenden ideologischen Linienrichter
polemisiert, sondern indem sie versucht, zum als notwendig Erkannten zu ermutigen.
Sie spricht von dem, was schon möglich geworden ist, von Geländegewinnen, die
durch den Abbau einst zäh und wider alle Vernunft aufrechterhaltender
Fehlpositionen erzielt worden sind, von der nützlichen Entschlossenheit derer, die das
Richtige taten, als das Falsche von ihnen verlangt wurde. In diesem Zusammenhang
gewinnt der Bericht über Hans Stubbe appellatorische Funktion.113
Bohm’s theoretical discussion and Werth’s more thematic approach highlight different
aspects of the institutionalisation of knowledge. Bohm’s analysis of the stultifying
atmosphere of the Soviet Union suggests that knowledge is institutionalised not so much by
bureaucratic administrators of research as by the political and economic agenda of a
country’s government. This is supported by the comparison he draws between the
ideological ban on genetic research in the Soviet Union and the ideological rejection of
non-Socialist Realist literature.
While the academic institution does not really feature in Bohm’s discussion, Werth places a
high value on the institution as a locus of productive research. He sees it as an autonomous
haven which provides an environment in which research can be pursued at liberty from the
restrictions imposed by the political institution without. Werth seems to suggest that, while
Wolf, cited in: Wolfgang Werth, ‘Christa Wolfs Plädoyer gegen eine Erstarrung der Literatur. Verbotene
Früchte gezüchtet. Essays der Verfasserin des Geteilten Himmels’, Die Zeit, 7 (16th February 1973), p. 26.
113
Werth, p. 26.
112
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the scientific institute protects the GDR scientist, GDR writers’ lack of cohesion leaves
them vulnerable to state intervention. This reading of the scientific institute is questionable
inasmuch as Gatersleben is not presented as being typical of GDR institutions, and
therefore cannot assume representative status. However, the allusion to writers’
comparative vulnerability in their ‘workplace’ of the GDR state picks up on the idea, hinted
at in ‘Ein Besuch’, that the GDR state is as institutionalised as the institutions within it. For,
Wolf suggests, if the Gatersleben Institute is threatened by over-bureaucratisation, how
much more true must that be of the GDR state, whose leaders do not share Stubbe’s
integrity and determination to withstand institutionalisation? Werth’s reading recognises
that ideas cannot be produced independently of their environment, regardless of whether
that environment is a conventional institution or a more nebulous social body. Thus, he
affirms Wolf’s belief in the importance of creating a morally responsible setting for the
production of knowledge, if the product is to benefit society.
2.2.5 Closing Remarks
All of the above observations raise some important questions concerning Wolf’s critical
approach. Why does Wolf use a scientist to expose the plight of the writer? What is the
significance of the relationship between science and literature? Is the Institute employed to
effect a GDR Gesellschaftskritik or a more overarching Zivilisationskritik?
On a practical level the scientist figure is a useful vehicle through which Wolf delivers her
attack on GDR literary convention. The serious portrayal of science imbues the essay with
a sense of objective scientificity, lending it credibility and concealing its subversive
dimension from the GDR censor. In addition, through her portrayal of the collaboration
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between the scientist and the writer Wolf mischievously subverts the official demand that
the twin towers of science and literature legitimise and realise socialist ideology. While the
narrator and the scientist agree on the importance of combining forces to create a better
future, the cooperation between the two disciplines in ‘Ein Besuch’ has the effect not of
legitimising, but of undermining, real-existing socialism. United, the writer and the scientist
expose flaws in the very organisation which demands their alliance. Their collaboration
does not, however, undermine the socialist project itself, just its distorted reality. In so
doing, it expresses constructive criticism typical of Wolf.
The question as to why Wolf uses a scientist to defend the cause of the writer is closely
connected to that of the significance of the relationship between science and literature.
This, in turn, is linked to questions of difference and similarity which are at the heart of the
text. Despite the ostensible opposition between science and writing, which is suggested,
amongst other things, by gendering the writer female and the scientist male, I do not
consider that ‘Ein Besuch’ is structured by a series of binary oppositions. On the contrary,
while Mittman observes in much of Wolf’s work the depiction of science and literature as
adversaries, with science invariably cast as the male oppressor, I see in ‘Ein Besuch’ an
impulse towards a non-dichotomous representation of these fields. The relationship
between the writer and the scientist is an equal one and is based on a search for common
ground between them and their respective disciplines.114 Wolf’s ostensible perpetuation of
In her essay ‘Krankheit und Liebesentzug’ (1984), Wolf addresses this question of alterity versus oneness
from the perspective of therapeutic medicine. Her argument that the traditional medical mind-body division
hinders the recovery of the (female) patient highlights the negative impact on modern society of binary
divisions. The concept of holistic medicine, which avoids the patriarchal mind-body division by treating the
subject as an organic whole, is held up as an exemplary model for all social interactions. Thus, the search in
‘Ein Besuch’ for commonalities, for wholeness through mutual cooperation, anticipates a fundamental
concern which is developed throughout much of the rest of Wolf’s literary and essayistic oeuvre. It is not for
another decade that Wolf’s work explicitly expresses feminist views, but the emphasis in ‘Ein Besuch’ on
commonality is clearly informed by a developing feminist consciousness. See: Christa Wolf, ‘Krankheit und
114
81
the male/female, scientist/writer divisions through the gendering of the scientist and writer
can thus be read as a rhetorical strategy: she needs these binary oppositions in order to
show what a noble struggle it is to establish common ground.
Finally, that the man in ‘Ein Besuch’ is employed as a spokesperson for the cause of the
woman might be taken to reflect the inherently patriarchal nature of GDR society in which,
contrary to official ideology, men were more likely to be heard. Furthermore, it can also be
read as an expression of Wolf’s perception of the inferior status of writers in the GDR: it
suggests that Wolf has already ceased to feel listened to as a writer by 1969.
The relationship between science and writing in ‘Ein Besuch’, with its subversion of
commonly accepted binary oppositions, has implications for the text’s more general
political critique, the search for commonalities described above extending to the parallels
which are drawn between the Gatersleben Institute and the GDR state. Furthermore, by
softening the distinction between the concrete scientific institute and GDR society, and
between the disciplines of science and literature, Wolf is exploring issues surrounding not
only the production of scientific knowledge, but also the production of literature, of literary
‘knowledge’.
Liebesentzug. Fragen an die psychosomatische Medizin’, in Sonja Hilzinger, ed., Christa Wolf. Essays /
Gespräche / Reden / Briefe 1975-86 (Munich: Luchterhand, 2000), pp. 410-33.
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2.3 ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’
2.3.1 Introduction
‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ is the second in a trilogy of futuristic short stories in
the collection Unter den Linden. The story is narrated by a bourgeois tomcat who sketches
the (ir)rational attempt of three scientists (Professor Barzel, Doktor Fettback and Doktor
Hinz) to develop a cybernetic system which, they believe, will lead to ‘Totales MenschenGlück’. As in ‘Ein Besuch’, the output – scientific knowledge – is not a tangible product
(such as is found, by convention, in Socialist Realist writing); unlike in ‘Ein Besuch’, the
institution in which it is produced is not foregrounded. However, the parallels drawn in
‘Ein Besuch’ between the scientific institution and the GDR state, and the similarities
which Wolf suggests between the scientists in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ and
GDR politicians, invite the reader to see the ‘Totales Menschen-Glück’ experiment as a
metaphor for the GDR socialist project.
The genre of the fantastic, suggested by the subtitle ‘Unwahrscheinliche Geschichte’ and
infused with a sharply satirical mood, represents a departure from the realistic and serious
account of the scientist’s and writer’s exchanges in ‘Ein Besuch’. Despite this change in
mode, Wolf’s concerns in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ are much the same as in
‘Ein Besuch’: not only does she employ her scientist characters as ciphers through which to
comment on the GDR state and its leadership, this time in a more satirical and overtly
critical fashion, but she also develops the critique of instrumental rationality which was
quietly introduced there, and questions the factors which influence the scientists’ research.
Finally, although the relationship between science and literature is less explicit than in ‘Ein
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Besuch’, the critique of unreflective scientific progress in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines
Katers’ contains within it a defence of creativity, emotion and literature, which is arguably
more explicit.
‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ has received relatively little critical attention,
particularly in Anglo-American scholarship. (Indeed, an edition of GDR Monitor entitled
‘Neue Ansichten: The Reception of Romanticism in the Literature of the GDR’,115 does not
contain a single reference to the story.) Some of those critics who do examine it somewhat
underestimate its GDR-specificity, focusing instead on the more timeless elements of
Zivilisationskritik in the story. Others concentrate on the inter-textual dimension of the text,
specifically its relationship to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Lebensansichten des Katers Murr. While
some critics refer to Wolf’s story as a Gesellschaftskritik, and thereby acknowledge the
GDR as a referent, none of them discuss the metaphorical potential of the scientists and
their project.
2.3.2 Zivilisationskritik versus Gesellschaftskritik
I begin with an aspect of the text on which scholars are generally agreed: its over-arching
critique of modern societies. Adorno and Horkheimer’s post-war quest to explain ‘warum
die Menschheit, anstatt in einen wahrhaft menschlichen Zustand einzutreten, in eine neue
Art von Barbarei versinkt’,116 casts light on the elements of Zivilisationskritik in the story.
Adorno and Horkheimer analyse the role played by the natural sciences in the domination
of nature by man, and the scientist’s subjection of others and himself/herself to his/her own
115
Howard Gaskill, Karin McPherson and Andrew Barker, eds, Neue Ansichten: The Reception of
Romanticism in the Literature of the GDR, GDR Monitor Special Series, 6 (1990).
116
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente (Frankfurt
am Main: Fischer, 1986), p. 1.
84
project. They argue that it is only a small step from the Enlightenment principles of the
domination of the natural world to the domination of the human body. Writing three
decades later from a pro-socialist perspective, philosopher of science Brian Easlea explains
that the more extreme rationalist tendency within Enlightenment thinking can lead to underattention to value judgements, morals and ethics, which are considered irrational modes of
thinking.117
The exaggerated antics of the fixated scientists in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’
echo these ideas, providing ample evidence of a general critique of instrumental reason. In
their attempt to realise their dream of total human happiness the scientists know no
boundaries: they create a prototype of an ideal human being which is little more than an
automaton; Professor Barzel is subjected by Doktor Fettback to humiliating regulation and
analysis of his bodily functions;118 Kater Max, were it not for his cunning, would have been
starved to the point of physical collapse; and it is decided that the masses have to be forced
into a state of total happiness. The scientists have an absolute plan, which they plan to
institute absolutely: ‘Was er [Barzel] will, ist übermenschlich, und er weiß das. SYMAGE,
habe ich ihn sagen hören, wird vollkommen sein und absolut gelten, oder es wird nicht
sein’ [p. 108]. For Barzel and co there can be no celebration of the ‘ab-normal’ as proposed
by the geneticist in ‘Ein Besuch’. According to their vision the individual is anathema and
must be moulded into an ‘NM’ – a ‘Normalmensch’, or ‘Reflexwesen’.
117
Brian Easlea, Liberation and the Aims of Science: An Essay on Obstacles to the Building of a Beautiful
World (Suffolk: Sussex University Press, 1973), p. 274.
118
This is a possible intertextual reference to Büchner’s Woyzeck. There, the pathetic Woyzeck is humiliated
by the inhuman experiments of the Doktor who takes a scientific interest in Woyzeck’s physical deterioration.
This allusion to a text written 140 years previously suggests that Hinz’s humiliating experiment on Barzel,
and indeed the dubious pursuit of scientific knowledge per se, is not simply rooted in the social and political
conditions of the young GDR. It appears pessimistically to suggest that the parameters and aims of scientific
endeavour have not changed since the early nineteenth century.
85
In addition to this satire of instrumental reason, the detrimental effects on the scientist of
relentless scientific endeavour are also highlighted. Unlike his passionate wife, Barzel is
incapable of emotion, and ultimately shuns the intimacy of marital relations for the relative
safety of his computer. He suffers from sleep disturbances, impotence and a stomach ulcer,
is as alienated from his daughter as from his wife, can no longer appreciate the beauty of
the natural world, and is, paradoxically, the antithesis of the totally happy human being to
which he believes he holds the key. In short, he is wholly alienated from the world around
him.
Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s analysis raises two important questions: first, whether the
alienation they describe is specific to the scientist or common to all citizens of advanced
societies; second, whether it applies to the whole of the modern world or to a specific
political and economic system. In their study of National Socialist society, The Racial
State, Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann begin by theorising alienation as a
typical condition of scientific endeavour wherever it is pursued. They suggest that the
specialisation and isolation of science are primary contributors to the amoralism which
some scientists display.119 Easlea contends that capitalist societies provide the most fertile
climate for scientific abuse, because objective scientific endeavour can be hijacked by those
seeking to profit from its discoveries. Theodore Roszak argues against this accusation,
suggesting instead that it is not Capitalism per se, but simply the quest for knowledge and
control, initiated by the Enlightenment, that is responsible for the decline in human
values.120 Similarly, Albrecht Wellmer draws on Weber to argue that a socialist system can
119
Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 56.
120
Easlea, p. 268.
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only result in a triumph of bureaucracy, and in the same administration and objectification
of mankind for which Capitalism is so often condemned.121
Like most critics of the tale, Therese Hörnigk and Sture Svensson interpret ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’ as a warning against the single-minded pursuit of knowledge
and scientific progress, which is not directed specifically at the GDR. To support this view,
both draw on Christa Wolf’s advocation, in her essay ‘Gegenwart und Zukunft’, of
literature as a means of educating the individual against the abuse of science and
technology:
Literatur in unserer Zeit, wenn sie überhaupt einen Sinn haben soll und sich selbst
ernst nimmt, muss helfen, den Gebrauch, den wir von den selbstgeschaffenen Geräten
und Instrumenten machen, zu humanisieren. Das heißt […] es nicht zuzulassen, dass
Technik und Ökonomie zum Selbstzweck entarten und dann ihren eigenen
destruktiven Gesetzen folgen.122
Wolf’s references here to the (ab)use of self-made devices, to technology and economics,
certainly point beyond GDR socialism. Furthermore, they indicate a belief in the overarching purpose of literature which transcends the restrictions of time and place that are
imposed by a narrow political reading. Accordingly, it is the non-political elements of the
text which inform much of the critical response to ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’.
Svensson contends that the story is an appeal to Wissenschaftler not to disregard the
emotional aspect of the individual in the name of social and scientific progress;123 Birgit
Lerman argues that the emotional alienation and dissatisfaction displayed by Professor
Barzel are prominent characteristics of all modern societies and their citizens:
Albrecht Wellmer, ‘Reason, Utopia and the Dialectic of Enlightenment’, Praxis International, 2 (1983),
83-107 (p. 88).
122
Christa Wolf, ‘Gegenwart und Zukunft’, in Die Dimension des Autors (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1987), pp.
36-9 (pp. 37-8).
123
Sture Svensson, ‘Gesellschaftliche Utopie in der DDR-Literatur. Christa Wolfs “Neue Lebensansichten
eines Katers”’, Moderna Sprak, 77/3 (1983), 223-7 (p. 226).
121
87
‘Gefühlsarmut und Kontaktlosigkeit, Individualitätsverlust, psychische Störungen, fehlende
Originalität und mangelnde Sensibilität für das Ästhetische sind durchaus Symptome
unserer Zeit’;124 and Hörnigk asserts that Wolf’s critique is directed at the continuation of
the absolute glorification of reason, the origins of which long pre-date the GDR: ‘[G]egen
eine überzogene, weil ausschließliche Herrschaft der Ratio und des Wissenschaftsbegriffs,
wie er sich im 19. Jahrhundert entwickelt hat und teilweise kritiklos übernommen wurde,
richtet sich [Wolfs] Einwand’.125
2.3.3 The Metaphorical Dimension
My analysis of ‘Ein Besuch’ demonstrated that the scientist there can be read as a positive
model for an alternative vision of the GDR leadership, as well as exemplifying the impact
of institutionalisation on the individual. Even though Wolf does not flesh out the
institutionalised context of the scientists’ research in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’,
a similar, more obvious, mechanism is at work there, meaning that the scientists,
particularly Barzel, can be read as metaphors both for the GDR leadership and,
paradoxically, but in line with Mittman’s discovery of the reversibility of a metaphor’s
poles, for the objectified GDR Volk.
Although the scientists’ symbolic potential has largely been overlooked, one or two critics
do edge towards a metaphorical interpretation of the text. For example, in her discussion of
the story’s narrative perspective, Lerman explains that Wolf’s use of Verfremdung allows
her to slide disguised critical comment past the GDR censor:
Birgit Lermen, ‘Das Menschenbild in Christa Wolfs Erzählung “Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers”’, in
Gerd Michels, ed., Festschrift für Friedrich Kienecker zum 60. Geburtstag (Heidelberg: Groos, 1980), pp. 97116 (p. 114).
125
Therese Hörnigk, Christa Wolf (Göttingen: Steidl, 1989), p. 180.
124
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Aus derartigen Einschüben kann geschlossen werden, daß Christa Wolf ihre
Verfremdungstechnik nicht nur aus ästhetischen Gründen anwendet. Vielmehr läßt sie
so durchblicken, daß das indirekte, getarnte Schreiben für den DDR-Schriftsteller eine
politische Notwendigkeit ist. […] Hier [wurde] Fiktives, Unwahrscheinliches und
Verfremdetes mit der Intention geschrieben, die wahre und wirkliche Situation des
heutigen Menschen aufzudecken.126
She also acknowledges Wolf’s use of metaphor in the story, both directly, through the word
‘metaphorisch’, and indirectly, by quoting ‘Selbstversuch’ and conflating the perversion of
the scientists with the perversion of the GDR’s leadership:
Metaphorisch stellt die Autorin die fortschreitende ‘Humanisierung’ der Gesellschaft
in Frage, zumindest alle Zukunftsentwürfe des technisch-wissenschaftlichen
Fortschritts. Sie ist der Meinung, daß die ausschließliche Beschäftigung mit den ‘drei
großen W.: Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft, Weltpolitik’ diejenigen deformiert, die sie
betreiben [my italics].127
However, Lerman stops short of developing these arguments into a full analysis of the
metaphorical function of the scientists.
2.3.4 Scientists – GDR Leaders? Scientific Experiment – Socialist Experiment?
Svensson sees Wolf’s scientists and their mission not as representative of, but as separate
from, the GDR politicians and their socialist project:
Die Politiker dieser utopischen Gesellschaft sind für die wissenschaftliche Arbeit des
Teams schon gewonnen, weil es später auf sie ankommt, das System planmäßig und
mit aller Kraft weiterzuführen und uneingeschränkt zu entfalten.128
Yet while the relationship between the scientist in ‘Ein Besuch’ and the GDR leadership is
a relatively realist one in which Stubbe represents a positive alternative to his questionable
126
Lermen, p. 100.
Lermen, p. 113.
128
Svensson, p. 223.
127
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political contemporaries, there is no literal connection between the scientists in ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’ and the GDR leadership. Rather, the relationship here is a
substitutive one: Barzel and colleagues, and their scientific mission, can readily be
interpreted as metaphors for the SED, and for the foundation and gradual perversion of the
GDR and the socialist ideology which underpinned it.
The most striking evidence which supports this interpretation is the nature of Barzel et al.’s
scientific quest, and its evocation of the GDR’s socialist project which, informed by
Marxism-Leninism, was itself supposed to be scientific. Driven by the utopian ideology of
total human happiness (a state which they perceive to be a far cry from the current state of
affairs) Barzel, Hinz and Fettback dedicate themselves to the realisation of their benevolent
vision. Just as the traditional family patriarch acts in the belief that he alone knows what is
best for his dependants, so the scientists ignore popular resistance to their activities,
convinced, if they reflect on it at all, that the means are justified by the end. The masses,
they believe, as yet unable voluntarily to forgo the trappings of their current existence, must
be forced to conform for their own long-term benefit:
Nur eine kleine Gruppe von Versuchspersonen, die hospitalisiert und streng
überwacht wurden, konnte man veranlassen, die Grundsätze von SYMAGE über drei
Monate schlecht und recht zu befolgen. Alle anderen, die übrigens die absolute
Vernünftigkeit des Systems nicht bestritten, eilten gleichwohl von einer Übertretung
der wohltätigen Vorschriften zur nächsten […]. Der entscheidende Schritt ins
TOMEGL kann bei der gegenwärtigen Unreife großer Teile der Menschheit nicht
anders geschehen denn durch Zwang [pp. 102-3].
This image of a group of influential figures in pursuit of a seemingly rational and positive
dream (that can only be achieved when individuals are institutionalised (‘hospitalisiert’) to
counteract their instinctual behaviour) is no doubt intended to evoke the promising birth of
the GDR, underpinned by the apparently incontrovertibly humane ideology of socialism,
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yet requiring discipline (‘Vorschriften’) and force (‘Zwang’) for its implementation. As the
story progresses, this metaphorical interpretation is steadily reinforced. Most obviously, the
inevitable perversion of the scientists’ utopian project, which mutates into a power-centred
ideology based on control and conformity (as they discover that the only human being
capable of adhering to their system would be a ‘Reflexwesen’ shorn of all human
characteristics other than obedient response to a stimulus), is reminiscent of the perversion
of the socialist project in the GDR, in which the freedom of the individual was subjugated
in the name of the realisation of a socialist utopia. The absolute nature of SYMAGE seems
to be a reference to the intolerance of the SED of non-conformity, while the fact that it is
developed in a locked and barred room evokes the secretiveness and paranoia of the
political elite. The scientists’ nervous rejection of creative thought and of ‘superfluous’
activities such as writing appears to be a personal comment on the increasingly soured
relationship between the state and writers during this time. Furthermore, the scientists’
insistence on the centrality of productivity and utility recalls the ethos of ruthless efficiency
in pursuit of quantifiable advancement in the GDR, and exposes the dangers of a value
system which fails to take account of intangible values such as morality, thought and
creativity. Thus, Wolf employs her scientist figures here to illuminate the way in which
utopian beginnings can become perverted if the central ideal is uncompromisingly pursued,
causing that ideal to become as undesirable as the status quo it was intended to correct. This
idea parallels the general critique of rationality in Dialektik der Aufklärung, in which the
self-defeating potential of Reason and Truth are explored. This is not to suggest that the
scientists in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ function purely on the level of a general
Zivilisationskritik. Rather, they are employed to expose the dangers of absolute thought
which, although not confined to the GDR, characterised real-existing socialism and much
that was wrong with the GDR state.
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There are various other echoes of the GDR leadership in the characterisation of the chief
scientist, Professor Barzel. His alienation from his wilful, decadent and thriller-reading
wife, and his futile attempts to convince her of the findings of his scientific investigations
are loaded with reference to the strained relationship between the GDR state and its
citizens, which was exacerbated by the SED’s efforts to control them. It also hints that the
GDR leadership is increasingly growing out of touch with its once loyal supporters, an idea
which is strengthened by Frau Barzel’s infidelity. Similarly, Barzel’s broken relationship
with his rebellious daughter is suggestive of the more challenging attitude of the younger
generation in the GDR, which did not witness National Socialism first hand and was more
questioning of the basic premises of the socialist regime. This father-child relationship,
although only a minor element in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’, has since become a
popular image amongst writers seeking to represent the relationship between the GDR state
and its people.129
If these clues to a metaphorical reading are not enough, Wolf also makes more direct
reference to the scientists as powerful leaders. Berating Barzel for his lack of scientific
objectivity, Doktor Hinz draws a parallel between the team of scientists and religious world
leaders:
Man solle der Rechenautomatik nicht auf ähnlich verzückte Weise gegenüberstehen
wie die ersten Christen ihrer Heilslehre. […] Da vertiefte sich das Hinzsche Grinsen
noch, und er verstieg sich zu der Behauptung, auch die Päpste hätten ja
jahrhundertelang wie Sachwalter Christi gesprochen, ohne selbst Christen zu sein:
Another example of the use of a parent-child relationship can be found in Ulrich Plenzdorf’s Die neuen
Leiden des jungen W. in which the mother (rather than the father) represents the orthodoxy that a child seeks
to escape from. Post-Wende examples include Thomas Brussig’s Helden wie wir, and Wolfgang Becker’s
film Good bye Lenin! (in which the GDR state, again, is represented not by the father but by the mother), as
well as Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe, in which she is writing about her real father, or possibly avoiding
writing about him.
129
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Macht über Gläubige übe auf die Dauer nur der Ungläubige aus, weil er allein seinen
Kopf zum Denken frei habe und seine Hände zum Handeln [p. 102].
Casting doubt on the sincerity of influential religious figures who, he suggests,
calculatingly cloak themselves in a veneer of piety so that they can discreetly manipulate
the masses, Hinz unashamedly reminds his colleague of the benefits of adopting such
tactics. If Wolf’s intention here is to cast doubt on the motives of the GDR leadership, this
is certainly a stinging, and brave, rebuke. Whatever the case, the lasting effect is to
reinforce the connection between the scientists and influential world leaders.
In a fit of rage with her father for spoiling her rebellious party, Barzel’s daughter labels him
a ‘Fortschrittsspießer’ [p. 109]. Like his predecessors in Der geteilte Himmel, Barzel is a
bourgeois scientist in an officially non-bourgeois culture. He has a large house with a
swimming pool, and a glamorous and decadent wife (who, if she has a profession, is not
characterised by it, but rather by her role within the home). There is an obvious
contradiction here between the ideal of the scientist who, at the heart of the GDR project,
apparently promotes the central ideology of GDR progress and equality, and the bourgeois
reality that is Barzel. Unlike the ideal scientist in ‘Ein Besuch’, Barzel et al. are clearly
hangovers from the past. Rather than objecting, from an orthodox socialist position, to
these tangible indications of middle-class membership, however, Wolf seems to be pointing
to the contradiction between the ideals of the GDR and its disappointing reality. Frau
Barzel’s shocked reaction to their neighbours’ divorce and unconventional living
arrangements also betrays this gap: the supposedly liberal principles of the theoretically
classless GDR are, in certain circles at least, still dominated by anachronistic bourgeois
attitudes. Furthermore, despite the self-projected image of the GDR as an egalitarian state
as far as gender was concerned, traditional gender roles are shown to be still very much at
93
play. The caricature of the intellectually uninterested, blonde Frau Barzel reclining in bed
consuming liqueur chocolates and reading thriller novels, while her husband keeps her in
luxury, is reminiscent of a certain stereotype of the 1950s woman in the West. If we read
Barzel as a metaphor for the SED, Wolf also seems to be pointing to the gulf between the
projected image of a visionary, egalitarian political elite, and the self-serving, reactionary
reality. On every level, Wolf’s text plays with the notion of the gap between the ideal and
the reality, which is evident in GDR politics and in the social conditions it produces.
Significantly, Wolf’s critique is restricted to the scientists’ execution of their project; their
mission itself escapes satirical treatment. The reader can deduce from this that the object of
Wolf’s frustration is the mismanagement of the socialist project, and not the ideal of the
GDR state itself. Despite its exposure of the failings of the GDR state, the story calls for it
not to be dismantled but improved. The scientists’ ultimate function, then, appears to be to
appeal for a return to the utopian principles upon which the GDR was founded.
2.3.5 The Scientist as GDR Individual
As we saw earlier, in addition to Mittman’s literal understanding of Wissenschaft as
meaning ‘science’ as an academic discipline, she also conceptualises Wissenschaft as a
metaphorical, and fluid, phenomenon which can occupy both a dominant and weak position
depending on whether it is figured as representative of knowledge itself, of the GDR state,
or of the scientific/academic institution. Mittman goes on to argue that, in some respects,
her concept of Wissenschaft can also be applied to the Wissenschaftler who can also shift
from one side of the weak/dominant divide to the other. But while Mittman plays with the
term Wissenschaft to allow her to read it very broadly, she assumes that the scientist is a
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stable semantic entity whose only ambivalence lies in the possibility of his occupying either
a subject or an object position. On the other hand, I argue that in ‘Neue Lebensansichten
eines Katers’ the Wissenschaftler is as slippery as Mittman’s concept of Wissenschaft
because the scientist can occupy different metaphorical positions simultaneously.
As discussed above, the primary symbolic manifestation of the scientists in ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’ is as a metaphor for the GDR leadership; the relationship
between the state and its citizens is also thematised through the Barzel family unit, for
whether or not he is ultimately successful, Barzel casts himself as the dominant figure. But
in addition to this metaphor of the scientist as powerful GDR leader, Barzel can also be
read as a metaphor for the powerless individual in the GDR and (more literally) as a weak
and institutionalised scientist.
Mixed with criticism of Barzel’s failings is an element of pity for him. He is rejected by his
daughter and humiliated by his domineering wife, and he is plagued by sleep disturbances,
stomach problems, unhealthy obsessions and sexual impotence. Thus, robbed of his spouse,
his self-respect and his idealistic dream, by the end of the story Barzel is presented as a
very pathetic and powerless figure indeed. In terms of his role as a scientist, the prevailing
image of Barzel, and indeed Doktor Fettback, is not one of calculating megalomaniacs, but
of essentially well-intentioned yet incompetent fools. (Barzel’s idiocy is demonstrated from
the outset by his farcical experiments on Kater Max, not to mention his failure to recognise
that Max’s feline mate, Napoleon, is not male but female.) Doktor Hinz’s shrewd readiness
to eliminate essential human characteristics from the prototype ‘Normalmensch’ reveals
him, in conjunction with the computer, to be the real driving-force behind the team’s hyperrational leaning. Although Barzel believes in the basic principles of his scientific
95
experiments, he is somewhat reluctantly swept along in the flow of events, unable to
withstand the ambition of his colleague Hinz, the degrading experiments of Dr Fettback,
and the terrifying demands of the computer, Heinrich. Cast in the ‘female’ position vis-àvis the nebulous institution within which he works, Barzel thus represents a certain type of
GDR individual who, despite (or perhaps because of) his or her loyalty to the state, is
organised and manipulated by it.
Furthermore, there is an uncanny similarity between the alienated and emotionless Barzel
and the supposedly ideal and totally happy ‘Normalmensch’ into which he longs to convert
the masses. This likeness invites interpretation of Barzel as representative of a future GDR
citizenry as it will end up if the state is allowed to continue to operate in such an oppressive
vein. That Barzel is in fact far less content than his emotional wife and daughter
demonstrates the foolishness of any quest to eradicate those characteristics responsible for
the individuality of each human being. These readings of Barzel as GDR Jedermann and
objectified scientist do not negate the story’s general warnings against scientific overspecialisation, nor Barzel’s symbolic function as representative of the GDR leadership. Far
from being mutually exclusive, these readings demonstrate the multiple meanings which
‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ generates, and the variety of concerns Wolf outlines
in it. Indeed, as I explore in the section below, the story can be read on yet another level: in
concert with the metaphors of the scientist as GDR leader and GDR individual, ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’, echoing ‘Ein Besuch’, also makes reference to the plight of
literature and the concerns of the writer in the GDR.
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2.3.6 Science and Literature: Unequal Partners
In my analysis of ‘Ein Besuch’ I argued that, in many senses, science and the scientist are
employed to defend the literary cause. Specifically, the scientist appeals against the
directing of literary creation from above, and attests to literature’s centrality to the healthy
future development of mankind. The scientist and writer, science and literature, are
presented as equal partners, and the idea that literature might share science’s potential for
damage as well as for good is also introduced. On the face of it, the thematisation of
literature in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ is less sophisticated: the only literary
figure is that of the anti-heroic feline narrator, through whose rambling attempt at literary
fiction the reader certainly gains an insight into the distorted mindset of the scientists, but
who cannot be interpreted as representative of the serious writer. However, in detailing the
scientists’ bid to eliminate ‘schöpferisches Denken’, ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’
makes more explicit reference than ‘Ein Besuch’ to the plight of literature in a society
dominated by the scientific-technological revolution. In contrast to the ideal Director in
‘Ein Besuch’ (and to the nameless organisers who arrange for writers and scientists to
engage in dialogue at the Gatersleben symposium), Doktor Hinz, a panel of experts, and
eventually Barzel and Fettback (not to mention Kater Max himself) conclude that literary
fiction is superfluous to a productive, rational and happy society. That Frau Barzel, a
voracious reader of crime novels, is probably the story’s most contented character
demonstrates that the abolition of creative thought in the name of total human happiness is
actually self-defeating, a fact to which the scientists’ alienation and distorted mode of
thinking also attest. (Of course, Wolf is not suggesting that the answer to the world’s
deficiencies lies in the passive consumption of thriller novels; indeed, in ‘Lesen und
Schreiben’ she explicitly laments the growing popularity of this genre which, she states,
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cannot be classed as true prose.130 Rather, this is typical of the satirical tone of the story
(corresponding to Feinberg’s ‘distortion’): what Wolf really wants is that people read
serious and engaged literature which will stimulate their critical and creative faculties.)
Thus, the importance of literature to the well-being of the individual and of society is
emphasised, not through the real-life figure of the ideal scientist and his partnership with an
ideal writer as in ‘Ein Besuch’, but through the exaggerated negative characterisation of the
scientists. As Ricarda Schmidt observes, ‘Wolf satirises an anti-ideal, out of which process,
ex negativo, an ideal is underlined.’131 The more negative the representation of science, the
more positive is that of its cultural counterpart.
As a result of the victimisation of culture at the hands of hyper-rational scientific thought in
‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’, the nuanced observations of ‘Ein Besuch’ concerning
the positive partnership of science and culture are lost. Furthermore, the polarisation of
science and literature here precludes discussion of their commonalities. In some respects,
then, the story represents a break from the more reflective discussion of literature embarked
upon in ‘Ein Besuch’ and later developed in Störfall.
Although the parallels between science and literature are hardly evoked on a thematic level,
the intertextual dimension of ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ invites discussion of at
least one of the concerns common to responsible scientists as well as writers: the
preservation of individual subjectivity. In her analysis of the Hoffmann intertext in ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’, Schmidt observes that the mediation of the scientists’
Wolf, ‘Lesen und Schreiben’, p. 245.
Ricarda Schmidt, ‘Intertextuality: A Study of the Concept and its Application to the Relationship of
Christa Wolf’s “Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers” to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Lebens-Ansichten des Katers
Murr’, in Arthur Williams, Stuart Parkes and Julian Preece, eds, Contemporary German Writers, their
Aesthetics and their Language (Bern: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 9-34 (p. 27).
130
131
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thoughts and words through the tomcat narrator contrasts with the dual voice narration
which characterises the Hoffmann text. She is critical of this homogenisation, arguing that
it undermines the story’s critique of the repression of the individual:
Paradoxically, Wolf’s attempt to combat the social tendency towards standardisation
and the abolition of heterogeneity has the consequence that her work itself follows the
principle of homogenisation.132
Schmidt is not the only critic to comment on the superiority of the Hoffmann text,133 and
she is right that Wolf has taken a Romantic text with different perspectives and made it
sound more like a nineteenth-century realist Bildungsroman with only one perspective.
However, one could argue that, on an aesthetic level, this change from the Romantic
tradition in which subjectivity is fairly fluid, to the tradition of the realist Bildungsroman
which eliminates Hoffmann’s dual-voice narration, is a pointed reminder of the dismissal of
non-realist, subjective modes of writing in the GDR. Furthermore, the story’s multithematic iridescence, and its fundamentally ironic mode which contributes a second voice
to Max’s apparently singular narration, means that the story cannot really be seen as
homogeneous.
On a non-aesthetic level, this change of form also evokes a central concern of many GDR
writers, and a widely discussed preoccupation of Wolf: namely, the difficulty of asserting
the subjective self in a socialist society and in the literature of a socialist state.134 This is
also thematised through Fettback’s pleas, ignored by his colleagues, in favour of preserving
‘schöpferisches Denken’, and Barzel’s capitulation to Fettback’s degrading regime. Thus,
Schmidt, ‘Intertextuality’, p. 27.
See also Hanne Castein’s analysis of the Hoffmann intertext: Hanne Castein, ‘Christa Wolfs “Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers”’, Mitteilungen der E.T.A. Hoffmann-Gesellschaft, 29 (1983), 45-53.
134
See Mittman’s analysis of Wolf: Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, pp. 29-61.
132
133
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the story’s intertextual dimension which, on one level, recalls the repression of subjectivity,
combined with its allusions to the scientists’ lack of an independent voice, highlights an
issue which is germane to the GDR writer, even if the process and difficulties of writing are
not the story’s primary concerns.
2.3.7 The GDR Institution and the Production of Knowledge
The fact that Barzel is not presented as operating within a named and characterised
scientific institution does not necessarily indicate that Wolf has lost interest in the dynamics
of the GDR as a social space. While it is true that her radically pared-down representation
of the circumstances in which her three scientists work has little to do with the complex
professional structures now understood to have operated within GDR research institutes (as
outlined in Chapter One), one could argue that the very reduction of the scientific
environment to a bare minimum of professional attributes (desk, computer, filing system)
frees the fictional figures to generate metaphorical meanings, to point away from science to
other things. The parallels drawn between the scientists’ project and the socialist project,
and between the scientists and the GDR political elite as well as the GDR individual, act as
a kind of shorthand which indicates Wolf’s continuing interest in the idea of the GDR as an
institutionalised space. Furthermore, Barzel displays evidence of institutionalisation. He is
competitive and hierarchical, he manipulates his experiments to yield the required results,
he is overly concerned to adhere to bureaucratic procedures, and is unable, or unwilling, to
withstand the demands of authoritative others. In these respects, as well as representing the
socialist project itself, Barzel’s experiment is shown to be rooted in its institutionalised
GDR context.
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The juxtaposition of the positive scientist in ‘Ein Besuch’ with his fictional dystopian
counterparts in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ echoes Lerman’s distinction between
the ideal of the ‘Homo nobilis’ and the reality of the ‘Homo technicus’. 135 This provides a
useful model through which the relationship between ‘Ein Besuch’ and ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’ can be understood. In ‘Ein Besuch’, Wolf gives more space
to the positive possibilities of science than to its damaging potential. On a realist level (one
not specific to the GDR), the critique of scientific rationality introduced in ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’ indicates a growing unease with modern civilisation’s
pursuit of scientific-technological development. On a metaphorical (GDR-specific) level, it
suggests an increasing disillusion with the GDR state as an institutionalised space in which
hyper-rational scientific development is fostered. According to this interpretation, if there is
something wrong with the production of knowledge, there is something wrong with the
institution that produces it. Because the particular institution visited in ‘Ein Besuch’ is an
exemplary one, there is no need to fear the experiments which are conducted within it;
because the experiment in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ takes place in the imperfect
‘institution’ of the GDR, its idealistic principles are inevitably perverted.
Latently aggressive and hierarchical, submissive and self-censoring, unable to display
genuine emotion or affection, and susceptible to the influence of authority figures, Barzel
exhibits many of the characteristics of the authoritarian personality as outlined by
Adorno.136 In his study of Adorno’s concept of the authoritarian character in relation to
culture and politics, Rupert Wilkinson argues that, although Adorno developed his theory
in the context of right-wing white supremacist attitudes in the deep American South, it
135
136
Lermen, p. 113.
Theodor Adorno, et al., The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950).
101
equally applies to representatives of all political and cultural backgrounds: ‘authoritarian
dynamics, both latent and overt, can go with a wide range of ideologies; and apart from the
case of German Nazism, there have been no studies directly indicating that authoritarians
are more likely than other people to be right-wing “extremists”’.137 Wilkinson argues that a
single factor such as one’s political environment would be unlikely to produce an
authoritarian personality; rather, such personalities are formed by a convergence of
historical events, ideologies, family circumstances and physiological makeup.138 His theory
thereby suggests that the production of knowledge can be affected by a range of factors,
including, but not limited to, its political environment. However, although Wolf’s texts
undoubtedly have a relevance beyond the GDR, as we know little or nothing about Barzel’s
family background or genetic makeup, we can only explain his behaviour based on what we
know of his living and working environment – the GDR state, or institution. Thus, although
the original theory may be more complex, Wolf seems to suggest that Barzel’s authoritarian
personality, and his dubious scientific practices, have developed as a result of his
institutionalised life both as a scientist and as an individual in the GDR.
2.3.8 Closing Remarks
Although the form and mood of ‘Ein Besuch’ and ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ are
very different, and the institution is not explicitly thematised in ‘Neue Lebensansichten
eines Katers’, many of the concerns expressed in the former are taken up and developed in
the latter. Significantly, the scientist figure in both texts is used to introduce a generic
critique of the pursuit of scientific progress in modern societies, as well as functioning
137
Rupert Wilkinson, The Broken Rebel: A Study in Culture, Politics, and Authoritarian Character (London:
Croom Helm, 1973), p. 137.
138
Wilkinson, p. 222.
102
either as a counterpoint to, or as a metaphor for, the GDR leadership. In this latter function
the scientist figures provide an insight into the relationship between the GDR political elite
and its citizens; and they are used to comment on scientific and cultural production both
inside and outside the GDR. Differing importance is attached to these various functions in
each of the texts. The problems of writing in the GDR receive more attention in ‘Ein
Besuch’ than in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’; conversely, the critique of realexisting socialism and its practitioners is more pronounced in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines
Katers’ than in ‘Ein Besuch’.
Although the satirical mode of ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ arguably renders the
critique of the GDR leadership more biting, certainly more obvious, both texts are
characterised by a fundamental belief in, and loyalty towards, the GDR state and the
ideology of socialism. Three years later, the critique of GDR state socialism introduced in
‘Ein Besuch’ and ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ is developed in the sex-change story
‘Selbstversuch’. Here, the institutional setting is much more defined than that in ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’, but can clearly be read as a metaphorical model of the GDR
state, with the scientific experiment and its protagonists serving, again, as metaphors for the
socialist project, the political elite and the GDR populace. The detailed representation of
the institutional setting renders the political critique in ‘Selbstversuch’ the most
unambiguously critical of Wolf’s three ‘academia tales’. In addition, the androcentric
essence of the experiment, and the thematisation of male-female relationships within the
institution serve to introduce scientific and feminist critiques which have both universal and
GDR-specific import. Once again, though, Wolf’s critique quite clearly stems from a desire
to renew, rather than dismantle, the political and social structures of the GDR.
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2.4 ‘Selbstversuch: Traktat zu einem Protokoll’
2.4.1 Introduction
Of the eight sex-change stories, each by a different author, in the specially commissioned
Geschlechtertausch volume,139 ‘Selbstversuch’ is the only one in which the sex change
occurs as a result of a scientific experiment; in all of the others the protagonist awakes
unexpectedly to discover that he or she has been transformed into the opposite sex. Three of
the four male contributors to the volume thematise a male protagonist who changes into a
woman; two of these protagonists have wives who turn into men. Thus, while all four
female-authored contributions solely feature a woman who turns into a man, the reverse is
true of only one of the male-authored stories. This bias might suggest an underlying
assumption that women are more likely (or appropriate?) subjects of a sex change. If so, it
echoes the automatic rejection of a male sex-change experiment in ‘Selbstversuch’ on the
grounds that no man would (or should) ever undergo such a procedure.
The androcentrism which informs the parameters of the experiment in ‘Selbstversuch’ has
been explored by Friederike Eigler in her analysis of feminism and scientific discourse.140
Eigler’s discussion brings together the principal themes of most literary analyses of
‘Selbstversuch’. For example, Anne Herrmann discusses the story in the context of Simone
de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.141 Anna Pegorano142 and Carlotta von Maltzan143 focus on
139
Edith Anderson, ed., Blitz aus Heiterm Himmel (Rostock: Hinstorff, 1975).
Friederike Eigler, ‘Rereading Christa Wolf’s “Selbstversuch”: Cyborgs and Feminist Critiques of
Scientific Discourse’, German Quarterly, 73/4 (2000), 401-15.
141
Anne Herrmann, ‘The Transsexual as Anders in Christa Wolf’s “Self-Experiment”’, Genders, 3 (1998),
43-56.
142
Anna Pegorano, ‘“Mann” versus “Mensch”. Zu Christa Wolfs Erzählung “Selbstversuch”’, Colloquia
Germanica, 15/3 (1982), 239-52.
140
104
the implications of the experiment for gender politics. Sigrid Damm and Jürgen Engler
explain that ‘Selbstversuch’ calls not just for gender equality, but also for a reconstitution
of male norms along female lines.144 Gisela Bahr concludes that the story offers little hope
that gender equality can be achieved in the GDR workplace or field of science. 145 And
examining the story’s scientific commentary, Nodar Kakabadse highlights Wolf’s sceptical
responses to the male-driven scientific-technological revolution.146
Although these critics observe that the story’s critique of patriarchy and instrumental
rationality implies a critique of the GDR ruling elite, my focus – the metaphorical
dimension of ‘Selbstversuch’ – is rather different. Eigler’s observation that ‘the literature of
the 1950s and 1960s was marked by an enthusiastic embrace of technology and science
which became central metaphors for the presumed ideological superiority of socialism over
capitalism’147 points promisingly to a literary tradition in the GDR which figures scientific
pursuit as a metaphor for political and economic endeavour. However, she does not explore
this approach in relation to ‘Selbstversuch’. Furthermore, despite Mittman’s argument that
several GDR female authors employ Wissenschaft as a cipher for the institution, even she
overlooks the metaphorical potential of the scientific institute in ‘Selbstversuch’, stating,
for example, that Wissenschaft appears in the story in the form of the natural sciences. Her
observation that the tale is ‘a piece of science fiction about gender and science’ 148 also
misses the story’s critique of GDR state socialism and the GDR political elite. As explored
Carlotta von Maltzan, ‘“Mann müßte ein Mann sein”. Zur Frage der weiblichen Identität in Erzählungen
von Kirsch, Morgner und Wolf’, Acta Germanica, 20 (1996), 141-55.
144
Sigrid Damm and Jürgen Engler, ‘Notate des Zwiespalts und Allegorien der Vollendung’, Weimarer
Beiträge, 21/7 (1975), 43-4.
145
Gisela Bahr, ‘Blitz aus heiterm Himmel. Ein Versuch zur Emanzipation in der DDR’, in Wolfgang
Paulsen, ed., Die Frau als Heldin und Autorin. Neue kritische Ansätze zur deutschen Literatur (Bern:
Francke, 1979), pp. 223-36 (p. 226).
146
Nodar Kakabadse, ‘Antiutopische Tendenzen in der DDR-Prosa der siebziger Jahre’, in Bernd Wilhelmi,
ed., DDR-Literatur der 60er und 70er Jahre (Jena: Tastomat, 1984), pp. 15-22.
147
Eigler, ‘Rereading Christa Wolf’s “Selbstversuch”’, p. 402.
148
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, p. 42.
143
105
below, only Helen Fehervary and Sara Lennox briefly address the wider metaphorical
significance of Wolf’s representation of the Professor and the sex-change experiment.149
‘Selbstversuch’ is the only one of the Geschlechtertausch stories which is set inside a
research institute. Although the protagonist of Sarah Kirsch’s contribution, Blitz aus
heiterm Himmel, is also a Wissenschaftlerin, the focus of attention is her relationship with
her partner rather than with her colleagues. The institutional setting of ‘Selbstversuch’
distinguishes it from its companion stories as offering more than a discussion of gender
relations in the GDR: I argue that the Institut für Humanhormonetik is modelled in such a
way that it can serve as a metaphor for the GDR state and so convey a biting critique of the
socialist state and real-existing socialism. In particular, I argue that the sex-change
experiment is a metaphor for the latter.
I begin by discussing Wolf’s ‘realist’ depiction of the workings of the scientific institute,
and the implications of this for both the GDR and the wider scientific world. I then explore
the metaphorical dimension of the story, focusing in particular on the use of the scientific
institute to conceptualise the political and social climate of the GDR as a whole. Finally, I
discuss the representation of literary endeavour in ‘Selbstversuch’, and consider the
significance of the academic institute for Wolf’s interest in the question of writing in a
socialist state.
Helen Fehervary and Sara Lennox, introduction to Christa Wolf, ‘Self-Experiment: Appendix to a Report’,
trans. by Jeanette Clausen, New German Critique, 13 (1978), 109-12 (p. 111).
149
106
2.4.2 The Realist Institution
2.4.3 The Critique of Instrumental Reason
While Wolf’s use of the science fiction mode means that her fictional research institute
with its fanciful human experiments can hardly be labelled ‘realist’ in the conventional
sense, the Institut für Humanhormonetik does, at one level, represent quite
straightforwardly the category ‘scientific research institutes’, with Feinberg’s satirical
distortion bringing the qualities of that institution into sharper focus. On this level, Wolf is
interested in exploring the driving forces of scientific pursuit, particularly the mechanism
and influence of instrumental reason. Perhaps more than any other of Wolf’s ‘academia
tales’, ‘Selbstversuch’ echoes Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. For
Adorno and Horkheimer, the root of ‘rational’ and ‘reasoned’ thinking is power: ‘Was die
Menschen von der Natur lernen wollen, ist, sie anzuwenden, um sie und die Menschen
vollends zu beherrschen. […] Macht und Erkenntnis sind synonym’.150 Similarly, drawing
on Bertrand Russell, Easlea identifies two possible motivations driving any quest for
knowledge: love of the object in question, and desire for power over the object. 151 As
discussed below, the androcentric interests of Wolf’s sex-change experiment suggest that
power, rather than love, is the scientists’ motivation. Adorno and Horkheimer also argue
that, in his/her highly specialised discipline and his/her hungry pursuit of knowledge and
power, the scientist may become alienated from the world around him/her and from his/her
object of investigation.
150
151
Adorno and Horkheimer, p. 10.
Easlea, p. 267.
