Unified Berlin

Seen Through the Eyes of

Brigitte Burmeister' s and kina Liebmann' s

Female Fliineurs

JOCELYN DIANA HADLEY KINNEAR

A thesis submitted to the Department of German Language and Literature

in conformity with the requirements for

the degree of Master of Arts

Queen's University

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

September, 1999

copyright Q Jocelyn Diana Hadley Kinnear, 1999 National Library Biblioth&que nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Sewices services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. nie Wellington Ottawa ON KIAON4 OltawaON K1AW Canada Canada

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I would like to thank my supe~sor,Dr. Petra Fachinger, for her guidance and support over the past year. I am deeply indebted to her for her phenomenal patience and for her generosity with her time and advice. I am also very grateful to DE Pugh for his helpll suggestions and attention to detail, and to Dr. Scheck for comments and guidance, particularly in the early stages of my work. Thanks also go to Dr. Reeve, for his support and encouragement throughout the course of my degree.

I would also like to express my gratitude to the Camp Outlook staff, particularly

Lenny Wang, whose generosity and dedication lessened my workload considerably this summer, and who helped me maintain my sanity and focus throughout Thanks also to

Nasser Hussain and Russ Fleming for shelter for the month of September, and to Nasser and Servane Mason, for their encouraging late-night visits to Kingston Hall.

Special thanks go to my parents and my sisters, and to Matthew Struthers, for their inestimable emotional support and encouragement throughout the course of this thesis. Finally, I would like to thank Alison Clegg without whose creativity and friendship I would never have undertaken to learn German. Abstract

In the decade that has passed since the fall of the Wall, Berlin has become a dynamic,

confusing, and somewhat alienating place for Berliners to live- The adjustment that

unification entails has been the subject of much literature, and Berlin novels, a genre

popular in the Weimar years, abod Many authors have adopted the figure of the

fliineur through whose eyes they explore unified Berlia. The flhem has been a literary

institution since his popularisation by Charles Baudelaire in the nineteenth century7and

by Walter Benjamin in the 1920s. Writers use this narrative figure to provide insight into

social, cultural and political conditions through its observations of people and places in

the city. In their novels Unter dem Narnen Norma (1994) and In Berlin (1994), Brigitte

Burmeister and kina Liebmann use the flheur to narrate divided and unified Berlin,

endowing the figure with a uniquely feminine and East German perspective. Their

fliineur-narrators' observations of the physical city reflect the disorientation GDR society has experienced in the wake of They engage in a desperate search for

identity, representative of many "GDR" writers' attempt to re-establish themselves in the

New Germany. Both narrators focus their observations of the city in hhro indoor milieus: their apartment and a Me. Their comfort with indoor spaces, and particularly their emphasis on the domestic sphere, represent a divergence fiom the habits of the traditional flheur. This divergence can be attributed to the feminine perspective these authors lend the figure. Beyond these two sites, the narrators' observations dwell on more public spaces in the city, including their neighbourhoods, the city sidewalks, and the S-Bahn.

Despite some differences, however, Burmeister's and Liebmam's narrators have much in common with the traditional flineur with regard to the alienation they experience and their portrayal of the city in metaphorical terms. By appropriating the traditional Weur and adjusting the figure to suit the unique situation of unified Berlin, these two authors provide a distinct new incarnation of the £hem,and thus test@ to the remarkable adaptability that Walter Benjamin ascribed to the figure.

*-- Ill Table of Contents

Abstract

I, Introduction

LI. A Brief History of the Flineur

A The Traditional Fl3neur

1, Charles Baudelaire's Flheur

2. Walter Benjamin's Fliineur

B. An Adaptable Flheur?

1. The Demise of the Flbeur in the Twentieth-Century City

2. The Resurgence of Berlin Novels and the Emergence of the Female Fheur

ILL Changes after Unification

A. The New Reality for the "'GDR" Writer

B. Overcoming Socialist Realism

IV. Brigitte Burmeister's and Irina Liebmaan's Berlin-Romane

A. The Portrayal of Physical Space in Unter dem Namen Norma and In Berlin

1. Indoor Spaces in the City: the Apartment and the Cde

a- Marianne' s Apartment

b. "Die Liebmsnn's" Apartment

c- "Die Liebmann's" "buntesCafi

CL Marianne's Cde 2. Outdoor Spaces in the City

a Ma-anne's "Outer" City

b. Marianne's CCInner"City

c- The Sidewalk in In Berlin

d The S-Bahn in In Berlin

B. The Role of Burmeistef s and Liebmann's Fl&eurs

1- Alienation and the City as Metaphor

2. The SelfXonscious Fliineur

V. Conclusion

Works Cited

Vita I. Introduction

The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War and the beginning of

an era of a global community and a c'un.ified"Germany. I place the term ^unified'' in

quotation marks because unification is a process that occurs on both political and social

levels and is achieved more immediately on the former than on the latter. The changes

required to secure political are the most obvious and tangible, and it has been

this facet of unification with which Germany has had the most success, through lengthy

processes of negotiation and legislation- However, Germany has not yet attained the

same sort of resolution with regard to the upheaval that political unification has wrought

in social and emotional arenas.

The social inequalities and the divergence in standard of living that existed

between the two Gennanies continue in the two halves of the united Gemany. The East

is attempting to approach the level of the West's consumer culture and availability of

goods and services while at the same time striving to maintain the accessibility of social

programmes. Both sides must also come to terms with differing personal and collective

attitudes and habits. Social adjustment of the populace requires far more time and effort than legislation can provide: each individual must adjust to these changes. The social and

emotional changes manifest themselves in a more direct fashion for some than for others. For example, effects have been more immediate for East Germans themselves, for West

Germans who live in places in which a large number of East Germans have arciwd, and for those with relatives on the other side of the border. The pressure to adapt to these changes is also more urgent for the inhabitants of Berlin, where East and West Germans live at close quarters and constantly encounter one another in public spaces7making the - experience of unification most intense-

One way of coming to terms with these and psychological issues on a grassroots level is through writing. Authors looking to reconcile themselves and their peers to the sudden disorientation to which the unification of Germany has subjected them have attempted to aaalyse and descrik the new world sunourrding them. This has incited a wave of Wende-Rolll~llle,novels that in some way endeavour to work through the difficult process of unification and issues surrounding it The Berlin-Romone that have appeared since the f111 of the Wall are a fascinating subset of Wende-Ronton-

Characteristic of these novels is the central role of the city of Berlin - the most intense locus of the havoc of physical and emotional rebuilding after unification - and the attempt to come to terms with the changes in political climate through the narrator's observations of people and spaces in the city A plethora of Berlin-Romune has been surfacing in bookstores as the 1990s progress. Novels reflecting on the nature of unified

Berlin since the fall of the Wall include Die andere Zeit by Peter von Becker, Unter dem

Namen Norma by Brigitte Burmeister, Nox by Thomas Hettche, In Berlin by Irina

Liebmann, Stille Zeile Sechs and Animal Triste by Monika Maros Der we* Wannsee,

Gen'elte Blicke and Liebeserkliirmr! an eine Wliche Stadt by Bodo MorsMuser,

Ausdeutschen by Andreas Neumeister, Eduards Heimkehr by Peter Schneider, Terrordrom by Tim Staffel, Riickmiel by Ulrich Woellc, and Der dicke Dichter by

Matthias Zschokke-

Without any doubt the fall ofthe Berlin Wall has incited a sudden surge of interest in writing about Berlin. Such a marked literary interest in Berlin has been absent since the Weirnar era, at which time the city was adjusting to a new role as fast-paced cosmopolitan metropolis. The fascination with the booming modem city in the i920s stimulated an increase in city writing, as technology pushed the pace of the inddalised city to an all-time high after the First World War. Writers spent their time wandering the streets of the city, observing the behaviour of passers-by, and contemplating the changes of the time and how they manifested themselves in the city streets. This fascination with and narration of the city called to mind the figure ofthe flbur, the city writer of Paris in the nineteenth century. Such was the fascination with city writing at the time that writers in Weimar Berlin adapted the figure of the fliineur to suit their city. The sudden resurgence of interest in Berlin after the fall of the Wall is perhaps an indication that the

1990s have come to appropriate and transform the flheur once again, to make him or her applicable in a unified Berlin facing the beginning of the 21n century.

Both Brigitte Burmeister, in her novel Unter dem Namen Norma (1994), and kina

Liebmmn, in her novel In Berlin (1994), offer fascinating examples of the reincarnation of the flineur in unified Berlin. The significant similarities between the biographies and the narrative styles of each author afford an intriguing comparison. Both women are former East German authors, born during the Second World War, who have lived most of their adult lives in Berlin. Because the GDR is undergoing arduous transformation to a capitalist system, East German authors provide a particularly acute perspective on the changes in the city. The awareness of change, as mentioned above, is what motivated the

flheur of the 1920s, and indeed the nineteenth-century flheur, to descni the city.

Thus, one will most Likely find a correlate to the flheur in the authors for whom the

current changes are most imminent, The analysis of the work of female city writers is

particularly interesting because one can expect the female fl5neur to deviate from the traditional role of the flheur. Although both authors eagerly assume the guise of the city

writer, they are hesitant to embrace the title of the flheur, whom critics have for a long time perceived as a mak figure-

Burmeister's and Liebmarm's narrative techniques also offa an interesting point of comparison with respect to that of the traditional flheur- They both use a --person narrator and montage-style technique to describe the city and treat the issues of unification of Berlin and its aftermatk Both authors choose a narrator with whom they share biographical details, perhaps to give the impression of a direct narration by the author: ages, social status, professions and even names overlap. Both narrators devote a great deal of energy to observing and describing the people and spaces of the city, and indeed to contemplating the nature of the city itseK Because of all these similarities between the novels their differences are even more pronounced. I will argue in this thesis that Burmeister and Liebmann use different methods of city writing within a common paradigm, which also conjoins with the traditional figure of the fl4neu.r-

The aim of this thesis is to assess to what extent Burmeister and Liebrnann still rely on the traditional figure of the flheur, in his firnction as a focalisor' and a tool to come to terms with the changes in the city, and to what extent they re-invent it After an appraisal of the role ofthe flikeur and a closer consideration of the literary situation after

the fall of the Wall, I shall examine the fashions in which these two authors approach

"'their"city. By exploring their treatment of the people they encounter and the physical

spaces they experience, I hope to demonstrate that these two authors use their city writing

to re-acquaint themselves-not only with the people and spaces in Berlin, but also with the

political ramifications that these engender. Finally, I shall consider Burmeister's and

Liebmann's narrative styles and discuss to what extent their narrators conespond to the traditional flkeur and illuminate the areas in which they are reluctant to Myassume his

guise. It is my hope that this analysis will answer the question as to whether the flineur

is indeed flexible, adaptable and tenacious enough to resurhce in the newly changing unified Berlin of the 1990s.

This term, wined by Mieke Bal, refas to the agent, through whose peqedve the items of the nursdve content are filtered, This agent is the subject of focalisation, which is "the relationship between thc 'vision,' the agent that sees, and that which is seen" (Bal 146). II. A Brief History of the ~16aed

Throughout literary history, the marketplace as the central stage for sociaal interaction, where the individual becomes part of the masses, has occupied a position of great theoretical significance- As industrialisation swept across Europe in the nineteenth century, the marketplace developed into the metropoIis. The new metropolitan city provided the observer with an almost infinite number of stimuli The inhabitant of the ind-alised city found himself3 in an environment where he was usually surrounded by throngs of people. Yet, paradoxically, being a member of the crowd left him feeling almost totally isolated, in that no one in the crowd held any importance for him, and he meant nothing to any of them. Everything in the city seemed transient, and yet the geography of the city and its physical landmarks remained constant. As the city became

- - ' Duden's defines the verb "niaierenn as follows: ''ohne ein besdmmtes Ziel langsam spazkrengehen an einem On, an dem man andere sehen kann und selbst gesehen wird." Kluge's Etvmoloaisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache states that the word was borrowed hm the French in the middle ofthe nineteenth centuryyand ori-@nated 60m the OId Icelandic word ",#%may" meaning '"urnherstreifen"' The Word Endish Dictionary defines a flheur as "'a Iounger or saunterer, an idle 'man about town'" and points out that the word ktappeared in an English context in an 1854 issue of Harper S Magaim- Gennan dictionary entries for the term generally omit the circow-2xe over the 'a,' (as does Walter Benjamin), whereas English dictionaries tend to include it. However, most critical Iiterature that discusses the figure in its literary capacity writesthe term with the accent, and accordingly, 1have done so as well- Although women's presence in the city grew throughout the course of indu~tri-alisatioo,the overwhelming majority of people who occupied public spaces, where the changes in question were occurring, were men. My use of the masculine pronoun is intended to reflect this the subject of intense literary scrutinyt the term 'Yliineur" was adopted to idmtify the loungingSobserving poet of the streets as the city's focalisor.

A. The Traditional Flgneur

It is difficult to provide a clear definition of the term flheur. Eie4 signifies and has signdied many things to different people. Thus, the cpestion as to whether he still exists in contemporary society and literaturet elicits a different response, depending on whom one asks. FundamentallyShe is the focalisor of the lit- city, who walks the city streets and records what he sees and feels. For some, the flheur is specifically the incarnation of an independently wealthy bourgeois Parisian male of the nineteenth century, who strolls through the Paris ArcadesSobserving the crowds of people around him and contemplating, and often protesting, the chaotic acceleration of the pace of life?

For others, although they recognise the £l&eur7sfirst appearance in nineteenth-century

Pmk, he represents a more adaptable and abstract concept, which fhds variant manifestations in different times and places. However, a historical precedent set by

Walter Benjamin suggests that the parameters within which the fliineur should be considered are indeed £Ienile and adaptable, and that constriction of the flaeur's realm of existence to nineteenth-centwy Paris is not justified-

4 Critics have traditionally viewed the flheur as a male figure, and histon'cally, it was primarily men who were able to walk the streets alone in the nineteenth and early twentieth ce-es. As such, while describing the flheur in these time periods, I shall refer to him as male. Walter Benjamin dates an amusing anecdote to illustrate this protest against the rapid pace of change: "Urn 1840 gehiirte es vo~bergehendpun guten Ton, Schildkroten in den Passagen spaderen zu fiihren. Der Flaneur lieB sich gem sein Tempo von henvorschreibeb W&e es nach ihm gegangen, so hiitte der Fortschritt diesen pas lernen miissen" (Der FZmeur 57). I. Charles Baudelaire's FlSineur

The flheur ofthe nineteenth century was male, bourgeois, and had much time at

his disposal to saunter at his leisure through the streets- He was an ovm idler, and spent

his time watching people in the streets or the Arcades of Paris- In a time when the pace -

of events in his environment was accelerating at an unprecedented rate, the flheur

attempted to slow his world down by paying rapt attention to detail. As crowds moved

by, he would pick out the faces of individuals and spin a tale about them. By focussing

on the idiosyncrasies of individuals in the crowd, he did not allow the swift cunent of

impressions to overpower him, and was instead able to select focal points within the

crowd to serve him as metonymic representations of the masses. As well, by

concentrating on individuals and maintaining his distanced stance, he was able to observe patterns of the city and of human habits objectively. [n taking such a distanced

perspective, the flheur kept himself apart fiom the crowds of the city, and as a result, despite his awareness of other people, he was equally alienated fiom them, as they were,

in their unawareness, fiom each other.

Charles Baudelaire was the iirst to popularise the term and the figure of the flheur in his poetry coIIectiom Les fleun du mal(1857) and particularly in Tableaux parisiens ( 186 1) and Le s~leende Paris (1 869). Baudelaire's flheur is by profession a man of the crowd: 'Tour le parfait flineur, pour I 'observateur passiorme, c'est me immense jouissance que d'elire domicile dam le nombre, dam l'ondoyant, dam le mouvement, dans le fbgitifet l'infini" (Baudelaire 1160). He seeks poetic inspiration from the experience of mingling with the crowds on city streets- In immersing himself in the tumult of the crowd, and by experiencing the immediate, lively throngs in public spaces, Baudelaire's flineur hopes to achieve a peaceu and enlightened understanding of the world. He roams the streets to find transitory people (and objects) to behold

Through strolling and beholdin& he strives to combine the experience of "the fleeting and transitory" with his 'bermanent and central sense of serin order to achieve a sense of wholeness (Osborne 54).

A defining characteristic of the Baude1aka.n flheur is tbat be is aware of the fact that he appears to others as they appear to him; he is aware ofhis position as the

"knonymousand insigaiscmt 'man of the crowd'" (Shields 76). Paradoxically, however, the knowledge that he is merely one of the multitudes sets him a* fiom the crowd. His self-awareness distinguishes him, but his unobtrusiveness nonetheless disguises this distinction, so that the flheur can easily observe the crowd unrecognised: "L'obse~ateur est un prince qui jouit partout & son incognito" (Baudelaire 1160). Since he is unrecognisable as a.observer, he may presume that he is seeing people's natural, and not self-conscious, behaviour Because of this insight, the fliineur assumes the ability to create for himself a structure for the meaning of the things he observes. Indeed, the flheur "as the poet.. . is able to transform faces and things so that for him they have only that meaning which he attriibutes to them7' (Tester 6). Baudelaire's fl- was thus a very powerhi figure. In the chaos of the. nineteenth-century city, he served as a focal point. In describing the experience of the city, the flheur-as-writer gave that experience the focus and structure it was lacking. Taking into consideration the lack of administration in the city at that time, the writer-flheur's job was important and potentially helpful to other city-dwellen, overwhelmed by the chaos surrounding them. 2. Walter Benjamin's Fliineur

Baudelaire's original flWmight well have faded into obscurityy by Werent city authors appropriating the focalising technique. neterm Likely would have gradually become obsolete and a different tenn would have evolved to suit the everchaaging quality of literature and of the city. However, Walter Benjamin revitahed the term and brought the figure of the flheur back to the intellectual stage in the 1920s, by andysing the flheur's role in resisting the chaos of metropolitan life. Without Benjamin, 'YXined would not have become a widely used term

Benjamin celebrated Baudelaire as one of the great poets of the nineteenth centurys and felt that his flhurwas the perfect instrument with &ch to exemplifjl the intellectual's changing relationship with the modem industrial city. The flheurssdesire to be amongst the crowd in order to achieve a better understanding of the worid complemented Benjamin's own theory of experience. The latter is based on the notion that two types of experience exist, Erlebnis (everyday experience), and Erfahnmg

(authentic, philosophical experience). Benjamin's goal was to find ways to transform everyday experience into philosophical experience or understanding. He believed the fliineur shared this goal, in that his writings not only descnked the city, but transformed it into a metaphor "Diese Biicher bestehen aus eiozelnen Skizzen, die mit ihrer anekdotischen Einkleidtmg den plastischen Vordergnmd jener Panoramen und mit Thrern infonnatorischen Fundus deren weitgapamten Hintergmd gleichsam uachbilden" (Der

Flaneur 35). Through his theory of experience, Benjamin introduced a new meaning to the figure of the flheur. He brought relevance and purpose to a figure that had previously been widely regarded as a lounging idler, a good-for-nothing parasite feeding off metropolitan culture- Whereas the flhurhad previously been viewed as having no aim or goal - indeed his strolling was characteristically aimless - Benjamin identified the deeper purpose in the flhem's work He painted him as a warrior baaling against the ever more pervasive and less meanin@ worid of modernityfthe "protest of spirit in the face of encroaching materidism, of human time in the face of artificial acceleration"

(Birkerts 167). In protest against this consumerist society in the metropolis he recognised insight and human intuition over material goods. As Sven Birkerts point out: "Thus he made a cult of the materially useless. His prized possession was the observation, the insight" (167).

Much as Benjamin admired the flineur's id&-stic stance, it also served as a model for his own work and for his role as a cuItural theorist To accept that the flbeur was an unproductive idler would be to agree that Benjamin himself had nothing to offer the world. And clearly he felt (and he was not alone in this) that the work he was doing was important in helping to keep the world fkom falling into a state of meaningless simulation- Thus Benjamin took the basic elements of the eccentric position that he shared with the fliineur - wandering, collecting and obsening - and established them as virtues. The wanderer, collector and observer was capable of recognising the relationship between fragments of the shattered whole that the world once represented (Osbume 55).

However, according to Benjamin, the relevance of the observing flheur, who resisted the forces of society, was soon to fade. Too many strong currents were working against the flkeur for him to be able to survive in a world that he opposed Benjamin maintained that the inhumanity of capitalism and the reliance on commodities were becoming so prevalent in the city that the flheur would soon cease to exist. Increasing materialism would lull the populace into seeldag commodities, and the pmuit of material goods would consume people to the point that they would lose the capacity for criticism.

The modern city was the central hub for the "empty" wealth found currency, stocks and mass-produced commoditiest in contrast to wealth previously relating more closely to the possession of unique objects and fbilyestates, heirlooms, etc. In relation to

Benjamin's theory of experience, the emptiness of commodity represented Erlebnis without the salvation of E@5ahnmg8The more the city continued to revolve around the false experience of the commodity, the less possible it would become to partake in real experience, ETfahnmg- As this transformation and search for Erfahrung constituted one of the central objectives of the fliineur, Benjamin predicted his imminent disappearance

&om the city. At some point, the lust for the Erlebnis of materialism would become so excessive that it would fully overshadow the search for Efuhnmg, and the need for this deeper sensation would dissipate completely. Then no one would yeam to make everyday experience meanin@ beyond materialism, and the flheur would vanish.

The other change that Benjamin felt would affect the activity of the fliineur was the administrative control over the city and its people, to which he referred as

Bestreben, durch ein vielililtiges Gewebe von Registrierungen den Ausfall von Spuren zu kompensieren, den das Verschwinden der Menschen in den Massen der groDen SWte mit sich bringt" (Der Flunew 49). As Paris grew more crowded in the nineteenth century, its infrastructure became more tightly controlled with the introduction of a house-numbering system, controls at libraries, and the ability to keep track of people with photographs.

The admiristration of all major cities became ever more efficient and Information

documenting people's activities became increasingly precise and pervasive. The

imposition of stnrctrne and organisation on the chaos of the city diminished the flineuc's

role as focalisor. The knowledge that everything in the city could be ordered and

recorded, &mystified the city to a degree that, according to Benjamin, the creative

narrative tradition of the flheur would inevitably come to an end. Benjamin made these

predictions despite the fkct that, at the time, various incarnations of the fliineur were

flourishing in the modem city. The stimuli offered by the city of Berlin f-inated

writers Like Franz Hessel and Ahxi Dbblin, who attempted through their work to impose

an alternative order on the experience of the city.

B. An Adaptable FEneur?

As it tums out, the point at which the gaze of the flbeur in its function to provide

structure became irrelevant had not yet arrived- For all his concerns about the imminent

disappearance of the flheur, Benjamin was not as quick as it might seem to close his

mind to the idea of a contemporary flheur. He recognised in Franz Hessel's work

elements of an adaptable, transmutable flheur ofthe 1920s. Many city writers were

acting as flheurs in Benjamin's time: Franz Hessel, Siegfkied Kracauer and Joseph Rot. to name the most conspicuous of them. Even Benjamin himself was a flheur. Indeed,

he used his musings about the figure of the flheur to amve at a de6nition of the fliineur that could be applied to himself In "Wiederkehr des Flanem," he cites the work of Franz Hessel as proof of the rebirth of the fl6neur "Wassie [die Stadt bei Hessel] eroffhet, ist das unabsehbare Schauspiel der Flherle, das wir endgiiltig abgesetzt glaubten. Und nun sollte es her, in Berlin, wo es niemak in hoher Bliite ted,sich erneuern? Dazu mu0 man wissen, daO die Berliner andre geworden sind" (194). Given that it is Benjamin's work on the flhe~fthat has rendered the figure immortal, and given that he himself recognised in Hessel what Wulf No11 calls "die eMMne

WandIu.ngsF&gkeit" of the figure, the reluctance by some critics to recognise contemporary incarnations of the fl5neur seems questionable- Indeed, the fact that

Benjamin identified traces of the traditional fliineur in the work of Hessel, and was willing to modify his definition of the Patisian figure to include the Berlin author, sets a convincing historical p~cedentfor the adaptability of the figure. The figure of the flheur had retired until Benjamin recruited it for service in a new era When Benjamin took his life in fli@t htom the Nazis in 1940, the flheur seemed to die with him.