107
As in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’, these mechanisms are represented throughout
the story. Entirely absorbed in his research, the Professor is presented by the narrator as
alienated from his emotions, humanity and conscience. A master of self-control, he is
fearful, the narrator believes, of any expression of emotion. Of women’s need for
acknowledgement and tenderness, she writes: ‘Euch aber ist unser Anspruch die neue
Verlegenheit, vor der ihr euch, wer weiß, hinter euren Tests und Fragebogen verschanzt’ [p.
151]. According to the narrator, the Professor’s worship of ‘rational’ scientific results
borders on the superstitious and, alienated from the outside world (the scientists live in a
segregated compound which is cut off from the non-scientific community), he reduces his
natural environment to a web of facts and calculations: ‘Während Sie sie [the world] in
Ihrem Fangnetz aus Zahlen, Kurven und Berechnungen dingfest gemacht haben, nicht
wahr?’ [p. 146]. Pegorano argues that, in his obsessive scientific specialisation, the
Professor has repressed his humanity to such a degree that he not only objectifies the
narrator, but he also reduces himself to the status of an inanimate object: ‘Wenn er den
Menschen in sich unterdrückt, ist der Mann nichts weiter als eine Linse – ein Mikroskop,
das, indem es die Wirklichkeit “zu einer unendlichen Aufzählung von Fakten reduziert”,
diese nicht mehr wahrnimmt, sondern verbannt’.152
Although Wolf does not explicitly critique the GDR’s scientific-technological revolution
with its ethos of rationality and unfettered progress, there are indirect allusions to 1970s
East Germany. For example, in his analysis of scientific-technical progress in the GDR,
Mike Dennis outlines the GDR’s ideology of technological advancement. He explains that,
as a strategy for improving the material and cultural living-standard of its citizens, as well
as for ensuring the GDR’s status as a leading industrial power, the Party identified certain
152
Pegorano, p. 247.
108
key technologies as fundamental to the growth of the republic.153 Bio-technology was
among the disciplines to be promoted and, in order to realise the Party’s technological
targets, a core group of gifted scientists was identified and cultivated. Their subsequent
technological success was rewarded with superior living conditions. In ‘Selbstversuch’, the
Institute’s cultivation of a generation of promising young scientists – the narrator, Rüdiger,
Beate, Irene – who ultimately pioneer a revolutionary sex-change experiment, recalls this.
2.4.4 A Feminist Critique of Science
By introducing the protagonist’s sex change through a planned scientific experiment rather
than an unexplained supernatural transformation, Wolf comments not only on gender
relations, as in the other Geschlechtertausch stories, and not only on the dangers of
instrumental reason as outlined above, but also on the way in which patriarchal attitudes
determine the objectives and distortions of scientific pursuit. In so doing, she echoes
feminist philosopher Sandra Harding, whose study The Science Question in Feminism
contends that scientists, far from being paragons of objectivity, are firmly situated in their
cultural and political environment.154 For example, the scientists’ assumption in
‘Selbstversuch’ that women would benefit from the sex-change experiment in ways that
men would not is informed by a belief in the superiority of the male sex. The battery of
tests which the post-operative narrator has to undergo is designed to prove this: by
demonstrating the narrator’s changed responses, the scientists hope to furnish empirical
evidence that gender is biologically determined, proof which might legitimise the ‘womannature’ association and the continuing inequality between the sexes. The strength of this
desire is illustrated by Rüdiger’s disappointment with Anders’ failure to improve her/his
153
154
Dennis, pp. 3-6.
Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (New York: Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 100.
109
memory, and his excitement at her/his typically ‘masculine’ responses in the association
test. Like Wolf, Harding also observes male scientists’ excessive focus on biological gender
differences, and concludes that ‘only masculine investment in the evolved distinctiveness of
men’s achievements and the unevolved naturalness of women’s activities appears able to
account for this’.155
Clearly, Wolf’s feminist critique of science applies not just to the GDR, but to the design
and implementation of scientific experimentation everywhere in the developed world. In
this literal sense, then, Wolf echoes Harding’s call for an acknowledgement of the ways in
which all research pursues and perpetuates certain biases. Moreover, by exposing the
androcentrism of science, and calling for a reconceptualisation of the fundamentals of
scientific pursuit, ‘Selbstversuch’ expresses a progression from an egalitarian feminism,
which calls for the full integration of women into traditionally male-dominated spheres, to a
more radical feminist agenda which questions the desirability of this integration. Harding
calls this a shift from the ‘Woman Question’ in science to the ‘Science Question’ in
feminism.156 Thus, the scientific institute in ‘Selbstversuch’ allows Wolf to explore these
issues which are central not just to the national and international feminist cause, but to the
integrity of scientific endeavour in the GDR and beyond.
2.4.5 A Feminist Critique of the GDR
Implicit within this commentary on scientific androcentrism is a critique of the values of a
government which promotes such obviously patriarchal methods. While the critique of
science outlined above is not confined to activities within the GDR, the focus on gender
155
156
Harding, p. 100.
Harding, p. 29.
110
relations in the Institut für Humanhormonetik illuminates GDR social dynamics. In this
sense, the institution is used to conceptualise, on a literal level, the diffusion of patriarchal
norms not just within GDR science, but across GDR society as a whole. As Fehervary and
Lennox argue, ‘the critique of patriarchy exhibited by Wolf’s story is intended most
explicitly in the context of the GDR as a critique of the Marxist-Leninist Party and the
societal forms which have evolved from it’.157 Gender inequality in the supposedly
egalitarian socialist state is a primary theme in ‘Selbstversuch’; Fehervary and Lennox
speak for most of the story’s critics when they observe that the sex-change experiment is ‘a
satire on the integration of women into GDR professional life, and into that society in
general’.158
In her article ‘Man müßte ein Mann sein’, Maltzan outlines the paradoxical question of
women’s emancipation in the GDR. Stating that ‘die Marxsche Maxime, daß der
gesellschaftliche Fortschritt an die gesellschaftliche Stellung der Frau gemessen werden
könne’159 is a guiding principle of women’s emancipation in socialist countries, she
observes that, far from achieving true social and occupational parity, working women were
simply doubly burdened with professional and domestic responsibilities. Furthermore, she
says, according to the Marxist definition of production, domestic labour is allotted no
intrinsic value. Thus, women who had no extra-domestic occupation were not recognised as
contributing to the growth of the state.160 Dennis supports Maltzan’s dismissal of the
official notion of gender equality in the GDR, stating that, far from enjoying equal status to
157
Fehervary and Lennox, p. 111.
Fehervary and Lennox, p. 110.
159
Maltzan, p. 142.
160
Maltzan, p. 150.
158
111
men in the production process, working women were expected to continue to perform
monotonous and simple tasks, with only a small minority entering the skilled professions.
Throughout the story there are countless indications of the patriarchal attitudes which Wolf
perceives as characterising GDR society. As young female students with aspirations to
scientific success, the narrator and her female colleagues were patronised by the Professor,
who, labelling them ‘unschuldig und nichts weiter’ [p. 132], undermined their dignity and
skill as aspiring scientists. Furthermore, the suggestion that the sex-change experiment
could be applied to male subjects is dismissed as absurd; that the narrator should benefit
from transformation into a man is considered beyond doubt; ‘women’ and ‘science’ are
widely supposed to be a contradiction in terms; the narrator’s stressed colleague, Beate,
epitomises the doubly-burdened woman who was typical of the GDR; and those women
who privilege their careers above their domestic ‘obligations’ are labelled ‘unnatural’ and
‘guilty’:
Das Wort ‘Unnatur’ war damals gefallen und konnte nicht mehr weggezaubert
werden. Eine Frau, die den eigens für ihr Geschlecht erfundenen Kompromiß ablehnt,
der es nicht gelingen will, ‘den Blick abzublenden und ihre Augen in ein Stück
Himmel oder Wasser zu verwandeln’; die nicht gelebt werden will, sondern leben:
Sie wird erfahren, was schuldig sein heißt [p. 137].
In addition, the ironic comment, ‘es [gibt] nichts Komischeres als Frauen, die Traktate
schreiben’ [p. 151], which points to the ridicule encountered by women who dare to assert
themselves in traditionally male-dominated roles, and the narrator’s paradoxical
observation, ‘meinen Wert als Frau hatte ich zu beweisen, indem ich einwilligte, Mann zu
werden’ [p. 138], are devastating indictments of the patriarchal pressure and prejudice
encountered by women across the GDR, not just in its scientific circles. All of these
comments contextualise the narrator’s participation in the sex-change experiment; they
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indicate that her self-subjection is informed by more complex, political conditions than a
naive erotic attachment to her Professor.161
While the figure of the institution Kaderleiter is absent in the less realistic text ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’, a female Kaderleiterin (who represents an exception to
Maltzan’s and Dennis’s observation that in the GDR women were generally excluded from
skilled or high-status positions) does feature in ‘Selbstversuch’; it is her job to oversee the
signing of the experiment’s secrecy contract. The Kaderleiter(in) was a powerful figure in
any GDR institution: he or she was responsible for the employment, training, and
professional and political development of an organisation’s employees. Although they did
not work under cover as did those who functioned as Informelle Mitarbeiter for the Stasi,
Kaderleiter(innen) were relied on by the MfS to provide information and reports on workers
who aroused suspicion.162 Thus, despite her critique of the GDR’s patriarchal values, Wolf
takes care to include in her cast of characters a woman who has advanced into an influential
managerial position, who is part of the state apparatus, who collaborates with the system.
Although one can view this positively as evidence of gender equality in the GDR, Wolf
probably intends it as a critical comment about the way in which women are becoming like
men. It is difficult to speculate on the Kaderleiterin’s motivations as she is only fleetingly
mentioned. However, just as we do not applaud the narrator’s collaboration with the sexchange experiment, we are not invited to celebrate the Kaderleiterin’s promotion to a
dubious position of power. Furthermore, the subsequent reference to the Kaderleiterin’s
Gisela Bahr overlooks the web of causes which leads to the narrator’s participation in the experiment
when, in response to the question of why the narrator partakes in the experiment, she comments, ‘nicht aus
wissenschaftlichem Engagement und Forschungsdrang, sondern weil sie den Professor liebt und ihn dadurch
zu gewinnen hofft.’ See: Bahr, p. 224.
162
Helmut M. Artus, ‘“VEB Horch & Guck.” Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS) der DDR, genannt
Stasi’ (Bonn: Informationszentrum Sozialwissenschaften, 2004), p. 5. (Accessible at:
www.gesis.org/Information/sowiNet/sowiOnline/horch&guck/Horch&Guck-cover.pdf) (accessed 14th
August 2008).
161
113
female secretary who is tasked to give the narrator flowers [p. 128] subverts the notion that
the GDR was a progressive site of egalitarian employment practice: while some women
may make it to the top, there will always be a lowly female assistant.
The fundamental principles of the sex-change experiment suggest that for a woman to
become emancipated in the GDR she must become like a man. Through this paradox Wolf
criticises the GDR state’s failure to acknowledge a central premise of Marxism-Leninism:
that the free development of the individual is central to the free development of all. She
thereby suggests that until gender equality is sought in the GDR, true socialism will remain
an unfulfilled aspiration. To complicate matters, the narrator’s insight into the inside
workings of the male world leads her to reject her newly won status as a man, and to
propose a new experiment, ‘[die] Erfindung dessen, den man lieben kann’ [p. 169].
Evoking Harding’s argument that women would benefit not so much from full integration
into science, but from a fundamental reconceptualisation of its aims and methods, the
narrator’s rejection of her new sex suggests that traditional gender equality – in so far as it
implies women changing (less drastically than in the satirical scenario, of course, but
accommodating themselves to male norms) while maleness stays essentially the same –
might not in fact be to the benefit of either sex. In a subsequent interview with Hans
Kaufmann Wolf states this explicitly:
Ist es denn das Ziel der Emanzipation, kann es überhaupt erstrebenswert sein, daß die
Frauen ‘werden wie die Männer’, also dasselbe tun dürfen, dieselben Rechte wie sie
bekommen und immer mehr auch wahrnehmen können, wo doch die Männer es so
sehr nötig hätten, selbst emanzipiert zu werden?163
Wolf, cited in: Hans Kaufmann, ‘Subjektive Authentizität. Gespräch mit Hans Kaufmann’, in Sonja
Hilzinger, ed., Christa Wolf. Essays / Gespräche / Reden / Briefe 1959-1974 (Munich: Luchterhand
Literaturverlag, 1999), pp. 401-37 (p. 430).
163
114
As well as calling for women’s emancipation, Wolf radically suggests that men are as much
in need of liberating as their female counterparts (a notion that will be developed in
Störfall). Thus, Wolf’s feminist critique in ‘Selbstversuch’ simultaneously exposes
continuing gender inequality in the GDR (and to a large degree in the wider world), and
calls for a re-working of traditional feminist agendas. On a ‘realist’ level (that is, in so far
as she writes about scientists out of an interest in science and about women out of an
interest in women), she questions the supposedly emancipatory objectives of science and of
female integration into male-dominated fields, and exposes the failure of the GDR political
elite to address these issues. As I discuss below, the metaphorical level of her feminist
critique develops this appraisal of GDR state socialism, and questions whether it is possible
for men, as well as women, to achieve self-realisation in the GDR of the early 1970s.
2.4.6 The Metaphorical Institution
‘Selbstversuch’ opens with the narrator’s cynical comment, ‘Kein Zweifel: Das Experiment
ist geglückt’ [p. 125]. In response to this remark, Gerhard Neumann observes that although
the experiment may have succeeded on a technical level, on a psychological level it
failed.164 While Neumann is referring to the literal sex-change experiment and the
narrator’s rejection of her/his manhood, his statement also applies to the metaphorical
dimension of the text: just as the SYMAGE experiment in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines
Katers’ is conceived in such a way that it can be read as a metaphor for the attempt by the
GDR political elite to create an ideal socialist state, so the sex-change experiment in
‘Selbstversuch’ is also designed to be symbolic of the GDR socialist project. The narrator’s
Gerhard Neumann, ‘Christa Wolf: “Selbstversuch”, Ingeborg Bachmann: “Ein Schritt nach Gomorrha”.
Beiträge weiblichen Schreibens zur Kurzgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts’, Sprache im technischen Zeitalter,
28 (1990), 58-77 (p. 67).
164
115
need to seek emancipation through the experiment indicates more than the literal failure of
real-existing socialism to achieve gender equality; it is also a metaphor for the universal
search for liberation through the utopian socialist project. While a socialist economy may
technically have been set up in the GDR, Wolf questions its success in less easily
quantifiable aspects of life. The sex-change experiment’s failure to bestow true
emancipation indicates Wolf’s sentiment that the emancipatory goals of socialism have not
been realised in the GDR of the 1970s.
While the Institut für Kulturpflanzenforschung in ‘Ein Besuch’ can be read as a positive
substitute for the GDR state, the Institut für Humanhormonetik in ‘Selbstversuch’ functions
as a negative metaphor for the GDR as a whole. The patriarchal values of the ruling elite
are replicated in the scientific institute, but more symbolically, the hierarchical relationship
between the Professor and the narrator, in which the Professor seemingly holds all of the
power and the narrator none, appears to represent the relationship between the Party and
ordinary GDR citizens: the objectified female subject of the experiment seems to symbolise
the way in which the entire GDR population, irrespective of sex, was dominated, or
‘feminised’, by the authoritarian ruling elite. Without explicitly framing their argument in
terms of the text’s metaphorical aspect, Fehervary and Lennox support this reading:
If Wolf’s heroine takes as her adversary and partner in dialogue the ‘Professor’ of
science and technology […] this ‘Professor’ also suggests the increasing reification of
Marxist theory and practice since Marx, culminating in a Party which interprets and
dictates as dogma the interests and needs of the people rather than being instructed by
them.165
By making the connection between the Professor, the perversion of pure Marxist theory,
and a Party which objectifies its subjects, Fehervary and Lennox endorse a reading which
165
Fehervary and Lennox, p. 111.
116
sees the Professor as a metaphor for the GDR leadership, and the narrator as symbolic of
ordinary East Germans. A similar mechanism is at play in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines
Katers’ in which, in his role of powerless object of external forces, Barzel represents the
feminised GDR scientist and the feminised GDR citizen. While in ‘Neue Lebensansichten
eines Katers’ these two opposing positions – the dominator and the dominated – are
collapsed into the single figure of the scientist, in ‘Selbstversuch’ they are occupied by two
separate characters who inhabit less fluid positions.
The narrator’s cynical post-experiment observation that ‘wir Männer […] uns unbeirrt den
Realitäten widmen, den drei großen W: Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft, Weltpolitik’ [p. 163],
explicitly makes the connection between science and politics. In addition to this statement,
there is significant textual evidence to support a reading of the story which sees the
Professor as a metaphor for the GDR political elite. A notable example is Wolf’s almost
imperceptible reference to the fact that the Professor is transported around in a chauffeurdriven Tatra – a luxury car produced in the Eastern Bloc between 1963 and 1975, and used
by many GDR Party functionaries. In the mind of the GDR reader, who would well have
understood such symbols of power, this discreet sentence would almost automatically have
linked the Professor with the GDR political elite. Furthermore, the Professor’s relationship
with the narrator can clearly be seen as symbolic of that between ordinary East Germans
and the GDR authorities. Reflecting on her career as a scientist within the institute, the
narrator recalls how she gradually internalised the ‘rational’ scientific norms encouraged by
her Professor:
Unbeherrschtheiten, Stimmungen, alle Arten von Entgleisungen. Es sollte mich aber
wundern, wenn Sie all die zehn Jahre über – seit Sie mich kurz vor dem Examen mit
diesem Satz programmierten – eine einzige Zügellosigkeit an mir bemerkt hätten [p.
131].
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The description of the way in which the narrator learned ‘die Spielregeln’ [p. 153], in other
words, learned to discipline herself, to control her emotions and reactions – everything
which determined her individuality – in order to be accepted by a powerful authority and to
benefit from the associated privileges, is reminiscent of social conditions in the GDR,
where a privileged, at least trouble-free, existence depended upon the individual’s capacity
and willingness to conform to the dictates of the Party. ‘Die Spielregeln’, or ‘the rules of
the game’, is a commonly used metaphor in many European languages, which usually
refers to the unwritten boundaries to which adversaries voluntarily adhere in order to
maintain the status quo, or to avoid a negative consequence. Wolf literalises this metaphor
by mentioning two children’s games, thereby illustrating the point that power games are
first experienced in childhood and are later reproduced in adult interactions. In particular,
Wolf refers to the apparently innocuous children’s game ‘Plumpsack’, which essentially
teaches children that they have to show respect for the ‘Spielmeister’ – an authority figure –
if they wish to avoid punishment. In ‘Selbstversuch’, as in some of her other texts, most
obviously Kindheitsmuster, Wolf is interested in processes of childhood socialisation which
become models for behaviour in adult life. The effects of this conditioning were especially
pronounced in the GDR in which subordination of the GDR citizenry to the authorities was
central to the state’s existence.
The Hegelian overtones in the relationship between the narrator and the Professor also
chime with Wolf’s references to power games. The essence of Hegel’s theory is that, in
order for a consciousness to achieve full self-consciousness, it requires the recognition of
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an external other.166 However, it also requires that this recognition be one-sided, for to
recognise the other in return represents a threat to the freedom of the self. Thus, the two
consciousnesses engage in a ‘life and death struggle’, the aim of which is that a pecking
order be established, and thereby the victor’s right to one-sided recognition. The original
equality between the two is replaced by an unequal relationship which Hegel likened to that
between a master and his slave. The master sets the slave to work and sits back to enjoy the
fruits of the slave’s labour and, of course, his recognition. However, contrary to
appearances, the dynamic is now at its most unstable: first, the master cannot after all enjoy
the slave’s recognition of him because, in the master’s eyes, the slave who is bound to him
is no longer an independent consciousness. Second, although the slave lacks the master’s
recognition, through his labour he makes his own ideas into a permanent external object,
and in so doing discovers that he has a mind of his own. Ultimately, Hegel concludes, their
fortunes are reversed and the slave achieves a higher state of self-consciousness than the
master.
Recalling this dialectic, ‘Selbstversuch’ depicts two individuals engaged in a struggle for
recognition and/or power. The narrator has spent ten long years striving to procure from the
Professor a fraction of the respect and recognition she held for him. Much to her frustration,
her thirst for acknowledgement remains unquenched, as the Professor, insisting on affecting
an impersonal air, consistently refuses to acknowledge her presence. As in the relationship
between Hegel’s Herr and Knecht, the recognition is wholly one-sided. Yet, just as Hegel’s
slave achieves a higher state of consciousness and fulfilment through its labour, so the
reflective and self-aware post-operative narrator is also presented as having reached a
166
G.W.F. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels Werke / Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. by Johann
Schulze , vol. 2 (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1841), pp. 135-43.
119
higher state of fulfilment than her alienated Professor. This process of self-realisation is
already evident when the narrator goes to dinner at the Professor’s house. The Professor’s
unease at Anders’ autonomy recalls Frankenstein’s fear at the loss of control over his selfcreated monster. Liberated from her/his former insecurities and admiration for the
Professor, the narrator no longer needs to play the Professor’s game. S/he threatens to date
the Professor’s daughter, s/he breaks off the Professor’s experiment, and perhaps worst of
all, s/he extracts from the Professor the painful admission that he is unable to love: ‘es
[waren] nicht Leichtsinn oder Übermut, die jenes Geständnis von Ihnen erpreßten. Wie
hätte ich wünschen sollen, daß die erste und einzige Vertraulichkeit zwischen uns das
vertrauliche Eingeständnis eines Defekts wäre…’ [p. 168]. The narrator’s revenge, however
graciously s/he exacts it, recalls the victory of Hegel’s slave over its master. For Hegel, this
victory took the form of a higher state of consciousness. While this is certainly a part of
Wolf’s narrator’s victory, her/his triumph is also less abstract: the narrator is no longer a
hostage to the Professor’s manipulations, and s/he has confronted the latter with his
inadequacies. Finally, it is significant that the narrator’s victory also involves a romantic
relationship with the Professor’s daughter. While the narrator could have trounced the
Professor on a professional level, her/his triumph is not a work-related, but a gendered one;
in a story which foregrounds gender issues this is particularly apt.
The Hegelian dynamic between the narrator and the Professor is reminiscent of the unequal
relationship between the GDR authorities and ordinary East Germans, of the apparently
one-sided recognition of the former by the latter. Furthermore, the narrator’s emotional
journey which develops from uncritical admiration of, and a desire for approval from, the
Professor, to total self-awareness and a critical evaluation of the latter’s deficiencies,
reflects in exaggerated form the increasing disillusion with real-existing socialism of many
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of its erstwhile supporters, male as well as female. Wolf’s own journey from utopian
Marxist to critical feminist, documented by Kuhn, is a paradigmatic example.167
‘Selbstversuch’ was written seventeen years before the collapse of the GDR, and at that
juncture Wolf certainly did not consider the GDR’s demise to be a victory for the East
German populace. Despite this, the post-Wende reader could be forgiven for seeing in the
liberation of the people in 1989 an ironic finale to the parallels Wolf evinces between
Hegel’s Herrschaft/Knechtschaft dialectic and the loosening grip of the GDR political elite
on the opinions and actions of many of its citizens.
The narrator’s professional and emotional reliance on the Professor also evokes the
dependence of GDR citizens on their socialist leaders. Compared to individuals living in
capitalist societies, who are in many ways reliant upon their own initiative and effort to
create a comfortable life for themselves, populations living in centrally planned socialist
economies are more dependent upon their government to satisfy their basic material needs.
This was particularly the case in the early years of the GDR’s existence, in which post-war
rebuilding, combined with political, economic and social restructuring along socialist lines
involved a period of significant transition and uncertainty.
In his post-Wende novel Helden wie wir, Thomas Brussig thematises the parent-child
dynamic which he observed between the Party and the GDR population.168 Through the
metaphor of the family, Brussig explores the way in which the GDR authorities cultivated a
hierarchical relationship of control, guilt and dependence. The regime is gendered both
male and female: the father is the silent, threatening face of the authoritarian state; the
167
168
See: Kuhn, Christa Wolf’s Utopian Vision.
Thomas Brussig, Helden wie wir (Berlin: Volk & Welt, 1996).
121
smothering mother exercises a more subtle mode of control which is thinly disguised as
loving affection and care. Of course, the relationship between the narrator and the Professor
differs in that theirs is not a familial bond, and the Professor’s power lies in his cool and
distanced demeanour. However, Wolf’s presentation of the material and emotional
dependence of the narrator on the Professor bears similarity to the relationship between a
distanced, authoritative parent and a materially dependent child. This, in turn, is often used
to symbolise the dynamic of dependence between the Party and the people in the GDR.
In the immediate aftermath of the sex-change experiment, the narrator loses the ability to
speak. Eigler sees this period of aphasia as a metaphor both for women’s loss of identity in
a male world, and for the absence of an ethical discourse within the field of bio-technology:
This loss of voice is symptomatic of the loss of identity during the transformation
from woman to man, and it underscores the narrator’s observation that men and
women inhabit different linguistic worlds. […] In addition to this commentary on the
sex/gender system, the scientist’s loss of a voice might be read as an allegory for the
central dilemma humanity faces amid a fast-changing high-tech society: the silence
would then point to the lack of an adequate ethical discourse on the desirability of
what is scientifically possible.169
In addition to these interpretations, the narrator’s loss of voice during her phase of
transition from woman to man can also be interpreted as symbolic of the loss of the power
of (critical) speech of ordinary East Germans in an increasingly totalitarian state, and of the
absence of an honest discourse in the GDR. The various stages of the narrator’s transition,
which culminate in her/his total, albeit short-lived, internalisation of male values, seem to
mirror those of the East German people in their adjustment to real-existing socialism:
admiration of and support for their inspiring and revolutionary leaders; conformity to the
demands of those leaders; suppression of one’s critical voice; internalisation of the
169
Eigler, ‘Rereading Christa Wolf’s “Selbstversuch”’, pp. 405-6.
122
prevailing norms. Damm and Engler implicitly draw the parallel between the narrator’s
love for the Professor and the early admiration of many citizens for the GDR authorities
when they comment that the narrator complies with the experiment ‘weil sie sich an einem
Lebensideal orientierte, das von ihrem Vorgesetzten, dem ideellen Urheber und Leiter des
Projekts, repräsentiert wird’.170
Ultimately, the narrator acknowledges her pawn-like function in the Professor’s personal
game, and asserts her right to resist:
Ohne es zu wissen oder zu wollen, bin ich doch Spion gewesen im Hinterland des
Gegners und habe erfahren, was euer Geheimnis bleiben muß, damit eure bequemen
Vorrechte nicht angetastet werden: daß die Unternehmungen, in die ihr euch verliert,
euer Glück nicht sein können, und daß wir ein Recht auf Widerstand haben, wenn ihr
uns in sie hineinziehen wollt [pp. 162-3].
This insistence on women’s right to oppose the attempts of men to implicate them in their
patriarchal power games also implies a call to the entire GDR population to stand up to the
Party’s attempts to control and silence dissenting voices. That GDR citizens as a body are
more powerful than they may realise is suggested through the narrator’s sudden insight into
the root of Rüdiger’s misogyny:
Frauen, sagte unser kleiner Kybernetiker, die in der Wissenschaft die erste Geige
spielen wollen, sind einfach zum Scheitern verurteilt. Jetzt sah ich erst, wie
verzweifelt er darüber war, daß der Erfolg dieses hochwichtigen Experiments,
welches zur Reduzierung einer fragwürdigen Gattung beitragen konnte, ganz und gar
in den Händen einer Frau lag [p. 152].
Rüdiger’s patriarchal taunts, the narrator suggests, are informed by the threatening
knowledge that his experiment depends upon the agency of the very object he is seeking to
control. Without realising it, the narrator, and by implication the GDR people, are in a
170
Damm and Engler, p. 41.
123
powerful position: without the existence and participation of their subjects, neither the sexchange experiment nor the GDR socialist project would be possible. Indeed, a decade
before ‘Selbstversuch’ was written, the dependence of socialism on the GDR’s citizenry
was demonstrated by the erection of the Berlin Wall which was primarily built to stem the
flow of citizens out of the GDR.
The possibility of resistance from within the system is demonstrated by the narrator’s
alternative account of the sex-change experiment. This is paralleled by Wolf’s literary
alternative to the official narrative of state socialism through texts such as ‘Selbstversuch’.
The parallels between the narrator’s critique of scientific discourse and Wolf’s critique of
socialist discourse further emphasise the densely metaphorical function of the scientific
institute and experiment in ‘Selbstversuch’. Eigler reminds us that while the narrator
counters official scientific discourse, she does not reject the discipline altogether:
By evoking both literary and scientific terminology in the story’s concluding passage,
Wolf once more draws attention to the protagonist’s double role as author (of the
treatise) and as scientist. In her role as scientist, the protagonist vows to work toward
changing the parameters of scientific research in ways that recognise rather than
ignore or appropriate the other.171
Instead, the narrator suggests a utopian alternative experiment in which the best of
scientific and feminist principles are fused. The narrator’s feminist challenge to official
scientific discourse from a position of loyalty towards scientific pursuit in its purest form
echoes Wolf’s feminist critique of real-existing socialism from a position of loyalty towards
the fundamental principles of socialism. The link between the sex-change experiment and
GDR state socialism is also indicated by Fehervary and Lennox when they argue that, by
focusing on the egalitarian, mutually beneficial interaction between two autonomous
171
Eigler, ‘Rereading Christa Wolf’s “Selbstversuch”’, p. 412.
124
subjects, the narrator’s alternative experiment will, ‘in the sense of a concrete utopia, […]
fundamentally transform the concept of Party itself’.172
2.4.7 Literature: Partner or Victim of Science?
In ‘Ein Besuch’ Wolf works hard to undermine the notion that science and literature are
binary opposites; she demonstrates the commonalities between the two disciplines both
within and beyond the specific context of the GDR, and she argues for cooperation between
scientists and writers. Moreover, she casts the scientist as a cultural figure whose
celebration of genetic difference implies a defence of aesthetic autonomy. In ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’, on the other hand, the marginalisation of creative thinking
positions literature as a powerless victim of science and of the hyper-rational GDR socialist
project. In ‘Selbstversuch’, the art-form of literature is not explicitly thematised.
Nevertheless, questions of writing, which are explored through the themes of discourse and
language, do come to the fore.
In ‘Selbstversuch’ there is a clear attempt by the scientists to gender science as a maledominated activity, while descriptive language, introspection and the arts are characterised
as female pursuits:
Schon kam es mir nicht mehr gefährlich vor, an jener Arbeitsteilung mitzuwirken, die
den Frauen das Recht auf Trauer, Hysterie, die Überzahl der Neurosen läßt und ihnen
den Spaß gönnt, sich mit den Entäußerungen der Seele zu befassen […] und mit dem
großen, schier unausschöpflichen Sektor der schönen Künste. Während wir Männer
die Weltkugel auf unsere Schultern laden, unter deren Last wir fast
zusammenbrechen, und uns unbeirrt den Realitäten widmen, den drei großen W:
Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft, Weltpolitik [p. 163].
172
Fehervary and Lennox, p. 111.
125
Literature, language and culture, like women, are dismissed as frivolous and unimportant
by denying them a status in reality. One type of writing, though, is considered acceptable:
the scientific report, or treatise. However, as demonstrated by the remark that there is
nothing more strange than women writing scientific reports, women are generally excluded
from this ‘acceptable’ form of writing. Thus, there is an attempt by men in the story to
attribute gender to genre as well as to science and culture; the ‘objective’ report is a worthy
male form of writing, while literary prose is dismissed as a trivial feminine amusement.
By infiltrating the male domain of the Traktat through her alternative report, the narrator
flouts the exclusion of women from certain types of writing. Furthermore, as Mittman
observes, ‘Selbstversuch’ is a text within a text, a scientific treatise within a piece of
literary fiction.173 By blurring the boundaries between these genres, and fusing elements of
scientific and literary language, Wolf challenges the male-female binary divisions which
are perpetuated by the scientists in ‘Selbstversuch’. In this sense, then, rather than
launching a defence of literature as found in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’, Wolf
uses the concept of writing to defend the text’s feminist thesis regarding the destructiveness
of binary thinking.
Mittman argues that, because the Traktat is a private text, addressed only to the Professor, it
fails to disrupt or challenge the original Protokoll, thereby perpetuating binary divisions,
and illustrating the ineffectiveness of the feminine voice in a patriarchal scientific world.174
One of the problems with this reading is that, as well as constituting a private piece of
correspondence, the Traktat is a fictional short story written by Wolf, and as such it offers a
173
174
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, p. 47.
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, p. 47.
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very public, woman-authored challenge to official discourse. The Traktat is
‘Selbstversuch’; ‘Selbstversuch’ is the Traktat. Thus, I would argue that, as a meta-critical
commentary on existing discourse, the Traktat is in fact a powerful endorsement of the
critical potential of ‘feminine’ literature and the female voice. Furthermore, Wolf uses a
piece of writing that, in its confessional tone, conversational rhetoric and use of personal
anecdote, defies the generic conventions of an official report to do what the report does not,
that is, to highlight the failings of prevailing scientific and political discourse and practice.
This in itself is a demonstration of the necessity and influence of subjective writing, of
literature.
Highlighting the double role of the narrator as scientist and author, Eigler’s analysis of the
function of the Traktat differs in the importance it attributes to the role of literature in
modern society:
In her role as scientist, the protagonist vows to work toward changing the parameters
of scientific research in ways that recognise rather than ignore or appropriate the
other. In her role as author of the treatise, she is actively involved in probing the
(gendered) production of meaning through scientific language and thus in situating
and ultimately in reshaping scientific discourse. […] the protagonist’s double role as
scientist and author reminds us of the creative and critical potentials that lie in the
interaction between the different disciplines.175
Focusing on the mutually complementary nature of the narrator’s positions as scientist and
writer, Eigler’s analysis evokes Gatersleben scientist and author, Hans Stubbe, and his
insistence on the cooperation between the two disciplines. This suggests that what Wolf is
emphasising is not so much the superiority of literature compared to science, but the
importance of their cooperation. In ‘Ein Besuch’ she writes about this cooperation; in
‘Selbstversuch’ she acts it out. Certainly, the story indicates that science as a discipline can
175
Eigler, ‘Rereading Christa Wolf’s “Selbstversuch”’, pp. 411-12.
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be redeemed if only scientists would take note of the narrator’s critique of its androcentric
bias. Thus, although the thematisation of writing in ‘Selbstversuch’ is far more implicit
than that of ‘Ein Besuch’ and ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’, Wolf gives space in
this third ‘academia tale’ to the conclusions drawn in both of its literary predecessors: first,
that science and writing are equally necessary pursuits which balance and complement one
another; second, that literature must be rescued from obliteration at the hands of irrational
scientists.
2.4.8 Closing Remarks
Important though it is to understand what it is that Wolf is criticising in ‘Selbstversuch’ and
her other ‘academia tales’, it is the aesthetic models she constructs to deliver her range of
academic, scientific and political critiques which lie at the heart of this study. One of the
interesting things about Wolf’s construction of the scientific institute is the way in which
certain key models – a hierarchical relationship, a corrupted experiment, an institutionalised
scientist – have the potential to evoke symbolic political meanings in the reader’s mind. As
we see in ‘Selbstversuch’, the more concrete the representation of the academic institute
and its mechanisms, the more clearly defined is the metaphorical political critique. In
Störfall, which was written more than a decade after ‘Selbstversuch’, the scientific
institution features only peripherally. Instead of constructing the institution as a
metaphorical model of the GDR state, Wolf gives more weight to an over-arching
commentary on the dangerous potential of scientific, as well as literary, endeavour. It is
therefore treated only briefly here.
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2.5 Conclusion: A Glance Forward at Störfall
In contrast to ‘Ein Besuch’ and ‘Selbstversuch’, which are set in named GDR institutions,
Störfall – which constituted a response to the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 – shares with
‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ an oblique representation of the scientific institute
and the scientist. In ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’, the institutional setting of the
SYMAGE experiment remains in the background, and Professor Barzel’s actions and
words are largely mediated through the tomcat narrator. This marginalisation of the
scientist is taken to its extreme in Störfall in which the narrator’s absent scientist brother is
in a state of enforced passivity, lying unconscious on the operating table. He is spoken of
only in the third person; the little we learn of him is reported from the narrator’s
perspective. Although Störfall is not set in an institution, many of the questions introduced
in Wolf’s early ‘academia tales’ are taken up and developed in this novella: the positive and
negative capacity of scientific development; the destructive potential of instrumental
reason; the detrimental nature of prevailing patriarchal norms; and the parallels between
science and writing. In describing the narrator’s brother as unconscious on the operating
table, Wolf is not necessarily deliberately seeking to objectify the scientist, but it might be
significant that the scientist has to be silenced in order for the text’s scientific, feminist and
cultural critiques to unfold.
There is another interesting development between Wolf’s texts in that the train carriages
which roll off the production line in Der geteilte Himmel give way to the more abstract
production of scientific knowledge in Wolf’s three ‘academia tales’. The intangible product
of Störfall – nuclear energy – could not be further removed from the physical product of
Rita’s workgroup in Der geteilte Himmel. This indicates that Wolf has not entirely lost
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interest in the concept of production, even though she now explores it in less traditionally
Marxist terms. Furthermore, the thematisation of nuclear energy is proof of the argument
advanced in her ‘academia tales’ that the products of scientific pursuit can be at once
beneficial and harmful. This idea of the positive and negative potential of scientific
endeavour is also applied to the discipline of writing through a process of candid
introspection. By the time she writes Störfall, Wolf is no longer at pains to explore the
plight of the GDR writer in a strictly controlled state, or the marginalisation of literature in
a world dominated by scientific pursuit. Rather, she resurrects the notion introduced in ‘Ein
Besuch’ of science and writing as equals. This leads her to explore the shared destructive
potential of each discipline, questioning whether the writer is as responsible for humanity’s
woes as the hyper-rational scientist.
Although Wolf does not employ the scientific institute as a model to conceptualise social
and political dynamics in the GDR as she does in her three ‘academia tales’, it is possible to
read her thematisation of nuclear science on a metaphorical level: the recognition of the
idealistic impulse informing the first nuclear scientists’ pursuit of nuclear fission leads the
narrator to reflect on the way in which political, as well as scientific, ideals can become
perverted. In this way, Wolf seems to invite comparison between nuclear scientists and
GDR politicians, in much the same way as she highlights the commonalities between the
Professor figures and the GDR political elite in ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ and
‘Selbstversuch’. Despite this, she appears to deflect blame from the GDR leadership. She
does this in part by choosing not to name the Chernobyl disaster as the story’s inspiration
(which means that she does not have to confront problems shared by Eastern Bloc
countries), and by exploring the utopian origins of nuclear science. More importantly, by
moving away from the use of the scientific institute as a microcosm of the GDR state,
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Wolf’s critique takes on more universal import than in her ‘academia tales’. Interestingly,
the only scientific institute upon which Wolf explicitly draws is not a GDR centre, but the
Livermore Research Laboratory in the US, which she depicts as a hub of instrumental
rationality and alienated scientific pursuit. This inclusion of an American scientific institute
suggests that Wolf has completely removed her GDR blinkers and is now unequivocally
acting as a warning voice for the whole of the developed world. But it can also be
interpreted as another way of deflecting blame from the Soviet leadership; while nuclear
power is of course a global phenomenon, the Chernobyl disaster happened in the Soviet
Union.
Thus, in contrast to ‘Ein Besuch’, ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ and
‘Selbstversuch’, in which the scientific institute is employed as a vehicle through which to
highlight the failings of the GDR, the scientific institute in Störfall is used not so much to
launch a GDR-specific critique, as to further Wolf’s over-arching critiques of unchecked
scientific endeavour and the embeddedness of patriarchal values. Of course, the themes of
science and patriarchy could have been explored through the metaphor of the institution:
my analyses of Wolf’s three ‘academia tales’ demonstrated that she has long had an
intellectual interest in scientific endeavour and gender issues, which she formerly chose to
explore through the cipher of the scientific institute. Wolf’s declining interest in the model
of the institution might be seen as a logical consequence of her changing concerns: by the
late 1980s she considered over-arching questions surrounding unchecked scientific pursuit
and patriarchal values to be as much, if not more, in need of expression than her
disenchantment with real-existing socialism and GDR social relations. In other words, she
no longer needs the scientific institute to serve as a vehicle for her encoded political
critique. Alternatively, or perhaps in addition, she may simply have ceased to be interested
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in institutional dynamics and mechanisms on a realist level. In the following chapter we
find a similar pattern in Königsdorf’s texts which feature academic institutions: in her short
stories, the GDR academic institution is foregrounded and can be read as a metaphorical
model of the GDR state. The academic institutions which feature in her novella
Respektloser Umgang are represented more obliquely, and while they do have some
metaphorical potential, as Königsdorf takes up the theme of nuclear research she too seems
to lose interest in the critical potential of the scientific institute as a microcosm of the GDR.
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Chapter Three: Representations of the Academic Institution in the Pre-Wende Work
of Helga Königsdorf
3.1 Introduction
In addition to working as a mathematician at the GDR’s Akademie der Wissenschaften,
Helga Königsdorf published three volumes of short satirical stories in the last decade of the
GDR’s existence, thereby responding to a lifelong urge to write.176 The first part of this
chapter looks at the representation of the academic institute, the Institut für Zahlographie,
in this series of ‘academia tales’, and will show that, like Wolf’s stories, Königsdorf’s
‘academia tales’ operate on the level of realist as well as metaphorically coded critique. On
a realist level, Königsdorf explores the perversion of pure academic principles, which is
similar to Wolf’s realist discussions of questions surrounding scientific pursuit and the
perversion of Enlightenment ideals. In addition, by conceptualising the academic institute
as a metaphorical model of the GDR state, Königsdorf reiterates Wolf’s concern about the
perversion of socialist ideals. Like Wolf, she explores the reasons for that perversion;
unlike Wolf, she also asks whether that ideal can be redeemed, and to whom this
responsibility falls.
In the second part of this chapter I look at the representation of academia and various
scientific institutes in Königsdorf’s novella Respektloser Umgang, published in 1986.
Although the academic institutions which feature in this text do not at first sight appear to
be conceptualised metaphorically, by exploring Königsdorf’s thematisation of the
connections between past and present, I show how the academic institutions which
176
Meine ungehörigen Träume was published in 1978, Der Lauf der Dinge in 1982, Lichtverhältnisse in
1988.
133
Königsdorf describes, although they pre-date the GDR, can nevertheless generate
metaphorical meanings which relate to the GDR.
3.2 Königsdorf’s ‘Academia Tales’
3.2.1 Introduction
Thematically, Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ can roughly be divided into those which have
been labelled her ‘woman’ stories – featuring unfulfilled women in the private sphere of the
home – and those which have been classified as her ‘science’ stories (which I call her
‘academia tales’) – peopled by unfulfilled scientists and mathematicians who operate in the
public sphere of the academic institution. Elizabeth Mittman has objected that the division
of Königsdorf’s stories into these distinct categories unhelpfully perpetuates the womanscience dualism which Königsdorf, in contrast to Wolf, seeks to overcome; she also argues
that it overlooks the continuities between all of Königsdorf’s short stories.177 Conversely,
Julia Petzl’s analysis of realism in Königsdorf’s pre-Wende volumes compounds this
distinction: Petzl describes Königsdorf’s ‘woman stories’ as inherently hopeful and
spiritual, while she attributes Königsdorf’s satirical ‘academia tales’ to the cynical
component of her writing.178 The publication, in 1989, of Ein sehr exakter Schein, in which
these ‘academia tales’ were drawn together, gives physical form to the division between the
two groups of stories.179 Although, as Mittman’s comments suggest, this is not
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, p. 66.
Julia Petzl, Realism and Reality in Helga Schubert, Helga Königsdorf and Monika Maron (Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 2003), p. 18.
179
Ein sehr exakter Schein contains ten stories. Interestingly, it does not include the story ‘Eine Idee und ich’
from the volume Der Lauf der Dinge, even though it is very obviously set in an academic institution.
Furthermore, it does include two stories, ‘Pi’ and ‘Der kleine Prinz und das Mädchen mit den holzfarbenen
Augen’, which, although they involve critiques of the rigid GDR education system and of the state’s
bureaucratic machinery, respectively, do not clearly fall into the category of the ‘academia tale’.
177
178
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unproblematic, Ein sehr exakter Schein is valuable for my purposes in that it focuses
attention on the particular significance of the (academic) institution which is absent in
Königsdorf’s ‘woman stories’.
While two out of three of Wolf’s stories foreground institution leaders and professors,
Königsdorf peoples most of her stories with a more even spread of departmental leaders
and rank-and-file mathematicians and scientists. While Wolf generally attributes
responsibility for the perversions she depicts to the institution leaders – who function as
metaphors for the GDR political elite – Königsdorf suggests that the process of perversion
is more complex than this, that it partly depends on the interaction between the leaders and
the led. Furthermore, while Wolf emphasises the content of specific scientific experiments
– which all in some way stand for the socialist experiment – Königsdorf explores more
general questions concerning the organisation and direction of scientific research, the ways
in which distorted institutional agendas define and impede academic endeavour.
One can speculate that these differences are informed partly by the individual experiences
and biographies of the two writers, and partly by the differing political and social
conditions at the time that each was writing. Wolf’s Marxist background and life-long
occupation as a writer and intellectual account, firstly, for her critical evaluation of literary
and scientific endeavour and, secondly, for her interrogation of political and Enlightenment
ideals and their perversion. It is perhaps unsurprising that her ‘academia tales’, written two
decades into the GDR’s lifetime and at a time of tangible political control over social and
cultural activities, express disappointment with the perversion of utopian beginnings. Her
focus on the failings of the socialist leadership might in part be attributable to her
disillusion with the severity of GDR cultural policies. Conversely, that Königsdorf spent
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most of her life working not as a writer but as a more inconspicuous mathematician
accounts, in part at least, for the realist observations on GDR academia to be found in her
stories. That her initiation into the literary arena post-dated the most repressive years of
political and cultural control, and that she never came into conflict with the GDR
authorities or literary censor,180 may well account for her readiness to explore not only the
failings of the GDR political elite, but also the ways in which ordinary East Germans
contributed to the unsatisfactory status quo. Furthermore, it is perhaps to be expected that
Königsdorf’s stories, written in the final decade of the GDR’s existence, and in its most
liberal years, should focus as much on the question of the future redeemability of perverted
ideals as on the retrospective question of the process of their distortion.
3.2.2 Previous Scholarly Approaches
In some previous studies of Königsdorf’s work, much has been made of her scientific
background as a mathematician, and the way her experiences as a scientist informed her
creative writing. Although such biographical approaches are of value, they are limited in
that they focus on Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ as straightforward reflections of academic
life in the GDR. Approaches such as this, epitomised by Diana Alberghini’s study of
Königsdorf’s evolving identities as a scientist, writer and intellectual, tend to preclude
discussion of the aesthetic complexity of the texts, the metaphorical models Königsdorf
uses to invite critical political readings.181 In so doing, they overlook the implications of
Königsdorf’s representation of the academic institution for the GDR state beyond.182
180
In fact, Königsdorf won the Heinrich-Mann Prize in 1985 for her volumes of stories Meine ungehörigen
Träume (1978) and Der Lauf der Dinge (1982).
181
Diana Alberghini, ‘Helga Königsdorf’s Evolving Identities: An Eastern German Author’s Responses to an
Era of Personal and Political Upheaval (1978-98)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Bath, 2000).
182
Dunja Welke also reduces Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ to their commentary on academic inadequacy.
Thus, she states that they are ‘weniger gewichtig’ than the ‘woman stories’, and describes them simply as
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Mittman’s analysis of the stories’ symbolic potential provides an alternative to Alberghini’s
literal analysis; she explains how the experiences of Königsdorf’s academics also reflect
those of the GDR citizenry. Valid though both of these lines of enquiry are, the existing
body of research on the ‘academia tales’ is limited to one approach or the other: either to
literal discussions of Königsdorf’s critique of academic bureaucracy and stagnation on the
one hand, or to purely metaphorical analyses of the symbolic potential of her fictional
institutions on the other. I propose instead to consider the interactions between the stories’
literal and metaphorical dimensions.
3.2.3 Summary of Stories
Mittman’s selection of just four of Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’, two taken from Meine
ungehörigen Träume, two from Der Lauf der Dinge, allows for detailed analysis, but it
makes it difficult to gain an over-arching sense of Königsdorf’s stories and the progression
between them. In her introduction to her discussion of Königsdorf, Mittman observes that
although Königsdorf depicts several different research institutes in her ‘academia tales’,183
and although she peoples them with different protagonists, when read together the stories
take on a coherence: they can be read as variations on the themes of alienation, emptiness,
self-serving circularity and expulsion.184 Because I want to draw on all of Königsdorf’s
‘academia tales’ in order to convey a sense of their ‘wholeness’, and in order to avoid
‘Satiren auf Unproduktivität, auf einen unnützen Verwaltungsaufwand, auf Plagiate und sinnentleerte
Mechanismen von Aufstieg und Auszeichnung im Wissenschaftsbetrieb’. See: Dunja Welke, ‘Träume,
Attacken, Studien. Helga Königsdorf Der Lauf der Dinge’, Neue deutsche Literatur, 31/12 (1983), 151-5 (p.
153).
183
‘Krise’ is set in the Forschungszentrum für Zahlographie; ‘Autodidakten’ is set in the Vereinigtes Zentrum
für Zahlographie and features the Vereinigtes Zentrum für Meta-Makrologie; ‘Eine Idee und ich’ features the
Forschungszentrum für angewandte Kübernautik; and ‘Kugelblitz’ features the Forschungsinstitut für MetaMakrologie.