Apparently, however, the flbeur is a resilient figure- As Benjamin reappropriated the flheur for late modernity, so it is possible for another to reconfigure the flineur of late modernity for the contemporary world

1. The Demise of the FlPineur in the Twentieth-Century City

German, and indeed European metropolises changed firadamentally through the

National Socialist years and after the Second World War. Consequently, writing about the city changed as well. For many years, the primary subject matter of new literature was shaped by the war experience. Many novels and short stories that comprised the Triimmediteratur may have been set within specific (but often not explicitly identified) urban settings, such as Wolfgang Borchert's stories in Hamburg, Heimich B6U7sin

Cologne and WoKgang Weyrauch's in Berlin. However, most of these cities were destroyed in the war, they were w longer the smoothly hctioning machines of pre-war modernity- The bustle of the cities had disappeared for the meantime7and graver and more immediate problems were addressed in the literature of the day. By the 1960s~most

German cities had still not developed enough character to invite any sort of intense

"fliinerie" (No11 651). The flhurof the 1930s bad departed for other cities, and, for the moment, seemed happy to remain elsewhere. North American cities were the source of much Literary interest for some time, and beatnik literature such as Jack Kerouac's On the

Road (1957) encouraged its readers to '"fl&ne9' in new directions: to Mia, Japan and

South America. South American and Indian cities, next to North American cities, received much attention throughout the 1960s @Jell 650).

In the late 1960s and 1970s, however, specific cities began once again to show their faces more fkequently on the German literary stage, particularly in East Gemany.

Authors such as Ulrich Plenzdorf, Jwek Becker, Volker Braun and Wolf Bierrnann used

Berlin as a backdrop for novels and poetry, and Leipzig provided a background to Fritz

Rudolph Fries' Der Wee nach Oobliadooh (1966). In West Gemany, on the other hand, the experience of the city was subject to something of a makeover in the 1970s, as activist groups called to reform the face ofthe innemtudt- Studies had revealed that suburban shopping malls and depots in American cities had drawn business away from the downtown retail areas, giving rise to problems that one now associates with the inner city such as high crime rates, increased drug traffic, etc- In hope of avoiding this problem in Gennan cities, these activists staged campaigns to make shopping in the downtown

core a more pleasurable experience. The result ofthis campaign was the introduction of

FuJgangerzonen (ORheil229). In FuJgdnger=onen store owners made shopping more

interactive, for example, by displaying wares outside of their stores. The FuBgngecorze

aIso offered a broad range of divertissements (fshion, movies, fast-food kiosks, etc.) in

an effort to tramform the downtown area into a place where people would want to come

just to "hang outY7and spend money. Such reasoning indicates that people believed that

they could use idhstmcture to control the "We" of tk city, and that that "life7' was very

closely linked to control over financial capital. That the city was now an immensely

consumer-based and wmmodity~rientedmilieu was no longer a revelation, but rather

axiomatic and inevitable-

The city continued to become more consumer-oriented in the late 1970s and early

1980s. Entrepreneurs made the city more user-friendly by publishing magazines such as

Zzfw and Tip in Berlin, which firmished the consumer with rbe knowledge of what was

going on all over the city- These magazines introduced and promoted the concept of

Szene as the place to be, attempting to solve the problem of the city's ovenvhelming size

by making it more accessible. Indeed, this promotion not only made planned events in

the city more public, but also rendered the inhabitants more "accessible," by offering in the personal advertisements an overview of people who want to sell a bicycle, to rent an apartment, or to find a partner interested in, for example, do-masochism or bondage.

Why bother imagining stories about peopie when scrumptious tidbits like these reveal themselves as "W'? These attempts to make the city more accessible seem to indicate that Walter

Benjamin's prediction of increased organisation and colillllodification was correct If he

thought the house-numbering system was detracting from the mystique of the city, how

would he have felt about a magazine whose sole purpose is to advertise events and

personal needs in the city? At the same time, the consumerism prevalent in postststwar

metropolitan society has placed the commodity in a central position. Another essential

function of the city magazines is that of a mafketplace. Not only do they sell objects

through the classified sections and advertisements, but they also market the city and its

cultural events or Sme as a commodity. It is clear that Benjamin was correct in his

predictions. The city today is in many respects a more structured, more commodified,

and hence less mysterious place than it was 150 years ago.

Hanns-Josef Ortheil assesses the current situation of city narration in his 1986

essay 'Der lange Abschied vom Flaneur." Surveying the state of the city and city

narrators, he concludes that commodification and structural changes have ended the

tradition of the flheur. Ortheil maintains that a much more complacent and less

powerful figure has taken the place of the flheur: "Dieser nach allen Seiten hin

durchlassige Passant, der sich der Einrichtungen bedient und von ihrer Gestaltung

verschluckt wird, ist an die Stele des Flheurs getreten" (Ortheil215). The figure of the

Passant (passer-by), which he sees as having replaced the flhem, does not impose any

structure on the city. On the contrary, the highly structured, contrived city controls him

by means of his dependence on its commodities (Einrichtungen)and reliance on its form.

The Passant obviously lacks the fliineur's ~e~awareness. Zygmmt Bauman also proclaims the disempowexment of the flineur. In his

1994 &cle "Desert Spectacular," he likens the act of flherie to the act of playing in that flherie is a game of watching people and creating a role for them in a constructed world: "His play is to make others play, to see others as players, to the world a play. And in the play which he makes the world to be, he is in full control" (Bauman 145). The control that the ilk&holds is similar to the control that the game-players hold, in that they may stop playing or change the rules of the game any time they wish. UItimatdy, he explains, this control is the essence of the play, this is its "W: "'Play is the rules: play has no other existence but a number of players observing rules" (145). Bauman further claims that the site of flherie has moved fmm the street indoors to public shopping malls. Such places, he asserts, have marketed their stores to the individual urge toward flherie, creating entire indoor complexes devoted to the individual's need to idle, stroll leisurely through shops and arcades, and to observe others. These malls constitute 'the touristic order, meant to acco~odatefldnewson the move,fkinews en masse, those

'conformist idlers who aspire to nothing else but to surrender to the incessant call of the sign consumption"' (152). As Bauman argues, these malls have expropriated the fliineur's power to create the rules for the game: the rules are now created by the infhutmcture, which draws the impotent flheur into conforming to them. Like Ortheil,

Bauman maintains that the fliineur in today's society is a powerless figure, a Passant.

'Wemany people who walk the streets could be referred to as Passanten, the term does not adequately describe the author or poet who contemplates and observes the city for inspiration To suggest that the ignorant and unobsewant Pussant is today's reincarnation of the literary flheur is questionable. Such a suggestion implies that no one is critical and aware enough today to be able to contemplate the city. Rather, Ortheil and Bauman seem to imply that poets and authors have ceased to contemplate the city and turned their attentions elsewhere- Bauman even believes that authors and poets are no longer able to contemplate the city because its structure is so pervasive in its wntro! of our actions and movement, When the two &tics wrote the articles mentioned above, few authors were writing about the city in the scrudnising style of the fl5neu.r. Thus, it might have seemed appropriate to proclaim tbe demise ofthe flbeur-

2. The Resurgence of Berlin Noveb and the Emergence of the Female Nneur

The situation changed in the late 1980s, in Berlin Perhaps the resurgence of interest in Berlin's literary possibilities originated with the city's 750~ anniversary in 1987, or with the naming of Berlin as Kultwsradt Europos in 1988. Or perhaps it first began with the fdl ofthe Berlin Wall in 1989. But whatever the impetus, in the beginning of the 1990s writers were fjlscinated with documenting the experience of the newly unified Berlin As the city's borders opened, it began to reclaim its status as the capital of Gemany and as an intellectual and cultural centre. Students, entrepreneurs,

Jobbers, construction workers, architects, city planners and, recently, politicians flooded to the new capital. As plans for construction got underway, the city filled with people and new experiences. The chaos that once again reigned over the city inspired authors and poets to contemplate the urban experience and to write about it. Writers became obsessed with Berlin and the description of life in the ever-changing city. Ortheil's prediction that the apathetic Passant had replaced the observant flheur has proven incorrect: many writers have demonstrated interest in being more than a Passant-

Given Benjamin's own recognition of the adaptabw ofthe flbeur, it is perhaps time to consider the possibility that a rebirth of the namtive figure has occurred with the unification of Berlin. Many factors render the unified BerIin of the 1990s a fertile ground for the fliineur to explore. The flbeur, the protester against acceleradng development in the city, has, dong with the rest of society, become used to the lightning- speed surface changes that have become the norm in this age of technology fbeUed by consumerism. This rapid-fire aesthetics is now a way of We; swift changeability ofthe superficial environment is no longer in and of itself remarkable. However, when the changes in environment reflect deeper changes in society, such as the political and social upheaval leading to and resulting fiom the fdof the Berlin Wall, reading the signs of the street becomes compelling once again. The street and the actions and reactions of the people that occupy it become a mirror for the political changes that incite those reactions.

Berlin itself is a spatial allegory for a new political union. As such, fliinerie supplies a well-suited key to decipher that allegory and delve into the core of the new political situation Conversely, if one endeavours to regard politics as abstract, the politically unified Germany is nothing but an allegory for the spatial union with which the people of

Berlin (and in a less immediate fmhion, of the rest of Germany) must come to terns. In this case, contemplating the politically unified Berlin provides a tool to understand the effects of the spatial unity of the city. From either angle, the politics of the nation and the environment of the city fbmish flherie with a new purpose: to act as an aid in adjusting to and re-defining a swiftly changing political and spetial environment, and as a means for the writer to acquaint herself with that environment-

Particularly in former East Berlin exists a pressure to qyickly reconcile oneself with a radically changing environment Since, politically spealdng the GDR was assimilated into the FRG, there are greater adjustments being made in the East than in the

Wesf and the effects ofthese changes are that much more acute- As we& the age of consumerism never hit East Germany with the same force as it did the West after World

War II. The economic pressure to try to catch up with 40 years of consumerism and commodification means that the flineur must accelerate fkom Benjamin's time to the present pest] time, and quickly adjust to the increased centrality ofthe commodity.

What has survived of the fliheur? How is this new flkeur of unified Berlin different fiom the flkur of Benjamin's time or of Baudelaire's? The answer to these questions relates largely to the new environment that the new flineur is encountering.

Clearly the historically specific elements that previous1y cbaracterised the flheur are the most adaptable: the new Berlin fl heur is most likely not from Paris, and is not necessarily male or bourgeois. But this is not altogether new. Benjamin, in his - description of Hessel as a flheur, had established a precedent for a non-Parisian fliineur-

And Hessel had long ago rejected the idea that flherie should be a strictly bourgeois activity¶maintaining that it is "'wohl das billigste Vergniigen, ist wirklich kein spezifisch biirgerlich-kapitaiistischerGenuD. Es ist ein Schatz der Armen uad heutmtage fast ihr

~orrecht'~Considering that two ofthe thee elements that once seemed to have defined the traditional fliineur have become obsolete, it hardly seems inappropriate to suggest that the maleness of the flheur is also w longer mandatory in this day and age. Indeed, the idea of the female fliineur is one that intrigues contemporary critics? Certainly by

Benjamin's time, women could walk about the streets relatively freely, and could indeed act as fliineurs if they so wished. However, women loitering on the meets in the 1920s and 1930s were sooner recognised as prosh~esthan as artists or intellectuals, a problem which male flheurs rarely encounter. - While men easily assumed the role of the observer, and could readily assign that role to other men, women were the obsewed, and the men such as Benjamin, Kracauer and Hessel, who documented city life at the time, rarely perceived women as being observers themsel~es.~The preconception that the fliineur or city writer be male still exists, and it is interesting that both kina Liebmann and Brigitte Burmeister resist it, trying to Liberate the figure of the fl&~urfiom this preconception.

Beyond the historically specific aspects of the flaeur, the new Berlin flheur shares many characteristics with Benjamin's flineur- She remains an intellectual in the city, who wanders, collects, and observes. In her critical observations ofthe city, she retains a sense of alienation fiom the rest of society and dissatisfaction with the current political climate. Frequently, the flheur within the work of fiction (i-e.,the narrator) is a writer in some capacity, whose observations of the city, as Burmeister notes in Unter dem

Namen Norma ( 1S), are uniahl'bited by the structure of a nine-to-five job. An interesting result of their status as writers is that they spend a great deal more time observing the city

Cited in Wulf NoIl, 65 1. 7 Anke GIeber in pm-cular, but dso Patrice Petro and Katharina von Ankum have conducted several investigations into the role of the balefliineur in literature and film in the Weimar era 8 Women rarely walked the streets alone in the 1920~~and Hessel specifically warned male flheurs of the distracting influence women could exert on their soiitary wande"ngs. Because of the relative scarcity of writings by female authors firom the era, much of GIeber's research involves the reconstruction offernale characters perceived by male flheurs. In her examination of the 1927 film Berlin: Symphony of a City, Gleber has recast certain of these fleeting female figures, oflea interpreted as prostitutes, as unacknowledged female flheurs- from indoors, at their workplaces in their apartments, than did the traditional fliheur.

Whereas the traditional fliineur wandered the streets to observe people in the city, these

narrators' perceptions of the city are largely reflected in the work they do from their

homes, indicative perhaps of the fact that women are still not as comfortable walking

alone in the metropolis as-men As mentioned above, the traditional flheur uses flberie

- his description of people in the city - as a tool to demirapid changes and to

reacquaint himselfwith his changing environment. In 1990s Berlin, these changes are

physical, political, social and cultural. And here again, the flheur uses her flherie as a

means of protest against the enforced pace of change.

Berlin in the 1990s provides the flhurwith a new environment to feed on,

comparable in its novelty to the Paris of high capitalism and to the cosmopolis that was

Weimar Berlin. Flherie, as a strategy that an author adopts to become familiar with a

changing situation, distinguishes the flheur fiom the mundane Passant to whom Ortheil refers. Nor is this new Berlin fliineur the fbeur whom Bauman describes, mindlessly drawn in to the allure of the commodities and unable to find his way out. Writers of the post-unification Berlin have appropriated the flineur for their own purposes. m. Changes after Unification

For many 1920s fliineurs, Potsdamer Platz was the most fwinating area of

Berlin It was there that the city's pace was at its briskest, with tdicflow becoming so heavy that Europe's first electric tdEc signal was installed there in 1924.~The changes that have occlmed at Potsdamer Platz since then have been almost synecdochic for the unfolding of the fate of Berlin and its flinerns (and indeed of Germany as a whole).

During the NS years, the Nazi administration erected government buildings around this centre, and at the end of the Second World War, Allied bombers flattened the area into nothing more than a heap of rubble. In the partitioaing of Berlin, the quarter fell directly on the border between the Soviet and American zones, and subsequently became part of the uninhabited no-man's-land upon which the Wall stood fiom 196 1 to 1989. As a result of the fall of the Wall, Potsdamer Pfatz once again became the geographical centre ofthe city, and speculators formulated plans to transform it into the bustling, thriving metropolitan hub it once had been-

' Siemens installed this traffic column which consisted of a red-amber-greenelectric light system, For Wer information see: "Unbenanntes Dokument-" 12 October 1997. Online posting- Internet, 12 July 1999. "VTMilestone-" Online posting-

completion of their architecnwl projects there, one is inclined to feel that Potsdamer

Platz is resuming the position it would have had if it had not been "out of commission7'

for this extended period After a Ripvan-Winkle-length nap, this plot of land at the

centre of the city is attempting to resume the role it played for Berlin over 60 years ago,

but is having to re-structure itself according to the new demands posed by the political

situation of the post-Cold-War era The ahem*who last thrived at the same time as did

Potsdamer Plae is also staging a comeback, which coincides with the reconstmction of

his" old haunt. Analogously, the flheur must compensate for having missed out on

about 60 years of writing and must throw himself into the complex literary stage that

exists in Germany in the 1990s, in the midst of the existential upheaval caused by

unification

A. The New Reality for the "GDR" Writer

The collapse of the GDR has had far-reaching consequences for German

literature, particularly for East German authors These writers find that their position has

changed fundamentally as a result of their society's conversion to democracy and the fiee

market economy. East Germans w longer read as much as they used to, and authors

have had to face market pressures instead of censorship. As well, they have had to come to terms with the faflure of socialism and with their loss of credibility during the

lo ''Infobox." Online posting.

literature.

"Serious" litewlost its prominent position as a pastime within the free market,

causing both financial and psychological changes for authors from the GDR. Until 1989,

GDR publishing houses received significant subsidies fiom the government, which

greatly reduced the cost of printing books. In encornaging the publishers to focus largely

on ccseriousLiteraturey7 when allotting these subsidies, the government regulated supply

and demand "Serious" socialist literature was readily available at a low cost, and this

was what people read When the market opened up, however, the subsidies were

removed, and a wide selection of other reading materials (inchding how-to books on

"survival" aspects of the heee market system, such as tax returns and legal issues) became

available. In addition to this, exposure to the West brought an influx of audio-visual entertainment that had not been as widely available in the East Under the circumstances,

it is not surprising that literature sales went down.

This loss of interest in.'cserious7'literature had several implications for established

GDR authors, such as Volker Braun, Giinter de Bruyn, Fritz Rudolph Fries, Christoph

Hein, Stefan Heyrn, Heiner Miiller, and Christa Wolf, particularly in the years immediately following the fall of the Wall, from 1990 to 1995. For one thing, these authors were subject to the pressures of the market for the first time: to a greater extent

'' Frank Schirrmacher launched the Litermwmeit in June 1990 with an atrack on Christa Wolfs -bleibt, blaming her for not using her status to speak out against the GDR government, and criticking the role of East German intellectuals in general for supporting the state- and fbrther attacks, which ranged from questioning Wolfs personal internto equating the former GDR with Nazi Germany and to "condemn[ing] the whole concept ofa political and social engagement in literature." sparked defences of Woff and rebuttals by Giinter Grass, Lew Koepelow and Walter Jens, among others- Revelations of the involvement of a number of authors (Sascha Anderson, Heiner Miiiler, Rainer Schedlinski and Christa Wolf) with the Stasi firelled the &tics further, and immersed literary Germany in a debate centred around these disclosures until late 1993 (Mellis 229). than ever, the interest their work generated amongst the general public determined their

success. Consequentiy, they experienced an identity crisis as they reafised that they were

Werout of step with their readers than they had likely thought They had to recognise

that, given more alternatives, fewer people chose to read their books. This disconcerting

blow to their self-esteem was accompanied by the disillusioning recognition that they

were amongst the only ones left who still believed in the socialist ideal that they hi been

working to uphold In additioa, some authors remarked that the removal of censorship

had a disorienting effect on them." After so many years of having had a clearly defined

audience !i.e- the censor before other readers), some authors felt uncertain about their

intended audience as they attempted for the first time to respond to the pressures of

buying power instead of those of censorship.

Wolfgang Emmerich descrik the parafysis that this existential crisis cast over

many authors as a form of melancholy. He suggests that they mourned the demise of

socialism to such an extent that they were temporarily unable to overcome their loss and

re-focus their attention elsewhere. He maintains that socialism had become a religion

and compares its collapse to a sudden revelation that life has no higher purpose: "nicht

nur fiir die Proletarier aller Lander, sondern auch fib die Intellektuellen wurde [der

Sozidismus] in der modemen Welt.. .zu eioem grokn Versprechen heilsgeschichtlicher

Sinngebung" (Emmerich 457). The sudden recognition that what they had idealised was condemned by others was tantamount to a dissolution of faith, which resulted in a loss of focus and a perceived lack of purpose. Moreover, the SED had clearly defined the role of

l3 Both Christa Wolf and Help Kiinigsdorfspoke of the loss of definition of the implied reader after unification (Emmerich 457)- Jurek Becker predicted that the loss of censorship, althougb atlowing more fieedom, would ultimately result in the loss of the unique character of East German literature, and would thus threaten the existence and identity of many GDR authors meeker 362-363). the author as an educator to teach the people socialkt values: Tach dem Willen der SED sollten die Autoren, als eine Avantgmde, Erzieher der nachhinkenden Volksmassen auf dem Weg zum Endziel Sozialismus sein" (Emmerich 456). In contrast, the new fiee market society hardly regarded them as wise teachers with knowledge to share, but rather criticised the role of the author as supporter of the GDR The West was no longer allured by the dissidence these authors seemed to have demonstrated, but rather repelled by any support they had shown to the state in remaining there.

The difficulty of coming to terms with the new Geman society's outright rejection and shunning of socialism was only aggravated by the simultaneous withdrawal of West German esteem during what came to be known as the Litemtwstreit. Authors such as Christa Wolf, whose works during the time of the GDR had shown some criticism of the regime for not measuring up to the socialist ideal, found themselves facing reproach from some Western critics for having embraced a sociakt ideal at all-

Other critics did not agree with this condemnation, poindng out that many of those under fire had previously received wide acclaim in West German literary circles for voicing criticism of the GDR At the same time, the opening ofthe secret Stasi files revealed that several of these acclaimed internal critics of the GDR had aaually operated as unofficial informants for the secret police. This sort of disclosure, in some cases blown out of proportion by the press, led to fixher points of contention in the Literatwstreit, as the pages of the FeuiIIetons filled with arguments about whether these authors could conceivably maintain their moral authority. B. Overcoming Socialist Realism

Finding a completely objective perspective on llfe in the former East Germany is

a damdng rask West German authors do not have the authority to pass judgement on

GDR society, and all authors &om the GDR are associated with some sort of bias .in their

relationship to the former state. Authors such as Hermann ~anf"whom the East

German State had extolled for closely embracing the style and content prescribed by the

official cultural policy, found little support for their work after the demise of the GDR

Writers who had remained in the GDR, such as Hein, Miiller and Wolf, inspired by a

belief in an ideal socialism that did not exist, but toward which they hoped to guide the

country^ also struggled to find an identity for themselves. Those who felt compelled to

leave the GDR before the fall of the Wall, such as Jurek Becker, Wolfgang Hilbig,

Monika Maron and Irina Liebmann, acted on loss of hope in change, which the course of

events in 1989 "proved correct-" However, whether they are in a position to judge the

GDR and its collapse authoritatively, without having lived through its entirety, is

questionable. Thus, it is impossible to find one author or person whose depiction of the

GDR is valid or objective. Equally, it is an exercise in firtility to try to invalidate ali

representations which betray any sort of bias. No novel can fully summarise the currents running through unified Berlin or Germany in the 1990s. Therefore, Germans who hope to understand and come to terns with the consequences of the Wende need to look at a broad spectrum of novels for literary guidance.

I4 Becker and Rohlfs both cite Kant, President of the &hrifisteIIerwerhd fiorn 2978 to 1989, as an example of a not untalented author who embodied East German cultural poky, but who, in the post-Cold- War era. has lost credibility as a result of this conservative stance (Becker 361, Rohlfs 245). What effect has unification had on the kind of literature former GDR authors are

producing now? And what ramifications have the fkee market economy and failure of

socialism had on what people are acrually reading? hning the Lzteratwstreit, one point

of speculation was whether unification would create another StdeNull, fiom which

"the new Germany would bring forth a literature more appropriate to its chauged stature

than the literature of conscience or moralism-.- which had dominated both Gerrnanys [sic]

since 1945" (Zehl Romero 141). The idea of a SWeNull bdcs back to the situation

after World War II and the National Socialist years, in which no model existed to suggest

how authors should face entirely new questions and problems. Certainly in the post-

Co!d-!Var ea20 model is available to which authors can turn to had the "appropriate"

way of dealing with new questions. However, this should not lead one to conclude that

the political changes extinguished the literary trends that existed before the fall of the

Wall. Literature is a continuum. Many trends have carried over fiom before 1989 -

particularly in terms of narrative style - and the Wende has not created a completely

"new" literature. At the same time, circumstances are now different and it is interesting

to see to what extent the resuIt of the transformations discussed above constitutes a

literature that is distinct from the one(s) that existed before.