184
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, p. 68.
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excessive repetition, I structure my analysis along thematic lines rather than looking at each
text in turn. Thus, a brief summary of each story will suffice to introduce them.
Meine ungehörigen Träume (1978) contains three ‘academia tales’. ‘Lemma 1’ features one
of Königsdorf’s few ‘good’ scientists, Johanna Bock, a gifted doctoral student who cracks
the unsolved ‘drittes Kurzsches Problem’,185 only to realise that her solution relies on a
flawed mathematical principle, a principle upon which much of the research of the
mathematics establishment is founded. When she insists on publicly revealing the error, she
is expelled from the research institute on the grounds of incompetence and trouble-making.
‘Krise’ is the story of Dr Heinrich Glors, a quiet and earnest mathematician who, like Bock,
identifies a mathematical crisis, this time in the discipline of primary numbers. His groundbreaking theory is beyond the scope of his intellectually limited colleagues who place
institutional rivalry and self-interest above pure scientific progress, and he is demoted to a
college of further education to study ‘Gülletechnik’ – the production and handling of liquid
manure. Meanwhile his work achieves international recognition and his former colleagues
seek to re-recruit him, but he is too absorbed investigating a crisis in his new discipline to
be won back. ‘Eine Idee und ich’ has a careerist first-person narrator who artfully
manipulates his colleagues to persuade them to help him set up a ‘Konsultationszentrum für
angewandte Kübernautik’, which he hopes will enhance his promotional prospects.
Although the centre is widely celebrated in the media, and the narrator is subsequently
promoted, the official propaganda conceals the reality that the centre is a self-serving
façade that is of benefit to no one.
The ‘drittes Kurzsches Problem’ is a recurrent theme in Königsdorf’s fiction, also appearing in the story
‘Autodidakten’, and the post-Wende novels Im Schatten des Regenbogens and Die Entsorgung der
Großmutter.
185
138
Published in 1982, Der Lauf der Dinge contains four ‘academia tales’. ‘Der unangemessene
Aufstand des Zahlographen Karl-Egon Kuller’ is the cynical story of a life-long conformist
and careerist mathematician who is suddenly struck by the hypocrisy of his environment
and the meaninglessness of his existence as a GDR mathematician. Ignoring the advice of
the university psychiatrist to keep his crisis to himself, he plans to give a flamboyant paper
at a national conference, in which he will expose the mathematical establishment for the
mediocre organisation he now perceives it to be. In a tragi-comic denouement, Kuller’s
ignorant and complacent academic audience greets his absurd paper with applause; the
despairing protagonist dies of a heart attack in the lecture theatre which, ironically, is
named after him in his honour. ‘Eine kollektive Leistung’ is a comical sketch about the
naivety of an unsuspecting mathematician and the plagiarism of his ideas by his colleagues
at his institution, as well as across the country and internationally. It is one of only a few of
Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ in which the international mathematics community is also
implicated. ‘Der todsichere Tip’ features a happy scientist, Cornelia Fröhlich, the only one
of Königsdorf’s mathematicians who rises above the invidious politics of the institution,
and carves a niche for herself in which she manages to lead a cheerful existence.
‘Autodidakten’, the last ‘academia tale’ in this volume, is the most tragic. It tells the story
of two earnest, old-school mathematicians, der Alte – Director of the Vereinigtes Zentrum
für Zahlographie, and Dr Margarete Tatenbruch – one of his Abteilungsleiter. Their
friendship is thwarted by the struggle each wages against the challenges of
institutionalisation, and they grow increasingly alienated from themselves and each other.
When Tatenbruch suffers an acute crisis of faith in her academic existence, der Alte is
unable to support her; a slave to his conformist habits, he even hastens her demise.
Excluded, lonely and depressed, Tatenbruch dies alone, leaving der Alte with a feeling of
desolation which he knows will never leave him.
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Published in 1988, a decade after Königsdorf’s first volume, Lichtverhältnisse contains just
two ‘academia tales’, and compared to ‘Autodidakten’ their tone is much more lighthearted. ‘Kugelblitz’ is narrated from the perspective of the scientist Friedrich Kummer,
who reflects on his association with the late inventor Rudolf Knack. The two characters
meet when Kummer was a young doctoral student at the Forschungsinstitut für MetaMakrologie, where Knack, a self-taught scientist, was leading a relatively autonomous
existence as a stereotypical ‘mad inventor’. However, Knack’s independence was shortlived; his refusal to conform threatened the official order of the institution and, like many of
his literary predecessors, he was expelled. Unperturbed, he continued work on his
Kugelblitz machine in the haven of his apartment. Demotion, promotion and/or
imprisonment of one or other character saw the alliance between Kummer and Knack wane,
until, years later, Kummer was sent to investigate rumours of Knack’s scientific
breakthrough. Knack was invited back to the Institute where, before an audience of official
delegates, his invention spectacularly exploded. Kummer recalls a grotesque final scene in
which the officials fought with each other to escape the smoking laboratory; sheltering
beneath a table, Kummer and Knack dissolved into peels of hysterical laughter. The
mischievous note of glee at the end of ‘Kugelblitz’ is also to be found in ‘Polymax’,
Königsdorf’s final ‘academia tale’. There, Anton Glück, arrogant and self-satisfied chief
editor of the magazine Welt des Fortschritts, is in hospital awaiting a risky life-saving
operation. Also in the hospital is scientist Alfred Stiller, who is infamous amongst state
publishing houses for bombarding them with unwanted articles in which he seeks to explain
why the publicly venerated Polymax device is fundamentally flawed. Unable to penetrate
these institutions’ defences, Stiller has been hospitalised with alcoholism. In a closing
exchange reminiscent of Roald Dahl, Glück’s self-satisfied ruminations are rudely
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interrupted by the surgeon’s assurance that his chances of survival are maximised by the
‘revolutionary’ Polymax machine. A lifetime of careerism and complacency revisit Glück
in a perfect piece of karma.
Many of the techniques of satire which Feinberg outlines in his analysis of literary satire
can be found in Königsdorf’s texts. For example, Feinberg writes that as satire is
intellectually challenging, rather than emotionally cathartic, it is often delivered through a
sequence of short episodes which are sometimes interspersed with other material.186
Königsdorf’s division of her academic and political critique into a series of short stories
which are alternated with her ‘woman stories’ recalls this observation. Thus, Königsdorf’s
satirical vision is conveyed, to quote Feinberg, through ‘a number of incidents and
characterisations and settings and dialogues, rather than continuously developed by a single
dramatic plot line’.187 Furthermore, Königsdorf’s narration consists of a mixture of realism,
sentimentalism, didacticism and caricature: the realism of her critique of academic
hierarchy and bureaucracy; the sentimentalism of Tatenbruch’s isolation, depression and
death; the didacticism of the texts’ exposure of hypocrisy, arrogance and self-serving
conformism; and the satire of her caricatured protagonists and exaggerated situations. As
Feinberg explains, the combination of these incongruous elements has a satirical effect.188
Other satirical devices employed by Königsdorf include the comic disparity between the
serious self-image of the Institut für Zahlographie and the reality of its total
ineffectiveness; the exaggerated characterisations of her most reprehensible characters; the
unexpected twists in the endings of ‘Kugelblitz’ and ‘Polymax’; the inappropriately lighthearted account of Kuller’s death; and the cool and abrupt narration of many of the
186
Feinberg, p. 85.
Feinberg, p. 227.
188
Feinberg, p. 78.
187
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protagonists’ failures and disasters. In addition there are the instances of comic repetition of
language in ‘Eine Idee und ich’ through which the pomposity, ineptitude and aggression of
the typical GDR bureaucrat is parodied; the humorous ‘speaking’ names Königsdorf gives
her protagonists – Fröhlich, Bock, Kuller, Tatenbruch, Knack, Kummer, Glück – not to
mention the names of the scientists in ‘Eine kollektive Leistung’, which spell out the entire
alphabet – AB, Doktor Cedeh, Professor E. Eff, G.Hai, Jotka, L.M.Nope etc.; the
disorientatingly authentic-sounding neologisms Königsdorf coins for the disciplines in
which her protagonists are engaged – ‘Zahlographie’, ‘angewandte Kübernautik’,
‘Praximetrie’, ‘Meta-Makrologie’, ‘pyromantische Astralistik’, ‘Gülletechnik’; and the use,
in ‘Eine kollektive Leistung’, ‘Der todsichere Tip’ and ‘Krise’ of what Feinberg calls the
‘ingénu’ – the well-intentioned but naïve character whose failure to recognise the
dishonesty which surrounds him or her serves to expose and compound the hypocrisy of the
other characters.189
3.2.4 GDR Academia – A Literal Critique
That Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ were generally received as literal critiques of the GDR
academic world is indicated by the fact that it was her academic colleagues, rather than the
GDR literary censor, who condemned her as a ‘Nestbeschmutzerin’ following the
publication of Meine ungehörigen Träume.190 The defensive reaction of Akademie der
Wissenschaften mathematicians was a response to their literal reading of ‘Lemma 1’,
‘Krise’ and ‘Eine Idee und ich’ as commentaries on the bureaucratisation, mediocrity,
hypocrisy and inertia of GDR academia. On the prefatory page of Der Lauf der Dinge
Königsdorf states ‘wer Ähnlichkeiten findet, muß Gründe haben’. This can be read as an
189
190
Feinberg, p. 239.
Alberghini, ‘Helga Königsdorf’s Evolving Identities’, p. 104.
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ironic response to her colleagues’ displeasure, and indicates her continuing commitment to
exposing the deficiencies of GDR academia in her subsequent volumes.
Königsdorf most obviously expresses her critique of GDR academia through the use of
recurring themes and images. The most unsettling of these is that of the exclusion or
destruction of those who are unable or unwilling to conform to the demands of the
academic system: ‘Lemma 1’, ‘Krise’, ‘Der todsichere Tip’, ‘Autodidakten’ and
‘Kugelblitz’ all feature a mathematician or scientist whose non-conformity in some way
threatens the institution, which reacts by demoting or dismissing that individual. More
disturbingly, ‘Der unangemessene Aufstand des Zahlographen Karl-Egon Kuller’ and
‘Autodidakten’ conclude with the death of the main protagonist. Of course, Königsdorf is
not really suggesting that GDR academic institutions are literally killing off their
researchers: such exaggerations are a feature of the satirical mode of her ‘academia tales’.
Once these threatening individuals have been rendered harmless through expulsion or
death, the institution resumes its previous form, sliding back into a cycle in which
authoritarian hierarchical structures, the central planning of the research process, the
stifling of creativity, the rewarding of mediocrity, the normalisation of dishonesty, and the
crushing of non-conformists inexorably perpetuate each other. In one exaggerated scene,
the inviolability of the cycle to attack is vividly represented by Kuller’s failure to shock the
mathematics community out of its complacency with his absurd conference paper; the little
man’s voice is no match for the academic system’s defences which enable it to neutralise
criticism simply by failing to acknowledge it. The self-perpetuating mechanism of this
institutional machinery is further illustrated by the circular structure of the story ‘Eine Idee
und ich’, which closes with the first-person narrator parroting the formulaic constructions
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of his predecessor with which the story opened.191 Königsdorf is not so cynical about the
GDR academic world that she denies the possibility that it may also have produced some
‘good’ scientists. Although she does not idealise them, Bock, Fröhlich, Glors, the naïve AB
in ‘Eine kollektive Leistung’, Tatenbruch and Stiller are examples of sincere academics
who aspire to the truth. However, each of these is in some way limited by his or her
ambitious colleagues and the restrictive rules of the institution. As Königsdorf paints it, the
academic institution does not exist to promote excellence, but to preserve itself and the
positions of those at the top of the institutional hierarchy.
Königsdorf highlights several factors which perpetuate this cycle. For example, in contrast
to Wolf’s positive representation of the younger generation of scientists in Der geteilte
Himmel, generational change within Königsdorf’s academic institutions is shown to have a
negative impact on their ethos and organisation: although ‘old-school’ scientists such as der
Alte and, temporarily, Knack are still in position, many of the stories are peopled by a
younger generation of scientists whose academic mediocrity, careerism and hypocrisy
betray their training as SED conformists (the SED itself is never mentioned by name but
several of the stories feature a Kaderleiter, a Parteisekretär or a Minister) rather than as
independent academics committed to scientific advance. This type of GDR academic is
epitomised in the ambitious narrator of ‘Eine Idee und ich’, in the complacent Glück and in
the pre-crisis Kuller, whose thesis title Über die pyromantische Astralistik, chosen because
Eva Kaufmann also comments that the Kreislauf is a stock feature of Königsdorf’s satire in her ‘academia
tales’. See: Eva Kaufmann, ‘Spielarten des Komischen. Zur Schreibweise von Helga Königsdorf’, in Inge
Stephan, Sigrid Weigel and Kerstin Wilhelms, eds, ‘Wen kümmert’s, wer spricht.’ Zur Literatur und
Kulturgeschichte von Frauen aus Ost und West (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991), pp. 177-84 (p. 178). Another
example can be found in Glors’ absorption in a crisis in the production of manure at the end of the story
‘Krise’, which echoes his discovery of the crisis in primary numbers with which it begins.
191
144
it combined the specialisms of his two doctoral examiners, symbolises, according to
Mittman, the power of empty representation in GDR academia.192
Königsdorf also demonstrates how the repressive cadre structure of GDR academic
institutions contributes towards the repression of her few ‘good’ scientists. While
occasional reference is made to the Kaderleiter and Kader, more often than not the system
is evoked through the situations Königsdorf describes. For example, the blame, bullying
and ejection which Bock experiences upon seeking to publicise her mistake is shown to be
driven by the institute administration’s fears of invoking the authorities’ displeasure. This
insecurity is not without grounds; as predicted, the centre is strongly rebuked for failing to
meet the centrally drawn-up research plan. In the story ‘Krise’, der Alte is also driven by
fear of the central authorities. Anxious about the risky nature of Glors’ unpredictable
research outcomes, he invests instead in the ‘safe’ project proposed by Glors’ mediocre
colleagues. The need to please the Institute’s political puppet-masters also influences the
strategy of Der Papst in ‘Der todsichere Tip’, der Alte in ‘Autodidakten’ and the Director in
‘Kugelblitz’. Simultaneously the subjects and objects of rule, these institution leaders have
as their sole focus the reputation of their centres, and thereby the preservation of their
careers. Innovation, risk-taking and creativity are trained out of their scientific staff, just as
they have been trained out of them. Suspicion of individuality and independent thought
characterise their leadership style. Furthermore, Königsdorf ironises the official notion of a
philosophy of welfare which supposedly characterised GDR institutional relations: the
Kaderleiter in ‘Krise’ affects concern for Glors’ mental stability, when in fact this is a
convenient pretext on which to have him transferred. The figure of the institute psychiatrist
in ‘Der unangemessene Aufstand des Zahlographen Karl-Egon Kuller’ evokes the notion of
192
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, p. 81.
145
the GDR as a ‘welfare dictatorship’ as outlined by Jarausch,193 yet while they fulfil a caring
role, psychiatrists also exert a certain power and, in advising that Kuller will be publicly
condemned if he expresses his academic crisis, the institute psychiatrist in Königsdorf’s
story is an ambivalent figure whose motives do not just seem to be about welfare.
Similarly, in ‘Autodidakten’, der Alte not only fails to respond to Tatenbruch’s attempts to
talk to him about her failing motivation but, having orchestrated her exclusion on the
dubious grounds that she can no longer cope, he cannot even find the time to visit her at
home where she sinks into a fatal depression.
The incompetence and complacency of the ostensibly successful mathematicians in
Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ account for the academic mediocrity which Königsdorf
depicts. That generations of (fictional) mathematicians have unquestioningly based their
research on the flawed ‘Lemma 1’ principle suggests that the GDR mathematical elite was
intellectually lazy and inept, as does the failure of Bock’s examiners to pick up on her
mistake because her thesis is too advanced for them. In ‘Krise’, der Alte’s limited
mathematical knowledge, as well as his fear of risk-taking, lead him to reject Glors’
pioneering research in favour of the farcical ‘Praximetrie’ project. In ‘Eine Idee und ich’,
mathematics communities nationwide celebrate the founding of the Konsultationszentrum
für angewandte Kübernautik despite its total ineffectiveness. We are told in ‘Der
unangemessene Aufstand des Zahlographen Karl-Egon Kuller’ that, having established an
enviable mathematical reputation at doctoral level, the not untalented Kuller opted for a
middle-of-the-road research career and was rewarded for his minimal efforts with a
professorship. In ‘Autodidakten’, der Alte, who fails to appreciate the value of
Tatenbruch’s findings, dissolves her department and eventually makes Tatenbruch herself
193
Jarausch, ‘Care and Coercion’, pp. 59-60.
146
redundant. Finally, in ‘Kugelblitz’, Kummer reflects on the glorious careers of his
contemporaries who, satisfying but not exceeding the requirements of the planning
committee, are officially celebrated as sterling contributors to scientific progress.
Thus, Königsdorf paints a world in which the insecurity of the GDR political elite filters
down into academic institutions, resulting in a self-sustaining cycle of conformism,
mediocrity and stagnation. Her texts suggest the impossibility of reform as long as
scientific institutions are subject to the demands of an omnipotent centralised organ with an
ulterior agenda. Nevertheless, while Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ confirm much of what
we now know about the historical reality of the GDR academic establishment and the
mechanisms of institutionalisation in the GDR workplace, they should not necessarily be
viewed as realistic reflections of academic life, since her satirical approach relies heavily on
exaggeration, and her simplified models of the GDR academic institute distil and highlight
the worst of its features.
3.2.5 The GDR State – A Critique Encoded in Metaphor
Although Königsdorf’s background as an Akademie der Wissenschaften scientist
undoubtedly informed her realist critique of the distortions of GDR academia, it is also
possible to read her analysis of GDR institutional life on a metaphorical level.194 One of the
benefits of having surveyed the historical analyses of Jarausch et al. is that they illuminate
the commonalities between the academic structures Königsdorf describes and the political,
industrial and social structures of the GDR state. Thus, by better understanding the
Although ‘Der Operationssaal’ is not strictly an ‘academia tale’, Hans Carl Finsen’s discussion of this twopage fragment of the dreamlike story ‘Meine zentnerschweren Träume’ also provides a revealing analysis of
Königsdorf’s use of metaphor to illuminate the cynical state-society relationship in the GDR. See: Hans Carl
Finsen, ‘Das zentnerschwere Träumen der Helga Königsdorf’, Text und Kontext, 14/1 (1986), 133-9.
194
147
mechanisms of the academic perversion which Königsdorf depicts, in particular the cycle
of academic centralisation, conformity, mediocrity and inertia, we can see how these
institutional conditions are also symbolic of the perversions of the GDR state, both in the
specific arena of its industrial institutions and on a broader socio-political level.
Königsdorf’s realist critique of GDR academia and her coded critique of the GDR state
flicker through one another, creating an iridescence which has so far largely been
overlooked.
There is compelling textual evidence to support a reading of Königsdorf’s fictional
institutions as metaphorical models of the GDR state. Both are highly controlled
environments which are characterised by bureaucratic and rigidly hierarchical structures.
Both feature repressed individuals whose survival depends on their subordination to the
demands of their leaders. Neither the academic institution nor the GDR state offers room
for independent thought, creativity or the pursuit of Truth.
Furthermore, if we consider Mittman’s exploration of the word ‘Zahlographie’, a
neologism coined by Königsdorf as an umbrella term for the various mathematical
disciplines in which her protagonists are engaged, we see that both the state and the
academic institution seek to reify empty dogmas which pose as the idealistic ideologies of
which they are poor imitations. Developing Eva Kaufmann’s interpretation of the word
‘Zahlographie’, which conceptualises it straightforwardly as an alienating term for the
discipline of mathematics, Mittman writes:
[t]his new name is the name, in effect, of ‘anydiscipline’ or ‘anyscience’. […] The
very abstractness of ‘numerography’ – the writing of numbers – empties it of the idea
that an essence exists somewhere behind its system of representation. In other words,
the discipline of ‘Zahlographie’ becomes a potential metaphor for the process of
148
creating a system that refers only to itself. […] [Numbers’] only ‘meaning’ exists in
their relations to each other; there is no reference to phenomena outside of the system
– the language – of this number-writing.195
Mittman goes on to argue that by situating many of her protagonists in the Institut für
Zahlographie, Königsdorf indicates that the knowledge they produce will be emptily selfreferential; that the endeavours of her few ‘good’ scientists will be thwarted because their
pursuit of genuine knowledge is a threat to the self-serving status quo.196 Mittman’s
illuminating discussion can be developed further. First, I see a similar metaphor at work in
Königsdorf’s texts as in Wolf’s: just as Wolf constructs a metaphorical relationship
between her fictional scientific experiments and the GDR socialist ‘experiment’, so the
distorted maths of Königsdorf’s ‘Zahlographie’ can be read as a metaphor for the perverted
form of socialism that Königsdorf saw around her. According to this reading, the selfserving and stagnant qualities of ‘Zahlographie’ symbolise those of real-existing socialism.
If we develop the parallels further, the controlling institute directors of Königsdorf’s
stories, and by association the central authorities whom they are so keen to impress, emerge
as metaphors for the GDR’s self-serving SED functionaries whose organisation of socialist
ideology in the GDR state has resulted in ‘real-existing’ socialism, much as the discipline
of mathematics in Königsdorf’s fictional institutions has been usurped by ‘Zahlographie’.
Similarly, as well as functioning on a literal level, the scientists who people Königsdorf’s
institutions can be said to function as metaphors for ordinary East Germans. From those
who conform, to those who rebel, to those who transcend the institution either mentally, by
maintaining a positive outlook, or physically, by retreating into the private sphere,
Königsdorf’s protagonists represent the main ‘types’ of GDR individual. They highlight the
195
196
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, pp. 68-9.
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, pp. 69-70.
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range of possibilities which were available to GDR citizens seeking to negotiate a path
through the dictates of a repressive regime. Furthermore, the manipulation of the scientists
under the guise of professional welfare provision can be said to symbolise the hypocrisy of
the official discourse of social welfare in the GDR.197 In fact, the institution has a negative
impact on the emotional health of at least two of these characters: the intoxicating
enthusiasm which spurred Tatenbruch’s research at home gives way to indifference and
depression when she returns to the Institute; and following his fruitless interaction with
state publishing houses Stiller sinks into alcoholism. This contrast between the idyll of the
home and the public sphere of the institution lends force to a metaphorical interpretation in
which the institution becomes a metaphor for the corrupted GDR state: outside of the
institution individuals are motivated, fulfilled and successful, while contact with the
institution yields despair, failure, instability.
3.2.6 Questioning the Inevitability of the Perversion of Socialism
Observing that the pure pursuit of knowledge is constantly hampered by the institution in
Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’, Mittman argues that at the heart of Königsdorf’s concerns is
‘the incompatibility of two different models of what science is or should be’.198 That those
protagonists who seek to expose the gulf between the two are silenced through expulsion or
death, Mittman says, underlines Königsdorf’s belief that ‘the idea of an alternative within
the sphere of institutional practice is unliveable, unviable’.199 Mittman goes on to ask
whether knowledge and its discourse can be separated, or whether Königsdorf’s sketches
Finsen’s metaphorical reading of ‘Der Operationssaal’ supports my reading of the ‘academia tales’.
Reading the doctors who are poised to operate on the ostensibly healthy narrator as metaphors for the
seemingly benevolent but actually cynical political functionaries of the GDR, Finsen says that readers would
immediately have understood Königsdorf’s allusion to the perversion of Marxist-Leninist ideology.
198
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, p. 70.
199
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, p. 70.
197
150
demonstrate that an ideal can never escape distortion by its organising discourse. She
concludes that Königsdorf does not provide an answer to this question.
Given the metaphorical relationship between ‘Zahlographie’ and real-existing socialism, I
would argue that Königsdorf is also posing this question with regard to socialist ideology
and its discourse: is it inevitable that the pure ideology of socialism should become
contaminated by its organisation? Several scholars have observed in Königsdorf’s
‘academia tales’ a pessimistic tendency which intensifies through the volumes; they
attribute this to her growing disillusionment with GDR state socialism.200 Although
Königsdorf could never have been classified a dissident, there are many clues which
indicate her increasing disenchantment. For example, in addition to my analysis of her
institution stories, other scholars have interpreted stories on quite different themes as biting
satires on the inadequacies of real-existing socialism: ‘Der kleine Prinz und das Mädchen
mit den holzfarbenen Augen’, published in 1982, and ‘Die Himmelfahrt des Philosophen
Bleibetreu’, published in 1988, are obvious examples.201 More explicitly, in conversation
with Günter Gaus in 1994, Königsdorf explains that although she initially wrote for
personal reasons, these were subsequently overtaken by a political motivation which she
See in particular: Alberghini, ‘Helga Königsdorf’s Evolving Identities’, pp. 111-13. Quoting the title of
one of the stories in Der Lauf der Dinge, Marilyn Sibley Fries observes that the ‘inappropriate’ dreams of
Königsdorf’s first volume turn into ‘zentnerschwere Träume’ in her second. See: Marilyn Sibley Fries, ‘Helga
Königsdorf (1938-) (Germany)’, in Elke Frederiksen and Elizabeth Ametsbichler, eds, Women Writers in
German-Speaking Countries: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1998), pp. 265-79 (p. 270). Although Anneliese Stawström’s overview of Lichtverhältnisse does not consider
the progression between Königsdorf’s three pre-Wende volumes, Stawström emphasises the gloomy tone of
its stories, including that of ‘Kugelblitz’. See: Anneliese Stawström, ‘Helga Königsdorf. Lichtverhältnisse’,
Moderna Sprak, 84 (1990), 99-101.
201
See: Sigfrid Hoefert, ‘Weltraummotive in der DDR-Literatur der 70er und 80er Jahre. Zu Helga
Königsdorfs Version des “Kleinen Prinzen”’, in Proceedings of the XIIth Congress of the International
Comparative Literature Association, 2 (Munich: Iudicium, 1988), pp. 416-21. For an analysis of ‘Die
Himmelfahrt des Philosophen Bleibetreu’, see: Petzl, pp. 127-9.
200
151
describes as ‘dieses Bewußtsein […] etwas machen, etwas ändern zu wollen’.202 And in her
post-Wende essay ‘Was nun?’, Königsdorf expresses the creeping disillusionment she felt
with the dysfunctional reality of the GDR state:
Auch als längst offensichtlich war, daß das Gesellschaftskonzept nicht funktionierte,
weil jede innere Triebkraft für eine Entwicklung fehlte, waren sie [die Nomenklatura]
zu keinerlei Korrektur bereit […]. Statt dessen wurden sie immer repressiver, und
ihre vordergründigen eitlen Demonstrationen von Macht beleidigten uns in ihrer
unmoralischen Arroganz.203
Despite her (retrospective) claim ‘etwas ändern zu wollen’, if we read Königsdorf’s stories
in the light of Feinberg’s theory of satire, it might appear that she, like Feinberg, is
pessimistic about the possibility of change. As indicated in Chapter One, Feinberg’s
pessimism derives from his analysis of the question of identification in satirical texts. First,
he argues that developed psychological characterisation is not compatible with satire
because ‘to examine carefully the position of one’s opponent is to develop sympathy with
him […] but to be sympathetic is to stop being a satirist’.204 Second, shifting his attention
from writer to reader, he argues that the latter’s pleasure in reading satire lies not in his or
her identification with the criticised protagonist, but in the sense of superiority he or she
gains by identifying with the satirist who is doing the criticising. This identification of the
reader with the author leads Feinberg to conclude that, while satire might provoke the
reader to question previously unchallenged norms, it rarely prompts him or her to any
constructive action:
One of the reasons why we get more pleasure from satire than from a sermon, even
when the satire is making exactly the same point as the sermon, is that we have an
uncomfortable feeling that the minister expects us to do something about it. We enjoy
Günter Gaus, ‘Zurück in die Alltagsgeschichte. Helga Königsdorf im Gespräch mit Günter Gaus’, Neue
deutsche Literatur, 42/5 (1994), 179-92 (p. 91).
203
Helga Königsdorf, ‘Was nun?’, in Aus dem Dilemma eine Chance machen, pp. 15-16.
204
Feinberg, p. 14.
202
152
satire because we know that nobody really expects us to do anything about it, and that
we have no real intention of ever doing anything about it.205
Thus, says Feinberg, as long as there is identification between satirist and reader, this
generally results not in a modification of the reader’s behaviour, but in its affirmation and
perpetuation. And as long as there is a lack of identification between reader and
protagonist, the power of satire to effect change is limited.
The question of identification is a complex one in Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’: on the
one hand, Königsdorf’s fusion of realist and coded critique seems to invite readers from all
walks of GDR life to recognise themselves and their situations in the stories. On the other,
the satirical flavour of the stories undercuts identification with even their most sympathetic
characters: can the reader really identify with the ‘good’ mathematician Glors when he
earnestly absorbs himself in a crisis in the production of manure; or with the guileless AB
of ‘Eine kollektive Leistung’ when he naively fails to see through his manipulative
colleagues?206 By playing with popular stereotypes of the ‘egghead’ scientist and the ‘mad
inventor’, which seem to have retained a certain currency in the GDR despite an official
rhetoric that valorised science for its service to the ‘Werktätige’, Königsdorf inhibits the
process of identification between the reader and many of her characters: it is not just that
the reader cannot easily identify with laughable or one-dimensional types but, more
205
Feinberg, p. 7.
The more psychologically developed characters of Margarete Tatenbruch and Der Alte in ‘Autodidakten’
are the only exception to Königsdorf’s satirical characterisation. It is partly for this reason that reviewer Uwe
Wittstock rates ‘Autodidakten’ above Königsdorf’s other ‘academia tales’, which he dismisses as
‘unanschaulich’, ‘dürr’ and ‘karg’. See: Uwe Wittstock, ‘Der Mann als widerspenstiges Lustobjekt.
Geschichten der DDR-Autorin Helga Königsdorf’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 271 (22nd November
1983), p. 2.
206
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specifically, the average GDR reader would not necessarily identify with these peculiarly
academic characters, some of whom seemingly belong to another world.207
However, I would like to problematise the notion of a narrative of pessimism by drawing
attention to the change of mood at the end of Königsdorf’s last two ‘academia tales’. Far
from resonating with doom and resignation, ‘Kugelblitz’ offers some cause for hope:
despite the best efforts of the institution to hinder the progress of Knack’s inventions, the
inventor’s dedication prevails, and he finally succeeds in building his pioneering Kugelblitz
machine. That it ultimately explodes due to a basic operational error could be interpreted as
symbolic of the institution’s ultimate victory over knowledge, but I read it more as
characteristic of Königsdorf’s satire which employs exaggeration and the absurd to unmask
the dysfunctional machinery of the institution and the GDR state of which it is a model. In
the final scene it is not the protagonists Knack and Kummer who suffer humiliation, but the
institution directors who have invited influential colleagues to witness the experiment’s
première, and whose undignified trampling to escape the laboratory speaks of their
cowardice and self-interest. Furthermore, Knack and Kummer’s hysterical laughter, which
triggers laughter in Kummer even as he recalls it, suggests, I think, the protagonists’
enduring resilience. That they are able to retain a sense of humour against all odds attests to
their impressive indestructibility, which must be the greatest victory possible against a
system which, as Königsdorf states in her post-Wende writings, was intent on destroying
human dignity.208 The upbeat mood of ‘Kugelblitz’ also characterises the ending of
Commenting on Königsdorf’s ‘woman stories’, Kaufmann similarly observes that Königsdorf’s superficial
and ambiguous characterisation of her female protagonists inhibits the reader’s identification with them. See:
Eva Kaufmann, ‘Helga Königsdorfs Band Meine ungehörigen Träume’, Weimarer Beiträge, 25/7 (1979),
109-13 (p. 110).
208
Alberghini explains that the concept of human dignity is a shaping principle of Königsdorf’s entire oeuvre,
and that she explicitly writes on the topic in her post-Wende essays. See: Alberghini, ‘Helga Königsdorf’s
Evolving Identities’, pp. 165-73.
207
154
‘Polymax’: Glück, who epitomises all that is wrong with real-existing socialism and its
practitioners, is about to be killed by the fruits of his arrogant management style. While it is
too late for the ‘good’ scientist Stiller, Königsdorf seems to be hinting that there are better
things to come.
Königsdorf’s non-fictional writings also indicate her optimism that the GDR could be
improved, a belief that she retained until its dissolution:
Wir glaubten an die Möglichkeit, ihn [den Sozialismus] von innen her zu reformieren,
ihn zu bessern. An die Möglichkeit, der schönen Utopie ein Stück näher zu kommen.
[…] Wir akzeptierten es nicht, das System, das uns umgab, aber wir liebten die
Utopie, die es einst auf seine Fahnen geschrieben hatte. Und wir hatten immer noch
die Hoffnung, wir könnten irgendwie dahin gelangen.209
Thus, the spirit of ‘good’ science which Mittman observes in the background of
Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ can be said to symbolise her belief in a ‘good’ socialism
waiting hopefully in the wings of the GDR.
This enduring faith in the essence of science and socialism does not, however, prove that it
is possible to preserve the essence of an ideology when it is put into practice. More
specifically, it does not automatically equate to a belief that socialism can overcome the
entrenched politics of its real-existing impostor. Königsdorf seems to explore these
questions through the attempts of her protagonists to ‘depart from the script’210 of
institutional mediocrity. At first glance, the attempts of her ‘good’ scientists to realise the
essence of their disciplines appear to be thwarted at every turn: Bock’s thesis is discredited;
Glors is reduced to the study of manure; Kuller’s exhortations fall on deaf ears;
209
210
Helga Königsdorf, ‘Was bleibt von der DDR-Literatur?’, in Aus dem Dilemma eine Chance machen, p. 33.
Fries, ‘Helga Königsdorf’, p. 269.
155
Tatenbruch’s research is dismissed; Stiller’s exposé is doctored; and even Knack snatches
defeat out of the jaws of victory. Crucially, however, although they all fail in the public
arena of the institution, the private setting of the home offers some of them a sanctuary in
which they are able to pursue their interests away from the spotlight’s glare. Indeed,
working in the unrestricted home environment, three of Königsdorf’s characters make
groundbreaking discoveries which, one senses, could not have been born in the GDR
institution: Tatenbruch nears a solution to the elusive ‘drittes Kurzsches Problem’, Knack
invents the pioneering Kugelblitz machine, and Stiller discovers an overlooked flaw in the
celebrated Polymax device.211 This image of the nourishing private sphere in Königsdorf’s
‘academia tales’ is in stark contrast to the bleak picture she paints of the home in her more
realist ‘woman stories’. In these, many of her female protagonists feel imprisoned by their
alienating daily routines and relationships, and by their lack of access to a supposedly more
fulfilling public sphere. This contrast between the representation of the home in her
‘woman stories’ and ‘academia tales’ highlights the constructedness of the fictional social
model in the latter, since she ascribes qualities to the home sphere which she does not
appear to believe exist in reality. Thus, by drawing on simplified metaphorical models of
the institution and the home in her ‘academia tales’, Königsdorf appears to be attesting to
the difficulty of changing the political discourse of the GDR state from within its existing
structures. If positive change is to happen, she suggests, it is more likely to be instigated
outside of official parameters.
There are echoes here of Ulrich Plenzdorf’s Die neuen Leiden des jungen W., in which the protagonist
Edgar Wibeau leaves his industrial apprenticeship and retreats from mainstream society to a hideout where he
invents a hydraulic spraygun. This invention symbolises the possibility for self-realisation outside of formal
institutional structures.
211
156
3.2.7 What Now? The Writer as an Initiator of Change
Despite the satirical mode of the ‘academia tales’ and the deaths, capitulations and failures
in which most of them end, as I suggested above, Königsdorf’s stories, when read as a
body, express a belief in the possibility of academic and political reform. But if all of her
protagonists fail, and if readers cannot be relied upon to take action where their fictional
counterparts did or could not, how can Königsdorf’s optimism be accounted for? Who or
what does she think has the power to interrupt the inexorable cycles she depicts?
Königsdorf’s motif of the embattled academic who longs to pursue authentic scientific
research evokes the image of those GDR writers who also seek to articulate the truth in a
public sphere that is often resistant to hearing the writer’s message. In fact, there are
interesting parallels between the mathematician Kuller in ‘Der unangemessene Aufstand
des Zahlographen Karl-Egon Kuller’ and the writer-narrator of Königsdorf’s story
‘Ehrenwort – ich will nie wieder dichten’. Both Kuller in ‘Der unangemessene Aufstand
des Zahlographen Karl-Egon Kuller’ and the writer in ‘Ehrenwort – ich will nie wieder
dichten’ are ostensibly successful in their respective fields; both are suddenly overcome by
an awareness of the way in which their activities are manipulated by the GDR authorities;
both suddenly cease to play along, Kuller by presenting his absurd conference paper, the
writer by dropping out of public life altogether. Fries’ statement that the latter story
‘contains a caustic criticism of a government that requires its citizens to refrain from
thinking, to act according to the official script’,212 could just as easily have been written of
the former, indeed of most of Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’. Furthermore, Königsdorf’s
description of the similarities between the disciplines of writing and mathematics in her
212
Fries, ‘Helga Königsdorf’, p. 276.
157
conversation with Günter Gaus explicitly attests to the commonalities between writers and
academics.213
Thus, by implicitly suggesting parallels between scientists and writers in the GDR, and by
openly pointing in her ‘academia tales’ to the private sphere as a locus for instituting
change, Königsdorf seems to be suggesting that writers enjoy a greater freedom to realise
their vision than their scientific counterparts who operate in the much more prescribed
scientific sphere.214 Taken together, Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ thus implicitly confirm
what Königsdorf has elsewhere explicitly stated about writers’ responsibility to correct
official versions of history.215 Of course, in the real-life GDR the distinction between public
and private was not as clear cut as Königsdorf’s models might suggest: while the private
sphere of the home in her ‘academia tales’ is set up in opposition to the public sphere of the
institution (a metaphor for the state), this is not to say that GDR writers who worked
outside of official institutions were thereby operating outside of the state itself. Thus, it is
unhelpful to assume a direct correspondence between all of Königsdorf’s metaphors and
GDR reality: like all satire, Königsdorf’s stories work with models of reality that are
simplified for effect. Nevertheless, analysis of the metaphorical dimension of her writing is
illuminating. As one metaphor opens out into another, we find not only a critique of the
213
Gaus, p. 91.
Although Königsdorf implicitly draws parallels between scientists and writers, unlike Wolf, she is neither
deeply interested in questions surrounding the relationship between the two disciplines, nor does she compare
the value of either discipline. Her suggestion that writers may succeed in bringing about change where her
scientist protagonists have failed should not be read as indicative of a belief that writing is a superior
discipline. Rather, it simply attests to the difficulties of changing institutional structures from within.
215
See in particular Königsdorf’s conversation with Gaus, in which she states that the political elite must not
be left alone to run things as best suits them; also, her belief that every time she bears witness in a story to an
experience that does not appear in official records of history, she is making an important contribution to
creating a better future: Gaus, p. 90 and p. 84.
214
158
political status quo, but a belief in the possibility of a more authentically socialist state, and
an endorsement of the writer as a central contributor to its realisation.216
3.2.8 Closing Remarks
While the protean nature of Wolf’s stories discussed above is rooted in her use of the
institution and its personnel as polyvalent metaphorical constructs, the iridescence of
Königsdorf’s texts is located in her synthesis of realist and metaphorically coded critique.
On a practical level, this allows Königsdorf to explore her interests in academic and
political perversion as both independent and interacting phenomena. And as analysis of the
aesthetics of Königsdorf’s fictional institution has revealed, by concealing a largely
subversive political critique within a seemingly innocuous portrayal of academic dystopia,
she creates a ‘safe’ space in which to examine and expose the mechanisms which led to the
perversion of the GDR’s political ideals; this also allows her to discuss the possibility of the
redemption of those ideals. Although the satirical mood of the ‘academia tales’ partly
implicates ordinary East Germans in the perversions which Königsdorf depicts, it
simultaneously inhibits the kind of identification between reader and protagonist which
might encourage the former to take productive action; instead, the writer is implicitly
proposed as a source of hope for the future of socialism in the GDR.
The satirical tone of Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ is in marked contrast to the serious
mood of Respektloser Umgang, written in 1986. There, Königsdorf describes three
scientific institutions – one in the GDR, one in National Socialist Germany, and one in
In his review of Der Lauf der Dinge, Ronald Schernikau astutely observes that ‘Königsdorf gibt sich nicht
mit Sachen ab, die nicht über Literatur geändert werden können.’ See: Ronald Schernikau, ‘Ehrenwort – ich
will nie wieder dichten. Neue Erzählungen von Helga Königsdorf’, Deutsche Volkszeitung, 10 (10th March
1983), p. 19.
216
159
wartime Sweden. While she moves away from the model of the GDR academic institute as
a microcosm of the GDR state as we saw in her ‘academia tales’, elements of her
representation of these institutions nevertheless evoke aspects of the GDR state.
3.3 A Glance at Respektloser Umgang
3.3.1 Introduction
On the dust-jacket of Der Lauf der Dinge Königsdorf is quoted as saying that it is time to
progress beyond depicting ‘trivialities’ such as women throwing men off balconies. She is
referring to ‘Bolero’, the first ‘woman story’ in the earlier volume Meine ungehörigen
Träume, in which a dissatisfied woman coolly tips her lover over her balcony to his death,
before settling down with a drink to the sounds of Ravel’s composition. The sober story of
a terminally ill physics professor and her exchanges with the apparition of deceased nuclear
physicist Lise Meitner, Respektloser Umgang realises, in more substantial form than the
short stories, that plan for a more serious approach. Most of the text’s critics have
responded to it on this level, interpreting it as a direct critique of unchecked scientific
endeavour and social apathy past and present;217 Nancy Lauckner praises Königsdorf’s
See: Jeanette Clausen, ‘Resisting Objectification: Helga Königsdorf’s Lise Meitner’, in Margy Gerber et
al., eds, Selected Papers from the Fifteenth New Hampshire Symposium on the German Democratic Republic,
Studies in GDR Culture and Society, 10 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1991), pp. 165-80; Klaus
Hammer, ‘Mobilisierung der Humanität. Helga Königsdorf. Respektloser Umgang’, Neue deutsche Literatur,
35/8 (1987), 138-42; Eva Kaufmann, ‘Haltung annehmen. Zu Helga Königsdorfs Respektloser Umgang’, in
DDR-Literatur ’86 im Gespräch (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1987), pp. 278-87; Nancy Lauckner, ‘The
Treatment of the Past and Future in Helga Königsdorf’s Respektloser Umgang: “Sich der Erinnerung weihen
oder für die Zukunft antreten? Mit der Vergangenheit im Bunde”’, in Margy Gerber et al., eds, Selected
Papers from the Fifteenth New Hampshire Symposium on the German Democratic Republic, Studies in GDR
Culture and Society, 10 (Lanham: University of America Press, 1991), pp. 151-63; Friedrich Roy, ‘Helga
Königsdorfs Respektloser Umgang und Christa Wolfs Störfall. Literarische Wortmeldungen zur Diskussion
von Existenzfragen der Menschheit’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der pädagogischen Hochschule “Karl
Liebknecht” Potsdam, 33/2 (1989), 273-9; Anneliese Stawström, ‘Zu Respektloser Umgang von Helga
Königsdorf und Störfall von Christa Wolf’, Text und Kontext. Zeitschrift für germanistische
Literaturforschung in Skandinavien, 17/1 (1989), 186-94.
217
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‘maturity’ in tackling problems of global significance (rather than focusing on internal
GDR issues).218
Certainly, aspects of Königsdorf’s critique are broader than the GDR-specific commentary
of her ‘academia tales’. She expresses anxiety about the common threats of nuclear
disaster, scientific and political irresponsibility, and individual inaction; she illustrates her
points through reference to Nazi Germany; and she highlights the international context of
potentially destructive scientific development. However, the text’s Zivilisationskritik does
not automatically preclude a Gesellschaftskritik. I also see in Respektloser Umgang a GDRspecific commentary which is similar to that found in the ‘academia tales’. Although
Königsdorf ostensibly provides little insight into the GDR institution, I believe that it is
nevertheless represented. Moreover, the thematisation of the scientific institute in
Respektloser Umgang is very similar to that of the ‘academia tales’: first, I argue that the
descriptions of Meitner’s institutions contain a realist commentary on present-day GDR
institutions. Second, I argue that the institutional conditions which Meitner describes have
metaphorical significance for the GDR state. These meanings are undoubtedly more
implicit than in the ‘academia tales’, but the background provided in her ‘academia tales’
allows her to use a kind of narrative shorthand for the institution. Read as intertexts, the
‘academia tales’ illuminate the more subtle thematisation of the institution in Respektloser
Umgang. As the institution theme in Respektloser Umgang is closely bound up with
Königsdorf’s Zivilisationskritik, I first give an insight into the general narrative approach of
Respektloser Umgang, in order to provide a basis for my analysis of the institution.
218
Lauckner, ‘The Treatment of the Past and Future’, pp. 151-2.
161
3.3.2 Identification
The narrator of Respektloser Umgang shares many biographical details with Königsdorf,
not least her diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease and her gradually declining health. Most
obviously, like Königsdorf, she is a professor at a GDR scientific institute, though her
subject is physics. In addition, there are many similarities between the narrator and her
interlocutor, Lise Meitner, who appears to her from beyond the grave: both are physicists;
both encounter difficulties as women operating in the male-dominated sphere of science;
both are Jewish,219 and both have five siblings. They even share a dislike of staying in hotel
rooms. In this way, Meitner seems to operate as a kind of mirror for the narrator, which
allows the latter to see herself more clearly.220 Thus, the uncomfortable questions which the
narrator asks of her scientific predecessor are also questions which she asks of herself as
both scientist and individual in the GDR.
The points of identification between author and narrator, and between narrator and
apparition are indicative of the process of identification and self-interrogation which
Königsdorf seeks to foster in the reader of Respektloser Umgang. Just as Lise Meitner is the
catalyst for the narrator’s journey of self-knowledge, so the narrator’s candid reflections
seem to encourage the reader to join her in her process of self-evaluation. Whereas
Feinberg sees the satirical text as characterised by a triangular mechanism through which
the author and reader join in solidarity against the protagonist, this non-satirical text creates
an identification between author, narrator, protagonist and reader. This mechanism of
identification is compounded by the serious tone of the narration and dialogue, and by the
Paul O’Doherty argues that the narrator’s and Meitner’s Jewishness is crucial to understanding their
behaviour, as well as that of the narrator’s father. He observes that critics of Respektloser Umgang have
repeatedly overlooked the relevance of their Jewishness. See: Paul O’Doherty, The Portrayal of Jews in GDR
Prose Fiction (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), p. 238.
220
Clausen says that Meitner is a ‘Bezugspunkt’ for the narrator: Clausen, p. 176.
219
162
authenticity of the characters, the sense of closeness to them, which Königsdorf creates
through their psychological and emotional development.
3.3.3 Past and Present
Having set up this mechanism of identification between Lise Meitner and the narrator, and
the narrator and the reader, Königsdorf suggests more general parallels between past and
present. At the heart of the text is the importance of mobilising GDR citizens to take
positive action to protect the dignity and safety of themselves, their society and humanity at
large. Most obviously, this refers to the nuclear threat which began with the discovery of
nuclear fission by Lise Meitner’s scientific community, and continues into the present with
the Cold War and the threat of nuclear destruction. Addressing the theme of past and
present continuities, Lauckner argues that Königsdorf believed that the need for resistance
and responsibility in the present and future could best be shown by comparison with past
circumstances which suffered from a lack of these qualities. Thus, she says, by juxtaposing
references to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany with visions of future destruction,
Königsdorf highlights the necessity of individual and mass resistance against destructive
behaviours.221 Most critics of Respektloser Umgang who explore the thematisation of time
and space focus on what Königsdorf says about the lessons of the past still holding
relevance for the contemporary world. However, one could argue that she also draws
attention to more specific continuities between the National Socialist past and present-day
conditions in the GDR. These are most obviously symbolised through the story of the
narrator’s Jewish father, whose deference towards the Nazi authorities resulted in his
internalisation of anti-Semitic norms and his self-objectification. The narrator rejects the
221
Lauckner, ‘The Treatment of the Past and the Future’, p. 155.
163
idea that there is a distinct opposition between perpetrators and victims, arguing instead that
repression relies upon the combination of two mechanisms: the misuse of power by those
who stage the attack, and the passivity of the attacked individual. Given the theme of the
continuities between past failures and the need for action in the present, this call for
resistance against the repressive conduct of political authorities resonates with particular
significance for the totalitarian GDR state and its people.
3.3.4 The Academic Institution
The above observations illuminate Königsdorf’s thematisation of academia and science.