Since unification a great number ofbooks have appeared by the younger

generation of writers who were not as widely known before and whom critics did not charge with having supported the oppressive GDR regime. Because many West German critics condemned the older generation of writers who defended the politics of the GDR, the younger, previously less published generation, has had the opportunity to receive wider publicity in the new Germany. Their experimental styles can be traced back to trends that existed earlier but rarely found an outlet in favour of promoting politically committed, established writers, GDR publishers tended to overlook or shun the avantgardist writers ofthe younger generation, such as the Prenzlauer Berg circle of writers, which included Sascha Anderson, Peter Bbthig, Bert PapenfuD-Gorek and Raker

Schedlinski. The experirnentalim prevalent in post-Wend' literature reflects the removal of the Socialist Realist doctrine from the publishing houses, which now allow "GDR authors" to address new subject matter and adopt new positions. Most important, a new set of political panunetem in the publishing industry is bringing different authors to the forefront and presenting all authors with a new set of questions. W. Brigitte Burmeister's and Irina Liebaaan's Berfin-Romone

Given the spotlight, previously Less well known authors, such as Brigitte

Burmeister, Kurt Drawert, Kerstin Hensel, Wowgang Hilbig, Reinhard Jirgl, Angela

Krauss, Irina Liebmann, Thomas Rosenliicher and Marion Titze, are taking German literature in new directions. In search ofthe answers to the questions unification has posed, many of them turned to the city of Berlin to explore their ideas. The drive to write the Berlin novel has coincided with the Wende, but it appears that the first call for it came very shortly before the events that Led up to unification, perhaps in anticipation of its corning. Frank Schirrmacher wrote in the Franwter AIigemeine Zeitmg of October 10,

1989:

Die Autoren leben in Smdten oder kennen sie doch nunindest- Aber es giit

bei uns seit Jahrzehnten keine Literatur der Metropolen, des stiidtischert

Lebens, der Weltstadt- Es gibt 'mew Yorker Geschichten7'im Kino, aber

kein Berlin der Nachkriegszeit. Jedes Jahr wird er angekendigt; es hat ihn

seit 'Berlin-Alexanderplatz" nicht gegeben (2)

Further calls for the new Berlin-Romrm have surfaced following the Lileratwstrezt

(Steinert 234), and it has become evident that the unification of Berlin has spawned a definite interest in exploring the city's character. Understanding Berlin promises to aid in the The unified LI-ping implications of unification for Germany as a whole.

Berlin offers a unique opportunity to explore the issues of free market pressures and the role of the author, as well as the guilt associated with supporting the GDR on a smaller, safer scale. History has placed the burden of N&sm and Cold War division on Berlin: it has not been a "real" or '%hole" city since 1933. As a result, there is a ubiquito& desire to resume where the cdtural obsewers of the Weimar era were forced to abort their explorations of Berlin-

Crucial to bear in mind are the differences which the potitid and cultural environment of the 1990s impose upon the practice of flherie. Walter Benjamin's ailegory of the one-way street offers a particularly engaging perspective in the unified

Berlin. His image of the Einbahnstrasse represents the city moving in one direction only: forward, the direction of progress (Muschamp 34). After 1945, the divided Berlin's prospects of becoming a major cultural or financial centre were dim, although both halves of the city did quite well considering the obstacles they faced There ceased to be much reward in looking forward- Instead, Germans were preoccupied with looking back in time, as they struggled to come to terms with their recent past Thus, Berlin became something of a one-way meet again, this time looking in the opposite, more reflective direction: backward. Unified Berlin represents, for the first time, a two-way street? It is finally able to look forward to potentially unlimited possibilities as a thriving cultural and economic centre of the fbtue, as symbolised by the huge new buiIding complex on

Potsdamer Platz. At the same time, looking backwards and contemplating its past is still a Berlin preoccupation Indeed, the new building project that bas received perhaps the most attention in Berlin is Daniel L~beskind'sintegration of the Berlin Museum with the

Jewish use urn'^ (Muschamp 39, Riding 38)- indicating a desire to incorporate the past into the present and future. Likewise, contemplating which GDR government buildings to salvage and which to demolish, and whether to preserve sections of the Wall, signals a desire to take the past into consideration while planning the heeThinking of Berlin as a two-way street offers contemporary writers a way to recast the work of the Weimar flheurs.

Brigitte Burmeister and Irina Liebmann are among the newly prominent authors who have chosen to write about the city of Berlin in the wake of Gennan unification, although it is difficult to determine into which category of GDR authors they fit- hrnin

1940 and 1943 respectively, they are older than many of the authors of the Preazlauer

Berg group. And yet one cannot easily group them with the older, more established generation of authors, as neither of them achieved great prominence in the GDR, indeed neither published anything before the 1980s.'~ As neither of them were well-established supporters of the GDR, they did not Nffer the same criticism that many of their established colleagues received after unification. Indeed, they were among the writers who were able to take advantage of the opening up of the publishing market to establish a firmer reputation for themselves with Wende- and Berlin-Romane. Although Liebmann emigrated fiom the GDR in 1988 and Burmeister remained in the East, both share a belief in socialism, but were disappointed by "der real existicrende Sozialismus." To a certain degree, they defend the ideal of socialism in retrospect and mist assimilation of GDR

l5 Herbert Muschamp touches on this idea in his New Yorlr Tiesarticle of 1 1 April 1999. l6 Libeskind has used the properties of broken lines (the broken Star of David) to express the absence of Jewish life in Berlin and at the same time to reflect its past integral presence. culture into the West Both women were part of the wave of East German authors that tried to push the boundaries ofprescnbed narrative models in the 1980s, developing narrative voices that combine stream-of-consciousness and montage technique to produce distinct alienating and yet compelling effects The novels In Berlin and Unter dem

Narnen Nonna both explore the unified city of Berlin as a two-way street. In contemplating the past ofthe GDR they suggest an outlook for the hire, the next layer to be lain upon Berlin's history.

A The Portrayal of Physical Space in CTnter dem Namen Norma and L Berlin

The contrasting portrayals of Berlin in Unter dem Namen Nonna and In Berlin illustrate how Brigitte Bunneister and kna Liebmana each cast their own meaning and structure onto the city. Each narrator's description of her physical environment reveals significant information about her state of mind and perceived relationship to those around her and to the new political situation in which she finds herself. Indeed, both authors formulate the na~ators'description of the city - their flinerie - as a tool with which to characterise them for the reader. Although the narrators' city descriptions point toward extensive emotional disorientation in the face of the changes brought on by unification, their plights are quite distinct This leads to divergences in the ways in which they relate to and perceive the city.

Intriguingly, both women's stories centre around two locations: their apartment and a cde. For both narrators, these milieus are essential in defining their identity. The

- - - l7 Liebmann published her first book Berliner Mietshaus, in 1982, while Burmeister's first novel, Anders oder vom Aufenthatt in der Fremde, appeared in 1987. cityscape that they choose to illustrate beyond these two places differs. and as such, further highlights the differences in the two women's emotional states. An exploration of the narrative of these various spatial realms will reveal how each narrator feels alienated by her environment and how she attempts to come to terms with this alienati011- As well, it will identifjr the parts of society toward which each narrator feels positively and demonstrate how she&lers strength fkom those areas. Her description of the city will show what representation of the political climate around haeach author wishes to convey, and what hope she offers for the future-

Burmeister's narrator, Mariame Arends, suEers £?om an identity crisis brought on by the fall of the Wall and the ensuing process of unification.. lobanaes, her husband of over twenty years, has left their apartment in Berlin-Mitte for Mannheim, where he hopes to establish himself fhncially, and, once he has completed the ''trial period" at his company, expects that Marianne will follow him there. Johannes, who had been a supporter of socialism, although not of the GDR government, has executed a complete political turnaround and llly recanted on his previous beliefs, and is thus representative, as Marianne sees it, of the vast majority of former GDR citizens. This total rejection of former ideals is the root of Marianne's identity crisis: she feels antagonised by the invasion of West German values and the free market economy. Her crisis stems from an unwillingness to abandon those former ideals and change her beliefs in order to succeed within the heworkof the new social order, as she sees so many of her fellow citizens doing.

Unter dem Namen Norma is divided into two sections, which are reminiscent of diary entries in their stream-of-~onsciousnessstyle of narration. In the first part, Marianne spends the morning of 17 June 1992 (the anniversary of the 1953 workers uprising and a former holiday in West Germany) at home in her apartment in Berlin-

Mitte trying to get to work on her translation of a biography of the French revolutionary and fiend of Madmilien Robespierre, Louis Antoiw de Saint-Just Sounds corn the courtyard outside her window distract her, and trigger the nanative process of the stories about the other people who live in her building, and thus the creation of a mosaic of life in Berlin after the fall of the Wall. A call from her neighbur, and then a visit from her

Lover Max, interrupt her thoughts. She and Max later go and sit in a nearby park, and then move on to a cde, where Max knows the barkeeper- As she moves through the city,

Marianne's impressions of people and places continue to add to the mosaic of Berlin she is creating. All the while she reflects on an argument she had recently with her

Norma, with whom she enjoys walking around the city and obsening people, and resolves to make amends for the quarrel as soon as possible- That evening, she goes to the new telephone booth around the corner fiom her house and calls Johames in

Mannheim. After a strained conversation, she heads home and contemplates the city by darkness. In her apartment once again. she continues to go through stories of the inhabitants of her house, adding stroke afker stroke to the ever more complex picture she is painting of Berlin-

In the second part of the book, she returns by Win to Berlin from West Germany on the morning of 14 July 1992 (the French national holiday and anniversary of the 1789 storming of the Bastille). She arrives at Friedrichstrak station and walks home to her apartment, fearing that Norma will not come to welcome her back because of the argument they had before she left over the boundaries of trust and fiendship. Their argument had culminated in Marianne forcing Norma to answer Marianne's hypothetical question as to whether Nonna would believe a rumour involving Marianne with the Stasi.

Norma's response, '9ie Hand ins Feuer legen \Kllrde sie fiu niemand;" disappoints

Marianne, and Norma feeis that Marianne is being unreasonable in her demands. As

Marianne lies on her bed on 14 July, she recalls the events of her three-week-long visit in

Mannheim- Her relationship with Johannes has ended as a result of an elaborate lie that she fabricated about her past to tell to the wife of Johes7fiend during the house- warming party that Johannes had planned Overwhelmed by the lack of communication and understanding she perceives between herself and her new "fkiends," she pretends to confide her past in the West German Corinoa KIing- The story she tells fulfils a plethora of West German stereotypes of East Germans. She tells of a father who toed the party line, a brother who became a leader in the FIN, and of an affairshe had with a Stasi- agent, which led not only to her collaboration with the secret service, but also a pregnancy and abortion Her Deckme, she tells Corinna, was Norma She cannot explain to Johannes her reasons for lying, but it seems that the stereotypes that she felt the West Germans had of her as an "Ossi" were too great for her to overcome, and the story is meant to emphasise the abyss she senses between them. Back in her apartment,

Mariaone's recollections are sporadically interrupted by noises fkom the courtyard, which * contrast the noisy East German city and the quiet West German suburb. When she opens her eyes, Nonna has arrived, listens to her story empathetically, and suggests they go out for dinner- Together they sit at the cde to which Max had taken Marianne on 17 June and watch the other people and invent stories about them. Mutually concerned about the hture of Berlin and Germany and eager to take steps to ensure that they can exert a positive influence upon their own future, they make a friendship pact, officiated by Max, to support each other through the uncertai~aflermathof unification and to set an example for others in doing so. Together they walk home, again contemplating the city in the dark

Unlike Unter dem Namen Norma In Berlin begins before the fdl ofthe Wall, in

October 1987. Liebmann's narrator, "die Liebmam," already exhibits signs of ai~ identity crisis at this early stage, aithough it takes German unification to bring it to the forefront In the portion of the novel that takes place before 9 November 1989, it becomes apparent that a significant part of "dieLiebmann's" identity lies in her dissatisfaction with and alienation fiom the GDR government. She falls in love with a

West Berlin film critic, to whom she refers throughout as "du," and the central focus of her life becomes a quest to leave the comtcy so that she can be with him. When she finally receives pkrmission to leave the GDR and moves to West Berlin, she finds that her lover seems to have loa interest in her. As a result, her life loses focus. In an attempt to regain a sense of purpose, "dieLiebmann" begins to make fiequeut visits to the East.