Although the narrator is a prominent physics professor, her worsening health precludes
active engagement with her institution; her intermittent reflections on her academic career
and colleagues are the only direct insights we gain into GDR academia. However, more
detail is provided about Meitner’s experiences as a scientist before and during the Second
World War, and given Königsdorf’s thematisation of the continuities between past and
present in Respektloser Umgang, Meitner’s recollections seem to fill in some of the gaps in
the narrator’s portrayal of GDR academic conditions. For example, the patriarchal attitudes
which Meitner observed in pre-war German institutions reflect and confirm the narrator’s
own sense of having more to prove as a woman in GDR science. Similarly, the institutional
prejudice of pre-war academia, encapsulated by the sentiment, ‘die Jüdin gefährdet das
Institut’ [p. 43], lends weight to the narrator’s suspicions that her ambitious colleagues are
secretly planning for her inevitable medical retirement. In this, as in many of the situations
described in her ‘academia tales’, Königsdorf points to the mythical nature of the official
notion that the GDR and its institutions embodied a philosophy of welfare. Furthermore,
Meitner’s humiliation of Otto Hahn on the grounds of his inferior scientific knowledge; her
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academic ambition and vanity; and her hunger for public acknowledgement of her
contribution to the discovery of nuclear fission all endorse the narrator’s brief reflections on
the careerism and rivalry of her colleagues, and indeed her younger self (and recall the
narrator’s reflection in ‘Selbstversuch’ that women must become like men if they are to
succeed in the world of science).
As well as casting light on GDR academia, the institutional environment Meitner describes
recalls conditions in the GDR as a whole. In this way, it can be read as a metaphor for the
GDR state, just like the GDR institution in the ‘academia tales’. One of the most obvious
similarities between Meitner’s institution and the GDR state is the contradiction between
the theory of gender equality and the prevalence of patriarchal values. Despite the law,
passed in 1909, which safeguarded the right of women to attend university, Meitner
experienced notable chauvinism on the part of some of her male colleagues, not least Max
Planck, who wrote that women should only exceptionally be engaged in scientific pursuit.
The narrator’s subsequent observation that it is easier to be a man than a woman in GDR
society invites the reader to draw a connection between the pre-war scientific institution
and the GDR state.
This parallel is developed through Meitner’s recollection of the heady early years of the
nuclear project, when the sea-change in scientific thinking and the construction of daring
new experiments breathed new life into the natural sciences:
Alles war aufregend und geheimnisvoll. Die ungeheure Wende im
naturwissenschaftlichen Denken. Die ganz neuen, vorher unerahnten physikalischen
Vorstellungen. Kühne Gedankenkonstruktionen. Heisenbergs Weltformel. Die Physik
der zwanziger Jahre [pp. 25-6].
165
Meitner’s description evokes the hopeful atmosphere of the young GDR with its fresh
political beginning which seemed to promise so much. Furthermore, her account of the
Institute’s egalitarian community atmosphere, the productive collaboration between
scientists, and the willingness of all parties to set aside personal and political differences for
the greater good of the Institute, recalls Stubbe’s account in ‘Ein Besuch’ of the birth of the
Gatersleben Institute which, as described in Chapter One, also functions as a model of the
GDR state:
[W]ir waren umgeben von einer Schar junger Leute, Doktoranden und Mitarbeiter,
die nicht nur von uns lernten, sondern von denen auch wir sehr viel lernen konnten,
was die menschlichen Beziehungen und manchmal auch unsere Arbeit betraf. Uns
verband wirklich ein sehr starkes Gefühl der Gemeinschaft, das auf gegenseitigem
Vertrauen beruhte und ermöglichte, die Arbeit auch nach 1933 fast ungestört
fortzusetzen, obgleich man in politischen Ansichten nicht ganz einer Meinung war;
denn alle waren sich in dem Wunsch einig, unsere persönliche und berufliche
Gemeinschaft nicht zerstören zu lassen [p. 15].
Gradually, however, the positive community which Meitner describes also becomes
corrupted. The rise of National Socialism and the propagation of anti-Semitic norms, drives
a wedge between Meitner and her colleagues. Their unwillingness to defend her for fear of
negative personal consequences evokes the climate of fear and suspicion in the GDR state.
Furthermore, on a political level, the general mis-management of the nuclear project evokes
that of the socialist project: that Meitner is shown to have been led not by a sense of
responsibility and humility, but by self-serving ambition, could be read as a dig at the
perverted motivations of the GDR political elite. Finally, the description of the Siegbahn
Institute in Stockholm, to which Meitner escapes during the growth of anti-Semitism in
Nazi Germany, also seems to evoke the GDR state:
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Das Siegbahnsche Institut in Stockholm sei unvorstellbar leer gewesen. Ein schöner
Bau, in dem sich ein Zyklotron und viele andere große Röntgen- und
spektroskopische Apparate im Aufbau befanden. Aber an experimentelle Arbeit nicht
zu denken. Es gab keine Pumpe, keinen Widerstand, keinen Kondensator. In dem
weiten Haus nur jüngere Physiker und eine bürokratische Arbeitsordnung. Siegbahn –
uninteressiert an Kernphysik, selbstsicher und mit einer Vorliebe für große Apparate
[p. 13].
Although it is housed in an architecturally handsome building, the Institute is poorly
equipped, overly bureaucratic and scientifically unproductive. Furthermore, its director
seems to be more interested in the outward trappings of success and power than in
encouraging internal productivity. Once again, this seems to function as a critique of
scientific and industrial stagnation in the GDR, and of the self-serving leadership style of
the GDR political elite.
Although Königsdorf expresses anxiety about the possibility of nuclear destruction, like
Wolf’s narrator in Störfall, she acknowledges the positive applications of science, and
insists that scientific responsibility, rather than opting out of scientific pursuit altogether, is
the key to protecting humanity. Given the parallels between the scientific institutions in
Respektloser Umgang and the GDR state, this can also be interpreted as a vote of faith in
socialist ideals, and a plea to GDR politicians to put their responsibilities to the people they
serve before their own self-interest. That said, unlike in the ‘academia tales’ discussed so
far, there is no direct correspondence between a particular scientist figure and the GDR
political elite; rather, the link exists in the general continuities which are suggested between
Meitner’s institutions and the GDR state, and Königsdorf’s insistence that scientists and
politicians, as well as everyday individuals, must act with responsibility.
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3.3.5 Closing Remarks
Respektloser Umgang, like Wolf’s ‘academia tales’, combines a literal Zivilisationskritik
with a coded GDR Gesellschaftskritik, and once again, we see that academic institutions
can be endowed by the author with certain attributes that allow them to function as
metaphorical models for the GDR state: idealistic beginnings, team spirit, strict hierarchies,
pressure to conform, narratives of progress and stagnation, etc.. In the case of Respektloser
Umgang, however, there is an important difference: instead of using a GDR academic
institute as a metaphor for the GDR state, Königsdorf depicts non-GDR institutions which
all in some way recall conditions there; specifically, they evoke GDR socialism at different
stages of its existence.
3.4 Conclusion
This chapter has shown that the academic institute in Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ and her
novel Respektloser Umgang generates a range of realist and metaphorical readings
including a critique of GDR academia, a warning against unfettered scientific progress, and
a commentary on the perversion of socialist ideals. In the following chapter, I consider two
academic novels by Günter de Bruyn, Preisverleihung and Märkische Forschungen.
Märkische Forschungen, like Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s texts, features an academic institute
which can be read as a metaphor for the GDR state, and de Bruyn, like Wolf and
Königsdorf, draws on the model of a protagonist’s journey from hope to disillusion as a
vehicle for his academic and political critiques. However, while GDR academia is also
criticised in Preisverleihung, we do not find the academic institute standing as a metaphor
for the GDR. Rather, GDR society is allowed to stand for itself, and de Bruyn’s
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institutional critique contributes to, rather than constitutes, his commentary on GDR social
relations.
169
Chapter Four: Representations of the Academic Institution in the Pre-Wende Work
of Günter de Bruyn
4.1 Introduction
In several respects, Günter de Bruyn’s biography bears similarities to those of Wolf and
Königsdorf. A research assistant at the Zentralinstitut für Bibliothekswesen, de Bruyn, like
Königsdorf, had personal experience of GDR academia. The progression through his
literary work has striking parallels with Wolf’s literary development: like Wolf’s Moskauer
Novelle, de Bruyn’s first novel, Der Hohlweg, was a programmatically Socialist Realist
text. De Bruyn later rejected his debut novel for its conformism and lack of authenticity,
echoing Wolf’s criticism of Moskauer Novelle.222 Subsequently, both Wolf and de Bruyn
became advocates of literary subjectivity, which on occasion brought each of them into
conflict with the authorities.223
A further similarity lies in the interest de Bruyn shares with Wolf and Königsdorf in the
critical potential of the fictional academic institution and the figure of the academic, which
he explores in the novels Preisverleihung and Märkische Forschungen, published in 1972
and 1978 respectively. Unlike Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s scientist protagonists, the
academics in de Bruyn’s novels are literary scholars and historians: Preisverleihung is the
story of a research assistant and Germanistik lecturer who finds himself in a professional
and moral quandary when he is expected to extol a derivative Socialist Realist novel at a
prestigious prize-giving ceremony; Märkische Forschungen features the methodological
222
Tracing the parallels between Der Hohlweg and the Socialist Realist novel written by Paul, the protagonist
of Preisverleihung, Owen Evans convincingly argues that de Bruyn’s disgust with Der Hohlweg found
literary expression in Preisverleihung, and that a knowledge of Der Hohlweg is central to a full understanding
of Preisverleihung. See: Owen Evans, ‘Ein Training im Ich-Sagen’: Personal Authenticity in the Prose Work
of Günter de Bruyn (Bern: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 110-12.
223
For a detailed analysis of the development through de Bruyn’s literary work, see: Evans, ‘Ein Training im
Ich-Sagen’.
170
clash between a hobby historian and a renowned professor of history. An obvious reason
for de Bruyn’s illumination of the humanities lies in the fact that Preisverleihung and
Märkische Forschungen, like Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’, are rooted in
personal experience: just as Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s representations of scientific
institutions are partly informed by their interest in questions surrounding the production of
scientific knowledge, so de Bruyn’s illumination of humanities institutions is underpinned
by his personal experiences as a librarian, literary researcher and writer in the GDR.
On the other hand, the academic discipline about which these authors choose to write is
also indicative of the differing nature of their political critiques. For Wolf and Königsdorf,
who had a personal investment in GDR state socialism, the symbolic potential of the
scientific experiment makes it a useful vehicle through which they can critique the
perversion of the socialist experiment. By contrast, de Bruyn, who was never a Party
member, was less concerned with documenting the decline and fall of socialist ideology
than with assessing the impact of this on academics and writers in the GDR. His decision to
write about the conditions of the production and reception of literature and historical
research reflects this interest. Unlike in Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’,
however, de Bruyn also devotes a lot of space to descriptions of the non-institutional
sphere, and in each of the following analyses I explore the significance of these, and their
relationship to the academic scenes.
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4.2 Preisverleihung
4.2.1 Introduction
Preisverleihung is a framed narrative which begins and ends in the bedroom of research
assistant, Dr Teo Overbeck, and his wife Irene, and describes a day in the life of the
Overbeck family and a handful of their acquaintances. The narrative frame features a firstperson narrator who, in the tradition of nineteenth-century narrators, addresses the reader
directly, and claims to have been tasked with the job of describing an exemplary marriage.
In the central narrative the narrator adopts an omniscient position, and comments, with
varying degrees of irony, on the characters and events of the story. The narrator also
provides information about the characters’ pasts, which serves to contextualise their
behaviour and to add temporal depth and complexity to the narrative’s otherwise
straightforward linear structure.
The central narrative relates the build-up to, and execution of, Teo Overbeck’s key-note
speech at a prize-giving ceremony held in honour of Teo’s erstwhile protégé, the farmhandturned-writer Paul Schuster. The Akademie has decided to honour Paul with a prestigious
prize for a Socialist Realist novel for which Teo, who recognises its derivative nature, can
find no words of praise. Consequently, he is in turmoil about how to navigate a path
between his personal convictions and the expectation that he eulogise the novel. The two
protagonists first met as young men when Teo, then a staunch Marxist-Leninist, guided the
naïve and passionate Paul during his first foray into creative writing, advising him how to
adhere to the literary tenets of Socialist Realism. Part of the novel’s tension arises from the
fact that the two men are on opposite trajectories: as Teo has shed his conformist tendencies
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and developed a profound sense of intellectual integrity, Paul has learned the benefits of
intellectual and literary conformism.
As the final discussion in the first part of the thesis will show, Preisverleihung contains
many stock features of the western campus novel: a student seminar, a clash of academic
values, an academic dilemma, a failed speech, a party and an alcohol-fuelled debate.224
However, the majority of the novel’s short, almost episodic chapters are set not in the
academic institute but in the private sphere; in addition to the academic figures there is a
writer, a housewife, an interpreter, a philosophy student, a retired factory worker, a wouldbe mechanic and a night-shift worker. Although most of the private scenes are structured
around Teo’s academic quandary and the lead-up to his speech, the academic world is just
one, albeit important, referent in the story. Furthermore, in contrast to Wolf and
Königsdorf, who construct the academic institute metaphorically, as a microcosm of the
GDR, de Bruyn represents the academic institute as just one part of the continuum that is
GDR society; while they share many features, each is represented in its own right.
4.2.2 Social Satire
In Preisverleihung de Bruyn combines social satire – on the class system, social inequality,
patriarchy and conformism in the GDR – with cultural and academic satire, particularly of
the way in which literature is pressed into the service of socialist ideology, but also more
generally of lazy and instrumentalised thinking. These two satirical critiques overlap and
224
Erika Tunner considers these elements of the story to be so central that she compares de Bruyn to campus
novelist, David Lodge, and Preisverleihung to Martin Walser’s academic novel Brandung. See: Erika Tunner,
‘Wem geben wir die Preise? Günter de Bruyns Preisverleihung’, Text und Kritik, 127 (1995), 79-83 (pp. 823).
173
reinforce one another. In what follows, I first outline de Bruyn’s social satire, and then
show how his cultural and academic satire fits in with and develops this.
One of the targets of de Bruyn’s social satire, the entrenched class system in the GDR, is
laid bare by the description of the three-tier hierarchy in Berlin society, which sees the
poorest citizens living in communal flats in run-down quarters of the city, white collar
workers renting rooms in pleasant suburbs, and the wealthy minority owning luxury
modern apartments and cars. Significantly, while academics are shown to benefit from
higher status and better working conditions than other types of worker, de Bruyn does not
put them at the top of the social hierarchy: Teo, Irene and their daughter Cornelia rent two
rooms from a retired factory worker, Herr Birt, and even Liebscher, a professor, lives in a
modest ‘AWG-Wohnung’ – a block of flats which was typically occupied by a collective of
employees at a state-run organisation. Rather, de Bruyn indicates that the most materially
privileged in GDR society were conformist journalists and writers such as Paul, and
industry leaders such as Frank Ungewitter’s father – the technical director of an
engineering plant in Saxony. When Teo tries to describe his work to Birt, he draws the
comparison between the academic researcher and the industry specialist: ‘Teo [versucht]
Herrn Birt zu erklären, daß er wie jeder andere Fachmann auf technischem, ökonomischem
oder sonstwelchem Gebiet zur Gütekontrolle verpflichtet sei und daß er sich gegen
Anordnungen zu wehren habe, die Qualitätsverlust zur Folge haben müßten’ [p. 125].
Inasmuch as Teo is committed to producing high quality research, the analogy stands up,
but de Bruyn makes clear that this is not an accurate comparison. On the other hand, the
gulf between the ivory tower of the academic institute and working-class life in the GDR is
illustrated by Cornelia’s exchange with Birt following the news of her failure to get into
university: ‘“Bekleidungsingenieur, Rinderzüchterin oder Bürokraft bei der Interflug kann
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ich werden!” “Das ist doch nichts für dich”, sagt Birt, den Hohn in ihrer Stimme
überhörend’ [p. 60]. This exchange illustrates the hypocrisy of the official notion that in the
GDR all work was of equal value: both Cornelia and Birt assume that she, an academic
high-flyer and the daughter of an intellectual, should not have to do a ‘lowly’
administrative job. Thus, de Bruyn is reflecting the reality that, although academics might
not have been materially privileged, they were accorded superior social status which
marked them apart from average East Germans.225
The official idealisation of the opportunities for upward social mobility (as exemplified in
the institution of the ‘Arbeiter- und Bauernfakultät’ immortalised by Hermann Kant in Die
Aula) is also revealed to be a hollow myth. While Paul’s career rise from lowly agricultural
worker to director of a Kulturhaus, to freelance journalist and finally to award-winning
writer might seem to exemplify this possibility, de Bruyn satirises the fact that he only
achieves this through adopting a cynically careerist mentality and converting himself into a
political yes-man: while he initially objects to the pressure to conform, he quickly comes to
understand the advantages to be gained from toeing the Party line.
Material inequality in the GDR is most clearly illustrated by Teo’s recollection of the
culture shock he experienced when, as a postgraduate student, he left Berlin and the
university, and went to work in the provinces: ‘Der freiwillige Abstieg in die Niederungen
der Provinz fiel ihm nicht leicht. Die miserable Versorgungslage, die dort herrschte, machte
ihm weniger Kummer als die Erkenntnis, daß diese den meisten Leuten mehr bedeutete als
alles andere’ [p. 35]. Interestingly, with the exception of Paul, who is condemned for his
snobbery and calculating conformism, de Bruyn does not criticise his wealthy characters,
225
I summarise Mary Fulbrook’s discussion of social stratification in the GDR on p. 36.
175
and he is sympathetic towards the material aspirations of those further down the social
hierarchy. While he criticises social inequality, particularly where this is the result of
compromise or conformism, he does not reject material prosperity per se, nor the desire for
it.
The patriarchal structure of GDR society is most obviously satirised through the
descriptions of Paul’s chauvinistic treatment of the women in his life. As his girlfriend,
Irene not only had to juggle a tiring job with the couple’s domestic chores, but in the
evenings Paul required her to act as his personal secretary, typing multiple versions of his
emerging novel and massaging his fragile ego. Having taken on the mantle, Paul’s wife
Ulla is required to anticipate and attend to Paul’s every whim: she must scrub his back in
the bath, hang up his clothes for the day, prepare his breakfast and ensure that his coffee is
at the optimum temperature when he emerges from the bathroom. In addition, she must
listen attentively to endless recitations of his work, respond admiringly but with critical
conviction, endure condemnation of her intellectual inferiority, repress her need for
affection, and on public occasions play the role of the mute trophy wife. By contrast, Teo’s
relationship with Irene is described by the narrator as ‘ein Modell […] für eine vorbildliche
Ehe’ [p. 5]. Yet this ostensible equality is illusory, for despite the affection and respect with
which Teo treats Irene, his adoration of her derives less from her personal qualities,
professional skills or intelligence than from her feminine beauty and charm. In addition to
these husband-wife dynamics, a mother-son relationship – that of Frank Ungewitter and his
mother – is shown to be characterised by Frank’s internalisation of society’s patriarchal
norms. For example, de Bruyn says of Frank’s relationship to his mother, ‘[n]atürlich hätte
er das Verhältnis […] nie mit dem Begriff Verachtung in Zusammenhang gebracht.
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Verachtung bezeichnete etwas Extremes; sein Verhältnis zur Mutter aber war normal,
selbstverständlich, natürlich: das natürliche Verhältnis des Mannes zur Frau’ [p. 77].
4.2.3 A Critique of the Academic Institution
The targets of de Bruyn’s social satire – hierarchy, social inequality, conformism and
patriarchy – are also at the heart of the text’s critique of academia. In an interview with
Frank Hafner, de Bruyn states that because he did not complete a university degree he is
unfamiliar with GDR institutional life, and that the insights into academia which he
provides in his literature are largely mediated through academic friends. 226 However, his
sharply observed descriptions of institutional dynamics in Preisverleihung suggest that his
personal experiences as a librarianship student, and subsequently as a research assistant at
the Zentralinstitut für Bibliothekswesen, also inform his portrayal of GDR academic life.
De Bruyn describes two institutions in Preisverleihung: the institute of higher education at
which Teo is employed as an Assistent and undergraduate seminar leader, and the Akademie
at which the prize-giving ceremony is held. Although neither institution is named,
geographical clues suggest that de Bruyn had in mind the Humboldt University and the
East Berlin Academy of Arts.227 In the text, as in life, the institutions have different
functions: Teo’s institute is a teaching and research facility, while the Akademie provides a
show-case for GDR art and a bridge between the worlds of scholarship and writing.
Frank Hafner, ‘Der Einzelne und die Macht. Günter de Bruyn im Gespräch mit Frank Hafner am 5.5.1983
in Ulm’, in Uwe Wittstock, ed., Günter de Bruyn. Materialien zu Leben und Werk (Frankfurt am Main:
Fischer, 1991), pp. 83-9 (p. 82).
227
From Teo’s office he can hear the tourists disembarking from their buses on the bridge leading to the
Pergamon Museum, which fits with the location of the Humboldt University. We are also told that the
Akademie lies 400 metres from the institute and is near a park – a probable reference to the Akademie der
Künste on Robert-Koch Straße.
226
177
4.2.4 The Akademie
Like Königsdorf’s Institut für Zahlographie, de Bruyn’s Akademie has a solid hierarchical
structure. One indication of this are the references to the Akademie-Präsident, the Chef des
Hauses, the Leitung and the Ministerstellvertreter, the latter serving as a probable allusion
to the shadow structure of Party functionaries who sought to channel the activities of the
Akademie.228 Also telling is the fact that Teo is left to negotiate the heavy entrance door for
himself, while a porter later springs to attention upon the arrival of two official-looking
men who emerge from black chauffeur-driven cars.229 De Bruyn’s quietly ironic
descriptions of the seating plan and drinks reception at the ceremony confirm the strength
of the Akademie’s hierarchical culture, and also illustrate its patriarchal ethos: the audience
is seated according to seniority, with important guests at the front, non-prominent attendees
(largely women and literature enthusiasts) in the middle rows, and students at the back.
Furthermore, of the thirty-seven guests invited to the post-ceremony party, just two are
women; the only other women present are secretaries doubling as waitresses.
Moreover, like Königsdorf’s Institut für Zahlographie, the Akademie has an air of
unshakeable self-assurance. An architecturally imposing building, it boasts a heavy
entrance door made of iron and glass, a carpeted grand staircase with a ‘Treppenabsatz, der
die Ausdehnung eines mittleren Saales hat’ [p. 96], capacious rooms, elegant furniture and
a ‘Konferenztisch, der wie die ganze Einrichtung durch Größe imponiert’ [p. 98]. A string
228
Stephen Parker explains that the SED sought to control the East Berlin Akademie der Künste, a fact which
lost it considerable respect in the West. See: Stephen Parker, ‘The Politics of Culture in German Unification:
The Case of the Berlin Academies of Arts’, in Clare Flanagan and Stuart Taberner, eds, 1949/1989 Cultural
Perspectives on Division and Unity in East and West, German Monitor, 50 (2000), 101-12 (p. 102).
229
Although there is no indication in the text that the cars from which these figures emerge are part of the
academy fleet, it is interesting to note from a terse post-unification exchange between the Presidents of the
East and West Berlin Academies that the GDR Akademie der Künste had four academy cars. See: Parker, p.
101.
178
quartet has been hired to play at the climax of the prize-giving ceremony, before which the
Leitung gather to share a bottle of ‘Qualitätskognak’. Doors open and close soundlessly,
and the oppressive ‘Stille des Hauses’ contrasts with the hustle and bustle of the Berlin
streets outside, as well as with Teo’s inner turmoil following the discovery that he is
wearing mis-matched shoes. A flustered Teo, who desires nothing more than to make a
discreet exit to dash to a nearby shoe shop, is firmly led around by an unidentified official,
and is left guessing as to the identities of his black-suited interlocutors who, it is assumed,
require no introduction. In short, the moment Teo enters the Akademie he is out of control;
his incoherent speech is the logical end-point of this disempowering process.
Thus, although the Akademie is not an academic institution, its rigid structures, clockwork
mechanisms and seemingly inviolable confidence recall Königsdorf’s Institut für
Zahlographie. Furthermore, de Bruyn reveals the Akademie to play an important role in the
institutionalisation of literary scholarship and the literature on which it comments. Not only
does Teo, an independent thinker and critic of GDR cultural politics, lose the ability when
he stands on the Akademie stage to critique the deficiencies of Paul’s derivative Socialist
Realist tome, but the prize-giving ceremony itself, attended by political dignitaries and
broadcast live on the radio for the nation’s consumption, provides an intensely public
gratification of Paul’s deep-seated need for recognition and fame. This exposes a prizegiving industry that provides an incentive for all but the most resolutely independent
writers to toe the Party line, to be an important cog in the state propaganda machine.
Clearly, one did not have to be employed at an institution to succumb to the
institutionalising mechanisms which, in the works addressed so far, are more readily
associated with academia.
179
Despite its encouragement of literary and scholarly conformism with GDR cultural norms,
de Bruyn’s Akademie can hardly be said to be a bastion of socialism. More significant than
its bourgeois trappings in this respect are the distinct self-interest and apoliticism of its
prominent members. For example, at a post-ceremony party in the Chef’s private rooms,
Paul is disappointed by the lack of interest shown in him or his Socialist Realist novel.
Satisfied that they have fulfilled their duty by attending the lengthy ceremony, these
‘Prominente und Mitwirkende’ feel no further obligation to him, but set about pursuing
their own personal lines of interest: the Chef attempts to flirt with Irene Overbeck, and
Professor Liebscher delights in the opportunity to try out his latest jokes on a fresh,
unsuspecting audience. Even more striking is the general disapproval of Paul’s toast to the
GDR state, Party and Volk with which Paul naively offends against the ‘betont
unkonventionellen Stil der kleinen Nachfeier’ [p. 105]. Stephen Parker notes that the
attempts of the SED to direct the activities of the East Berlin Akademie der Künste were
only partly successful;230 the indifference, even hostility, of this hand-picked circle of
guests (which does not appear to include the Ministerstellvertreter) towards socialist
conventions might suggest that it constitutes a rebellious minority within the Akademie. Yet
there is nothing in the text to suggest that their indifference is rooted in anything other than
political apathy, a fact which is later emphasised at Teo’s post-ceremony party by his
elderly landlord: ‘Gar zu selten höre ich in euren Kreisen das Wort Sozialismus’ [p. 127].
4.2.5 The Institut
De Bruyn is even more economical in his sketches of the institute of higher education than
in his depiction of the Akademie. Nevertheless, what quickly emerges is a picture of an
institution which is organised along similarly self-serving lines as Königsdorf’s Institut für
230
Parker, p. 102.
180
Zahlographie. First, there is a palpable division between the lowly Assistenten and the
professors who enjoy superior status and academic control. More problematic is the fact
that promotion up the Institute’s ranks does not reward academic merit but rather one’s
adherence to its rigid norms. Head of department and political yes-man, Liebscher, is a case
in point: once a university contemporary of Teo, he is now an ambitious dominator who
sees the ‘study’ of literature as a means to advance his career. His place at the top of the
institutional hierarchy is attributable to his internalisation of the institute’s norms, foremost
amongst which is the directive ‘Erfolg haben ist Pflicht für jeden’ [p. 54]. The apparent
egalitarianism of this statement belies a more dubious ethos for, in institution speak,
success is a euphemism for compliance with the Institute’s instrumentalisation of
scholarship for anything but scholarly ends. This is underlined by Liebscher’s selfjustificatory reflection, ‘denn die Gesellschaft, die ihn beruft und bezahlt, ist schließlich
keine von Literaturwissenschaftlern, sondern eine umfassende, der diese Wissenschaft wie
jede sonst Mittel zum Zweck ist, zum Zwecke ihrer Macht, ihrer Entfaltung, ihres
Fortschritts’ [p. 50]. This extract is revealing because the combination of Liebscher’s
reference to personal gain (‘die ihn beruft und bezahlt’), his confused allusions to societal
power and development (‘zum Zwecke ihrer Macht, ihrer Entfaltung, ihres Fortschritts’),
and his dubious invocation of ‘means’ and ‘ends’ not only betrays his uncritical absorption
of institutional jargon and GDR cultural politics, but also exposes the hypocrisy of his selfrighteous condemnation of what he claims is Teo’s indifference to the socialist cause.
By contrast with Liebscher, dedicated literature lover Teo is still an Assistent, a position
(we are told three times) which is typically held by much younger academics. Teo’s failure
to gain promotion is a consequence of his intellectual honesty: recognising that ‘einmal
Etabliertes neigt immer dazu, sich für ein für allemal etabliert zu halten’ [p. 33], Teo
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believes that challenging received knowledge and outmoded ways of thinking is part and
parcel of the academic’s responsibility to his or her discipline. In contrast to Liebscher, who
sees literary criticism as a means to an end, Teo sees it, in James Knowlton’s words, as a
‘vital mediator between literary texts and their readers’.231 The general suspicion of Teo
amongst his colleagues at the Institute attests to the pervasiveness of the Institute’s culture
of complacency: ‘Bequemen Kollegen mißfällt das. Andere zeigen Mißtrauen, bezichtigen
ihn, der Methoden ändern will’ [p. 34].
Like Königsdorf, de Bruyn points to academic mediocrity as the inevitable consequence of
this instrumental approach to scholarship. This is most obviously illustrated by the fact that
Paul’s programmatically Socialist Realist novel is honoured at the highest level. That
Liebscher justifies the award not on the basis of artistic merit but on the grounds of the
primacy of convention, and that he promotes academic conformism on the grounds of
political expediency [p. 53], demonstrate the Institute’s subordination of academic rigour to
official cultural policy.232
Perhaps more alarming than this ethos of mediocrity itself is de Bruyn’s portrayal of its
inviolability. As revealed by Liebscher’s complacent reflection following his fractious
exchange with Teo, the Institute is invulnerable to attack: ‘Solche Art von
Selbstzerfleischung ist immer rührend – aber entsetzlich nutzlos’ [p. 54]. The reason for
this, as Knowlton notes, is that ‘the system of social domination, instead of being forcibly
James Knowlton, ‘Günter de Bruyn’s Novel Preisverleihung and the Question of Literary Reception in the
GDR’, Germanic Notes, 28/3-4 (1987), 33-7 (p. 35).
232
De Bruyn’s condemnation in Preisverleihung of the academic establishment’s instrumental attitude
towards scholarship and literature is reiterated in very direct terms in his speech at the 10 th Writers’
Conference in 1987. There, de Bruyn openly appealed for an end to literary censorship, arguing that it
disempowers writers and readers, and ultimately hinders the development of society. See: Günter de Bruyn,
‘Zur Druckgenehmigungspraxis. Diskussionsbeitrag auf dem 10. Schriftstellerkongreß der DDR 1987’, in
Wittstock, ed., Günter de Bruyn, pp. 19-21.
231
182
imposed, has been internalised as the inner censor known to many GDR writers’. 233 Unlike
Königsdorf’s Institut für Zahlographie, which efficiently removes any individual who
represents a threat, the Institute in Preisverleihung does not need to silence its detractors,
for ultimately they silence themselves: although Teo is neither threatened nor coerced,
when given the opportunity publicly to expose the system’s distortions, he cannot get the
words out. Similarly, while Königsdorf describes a clear top-down system of oppression
with the GDR cultural authorities at its head, the cycle of conformity which de Bruyn
describes does not have such a clearly identified agent: while Liebscher is mindful of the
official Party line, institutional policy is not described as being directly determined by an
external authority. Thus, while Königsdorf depicts the Institut für Zahlographie as a
defensive and brutal machine, de Bruyn describes a more subtle conditioning mechanism.
Another scene which offers an insight into the Institute’s culture of mediocrity and its
system of conditioning is that in which we see Teo in his role as student seminar leader.
The significance of this chapter is two-fold. First, it highlights the institutionalisation of
mediocrity from another perspective: the students’ desire to please their lecturers with their
eager internalisation and reproduction of what they perceive to be the ‘correct’ answers
shows that the fear of independent thought and the subsequent adherence to the official
script are not just typical of the Institute’s academics. Second, Teo’s musings on his own
student years cast more light on the mentality of his conformist colleagues. Specifically,
Teo describes his university years as a period of ‘wohlbehüteter Kindheit’ [p. 34] during
which he learned to value literature which conformed to the inauthentic tenets of Socialist
Realism, rejected thinkers whose more rigorous approach to scholarship posed a threat to
233
Knowlton, ‘Günter de Bruyn’s Novel Preisverleihung’, p. 35.
183
his own mediocrity, and developed a complacency born of the safety of numbers and the
security of the academic institution:
Er war damals von einer Literatur beeindruckt, die den Zugang zur Wirklichkeit mehr
verbaute als eröffnete, umgab sich mit Leuten, die wie er Wunschvorstellungen für
Realität, Realität für Schönheitsfehler hielten und mit uneingestandenem Hochmut
auf Leute herabsahen, die ihnen unterentwickelt schienen. Sie verdammten alle
Elitetheorien und waren in ihnen befangen. […] Das Wort vom Erfolghaben, das
Pflicht für jeden ist, machten sie zu einer neuen Prädestinationslehre, mit bestem
Gewissen, da sie sicher waren, daß von nun an ehrliche Anstrengung und öffentliche
Honorierung derselben in eins zusammen fallen würden [p. 35].
This description of the young Teo’s internalisation of his academic institution’s norms, his
uncritical academic approach, his fear of critical thinkers, his belief in the duty to succeed,
and his hypocrisy, complacency and arrogance casts him as a youthful carbon copy of the
present-day Liebscher. In this way, de Bruyn invites speculation on what might have been,
as a means of highlighting the detrimental effects of the institutional environment. It is
suggested that, if Teo had not interrupted his doctoral research and gone to work in the
provinces, he would have turned out just like Liebscher, for only when Teo removed
himself from the university did he become aware of the falseness of his previous
conditioning and beliefs. It is not, therefore, surprising that Liebscher, who has never left
the institutional environment, should continue to promote the untruths of his academic
training.
As well as Teo’s and Liebscher’s differing academic approaches, the complex
psychological dynamics of their relationship also deserve attention. In her analysis of Jens
Sparschuh’s Lavaters Maske, Chloe Paver explains that the master-pupil relationship is a
narrative archetype on which writers across the ages have drawn, and which finds a
correlative in German literature in the model of the professor and his research assistant who
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are bound together in an unequal hierarchical relationship.234 In its emphasis on the unequal
relationship between Liebscher and Teo, Preisverleihung certainly contributes to this
tradition. More specifically, certain elements of their relationship recall the psychoanalytic
Herrschaft-Knechtschaft dialectic as described by Hegel, and summarised in Chapter
Two.235
Once student contemporaries, Teo and Liebscher started out on an equal footing. Although
de Bruyn does not describe a life and death struggle, he does suggest that it was
subsequently at least partly a desire for recognition which spurred Liebscher to seek
promotion to head of department, while Teo, who is more interested in pursuing the truth
than bolstering his ego, remains at the bottom of the institutional pile. Thus, when we meet
them in the present-day timeframe of the story, Liebscher is cast as the ostensibly powerful
and satisfied master, and Teo as his subordinate: the professor sets his assistant to work and
sits back to enjoy the fruits of his labour. However, just as Hegel’s master fails to enjoy the
slave’s recognition, so Liebscher remains locked in a competition for recognition in which
he is the only participant. He resents Teo’s good-natured respect for him, suspects Teo of
secretly dismissing him as an ‘erfolgreicher Karrierist’, makes a public display of petulance
at the party Teo throws for Paul, and takes every opportunity to reassert his primacy and
put Teo in his ‘rightfully’ subordinate place. What is more, like Hegel’s slave, Teo is more
fulfilled than Liebscher. Although Teo lacks status and recognition, through his research,
his writing and teaching he enjoys moments of acute self-awareness, insight and
satisfaction. By contrast, Liebscher, who is a skilled teacher, has no contact with students,
Chloe Paver, ‘Lavater Fictionalised: Jens Sparschuh’s Lavaters Maske’, in Melissa Percival and Graeme
Tytler, eds, Physiognomy in Profile: Lavater’s Impact on European Culture (Newark: University of Delaware
Press, 2005), pp. 217-29 (p. 225).
235
See pp. 118-9 for my overview of Hegel’s Herrschaft/Knechtschaft dialectic.
234
185
and spends his days directing others to dishonest ends and trying not to step on the toes of
the authorities on whom his professional status depends. Although he may not be conscious
of it, Liebscher leads an inauthentic existence which is devoid of meaning, integrity and
freedom. If this reversal of fortunes is not obvious enough, de Bruyn has Teo make direct
reference to the advantage of the subordinate figure in unequal relationships: ‘[d]er
Schwächere bleibt nur so lange neben dem anderen, bis dessen Stärke sein Wachstum nicht
mehr fördert, sondern hemmt’ [p. 73]. The use of the generalised term ‘der andere’, with its
connotations of secondariness, to refer not, as one would expect, to the subordinate, but to
the more powerful figure, underlines the reversal of fortunes which de Bruyn suggests in
his representation of the relationship between his fictional professor and Assistent.
Although women were less well represented than men in GDR academia, particularly in
professorial positions, the fact that de Bruyn casts his two main academic protagonists as
male nevertheless has a two-fold significance: most obviously, it reflects the patriarchal
structure of GDR academia, but it also seems to stem from an interest in male-male power
relations which, as illustrated above, de Bruyn describes as being based on a rivalry for
status and recognition. It is significant that Fräulein Hesse, the only female academic to
feature in the story, is cast not as an aggressor or competitor, but as a flattering mirror for
Teo. Her longing for Teo’s recognition may be the driving force of their relationship, but
she readily casts herself as his subordinate, adapting her research project to reflect his
interests, mentally recording his every utterance, and encouraging him to off-load his
troubles onto her sympathetic shoulder. Given that there were, of course, many talented
female academics in the GDR, one might question de Bruyn’s depiction of his only female
researcher as an impressionable light-weight caught in the throes of an inappropriate
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crush.236 In his defence, however, the juxtaposition of this relationship with that of Teo and
Liebscher illustrates what de Bruyn suggests is the difference between all-male and mixed
gender academic dynamics: while inequality and the desire for recognition are features of
both, male-male interactions are more unstable than male-female relationships, which
seems to be due to the fact that the perceived inferiority of the woman makes her less of a
threat to her male superior. It is no surprise, then, that, in the male-dominated environment
of the academic institute, Fräulein Hesse’s defence ‘von der Partnerschaft Gleichwertiger’
[p. 74] falls on deaf ears.
4.2.6 The Relationship between the Institutional and non-Institutional Scenes
Although de Bruyn describes many similarities between the institutional and noninstitutional spheres, unlike Wolf and Königsdorf, he does not present the academic
institution as a metaphor for the GDR state, but as just one component of GDR society. In
this way, rather than one standing for the other, the academic and social critiques
complement and confirm one another. For example, the critique of the stratification of
GDR society and the representation of hierarchical structures in the academic institution
feed into and support one another. Furthermore, the social satire on inequalities in GDR
society is strengthened by the illumination of issues surrounding the elevated social status
of members of the academic establishment. Similarly, the thematisation of the master-slave
relationship between Liebscher and Teo is strengthened by the descriptions of the other
characters’ need for recognition from others in their everyday lives: Paul demands that
Irene and Ulla listen to him attentively, but he refuses to return their recognition. He has a
236
Questioned by Frank Hafner about the depressing representation of women in his work since Buridans
Esel, de Bruyn responds: ‘[Meine Einstellung] ist positiv zu dem, was Frauenemanzipation betrifft, aber mein
eigentliches Thema ist das nicht.’ See: Hafner, ‘Der Einzelne und die Macht’, p. 85.
187
‘Durst nach Anerkennung und Beachtung’ [p. 88] which, he believes, can only be satisfied
when he becomes a writer, an ‘offiziell Anerkannter’ [p. 46]. When choosing a new hat,
Irene is described as ‘nach Anerkennung hungernd’ [p. 66]. Furthermore, Irene’s fragile
self-esteem is built upon Teo’s adoration of her feminine beauty and charm, and she
welcomes the attentions of her Polish admirer. Cornelia’s desire for recognition takes the
form of her need for understanding, rather than help, from Teo. Her sense of self-worth is
temporarily bolstered by Paul’s attention, although she realises just in time that his own
need for recognition would require that she surrender her sense of self and become his
‘Resonanzboden’ [p. 135]. In this way, de Bruyn’s depiction of his non-academic
characters demonstrates that unequal power relations and the desire for recognition are
features not only of academic relations, but also of wider social interactions in the GDR.
4.2.7 The Public-Private Dialectic
Although Preisverleihung generally functions on the level of realism, the relationship
between institutional and non-institutional life, between public and private, is also
conceptualised more symbolically through a series of parallels between academia and the
non-academic professions in the GDR. In particular, by setting up Teo and Paul as a kind of
twinned pair, with one figure operating within the institution and the other outside it, de
Bruyn draws parallels between academic scholarship and non-academic writing (journalism
and creative writing): both exploit the written word as an instrument to further the socialist
cause; both reward conformism with promotion and material benefits; and both are
characterised by mediocrity. Likewise, the pressure on Paul to produce an archetypal
Socialist Realist novel, and the subsequent official celebration of it, echo the suppression of
subjectivity inside the institution: specifically, de Bruyn describes in detail how the young
188
Teo, exuding all the authority and confidence of Liebscher, persuaded the naïve young Paul
to eliminate any trace of subjectivity and truthfulness from the passionate first version of
his novel, much as Liebscher now seeks to pull Teo into line with his insistence on the
importance of duty, discipline and convention. Thus, Teo’s criticism of literary production
in the GDR is shown to be applicable to the production of academic scholarship, as well as
of journalistic reportage: ‘Kunstvoll wird Bekanntes wiedergekäut. Sie regt nicht an, nicht
auf, erforscht seit langem Erforschtes. Nicht die Artisten fehlen ihr, sondern die Entdecker’
[p. 39]. Thus, through this mirroring of Teo’s and Paul’s experiences, de Bruyn introduces
a certain symbolisation into the text, even though one world is not set up as a metaphor for
the other.
As well as showing numerous similarities between public and private attitudes and
structures, in one respect de Bruyn appears to set the private sphere of the home up in
opposition to the public sphere of the institution: in the safety of his home Teo confidently
articulates his objections to GDR cultural politics in general and Paul’s Socialist Realist
novel in particular, but his critical voice fails him in the pressured environment of the
institution, and he delivers a wildly incoherent address in which he fails to articulate his
personal misgivings.
In this respect de Bruyn, like Königsdorf in ‘Kugelblitz’ and ‘Autodidakten’, appears to
create an opposition between the oppressive public sphere of the institution and the
liberating private sphere of the home. This is also comically symbolised by Teo’s footwear
at the prize-giving: on one foot he wears an everyday slip-on shoe, while on the other he
sports a formal lace-up dress shoe. However, de Bruyn’s critique is more complex than this:
Teo’s contrasting voices and mis-matched shoes do not so much symbolise discontinuity
189
between the private and public spheres themselves, as the more abstract conflict between
private conviction and public conformism in the GDR. De Bruyn himself rejects the idea
that GDR society contains liberated private idylls: ‘wer da von Idyllen redet […] hat nicht
begriffen, […] daß es Idyllen nicht gibt, daß Gefahren nicht pausieren, daß Großes und
Kleines ineinander verflochten sind’.237 Furthermore, he explains that all of his writings are
informed by his desire to illuminate the conflict between private needs and public demands:
‘Wenn Sie so wollen, ist alles was ich geschrieben habe, immer eine Verteidigung des
Individuums gegen die Ansprüche der Macht’.238 As his representations of the continuities
between the academic institution and GDR society in Preisverleihung suggest, ‘das
Individuum’ here is an all-embracing term referring not only to the individual in the private
sphere of the home, but also to those operating in more public spheres, such as writers,
journalists and scholars, who all have to negotiate the conflict between their individual
perspectives and the oppressive requirements of the state. When, in his discussion of
Preisverleihung, Knowlton concludes that resolution ‘can only be achieved when the needs
of the individual correspond exactly to the demands of the society as a whole […] – a
professed but elusive goal of socialism’,239 he encapsulates, I think, what de Bruyn is
seeking to express through his descriptions of Teo’s vacillating voices and the metaphor of
his odd shoes.
4.2.8 Closing Remarks
The academic institutions which feature in Preisverleihung are modelled differently from
those discussed in the first part of this study: rather than fulfilling metaphorical functions as
237
Sigrid Töpelmann, ‘Interview mit Günter de Bruyn’, Weimarer Beiträge, 14 (1968), 1184-1207 (pp. 1174-
5).
238
239
Hafner, ‘Der Einzelne und die Macht’, p. 89.
Knowlton, ‘Günter de Bruyn’s Novel Preisverleihung’, p. 36.
190
microcosms of the GDR state, they are largely represented in realist terms, as part of the
tapestry of GDR society. One of the effects of the fact that de Bruyn embeds his academic
commentary in descriptions of everyday life is that the institutional sphere is less
caricatured than Königsdorf’s Institut für Zahlographie, and the critique of GDR academia
is milder. Furthermore, by giving space to the non-academic sphere, and by giving a voice
to a range of characters from different backgrounds, de Bruyn paints a more nuanced
picture of the socialist state than the metaphorical approach used by writers before him
allows:240 although Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s use of metaphor is not unsophisticated, the
idea that the figure of the scientist or academic could stand for the average worker in the
GDR arguably overlooks the fact that members of the Intelligenz often enjoyed greater
privileges, and certainly higher status, than the average GDR citizen. Inasmuch as Teo’s
academic background brings out these differences in status, the thematisation of the
academic sphere serves the novel’s social critique, particularly of class division in the
GDR. While another member of the Intelligenz, the doctor or the engineer, for instance,
might have fulfilled this function just as well, de Bruyn is also interested in the academic
establishment in and of itself, in particular the pressures exerted on academics to toe the
Party line. Thus, while numerous continuities are shown between GDR academia and GDR
society (hierarchical and patriarchal structures, inequality, the pressure to conform,
careerism and complex interpersonal dynamics), the academic sphere is also emphasised as
a separate space within GDR society, both literally through the topography of the fictional
academic world (the glass and steel doors of the Akademie, for instance, give it a clear
threshold that marks a boundary between one world and another), and in the construction of
an ‘inside-outside’ opposition between the academic sphere in which Teo loses the ability
240
Interviewed by Töpelmann, de Bruyn explains that his commitment to representing social reality as
accurately and authentically as possible springs from his belief in ‘eine Chronistenpflicht des Autors, die ihn
zwingt, dem Alltäglichen oder Gewöhnlichen Beachtung zu schenken.’ See: Töpelmann, p. 1177.
191
to articulate his criticisms of Paul’s book, and the non-academic world in which he does so
with ease. In this way, the boundary between the academic sphere and GDR society is at
once dissolved and highlighted in de Bruyn’s text (whereas in Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s
texts the boundary is quite sharply delineated).
Like Preisverleihung, de Bruyn’s second ‘academia tale’, Märkische Forschungen, features
many non-institutional scenes. However, as I now discuss, the academic institute serves a
more clearly metaphorical function, and the relationship between the institutional and noninstitutional scenes is easier to define.
4.3 Märkische Forschungen
4.3.1 Introduction
In 1975 de Bruyn published a biography of the late eighteenth-century German author, Jean
Paul Friedrich Richter.241 It was a nuanced study in which he took pains to explore the
contradictions of a complex literary figure, yet it was subsequently overshadowed by
another historian’s tendentious ideological eulogy of Jean Paul, in which de Bruyn’s
contribution, over many years, to the subject is only fleetingly acknowledged.242 Three
years later this experience found literary expression in Märkische Forschungen in its
thematisation of the academic clash between meticulous amateur historian and school
teacher, Ernst Pötsch, and careerist history professor and media celebrity, Winfried Menzel.
In this fictional rendering of de Bruyn’s and Harich’s methodological differences, Jean Paul
241
Günter de Bruyn, Das Leben des Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1975).
Wolfgang Harich, Jean Pauls Revolutionsdichtung. Versuch einer neuen Deutung seiner heroischen
Romane (1974).
242
192
is replaced by a fictional writer of the same era, Max von Schwedenow, whose ties with the
local geographical vicinity have captured Pötsch’s heart, and whose place in the GDR
Kulturerbe Menzel is determined to secure by disingenuously painting him as a
‘kleinbürgerlich-revolutionärer Demokrat fronbäuerlicher Herkunft’ [p. 46].
This basic methodological conflict plays out in an academic institute, but also involves a
party and several domestic scenes, and culminates in the assistant giving a doomed public
presentation. In this way, the semi-autobiographical origins, dramatic conflict and thematic
ingredients of Märkische Forschungen clearly position it as a sequel to Preisverleihung,
published six years earlier. Be that as it may, Owen Evans argues that Märkische
Forschungen differs from Preisverleihung in the more provocative tone of its critique of
the state-sponsored academic approach to the Kulturerbe in the GDR, and in its political
critique of the GDR’s ruling elite.243 While a personal experience certainly provided the
basic material for the novel, de Bruyn expanded this into a broader statement about GDR
cultural politics, academia and society, calling Märkische Forschungen ‘ein politisches
Buch’244 and expressing surprise that the cultural authorities did not greet it with more
suspicion. Certainly, the mild exaggeration of Preisverleihung is stretched as far as
caricature in Märkische Forschungen, which adds punch to its satirical critique. While
some critics see in the novel little more than an academic conflict, others point to an overarching political critique. A few hint at a metaphorical reading of the academic institute and
its academic personnel, but none fully commit to such an interpretation. I first examine de
Bruyn’s representation of the academic institute, before discussing how best to calibrate his
institutional critique. Is it a straightforward denouncement of GDR academic attitudes and
Evans, ‘Ein Training im Ich-Sagen’, p. 16.
de Bruyn, cited in: Karin Hirdina, Schriftsteller der Gegenwart. Günter de Bruyn (Dresden: Volk und
Wissen, 1983), p. 17.