After the Wall opens up, she moves back to her old apartment in Pankow, hoping that distance will rekindle her lover's affections- Intense self-reflection and an examination of her past make her realise that her identity has long been dependent on her dissatisfaction with the authoritarian state of the GDR Instead of examining her own strengths and wedcnesses, she has concentrated on discontentment with the stifling political climate of the GDR Similar to Marianne at the end of Bunneisterysnovel, "die

Liebmann" realises that she must re-evaluate the things that she believes in and supports. In Berlin consists of seven titled chaptersyad, with the exception ofone chapter recalling the narrator's chiidhood, observes a chronological order it opens with "die

Liebmann" arriving at Schonefeld airport fiom a conference in Vienna The £irst and second chapters document her return to East Berlin, and relay her obsemations and feeling as she travels on trams and SLBahns around the city, eventually arriving at her

"Stammcafe," her main social venue, where vidyeveryone appears to be opposed to the GDR govenunent and to have applied for an exit visa In the third chapter she meets the West Berlin film criticyand their romance blossoms, Finally, her pass to leave for the

West arrives, and she and her daughter travel by S-Bahn to West Berlin The fourth chapter documents the grox-~hg~~~xt in her relationship with the West Berliner, and her straying back and forth across the border, unable to find contentedness. While the couple is visiting Frankfurt an der Oder, the Berlin Wall tumbles, and they can no longer attribute their emotional distance to physical borders. Confronted with a failed relationship, "die Liebrnann" moves back to her Pankow apartment and eventual1y, sitting at her typewriter, spirals into a profound identity crisis. The hitof this crisis comprises chapter five, in which she recalls fiom her Berlin childhood memories of her father, an influential Party hctiooary who was at the heart of a little-known and abortive coup against Walter Ulbricht around the time of the 1953 workers' uprising (In Berlin

144). L8 In the sixth and seventh chapters, she gradually overcomes the loss she feels at the end of her relationship with the man from West Berlin, searches the unified city for someone who will trade apartments with her, and catches up with some of her old friends from the East- At the end of the novel we hear that "die Liebmann" has found a new

IK Hereinafter I shall refer to the novel with the abbreviation IB. All page references are taken fiom the first paperback edition of the work apartment, although she does not tell us whether it is in the West or in the East, and we see her contentedly observing the city around her. Whereas Marianne, at the end of

Unter dem Namen Norma, finds a companion in Norma, "die Liebmann'sn companion at the end of In Berlin is the city of Berlin itseK- Mer a great deal of upheaval and reflection, she has found her identity and self-image reflected in the unified city

Both narrators experience extreme disorientation as a result ofthe hdamental changes that are occurring in the society around them They struggle to prevent the new system fkorn overwhelming them and to find their place in the 'mew Berlin" and in the

?Jew Germany." Through their narrators, Burmeister and Liebmann raise the question as to whether they, or anybody else in the New Gennany, know "where they are."

Marianne Arends, in a conversation with her Eend Max, maintains that East Gems feel displaced after unificatio~Tor drei Jahren ist die Ewigkeit zusammengebrochen, die Zeit seitdem entfesselt, und wir geistem durch die alten Rbne und versichem uns, hier zu sein, als Wten wir noch, wo das ist" (Unrer dern Nomen Noma 79).19 By comparing East Germans to ccghosts7''Burmeister evokes the image of spirits floating through an old house. Ghosts have no physical presence and thus no real connection to their environment. They inhabit a space but do not really exist, and have no perceptible effect on that space: they are trapped, as it were, in a dimension in which they are unable to affect their surroundings. As such, she implies that the people in the city have no real effect on their physical, and by extension political, environment, Aithough they see the city around them and convince themselves that they still understand and are fdiarwith it, she maintains that they no longer really know "where they are." East Berliners are

l9 Hereinafter I shall ref- to the novel with the abbreviation UdNN A11 page refaences are taken fiom the first edition of the work thus ghosts, existing in the same physical space that they always have, hut having lost

their sense of belonging. She mocks them for thinldng that nothing has changed and that

they inhabit the same space - on a physical and political level - as they always have.

Her challenge to herselfand to those around her (and to the reader) is a call to reflect

upon the very foundations of their existence, and to examine how thorough their

understanding of their political and physical environment is. Throughout the novel,

Marianne attempts to do this herseIf, observing the "'dte Rtlu~ne~'around her in the most

minute detail, and hopihg, by scmthising the physical, to see beyond it to the underlying

"reality."

Interestingly, Irina Liebmann uses a similar notion ofccnotknowing where one is7' to address the relation between the physical and the underlying "reality" in her essay

"Schabiges Schlaraffenland" She recalk a particular moment in time, at which she realises, through observation of her physical surroundings, that she is deceiving herself in her perception of her environment and, consequently, in her perception of the world in which she lives. This realisation comes not during the tunnoii following unification, as it does for Marianne7but rather in a memory fiPm childhood She becomes aware, while waiting for a tram after an FDJ sports rally, that the concrete reality of the GDR does not correspond to her socialist idealism:

.. . ich [habe] das auf einmal gesehen: die Lacheriichkeit unserer Kleidung,

die Verlorenheit dieser Schaer und Lehrer, das leere Stadion, die

klapprige StraOenbahn. ..- daD die Dinge so nackt -den vor meinen

Augen und daS sie mit den WBrtem, die wir dafur benutzten, gar nichts zu tun hatten. Mir war ganz unheimlich fk einen Moment, weil ich dachte,

da13 ich nicht we& wo ich bin,

Indeed, although the child knows precisely where she is, her penetrating observation of her environment leads her to question the essence of the state in which she lives. Ifa citizen examines her physical environment closely enougb the political and social dogma in which it is shrouded will fall away, and she will be able to see for the new "reality" they represent for her. Only then will the obsener be able to interact directly with her physical surroundings and determine what they truly represent to her, without the filter of the prevailing perspective. Although Liebmann's and Bunneister's narrators perceive their surroundings in the city subjectively, they share a critical perspective which distinguishes itself £kom Socialist Realism.

1. Indoor Spaces in the City: the Apartment and the Cafe

The two authors exhibit a number of similarities in their adaptations of the

Rheur, most strikingly in the feminine perspective with which they provide the figure.

In contrast to the traditional male flheur, both narrators focus a great deal of attention on indoor spaces in the city, namely their apartments, and cafes. The apartment represents the most comfortable and intimate place for both narrators, and both texts open with the narrator travelling to her apartment and introducing it to the reader- For both, the aparbnent is a place to which they retreat when they are emotionally depleted The emphasis placed on the apartment represents a significant step away from the haunts of the traditional fliineur, who was in persona only while strolling through the streets. These female flheurs, however, include their homes as a significant space in their subjective

visions of the city, which perhaps signals the relative importance of the home for women

as compared to men The domestic arena has traditionally been a feminine sphere, and

even in the 1990s, when it is common for women to walk the streets alone, these women

indicate that they are not llly comfortable in the public realm, despite the fact that they -

do enjoy observing the occurrences outside. Both narrators also point out that their male

partners do not understand this fixation on comfortable living space, and this becomes a

major point of contention in both relationships, further emphasising the importance that

these women place on their homes as spheres of comfom

The cafe, by contrast, hctions as the milieu in which the narrators do their most

intensive observation of other people in the city, and where they are intellectually

stimulated to observe others' actions and the meaning behind them- In both novels, the

cafe is a scene of dissidence, a place where people air their grievances about the world.

Yet the hction of the cafe is different for each narrator- Whereas "die Liebmann"

completely blocks out the world while in her apartment, the Me represents a social

environment for her, a place where fiends surround her and where she fits in. Marianne,

by contrast, who welcomes the sounds of the outside world into her apartment, does not

engage in interaction with others at the de. Rather, she remains a distant but interested

observer of the people she encounters there. However, in both novels the cafes have the

air of being somewhat "underground," or by some standard "authentic," in that they provide a form for uncensored discussion of the contemporary political and social climate, and a glimpse of the grassroots politics of the working class population. Thus, the apartment and the cafe function as two ends of a scale. Whereas the apartment serves as a retreat from the outside world the cze is the place to find stimulus for self-

reflection-

a. Marianne's Apartment

Marianne Arends clearly establishes her apartment as a place where she feels

comfortable. It is the first place she depicts in her narrative. by first descnig the house

and its situation in Berh-Mitte. By emphasising the location of the house and pondering

over the name of the neighbowhood in the historical context, she reveals the time and

place of the narration, and pushes the political context of unification into the foreground:

"Der Stadtteil, in dem das Haus steht, hieD weiter Mitte, als er liingst Rand war, dahinter

Niemandsland, von der SchuDwaffe wdeGebmuch gemacht7'(UM 7). The narrator carefully lays out the surroundings of the house, explaining how long one requires to walk from the house to various nearby points in the city, so that the reader can imagine almost precisely the comer on which it stands. She also describes the other houses on the street and compares the exterior of her house to them, so that a reader familiar with post- unification Berlin can almost visualise the building. She creates a frvther sense of familiarity as she descnks walking up the stairwell to her fourth floor apartment Every sound and smell is familiar to her, and she can connect each to the perennial habits of her fellow house-dwellers:

Im Treppenhaus h6rte ich, daD im zweiten Stock Frau Schwarz dabei war,

ihre Wohnung zu Ofhen, Ich kamte die Gertiusche, das Aushaken der

Tiirkette,. .das Rasseln der Schle~selam Bund, das Knacken und Klicken der SchliSsser, wenn der Sicherheitsschliissel zweimal, darm der mcker

gedrehf dabei an der Tm gertittek wmde.. .Da hatte Frau Schwarz die Ti&

aufbekommen und entIieD einen Schwdl Wohnungsgeruch in das

Treppenhaus. (UdNN 9)

Such meticulous, almost tender, description of the routines of the people around her indicates the level of comfort and kiliarity she feels in her house. Although she may not have positive feelings towards all of the inhabitaats, their habitual behaviours have become almost endearing to her, if simply for the constancy they provide to her daily life.

Her particular attention to the habits of others is also indicative of her fascination with watching the people and places around her.

Marianne also reflects upon the brightness ofher apartment: "Du [has4 nicht bemerkt, wie hell am Vormittag unsere Wohaung ist" (UdlW 11). Her comments are somewhat defensively directed at Johannes, who is not there, but who, in her mind, has no appreciation for the importance of light in a room, having never experienced how the light changes during the day since he works outside the house. She refers to a previous apartment in the second floor of the same building, which they traded, on her initiative, for this brighter one. She underlines the importance that light holds for her, by sneering at Johannes for not being as sensitive to his environment: 'Der Ausblick gefiel dir, die hellere Wohnung auch, obwohl du in der anderen weiter hattea leben ko~en,sogar in einer vie1 schli~~lfneren"WdNN 11). What attracts Marianne the most about her apartment are the light and noises from outside, rather than the inner furni-shings. This is also evident in her sketch of her workplace by the window: Die Some scheint aufmeinen Arbeitstisch, aber ich ziehe die Vorhtinge

nicht zy und das Fenster lasse ich offen Tagsiiber start mikh Stille.

Namlich sind mir nicht alle GeHusche gleich willkornmen. Stimmen,

Schritte, den geringen LiLrm des Schildemalers und der Klempner ziehe

ich laufenden Motoren vor, erst recht der Kreissiige, die unser

Kohlehiindler gelegentlich in Gang sem (UdNN 12)

This environment is where Marianne chooses to work and he, where not the ability to block things out, but rather the opportunity to let light and the sounds of the city wash over her, soothes and relaxes her.

The narrator's apartment also revitalises her when she is emotionally drained, in parti-cularafter stressfid encounters with her husband- She returns there after her telephone conversation with him on the night of 17 June. While it is late at night and the noises of the day are absent, Marianne can still hear the noises of the people whispering quietly on the other side of the thin walls: "DaD da gesprochen wid., hort man, nicht aber, was, nicht einmal, wo genau." (UdNN 128) The knowledge that the other inhabitants are there, being quiet, as she also is, gives her reassurance. Marianne also takes refuge in her apartment when she returns &om Mannheirn on 14 July, after having ended her relationship with Johannes. As she lies in her bed, eyes closed, she has opened her apartment to let the city in, to let the sounds and sensations of Berlin wash over her:

Alle Fenster sind geMhet, es gibt einen schwachen Durchzug heikr Luft

Wenn man sich nicht bewegt, ist die Hitze auszuhalten, sogar angenehm.

Im Hof platschert Wasser. Stimmen und andere Geriiusche kommen von hinten, aus der Werkstatt des Schildermalers. Sonst nichts, nur das

Rauschen der Stadt, einschlafernd wie die W-e- (UdNN 206)

As she lies there and reflects upon her stay in Mannheim, she recalls Johannes' apartment, and contrasts it to hers in Berlin, by weaving inteqections from the immediate present into the fabric of her recollections- While Jobannes' Mannheim apartment is bright like hen, it is very quiet, which, as she states eariier, disturbs'her during the day:

"'HeIligkeitund Stille. ..Der Tag vor mir war fiei. Ich wiude in den schmen, noch f~ leeren Mumen umhergehen, auf der Tenasse sitzen... und Zeit in einem Bad verbringen, das so groD war wie die Kiiche zu Hause'' (UM209). She paints a picture of a vast, luxurious house, surely a symbol of her husband's successfid financial integration into the West, but she perceives it as empty and lonely, and she is at a loss for what to do with her time. Noises fiom the courtyard outside her Berlin-Mitte apartment intermpt

Marianne's thoughts at this point. While the interruption is less refined and idyllic than the quiet and solitude she notices about the house in Mannheim, it is clear that she is comforted by the loud but light-hearted nagging and quarrelling of the workers outside:

Sie sprechen hier oft so laut Einer von den Handwerkern, denke ich Es

geht um das Wasser, sol1 es weiterplatschern oder was? und wer macht

den Bademeister? Mach du lieber den Biermeister, bates zuriick, bald

kt Feierabend. Die Geeusche sind voller geworden, die Femseher schon

dabei, und klingen sogleich hmer und trockener, als das Wasser abgestellt

wird, (UdNN 209)

Again Man-anne's connection with the world outside her apartment soothes her, and she resumes her recollections. Her next thought affirms the importance she places on familiarity with the outside noises, and on her ability to connect with her environment

The first thing she reflects upon as she returns in her mind to the Mannheim neighbourhood, is how impenetrable the other houses there seem to her probing imagination: "In die Gmdstiicke reichte meine Vorstellung rioch, in die Hiiuser nicht rnehr" (Urn209). Marianne prizes her apartment, not for its material A~~~stattung,but rather for the environment surrounding it It provides her with a place fiom which to observe the city around her. It is evident fiom the limitation she ascnis to the houses in

Mannheim that she places the utmost importance on the ability to imagine and be familiar with the details of the lives and lifestyles of the people around her. She opens the windows to let the somds and sensations of the city into her apartment, so that she can enjoy the therapeutic effect they have on her. She reiterates this once more after recalling her departure from Johanaes' house that morning, clinging to the noises fiom the courtyard for support in dealing with the separation: "Ichhore Stimmen und Geliichter.

Unten in der Gartenecke siben die Handwerker beim Bier- Die Geriiusche vom Hof sind angenehrn und einschliifernd wie die W&meyy(UdNN 2 16).

The final impression the reader has of Marianne's apartment, as she showers before going out for dinner with Norma, affirms the positive energy she derives fiom watching and listening to the city from her home. In revealing to Norma the ~multuous events of the past three weeks, she has just begun the healing process that will help her look ahead to a positive future in the unified Berlin. She is exhausted but content, and finds her disposition reflected and affirmed in the city she observes through the window in her shower-room: Am Fenster zu duschen, mit Blick auf Dcher und Tihue*sich mit

warmem Wasser zu berieseln, ._ das war fiir mich ein Fest,-- Ich sah den

Dunst iiber der Stadt, Fenster, die in der Abendsome gliihten, das

hingebreitete Grau und Rot der DBcher, den blassen Himmel und die

- stanen Baurnspitzen, alles wie erschapft von diesem Tag. (UW 156) -

Her apartment affords Marianne a place fiom which to contemplate Berlin. She interprets the city according to her mood, and seems to gather strength from its reflections of her thoughts and feeiings

b. "Die Liebmann's* Apartment

In Berlin offers an alternative model for the role of the flheur's apartment within the city. "Die Liebmarm" also retreats to her apartment in order to rejuvenate herself, and, as is the case with Marianne, she also feels most comfortable and soothed there.

However, "die Liebmann" clearly does not derive her energy fiom letting the city into her apartment, as Marianne does. Rather, she goes there to be alone and to block out the outside world- The noises which "die Liebmann" descnibes fiom outside the window offer a remarkably harsh contrast to the lulling voices and laughter outside Marianne's window:

Wer in diesem Haus schliift, schle. - - nahe der StraDenbahn iiber einem

Hof voller Katzen. Bei ge~fietemFenster hort er Tiergeschrei und das

Quietschen von Metall auf Metall, in Abstiinden fiiilen die Krachlawinen

der Flugzeuge im Anflug auf Tegel das Zimmer. Andere Geriiusche der Nacht kommen von Sirenen, Lastwagen, aneinanderlmallenden Waggom

auf dem Rnngierbahnhof .. (IB 14)

Whereas Marianne focuses on the more pleasant noises, and acknowledges that there are other noises, such as car motors, which she does not enjoy as much, the least grating and offensive of the sounds that "'die Liebmarm" hmrs fkom her window are heavy truck motors and sirens. This contrast indicates that Man'anne's feelings toward the city are as positive as "die Liebmann's" sentiments are begrudging and negative. Their stance toward the city further reflects the regard of each toward the political system governing the city. Marianne bemoans the swift and datedrejection of the old GDR values after unification: consequently, she clings to the ramshackle buildings decaying f?om years of neglect, does not look favourably upon the renovations quickly sweeping the city to make it look more like the West By contrast, "die Liebmam," living in East Germany in 1987, resents the GDR government for impairing her ability to travel fieely: as a result, everything she sees in the city breeds resentment in her, and she looks upon it with distaste and disgust. "DieLiebmann" keeps her windows closed as ofien as possible, locking the odious sounds of the city out ofher private sanctuary.

Nevertheless, once she has shut the abrasive city out of her realm, "die

Liebmann" is very fond of her apartment After returning from Vienna, she revels in her home, describing how, as she looks for some clothes, she 'Wdert sich iiber ihr eigenes

Zimmer, so ein riesiger Raum voll stiller Luft und paar braunen MBbeln" (IB 15). "Die

Liebmann" values the still, almost stagnant environment she is able to maintain within the confines of her apartment Later, she becomes agitated over the old papers piling up in her room, remnants of an old project, documenting the lives of the inhabitants of ~ro~e-~ambur~er-~~~~These papers overwhelm her and the thought of them sends her to the verge of physical collapse- She wants to distance herself fiom the clutter and confisios and from her past, as thoroughly as possible: ". .-jetzt will die Liebmann. .. sich davonmachen, das ist ihr ar schwer, weiterschleppen, das Ganze, vielleicht geht es der

Seele im K6rper auch so, wenn der zusammenkracbt- BloD weg hier, denkt so eine Seele, raus hier, denkt die Liebmann" (TB 17). She does not want to leave the physical space of her apartment so much as she wishes to escape from the remnants of what has been her life up until this point However, once she has tidied up the papers and the "'past" is no longer visible in her apartment, the soothing sanctuary of her apartment allays her anxiety again considerably. She is happy to be where she is, at least temporarily, and no longer feels the pressing need to move on: "Hat sie sich schon ma1 in einer Wohnung so wohl gefiihlt wie in dieser her, nein, hat sie nicht, nur her ist es schtin, hier will sie ble~kn

.. . " (IB 17). As long as "die Liebmann" is able to control what is in her apartment, and keep out the chaotic elements of the city, it provides her with great comfort and support

She depends on the space of her apartment, and the feelings associated with it, as a refuge fiom her personal history and that of the country.

If there is any doubt that it is her apartment in Pankow in that serves as a sanctuary, "'die Liebmann" dispels it with her cold description of the apartment to which she moves in West Berlin. This apartment is very small, makeshift and crude in comparison with her Pankow apartment:

20 The description of this project likely corresponds with Irina Liebmann's own work on Berliner Mietshaus, in which she meticulously documented the lives and living situations of the inhabitants of each of the apartments in an old Prenzlauer Berg Mietshs. This is one of many details (others would include her name and the approximate time of her departure from the GDR) that overtly indicate to the reader that Liebmann intends the figure of "die Liebmann" to be at least somewhat autobiographical, Die Liebmann lie@in einer Kammer?Uadchealcammerf hat ein FliichtIing

aus Persien ihr tapeziert, gesaichen hat sie sie selber und die Matrake

noch eingebaut.. .die Liebmann hat auch einen Vorhang hinter die schmale

Scheibe geWgt (IB 85)

Instead of referring to these entities as 'CWohnung,'7"Betty: ad CTenster7" "die

Liebmann" consciously calls them by names that underscore their iaferiority to her previous Living situation, whether in size or comfort: 'Xa~lmer,"c'Matratze'7 and

"schmale Scheik." For some reason, this apartment is unable to provide her with the same emotional comfort and reassurance that she derives from her Pankow apartment

Indeed, when her dissatisfying life and disappointing love affair in the West become too disillusioning, she flees to her Pankow apartment. When she arrives, she experiences a similar flood of warmth as Man-anne's when she returns to her apartment to seek refbge fiom the alienation and Wation in the West:

Tt ad, ist alles so warm hier, die Tiirfassungen aus braunem Hok,der

Schrank in der Kuche, und alles Besteck liegt wie age-t hier, das

Bad sogar warm und eingestaubt, die Liebmann geht in ihr Zimmer, so

hell ist der riesige Raum, und jeta schlafen, mckt sich aus adder Liege,

schlafi ein,. - denkt, wenn sie noch hier me, wiirde er sie noch besuchen,

meine Liebe, hier ja- (I6 90E)

Being in her old apartment gives her the illusion of having solved her problems.

Disturbed by the lack of interest her lover has shown in her since her arrival in West

Berlin, she feels as though placing distance between them once again, by moving back to

Pankow, would revive his affection for her. The solution is superficial at best: even if the ploy does entice her lover to visit her more often, it fimctions merely as a way to gloss

over potentially more fundamental problems in the relationshipP However, such is the

extent of the positive energy that her apartment exerts over her, that "die Liebmann" is

convinced that living there can solve her problems. After the Wall falls she moves back

to Pankow-

"Die~iebmak" is not conscious ofthe fkt that she is merkly fleeing her current

difficulties when she nurs back to her Pankow apartment, just as she is unaware that

living in East Berlin will not solve those problems. However, shortly after the Wall falls

she commences an unsuccessful search for a new apartment, perhaps subconsciously

aware of the fact that she uses the cowof her old apartment as a crutch Nothing

available appeals to her in comparison to her own apartment: '%I Tram geht die

Liebmann durch Wohnungen, dunkle, verschachtelte, Wuser stehn schief, mit Lachem

im Boden, Treppen, die Stufen vermtschen wie Bauklotze, immer dasselbe" (TI3 106).

She hdsthat very few people are interested in her place, "rmd wenn es ma1 ginge, dam

steht sie vor einem fiemden Haus und denkt: Hier? Will ich hier leben, nein" (IB 136).

One after another she finds that the apartments she views do not satisfy her need

As her relationship with the West Berliwr becomes increasingly negative, "die

Liebmann" begins to realise that superticia1 solutions to her problems will not meet with

any lasting success, and that she must find the root of the problem within herself As her quest for self-loowledge progresses, her dependence on her Pankow apartment dwindles,

and the likelihood that her search for a new apartment will come to fruition enters the realm of possibility. Indeed, in the novel's final chapter, "die Liebmarm" is genuinely happy with her environment in the city and independent in her outlook for the frrture. The final indicator that she has succeeded in coming to terms with the past is that she throws away the papers from her project and finds a new apartment into which she will soon be moving: "[sie hat] das game Papier weggeworfen, verschenkf die Wohauug gekimdigt, eine andere Wohnmg gefimden7'(IB 170). In this era of new beginnings after unification, the time has come for her to fke herselffkom her-previousinsecurities, and she now has the strength to deal with her own past and that ofher country.

The differences between the two narrators' feelings toward their apartments are pronounced While both enjoy withdrawing to their apartments, different circumstances motivate them to do so. Marianne's retreat does not represent a withdrawal from society-

She continues to interact with the world outside her apartment, even ifoaly as a receiver.

She derives a great deal of positive energy fiom listening to and contemplating the microcosm of society that exists outside of her window. 'Die Liebmann's" retreat into her apartment, however, represents an attempt at temporary withdrawal fiom society.