243
244
193
structures, a political critique of GDR cultural politics, or even a coded critique of the GDR
state? How should we understand de Bruyn’s opposition between the life of the urban
professor and that of the rural teacher? These questions inform my analysis of Märkische
Forschungen, which ultimately seeks to understand the text’s relationship to
Preisverleihung and to Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’.
4.3.2 The Zentralinstitut für Historiographie und Historiomathie
Although the academic institute in Preisverleihung is not named, its geographical
coordinates clearly identify it as the GDR’s Humboldt University. The reverse is the case
in Märkische Forschungen in which the Zentralinstitut für Historiographie und
Historiomathie is named, but there is little to connect it to a particular GDR institution.
Michael Ossar reads the name as an allusion to the GDR’s Institut für Geschichte, which
was part of the Akademie der Wissenschaften and was tasked with developing a socialist
historiography.245 While de Bruyn may have had this GDR institution in mind, like
Königsdorf’s term ‘Zahlographie’ (which, as Mittman explains, embodies the idea of
‘anyscience’),246 the neologism ‘Historiomathie’ is deliberately defamiliarising, and
indicates that the academic institute in Märkische Forschungen is not so much meant to
represent a single institution as ‘anyinstitution’, that is, the GDR’s academic industry in
general. Moreover, the term ‘Historiomathie’, which seeks to emphasise the scientificity of
GDR historiography, and the doubling up of the terms ‘Historiographie’ and
‘Historiomathie’ suggest an excessive striving to project an impression of intellectualism
and rigour, neither of which, it will turn out, are characteristics of the Institute. This is
Michael Ossar, ‘Instrumentalisierung der Geschichte. Günter de Bruyns Märkische Forschungen und
Stefan Heyms König David Bericht’, Gegenwartsliteratur, 3 (2004), 169-99 (p. 195).
246
See pp. 148-9 for my discussion of Mittman’s analysis of the term ‘Zahlographie’.
245
194
immediately indicated by the comic abbreviation ZIHiHi which, evocative of a childish
giggle, satirically undercuts the self-aggrandisement of the Institute and the authority of
the GDR academic establishment as a whole.
In local academic circles the ZIHiHi is popularly referred to as ‘Menzels Pfründe’. On one
level this further emphasises the fictional status of the Institute, and therefore its
universalising function; the alternative acronym, ‘MP’, can be read as another satirical
poke at formal academic conventions in the GDR. More specifically, the term ‘Pfründe’
(and the fact that even Menzel, its Director, does not deny its appropriateness) indicates
that the primary function of the ZIHiHi is to keep Menzel in a job. That it also has a more
sinister political role is indicated by the explanation that it ‘schwebt über allem, was
Geschichte erforscht und schreibt und lehrt, von der Hochschule bis hin zur
Fachzeitschrift’ [p. 64] and, moreover, by the fact that it fills the gap between these
institutions and the Ministerium. Regardless of whether it is a sinecure for Menzel or a
camouflaged SED institutional surveillance organ, there are strong hints from the outset
that the ZIHiHi is not an organisation of academic distinction.
Pötsch is invited to the ZIHiHi on two separate occasions. The first visit is supposed to
involve a personal discussion with Menzel about Pötsch’s comments on the manuscript of
the professor’s Schwedenow biography; the reason for the second is never revealed to
Pötsch, although he assumes that it is connected to his Schwedenow essay, a gift to
Menzel, and his application for a research assistantship at the Institute. In the scene
preceding Pötsch’s first visit to the Institute, de Bruyn describes Pötsch’s mounting
excitement about Menzel’s offer of an assistantship at the ZIHiHi, with its promise, ‘aus
dem Freizeit-Forscher einen Wissenschaftler zu machen’ [p. 63]. The comedy in the scene
195
derives from Pötsch’s total absorption in thoughts about Menzel and his own forthcoming
admission to Menzel’s circle, despite the fact that he and his wife are supposed to be
sharing a rare intimate moment. In this way, the reader senses that disappointment lies in
store, even before Pötsch arrives at the Institute. Pötsch’s first impression of the ZIHiHi is
one of surprise and deflation. Far from the grand and confident building that he had
supposed would house what he believes to be an establishment of unrivalled academic
distinction, it occupies three floors of a shabby office block which also houses any number
of other organisations, including editorial offices and firms. Instead of the glass entrance
and bold inscription that Pötsch had imagined, it is fronted by a small wooden door which
is covered in a confusing array of signs displaying the names of the organisations within
[p. 64]. This disorientating sign system is the first real indication that Pötsch’s admission
to the centre of the Institute is not going to be straightforward; the symbolism is
compounded by the labyrinth of narrow, windowless corridors in which Pötsch finds
himself, and in which he loses his way more than once. Having arrived during the
Institute’s lunch hour (the unpleasant odour of mass cooking hangs in the air), he has to
wait to be met. To his disappointment (and not inconsiderable indignation), not only has
the secretary not heard of him, but her manner is brusque and she is unimpressed by his
proud explanation that he was invited to come at his own convenience rather than at a time
of Menzel’s choosing [p. 64].
Before Pötsch is granted his eagerly anticipated tête-à-tête with Menzel, he is passed, in a
comically exaggerated protraction of the disappointment of his hopes, from one employee
to another, each time getting no closer to his goal. First, he is met by Menzel’s selfconfessed right-hand woman, the dominant Frau Dr Eggenfels, whose colourful dress
sense, heavy make-up and unnerving way of leading Pötsch around by the hand
196
immediately position him as her subordinate. Her outward motherliness, large moist eyes
and the confessional tone which accompanies her detailed account of her life story, an
ascent from a deprived childhood background to a promising academic career, do nothing
to alleviate Pötsch’s rising sense of oppression and apprehension. The reader, however, is
invited to laugh at Frau Dr Eggenfels’s pride in her biography – a model socialist journey
which is supposed to illustrate the GDR’s possibilities for upward social mobility – and to
detect de Bruyn’s satire on the way in which she plays on this biography to further her
career.
Frau Dr Eggenfels delivers Pötsch to the office of Dr Albin, who introduces himself as
Menzel’s deputy, although the narrator clarifies that he is in reality the head of
administration and personnel. Described as an icily correct man, Dr Albin unconvincingly
states his pleasure that Pötsch is to join the Institute in the autumn. It is Dr Albin’s
responsibility to inform Pötsch that Menzel is too busy to discuss his views on the
Schwedenow manuscript. Instead, this task has been delegated to Brattke, a research
assistant to whom the luckless Pötsch is thereupon handed over.
The immediate impression which de Bruyn creates of Brattke is of a highly
unconventional figure: he is a tall, thin man with a pronounced stoop and an eccentric
dress-sense. It soon emerges that Brattke’s unconventionality is not restricted to these
outward appearances: to Pötsch’s increasing discomfort, Brattke wastes no time in
educating him in Menzel’s feudal management style and lack of academic credibility. By
making Pötsch the unwilling confidant of a detractor who seeks to negate the values of the
‘centre’ Pötsch longs to reach, de Bruyn cruelly ensures that he is further than ever from
his goal.
197
Brattke introduces his critique with the complaint that he is denied the freedom to pursue
his academic passion – research into two medieval authors – because he is strait-jacketed
by his role as Menzel’s proof reader and general dogsbody. He then proceeds to warn
Pötsch that Menzel only wants him to join the Institute because he has identified Pötsch as
a submissive and pliable servant. What is immediately striking about Brattke’s critique is
his use of feudal vocabulary to describe the ZIHiHi and its institutional relations: Menzel,
he explains, wants someone who will enthusiastically undertake ‘Frondienst’, who will
wear his ‘Fesseln’ with pleasure, whose adoration will secure Menzel ownership of his
mind (‘Geisteseigenschaft’), if not actually of his body (‘Leibeigenschaft’) [p. 70]. On
Pötsch’s second visit to the Institute, Brattke develops this theme, calling the ZIHiHi a
‘Fürstenhof’, Menzel its ‘Feudalherr’, Dr Albin his ‘Fronvogt’, Brattke his ‘Hofnarr’, and
using the collective noun ‘Untergebene’ [pp. 107-8] to describe Menzel’s academic staff.
Brattke goes on to explain that, in order to preserve his independence of thought, he has
created a private space for himself which he vigorously guards with what he calls a barbed
wire fence of criticism. Menzel, he says, is prepared to tolerate a degree of criticism from
certain members of his staff, as long as their intellectual powers are ultimately employed
in his service, and their criticism remains internal.247
Having thus appraised Menzel’s leadership style, Brattke unlocks a drawer in his desk and
extracts a well-hidden manuscript. Prefacing his subsequent recitation with the explanation
that the manuscript is only for private use, he proceeds to read out a review which he has
See David Clarke’s article on the function and Abwicklung of the Institut für Literatur “Johannes R.
Becher” for an analysis of the way in which this GDR institute tolerated internal dissent on the understanding
that it was not publicly expressed: David Clarke, ‘Parteischule oder Dichterschmiede? The Institut für
Literatur “Johannes R. Becher” from its Founding to its Abwicklung’, German Studies Review, 29/1 (2006),
87-106.
247
198
written of Menzel’s Schwedenow biography. The central message of his condemnatory
evaluation is the disingenuous selectivity with which Menzel cherry-picks only those
aspects of Schwedenow’s life history which confirm his erroneous thesis that
Schwedenow was a leading revolutionary figure of the early nineteenth century: ‘Alle
Widersprüche, Doppelbödigkeiten, aller Reiz und alle Schönheit sind dahin, alles Wilde
ist gezähmt, jede Unebenheit geglättet. […] Er fälscht zwar nicht […], er läßt nur weg,
was ihm nicht wichtig ist’ [p. 72]. Brattke attributes this not just to Menzel’s personal
careerism but also to GDR cultural politics which view literature as a medium for
conveying political ideology:248
Des Rätsels Lösung weiß ich nicht, vermute nur, sie ist bei Menzel allein nicht zu
finden, sie liegt tiefer oder, wenn man will, auch höher, bei der Ansicht nämlich
[…], man könne Dichtung (wie auch Leben) aus einer These erklären [p. 72].
Having thus denounced Menzel’s methodological dishonesty, Brattke proceeds to read out
another manuscript, this time a parody of Menzel’s interpretative approach and written
style in the form of an absurd Marxist reworking of the fairy tale Rotkäppchen. Brattke’s
irreverent mockery of Menzel is too much for Pötsch, who indignantly leaps to Menzel’s
defence with the sycophantic objection, ‘es sei so billig […], das Strahlende zu schwärzen’
[p. 77]. But Brattke is unperturbed; unlike Pötsch, who never relinquishes his futile desire
to persuade Menzel of Schwedenow’s true date of death, Brattke’s aim is not to persuade
Menzel of his viewpoint, but to carve out a niche for himself in the Institute, in which he
can enjoy a degree of autonomy in return for his loyalty. Although Brattke’s manuscripts
introduce a serious critique of Menzel’s way of working, there is comedy in the fact that
Brattke’s opposition is worked out in such minute detail, in not just one but two pieces of
248
Dennis Tate, notes to Günter de Bruyn, Märkische Forschungen. Erzählung für Freunde der
Literaturgeschichte (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 137.
199
writing, and yet these have absolutely no effect on the institution since they are not
publicly aired. Indeed, presenting them to Pötsch is doubly pointless: not only does he
have no influence at all, but at this point in the story his loyalties lie with Menzel, so
Brattke’s words fall on deaf ears. The ZIHiHi, like Teo’s Institute in Preisverleihung and
Königsdorf’s Institut für Zahlographie, is invulnerable to criticism.
Only after he has been passed around not twice, but three times, does Pötsch’s longing to
discuss his manuscript with Menzel look set to be satisfied. Yet the meeting represents the
culmination of Pötsch’s frustrated hopes: having first punctured Pötsch’s sense of
importance by making clear that the meeting is limited to an hour, Menzel comically
frustrates Pötsch’s desire to discuss his views on the manuscript by repeatedly indulging in
verbose and irrelevant anecdotal digressions. Finally, with Pötsch’s agitation at its peak,
Menzel announces the discussion’s end. While Pötsch is not prepared to leave the Institute
without clarifying one all-important matter, his bravery reaps no rewards: instead of being
congratulated on spotting Menzel’s mistake about the occasion of Schwedenow’s death,
he is fobbed off with the unsatisfactory explanation that such details are less important
than the aim of getting Schwedenow into the history books [p. 78]. With that, a confused
Pötsch is dismissed and, in a comical portent of things to come, instead of finding the exit
he stumbles into the dead-end of the coal cellar.
Pötsch’s second visit to the ZIHiHi is initiated by a telegram from Menzel. Secretly
disappointed that the invitation contains no congratulations on the essay which Pötsch had
presented to Menzel at his fiftieth birthday party, in which he revealed that Schwedenow
did not, as believed, die a hero in battle in 1813, but as a bourgeois reactionary seven years
later, Pötsch nevertheless hopes for a warm reception and for discussion of his application
200
for an assistantship at the ZIHiHi. It is a stifling summer’s day, and the odour of sweat
hangs in the Institute’s corridors. Despite Pötsch’s desire to avoid conversation with Frau
Dr Eggenfels on his way to Dr Albin’s office, he cannot escape her clutches that easily;
she grabs hold of his hand and ominously assures him that he can always count on her
support [p. 106]. After subsequently losing his way in the Institute’s labyrinthine
corridors, he finally locates Dr Albin, only to find him in a meeting about the Institute’s
five-year plan, during which Brattke, ever the rebel, whispers dark warnings to Pötsch
about the thorough bureaucratisation of research at the ZIHiHi [p. 107]. Before Pötsch has
an opportunity to learn the reason for his visit, there is a telephone call from Menzel who
requests that Pötsch should meet him at his villa.
There follows an ugly scene in which Brattke’s warnings are realised: dispensing with the
usual niceties, Menzel promptly sets about annihilating Pötsch’s essay, and with it his
hopes for a hero’s welcome. The style, Menzel says, is ‘miserabel’, the methodological
approach ‘undurchschaubar’, and the ‘negative Ausgangsposition’ regrettable [p. 109]. To
Pötsch’s enquiry about Menzel’s evaluation of the essay’s content, rather than merely its
form, Menzel responds in the same vein with accusations of ‘Detailfreudigkeit’,
‘Kleinkariertheit’, ‘Standpunktlosigkeit’ and ‘Positivismus’, which climax in the crushing
accusation, ‘die Arbeit enthält gefährliche Thesen eines Hobby-Historikers, die zu
beweisen er nicht fähig ist’ [p. 111]. Despite his devastation, Pötsch is neither sufficiently
convinced nor sufficiently disillusioned to be discouraged from presenting his essay at
Menzel’s forthcoming Schwedenow celebration at the GDR’s Urania Theatre – the
depressing scene with which de Bruyn begins his story.
201
4.3.3 A Critique of Academia
From this description of Pötsch’s two visits to the ZIHiHi it is clear that de Bruyn’s
academic critique in Märkische Forschungen shares many of the features of that in
Preisverleihung, as well as in Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’: the ZIHiHi is an
unashamedly self-serving organisation, the primary function of which is to lend credibility
to its Director’s celebrity career. To this end, its rigid hierarchical structure presses its
junior personnel into the service of Menzel’s glorification, leaving their own academic
potential untapped. Academic passion, flair and integrity have no place in the ZIHiHi.
Rather, as in Königsdorf’s Institut für Zahlographie, scholarship is produced according to
a plan, and to satisfy an ideological norm, mediocrity being its prevailing characteristic.
Like Königsdorf, de Bruyn laments the unshakeable confidence and stability of the
academic institution. Menzel’s position at the top of the institutional hierarchy gives him
the power to intimidate, manipulate and silence those who threaten to destabilise his
standing as an admired household name: Pötsch immediately finds himself excluded from
the Institute when he dares publicly to expose the flaws in Menzel’s Schwedenow
biography; even Brattke, an acute observer and the Institute’s resident critic, is persuaded
to toe the institution line because he knows he will otherwise be expelled. In addition,
Menzel’s close personal connections with the GDR political elite, which de Bruyn
portrays in the bitingly satirical chapter featuring Menzel’s birthday party, hints not only
at the well documented political affiliation of GDR academics but also, more sinisterly, at
the idea that professors and institutional leaders were hand in glove with the Party elite.
Thus, even more than in Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’, and more so than in
Preisverleihung, in Märkische Forschungen de Bruyn points up the utter invulnerability of
the academic establishment. Unlike Teo, who voluntarily compromises, Pötsch sticks to
202
his guns and proceeds with the public presentation of his corrective to Menzel’s erroneous
Schwedenow biography. Despite this brave act of defiance, for two reasons Pötsch can
never destabilise the Institute’s sovereignty. First, Menzel easily eradicates the threat by
simply retracting his job offer to Pötsch, thereby silencing his potentially threatening voice
in much the same way as does Königsdorf’s Institut für Zahlographie. Second, so beguiled
are the assembled media and guests by Menzel and his Institute’s reputation that the
anonymous Pötsch is simply overlooked. However right he is, the little man is no match
for the might of the institution. As Rachel Halverson concludes in her discussion of the
correlation between institutional affiliation and censorship, ‘Pötsch continues to live on as
an independent thinker, yet his ideas will never have a life beyond that of his mind’.249
Although de Bruyn criticises many institutional aspects of the ZIHiHi, the focus of his
critique is the methodological question – the use and abuse of history and literature for
personal and political purposes. Contrasting Märkische Forschungen with Stefan Heym’s
König David Bericht, Michael Ossar says of de Bruyn’s text that the motives for Menzel’s
manipulation of Schwedenow’s biography are ‘persönlicher Natur und relativ einfach’.250
Although Ossar is making the point that Heym’s novel is more political than de Bruyn’s,
this statement overlooks the political context of Menzel’s and Pötsch’s conflict, and risks
reducing it to a harmless, certainly apolitical, academic squabble. At heart a literature
lover (as we see from his extensive personal library), and a deep admirer of
Schwedenow’s poetry (as he confesses to Pötsch during a moment of emotional intimacy
[pp. 99-102]), Menzel, like Paul in Preisverleihung, is not a born philistine, but has
become one under the political and academic conditions of the GDR. During the late
Rachel Halverson, ‘Günter de Bruyn’s Märkische Forschungen: Form, Institutions and Censorship’, Rocky
Mountain Review, 50/1 (1996), 7-17 (p. 15).
250
Ossar, p. 172.
249
203
1970s, GDR cultural functionaries began to place increasing emphasis on a GDR
Kulturerbe which, as Joanna McKay and Dennis Tate explain, was designed to lend
legitimacy to GDR socialism and to inspire its citizens to commit themselves to the
socialist cause. The assertion of a GDR cultural heritage involved rehabilitating historical
figures such as Bismarck, and Weimar Classicists such as Goethe and Schiller, and,
through the ideological re-writing of their biographies, casting them as forerunners of
socialist values, and idealising them as role models for GDR citizens.251 Unsurprisingly, it
fell to GDR historians to legitimise the official version of history and the GDR’s cultural
heritage by producing ‘scholarship’ to support the claims of the SED, which in turn
rewarded them with job security, prizes, prestige and material and travel privileges.
Menzel’s dishonest account of Schwedenow’s biography is therefore not produced in a
vacuum; it does not spring from an intellectual inadequacy or personal conviction, but
from a combination of political pressure and selfish opportunism, that is, from an
internalisation of official cultural policy combined with the self-serving aim of writing
himself, through Schwedenow, into the history books of the future. In this sense, de
Bruyn’s academic critique reveals the interdependence of the academic and political
spheres in the GDR, and expresses at least as much criticism of the political conditions
which created the Menzels and the ZIHiHis of the GDR academic world, as of the
individuals and institutions within it.
Joanna McKay, ‘East German Identity in the GDR’, in Jonathan Grix and Paul Cooke, eds, East German
Distinctiveness in a Unified Germany (Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press, 2002), pp. 15-29 (pp.
22-3); Tate, introduction to Günter de Bruyn, Märkische Forschungen, p. 12.
251
204
4.3.4 A Political Critique
Tate notes that the GDR’s ‘Minister for Books’, Klaus Höpcke, passed Märkische
Forschungen for publication with the justification that, in the character of Menzel, de
Bruyn had usefully identified a rare academic type whose influence on GDR academia
needed to be challenged.252 This focus on the text’s academic commentary is shared by
GDR reviewers, who generally sought to reduce the text to a straightforward academic
critique. It is more surprising that this interpretation should also find currency amongst
some western critics: as mentioned above, Ossar downplays the influence of GDR cultural
politics on Menzel’s modus operandi. In addition, James Knowlton’s contention that the
unequal power dynamic between Pötsch and Menzel is much less significant than the
thematisation of the abuse of literature underestimates the symbolic potential of de
Bruyn’s representation of institutional relations.253 Not only do these readings overlook
the critique of GDR cultural politics outlined above, but they also miss the text’s
metaphorical potential which, as in Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’, allows the
ZIHiHi to become a model of the GDR state.
Manfred Jäger, on the other hand, seems to acknowledge the way in which the realist
critique of academia and the coded critique of the GDR state flow into one another, much
as we saw in Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’:
Parteiapparat und Staatssicherheit kommen nicht vor. Oder doch? Es muß nicht
eigens gesagt werden, daß Menzel in der SED fest verankert ist. […] Und dafür, daß
alles unter Kontrolle blieb, sorgten diverse Mitarbeiter des Instituts, ohne daß die
Arbeitsbereiche klar umrissen wurden. Herr Albin, der Stellvertreter Menzels, wird
Dennis Tate, ‘“…natürlich ein politisches Buch.” Märkische Forschungen im historischen Kontext der
Honecker-Ära’, Text und Kritik, 127 (1995), 84-91 (p. 88).
253
James Knowlton, ‘“Das Erbe der Kultur, das zu erwerben uns aufgegeben.” Zu Günter de Bruyns Roman
Märkische Forschungen’, in Uwe Wittstock, ed., Günter de Bruyn, pp. 157-64 (p. 162).
252
205
als Mann von ‘eisiger Korrektheit’ beschrieben. Frau Eggenfels, Spitzname ‘Guter
Stern des Instituts’, wird eingesetzt, wenn junge Leute, die mit dem Kopf durch die
Wand wollen, warmherziger Ratschläge bedürfen, um von solcher Unvernunft
abzulassen.254
Here, Jäger does not suggest that Menzel is a metaphor for an SED leader, but that he is
obviously a member of the SED. When it comes to Albin, Jäger imitates the vagueness of
the novel by not saying exactly what is meant, but implying that the reader will fill in the
details and make the connection between the Institute’s personnel and Party functionaries,
even if they are not named as such. Of Frau Dr Eggenfels Jäger seems to be saying that de
Bruyn is not so much giving us a nudge and a wink that she is the Stasi woman in the
Institute, as suggesting that she represents the way the Stasi works, acting as a kind of
political conscience to potentially disruptive colleagues. In this way, Jäger points up the
iridescence of de Bruyn’s satire on both the Institute and the GDR state.
Other aspects of de Bruyn’s representation of the ZIHiHi which invite a metaphorical
reading include the Institute’s rigid hierarchical structure and top-down system of control,
which can be said to mirror the organisation of the SED in particular and the GDR state in
general. Furthermore, Jäger’s identification of Frau Dr Eggenfels with a Stasi operative is
supported by York-Gothart Mix, who writes that the Stasi’s attempt to recruit de Bruyn as
an Informeller Mitarbeiter in 1973 appears in Märkische Forschungen in the form of Frau
Dr Eggenfels’s unannounced visit to Pötsch’s home where she pressures him to toe the
institution line.255
Manfred Jäger, ‘Karrieren auf schräger Laufbahn. Günter de Bruyn. Märkische Forschungen’, in Karl
Deiritz and Hannes Krauss, eds, Verrat an der Kunst? Rückblicke auf die DDR-Literatur (Berlin: Aufbau,
1993), pp. 178-85 (pp. 183-4).
255
York-Gothart Mix documents how two members of the Stasi visited de Bruyn in his country home and,
just like Frau Dr Eggenfels, portrayed themselves as de Bruyn’s allies who were simply passing on a friendly
warning not to become implicated in anti-socialist behaviours: York-Gothart Mix, ‘Das Phantom der
Wahrheit oder was war und ist wirklich? Die Realität des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit und die
254
206
Read in this light, the relationship between Pötsch and the ZIHiHi’s personnel positions
Pötsch as a metaphor for the GDR populace which was subject to the authority and whims
of the ruling elite. Tate makes this point quite clearly:
[de Bruyn’s] fellow-citizens, and especially the GDR’s younger generation, were
frequently being thwarted in their attempts to question Party authority, whether the
issue was cultural, political, or something of a more personal nature. […] They would
profoundly understand the kind of conflict in which this ordinary school-teacher finds
himself. Ernst Pötsch […] is clearly conceived as a more ‘average’ GDR citizen in
the way that the odds are stacked against him from the beginning.256
Similarly, Detlef Gwosc speaks of ‘the helplessness of the individual when confronted
with the power of the state, as represented by Menzel’.257 Certainly, Menzel’s exploitation
of Pötsch’s hopes and dreams, his pretence of acknowledging the value of the little man,
and the false promises he makes of a more fulfilling future within the ‘family’ of the
ZIHiHi, strongly recall the manipulation of ordinary East Germans by a government which
failed to deliver on its promise of a socialist utopia. In this sense, de Bruyn fulfils his aim
to create for the reader ‘Modellsituationen […], die man auf eigene Erfahrungen
übertragen kann’.258
It is significant that de Bruyn hints at the literature lover behind Menzel’s instrumental
approach to scholarship. Echoing Wolf’s illumination of the utopian ideals at the core of
Professor Barzel’s TOMEGL project in Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers, it supports a
reading of Menzel as a metaphor for an SED leader whose idealistic principles have
Erzählungen Freiheitsberaubung und Märkische Forschungen’, in Dennis Tate, ed., Günter de Bruyn in
Perspective, German Monitor, 44 (1990), 65-78 (p. 70).
256
Tate, introduction to Günter de Bruyn, Märkische Forschungen, pp. 2-3.
257
Detlef Gwosc, ‘Idealism Takes on the Establishment: Social Criticism in Roland Gräf’s Film Adaptations
of Märkische Forschungen and Der Tangospieler’, in Sean Allan and John Sandford, eds, DEFA: East
German Cinema 1946-1992 (New York: Berghahn, 1999), pp. 245-66 (p. 256).
258
de Bruyn, cited in: Hirdina, p. 18.
207
become corrupted by the challenges, temptations and excesses of power. Furthermore,
Menzel’s privileging of a politically convenient lie over an inconvenient truth, and the
ease with which he projects this falsehood into the public sphere where its veracity is
unquestioningly accepted, allows us to read him as a metaphor for a political elite which
enjoyed almost total control over the dissemination of information throughout GDR
society, and which ruthlessly erased any facts which ran contrary to official ideology.
Tate says of the ZIHiHi that ‘in its bureaucratic nature it is an exact replica of the
organisation of society as a whole’.259 He cites as evidence for this not only the
hierarchical and centralised structure of the ZIHiHi, but also Menzel’s language of
efficiency and planning, his pseudo-Marxist jargon, the emotive terms of abuse he uses to
discredit Pötsch’s claims, and the false veneer of transparency and tolerance which Menzel
and his cronies hypocritically celebrate. Although Tate does not explicitly describe the
Institute as a microcosm of the GDR state or its upper echelons of power, his analysis
strongly proposes this as a key interpretation. To his evidence Tate might have added the
labyrinthine layout of the Institute’s corridors, in which all but a few initiated insiders find
themselves disorientated and disempowered, and which thereby reflect the impenetrable
bureaucracy of GDR officialdom. More abstractly, it is worth considering the significance
of Brattke’s language of the class struggle, in particular his critical labelling of the
Institute as a ‘Feudalhof’. Evans outlines in his analyses of de Bruyn’s Jean Paul
biography and his novel Neue Herrlichkeit how de Bruyn’s ostensible critique of a Prussia
which was ripe for reform contained implicit criticism of what he saw as a continuation of
Prussian values and structures in the GDR.260 In Kein Ort. Nirgends, Christa Wolf, too,
259
260
Tate, introduction to Günter de Bruyn, Märkische Forschungen, p. 28.
Evans, ‘Ein Training im Ich-Sagen’, pp. 15-16 and pp. 241-4.
208
goes back to the nineteenth-century German past to show how the problems that needed
resolving then have still not been resolved. In this way, these writers satirise the notion
that the GDR had entered a new stage of history. Although Märkische Forschungen is not
set in a past which serves as a metaphor for the present, through Brattke’s identification of
the ZIHiHi as a ‘Feudalhof’, de Bruyn criticises its reactionary structures and mechanisms
which, he suggests, pre-date even the bourgeois age, let alone the supposedly socialist
GDR. Inasmuch as the Institute can be read as a microcosm of the GDR, this critique also
applies to the GDR state as a whole.
4.3.5 A Social Critique
Menzel serves as a vehicle not only for de Bruyn’s academic and political critiques, but
also for his critique of GDR social inequality, which is largely introduced through the
text’s non-institutional scenes. Unlike in Preisverleihung in which the professor leads a
modest lifestyle which is no more privileged than that of his academic Assistent, in
Märkische Forschungen de Bruyn sets up an exaggerated opposition between Menzel’s
and Pötsch’s living conditions. While Pötsch, the village school teacher, lives on a tumbledown farm in a rural suburb of Berlin, Menzel’s lifestyle could not be more opulent: his
large gated villa boasts a cellar, a sauna, a bedroom-sized dog chamber, an office and a
library, the latter housing a jaw-dropping collection of rare first editions. Naturally, the
property is managed by a full-time housekeeper, Frau Spießbauch, whom Menzel
snobbishly insists on calling Frau Spießbach. Rather than describing all of Menzel’s
antiques in detail, de Bruyn lists categories of object – ‘Fayencen und Intarsien’, ‘Empire
und Biedermeier’ [p. 56] – to convey his conspicuous wealth. These nouns suggest that
Menzel owns some of the most sought-after antiques from the highpoint of the bourgeois
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era, a point which is confirmed by the closer mentions of an oil painting and a cabinet
from the nineteenth century, highlighting the hypocrisy of a regime that disparages the
bourgeois era while coveting its cultural riches. Even more than these material differences,
de Bruyn satirises the empty values and pretentious behaviours of Menzel’s social circle.
Their superficial conversations, ostentatious kisses, affected laughter, emphasis on
etiquette and sycophantic swarming around their host are alien social mores for Pötsch and
Elke, and are heavily satirised by the narrator. What is striking about these descriptions,
and those of Menzel’s villa discussed above, is that they could just as well have been
written of a professor’s house and an academic party in the West.261
As in Preisverleihung, cars are a clear symbol of wealth and power. Thus, when Pötsch,
on his bike, first meets Menzel, in his car, de Bruyn hints that their initial meeting of
minds will be complicated by their unequal social status. Later, when Pötsch and Elke
arrive at Menzel’s fiftieth birthday party, they are amazed by the fleet of luxury cars
belonging to the other guests, among them a ‘riesengroßer schwarzer’ [p. 88] which GDR
readers would have understood as a reference to a Party Tatra, probably belonging to the
Minister with whom Menzel cosily banters. Surprised to see Pötsch and Elke arriving on
foot, Menzel’s wife assumes that they must have decided to leave their car at home.
Clothing, and in particular footwear, are other leitmotifs in Märkische Forschungen which
indicate the characters’ wealth and values. For example, when Pötsch and Menzel first
meet, Pötsch’s wellington boots contrast with the Menzels’ fine city shoes; when Frau Dr
Eggenfels pays Pötsch a visit, she wears high-heeled shoes which are unsuitable for the
In Der Vorleser, Bernhard Schlink describes the professor’s house in similar terms: ‘die
Biedermeiermöbel, den Flügel, die alte Standuhr, die Bilder, die Regale mit den Büchern, Geschirr und
Besteck auf dem Tisch’: Bernhard Schlink, Der Vorleser (Zurich: Diogenes, 1995) (p. 71). In Lucky Jim,
Kingsley Amis describes an equally bourgeois party at the house of Professor Welch.
261
210
rough terrain in Pötsch’s yard. Later in the story, Pötsch, who is embarrassed to turn up at
Menzel’s party in his old-fashioned all-purpose suit, is persuaded by Elke to buy a new
outfit for the occasion; Elke wears perfume for the first time in years. Although the couple
feel self-conscious and uncomfortable, and are conspicuous in the train beside the workers
on their way to start the night-shift, compared to the gold and silver evening shoes of the
female guests, their attire is understated.
In his essay ‘Zur Entstehung einer Erzählung’, de Bruyn explains that although Menzel is
based on an academic acquaintance, his external living conditions bear no resemblance to
those of the figure on whom he is modelled.262 Thus, these highly exaggerated descriptions
of Menzel’s upper-class lifestyle are a deliberate fabrication through which de Bruyn
seems not so much to be reflecting GDR social relations in a realist way, as to be
stretching to its absurd extreme the contradiction inherent in the existence of a high
society world in a supposedly classless state. After all, elsewhere in the novel de Bruyn
reflects the possibilities for upward social mobility in the GDR: Pötsch’s tractorist brotherin-law owns a car, Frau Dr Eggenfels overcomes her impoverished beginnings to become
an academic, and Menzel’s mother’s dialect indicates Menzel’s working-class origins.
Furthermore, six years earlier in Preisverleihung de Bruyn portrays social differences in a
nuanced way, with Professor Liebscher enjoying no more affluent a lifestyle than his
assistant, and greater upward mobility being possible for blue-collar workers and even
members of the working class. However, while de Bruyn is probably not criticising rich
professors in the GDR, if we see Menzel as a representative of the GDR’s political elite, it
seems likely that he is satirising privilege in the highest ranks of the SED.
Günter de Bruyn, ‘Zur Entstehung einer Erzählung. Zu Märkische Forschungen’, in Lesefreuden. Über
Bücher und Menschen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1986), pp. 316-32 (p. 327).
262
211
4.3.6 Closing Remarks
On a realist level, de Bruyn employs the ZIHiHi in Märkische Forschungen to explore the
deficiencies of the GDR academic establishment, the role of GDR cultural politics on the
perpetuation of academic mediocrity and, through the novel’s non-institutional scenes,
social inequality and ideological contradictions in the socialist state. In this, the academic
institute serves a similar function to Teo’s Institut and the Akademie in Preisverleihung. In
its conceptualisation of the ZIHiHi as a model of the GDR state, however, Märkische
Forschungen bears greater resemblance to the scientific institutions in Wolf’s and
Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’ than to either institute in Preisverleihung. In particular, by
describing an unequal hierarchical relationship between a powerful leader and a GDR
Jedermann, by painting a picture of corrupted ideals and a powerful propaganda system,
and by describing the disempowering effect of the academic institution on the uninitiated
individual, de Bruyn evokes well-understood aspects of the GDR Alltag and social
relations in the GDR state. By exploring the coded conceptualisation of the academic
institute, we can begin to see how the academic conflict which de Bruyn describes opens
out into a broader commentary not just on GDR cultural politics on a realist level but, in a
metaphorical sense, on the plight of the everyday individual in a corrupt and powerful
system which privileges its own survival above all else, and certainly above the ideals it
purports to embody.
4.4 Conclusion
As in Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’, the various academic institutions which
feature in Preisverleihung and Märkische Forschungen serve as vehicles for de Bruyn’s
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GDR academic and cultural critiques, particularly of self-serving, fear-based institutional
mechanisms which perpetuate conformism and mediocrity, and lose sight of the academic
values they are supposed to promote. In addition, through the non-institutional scenes, de
Bruyn introduces a more clearly stated social critique than we find in Wolf’s or
Königsdorf’s stories. The relationship between the academic and private spheres is
conceptualised differently in Preisverleihung and Märkische Forschungen: in the former,
the academic institution, while exhibiting similarities with GDR social dynamics outside
the academic sphere, is shown as just one element of GDR society, continuous with it,
rather than standing as a metaphor for it. In this non-metaphorical representation of the
institution, Preisverleihung differs from Märkische Forschungen, and represents the
exception which perhaps confirms, rather than negates, the pattern exhibited in the other
‘academia tales’ discussed in Part One of this study, whereby the academic institute can be
read as a metaphorical model of the GDR state. By paying attention to the aesthetics of the
representation of the academic institute, we reach a deeper understanding of the
complexity of these authors’ coded political critiques, and of the ways in which these
interact with and support their realist academic, scientific and/or social commentaries.
In Part Two of this study I am interested in the post-Wende literary representation of the
restructuring of the east German academic establishment. Perhaps because many of the
academic institutions depicted in these texts have fallen victim to the Abwicklung process,
the private sphere tends to be foregrounded. However, by exploring these authors’
symbolic conceptualisation of the loss of the academic institute, and/or of the post-Wende
founding of new organisations, more nuanced critiques of the GDR state, the unification
process and prevailing post-Wende discourses begin to emerge.
213
Before that, however, I round off my examination of the pre-Wende texts with a short
excursus on their relationship to the western genre of the campus novel.
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An Excursus: The GDR ‘Academia Tale’ and the Campus Novel
By way of conclusion to the first part of this study I now make a brief excursus into the
ostensibly very different world of the campus novel. By identifying the characteristics of
the campus novel, and by considering points of similarity and departure between this
typically Anglo-American genre and the texts I have considered so far, I hope to define
more exactly the mechanisms of the GDR ‘academia tale’. Some key concepts from
Foucault also help to bring these mechanisms into sharper focus.
Elaine Showalter’s study of the Anglo-American campus novel in her monograph, Faculty
Towers: The Academic Novel and its Discontents, charts the development of the genre from
its birth in the 1950s to the present day.263 Although it is a fairly straightforward thematic
study, it usefully highlights the changing focus and attitudes of campus novelists over the
decades, and points to sociological and political changes beyond the university campus as
influencing factors.264 The sudden rise of the genre in the 1950s, says Showalter, is partly
attributable to the expansion of student numbers in the post-war years. Previously the cosy
reserve of a privileged minority, the university campus became a more representative social
body which was increasingly subject to the financial restraints, political negotiations and
inter-personal tensions of the outside world. Showalter explains that in the 1950s this shift
is represented on the one hand by the utopian Oxbridge novel, epitomised by C. P. Snow’s
The Masters (1951), and on the other by the satirical academic lampoon, of which Kingsley
Amis’s Lucky Jim (1953) was a pioneer.
263
Elaine Showalter, Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and its Discontents (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005).
264
As Showalter provides a lot of detail on the themes and situations represented in the novels she describes,
and because I only use the campus novel as a starting point for identifying the mechanisms of my ‘academia
tales’, I rely on Showalter’s overview of the campus novel rather than having read all of them myself.
215
The campus novel of the 1960s, says Showalter, is characterised by acerbic thematisations
of the struggle for survival in the tribal English departments of the US university. The
beloved master of Snow’s Cambridge college gives way to the patriarchal head of
department, female chairs are almost unheard of, and the plight of the outsider is a staple
theme. Showalter explains that the social and political turmoil of the 1960s subsequently
found expression in the campus novel of the 1970s. Feminism began to enter the academic
novel, and the upheavals of the institution and of society are often conveyed through
architectural signifiers: in one novel the fragile new glass tower is juxtaposed with its
sturdy old brick predecessor.
By the 1980s, women are finally represented as worthy of permanent lectureships, although
writers continue to demonstrate the patriarchal attitudes which dominate academia. The
1990s see the thematisation of the battle for academic tenure, particularly in American
campus novels. Furthermore, the murder mystery combines with the conventions of the
traditional campus novel, conflict between academics old and young becomes a common
feature, and any faith in the survival of the idyllic ivory tower is definitively quashed. The
tone of twenty-first century representations is altogether darker and bleaker: sexual
harassment is a dominant theme, and the hypocrisy and inhumanity of the academic
establishment are the objects of critique.
Similarities
This summary of Showalter’s analysis suggests, perhaps surprisingly, that there are many
commonalities between the campus novel and the GDR ‘academia tale’. On a general level,
216
both foreground closed societies, bringing institutional behaviours into sharp focus and
consistently finding them wanting. Both thematise the unattractive aspects of academic life:
hierarchical and patriarchal attitudes, competitiveness, power games, hypocrisy, the
dialectic between the academic ideal and its perverted reality, and the loss of the academic
dream. Mid-life crises and the loss of academic faith are the subject of many campus novels
as well as many ‘academia tales’. The deployment of character types and the plight of the
outsider are also features of both. Indeed, Steven Connor’s description of the campus
novel’s two principle narrative structures could equally have been written of a number of
Wolf’s, Königsdorf’s and de Bruyn’s ‘academia tales’:
[t]he one concerns the disruption of a closed world and the gradual return of order
and regularity to it, while the other concerns the passage through this closed world of
a character who must in the end be allowed to escape its gravitational pull.265
Equally, Ian Carter’s criticism of the ‘mind-boggling’ repetitiveness and predictability of
the campus novel might, prima facie, seem applicable to the recurrent themes and
metaphors which characterise all of the ‘academia tales’.266 Finally, the satirical mode is
characteristic of most campus novels and GDR academic texts.
Reading Showalter’s analysis of the spectrum of campus novels, one is struck by a wealth
of more specific similarities between individual campus novels and ‘academia tales’. For
example, in Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis mocks the pseudo-intellectualism of the title of Jim
Dixon’s article; this is a joke which Königsdorf employs in her account of Kuller’s thesis
title in ‘Der unangemessene Aufstand des Zahlographen Karl-Egon Kuller’. Dixon’s public
denouncement of academic hypocrisy is similar to Kuller’s attempt to do the same, and
265
266
Steven Connor, The English Novel in History 1950-1995 (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 70.
Ian Carter, cited in Showalter, p. 3.
217
Dixon’s ‘burst of anarchic laughter’267 recalls Knack and Kummer’s hysteria at the end of
‘Kugelblitz’, as well as Teo’s hysterical laughter at the post-speech party in de Bruyn’s
Preisverleihung. In addition, the progression from Snow’s beloved college master to the
formidable professor of later campus novels parallels the progression from the ideal
institute director of Wolf’s ‘Ein Besuch’ to the patriarchal professor figures in her
‘Selbstversuch’, in de Bruyn’s Märkische Forschungen and in many of Königsdorf’s
stories. Campus novelists’ depiction of their characters’ oedipal projections on to the
departmental chair268 is echoed in the narrator’s infatuation with her professor in
‘Selbstversuch’, and even Pötsch’s reverence for Menzel in Märkische Forschungen. The
opposition between the innocent existence of the researcher and the dubious position of the
institutional leader is represented in both Carlos Baker’s A Friend in Power (1958) and
Wolf’s ‘Ein Besuch’. Another opposition – that between the sciences and the arts – is also
thematised in this and several other campus novels,269 as well as in all of Wolf’s ‘academia
tales’.
Generational change, and in particular the conflict between old-school academics and
newly qualified pretenders to the academic throne, appear to be as much a feature of the
campus novel as they are of the GDR texts I discuss. The importance Snow places on age
as a way of indicating status and hierarchy is echoed by Wolf who, in ‘Neue
Lebensansichten eines Katers’, details the ages of her scientists. Academic anxiety is
symbolised in at least one campus novel by the sexual impotence of its professors,270 a
metaphor which Wolf employs with her impotent protagonist of ‘Neue Lebensansichten
267
Showalter, p. 18.
Showalter, p. 43.
269
See in particular Nice Work and Thinks by David Lodge.
270
Showalter, p. 46.
268
218
eines Katers’. Furthermore, the humorous names which campus novelist Lev Raphael gives
to his fictional university and faculty (SUM – State University of Murder, and EAR –
English and American Studies and Rhetoric) evoke Königsdorf’s and de Bruyn’s use of
comic names for their academic institutes and subjects. Similarly, just as many of
Königsdorf’s and de Bruyn’s characters have humorous names, the names of many campus
novel protagonists are comically onomatopoeic, evocative or literal: Welch, Zapp,
McGarrigle, Swallow, Messenger. Many campus novelists’ symbolic descriptions of the
architecture of their fictional universities are echoed in Königsdorf’s metaphorical
description of the Siegbahn Institute in Respektloser Umgang, as well as de Bruyn’s
representation of the ZIHiHi building in Märkische Forschungen.
There are also similarities in the representation of women and the treatment of feminist
issues. In the early campus novel, as in Wolf’s ‘Ein Besuch’, ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines
Katers’ and Störfall, and de Bruyn’s Preisverleihung, women appear only as students,
secretaries and professors’ wives. It is only in the 1980s campus novel, and in Königsdorf’s
stories of the same period, that women feature as academics in their own right.
Nevertheless, the dominance of patriarchal attitudes in the academic institution is critiqued
by campus novelists and GDR writers alike, most strikingly, in Carolyn Heilbrun’s Death
in a Tenured Position (1981): the plight of the female protagonist, who measures herself
against male academic norms, echoes the conviction of the narrator of ‘Selbstversuch’ that
she must become a man in order to prove herself as a woman. Furthermore, the concern of
another of Heilbrun’s protagonists with her national reputation, and her frustration that her
219
contribution to academia is not being acknowledged because of her sex, recalls Lise
Meitner’s fear of exclusion from the history books of science.271
In addition to these thematic continuities, Showalter’s analysis reveals methodological
similarities between a number of campus novels and ‘academia tales’. She explains that
some of the best campus novels are rewritings of Victorian novels, and cites, amongst
others, Lodge’s Nice Work – a modern-day version of Mrs Gaskell’s North and South – as a
paradigmatic example. Although this pastiche is not characteristic of all GDR ‘academia
tales’, Wolf’s ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’ is an explicit rewriting of E.T.A.
Hoffmann’s Lebensansichten des Katers Murr. In addition, Showalter writes that a
technique favoured by campus novelist Carol Shields involves the juxtaposition of
contemporary women professors with mythic female figures from the past. This recalls
Königsdorf’s Respektloser Umgang, in which the female narrator is juxtaposed with the
apparition of the famous nuclear physicist Lise Meitner. Finally, in the Author’s Note to
The History Man, Bradbury ironically comments that the novel bears no relation to reality.
This evokes Königsdorf’s mischievous denial on the prefatory page of Der Lauf der Dinge
that similarities between her stories and the real world were intended.
Differences
Notwithstanding these similarities, there are significant points of divergence between the
campus novel and the ‘academia tale’. An obvious difference is their length and breadth: at
several hundred pages, the campus novel offers more intricate plots, a deeper insight into
campus mechanisms, and more psychologically developed characters than the ‘academia
271
Showalter, pp. 86-7.
220
tale’. Furthermore, although campus novelists invariably foreground lecturers rather than
students, the more global university setting of this genre inevitably differs from the narrow
research environment of the GDR ‘academia tale’. While teaching matters, student life and
classroom politics are inevitably a feature, however peripheral, of most campus novels,
they are generally absent from the ‘academia tale’.
An ostensibly small, but highly significant, difference is that most campus novels
foreground English lecturers, while Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s, if not de Bruyn’s, ‘academia
tales’ feature scientists and mathematicians. Showalter suggests that one reason for the
prominence of English departments in the campus novel is that many campus novelists are
also English professors. She goes on to argue that a large part of the campus novel’s appeal
for academic writers is that it offers an opportunity to send up or critique the foibles of their
work environment and academic colleagues, while for academic readers the fun lies in the
recognition of familiar types and personae: it is widely acknowledged, for instance, that
Lodge’s ubiquitous Morris Zapp is the literary double of critical theorist Stanley Fish.
Commenting on Nabokov’s novel Pnin, David Lodge defines the campus setting as ‘a
“small world” removed from the hustle and bustle of modern urban life, in which social and
political behaviour can be amusingly observed’.272 The fictional academic institute of the
GDR ‘academia tale’ can also be described as a ‘small world’, or microcosm. The Oxford
English Dictionary defines a microcosm fairly generally as ‘a thing regarded as
encapsulating in miniature the characteristics of something much larger’. This definition
allows for two subtly different possibilities: the microcosm can function either as a realist
David Lodge, ‘Exiles in a Small World. An Early Campus Novel: Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin’, Guardian,
‘Review’ (8th May 2004), p. 34.
272
221
model of a larger version of itself, or as a metaphorical miniature of a different system. The
campus novel and the ‘academia tale’ embody each of these possibilities: while Showalter’s
discussion suggests that the fictional western campus generally functions as a realist
microcosm of the western academic world, I have argued, in line with Mittman, that the
fictional GDR institution tends also to operate as a metaphorical microcosm of the GDR
state. Thus, for example, while the newly built University of Watermouth in Bradbury’s
The History Man is a model of the ‘New University’ of 1970s Britain, Königsdorf’s Institut
für Zahlographie is not just a miniature of the GDR academic institution, it also serves as a
model of the GDR state. The distinction is neatly illustrated by the desire of Amis’s
protagonist in Lucky Jim to escape academia and join the wider world outside the
university; Amis conceptualises the academic world as separate, and different, from society
at large. While this holds true if we read Wolf’s, Königsdorf’s and de Bruyn’s texts on the
level of their realist academic critiques, in general, these writers also suggest that GDR
society is mirrored in the academic institute.
Steven Connor’s analysis of the British campus novel might, at first glance, seem to
complicate the distinction between academia and the ‘outside world’. He explains that the
fictional campus of the campus novel is both outside and inside society: while it certainly
represents an academic enclave separate from mainstream society, it is not ‘worldtight’, it
is not immune to the social, political and economic forces of the outside world. Recalling
Showalter’s overview of campus novels of the 1950s, Connor argues that, in its
thematisation of the changing demographics of university populations, increasing financial
pressures, and changes in academic curricula, the campus novel also functions as an index
222
of change in England as a whole.273 Thus, it might seem that the campus novel should not
just be seen as a vehicle for academic comment, but also, like the GDR ‘academia tale’, for
observations on society at large, on what Connor terms ‘the condition of England theme’.274
Nevertheless, I see a distinction between this kind of social and political commentary, and
that which is found in the GDR ‘academia tale’: what Connor describes is a realist portrayal
of the impact on the academic institution of societal change without, while in the ‘academia
tale’ we typically have one closed world operating as a hermetically sealed metaphor for
another. In this sense, while the main referent of the campus novel remains the academic
world, in the ‘academia tale’ readers are encouraged, both by the author’s construction of
the academic space and by their horizons of expectation as GDR readers to read through the
academic setting to the GDR state.
With specific reference to Lodge’s Nice World, Connor explains that there is another, more
fundamental, sense in which campus novelists thematise the condition of England. This is
tied up with what he calls the campus novel’s dual ‘addressivity’:
The campus novel appears to be addressed to an ideal audience constituted by the
more generalised experience of higher education, an audience who can be flattered,
entertained and reassured by recognition of a familiar world […]. But it is also
addressed to the outsider or non-participant in university life. […] [T]he dual
orientation of the novel is made part of its subject by addressing an academic or
quasi-academic audience who are on the inside of the academic world looking out,
and a non-academic audience who are outside that world, looking in at what it feels
like to look out.275
In other words, in its very thematisation of the academic sphere as a ‘small world’ distinct
from mainstream society, and in the subsequent ambiguity of its address, the campus novel
273
Connor, pp. 69-72.
Connor, p. 71.
275
Connor, p. 73 and pp. 79-80.
274
223
touches on the issue of class distinction, which is a deeply sensitive aspect of English (and
American) society. Similarly, I have shown that my GDR ‘academia tales’ are also
characterised by the dual addressivity of which Connor speaks: they combine realist
commentaries on science and academia (with which academic and educated readers can
identify) with coded critiques of the GDR state (to which non-academic readers can also
relate). In this way, as well as through more direct references to social stratification in the
GDR, Wolf, Königsdorf and de Bruyn also make this dual ‘addressivity’, the class
distinctions in what was supposed to be a classless state, a subject of their texts.
The concept of the institution as a metaphorical social space is not new. It can be used
affirmatively, as Agnes Cardinal’s discussion of Der geteilte Himmel suggests. She
explains that Rita’s work Brigade becomes a paradigm for the whole of society, in which
every social type and their interactions are represented.276 Wolf’s use of microcosm here
conforms to the Socialist Realist demand for representative types, in which the part (or a
series of parts) can represent the whole. Increasingly, however, the device of the institution
as a microcosm was used critically, as Schachtsiek-Freitag’s, and Krueger and Poore’s
analyses of the power dynamic within the GDR school demonstrate.
In addition to literary depictions of the institution, there is a sociological tradition, most
obviously represented by Foucault, which explores the connection between institutions and
wider social relations. Although Foucault’s sociological observations are based on
empirical reality as he saw it, and are therefore at odds with Wolf’s, Königsdorf’s and de
Bruyn’s literary device of metaphor in fictional texts, his conceptualisation of the causal
276
Agnes Cardinal, introduction to Christa Wolf, Der geteilte Himmel (London: Methuen & Co, 1987), pp. 135 (p. 24).
224
connections between the dynamics of social institutions and the dynamics of wider society
illuminate the authors’ representation of the institution from another perspective. In his
seminal study Discipline and Punish, Foucault traces the development of the ‘carceral
system’, charting the progression from pre-modern punishments of physical torture to
modern methods of incarceration and surveillance, which, he argues, primarily seek to
control the mind. Foucault argues that the possibility of constant observation inherent in
Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, which forms the architectural and philosophical model for
the modern prison, not only enables constant observation of prisoners, but also leads to
their self-regulation. He explains that by rendering people visible, it becomes possible to
alter them: non-conformity is observed and punished, and in this way is ultimately preempted and prevented. ‘Normalisation’ of the prison population, says Foucault, is the goal
and effect of prison surveillance.
Although Discipline and Punish carries the subtitle ‘The Birth of the Prison’, Foucault is
primarily interested in the diffusion of its power relations throughout the social body as a
whole. Barry Smart clarifies this distinction:
Two images of discipline need to be distinguished, namely the ‘discipline-blockade’
and the ‘discipline-mechanism’. The former refers to the enclosed institution, to the
exercise of a negative, constraining power, the latter to the diffusion of disciplinary
mechanisms in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries beyond the perimeter of the
enclosed space of the institution to the whole of society.277
Foucault explains that following the successful employment of disciplinary techniques in
modern prisons, they became widely adopted by other ordered and disciplined bodies such
as the military hospital, the army and the factory. Subsequently, these institutions became
models for all major organisations, amongst them the general hospital, the asylum and the
277
Barry Smart, Michel Foucault (London: Tavistock Publications, 1985), pp. 87-8.
225
school. Finally, Foucault argues that a de-institutionalisation of what he terms the
‘technologies of power’ took place, in which, as Smart puts it, ‘disciplinary mechanisms
began to seep out from their institutional location to infiltrate non-institutional spaces and
populations’.278 The family, the workplace, the charitable organisation and the health centre
were among the bodies affected. The result of this diffusion was the ‘disciplinary society’.
My argument is not that Foucault influenced my authors directly, though many of the
concepts advanced in the texts I have looked at are anticipated in Foucault’s earlier work,
but rather that one can use Foucault as a toolset for analysing their conceptions of the
institution. While one can hear echoes of Foucault’s theories of power and domination in
Wolf’s, Königsdorf’s and de Bruyn’s literary representations of the academic institute as a
microcosm of the GDR state, Foucault and these GDR writers differ on the question of the
source and direction of the domination. Foucault, who is unconcerned with the distinction
between socialist and capitalist societies, vehemently denies that power and discipline
originate in a state’s political ranks. Rather, he considers that forms of social domination
emerge ‘at multiple points in social space’.279 Instead of seeing disciplinary techniques as
part of a political strategy to regulate the populace, Foucault sees them as an ‘agentless’ and
inevitable consequence of the organisation of modern societies:
[One should] not look for the headquarters that presides over its [power’s] rationality;
neither the caste which governs, nor the groups which control the state apparatus, nor
those who make the most important economic decisions. […] The rationality of
power is characterised by tactics […] which, becoming connected to one another, but
finding their base of support and their condition elsewhere, end by forming
comprehensive systems; the logic is perfectly clear, the aims decipherable, and yet it
is often the case that no one is there to have invented them.280
278
Smart, p. 89.
Mark Poster, Foucault, Marxism and History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984), p. 104.
280
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (London: Allen Lane, 1979), p. 94.
279
226
While Foucault insists that disciplinary mechanisms originate somewhere in the network of
social institutions and are replicated throughout society, Wolf, Königsdorf and de Bruyn
conversely suggest that they originate in the upper echelons of political power, and are only
then replicated in the institution and throughout the state; unlike Foucault, my authors do
not see the state’s institutional structures as agentless. By comparison with Foucault’s
somewhat vague notion of ‘society’, they have a strong sense of the ‘state’ which they seem
to see as an entity structured by and dependent on the relationship between political leaders
and ordinary East Germans. In many of my literary analyses I observe that in the ‘academia
tales’ discussed in this study, the GDR state is represented as being just as institutionalised
as the disciplinary institution within it. This is not to suggest that Wolf, Königsdorf and de
Bruyn subscribe to the Foucauldian view that the institution is the original site of
disciplinary mechanisms which are then replicated without. Rather, drawing on their
understanding of the state as a hierarchical body comprised of politicians and the general
population, my analysis so far has illuminated the self-reflexive process by which
disciplinary mechanisms, which are seen to have been constructed by the GDR political
elite, are examined through the microcosm of the fictional institution, the dynamics of
which, while appearing to be replicated in the state, are not the foundation of GDR social
relations, but simply a metaphor for them.
The second part of this study is not so much concerned with the representation of
institutional mechanisms or GDR state relations, as with the treatment of the post-Wende
Abwicklung of the academic sphere. While some, but by no means all, of the texts I discuss
in the following analyses involve metaphorical treatments of the academic institute, this no
longer tends to function as a microcosm through which GDR social relations are examined,
227
but rather as a symbol for the loss of the GDR and for the sense of Heimatlosigkeit
experienced by many east Germans in the post-Wende years.
228
PART TWO
Chapter Five: Post-Wende Literature and Academic Abwicklung
5.1 Introduction
Looking back from the vantage point of the year 2000, Iris Radisch observes that the
immediate post-Wende years were characterised by a fictional drought during which east
German writers preferred to process the upheavals of the times through documentary
essays.281 Subsequently, she says, when east German writers’ first post-Wende attempts at
literary fiction began to appear, they were characterised by a sadness for the lost
seriousness of life in the East which resulted in a nostalgic romanticisation of the GDR and
clichéd caricatures of the capitalist ‘Westmensch’. It was only with the emergence of
writers such as Wolfgang Hilbig, she continues, that more realistic appraisals of the GDR
and its legacy began to emerge.282 Wolfgang Emmerich has famously attributed what he
terms a post-Wende ‘status melancholicus’ to east German writers, especially those who
were committed to reforming GDR socialism from within, as they began to come to terms
with the futility of their utopian vision.283 Picking up on Emmerich’s term, Frauke MeyerGosau sees this as a primary characteristic of post-Wende east German writing until the
281
This introduction to post-Wende texts dealing with my theme starts quite close to the subject at hand. In
doing so it takes as read those aspects of the broader context that are already very thoroughly researched: the
Literaturstreit, the loss of east German writers’ Ersatzfunktion in a society with a free press, the experience of
having to compete for publication and readers on the open market and so on.
282
Iris Radisch, ‘Zwei getrennte Literaturgebiete. Deutsche Literatur der neunziger Jahre in Ost und West’, in
Heinz Ludwig Arnold, ed., Text und Kritik, special issue, DDR-Literatur der neunziger Jahre (2000), 13-26
(pp. 16-20).
283
Wolfgang Emmerich, ‘Status melancholicus. Zur Transformation der Utopie in der DDR-Literatur’, in
Heinz Ludwig Arnold, ed., Text und Kritik, special issue, Literatur in der DDR. Rückblicke (1991), 232-45 (p.
241).
229
mid-1990s.284 Dirk Schröter identifies the year 1994 as a turning-point in east German
writers’ treatment of the Wende: he explains that expressions of Heimatlosigkeit and
Orientierungslosigkeit were commonplace in east German literature which appeared in the
early post-Wende years, while more humorous representations of the Wende, albeit tinged
with a continuing sense of weariness, began to emerge as time progressed.285 Ten years
after unification, Radisch identifies east and west German writing as embodying ‘zwei
getrennte Literaturgebiete’, the ‘Pop-Generation-Roman’, which she sees as typical of
writing in the west, contrasting starkly with the ‘im besten Sinn politische Literatur’ of east
German authors.286 What Radisch celebrates in east German literature of the late 1990s is
what she sees as its commitment to uncovering, deconstructing and destabilising postWende German reality. Finally, Paul Cooke observes a shift during the 1990s from
thematisations of oppressive institutions, notably the Stasi, to representations of the GDR
Alltag which emphasise the more normal aspects of life in the East.287
Although the attempt to periodise post-Wende literature should, perhaps, be treated with
caution (no timeline of literary developments can account for every literary voice and text,
and there is only a short temporal distance between the events and their historicisation),
these critics highlight some of the most prominent themes and widely debated issues of
post-Wende east German literature: melancholy, mourning, Ostalgie and dissatisfaction
with post-Wende society. Cooke’s identification of east German writers’ initial, and then
declining, interest in the institution of the Stasi provides a particularly useful starting point
Frauke Meyer-Gosau, ‘Ost-West-Schmerz. Beobachtungen zu einer sich wandelnden Gemütslage’, in
Heinz Ludwig Arnold, ed., Text und Kritik, special issue, DDR-Literatur der neunziger Jahre (2000), 5-12 (p.
8).
285
Dirk Schröter, Deutschland einig Vaterland. Wende und Wiedervereinigung im Spiegel der
zeitgenössischen deutschen Literatur (Leipzig: Kirchhof & Franke, 2003), p. 13.
286
Radisch, pp. 24-6.
287
Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification, p. 94.
284
230
for the following analysis of the post-Wende representation of the academic institute. As
the Stasi could not be represented in GDR fiction, there was an initial flood of post-Wende
texts about this previously taboo subject matter, which gradually subsided as the years
passed. Academic institutions, on the other hand, could be, and were, represented and
criticised before the fall of the Wall, although this critique often had less to do with
academia itself than with a wider political commentary. While east German writers
gradually lose interest in the Stasi, academic institutions and their personnel find continued
representation right up until the turn of the millennium at least, but the manner of their
representation changes: in contrast to their pre-Wende manifestation as places of
oppression and control, they now almost invariably find a more nuanced representation in
which their everyday rather than totalitarian features are emphasised. One might see this
post-Wende shift as indicative of the fact that east German writers no longer needed to
cloak their political critiques in representations of academic institutions. It could also be
understood as belonging to what Cooke identifies as the movement towards countering
one-sided post-Wende discourses of the GDR as an illegitimate ‘Unrechtsstaat’, on a par
with National Socialist Germany, which needed to be dismantled. But there is something
else going on in these texts: while some east German writers continue to be interested in the
GDR academic institution, what unites the texts I look at in this chapter is an interest in the
post-Wende fates – the restructuring and Abwicklung – of east German academic institutes
and academics.
Although not all my authors seek accurately to detail the evaluation and Abwicklung
process, they assume a knowledge of the basic facts, which have since largely been
forgotten. Thus, I introduce my analysis with a brief historical account of the process and
extent of the restructuring of the east German academic establishment, which is followed
231
by three literary discussions: close analyses first of Helga Königsdorf’s Im Schatten des
Regenbogens and of John Erpenbeck’s Aufschwung, followed by a broader overview of
four further texts which all in some way touch either on GDR academia or on the plight of
east German academics in the New Germany. In all of my readings, I reflect upon moments
of continuity and difference between the pre- and post-Wende representation of the E/east
German academic establishment. Furthermore, I explore the ways in which east German
writers use the GDR or east German academic institute to comment, sometimes in a realist
way and sometimes more metaphorically, on the GDR past and/or post-Wende present,
almost always with the aim of destabilising what they see as the dominant, and
ideologically-determined, discourse on German unification.
5.2 The Post-Wende Restructuring of the East German Academic Landscape
The GDR academic landscape was broadly divided into non-pedagogical research
institutions on the one hand, and teaching bodies such as universities and Hochschulen on
the other; as explained in my introductory chapter, their internal structures and relationship
with the GDR regime were quite different. Because of these differences, and because of the
different roles which each system was expected to play in the New Germany, there could
not be a one-size-fits-all approach to the post-Wende restructuring of the east German
academic establishment. In what follows, I outline the different evaluation processes which
were applied to each system, and explore the extent and consequences of the restructuring,
or Abwicklung as the process was popularly dubbed, of east Germany’s academic
institutions in the immediate post-Wende years.
232
In August 1990 the chair of the West German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat), Dieter
Simon, announced a one-year timetable for the evaluation of the GDR’s Central Institutes
of the Akademie der Wissenschaften. Writing in the immediate aftermath of Abwicklung,
Wolfgang Raible, a west German member of the evaluation committee, notes that Simon’s
proposal was a response to a joint request from both the West German and (not yet
dissolved) GDR governments that the GDR’s research culture be evaluated and
recommendations made for its future,288 although Wolf Häfele’s account suggests that it
was actually a West German initiative.289 Numerous subject-specific evaluation committees
were formed, led by a range of west German academics who were supplemented by a
minority of east German representatives selected largely from the academic Mittelbau. Two
basic convictions informed the decision to draft in primarily west German committee
members: first, east German academic institutes were viewed as inexperienced at best, at
worst politically compromised, and therefore not in a position to reform from within.
Second, as west German academic institutes were to provide the model for any east
German restructuring, their representatives were thought best placed to lead the process.
Raible explains that institutional evaluation generally followed a set procedure: prior to the
committee’s arrival, the institute’s directors had to supply answers and documentation
pertaining to twenty-three areas of interest determined by the evaluation committees. The
evaluators’ subsequent visits to the institutes, which lasted one or two days, typically
consisted of a two-hour interview with the institution leaders, a tour of the institute, private
discussions with its academic personnel, an interview with its academic council and, where
288
Raible, p. 54.
Wolf Häfele, ‘Reshaping and Integrating a Large Scientific Institution of the Former German Democratic
Republic after Unification’, Minerva, 35 (1997), 127-37 (p. 128).
289
233
necessary, a final clarifying interview with the directors.290 The principal purpose of these
institutional visits was to decide the fate of the institution as a whole, rather than that of
individuals. By the end of 1991, all but a third of the sixty institutes of the Akademie der
Wissenschaften had been closed down, and of those that remained, many were subject to
extensive restructuring. While information about the reasons for closure is scarce, what is
clear is that many thousands of east German academics found themselves out of a job:
Hannah Behrend, writing in 1994, quotes the figure 9,500,291 while eight years later in 2002
Arno Hecht puts it as high as 12,000.292 (The difference in these figures might be
attributable to the fact that, by the new millennium, Hecht had more accurate information at
his disposal. However, it should be noted that Hecht’s study is clearly biased in favour of
east Germany, which possibly has implications for the general applicability of his findings.)
Of those academics who lost their jobs in this way, some took early retirement, some
attempted to set up new scientific or technical research groups, and a handful found
themselves employment at institutions such as the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft and east
German universities.293 In fact, it had been the German government’s plan that many of
those made redundant from the Akademie der Wissenschaften would be absorbed into east
German higher education institutions. The task of evaluating the suitability of individual
academics for these roles fell to the Wissenschaftler-Integrations-Programm (WIP),
organised by the Koordinierungs- und Abwicklungsstelle für die ehemaligen Einrichtungen
der Akademie der Wissenschaften (KAI AdW) which had until the end of 1991 to process
some 2,000 applications for the programme. Less than a quarter of these applicants were
290
Raible, pp. 56-7.
Hannah Behrend, ‘Keeping a Foot in the Door: East German Women’s Academic, Political, Cultural and
Social Projects’, in Elizabeth Boa and Janet Wharton, eds, Women and the Wende: Social Effects and Cultural
Reflections of the German Unification Process, German Monitor, 31 (1994), 64-79 (p. 65).
292
Arno Hecht, Die Wissenschaftselite Ostdeutschlands. Feindliche Übernahme oder Integration? (Leipzig:
Faber & Faber, 2002), pp. 72-6.
293
Hecht, pp. 73-4.
291
234
reemployed at an east German institute of higher education, and of these only a minority
were given long-term contracts. Some applicants were found other short-term positions,
while forty per cent remained unemployed.294
East Germany’s universities and Hochschulen were not evaluated by the West German
Science Council (although it did make general recommendations about the future of east
German higher education), but by Landeshochschulstrukturkommissionen, which were
commissioned and overseen by the east German Bundesländer to assess the higher
education sector in general and to make recommendations for individual institutions in the
east. Although there was a degree of institutional input, the panels were largely peopled by
west German experts. Because the unification treaty required that the east German higher
education establishment be restructured along west German lines, big changes were
inevitable: first, institutions, departments and programmes which had a strong ideological
leaning – generally those specialising in the humanities and social sciences – were closed
down completely and their staff dismissed. Those who were ‘abgewickelt’ in this way
could reapply for different positions but, like all other academics who wished to continue in
their roles, they were required by law to undergo individual evaluation. Perhaps out of
anxiety about this assessment process, perhaps because they were approaching retirement
age, many lecturers and professors chose not to reapply for their jobs. 295 For those who did,
the first stage was a personal evaluation, carried out by an Ehren-, Integritäts- or
Personalkommission which was tasked with filtering out those academics whose past
involvement with the GDR regime or secret services ruled them out of education as well as
294
295
Hecht, p. 77.
Hecht puts this figure at 22%: Hecht, p. 156.
235
all other public service positions. Positively evaluated academics then underwent a subject
evaluation, presided over by west German subject specialists.296
Statistics on the extent of job losses in east German higher education differ, but it seems
safe to say that between half and three-quarters of east German lecturers and professors
either left out of ‘choice’ or were made redundant.297 The majority of these redundancies
resulted from the Abwicklung of an institute or department; only about five per cent were
due to negative personal evaluation.298 In addition, about half of all non-academic staff
employed at east German universities and Hochschulen also lost their jobs, not for any
political reason but because GDR institutions were deemed to have been over-staffed in this
area. While most administrative and support roles continued to be held by east Germans,
most professorial posts went to west German academics, many of whom brought their
assistants with them.299 In line with general practice in the west, east German lecturers who
did survive the cuts were only employed on a temporary basis, and many who were initially
reemployed subsequently found themselves out of a job when their contracts expired.300
Although these are the reform processes with most relevance to the literary texts that I
analyse in this chapter, it is worth briefly sketching some related cases. The Institut für
Literatur “Johannes R. Becher” and the East Berlin Akademie der Künste suffered similar
Renate Mayntz, ‘Die Erneuerung der ostdeutschen Universitäten zwischen Selbstreform und externer
Intervention’, in Renate Mayntz, ed., Aufbruch und Reform von oben. Ostdeutsche Universitäten im
Transformationsprozeß (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 1994), pp. 283-312 (p. 298).
297
Mayntz reports that the Forschungsgruppe Wissenschaftsstatistik calculate that 48.8% of personnel lost
their jobs between 1989 and 1993, but that it could well have been more because it was illegal in 1993 to ask
employees whether they were from east or west Germany: Mayntz, ‘Die Erneuerung der ostdeutschen
Universitäten’, p. 303. De Rudder says that between half and two-thirds of east German academics left or lost
their jobs between 1990 and 1997: de Rudder, p. 116. Most pessimistically, Hecht puts the number of
academics who lost or left their jobs in the immediate post-Wende years at 72%: Hecht, p. 59.
298
Hecht, p. 156; de Rudder, ‘The Transformation of East German Higher Education’, p. 116; Mayntz, ‘Die
Erneuerung der ostdeutschen Universitäten’, p. 304.
299
Mayntz, ‘Die Erneuerung der ostdeutschen Universitäten’, p. 305.
300
de Rudder, p. 116.
296
236
fates, though not before their directors had put up a considerable fight. As David Clarke
and Stephen Parker explain in their relatively recent analyses, both institutes were
discredited on the only partially justified grounds of compromised political integrity. 301 The
GDR’s under-resourced industrial research institutes were also dealt a harsh blow: only a
quarter of their eighty-six thousand research and development personnel survived the
Abwicklung of much of the industrial research establishment in 1991.302 Although the
process of evaluation and Abwicklung was not applied to secondary schools in the same
way, reforms in secondary education have been greeted, according to Stephanie Wilde
(writing in 2002), with the same sense of dismay amongst teachers as has academic reform
amongst many GDR academics who escaped the cuts.303 And, of course, the phenomenon
of Abwicklung was not confined to the cultural and academic sphere: between 1990 and
1994, the Treuhandanstalt, the government-appointed agency which was tasked with
privatising the GDR’s thirteen thousand state-owned enterprises, sold off all but a quarter
of these. As Claudia Sadowski-Smith explains, this virtual deindustrialisation caused
massive lay-offs in the industrial and agricultural sectors, plunging the former socialist
territory into a state of unprecedented unemployment and upheaval.304
While the immediate effects of academic Abwicklung were undoubtedly devastating for the
thousands of individuals who lost their jobs, this should be balanced against the longer term
benefits of academic restructuring. Raible, writing not long after his involvement in the
Clarke, ‘Parteischule oder Dichterschmiede?’, pp. 87-106; Parker, pp. 101-12.
Hecht, p. 79.
303
Stephanie Wilde, ‘All Change? Secondary Schools in Eastern Germany’, German Life and Letters, 55/3
(2002), 282-95 (pp. 286-90). Wilde’s account of teachers’ disappointment with post-Wende changes in
secondary education on the grounds of a reduction in academic and behavioural standards, teachers’ status,
pay and job security echoes Hannah Behrend’s account of academics’ disappointment with their new
conditions, according to which only 15% of women academics who remained in post feel that working and
research conditions have improved. While Behrend’s data relates to women, who faced particular pressures, it
is reasonable to assume that the same disappointment was felt, though possibly less acutely, by male
academics. See: Behrend, p. 66.
304
Sadowski-Smith, p. 2.
301
302
237
evaluation process, and clearly in favour of east German academic reform, observes that
while dubious institutes were dealt with harshly, examples of good practice were
highlighted and supported. In addition, as he is keen to emphasise, the evaluation
committees recommended the founding of seven new Cultural Studies Research Centres on
the territory of the former East Germany, which would focus on areas in which GDR
academics made particularly noteworthy contributions, and would employ a preponderance
of east German scholars.305 Even Manfred Bierwisch who, as an east German academic (a
professor of linguistics) writing in the immediate aftermath of Abwicklung, is
unsurprisingly more circumspect than Raible about the benefits of reform, points to these
proposed new centres as a positive step towards addressing the deficit in autonomous
research in the humanities.306 Helmut de Rudder, writing in 1997, is also keen to point out
the improvements in east German higher education, citing the fresh, competitive and
innovative climate of post-Wende academia in the new Bundesländer, as well as the
renewed facilities, smaller class sizes and greater interdisciplinarity of east German
universities, as evidence of the benefits of restructuring. Indeed, he argues that it has even
enabled some east German institutions to overtake their less progressive western
counterparts and to offer a model for the long overdue modernisation of west German
academia.307 However, writing a few years earlier than de Rudder, Renate Mayntz notes
that others see this in less positive terms: there is much criticism, she says, of the decision
to base east German restructuring on a west German system which was itself in need of
reform.308
305
Raible, pp. 59-60.
Bierwisch, p. 53.
307
de Rudder, pp. 119-23.
308
Mayntz, ‘Die Erneuerung der ostdeutschen Universitäten’, p. 308.
306
238
So far I have summarised scholarly analyses of restructuring as a political act and a Human
Resources process, but the scholarship also gives glimpses of the less tangible effects (the
‘human cost’) of Abwicklung, which will be the primary focus of the literary texts studied
in this chapter. In his recent discussion of the post-Wende treatment of east German
historians, Stefan Berger, for example, points to the lack of collaboration between
historians of the old and new Länder, and the bitterness felt by east German historians
towards their west German counterparts, whom they suspect of misrepresenting the GDR
past.309 Behrend documents the loss of female academic talent from the New Germany, and
the subsequent struggle of former female scholars in the unacknowledged (and largely
unpaid) world of independent research.310 Moreover, in her discussion of the term
Beitrittsgebiet to indicate the territory of the former GDR, on to which were imposed the
values and structures of its western benefactor, Wilde defines the psychological legacy of
Abwicklung:
The conditions under which the unification of Germany occurred identified eastern
Germany as the subordinate partner. The pejorative term ‘Beitrittsgebiet’ indicates
this. This situation led to a certain disregard for the achievements of the GDR […].
After unification, eastern Germany was […] now the ‘poor relation’ to western
Germany, whereas it had been one of the most economically successful of the
Comecon countries.311
By defining the effects of reform in terms of east Germans’ negative self-perception, and
their inferior status in the eyes of the external world, Wilde lays bare the unseen but
enduring negative impact of the changes. Although the more general upheavals initiated by
unification itself undoubtedly contributed to this alteration in the (self-)perception of the
GDR, the specific phenomenon of Abwicklung, with its public reiteration of the inferiority
Stefan Berger, ‘Former GDR Historians in the Reunified Germany: An Alternative Historical Culture and
its Attempts to Come to Terms with the GDR Past’, Journal of Contemporary History, 38/1 (2003), 63-83
(pp. 68-9).
310
Behrend, pp. 65-9.
311
Wilde, p. 282.
309
239
of GDR academics and their work, and the ‘Überstülpung’312 of western academic ideals
and systems on to east Germany, is shown to have contributed more deep-seated resentment
and disappointment than might have been created by a non-discriminatory unification of the
two countries. Petra Boden, former academic at the Central Institute for Literary History,
articulates these sentiments in an interview with American Germanist, Robert von Hallberg,
in 1996:
In the institute, we always worked on the premise that we were there to be questioned
by politicians and that people had to turn to us for advice. […] Suddenly everyone
realised that our whole effort, to educate and to enlighten, to motivate and to talk, was
totally useless. […] Now that the whole structure is collapsing, you can suddenly see
how silly it all was. This makes a harsh inroad into your personal life. You acquire a
strange relationship to your own past and to what you used to call your identity.313
The sense of redundancy and dislocation described by Boden is perhaps the least
quantifiable effect of post-Wende academic restructuring, but it is an experience which is
depicted (and to a degree instrumentalised) by many east German writers in their literary
representations of Abwicklung.
5.3 Helga Königsdorf’s Im Schatten des Regenbogens
5.3.1 Introduction
In the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Wall Königsdorf channelled her intellectual
and creative energies into a proliferation of essays, articles, letters and speeches in which
she responded, both as a writer and as an east German citizen, to the loss of the GDR, the
collapse of the socialist dream, and the social, political and economic upheavals of the early
312
313
Bierwisch, p. 40.
Petra Boden, cited in: Hallberg, pp. 112-13.
240
1990s.314 What comes through in these writings is an acceptance of the failings and
collapse of the GDR, an apprehension about the imposition of capitalist values on the
former socialist state, an insistence on treating east Germans with fairness and dignity, an
assertion of the need for a collective and individual reappraisal of the GDR past, and a
belief in the continuing Ersatzfunktion of literature in post-1989 Germany, as well as its
value as Lebenshilfe for the disorientated former citizens of the GDR.315
It was three years after the fall of the Wall before these views began to find fictional
expression, first in the novel Gleich neben Afrika, and a year later in Im Schatten des
Regenbogens. Both texts reflect the sense of disorientation, powerlessness and
Heimatlosigkeit of east Germans, and describe their protagonists’ attempts to work through
their pasts and to recreate a sense of Heimat in the present. What distinguishes Im Schatten
des Regenbogens from Gleich neben Afrika, and the post-Wende texts of most other east
German writers, is Königsdorf’s continuing focus on the academic sphere. The Institut für
Zahlographie of her pre-Wende ‘academia tales’ makes another appearance, as do the
‘drittes Kurzsches Problem’ and the characters of der Alte and Dr Kallenbach from the
stories ‘Autodidakten’ and ‘Lemma 1’. In this way, the reader has a rare opportunity to
compare texts written by the same author, and featuring the same institution and some of
the same characters, on either side of a major historical watershed. On the level of her
academic critique, Königsdorf expands on what she said before the Wende, expressing
314
Most of these writings are collected in three volumes: Aus dem Dilemma eine Chance machen. Reden und
Aufsätze (Frankfurt am Main: Luchterhand, 1990); 1989 oder Ein Moment Schönheit. Eine Collage aus
Briefen, Reden und Texten (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1990); Über die unverzügliche Rettung der Welt.
Essays (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1994). Additionally, she gathered together reports from eighteen fellow
East German citizens in the volume Adieu DDR. Protokolle eines Abschieds (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990).
315
Godfrey Carr and Georgina Paul note that there was an upsurge in demand for self-help books amongst
east Germans in the aftermath of the Wende: Godfrey Carr and Georgina Paul, ‘Unification and its Aftermath:
The Challenge of History’, in Rob Burns, ed., German Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995), pp. 325-47 (p. 330).
241
more openly her criticism of the instrumentalisation of knowledge by a Party which saw the
‘Produktivkraft Wissenschaft’ [p. 129] as a means to turn the GDR into an economic world
competitor. But in contrast to the satirical lampooning of the Institute and its personnel in
the pre-Wende stories, Königsdorf now paints a more detailed and differentiated picture of
her characters and their working lives. In addition, sober judgements about their postWende Abwicklung are offered, with the result that, as Eva Kaufmann has noted, there is a
shift in focus from a pre-Wende satire on institutional mechanisms, to a post-Wende
evaluation of individuals and their fates.316 In my analysis below I develop this idea of an
‘evaluation of individuals’ that stands as a deliberate alternative to the evaluations carried
out by the WIP and by the Integrity Commissions.
In addition to this realist appraisal of the Institut für Zahlographie and its Abwicklung, Im
Schatten des Regenbogens also has a potential metaphorical dimension, although the use of
metaphor differs from that in the ‘academia tales’. In those pre-Wende texts the Institut für
Zahlographie functioned as a metaphor for the GDR state, the institutional dynamics
reflecting political and social conditions there, and its mediocre research projects standing
for the disappointments of real-existing socialism. In one sense, these metaphors are
developed in Im Schatten des Regenbogens: the collapse of the Institut für Zahlographie
can be read as a metaphor for the collapse of the GDR. However, while the Institut für
Zahlographie was once a metaphor for an oppressive state, in Im Schatten des Regenbogens
it conversely comes to represent a Heimat: the protagonists’ sense of their loss of a Heimat
following the Abwicklung of the Institute mirrors the sense of Heimatlosigkeit expressed by
ordinary east Germans in the post-Wende years. Taken together, then, Königsdorf’s texts
Eva Kaufmann, ‘Erzählen aus Nahdistanz. Helga Königsdorf – Im Schatten des Regenbogens’, Neue
deutsche Literatur, 41/11 (1993), 129-31 (p. 129).
316
242
are not coherent, for the Institute cannot simultaneously represent an oppressive regime and
a comfortable Heimat. In this way, we see that Königsdorf’s focus has shifted from
exposing the deficiencies of GDR state socialism to exploring the effects of German
unification on GDR academics in their own right, as well as the east German populace for
whom they may be said to stand.
I introduce this analysis of Im Schatten des Regenbogens with an examination of the
retrospective representation of the Institut für Zahlographie, in which I discuss the
continuities and differences between its pre- and post-Wende manifestations. I then explore
Königsdorf’s commentary on the evaluation and Abwicklung of the Institute and its
personnel, and discuss the realist and metaphorical implications of this theme. Finally, I
consider Königsdorf’s representation of the restructured institute which replaces the Institut
für Zahlographie, as well as two contrasting market-oriented research companies which
feature towards the novel’s end.
Im Schatten des Regenbogens received mixed reviews in the west German press. While
many reviewers criticise its laboured style and unconvincing characters, 317 it is also
conceded that the novel is an important document of its time. 318 In what follows I not only
Irmtraud Gutschke, ‘Abgewickelt – und frei’, Neues Deutschland (8th October 1993), p. 12; Katrin
Hillgruber, ‘Alice lebt hier nicht mehr. Helga Königsdorf läßt eine WG mit der Einheit hadern’, Süddeutsche
Zeitung (6th October 1993), p. 10; Wilhelm Kühlmann, ‘Duft der fremden Welt. Helga Königsdorf bedenkt
die seelische Lage im Osten’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (9th December 1993), p. 36; Marko Martin,
‘Lieber Eisbein. Helga Königsdorf setzt ihren Romanhelden – igitt! – fremdländische Früchte vor’, Die
Tageszeitung (3rd January 1994), p. 17; Dorothee Nolte, ‘Ein hartes Schicksal für Zahlographen. Helga
Königsdorf will am Beispiel einer Wohngemeinschaft die Verstrickungen der DDR-Elite beschreiben – und
enttäuscht’, Der Tagesspiegel (5th October 1993), p. 2; Giaco Schiesser, ‘Die Logik der Dinge’, Die
Wochenzeitung (1st October 1993), p. 34; Hans Stempel, ‘Leid-Leitartikel. Helga Königsdorfs Roman Im
Schatten des Regenbogens’, Frankfurter Rundschau (18th December 1993), p. 7; Jürgen Wallmann, ‘Mit
Helga Königsdorf am Stammtisch. Pappkameraden’, Die Welt (11th December 1993), p. 65.
318
Gutschke, ‘Abgewickelt – und frei’, p. 12; Werner Liersch, ‘Zufällige Ähnlichkeiten sind beabsichtigt.
Helga Königsdorf: Im Schatten des Regenbogens’, Berliner Zeitung (6th October 1993), p. 3; Schiesser, p. 34;
Stempel, p. 7. See also: Kaufmann, ‘Erzählen aus Nahdistanz’, pp. 129-31.
317
243
show how the novel reflects the political and social upheavals of east Germany in the early
1990s, but also, and perhaps more interestingly, the ways in which it actively engages with,
and contributes to, post-Wende discourses on German unification.
5.3.2 The Institut für Zahlographie Viewed in Retrospect
Early on in Im Schatten des Regenbogens Königsdorf slips in a couple of satirical jokes,
akin to those found in her pre-Wende stories, about the academic vanity of Alice’s319
doctoral supervisor (who only declined to take credit for her publications because
alphabetical convention dictated that her name would appear before his), and the sticky end
met by der Alte’s320 predecessor (a greedy Reisekader who dropped dead on a foreign visit
while gorging himself on avocadoes). By and large, though, the Institut für Zahlographie
and its academics are treated much less satirically than in the ‘academia tales’,
Königsdorf’s aim now being to address the complexities of institutional life in a more
serious and factual way.
In the wake of unification many east German intellectuals complained about what they saw
as a west German ‘appropriation’ of GDR history for the purpose of self-justification. In
particular, what is seen as a disproportionate focus on the totalitarian aspects of GDR
history, to the exclusion of the everyday experiences of the GDR’s citizens, has been
greeted with cynicism in east German intellectual circles. Cooke explains that nostalgic
recollections of GDR life are a prominent feature of post-Wende writing. While overtly
nostalgic texts are commonly criticised for viewing the GDR through rose-tinted spectacles,
Throughout the text, Alice is called by the familiar form of her name, ‘die Alice’, but I refer to her simply
as ‘Alice’ because there is no English equivalent of this use of the definite article.
320
When referring to der Alte I retain the definite article ‘der’ because it is part of the way in which
Königsdorf denotes his seniority.
319
244
he writes, they actually often represent a more intellectual attempt to ‘write back’321
against, or correct, western misrepresentations of the GDR past.322 Königsdorf only half fits
Cooke’s category. She, too, can be seen as ‘writing back’ (for reasons that will be outlined
below), but she does not use Ostalgie as her tool. Indeed, in her non-fictional writings she
warns against misplaced GDR nostalgia on the grounds that it represents yet another
illusion, and inhibits east Germans’ integration into the New Germany:
Wir werden nostalgisch von den alten Zeiten sprechen und vergessen, daß all das
Gute irgendwie ambivalent war. Damals, werden wir sagen, damals. […] Den Leuten,
die ohnehin gelähmt sind, nun mit DDR-Nostalgie zu kommen ist wirklich das
Letzte. Wer wieder Politik auf Lügen aufbauen will, hat nichts begriffen.323
This rejection of unreflective nostalgia clearly comes through in Im Schatten des
Regenbogens in which, in stark contrast to Volker Braun’s hymn to the GDR workplace in
Die vier Werkzeugmacher, she paints a largely negative picture of the past of the Institut für
Zahlographie.324
While in most of the earlier ‘academia tales’ the Institut für Zahlographie is described by a
satirical third-person narrator, in Im Schatten des Regenbogens occasional satirical
comments by the omniscient narrator are outweighed by the personal recollections of three
characters who have recently been ‘abgewickelt’ – der Alte, its erstwhile Director, his
secretary, Ruth Makuleit, and Alice, the Institute’s leading mathematician. These personal
perspectives combine to paint a more detailed picture of the organisation, although it bears
Cooke has adapted the term ‘writing back’ from the title of an anthology of postcolonial writing, The
Empire Writes Back by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. Cooke’s evaluation of the
applicability of the term ‘colonisation’ to the dissolution of the GDR is explained later in this chapter.
322
Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification, pp. 73-4.
323
Königsdorf, Aus dem Dilemma eine Chance machen, p. 18 and p. 62. See also: Königsdorf, 1989 oder Ein
Moment Schönheit, pp. 146-7.
324
In this my reading of Im Schatten des Regenbogens is at odds with Wallmann’s review of the novel in
which he writes that it ‘[watet] knietief in DDR-Nostalgie’. See: Wallmann, p. 65.
321
245
many of the negative hallmarks of the Institut für Zahlographie described in Königsdorf’s
pre-Wende stories: der Alte recalls the shadow structure of controlling Party overseers, the
punishment from above of even the slightest academic or political transgression, the use of
Kaderakten as an instrument of control and, on his arrival at least, a pervasive ethos of
complacency and mediocrity. Alice reflects on the Institute’s impenetrable bureaucracy, its
tightening restrictions on academic freedom, and its infiltration by the Stasi.
An aspect of institutional life which comes through more strongly than in the ‘academia
tales’ are the hostile working relationships between the academics. The fact that Alice
never had a meaningful conversation with her colleague in the neighbouring office, despite
working beside him for twenty years, is indicative of the lack of warmth and collegiality
between the Institute’s personnel. Even more destructive were the resentment which der
Alte encountered towards his attempts to introduce positive change, the attempts of his
detractors to denounce his leadership methods to the Party, and the fabricated rumours of a
plot to replace him with Alice. In addition, resentment and hostility were not just features
of academic relations but, as the comments of the Institute Hausmeister, Herr Burmeister,
illustrate, also of the relationship between academic and non-academic staff: ‘In dem Haus
haben alle das Pulver persönlich erfunden. Dabei möchte ich mal wissen, wozu hier das
Papier verschwendet wird. […] Aber Nase hoch. Unsereiner ist für die wie eine Laus’ [p.
27]. Although GDR propaganda sought to show scientists working in tandem with workers
towards the common goal of building a better society, the fact that workers still see
scientists as the ‘other’ suggests, in line with other texts in this study, that the GDR was
anything but a classless state. Furthermore, despite the efforts of the regime to present the
scientist as someone with a role in realising the socialist dream, Königsdorf’s depiction
246
implies that workers have not progressed beyond the old cliché, which pre-dated the GDR,
of academics as good-for-nothing eggheads in their ivory towers.
As well as amplifying the criticism of academia voiced in the earlier texts, Im Schatten des
Regenbogens arguably belongs to the category of literature described by Cooke in which
authors ‘write back’ against reductive west German constructions of the GDR as a
totalitarian state. Königsdorf does this not by idealising the Insitut für Zahlographie (which
functioned in her pre-Wende texts as a metaphor for the oppressive state), but by
characterising der Alte in a more nuanced way than she did the villainous directors that
peopled her pre-Wende stories. There, the directors arguably had to be villains in order to
stand for members of the SED, but now that the focus of Königsdorf’s critique has shifted,
they can be represented in a more differentiated way. On the one hand der Alte is described
as a passionate mathematician, an honest academic and a fine leader. An autodidact who
was guided as much by a belief in the social application of science as by his vision of
bringing GDR ‘Zahlographie’ onto the world stage, he was determined that the Institute, his
‘Lebenswerk’ [p. 39], must be more than a ‘Verein von Hobbyforschern’ [p. 52]. Upon
taking up position he quickly ordered the sub-division of his predecessor’s spacious woodpanelled office so that every researcher would have a personal work space and, more
importantly, no excuse for absenteeism. His commitment to pioneering links with industry
and to driving up academic standards earned him enemies amongst his staff, but he
ploughed on with his vision irrespective of his waning popularity. Furthermore, in addition
to carrying out his leadership responsibilities he remained an active researcher, declining to
take a holiday in the twenty years that he led the Institute. Characteristically, even
following his Abwicklung he stoically beavers away on his academic projects, and
ultimately founds an ethically-oriented scientific research company.
247
At the same time, what also emerges is the impression of a rather insensitive and smallminded man: we are told of his enduring jealousy of Alice, the meanness which led him to
undermine her department when he began to fear for his position, his self-indulgent
reflections on his leadership successes, his chauvinistic treatment of his hostess, Ruth
Makuleit, and his cold, self-righteous response to Herr Burmeister’s suicide: ‘Solche Leute
kriegen immer eines Tages die Quittung. Ein Dreck sind sie am Ende. Ein Dreck’ [p. 30].
Furthermore, although he was by no means a Party yes-man, we learn of occasions when he
peddled the ideological rhetoric of the SED, and was prepared to toe the Party line in order
to keep himself and the Institute out of trouble.
In representing der Alte as a complex individual with good and bad characteristics,
Königsdorf avoids the kind of moral story we have seen in some pre-Wende texts whereby
an idealistic character gradually becomes corrupted. Furthermore, she seems to subvert
what Stuart Taberner identifies as ‘the demands in the early to mid-1990s, mostly
emanating from west German politicians and the west German media, for clarification of
questions of guilt and complicity with regard to the former GDR’.325 Her carefulness
neither to idealise nor to demonise der Alte, and through him to bring out both the positive
and negative aspects of the Institut für Zahlographie, reflect the honest and rigorous
appraisal of the GDR past which characterises her post-Wende essays. Moreover, this more
complex characterisation of her academic characters than in her pre-Wende stories, the
willingness to explore the ambiguities of institutional life, and the fact that she allows her
Stuart Taberner, ‘From “Normalisation” to Globalisation. German Fiction into the New Millennium:
Christian Kracht, Ingo Schulze, and Feridun Zaimoglu’, in Stuart Taberner and Paul Cooke, eds, German
Culture, Politics and Literature into the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Normalisation (Rochester: Camden
House, 2006), pp. 209-21 (p. 215).
325
248
protagonists to speak for themselves, to articulate their personal – however subjective –
memories of the Institute and their roles within it,326 form part of her attempt to ‘write
back’ against what she sees as the hegemonic process of institutional evaluation and
Abwicklung, her critique of which, as I now show, is a central concern of the novel.
5.3.3 A Realist Critique of Academic Abwicklung
In her post-Wende essay ‘Ohne Lotsen zwischen Scylla und Charybdis’, Königsdorf
expresses her reservations about the Abwicklung of east German scientists.327 She
highlights the adverse conditions under which they had to work, and argues that there were
many laudable achievements in GDR science, not least the attempts to marry theory with
practice. While she acknowledges the SED’s exploitation of science for political ends, and
thus the need to make changes to the east German scientific landscape, she criticises the
broad dismissal of east German scientists and their work, and laments their humiliation at
the hands of the western evaluation committees. As part of a fairer and more respectful
approach towards scientists who have been ‘abgewickelt’, she recommends measures such
as financial support and assistance in finding a new direction. Finally, pointing to the
weaknesses inherent in the west German scientific establishment, she argues for greater
transparency and honesty in west as well as east German science.
Many of these sentiments find expression in Im Schatten des Regenbogens through the
detailed descriptions of the process and consequences of der Alte’s, Alice’s and Ruth
326
The publication of the personal testimonies of a handful of east German citizens (but not former
academics) in the volume Adieu DDR. Protokolle eines Abschieds embodies this principle of giving east
Germans a voice. In her preface to this volume Königsdorf writes of the importance of correcting the popular
view of the GDR as ‘grau’ by bearing witness to the colour and complexity of life in the socialist state.
327
Helga Königsdorf, ‘Ohne Lotsen zwischen Scylla und Charybdis’, in Aus dem Dilemma eine Chance
machen, pp. 73-9.
249
Makuleit’s Abwicklung. Although Hecht explains that individual evaluation of academics
did not take place at the Akademie der Wissenschaften,328 Königsdorf writes such
evaluations into her depiction of the Abwicklung of the Institut für Zahlographie: the first
stage, it is explained, is the subject evaluation; those academics whose work is positively
assessed are subsequently interviewed by the Integritätskommission where their conduct in
the GDR, and their political convictions past and present are scrutinised. Der Alte’s
research is evaluated by his former western counterparts, with whom he has had
connections for many years. Although they were once equals, the balance of power has
tipped towards the western academics who, while they cannot deny the value of der Alte’s
research, treat him with suspicion and cut him short whenever he talks for longer than they
care to listen. Königsdorf’s sharpest criticism, though, is saved for the chair of the
Integritätskommission: reflecting that all east Germans are in need of a psychiatrist, that the
GDR was rotten to the core, and that ‘diese Leute’ are too ‘begriffsstutzig’ [p. 59] to
appreciate the patronage of the West, he is the embodiment of what many east Germans
perceived to be a characteristically west German blend of complacency and arrogance. As
if her critique needed further emphasis, Königsdorf has him proclaim that sexual equality is
‘Unsinn’ [p. 60] which, while it ironically casts doubt on the integrity of the
Integritätskommission, is rather too obvious a swipe. Although Königsdorf attempts to add
complexity to this character by having him defend Alice against her jealous detractors and
offer her a second chance to attend an evaluation interview, the lasting impression of him is
of a self-serving careerist – the western equivalent of the lampooned institute leaders of the
pre-Wende ‘academia tales’.
328
Hecht, p. 74.
250
In addition to individual weaknesses, systemic failures also come in for criticism. In
particular, the policy of inviting the Institute’s personnel to lodge complaints about any
treatment of them at the Institute which they felt to be unfair is shown to appeal to those
academics who see in the invitation an opportunity for personal score settling. Having
heard the complaint of a former colleague against der Alte, who was only very obliquely
instrumental in the demotion of the complainant, the Integritätskommission swiftly reaches
a unanimous decision: ‘Auf Grund seiner Verstrickung in das Unrechtssystem sei er
persönlich nicht geeignet, in den Hochschuldienst zu gehen, dieses vorzubereiten sei aber
der Sinn des WAP’ [p. 78].329 The injustice of this decision, and thus the flawed nature of
the evaluation process, are suggested by descriptions of der Alte’s powerlessness to
overturn decisions imposed from above by the Party functionaries who ultimately
controlled the Institute, as well as by repeated references to der Alte’s academic integrity,
and the mention of an international petition against der Alte’s redundancy. Despite his
twenty-year dedication to the Institute, der Alte finds himself replaced by a former
subordinate (who, it is hinted, is selected because he served time in prison for political
dissidence) and demoted to a ‘WAP-Mensch’ – a participant in a WissenschaftlerAnpassungs-Programm. Although it appears that there is little prospect of future
employment, as a temporary concession he is allocated a desk in a shabby office which he
shares with his former junior staff.
The Abwicklung of Alice and Ruth Makuleit proceeds somewhat differently. Likening the
notion of an integrity evaluation to the humiliation of being stripped naked in order that her
innocence can be examined, Alice declines to attend her interview with the
In Im Schatten des Regenbogens, ‘WAP’ stands for ‘Wissenschaftler-Anpassungs-Programm’ which is a
satirical adaptation of the historical term WIP which stood for Wissenschaftler-Integrations-Programm.
329
251
Integritätskommission. Although the chair of the commission fears negative reprisals from
the international academic community because of Alice’s academic renown, he is more
concerned for his reputation in the west, and Alice is duly ‘abgewickelt’. She is later given
a second chance to meet the commission, but she again refuses. (The desire to escape
judgement by the west is given more dramatic expression in the suicide of Herr Burmeister
who cannot face being quizzed about his activities as an informant for both the GDR and
West German security services.) Ruth Makuleit’s Abwicklung proceeds even more swiftly
than Alice’s. Although she is initially kept on as a secretary for the new personnel
department, one day she receives a letter of termination in the post. Without even being
invited to an integrity interview, ‘sie wurde einfach wegrationalisiert’ [p. 99].
Ostensibly, Königsdorf’s protagonists respond to their Abwicklung in different ways. Der
Alte throws himself headlong into his research, spurred on by the conviction that he still
has the potential to save the world, and that it is only a matter of time before his genius is
recognised. Finally, he leaves the Wohngemeinschaft which he has formed with his former
colleagues Alice and Ruth Makuleit to set up a private research company. Alice engages in
a process of introspection and self-evaluation before quitting the Wohngemeinschaft to lead
a nomadic street existence. Ruth Makuleit seeks employment as a cleaner in order to fund
the rent, but is ultimately evicted and is last described leaving the flat for an ominously
unspecified destination.330 Despite their different outward responses to their Abwicklung, all
three characters share a profound sense of disorientation and anxiety. Alice feels ‘einsam
und ziellos wie nie in ihrem Leben’ [p. 123]; accordingly she has nightmares in which she
330
Paver observes that, by refraining from telling us where Ruth Makuleit is going, Königsdorf deliberately
raises the possibility that she, too, is faced with a life on the streets, even though she may of course just be
moving to more appropriate accommodation. See: Chloe Paver, ‘Down and Out in the New Germany: Urban
Homelessness in Post-“Wende” Fiction’, in Cityscapes and Countryside in Contemporary German Literature
(Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 45-66 (p. 50).
252
is lost in foreign landscapes and trapped on a runaway train. Ruth Makuleit senses ‘wie der
Sturm der Geschichte über sie hinwegfegte, wie sie, einem Sandkorn gleich, angehoben
und fallen gelassen wurde’ [p. 31], and der Alte suffers ‘blanke Existenzangst’ [p. 101] and
contemplates killing himself.
Although Königsdorf was not herself ‘abgewickelt’ (she retired from the Akademie der
Wissenschaften to become a full-time writer in 1990) her critique of Abwicklung reveals a
deep concern about the treatment of east German scientists in the early post-Wende years,
and her detailed representation of the evaluation process and its effects shows a desire to
chronicle these events for the public record. Alberghini explains that Königsdorf felt deeply
disappointed in the west German media which she felt to be little better at addressing
difficult subjects than the state-controlled GDR media apparatus. This disillusion,
Alberghini argues, led to a continued belief in the Ersatzfunktion of literature in the postWende years.331 Linked to the notion of literature as a substitute for an open media is
Königsdorf’s understanding of writing as Lebenshilfe for its readers, who may find in it a
comforting reflection of their own experiences and feelings. In the preface to 1989 oder Ein
Moment Schönheit, Königsdorf expresses these continuing beliefs, and her concern that
what is missing from the historical documents – the emotional side of the loss of the GDR
and its ideals – should survive into the future:
Die nach uns kommen, werden die Ereignisse historisch betrachten. Sie werden ihn
suchen, den roten Faden durch das Geäst der Zeit. Aber was sie finden, wird nicht das
Eigentliche sein. Sie finden Akten oder modernere Dokumentationen. Sie werden
entdecken, daß wir unsere Meinung änderten, aber sie werden nichts von dem
Schmerz erfahren, dem Schmerz, an dem wir litten, als unsere Seele dem eiligen
Verstand nicht mehr zu folgen vermochte. Nichts wird da geschrieben sein von
unserer Einsamkeit, von unserer Angst. Von unserem Glück.332
331
332
Alberghini, ‘Helga Königsdorf’s Evolving Identities’, p. 263.
Königsdorf, 1989 oder Ein Moment Schönheit, p. 5.
253
Thus, the detailed representation of the phenomenon of academic Abwicklung in Im
Schatten des Regenbogens can at least in part be understood as a response to what
Königsdorf perceived to be the inadequate representation in the west German press of the
dissolution of the GDR in general, and of Abwicklung in particular, and also to her desire to
offer support to those east German academics who found themselves subject to evaluation
and redundancy.
5.3.4 A Critique of the Unification Process through the Collapse of the Institute
Königsdorf’s critique of academic Abwicklung forms part of the novel’s wider commentary
on the process of German unification. Cooke explains that after unification the metaphor of
colonisation was evoked by many east German intellectuals to refer to the popular notion
that the GDR was taken over by West Germany.333 What is important, he emphasises, is not
the validity of this claim, which does not bear serious scrutiny, but the perception that, in
bringing about what Wolfgang Dümcke and Fritz Vilmar label ‘the destruction of an
“indigenous” economic structure, the exploitation of available economic resources, the
social liquidation of not only the political elite but also the intellectuals of a country, along
with the destruction of […] a population’s identity’,334 German unification represented an
act of colonisation. The literary construction of unification as the western colonisation of
East Germany, Cooke continues, is a form of ‘writing back’ against the marginalisation of
east Germans in the post-Wende years, and their exclusion from mainstream western
discourses about GDR history and German unification.335
333
Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification, p. 2.
Wolfgang Dümcke and Fritz Vilmar, cited in: Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification, p. 2.
335
Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification, pp. 14-15.
334
254
Without explicitly employing the vocabulary of colonisation, Königsdorf articulates a view
of unification which makes clear the unequal relationship between east and west Germany.
For example, in the opening pages we are told that ordinary east Germans feel injured that
they have not been consulted about changes instituted by ‘die Mächtigen des Landes’ [p.
7]; elsewhere in the novel references to west Germans living or working in east Germany as
‘die Neuen’ position citizens of the former East as the rightful native inhabitants of a
territory which is being infiltrated by a new population. In addition, Ruth Makuleit reflects
that west Germans expect east Germans to be grateful for the opportunities they have given
them, and cannot begin to understand their sense of homesickness for the fallen GDR. That
sense of losing a home is literalised in the scene in which a west German property
developer oversees the destruction of an east German house while its former occupants
look on in distress [p. 162], and other scenes point to a western takeover: a west German
antiques dealer tricks Frau Franz into accepting a nominal sum for her valuable jewellery
collection [p. 119]; the patronising west German Mitbewohner, Herr Schulze-Einen,
considers it his calling to bring marketing skills to what he sees as the backward east
German provinces [p. 83]; and Frau Franz’s west German nephew demands that east
Germans dismiss their false dreams and show more gratitude for the support of their west
German patrons [pp. 136-8]. Thus, in the novel’s non-academic scenes, too, the west
German characters are portrayed as representatives of an arrogant and opportunistic
‘colonising’ power.
As well as highlighting the injustices inherent in one particular aspect of the unification
process, Königsdorf’s depiction of academic Abwicklung also functions on a metaphorical
level. That the loss of the Institute is experienced by all three protagonists as a loss of
255
Heimat is not least suggested by the fact that director, researcher and secretary regroup in a
Wohngemeinschaft in Ruth Makuleit’s flat: however uncollegial, the Institut für
Zahlographie, Königsdorf suggests, fulfilled a primitive need for a sense of community,
belonging and Heimat. Significantly, the sense of a loss of Heimat is often evoked in
literature to express the loss of the GDR. This can be seen in Gleich neben Afrika in which
the main protagonist speaks of feeling ‘unbehaust’ in the New Germany, and travels to
Africa in search of the sense of Heimat she lost with the GDR’s collapse. Similarly, in the
preface to Adieu DDR Königsdorf observes, ‘[o]hne den Ort zu verändern, gehen wir in die
Fremde’.336 Read in this light, it can be argued that the loss of the Institute comes to stand
for the loss of the GDR, with Königsdorf’s critique of the process of Abwicklung
representing a critique encoded in metaphor of the west German ‘takeover’ of east
Germany. In this way, the descriptions of the subjection of the academics to west German
authority, the use of the verb ‘wegrationalisieren’ to describe the Abwicklung of Ruth
Makuleit, Alice’s perception of the evaluation interview as a bodily assault, the portrayal of
der Alte’s humiliating marginalisation, and the loss of the protagonists’ identities serve not
only as aspects of Königsdorf’s realist critique of the process of Abwicklung, but can be
read metaphorically as a wider commentary on the experiences of the east German
population in the post-Wende years.
If the loss of the Institute can be read as a metaphor for the loss of the GDR, the reactions
of the academics who have been ‘abgewickelt’ to this loss come to represent the possible
responses to the GDR’s collapse. In Aus dem Dilemma eine Chance machen, Königsdorf
writes that, in order to come to terms with the loss of the GDR and properly adapt to their
new conditions, east Germans must undertake a process of Trauerarbeit, involving ‘nicht
336
Königsdorf, Adieu DDR, p. 9.
256
nur eine geistige, sondern eine seelische Arbeit’ in order to work through the natural postWende phases of incredulity, rejection and depression.337 In Im Schatten des Regenbogens,
the three main protagonists’ engagement in very individual processes of introspection and
self-evaluation following their Abwicklung is portrayed as just such a form of Trauerarbeit:
der Alte contemplates his role as director of the Institut für Zahlographie, Alice explores
the influence of her childhood on her career development, examines her motives for joining
the Party, and interrogates her affair with a Stasi agent, and Ruth Makuleit reflects on her
need to be needed by her colleagues at the Institute, and confronts her jealousy of Alice. In
addition, they all reflect more objectively on the weaknesses of the socialist system.
Königsdorf presents this soul-searching in a positive light, as she does her protagonists’
willingness to confront the spectrum of emotions associated with the loss of their jobs,
identity and sense of Heimat. Ultimately, all three characters make different choices about
how to proceed in the future. Der Alte first commits himself to his research, then to a
reconciliation with his west German brother, and finally to a new business initiative. Alice
drops out of mainstream society and leads a bohemian life on the streets. Ruth Makuleit
looks after the members of the Wohngemeinschaft while trying to maintain financial
solvency. That none of these choices is explicitly criticised by the narrator suggests that
Königsdorf is simply highlighting the various possibilities open to east Germans, rather
than advocating a particular path. However, it is perhaps significant that she rewards der
Alte’s proactive attitude with a familial reunion and the realisation of his dream of a
pioneering industrial research group: as much as Königsdorf supports a period of
introspection, she seems to give east Germans permission to stop looking back and to grasp
the new opportunities created by the unification of Germany. In this way, Im Schatten des
337
Helga Königsdorf, ‘Identität auf der Waage’, in Aus dem Dilemma eine Chance machen, p. 99.
257
Regenbogens does not just offer Lebenshilfe to academics who have been ‘abgewickelt’,
but to all east German readers of the novel.
5.3.5 Representations of Post-Wende Institutions
Königsdorf’s depiction of the Abwicklung of the Institut für Zahlographie cannot be seen in
isolation from her depiction of three new organisations – one academic institute and two
private research companies – which, directly or indirectly, supersede it. Although most of
the members of the Institut für Zahlographie are ‘abgewickelt’, the rigorous academic
standards enforced by der Alte mean that the Institute itself escapes total closure. Instead, it
is renamed (we are not told what) and restructured according to west German norms, the
handful of surviving east German personnel filling just half a floor. Temporarily at least,
the new institute is led by an east German academic but, having spent time in a GDR prison
for a minor political transgression, he is probably a safe bet for ‘die Neuen’ who are shown
to be firmly in control. Although the restructured institute is only lightly sketched,
Königsdorf paints an image of a west German organisation which bears many of the
hallmarks of its GDR predecessor. For example, the ironic description of the hasty
relabelling of the office door of the former Kaderleitung implies that the new
‘Personalbüro’ differs only in name from the sinister department it replaces. Moreover, this
symbolic act of renaming shows that GDR socialism was not the only system in which as
much if not more importance was attached to appearance than function:
Als sie [Ruth Makuleit] in die Räume der ehemaligen Kaderleitung eingezogen war,
hatte man das Provisorium an der Tür bereits durch das korrekte Schild ersetzt. Die
Neuen legten auf die richtigen Benennungen ebenso großen Wert wie die Alten. Das
Türschild zeigte an, daß sich hier jetzt das Personalbüro befand [p. 43].
258
In addition, the description of the east German academics’ surprise at the volume of
personnel files held on them by the new institute gives the lie to the west German claim to
openness and freedom, while also suggesting that excessive bureaucracy was not just a
feature of the GDR:
Die Betroffenen waren über den Umfang der neuen Akten erstaunt. Der war kaum
geringer als früher. Überhaupt hatten sie mit soviel geballter Bürokratie nicht
gerechnet. Sie hatten immer gedacht, wenigstens auf diesem Gebiet eine
Weltspitzenleistung vorweisen zu können [p. 44].
Of course, Königsdorf is not suggesting that the restructured academic institutes were mere
carbon copies of the deficient GDR organisations they replaced; such comments should be
read as part of her satire on the widely proclaimed superiority of west German structures.
However, while she clearly accepts the need to improve the east German system (as
signalled here by the ironic use of the hyperbolic term ‘Weltspitzenleistung’ for something
that is no cause for national pride), her ambivalent representation of the new institute does
suggest that the west German institutional model is not as perfect as its proponents would
have east Germans believe, and calls into question the justification for the violent
restructuring of the east German academic establishment. This can also be read on a
metaphorical level: if we recall that the loss of the Institut für Zahlographie can function as
a metaphor for the loss of the GDR, the restructured institute can arguably be said to stand
for the new economic and political system introduced in east Germany. In this way,
Königsdorf seems to comment more broadly on the way in which one deficient system has
been replaced by another – a sentiment which finds ample expression in her non-fictional
writings of the early 1990s.
259
The other post-Wende institutions featured in the novel are the Delphie GmbH, a medicinal
research and development company led by east German doctor and medical researcher,
Unserehanni, and der Alte’s fledgling scientific research company. Although both are
businesses rather than academic institutions, they are worth consideration because
Königsdorf holds them up as examples of the kind of projects with which east German
academics who have been ‘abgewickelt’ might have become involved. Unserehanni’s
Delphiegesellschaft seeks to provide statistical data to demonstrate the efficacy of
medicinal drugs, the patents for which are then bought for large sums of money by west
German pharmaceutical companies. However, when her evidence-based drugs trial
collapses, her request that Alice should come up with a mathematical formula to provide
the golden ‘proof’ of a drug’s effectiveness shows that profit, rather than scientific
integrity, is the driving force of the business. To underline Unserehanni’s ruthless
opportunism, Königsdorf has her coldly drop Alice once she is no longer useful, and
calculatingly approach der Alte to be the public face of the company. (That his credentials
as a man and a former institute director are likely to carry weight in the west German
pharmaceutical industry is a satirical comment on both the chauvinism and the illogicality
of a system which can destroy a person’s career on the basis of his past, and subsequently
reward him with a comparable new position on account of that same history.) Furthermore,
Königsdorf satirises Unserehanni’s use of marketing jargon, which is meant to indicate her
uncritical internalisation and exploitation of capitalist values, and (through the ironic
juxtaposition of the words ‘Aufschwung’ and ‘Solidar’) her failure to see that the promised
east German boom is being bought largely at the cost of solidarity with the citizens of the
new Bundesländer: ‘Wichtig wäre, daß alle potentiellen Möglichkeiten für Geldquellen
offenblieben. Es wäre nicht schlecht, wenn die Worte Aufschwung, Solidar, Hauptstadt,
Europa, Olympiade vorkämen’ [p. 115]. Finally, der Alte’s rejection of Unserehanni’s
260
invitation on the grounds that ‘[e]ine Sache müsse sich durch Leistung ausweisen’, and ‘ein
Land, das den größten Teil seiner Kreativität in ein verlogenes Marketing stecke, sei auf
dem besten Wege zu verkommen’ [p. 157], are clear expressions of Königsdorf’s
disapproval of Unserehanni and other Wendehälse of her ilk. By contrast, der Alte’s
idealistic vision is held up as an admirable alternative to Unserehanni’s self-serving
opportunism, and suggests a belief in the possibility of ‘Capitalism with a human face’:
Er wolle eine kleine Gruppe von Spitzenleuten aus unterschiedlichen
Wissenschaftsdisziplinen zusammenholen und Forschungsaufgaben von der Industrie
übernehmen oder mitformulieren, von deren Lösung gleichzeitig wissenschaftlicher
Erkenntniszuwachs zu erwarten sei. Man würde sehr sparsam anfangen und auch den
Mut haben, lukrative Dienstleistungsaufgaben nicht anzunehmen. Es müsse für junge
Wissenschaftler ein Markenzeichen werden, in dieser Gruppe zwei oder drei Jahre
mitgearbeitet zu haben [p. 157].338
For such a vocal critic of academic Abwicklung, it is to Königsdorf’s credit that she is
prepared to acknowledge the opportunities available to unemployed academics in the New
Germany. However, while the contrast between Unserehanni’s profit-oriented ethos and der
Alte’s academically honest approach symbolises the moral issues with which (east German)
entrepreneurs must grapple in a free market economy, this simplistic opposition between
cynical capitalist values and idealist socialist principles belies the more sophisticated level
of analysis found elsewhere in the novel and in her non-fictional writings of this time.
This description of der Alte’s vision is highly evocative of Stubbe’s vision for the Institut für
Kulturpflanzenforschung in Wolf’s ‘Ein Besuch’: ‘Ein Institut, das die wichtigsten Disziplinen der Biologie
[…] sozusagen unter einem Dach vereint; das allen diesen Forschungsgebieten die großen, wertvollen
Samensortimente zur Verfügung stellt, die wir nun mal haben. […] Ein Institut, das Grundlagenforschung
sinnvoll mit praxisbezogener Forschung für die Landwirtschaft verbindet; das, zu guter Letzt, die
Wissenschaftler der verschiedenen Richtungen zur Gemeinschaftsarbeit zusammenführt und sie von den
Nachteilen zu enger Spezialisierung und Isolierung weitgehend befreit.’ See: Christa Wolf, ‘Ein Besuch’, in
Lesen und Schreiben. Aufsätze und Betrachtungen (Berlin: Aufbau, 1971), p. 155.
338
261
5.3.6 Closing Remarks
Im Schatten des Regenbogens clearly belongs to two groups of literature: one which looks
at the post-Wende process and effects of academic restructuring, and another which
explores the impact of the Wende on the general GDR population. In this double focus, it
recalls the iridescence of Königsdorf’s pre-Wende ‘academia tales’ which simultaneously
offer a realist critique of GDR academia and a metaphorically coded critique of the GDR
state. One might argue that it is contradictory of Königsdorf to express sadness for the loss
of the Institute which she once criticised, and sympathy for the Institute directors whom she
formerly condemned. On the other hand, the existence of fictional continuities between her
pre- and post-Wende texts does not mean that they must add up to an absolutely coherent
whole. The tensions in her representation of the Institut für Zahlographie need not be seen
as a weakness, but can be seen rather as an inevitable response to the changing political
times and, as one effect of this, to the new possibilities for east German writers to express
themselves in the united Germany.
Although the object of Königsdorf’s critique shifts after the Wende, her satirical voice is as
much a feature of Im Schatten des Regenbogens as of her ‘academia tales’. Her
characterisation and representation of the Institute may be more complex in this novel, but
she continues to employ a certain amount of overstatement and caricature to emphasise her
critique. As we will now see, this fusion of the complex and the simplified, of threedimensional characters and archetypes, is also a feature of the satirical approach adopted by
John Erpenbeck in his 1996 novel Aufschwung.
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5.4 John Erpenbeck’s Aufschwung
5.4.1 Introduction
The fantastical tale of a professor of Marxism-Leninism who, following his Abwicklung
from the Akademie der Wissenschaften, takes Germany by storm with his pioneering palmreading company, creating a media furore and earning the Bundesverdienstkreuz for his
contribution to the (east) German economy (thereby supplementing his Vaterländischer
Verdientsorden for services to East German scholarship), Aufschwung could be said to
exemplify what Schröter identifies as the shift in post-Wende literature in the mid-1990s
towards humorous treatments of the Wende and its aftermath. Certainly, Professor Edgar
Rothenburg’s gleeful romp through the capitalist landscape of the New Germany starkly
contrasts with Königsdorf’s painstaking discussion of academic Abwicklung, her serious
representation of east German Trauer for the collapsed GDR, and her earnest evaluation of
the benefits and dangers of market economies. Perhaps it is comparisons such as these
which have led reviewers of Aufschwung to label it clichéd and superficial.339 The opening
scene, a mock erotic sketch in which Edgar sensuously reads the palm of his beautiful
former student, might seem to justify such criticism: in its descriptions of Gerda’s
whispered endorsements of Edgar’s predictions, her admiration of Edgar’s muscular body
and her urgent demand, ‘weiter, Professor, weiter’ [p. 9.], of Edgar’s sudden erection, and
of Gerda’s reciprocation of his attentions by soothingly taking his hand in hers, it alludes to
the conventionalised eroticism of popular romantic fiction. Nevertheless, I argue that
Aufschwung is a highly self-conscious narrative (immediately suggested by the fact that the
Klaus Bellin, ‘Aufschwung. Der neue Roman von John Erpenbeck’, Neues Deutschland, 74 (1996), p. 6;
Hans-Rainer John, ‘Über Lebenswerte und Narreteien. John Erpenbeck – Aufschwung’. (Accessible at:
www.http://www.luise-berlin.de/Lesezei/Blz96_10/text49.htm) (accessed 14th August 2008).
339
263
names ‘Edgar’ and ‘Gerda’ are anagrams of one another), and that the playful subversion of
expectations in the opening pages is typical of Erpenbeck’s satirical approach, the lightheartedness which characterises the novel concealing a more complex and serious treatment
of post-Wende issues than may initially be apparent.
Picking up where Königsdorf left off, Erpenbeck ostensibly takes as his theme the question
of what a redundant professor of Marxism-Leninism can do in the radically changed
conditions of the New Germany. However, Edgar’s entrepreneurial tour de force is clearly
not meant to be a realistic reflection of the possibilities open to the average redundant
academic. Instead, it is a satirical vehicle which allows Erpenbeck to comment not only on
GDR academia and its Abwicklung, but also on the socialist past of the GDR, its capitalist
alternative, and the post-Wende atmosphere of the united Germany. In this way,
Erpenbeck’s concerns echo Königsdorf’s in Im Schatten des Regenbogens, a
correspondence which is partly obscured by the satire and irony which permeate the novel.
Accordingly, I begin my discussion with an analysis of Erpenbeck’s satirical techniques,
taking his characterisation of Edgar as a model. I then consider the novel’s treatment of
GDR academia and its Abwicklung, before exploring the coded and realist critiques
introduced through the representation of Edgar’s company, Tes Chiros GmbH, and the
discipline of chiromancy. Although Erpenbeck’s satirical approach relies on distortion and
hyperbole which are far removed from Königsdorf’s realist reflection of the post-Wende
Alltag, I seek to demonstrate that Aufschwung is more than just a ‘kapitalistisches
Märchen’, or ‘ein Lehrbuch, eine Anleitung zum Handeln’,340 but rather actively engages
with real post-Wende issues and discourses.
340
John.
264
5.4.2 Erpenbeck’s Satirical Approach
In his review of the novel, Hans-Reiner John criticises Erpenbeck for apparently falling
hook, line and sinker for the esoteric art of palm reading, referred to in the text by its
scientific name, Chiromantie.341 What John objects to is the absence of any direct critical
commentary on the practice of palm reading, and the fact that Erpenbeck apparently enjoys
Edgar’s unexpected entrepreneurial success as much as his protagonist himself. In a similar
vein, Klaus Bellin expresses surprise at what he sees as a complete absence of irony or
satire in the novel:
Meint er wirklich alles so, wie’s dasteht? Läßt er nicht wenigstens hin und wieder
durchblicken, daß er seiner Geschichte womöglich einen doppelten Boden verpaßt
hat? Nein, er verzieht keine Miene. Er erzählt in aller Ausführlichkeit, wie ein
ehemals roter Professor die Vorzüge des Kapitalismus entdeckt.342
What John and Bellin overlook is the underlying satire, however subtle and gentle, in
Erpenbeck’s ostensibly affirmative representation of his protagonists and their actions. In
this section I examine Erpenbeck’s characterisation of Edgar, and suggest that it offers a
useful illustration of the satirical mechanisms at work in the rest of the novel. At the same
time, I explore the interpretative difficulties posed by Erpenbeck’s ambiguous satirical
approach.
The surface image of Edgar is of a good-natured, well-intentioned, sincere autodidact, a
hard-worker and family man who takes his responsibilities seriously, makes the best of a
bad situation, and deserves all the success that comes his way. His optimism, openmindedness and readiness to question long-held beliefs are also presented to the reader as
341
342
John.
Bellin, p. 6.
265
qualities worthy of applause and admiration. And if he occasionally experiences angst at his
declining masculinity, or indulges in others’ awe for his academic credentials, these are
described in fondly humorous terms, and add depth to a character who, while not without
his flaws, is clearly presented as a figure with whom the reader is invited to identify.
This is not to say, though, that Erpenbeck idealises his protagonist. Rather, he relies on the
reader to pick up on the moments of gentle satire and implied criticism which characterise
the text. Erpenbeck uses two main techniques to indicate criticism of Edgar’s attitude and
actions. First, he describes in neutral terms an action past or present from which he relies on
the reader to draw his or her own critical conclusions. For example, although Erpenbeck
describes Edgar’s smooching with the young Gerda without attaching to the description any
explicit value judgement, the reader is expected to raise an eyebrow at Edgar’s impropriety
(Gerda is his student), his infidelity (Edgar is married), his weakness (Gerda flatters his
ego) and his arrogance (this takes place in public). The description of the start of Edgar’s
relationship with his second wife Amy operates along similar lines: while we are told that
they met at a sauna party, that Edgar fancied that Amy would make him a good wife and
mother, and that his wife divorced him soon after, this information is relayed without
explicit judgement, the reader being expected to detect the implicit satire on Edgar’s
decadence, chauvinism and infidelity. At times, such as when Edgar earnestly describes his
working-class background, Erpenbeck reports Edgar’s words directly, and instead of
explicitly satirising Edgar’s bourgeois value system and blindness to the hypocrisy of his
situation, he allows Edgar’s words to communicate these for themselves, again relying on
the reader to pick up on the irony: ‘Der Knochenarbeit war ich gewachsen, ja, sie machte
mir Spaß. Noch heute verausgabe ich mich gern bis zur Grenze, beim Tennis, beim
Skifahren’ [p. 10]. At other times free indirect discourse is employed to satirise Edgar’s
266
bourgeois, illogical or self-serving reasoning, which is again left uncommented on: ‘Das
Haus brauchte eine Frau – nicht weniger als er selbst. Da war und blieb er historischer
Materialist. […] Der Ursprung der Familie ließ sich auf Arbeitsteilung zwischen Mann und
Frau zurückführen’ [p. 25]. In both examples there is irony in the use of socialist language
(‘Knochenarbeit’ and ‘Arbeitsteilung’) to express bourgeois ideas. While the word
‘Knochenarbeit’ is not inherently socialist, as Edgar uses it it contains the hint that hard
manual labour is a noble sacrifice, and seems to allude to the GDR’s manual labourers.
Erpenbeck’s second main satirical technique involves the subtle qualification of Edgar’s
words or thoughts through the use of additional information which points up the
unreliability of his perspective. For example, there is nothing in the following sentence,
another piece of free indirect discourse, to cast doubt on Edgar’s view of his modest
material circumstances: ‘Erstmals im Leben war er froh, alt zu sein, zumindest alt genug für
den vorzeitigen Ruhestand und eine Rente, die ihm gerade den Erhalt seines Häuschens und
eine bescheidene Existenz ermöglichte’ [p. 8]. In the following chapter, however, Edgar’s
‘Häuschen’ is revealed to be a large family house in a Pankow Bonzenviertel, replete with
antique furniture, valuable old books, gold-framed paintings and a precious porcelain
collection. Furthermore, some pages later we discover that the reduction in Edgar’s
circumstances consists merely in the loss of his cleaning lady and the sale of his prized
foreign car. Although on the one hand the positive way in which Edgar reconciles himself
with having to travel by tram (he is grateful to be able to sit back and enjoy the surrounding
countryside) evokes sympathy, the description of the loss of Edgar’s car also serves as an
ironic qualification of his perception of his ‘bescheidene Existenz’ reported in the earlier
scene. In another example of this technique, we first sympathise with Edgar’s umbrage at
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being left by his wife for a younger man until the subsequent description of his own past
infidelity undermines his self-pity and serves gently to mock his double standards.
What is common to all of these techniques is that they often function less to enlighten than
to disorientate. For example, Erpenbeck’s use of the technique which narratologist
Schlomith Rimmon-Kenan calls ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’,343 of describing without
offering explicit commentary, can leave the reader with a sense of uncertainty as to the
conclusions he or she is expected to draw. The use of free indirect discourse can sometimes
compound this difficulty. In her analysis of speech representation in narrative fiction,
Rimmon-Kenan comments on the double-edged effect of free indirect discourse:
On the one hand, the presence of a narrator as distinct from the character may create
an ironic distancing. On the other hand, the tinting of the narrator’s speech with the
character’s language or mode of experience may promote an empathetic identification
on the part of the reader. Perhaps most interesting are cases of ambiguity, where the
reader has no means of choosing between the ironic and the empathetic attitude.344
This ambiguity is certainly at play in Aufschwung: does Erpenbeck distance himself from
Edgar’s thoughts in order to mock certain aspects of his protagonist’s personality, or are his
internal representations of Edgar’s thought processes imbued with a fondness for, an
empathy with, his protagonist? The second technique I outlined, whereby apparently
neutral statements find subsequent qualification, also has a disorientating effect on the
reader who finds an initial interpretation is suddenly subverted by a new, often
contradictory, piece of information. The slipperiness of Erpenbeck’s satire, which is as
enjoyable as it is ambiguous, is not just a feature of his characterisation, but applies to all of
the novel’s action. Thus, the critique which inheres in the references to GDR academia and
343
Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London and New York: Routledge,
1993), p. 107.
344
Rimmon-Kenan, p. 114.
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its Abwicklung, and in the representation of Tes Chiros GmbH and chiromancy is often very
difficult to pin down.
5.4.3 The Representation of GDR Academia
The GDR academic establishment is sketched much more lightly in Aufschwung than in Im
Schatten des Regenbogens, with only a handful of references to academic life scattered
across the narrative. On occasion, Erpenbeck comments directly, and critically, on GDR
academia, such as through Edgar’s reflection on his wranglings with the censorship
authorities over the wording of certain sentences and even the appropriateness for
publication of whole books [p. 33]. At other times, most obviously in the description of the
official celebrations of Edgar’s fifty-fifth birthday, the critique is wrapped up in a gentle
satire:
Unten erfuhr, was Oben machte, Oben erfuhr, was Unten dachte. Das änderte nichts
und verschaffte allen Anwesenden ein – sektbefeuertes – Wohlgefühl. Politische
Witze wurden erzählt, die frechsten von den Vertretern des Zentralkomitees: “Wir
sind ja unter uns, Genossen…” Später kam der Akademiepräsident, ein bekannter
Wissenschaftler und kultivierter Gelehrter. Er überreichte die achtzehn Lederbände,
schaute etwas mokant auf die Protokollgeschenke und die protokollarisch
ausgewählten Gäste, ehe er wirklich herzlich gratulierte. Zuletzt kamen Vertreter von
Ministerrat und Staatsrat, überreichten Edgar einen Vaterländischen Verdienstorden
und – diskret – den dazugehörigen Scheck [pp. 31-2].
Echoing de Bruyn’s satirical representation of Menzel’s fiftieth birthday party in Märkische
Forschungen, Erpenbeck satirises the reified hierarchical structure and false egalitarianism
of the Akademie, its formulaic celebratory conventions, and its bourgeois fear of doing
anything so crude as to make a publication presentation of a monetary award. At times,
though, the critique is more concealed: what at first sight appears to be a satire on the
materialism of Edgar’s ex-wife, who predicts (rightly, as it turns out) that marriage to a
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professor will secure her a luxury existence, foreign travel opportunities, long summer
holidays, and plenty of attention from a husband whose occupation will make few demands
on him, also serves to satirise the privileged and undemanding lifestyle of the average GDR
professor. This view of GDR academics as the embodiment of privilege hints at mediocrity
in the GDR academic establishment. While at times Erpenbeck appears to add his voice to
this view (he jokes about Edgar’s expertise at synthesising others’ ideas, and has him
confess to his adherence to the ideologically determined methodological and linguistic
norms of the Akademie), he complicates matters by adding that Edgar’s research sought to
problematise those distortions of Marxist ideals which found currency in an increasingly
self-serving system. In this way, Erpenbeck’s final assessment of academic rigour in GDR
institutions is much more ambiguous than Königsdorf’s and de Bruyn’s straightforward
critiques of intellectual mediocrity and the cynical instrumentalisation of knowledge. At
other times, such as in the descriptions of Edgar’s post-lecture liaisons with the young
Gerda, the reader must read against the grain of an apparently harmless or humorous
description to discern an implied criticism, in this case of a system which tolerated such
sexist exploitation in its senior professors. Alternatively, criticism can be detected by
piecing together various clues from across the narrative. In this way, Erpenbeck satirises
the hypocrisy of an establishment whose professors preached Marxism-Leninism by day,
and returned home in the evening to a Pankow Bonzenviertel and a decadent lifestyle
consisting of sauna parties, foreign cars and housekeepers.
If we piece together the various parts of the jigsaw, what emerges is an image of an
organisation which shares many of the dubious features of the institutions described by
Wolf, Königsdorf and de Bruyn, in particular, hierarchies, bureaucracy, censorship,
conformism, hypocrisy and disproportionate privilege. Despite this, Erpenbeck’s critique is
270
considerably more mild than that found in any of the texts discussed above. In part, this can
be attributed to his gentle satirical approach, and possibly also to the more detailed
commentaries on GDR academia already provided by writers such as Wolf, Königsdorf and
de Bruyn, and to a degree also by the media. The likelihood that his readers are familiar
with such narratives arguably allows him to compress his own critique into a handful of
stock characteristics which immediately evoke the broader critiques contained in earlier
texts. This technique is also at work in the thematisation of academic Abwicklung.
5.4.4 The Representation of Abwicklung
Unlike Königsdorf, who carefully details the process of Abwicklung and subjects its west
German implementers to as much scrutiny as she does the GDR academic establishment,
Erpenbeck makes no mention at all of the role or methodology of the Science Council or
evaluation committees. While the absence of commentary on the evaluation process can
partly be attributed to the assumption that it was sufficiently well known, at the time, to
obviate the necessity of detailing it at any length, Erpenbeck is, quite simply, less
concerned than Königsdorf to provide an in-depth analysis of the process of and
justification for academic Abwicklung. Although there are numerous allusions to the
illogicality and iniquity of a process which reduced intelligent and educated people to
‘Menschenmüll’ [p. 27] (indeed, he tells us that many redundant east German academics
are successful in publishing abroad where their GDR background does not prejudice the
reception of their work) only to replace them with ‘oft zweitrangige’ [p. 30] academics
from the west, by filtering his commentary through Edgar’s clearly subjective perspective,
Erpenbeck makes it difficult for the reader to calibrate the harshness of his critique, and
271
indicates that it is not his intention to present an objective analysis of the merits and
demerits of Abwicklung:
Beinahe alle Lehrstühle für Philosophie waren mit – oft zweitrangigen – westlichen
Wissenschaftlern besetzt, fast alle namhaften Ostdeutschen entlassen worden. Ihre
Arbeiten wurden nicht mehr publiziert. Die ‘Zeitschrift für Philosophie’, vier
Jahrzehnte Zentralorgan der Rechtgläubigen, worin auch die meisten seiner Artikel
erschienen waren, druckte jetzt, linientreu ‘pluralistisch’, Artikel von Leuten, deren
Namen er oft nicht einmal kannte. Weder 1933 noch 1945 war mit den Philosophen
des ‘alten Systems’ so rigoros verfahren worden [p. 30].
On the one hand we find in this passage the expression of a popular view of Abwicklung as
a self-serving west German strategy to manoeuvre its own into east German academic
positions, as well as of the widely held sense of injustice at the excessive rigour of the ‘decommunisation’ of east Germany. On the other hand, the validity of this perspective is
destabilised by Edgar’s scornful designation of a GDR academic journal which has been
taken over by west German editors as ‘linientreu “pluralistisch”’. The term ‘linientreu’ is
conventionally used of cowardly conformists in the GDR, but here Edgar unconvincingly
suggests that academic ‘pluralism’ is just another form of unquestioning conformism to a
different consensus. His equation of western pluralism with GDR conformism smacks more
of bitterness than of truth, as does the implication that contributors to the journal must be
second rate because he has never heard of them. In this way, Erpenbeck at once gives voice
to, and distances himself from, the kind of critique of Abwicklung that we find in Im
Schatten des Regenbogens. This is not to say that Erpenbeck rejects the views which he has
Edgar express, but it is typical of his satirical approach that he refuses to offer a
straightforward critique of the justification for academic Abwicklung.
While the process of Abwicklung is only superficially sketched, its impact on the individual
who has been ‘abgewickelt’ is represented in greater detail, the narrative abounding with
272
references to the financial, psychological and sociological consequences of redundancy:
‘Existenzängste’, diminished self-esteem, decline in sexual appetite, feelings of
hopelessness and depression, suicide, broken friendships and loss of trust. However, in
contrast to Königsdorf’s earnest and empathetic representation of her redundant
protagonists’ financial and emotional distress, Erpenbeck’s approach is characterised by the
light-hearted satire found throughout the novel. Specifically, on several occasions an
ostensibly sombre comment on the negative personal consequences of Abwicklung is
suddenly subverted by a satirical comment or qualification. For example, Edgar’s loss of
status is treated with a mix of the serious and satirical, as illustrated by his nostalgic
rumination on the past: ‘Da galten seine Arbeiten, da galt er, da galt sein Geburtstag noch
etwas’ [p. 31]. Here, Erpenbeck employs bathos to satirise Edgar’s self-indulgence: the
sympathy which is evoked in the first part of the sentence for the devaluation of his work
and personal standing is suddenly thrown into comic relief by his self-pitying reflection that
even his birthday no longer counts as an important date in the academic calendar (which is
also a satire on institutional conventions in the GDR). A similar mechanism is at work in
the following extract, the first three sentences of which recall the melancholy of Im
Schatten des Regenbogens, only for Edgar’s serious concern about the waste of human
talent to be punctured by the allusion to his annoyance at the loss of his cleaner – a clear
reminder of his privileged existence in the GDR, and a hint that we should not feel too
sorry for him:
Wehmutig wurde ihm nur, wenn er an die vielen intelligenten, gebildeten Bekannten,
Kollegen und Freunde dachte, die über Nacht zu Menschenmüll geworden waren. An
ihre zerstörten Ideale und entwerteten Biographien. An sein eigenes, wertlos
gewordenes Leben. Die eingestaubten Räume im oberen Stock wirkten wie
Wahrzeichen der Entwertung [p. 27].
273
The mild satire here on Edgar’s nostalgia for his lost status and privileges finds sharper
expression in the description of his visit to a meeting of the ‘Gundling-Gesellschaft’ of
academics who have been ‘abgewickelt’. On the one hand, admiration is conveyed for their
continuing commitment to their subjects, the forum they provide for sharing their worries
and fears, and the exciting quality of their debate, an ‘intellektuelles Feuerwerk, das in allen
Hauptstädten außerhalb Deutschlands mit Hochachtung bedacht worden wäre’ [p. 76].
However, as illustrated by Edgar’s mental note to self, ‘[n]iemals, nie, nie […]. Nie zu
diesem Club der Gestrigen gehören’ [p. 78], Erpenbeck has much less patience than
Königsdorf for what he portrays as self-indulgent wallowing in uncritical Ostalgie. Thus,
while only lightly sketched, Erpenbeck’s representation of academic Abwicklung engages
with many aspects of post-Wende discourse surrounding the evaluation and restructuring of
the east German academic landscape.
Although Erpenbeck focuses on Edgar’s Abwicklung from the Akademie der
Wissenschaften, he acknowledges other groups of GDR society which also suffered
Abwicklung in the early post-Wende years. On the one hand, he sketches the plight of the
GDR political and cultural elite who, if not exactly ‘abgewickelt’ in the sense of
undergoing formal evaluation, found themselves completely redundant in the New
Germany. As in the examples outlined above, sympathy is invited for the disorientated
Pankow elite, although this is somewhat relativised by the subsequent reference to their
sense of self-importance:
Die vor kurzem noch Minister, Chefärztin, Offizier, Schauspieler, Malerin, Philosoph
gewesen waren, eine Gesellschaft repräsentiert hatten – und nun in ihrer Mehrzahl
nichts anderes darstellten, als ein trauriges Häuflein von Pensionären und
Arbeitslosen. Tragikomisch, wahrhaftig: Wenn sie sich zu erkennen gaben, lösten sie
ein Lächeln aus, wie Größenwahnsinnige, die behaupten, Goethe, Napoleon oder gar
Gott zu sein [p. 20].
274
Besides, Erpenbeck distances himself from the view of German unification as a
‘colonisation’, which is advanced by at least one of their number. Nevertheless, he does not
want to see these figures consigned to the scrapheap of history, and the delight he seems to
take in seeing them all gainfully reemployed by Edgar’s Tes Chiros GmbH suggests that
they still have a contribution to make in the unified Germany.
Real sympathy is evoked for the less privileged victims of redundancy and Abwicklung,
epitomised by Edgar’s first two clients – a skilled computer engineer and a dedicated head
teacher – neither of whom, it is clear, deserved to lose their jobs. In giving space to their
detailed confessions of disorientation and depression, the poignancy of which escapes his
characteristic satire, Erpenbeck reflects some of the experiences and feelings of the many
thousands of east Germans who lost their jobs in the early 1990s, even though, unlike for
Königsdorf, this is not a primary motivation for writing. Again, Erpenbeck celebrates their
subsequent reemployment in positions commensurate with their experience and skills. In
generously distributing narrative rewards to east Germans who have been declared
redundant by the New German state, Erpenbeck scores a playful literary point on behalf of
the losers of the unification process. At the same time, he seems to acknowledge that their
prospects in the New Germany are not perhaps as bleak as texts such as Im Schatten des
Regenbogens have suggested.
5.4.5 Tes Chiros: A Political Commentary Past and Present
In Wolf’s ‘Ein Besuch’ the founding of the Gatersleben Institute can be read as a metaphor
for the birth and development of the GDR state, while in Im Schatten des Regenbogens the
275
creation of the Delphiegesellschaft offers a realist insight into the capitalist structures of the
New Germany. The Tes Chiros GmbH which features in Aufschwung serves both of these
functions, Erpenbeck’s thematisation of its business practices and development inviting the
reader to discern a coded commentary on GDR state socialism, while also providing a
realist insight into post-Wende Germany.
5.4.6 Tes Chiros: A Critique of the GDR?
The essence of the coded political commentary that it is possible to read into Aufschwung
lies in the parallels which Erpenbeck seems to construct throughout the novel between the
modus operandi of Tes Chiros and many of the well-known questionable workings of realexisting socialism. Specifically, the clever marketing of the company, the insistence on the
scientificity of chiromancy, the exploitation of its clients’ need for meaning, reassurance
and hope, and the increasing emphasis on profitability at the cost of quality recall the overt
propaganda of the GDR, the supposedly scientific basis of Marxism-Leninism, the SED’s
false promises of individual self-realisation and happiness, and the gradual perversion of
socialist ideals. In this way, the discipline of chiromancy, like that of ‘Zahlographie’ and
the experiments featured in Wolf’s ‘academia tales’, becomes a metaphor for the ‘science’
of socialism. Indeed, early on in the novel Erpenbeck explicitly makes the connection
between Marxism and the occult arts through Edgar’s reflection on the thesis of his most
recent book:
Ist man bereit, Weltanschauungsutopien und Zukunftswerte als lebens- und
handlungsnotwendig gelten zu lassen, warum sollte man jenen Künsten [i.e.
chiromancy and other pseudo-sciences] dann die Anerkennung verweigern? Waren
sie nicht ebenso notwendig, ebenso unentbehrlich wie ihre vornehmeren Schwestern?
Andere hatten den Marxismus zu diffamieren versucht, indem sie ihn mit Astrologie
und Chiromantie gleichsetzten: Lieferten sie nicht eher Rechtfertigungen für letztere?
[p. 34].
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These parallels are more light-heartedly developed through the implausible contrivance of
having Edgar expand his chiromancy consultancy into the premises of a former GDR
Parteischule: in the lecture theatre where he had once extolled the virtues of MarxismLeninism he now practises the discipline of chiromancy. The irony of this weighs heavily
in the narrator’s observation, ‘[a]lles war wie für die Ewigkeit. Wer an diesem Schreibtisch
im Zentrum des Unendlichen saß, war der Erhabene: unfehlbar, allwissend und
zukunftssicher; Edgars alte Rolle’ [p. 171]. As if to underline this reference to Edgar’s
former (and formerly ‘eternal’) role, Erpenbeck tells us that ‘ein Gefühl von Zufriedenheit
mit sich selbst, wie er es seit dem Wendejahr nicht mehr verspürt hatte, überwältigte ihn’
[p. 67]. Furthermore, the establishment of the sister company, ChirosInvestigations, which
employs a former Stasi agent to assist Edgar with his predictions by providing background
information about his clients, clearly evokes the contradiction in the GDR between an
ideology which purported to prioritise the welfare of its citizens, and its invasive
surveillance of them. As if to underline these connections between Tes Chiros and the
GDR, Erpenbeck tells us that Edgar feels the same sense of fear during the media Stasi
allegations which at one point threaten to bring down the company as he experienced
during the collapse of the GDR state. In a last reference to socialist conventions, Erpenbeck
points out the similarities between the award ceremony where Edgar is awarded the
Bundesverdienstkreuz for his contribution to the German economy, and the prize-giving
events at which he was similarly celebrated for his services to GDR academia: ‘Beamte
hasteten umher, ihre Geschäftigkeit stach grotesk von der Ruhe der Wartenden ab. Alles
erinnerte Edgar an die einstige Auszeichnung mit dem Nationalpreis’ [p. 214]. Far from
representing a new start, the New Germany appears to allow the worst of the past to thrive.
277
Early on in the novel we are told that Edgar feels it is too soon after the Wende to embark
on an evaluation of the GDR past. Although Erpenbeck clearly evokes parallels between
Tes Chiros and the GDR state, between chiromancy and real-existing socialism, it would be
naïve to assume that this makes for a rigorous retrospective appraisal of the collapsed state:
Erpenbeck’s commentary on the GDR past is only as reliable as his critique of Tes Chiros
which serves as a metaphor for it – and Edgar’s entrepreneurial triumph does not escape
Erpenbeck’s satirical brush. As with other targets of Erpenbeck’s satire, the nature of the
critique is far from unambiguous. At times, such as in the following euphoric statement
made by a business associate of Edgar, deciphering the strength and target of Erpenbeck’s
satire is not a straightforward task: ‘Wir produzieren Träume, Hoffnungen, Lebenspläne,
auch Illusionen, klar. Wir produzieren Sinn! Kein anderes Produkt wird heutzutage mehr
nachgefragt und weniger produziert’ [p. 189]. While the reader senses Erpenbeck’s satire
here on the perverse claim that something as abstract and personal as meaning can be
manufactured, marketed and sold, at other times Erpenbeck appears to take as much delight
in his protagonists’ success as they do themselves. Certainly, he seems to enjoy finding
each of his redundant characters appropriate employment in the company. Moreover, the
satire on the disingenuous marketing of a technique as scientific, which in fact relies on
popular psychology and its subjects’ gullibility, is weighed against the emphasis on the
valuable Lebenshilfe which Tes Chiros offers its desperate clients: encouraged by Edgar’s
positive predictions and encouragement, many go on to seek out new opportunities and
snatch success from the jaws of apparent defeat. The practice of chiromancy is treated with
similar ambiguity: having first hammered home its lack of scientific credibility, Erpenbeck
mischievously contrives to have two independent palm readers confirm Edgar’s reading of
Gerda’s future, their unanimous prediction ultimately being borne out in her untimely
278
death. In this way, Erpenbeck’s critique of Tes Chiros and chiromancy is playfully
contradictory.
One might see this slipperiness as a deliberate refusal to provide a reductionist appraisal of
GDR state socialism, thereby situating the novel in the camp of post-Wende literature
identified by Cooke as ‘writing back’ against western calls for moralistic black and white
assessments of the GDR past. In this respect, it is perhaps significant that the strongest
critique of Tes Chiros is put into the mouth of an unscrupulous tabloid journalist: as if,
while recognising the need to criticise the questionable aspects of the company, deep down
Erpenbeck seems reluctant to do so. Thus, by employing the familiar figure of the ruthless
tabloid journalist to attempt to destroy the company by publishing a vile attack on its
background and practices, he negates the journalist’s (not entirely unjustified) critique, and
positions Tes Chiros as the victim of a ruthless and self-serving media machine. The
sympathy which this indicates for Tes Chiros and chiromancy can thus be seen as an
implicit expression of support, if not quite nostalgia, for the collapsed socialist state.
5.4.7 Tes Chiros: Hybridity and ‘Writing Back’
Cooke’s application of postcolonial theory to post-Wende writing by east German authors
(by which, it bears repeating, Cooke does not imply that East Germany was indeed
colonised, but rather that a perception of colonisation has left its mark on east German
culture) can be used further to illuminate Erpenbeck’s engagement with post-Wende
discourses on the GDR past. Cooke takes as his starting point the theories on hybridity of
anthropologists Homi Bhabha and Bart Moore-Gilbert: explaining that colonised subjects
are forced to mimic the colonial master, Bhabha argues that the imperfectness of the copy
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of the coloniser they produce reinscribes its authority and superiority. 345 Moore-Gilbert is
less pessimistic about the effect of this ‘not-quite-sameness’, arguing instead that it ‘acts
like a distorting mirror which fractures the identity of the colonising subject’.346
Erpenbeck’s portrayal of an east German character’s metamorphosis from MarxismLeninism professor to capitalist entrepreneur seems to illustrate Bhabha’s argument that
colonised subjects are forced to mimic their colonial masters, to adopt their values and
norms. On the face of it, far from representing an imperfect copy of west German
Capitalism as Bhabha suggests, Tes Chiros exemplifies the kind of capitalist success story
of which most entrepreneurs could only dream: in this, Erpenbeck seems to reject the view
of east Germany as an imperfect hybrid, an inferior colonised subject. And yet, Aufschwung
is not supposed to be a happy tale about the seamless integration of east Germany into the
west German market economy. Rather, by painting a hyperbolic picture of the company’s
success, its worship of profit, and Edgar’s absolute internalisation of and conformism to
capitalist values and practice, Erpenbeck seems to create a copy of a west German company
which, in its monstrous perfectness is, in the spirit of Moore-Gilbert’s notion of distortion,
after all ‘not quite the same’. In this way, Tes Chiros seems to function as a satirical parody
of a capitalist enterprise, thereby ‘[fracturing] the identity of the colonising subject’ and
‘provocatively returning the gaze of the coloniser’.347
Cooke goes on to explain that the phenomenon of hybridity is also used by some east
German writers as a means of ‘writing back’ against what they see as a coloniser’s
reductive view of their history. Specifically, he says, by actively adopting the position of
the ‘hybrid’ – a copy of the master which is rendered ‘imperfect’ by traces of its original
345
Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification, p. 17.
Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification, p. 17.
347
Bart Moore-Gilbert, cited in: Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification, p. 17.
346
280
characteristics – they challenge, through parody, hegemonic pronouncements about aspects
of their history and identity.348 In Aufschwung this hybridity largely consists in the
incongruous juxtaposition of a modern capitalist enterprise with the ancient art of
chiromancy. By choosing to have his protagonist set up a palm-reading business, rather
than, say, a financial services company, Erpenbeck deliberately casts his east German
protagonist in the role of the primitive and mystical other. In this, Erpenbeck seems to be
parodying the ‘orientalisation’ of the GDR in left-leaning west German circles, in which the
socialist state was romanticised as ‘the preserve of a more authentic German tradition, and
specifically one that had not been “corrupted” by what is often viewed as the post-war
Americanisation of western society’.349 Cooke argues that, although this brand of
orientalism is less derogatory than that which constructs the GDR as west Germany’s evil
other, it is nevertheless an example of an ideological colonisation. Moreover, he explains,
many east German intellectuals, too, even those who were not proponents of the GDR prior
to its collapse, are susceptible to propagating an idealised image of the GDR’s socialist
project as a corrective to the excesses of Capitalism, using this to assert a defiant sense of a
more authentic east German identity.350 Thus, through the very choice of chiromancy as the
product of Edgar’s business, and through his dubious representation of its scientific
validity, Erpenbeck seems to be reflecting, and problematising, post-Wende orientalist
discourses about GDR history, which enjoyed currency in both east and west German leftleaning intellectual circles.
348
Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification, p. 73.
Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification, p. 13.
350
Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification, p. 16.
349
281
5.4.8 Tes Chiros: A Critique of the New Germany?
Erpenbeck’s critique of west Germany is not confined to problematising the discourses of
unification which it promotes. Clearly, Edgar’s metamorphosis from professor of MarxismLeninism to entrepreneurial fat cat is not supposed to reflect the real-life fortunes of
redundant east German academics, but, as well as providing a vehicle for Erpenbeck’s
critique of socialism, it is also an exaggerated satirical construct through which Erpenbeck
introduces his commentaries on Capitalism and the New Germany.
Like Günter Grass in his post-Wende novel Unkenrufe, Erpenbeck charts the steps involved
in starting up and developing a new business. Both authors seem to recognise the narrative
interest in the story of a business on the up, and yet the sudden reversal of their
protagonists’ fortunes represents a last-minute withdrawal of the authors’ narrative
‘investment’ in capitalist success. Erpenbeck’s refusal to provide a happy ending to what
appeared to be a celebration of the capitalist dream seems to offer an indictment of
capitalist values, which is overtly articulated in the closing lines, ‘[w]as für eine
Unternehmensbilanz. Was für eine Lebensbilanz. Wo bin ich hingeraten? Er erkannte sich
selbst nicht wieder’ [p. 224]. In addition, through the sudden subversion of the reader’s
expectations of a happy ending, Erpenbeck seems to satirise human nature’s susceptibility
to the allure of the capitalist fairy tale, and in particular the readiness of many east as well
as west Germans to accept the western-sponsored post-Wende narrative of the
‘Aufschwung Ost’, supposedly made possible by its accession to the capitalist FRG. This
reverence for Capitalism and its participants is satirised in the figure of the registry office
official who, impressed by Edgar’s entrepreneurial status, agrees to squeeze Edgar and
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Gerda in before a mere ‘Proletenpärchen’ [p. 116] who had booked their wedding much
earlier.
However, because the novel works with such self-conscious irony and satire, it is difficult
to calibrate the seriousness of this ostensible critique of Capitalism. Furthermore, at times
Erpenbeck seems to celebrate the advantages of capitalist systems: not only is the
possibility of advancing oneself ‘vom Tellerwäscher zum Millionär’ [p. 194] described
without apparent irony as a positive aspect of Capitalism, but Edgar’s revision of his lifelong prejudices about capitalist entrepreneurs, and his acknowledgement of their greater
potential to effect social change than professors of Marxism-Leninism, are not subject to
the satire by means of which Erpenbeck elsewhere distances himself from Edgar’s
contemplations.
Through his thematisation of the expansion of Tes Chiros, Erpenbeck also comments more
generally on the social dynamics of post-Wende Germany. This commentary is less
ambiguous than his capitalist critique; where used, satire serves to poke fun rather than to
disorientate. Although Erpenbeck foregrounds Edgar’s atypical entrepreneurial journey, in
the descriptions of the plight of his first three clients Erpenbeck acknowledges the
disorientation, insecurity and depression experienced by many east Germans in the early
post-Wende years, as documented in greater detail by writers such as Königsdorf. Unlike
Königsdorf, in the thematisation of the expansion of Tes Chiros across the length and
breadth of Germany, Erpenbeck shows how west Germans, too, are affected by a crisis of
meaning and a need for guidance and the promise of hope. While this aspect of the
narrative is treated light-heartedly (Erpenbeck satirises the self-indulgent narcissism of
Edgar’s wealthy Munich clients), it forms part of the novel’s critique on the alienating
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effects of Capitalism: it is not just east Germans who are in need of Lebenshilfe, Erpenbeck
suggests, and it is not just in the east that political and social conditions are engendering a
widespread appetite for the occult as an instrument for providing meaning and hope for a
more fulfilling future.
Although he seems to have some sympathy for the alienated west German, Erpenbeck also
satirises west German attitudes towards their east German compatriots. In particular, that
brand of west German arrogance and complacency reviled by many east Germans is
satirised through the ironic description of the Mercedes saleswoman who, assuming that
Edgar is a fellow west German, patronisingly disparages east Germans who can only dream
of owning a luxury car. A more gentle satire is at play in the heading of an article about Tes
Chiros which appears in the Bild newspaper: ‘Zwei Ostdeutsche, der Zukunft zugewandt’.
While the article is wholly affirmative, there is a hint of satire on the patronising nature of
the west German celebration of this rare example of an east German couple looking
forward to their bright future in the New Germany, rather than remaining mired in nostalgia
for their lost state. Generally, in his depiction of the media frenzy surrounding the growth
of Tes Chiros, Erpenbeck satirises the profit-driven values of the west German media
system.
5.4.9 Closing Remarks
In one sense, Aufschwung could be said to belong to that body of literature which plays
with the reader’s appetite for the occult, which explores non-rational elements from the past
from the safe distance of the present. Yet Edgar’s interest in chiromancy also serves
Erpenbeck’s prominent satirical and political agendas. First, the contradiction of a
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Marxism-Leninism professor who harbours an interest in non-rational occult practices
reinforces the slippery characterisation of Edgar. One consequence of this is that the reader
is never quite sure how far Erpenbeck is questioning the justification for academic
Abwicklung: in its ambiguous representation of Abwicklung, Aufschwung differs from the
straightforward critique of the evaluation process in Im Schatten des Regenbogens. Second,
the story of the founding and development of a palm-reading company is so compelling
precisely because we think of business as being the opposite of academia, and chiromancy
as being the antithesis of Marxism-Leninism. But Erpenbeck surprises us by setting up
unexpected parallels between Tes Chiros and the world Edgar occupied in the GDR, by
means of which Erpenbeck deliberately destabilises his critiques of socialism and
Capitalism. Finally, the discipline of chiromancy functions as a provocative means of
‘writing back’ against western discourses of the GDR and its demise. Thus, even more so
than in Im Schatten des Regenbogens, the facts of Abwicklung simply form the narrative
starting point of a novel which is concerned with a broad range of post-Wende issues. The
same is true of all four of the texts I discuss in the following – and final – analysis of the
literary representation of academic Abwicklung.
5.5 An Overview of the Representation of Abwicklung in Post-Wende East German
Literature
5.5.1 Introduction
The GDR academic institution and its Abwicklung do not have to be at the centre of the text
for the theme to be of narrative interest: indeed, even texts which foreground academic
Abwicklung or academics who have been ‘abgewickelt’ are not necessarily ‘about’, or at
least not only ‘about’, Abwicklung in a realist sense. Im Schatten des Regenbogens and
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Aufschwung are cases in point: taking the Abwicklung of an institution as their starting
point, Königsdorf and Erpenbeck not only consider, albeit in different ways, the
justification for academic Abwicklung and the social consequences of it, but also engage
more broadly with a range of post-Wende political discourses. Since thematisations of
Abwicklung may in this way function as vehicles for a wider critique, it makes sense also to
consider texts in which Abwicklung figures more obliquely.
In what follows I consider four post-Wende texts which feature an east German academic
who has either already been ‘abgewickelt’, is in danger of being ‘abgewickelt’, or who, for
other reasons, has recently left an academic institution. In their thematisations of
Abwicklung and its effects, Annett Gröschner’s Moskauer Eis and Ingo Schulze’s Simple
Storys most obviously recall Königsdorf’s and Erpenbeck’s treatments of Abwicklung. By
contrast, the academic figures in Monika Maron’s Stille Zeile sechs and Rolf Hochhuth’s
Wessis in Weimar are more incidental to these authors’ respective (and opposing) political
polemics. What matters is not the centrality of the academic, the academic institute or their
Abwicklung, but the way these authors use them to articulate their responses to the GDR
past and/or to German unification.
5.5.2 Annett Gröschner: Moskauer Eis
Annett Gröschner’s debut novel, Moskauer Eis, combines autobiographical, historical, and
fantastical elements to chronicle the life and times of the Kobe dynasty of cold storage
engineers from the early post-war years when the Institut für Kälteforschung351 in
Magdeburg was founded, to its post-Wende Abwicklung by the Treuhandanstalt. Although
351
The Institut für Kälteforschung is substantially based on the real-life Forschungsinstitut für Kühl- und
Gefrierwirtschaft at which Gröschner’s grandfather and father were employed.
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the fictional Institut für Kälteforschung is a state-owned industrial research institute, rather
than a university or a branch of the Akademie der Wissenschaften, the similar post-Wende
fates of the GDR’s academic and industrial research institutes afford Moskauer Eis a place
in this study. Told from the perspective of first-person narrator Annja Kobe, the youngest
member of the family, the action begins in December 1991 with the baffling discovery of
her father’s frozen body in an unplugged freezer, and subsequently alternates between her
present-day search for answers to this conundrum and reflections on the past of each family
member.352
Although she cannot account for the freezer’s lack of power, the narrator decides that the
two most likely explanations for her father’s condition are a cryogenic experiment or
suicide. The suicide of his long-term colleague following the Abwicklung of the Institut für
Kälteforschung in which they had worked for thirty years would seem to point towards the
latter. The Abwicklung of east Germany’s research and development sector is introduced at
the start of the novel through a gloomy newspaper report which forecasts the hopeless
prospects for nearly five thousand employees at east Germany’s doomed agricultural
research institutions, but precise details of the Abwicklung of the Institut für Kälteforschung
are only provided towards the end of the novel, through documentary sources which the
narrator discovers in her search: correspondence between her father and the
Treuhandanstalt, and her father’s ‘Bericht vom Ende’ – his account of the Institute’s
evaluation and Abwicklung which he wrote shortly before his baffling ‘demise’ [pp. 211-3].
Here, he describes the intensive preparations undertaken by the Institute’s leaders, the
352
Having lost his job through the Abwicklung of the Forschungsinstitut für Kühl- und Gefrierwirtschaft in
1991, Gröschner’s father came to a happier end than the narrator’s: he and four colleagues set up the
Forschungslabor für Speiseeis und Tiefkühlkost and continued with their research. See the transcript of the
1996 Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk radio feature, ‘Eiszeit. Die Geschichte der Eiskremproduktion in der DDR’.
(Accessible at: www.moskauereis.de/eis/EISZEIT.pdf) (accessed 14th August 2008).
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positive evaluation of its research and personnel, the evaluation commission’s acceptance
of an innovative proposal to unite with three other scientific institutes and form an Institut
für Ernährungswirtschaft, the subsequent reversal of this decision by a bureaucrat at the
Ministerium für Landeswirtschaft, the announcement of the Abwicklung of the Institut für
Kälteforschung, and the order that the father should oversee the dissolution of the Institute
to which he had dedicated thirty years of his life.353 Thus, similarly to Königsdorf in Im
Schatten des Regenbogens, Gröschner narrates the story of an injustice which was visited
upon thousands of employees in east Germany’s industrial research sector, and gestures
towards their bleak future. However, in contrast to the melancholy which characterises Im
Schatten des Regenbogens, Gröschner’s treatment of Abwicklung is, as Karl-Heinz Ott
observes, imbued with a light-hearted humour which almost belies the serious subject
matter: ‘Doch der Roman wirkt nirgends mit dem Zeigefinger und erzählt mit Komik, was
im Grunde nur mit Wut zu ertragen ist’.354 Furthermore, although her treatment of the topic
comprises just two or three pages, the attention to detail, the citing of statistics, and the
mention of specific institutions and government bodies lend her account a stronger sense of
historical accuracy and objectivity than we find in Königsdorf’s novel.
Although Gröschner is not interested in attacking the government or the Treuhandanstalt
for closing down the Institute, the lack of scientific (if not economic) justification for the
decision is underlined by the Institute’s representation as a site of utopian principles and
equality. Admittedly, its experiments are shown to have been dictated by the political
priority of the day, while the efficiency of its operations was constantly obstructed by
In ‘Eiszeit. Die Geschichte der Eiskremproduktion in der DDR’, Gröschner explains that the Abwicklung
of her father’s institute really did happen as she describes the Abwicklung of the Institut für Kälteforschung.
354
Karl-Heinz Ott, ‘Im Prinzip kann man alles einfrieren. Moskauer Eis. Annett Gröschner erzählt eine
Familiensaga aus Magdeburg’, Stuttgarter Zeitung (20th November 2000), p. 40.
353
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failing equipment and a lack of essential supplies. However, the Institute’s internal
mechanisms are described in utopian terms: the hierarchical and patriarchal structures
which characterise most of the institutions discussed in this study do not seem to be
features of the Institut für Kälteforschung: many of its senior researchers are women, the
narrator’s father shares an office with two female colleagues, and the scientists are
described as working together in an egalitarian and collaborative environment. The selfserving ambition and academic mediocrity described by so many other authors are also
absent: the narrator’s father is described as a talented scientist who lived for his work, and
considered it his mission to serve the GDR populace through his research (even when this
is restricted to experimenting with ice cream production).
Gröschner’s idealisation of the Institut für Kälteforschung, and the work of the two Kobe
Kälteingenieure might partly be rooted in the novel’s autobiographical foundations,355 but
as in many of the ‘academia tales’ discussed above Gröschner’s representation of the
Institute contains a metaphorical dimension which might also account for this. Specifically,
the utopian vision and egalitarian structures of the Institute which, founded in 1948 and
dissolved in 1991, roughly matches the GDR’s lifespan, recall the socialist ideals of the
GDR state. In his commitment to serving the GDR people, to raising their living standards
and realising social equality (‘eines Tages würden alle Menschen Thüringens ihren
Blumenkohl zu Hause einfrieren’ [p. 145]), the narrator’s father, who loved the GDR but
hated the SED, seems, like Stubbe in Wolf’s ‘Ein Besuch’, to represent the GDR leadership
as it could and should have been (allowing for the comical gap between the leadership’s
In addition to ‘Eiszeit. Die Geschichte der Eiskremproduktion in der DDR’, see Gröschner’s interview
with Falco Hennig for details on the close similarities between the Kolbe family and Gröschner’s family
background, as well as between her father’s research as a Kälteingenieur and the activities of the Institut für
Kälteforschung: Falko Hennig, ‘“Es gab Eissorten, die mich traumatisierten.” Annett Gröschner hat einen
Roman über die Speiseeis-Produktion in der DDR geschrieben. Ein Gespräch über Geschmackserinnerungen’,
Der Tagesspiegel (5th August 2001), p. 25.
355
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professed aim of universal access to social justice and Kobe’s aim of universal access to
frozen cauliflower). At the same time, though, the Institute can also be read as a microcosm
of the ‘real-existing’ GDR state under the conditions of real-existing socialism: the
perpetual lack of essential materials and ingredients, the restrictions on the scientists’
activities, and their subjection to the whims of the SED leadership recall the frustrations
and limitations of the GDR Alltag, while the downward modification of the father’s
experiments, which culminate in him being forced to replace good quality ingredients with
artificial substitutes, can be read as a metaphor for the gradual perversion of the socialist
dream.356 In this, Moskauer Eis has echoes of the corruption of the ‘Totales Menschenglück’ experiment in Wolf’s ‘Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers’. More than a decade
after the GDR’s demise, the metaphors used by first generation GDR writers still have
currency in post-Wende writing by a young east German author.
In essence, though, Moskauer Eis is not about a GDR research institution and its
Abwicklung, nor is it a critique of the GDR. Rather, the majority of the novel is made up of
a montage of family anecdotes and, as the narrator’s reflection on her role as chronicler of
her family history suggests, it represents a personal attempt to rescue a slice of everyday
GDR history from sinking into oblivion: ‘Wenn ich tot bin, wird niemand mehr die
Geschichte zweier Kälteingenieure verstehen, deren einziges Handicap es war, auf der
falschen Seite der Welt gelebt zu haben’ [p. 94]. As with the cauliflower joke above,
Gröschner employs the satirical technique of sending up a perfectly serious point (with the
intention of sharpening it rather than undermining it): on the one hand there is an ironic gap
For discussions of these and other metaphors in the novel see: Peter Böthig, ‘Auf zum Archipel der
Kälteingenieure. Die furchtbarste Provinz, von der DDR hervorgebracht. Annett Gröschners Roman
Moskauer Eis’, Literatur in der Frankfurter Rundschau (6th December 2000), p. 4; Friederike Eigler, ‘Jenseits
von Ostalgie. Phantastische Züge in “DDR-Romanen” der neunziger Jahre’, Seminar, 40/3 (2004), 191-206
(p. 199); Claudia Kramatschek, ‘Alles gilt so wie es war. Innenschau der Privatgeschichte. Annett Gröschners
Debüt-Roman Moskauer Eis’, Freitag (13th October 2000), p. 8.
356
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between the narrator’s confidence that she is making a reasonable point, and our suspicion
that there are quite good reasons why stories of cold-storage engineers from behind the Iron
Curtain tend to get forgotten, since it is hard to imagine a less promising basis for a story.
On the other hand, as Gröschner hints in the prologue to the novel, she has in her sights the
west German insistence that east Germans cast off their history in order to partake in the
pleasures of the New Germany:
Wir gingen und schauten Schaufenster an. Und aus den Türen der Läden traten die
Berater und machten Offerten an die Zögernden. Kommt, werft eure Geschichte ab.
[…] Wir tauschten das Geld gegen unsere Geschichte, mehr hatten wir nicht [pp. 112].
Seen in this light, Gröschner’s reconstruction of one family’s story can be read as an act of
‘writing back’, not so much against the western misrepresentation of the GDR past as we
saw in Im Schatten des Regenbogens and Aufschwung, but against what she sees as a west
German eagerness to gloss over the history of the GDR altogether – and east Germans’
willingness to comply. The preposterousness of her story can be read as part of the
rebellious stance: the gap that Gröschner engineers between her narrator’s defiant
insistence that GDR citizens had life stories worth telling and the farcical nature of the
Kobe family’s freezer-related pursuits allows the reader to see the problem at issue – the
lack of interest in one half of a nation’s history – from an ironic distance, while at the same
time the story does (by virtue of its absurd plot) fulfil its promise of a story from the East
that is worth hearing.
5.5.3 Ingo Schulze: Simple Storys
Five of the twenty-nine stories contained in Ingo Schulze’s best-selling collection Simple
Storys feature the character of Martin Meurer, an erstwhile Assistent and art historian at the
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University of Leipzig. Although Schulze does not use the term Abwicklung, the post-Wende
fate of academics and other public servants was sufficiently well known at the time of
writing for him to leave it to his reader to fill in the details. Accordingly, all we are told
about the process is that Meurer and many of his colleagues suddenly found themselves
replaced by west German professors and their assistants. Although Meurer indicates that he
and his fellow doctoral students were not necessarily as diligent as they might have been,
an admission which complicates the view of academic Abwicklung as a travesty of justice,
he enthuses about his lecturers’ academic and pedagogical dedication, and speaks of a
talented contemporary who lost her permanent lectureship in the restructuring process.
Apart from these comments, we learn nothing about GDR academia, nor about the process
of or justification for academic Abwicklung. Instead, in line with the text’s focus on its
characters’ adjustment to post-Wende conditions, the narrative is strongly rooted in the
post-Wende Alltag, and takes us through Meurer’s struggle to make a living in a series of
alienating and increasingly dead-end jobs.
First, Meurer finds employment as a travelling salesman for VTLT Natursteinkonservierung
GmbH & Co. KG, a supposedly prestigious position which involves him hawking samples
of stone preservation fluid (referred to by Meurer as ‘Wunderwasser’) around east
Germany, attempting, and failing, to meet his sales target. The next time we see him he is
unemployed, and eagerly jumps at a couple of days’ work travelling to west Germany to
pick up a car for a friend. In the novel’s final story we see Meurer again, this time
advertising the Nordsee fast food chain in Stuttgart, dressed in full diving regalia and
handing out flyers in the main shopping boulevard. As if this were not enough of a comedown for a former art historian, his attempt at an enthusiastic sales pitch is greeted with a
292
punch in the face from an aggressive west German, which leaves him sprawled on the
ground with a swollen eye and in need of another job.
Schulze’s representation of Meurer’s plight is more akin to Königsdorf’s sombre
representation of the post-Wende Alltag than to Erpenbeck’s satirical portrayal of Edgar’s
dramatic rise to fame and fortune. However, despite the stories’ ‘unremittingly bleak’,357
representation of east Germany, Meurer, like most of the other characters in Simple Storys,
is not shown to suffer from the disorientation and depression which Königsdorf’s characters
experience. He neither sinks into nostalgia for his lost Heimat nor undergoes a period of
Trauer, but simply seeks to adapt to his changed circumstances and find practical solutions
to what are shown to be practical, rather than psychological, problems. As Peter Graves
observes, Schulze’s characters show no bitterness or self-pity; although they are clearly the
losers in the unification process, they do not appear to see themselves as victims.358 Indeed,
Graves continues, the narrative contains numerous moments of defiance, in which the
characters refuse to give in to their situations but rather turn adversity into victory. Both
Graves and Cooke see the closing scene, in which a bruised Meurer and his colleague Jenny
splosh hand in hand down Stuttgart’s central shopping boulevard, as a prime example of
this, as indicative of the novel’s affirmation of the power of the little man’s tenacity which
will see him through the tumultuous post-Wende years.359
Meurer’s academic background is not in itself of great significance. While it emphasises his
post-Wende come-down, he might equally have been a doctor or engineer in the GDR;
Paul Cooke, ‘Beyond a “Trotzidentität”? Storytelling and the Postcolonial Voice in Ingo Schulze’s Simple
Storys’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 39/3 (2003), 290-305 (p. 297).
358
Peter Graves, ‘How Simple are Ingo Schulze’s “Storys”?’, in Arthur Williams, Stuart Parkes and Julian
Preece, eds, German-Language Literature Today: International and Popular? (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2000),
pp. 197-206 (p. 204).
359
Cooke, ‘Beyond a “Trotzidentität?’, p. 302; Graves, p. 205.
357
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certainly, Meurer does not apply his academic faculties to an analysis of unification and the
New Germany. Moreover, rather than playing a central role, Meurer is just one of a
collection of characters through which Schulze explores the east German population’s
adjustment to the changed conditions of the New Germany. Thus, unlike Königsdorf,
Schulze is no more interested in the plight of east German academics than of any other
group. Furthermore, while the little employment Meurer finds points up the alienating
features of the capitalist job market, and while Schulze gestures towards the view of
unification as an act of colonisation (through Meurer’s reference to the sudden arrival of
teams of west German academics), Schulze does not overtly engage with dominant postWende discourse. In Simple Storys, grand ideological and political debates are subordinated
to the novel’s illumination of the life of the east German Jedermann.
5.5.4 Monika Maron: Stille Zeile sechs
Like Im Schatten des Regenbogens, Aufschwung and Simple Storys, Stille Zeile sechs
features an unemployed east German academic trying to find her place in the united
Germany. Having left her job as a historian at the Barabsche Institut, Rosalind Polkowski,
like Königsdorf’s, Erpenbeck’s and Schulze’s academic protagonists, must find another
role for herself and a way to make ends meet. Here, though, ends the similarity between
Maron’s post-Wende novel and these other texts, the difference lying not so much in the
fact that Rosalind is not a statistic of academic Abwicklung (she chooses to leave her job as
a historian at the fictional Barabsche Institut), as in its foregrounding of a politicalhistoriographical conflict and its unremittingly western perspective of the GDR as an
‘Unrechtsstaat’ which needed to be dismantled.
294
Since emigrating to West Germany shortly before the collapse of the GDR, Maron has
firmly aligned herself with the GDR’s western critics, publicly expressing her hatred of the
socialist state; the character of Rosalind in Stille Zeile sechs has been identified as a
mouthpiece for these views.360 Although the novel was published in 1991, Maron began
writing it before the GDR’s collapse, and in many ways it bears greater similarity to the
pre-Wende ‘academia tales’ of Wolf, Königsdorf and de Bruyn than to the post-Wende
novels discussed above. First, though lightly sketched, Maron’s portrait of GDR academia
bears all the negative hallmarks of Wolf’s, Königsdorf’s and de Bruyn’s pre-Wende
critiques of academia: the lack of intellectual autonomy, the pursuit of politically safe
projects, academic mediocrity, the dispensability of individual researchers, an academic in
crisis, institutional hierarchies, a shadow structure of controlling SED functionaries,
denunciation, careerism and intellectual dishonesty. As Mittman observes, this academic
critique is strengthened by the character of Rosalind’s boyfriend, Bruno, whose private
pursuit of erudition for its own sake serves as a foil for the corrupting instrumentalisation of
knowledge by the academic establishment.361 Second, as in Märkische Forschungen, at the
core of the novel lies the thematisation of the conflict between opposing versions of GDR
history: having given up her job as a historian, Rosalind agrees to assist a paralysed former
SED functionary to write his memoirs of his life and role in the GDR. Although Rosalind is
determined to be nothing more than an unreflective scribe, her rising incredulity at
Beerenbaum’s rose-tinted version of the Party’s activities and dishonest account of his own
role within it leads her, quietly at first and then with increasing confidence, to challenge
what she sees as his dangerously partisan version of history. An emotionally charged
Astrid Herhoffer, ‘Abschied von politischem Alltag als ästhetiktaugliches Paradigma?’, in Osman Durrani,
Colin Good and Kevin Hilliard, eds, The New Germany: Literature and Society after Unification (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), pp. 365-76 (p. 374).
361
Mittman, ‘Encounters with the Institution’, pp. 125-6.
360
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confrontation between them results in Beerenbaum’s collapse and death, and with it the
power of the SED’s ideologically warped version of the life and history of the GDR state.
Rosalind’s and Beerenbaum’s fight for the right to control which version of history is
allowed to enter the public domain plays out in a more explicitly political form the
historiographical conflict thematised by de Bruyn in Märkische Forschungen. However,
while Pötsch’s truth was no match for the reified version of history propagandised by
Menzel and the SED which he represents, in the post-Wende climate of Stille Zeile sechs,
the little (wo)man’s voice wins out. In contrast to those GDR writers who criticised the
regime out of a loyal desire to recuperate its original socialist ideals, Maron suggests that
the death of the GDR was necessary for the truth to prevail.362
Unlike Königsdorf and Erpenbeck in their post-Wende novels, Maron is not concerned with
weighing up the pros and cons of the Wende, with problematising the unification process or
reflecting the human cost of east Germany’s restructuring. Representations of Abwicklung,
Heimatlosigkeit, disorientation and despair, which characterise so much post-Wende
literature by east German writers, are absent in Stille Zeile sechs. While she does show two
protagonists engaging in a kind of Erinnerungsarbeit with respect to the fallen GDR state,
this has nothing to do with the process of mourning the loss of a Heimat as we see in Im
Schatten des Regenbogens but, conversely, with articulating a more critical view of what it
was like to live in the GDR. In this, Maron shares with Königsdorf and Erpenbeck a desire
to correct what she sees as the inaccurate account of GDR history and the inauthentic
reflection of the GDR population’s experience as presented in the prevailing discourse.
However, while Königsdorf and Erpenbeck are concerned to correct west German versions
362
Hyacinthe Ondoa, Literatur und politische Imagination. Zur Konstruktion der ostdeutschen Identität in der
DDR-Erzählliteratur vor und nach der Wende (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2005), p. 151.
296
of GDR history, Maron counters the equally reductive historical narrative put forward by
the SED. The fact that Rosalind is a former historian lends credibility to her conflict with
Beerenbaum, but otherwise, as in Simple Storys and Wessis in Weimar, her academic
background is largely incidental.
5.5.5 Rolf Hochhuth: Wessis in Weimar: ‘Systemnah’
‘Szenen aus einem besetzten Land’: the subtitle of Rolf Hochhuth’s post-Wende collection
of dramatic scenes, Wessis in Weimar, is an immediate indication of the polemical stance
which Hochhuth adopts in one of these scenes, ‘Systemnah’, a protest against the postWende treatment of east German professors. Like all of the scenes in the text, Hochhuth
seeks to legitimise the polemic which follows by prefacing it with an extract from an
authentic journalistic source – an article from the FAZ which plays down the scale and
significance of east German redundancies, and which has been carefully selected to
‘illustrate’ west Germany’s bias against the east German academic establishment, an
accusation which is developed in the scene which follows.363 This, a conversation between
two childhood friends – one a long-serving east German university professor of ear-noseand-throat medicine, the other an east German CDU minister – does not in fact pivot on the
issue of academic Abwicklung (although the professor gloomily predicts that she will soon
be ‘herausgeworfen’), but is a polemic against the Rentenstrafrecht which saw the
reduction in the pensions of east German professors (amongst many other groups) on the
grounds of GDR Staatsnähe. Although the reasoning behind the Rentenstrafrecht seemed
logical – it was designed to prevent former SED functionaries from receiving
For a discussion of Hochhuth’s use of newspaper reports in Wessis in Weimar as a way of ‘manufacturing
credibility’, see: David Barnett, ‘Tactical Realisms: Rolf Hochhuth’s Wessis in Weimar and Franz Xaver
Kroetz’s Ich bin das Volk’, in Arthur Williams, Stuart Parkes and Julian Preece, eds, “Whose Story?”
Continuities in Contemporary German-Language Literature (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998), pp. 181-95.
363
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disproportionately high pensions based on their privileged GDR salaries – there were
fundamental questions surrounding the legitimacy of punishing someone who has not been
convicted in a court of law. Furthermore, its blanket application to anyone whose salary in
the GDR exceeded a certain figure, or whose job had any connection to the SED
government, proved highly contentious, and the system was later modified and eventually
dissolved.364
While referring to herself ironically as an ‘alte SED-Tante’ [p. 81] and an ‘alte OssiProfessorin’ [p. 90], the professor polemicises about what she sees as the prejudiced west
German assumption that all east German professors were SED functionaries. Without
evaluating east German professors individually, she rages, they are cheating all of them out
of one-third of their rightful pension into which many have paid for decades. The gravity of
this injustice, she goes on to say, is embodied in the application of the law to her eightythree-year-old father, who served as a doctor and professor of medicine for the whole of his
working life.
While the professor’s sense of grievance may be understandable, on several counts
Hochhuth undermines the validity of his polemic. First, the professor’s criticism of the
unjustified branding of GDR professors as ‘systemnah’ disingenuously glosses over the
reality that SED loyalty was almost invariably a prerequisite for a university professorship,
and was increasingly becoming so at non-pedagogical institutions also. As Florian Radvan
observes, a more dialectical and honest approach taking account of the contradictions in,
364
For a detailed explanation of the law, see chapter seven of the following on-line book which can be
accessed at www.rentenrecht.de (accessed 14th August 2008): Karl-Heinz Christoph and Ingeborg Christoph,
eds, Das Ostrentenbuch. Das Rentenüberleitungsgesetz und die Herstellung der Einheit Deutschlands.
Beiträge zum Alterssicherungsrecht (1999).
298
and serious defects of, GDR society would have leant Hochhuth’s black-and-white ‘Theater
der Empörung’ greater credibility.365 Second, in a further bid to legitimise his portrayal of
east German academics as the victims of west German arrogance, Hochhuth inserts an
extract from a provocative letter sent by the west German chancellor of Leipzig University
to an east German professor who has recently been ‘abgewickelt’.366 The chancellor’s tone
is certainly self-righteous and judgemental: he refers to the GDR as a ‘Spitzel- und
Denunziantenstaat’ [p. 86], and congratulates west Germans on the ‘Geduld, Klugheit und
Mut’ [p. 87] with which they secured freedom for east Germany. However, there is no
attempt to contextualise the letter, and in presenting it as representative of west German
opinion Hochhuth only cheapens his argument. Finally, Hochhuth peppers his characters’
debate with attacks on the (west) German government, politicians and media: the CDU is
accused of being populated by former Nazis, of treating east German professors more
severely than Nazi war criminals, of imposing ‘Besatzungsrecht’ [p. 85] like ‘Okkupanten’
[p. 82], and of cynically feigning democracy to the outside world. East German CDU
ministers are condemned for betraying their east German voters, the ‘luxurious’ living
standards of west German CDU politicians come under attack, and the Tagesschau is
dismissed as an organ of the CDU. Unlike Erpenbeck, Hochhuth creates no ironic distance
from his characters, who function as two-dimensional mouthpieces for his polemic. Indeed,
it is telling that, unlike Königsdorf, Erpenbeck and Schulze, Hochhuth makes no attempt to
explore the social or psychological effects on the individual of being branded as ‘staatsnah’,
or of receiving a smaller pension. As such, one cannot help but feel that for Hochhuth, the
post-Wende treatment of east German academics is little more than a springboard from
Florian Radvan, ‘Bruderkrieg in Deutschland. Zu Rolf Hochhuths Stück Wessis in Weimar’,
Neophilologus, 87/4 (2003), 617-34 (p. 622).
366
This extract comes from a real letter sent by the chancellor of Leipzig University to former professor of
physiology, Peter Schwartze, who was ‘abgewickelt’ on the grounds of connections with the SED regime.
365
299
which to launch his broader political attack. While he echoes many of the sentiments
expressed by other east German writers, his highly tendentious approach undermines the
credibility of his critique.
5.6 Conclusion
While most of the pre-Wende texts discussed in previous chapters combined realist
critiques of GDR academia with coded political critiques, many of the post-Wende texts
discussed here also combine critiques of academic and political targets. Specifically, a
critical evaluation of academic Abwicklung often serves as an important starting point for a
critique of the unification process in general, and in particular of west German attitudes
towards the GDR and east Germany. In some texts, the phenomenon of Abwicklung plays a
very marginal role, providing little more than the background to a character’s adjustment to
the changed conditions of the New Germany. Thus, while Königsdorf, for example, is
genuinely concerned by the plight of east German academics in the early post-Wende years,
Schulze represents academic Abwicklung as just one example of an economic process
which wrenched many east German citizens out of the existences they had carved for
themselves, and forced them to find new ways of living, thinking and being in a changed
society.
While the authors discussed in this chapter take academic Abwicklung as their starting
point, other post-Wende writers have written about Abwicklung in the industrial and
governmental sectors. In Die vier Werkzeugmacher, for example, Volker Braun depicts the
disorientation and despair of four labourers who lose their jobs when their firm is taken
over by west German owners. Although Braun does criticise the Abwicklung of east
300
German workers, by representing the ‘Werkzeugmacher’ as ambivalent characters, and by
refusing to position them as wholly innocent victims of the unification process, he avoids
over-simplifying the issues surrounding unification and industrial restructuring. More
polemical than Braun’s story is the scene ‘Abgewickelte’ in Rolf Hochhuth’s Wessis in
Weimar. Here, Hochhuth presents a dramatic dialogue between a journalist and two
redundant factory workers who have an unrealistically comprehensive understanding of the
Abwicklung process and the activities of the Treuhandanstalt. Jens Sparschuh’s humorous
representation in Der Zimmerspringbrunnen of an erstwhile GDR housing official who,
after a period of unemployment, finds his niche selling indoor fountains which he modifies
to appeal to the nostalgic east German buyer (an entrepreneurial idea not unlike that of
Edgar in Aufschwung in that in both texts a product is chosen for its appeal to a disoriented
populace), is a satirical contribution to the body of post-Wende literature thematising the
phenomenon of Ostalgie. What these writers share with those discussed in this chapter is a
desire to respond to what they see as the iniquities of the unification process, to engage
with the issues raised by the collapse of the GDR and the creation of the New Germany,
and/or to ‘write back’ against west German discourses on the GDR past and German
unification. In most of my texts, the facts of academic Abwicklung are secondary to these
broader political aims.
301
Conclusion
This study has shown that, despite the extensive body of scholarship which has been
produced on GDR literature both before and since the collapse of the GDR, there is still
more light to be shed on the cultural products of the socialist state. I have shown, for
example, that scholarship on GDR literature has not so far fully addressed the small body of
texts produced by GDR writers which thematise GDR academia and the figure of the
academic. In the first section of this study in particular, I have examined the use which
three GDR writers make of the academic institute as a microcosm of the GDR state as a
means of describing its social and political dynamics, and I have explored the fusion of the
metaphorical and realist dimensions of these texts.
The realist dimension of Wolf’s texts has little to do with GDR academia as we see it
presented in Königsdorf and de Bruyn; instead, Wolf explores and criticises instrumental
rationality and the mindless pursuit of scientific endeavour at any cost. Linked to this is an
interest in the question of the production of literature: in all of her ‘academia tales’ Wolf
draws parallels between science and writing, and by the time she wrote Störfall in 1986, she
expresses grave concern about the potential for harm of unreflective literary production. In
all of her ‘academia tales’ Wolf combines these elements of Zivilisationskritik with a
Gesellschaftskritik which is encoded in metaphor: most of the scientific institutes can be
read as standing for the GDR state, with the scientific experiments representing the GDR
socialist project and her scientist figures signifying the GDR political elite and/or the
repressed GDR population.
302
Königsdorf also combines a realist with a coded critique although, in contrast to Wolf’s
over-arching critique of scientific pursuit, she largely confines herself to GDR issues,
combining a realist critique of the GDR academic establishment with a coded critique of
the GDR state. Like Wolf, she uses the ciphers of the academic institute, the mathematics
research project and the academic to represent and criticise the GDR state and the
relationship between the political elite and the populace at large. While Wolf is, on the
whole, interested in the process of the perversion of the socialist ideal, Königsdorf is also
interested in whether or not these ideals can be redeemed: in contrast to Wolf’s
apprehension about the harmful capacity of literature, Königsdorf expresses, albeit
implicitly, greater confidence in the power of literature to institute change.
In foregrounding the humanities rather than the sciences, de Bruyn’s ‘academia tales’
represent a departure from the symbolism of the scientific experiment, and express his
greater interest in the perversion of academic, rather than socialist, ideals. Like Königsdorf,
de Bruyn highlights dysfunctional institutional mechanisms and condemns the
instrumentalisation of academic pursuit for political gain. Like Wolf and Königsdorf, he is
interested in the function of literature in the GDR, but he casts it more as a victim of GDR
cultural policy than as an agent of social or political change. While he constructs the
Institute in Märkische Forschungen in such a way as to invite a reading of it as a metaphor
for the GDR state, the institutions which feature in Preisverleihung are not represented as
metaphors for GDR society, but rather as discrete elements within it.
Although there are points of difference in Wolf’s, Königsdorf’s and de Bruyn’s
representations of academia and the academic institute, all three writers employ simplified
models of the academic institute to trigger associations in their readers’ minds between the
303
academic conditions they describe and GDR social and political relations more generally.
In some of these stories, especially Wolf’s and Königsdorf’s ‘academia tales’, this
simplification results in a tension between the desire to describe the complexities of GDR
social relations and an unfortunate tendency to homogenise the GDR’s citizenry, as a
consequence of using the oppressed academic figure to stand for what was in fact a fairly
heterogeneous population. While class tensions are repeatedly hinted at – in the
descriptions of some of the grander professorial homes, for instance, or in Cornelia’s
contempt for a white-collar future – they are not foregrounded, and the metaphorical
dimension tends to flatten out social differences.
The repetitious use of a narrative model comprising a progression from hope to disillusion,
represented either as the experience of an individual character in his or her professional life,
or more abstractly through the perversion of an idealistic experiment, also evokes political
meaning in the GDR reader’s mind, not least because, as the use of metaphor and allegory
was commonplace in literature produced in the GDR, readers would have brought
corresponding reading habits to the text. Mechanistic though these models might sound
when reduced to such inevitably simplistic summaries (the academic institute as a metaphor
for the GDR, directors as metaphors for the political elite, academics as metaphors for the
GDR individual, academic projects as metaphors for the socialist project), I have sought to
illustrate the complexities inherent in these writers’ use of metaphor: by fusing their coded
political commentaries with realist critiques on scientific rationality, GDR academia and
the role of literature in the socialist state, many of these ‘academia tales’ acquire an
iridescence which prevents the metaphors from becoming over-written. Wolf, in particular,
refuses easy correspondences between the fictional world of her scientific institutions and
the real-world GDR by figuring her academic characters as protean figures who, seemingly
304
paradoxically, can at once be read as representatives of the powerful ruling elite and as its
powerless subjects. Furthermore, de Bruyn’s detailed depictions of life outside the
academic establishment introduce his social and political critiques more directly, and
prevent the metaphorical dimension, where it exists, from reading too mechanistically.
Finally, the satirical mode of nearly all of Wolf’s, Königsdorf’s and de Bruyn’s texts serves
to enhance their polyvalent texture. Just as the fusion of realist critiques and critiques
encoded in metaphor (which themselves are sometimes polyvalent) in these texts prevents
the reader from drawing easy, uniform interpretations, so the satirical treatment of many of
the characters renders them protean and playfully ambiguous. All of the satirical texts
discussed in the first part of this study can be said to correspond to Meyer’s category of
‘kritisch-aufbauende Satire’: they occupy the middle ground between invective on the one
hand and affirmation on the other, subtly expressing criticism of the status quo as a means
of highlighting the need for change from within the existing system.
Although one might argue that my analysis of these writers’ use of metaphor to introduce
coded political critiques represents a return to pre-Wende system-immanent readings of
GDR literature which sought to mine it for evidence of political wrongdoing, I hope to have
shown that, nearly two decades after the collapse of the socialist state, it is possible to look
back at literature produced in the GDR with a more open mind, prioritising an appreciation
of aesthetic complexities and ambiguities over a celebration of criticisms of the so-called
‘Unrechtsstaat DDR’. Indeed, the new and unexpected correspondences I have identified
between the GDR ‘academia tale’ and the Anglo-American campus novel could be said to
justify my approach: paradoxically, my ‘system immanent’ approach has revealed that,
despite the different political circumstances under which they were working, GDR and
Anglo-American writers were, to a degree, working on similar sorts of problems.
305
While one might not have expected to find such commonalities between GDR and AngloAmerican texts, it might be more natural to expect that, in the shared conditions of the New
Germany, literature written by east and west German authors would begin to converge. The
scope of the second part of this study is limited to texts produced by east German writers in
the decade following unification, which thematise the so-called Abwicklung of the GDR
academic establishment and/or the experiences of the former GDR academic in the New
Germany; as such, it cannot come to any broad conclusions about the relationship between
literature written by east and west German authors. However, what all of the texts included
in Part Two do illustrate is that east German writers did not simply stop thinking and
writing about GDR and east German issues once they became citizens of a united Germany.
Rather, representations of the GDR past, the post-Wende transformation of east German
society, east Germans’ personal experiences of the Wende, and/or critiques of what are
seen as one-sided west German discourses on GDR history and the east German present
characterise all of the post-Wende texts included in this study. Radisch would no doubt
have seen these threads as characteristic of what she calls the ‘im besten Sinne politische
Literatur’ of east German writers, which she, rightly or wrongly, contrasts with what she
terms the ‘Pop-Generation-Roman’ of west German authors.367
Just as the texts discussed in Part One of this study do not contain faithfully mimetic
representations of the GDR academic establishment, so none of my post-Wende authors
reflect GDR academia or its Abwicklung in totally realist terms either. For example, while
Königsdorf gives a detailed account of institutional evaluation and restructuring, it is (not
surprisingly given her personal stake in both academia and the socialist state) less than
367
Radisch, pp. 24-6.
306
wholly objective, though certainly more objective than her nostalgic representation of the
pre-Wende Institut für Zahlographie. Her focus, in writing about both the past and the
present, is the psychological impact of the post-Wende upheavals on the GDR individual:
the sense of Orientierungslosigkeit and Heimatlosigkeit. Erpenbeck’s superficial
representation of Abwicklung in Aufschwung contrasts with Königsdorf’s detailed approach.
However, although Edgar’s Abwicklung is simply a starting point for Erpenbeck’s satirical
post-Wende commentary and his attempts to ‘write back’ against what he sees as reductive
west German discourses on the GDR and unification, there is considerable overlap between
Königsdorf’s and Erpenbeck’s political critiques. Gröschner’s, Schulze’s, Maron’s and
Hochhuth’s texts feature academic Abwicklung and/or east German academics even more
obliquely, and in so doing reflect the plight not just of redundant academics, but also of the
east German populace more generally. Again, the post-Wende fate of GDR academics
serves as a springboard for broader, but unremittingly east German, political and social
commentaries.
The post-Wende texts discussed in Part Two of this study do not just pick up on many of
the themes of the GDR ‘academia tale’ discussed in Part One: the three longer texts – Im
Schatten des Regenbogens, Aufschwung and Moskauer Eis – also use metaphor to deliver
their broader political commentaries. In Im Schatten des Regenbogens, the loss of the
academic institute comes to stand for the loss of the GDR state; in Aufschwung, Tes Chiros
GmbH and the practice of chiromancy are constructed as metaphors for the GDR state and
real-existing socialism; and in many respects the Institut für Kälteforschung in Moskauer
Eis can be read as a microcosm of the GDR state. It is perhaps not surprising to find east
German authors employing similar aesthetic techniques in their post-Wende texts as were
commonplace in pre-Wende GDR writing: academic institutes can be dismantled, political
307
and social configurations restructured, but people, writers, do not change so quickly. One
might logically surmise that the passing of time and generational change will bring about a
new set of concerns and aesthetic discourses in the literature of east German writers;
certainly, there has been little interest in academic Abwicklung amongst east German
writers since the publication of Gröschner’s Moskauer Eis in the year 2000. And yet, if the
enduring interest of Anglo-American writers in the critical potential of the campus novel is
anything to go by, we may yet see a revival of the ‘academia tale’ in literature of the New
Germany, albeit, perhaps, with a different critical agenda.
308
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