While both women are trying to find refuge from problems in their lives, "die Liebmand9 attn'butes the blame for these problems on the society around her, instead of reflecting on the roots of the problems that might lie within her. In blocking out the outside world she thinks she can escape her problems altogether, while really she must conf?ont her own demons in order to solve the difficulties, Once she has come to terms with her own dissatisfactions, she is much happier with the city uomd her, and is able to leave her sanctuary and interact once again. c. "Die Liebmann's" "buntes Cafe"

"Die Liebmad never explicitly discloses the meof her cafe in In Berlin to the reader, but refers to it consistently as the "%mtesCafe." Given the symbolism that

Liebmann associates with bright and colo~objects throughout the novel, the name of the caE alone is sficient to indicate to the reader that this is a place where dissidents meet "Die Liebmann" consiste~tlyportrays everything she sees in East Bedin as grey and drab, and objects or people associated with the West as bright and sparkling. She describes West Berlin with words like "golden," "gI&uenY'(B 85) and "glitzert" (IB 94), and marvels over her shoes from Italy which are "aus lila mit Silber admit eigentlich allen auf Silber erscheinenden Farben bedrucktern Leder" (IB 65). Thus, her reference to this locale as the '%buntCCaf' as well as her frequent mention of the many different coloun of lights shining in its two rooms, is allegorical for its ibction as a "glowing beacon" in the dreariness of an oppressive regime. Unhappy with her life and seeking to blame her discontent on the oppression under which she lives, it is logical that she seek company in a place such as this brightly coloured dissident cde, where many of the regulars have applied for exit visas to the West

At the cde, "'die Liebmann" has a forum for discussion of the merits of staying or leaving the country. Her feelings about the GDR have created conflict within her since her recent return fiom Vienna, and she is looking for some way to achieve clarity.

Lonely and dissatisfied, "die Liebmann" decides to return to the cafe. Although she does not participate in it herself, the debate between Eddi Wachsmann and Manne expresses her own inner conflict, and depicts the dissatisfaction of many GDR citizens. Wachmann is intent on leaving the GDR "Undwenn er zehn Jahre warten miJJte" (IB

37), whereas Manne, who has been permitted to visit relatives in the West but always

returns, confides in "'die Liebmann" in his Cognac-drenched slm. "Ich kann nicht weg!"

(IB 38) Eva, Manne's girlfriend, also complains very vocally about the state ofthings in

the GDR.

Liebmann further underscores the dissident tone of the die by descn'bing how

segregated it is from the world around it Liebmann mentions its deepset windows (TB

I%), removed fiom eyesight and fiout the streef and states: 'ton [der StraOe] guckt

schon lange keiner mehr dmCafe in die Fenster, die shd mit Gardinen verhilngt" (IB

33). "Die Liebmann's" gaze out of the cafe also helps to define the significance the

space holds for her. The window, which provides her with a view to the street, acts as a

threshold that divides the outside hmthe inside: it separates the dissident atmosphere of

the cafe from the obedient, almost submissive air of the people walking past it From

inside, "die Liebmamt' looks through the windows of the de(presumably through the

above-mentioned lacy curtains), and is transfixed by the sight of the passers-by on the

street, staring "so lange, bis sie versteht, was da so merkwiirdig ist: Die laden alle in eine

Richtung, die Menschen" @3 38). In looking out at the people on the street, "'die

Liebmann" grows aware of the difference between them and herself She sees a total

conformity and lack of individuality in the bent figures streaming by outside. Her

position inside the &e distinguishes her from those outside, and her wnscious

recognition of their lack of individuality strengthens her need to define her own identity.

The thought of joining the grey masses repels her, and she feels that by idenbifying herself with the cafe and its ""regulars"she will avoid this fate. 'Die Liebmann's" inclination to take the West Berliner to the '%untes Cafe" when

they first meet, further underscores the extent to which the dissident dehelps her to

define her identity- She is eager to point out to him the dissidence rampant amongst the

regulars at the de,dling one of her acquaintances to his attention: "der hat auch einen

Ausreiseantrag sagt die Liebmann, wir alley'(IB 66). Once again she underlines her

dissatisfaction with the GDR government and her desire to be identified with a group that

is not part of the mainstream-

The extent to which rejecting the profile of the average GDR citizen in favour of

the profile of the dissident constitutes self-awareness or a well-defined identity is

questionable. "DieLiebmann's" role within the context ofthe cafe is hazy at best.

Instead of demarcating who she is, her presence at the die merely helps her to define who she does not want to be. As "die Liebmann7s" sense of self-worth begins to crumble within the context of her later relationship with the West Berlin film critic, it becomes apparent that she has been defining her own identity too narrowly and has become too dependent on her status as a dissident in her understanding of herself..

After the climax of her identity crisis, ''die Liebmann" realises that her relationship with the West Berliner had been founded largely an the fascination with the exotic and the "forbiddeny*which each had presented for the other- Once the barrier of politically imposed separation no longer exists between them, neither is quite as alluring for the other as before. As soon as she moves to the West, the visits fiom her lover become less tiequent, and even her attempt to reinstate the physical separation to rekindle their relationship by moving back to her Pankow apartment does not work for long. She presented herself to him as an East German dissident, and it was in this role that she entered the relationship. With the disintegration of their relationship and the collapse of the WaIl and the GDR regime, she realises that the image that she presents to herself and to others is actually completely dependent on her reIation to the state in which she lives.

She re-examines her past in order to confkont the issues that have led to the feeling of dissidence, around which-she focussed her identity- Her altered perception ofthe '%untes

Cafey7after this examination of herself and her pest reveals the fm-reaching effects that this climactic revelation has exerted on her-

When "die Liebmann" returns to the cde after this crisis, she once again sees how some of the ccregulars'"lives @el hers. Now, however, she no longer regards the dissidence of the deand its customers as minoring her own dissatisfacdons. Rather, she sees the need to conf?ont and accept the past as implicit in the physical situation of the building. The barriers to the city outside, which once represented to her an attempt to dissociate the people in the cde fiom the oppressive reality of the GDR in the 1980s, have taken on a new significance. Because of the cafie's unique location in the GroDe-

Hamburger-Strak, "die Liebmann" can see this spatial dissociation now as a denial of

Berlin's more unpleasant past Directly across the street fiom the cafe are the old Jewish cemetery and a bronze memorial to the Holocaust, marking a place where thousands of the Berlin-Scheunenviertei's Jews were rounded up and temporarily contined before transportation to concentration camps. The strategic location of the cafe indicates that, although those inside the cafe might view the current GDR regime as being the only source of their problems, they must also confront the more removed past that they have inherited, in order truly to solve their problems. The Nazi legacy with which almost none of them identify, and fiom which the GDR has attempted to thoroughly dissociate itself, is an underlying issue, with which they must deal. The obligation of GDR citizens to come to terms with the Nazi past parallels "die Liebmann's" personal identity crisis and realisation that she cannot solve her problems by fleeing the GDR Rather, the narrator must turn to her childhood, and find the roots of her dissadsfacdon with the state in which she lives. She must re&se the prdound effect her past exerts on her attitude toward the GDR, so that she can begin to change the way in which she relates to her environment By installing this subtle parallel between "die Liebmann's" need to look to the past and the physical reminder in the city that society must do the same thing, the author shows that the city consists of layers of history. The historical landmarks of a city, particularly in Berlin, are reminders of what happened in that exact place in the past

Indeed, when '

Pankow for the time being, she recognises two layers of the past in the layout of the street: "dieLandschaft ihrer Gedanken! Was sie damals fiu gut hielt, fi& Mse, dles da, und es stand sich direkt gegentiber aufden StraOeuseiten, rechts - links, kana das s& und da ist sie geblieben-.." (IB 156). ''Die Liebmann's" awareness of the significant location of the cde for her own struggle is evidence once more that her observations and perceptions of the city are an extension of her personal state of mind. Thus it makes sense that she becomes aware of the historical ramifications of the cafCs neighbourhood at a moment when she realises the importance of reconciling herself with her own past.

When she returns to the deafter her ccrevelation,yyshe looks at it fiom an altered perspective. She no longer refers to it as "bun&"but merely as "dasCafe" @I3 155, 167).

She no longer needs to contrast it to the rest of the city in colour or brightness. Just as the city landscape surrounding the cafe no longer appears grey to her, but rather green, the cafie is no longer "'bunt"in contrast to it The city ceases to fed repressive to her, and the

cafe to be the "glowing beacon" of dl&dence- This altered penpctive is equally

attributable to the change in political climate as to the change in her perception of herself

and the world around her. The cafe is also relatively empty when she arrives there at the

end of the novel, and she notes in particular that "vome der Stammtisch ist ausgeriiumt-

(Il3 167). The dissidents, fiom whom "die Liebmann" once derived a great deal of her

sense of identity, have scattered, as the fmus of their dissent disintegrates with the

demise of the GDR

Two other cafi that "'die Liebmann7' mentions by name are significant: Cafe

Praha and Cafe Borchardt Cafe Praha, where she met her now-estranged East Geman

lover Georg, as well as her friend and admirer lohannes, is being tom down and replaced

by one of the faceless Argentinian steakhouses that can be found in any West German

urban centre. Despite her skepticism and lack of enthusiasm for the concrete building

housing the steakhouse, she is relieved to find that the cde has disappeared: "gut ist es auch, endlich, die Cafes sind weg" (IB 166). VieLiebmann7' associates not only her own cafe, but cdes in general, with shortcomings of dissident behaviour in the GDR.

The other die that Liebmann refers to by name is Cafe Borchardt. 'Die Liebmann's"

West Berlin lover is the first to bring it up, distracting her £iom her work by asking if she has heard of the new "cutting-edge" cde that has opened up in the East since the fall of the Wall: ". .. aber sie kann ihm vielleicht sagen, was das ist, Borchardt, sol1 irn Osten er6ffUet habe, so ein hkal, wo sie alle jetzt hingehn, nein kemt sie nkht ..." @3 106).

But in her reminrminrscencesof her childhood, "'die Liebmanny'recalls her father taking her to a beautlfd, decadent Ciife, which had its heyday before the war and which she later discovers has re-opened since unification: ". ..Borchardt heat das Lokal. Davor eine

Baugrube, riesig" (IB 118). The restaurant that is becoming popular in the unified city is a caE from the city's past," which is being revived and incorpomted into the new Berlin

The cdethat is closing is one that is inextricably associated with the GDR In remarking on the fates of these two cdes, '=die Liebmann" notices how the city of Berlin, in restructuring its identity within the context ofa unified Germany, is turning around to embrace the past that it has so thoroughly rejected over the past forty This acceptance of the city's past again parallels her need to come to terns with the injustice done to her dissident father in the past in order to find her own identity once the GDR government has collapsed Once again, the di provides a mirror for "die Liebman's7' own feelings of change and need to reestablish a new identity after the downfd of the

GDR

d. Marianne's Cafe

Marianne Arends also presents the cde as a mirror for the city, but in a less introspective and more obsemational manner than does '=dieLiebmann." In contrast to the role of the cde in "&dieLiebmann's" Berlin as mirror for herselc the dein Unter dem Namen Norma affords Marianne a forum for studying the people of the city and extrapolating their actions to reflect the state of lingering psychological division of

'I Significantly, she refas to Borchardt as a cpfe in her father's time, but as a restaurant when it reopens in unified Berlin, 22 The resemblance that the name "Cafe Borchardt" bears to the name of the post-war German writer Wolfgang Borchert is striking, kina Liebmann has cited Borchert as an example of an author who was able to immediateIy grapple with the events of the Second World War In an intemiew with Amelie Heinrichsdorc she states that Borchert's death marked the beginning of a long penpenodof repression in Berlia These extrapolations reveal Marianne's preconceptions concerning her

environment and thus provide the reader with insight into her character The dein

Norma is not a place that Marianne has ever visited other than the two times she goes

there during the course ofthe novel. She is not amongst good fiends there, but rather

sits alone the first time, after Max deserts her to talk to his. fkiends at the bar, the second

time together with Norma This cafii also serves as a forum where people vent &eu

discontentment- However, Marianne does not participate in this dismay in the same way

that "'die Liebmann" does, but rather "reads" the interaction of the figures in the deas a

microcosm of society at large.

Max first brings Ma~ameto the cafe- The discussion in the cafe revolves around

the state of the city in the aftermath of the "revolutionyythat marked the end of the GDR-

A disparate mix of people fill the die, each representing a different "type7' of person who

might stroll around former East Berlin in the early evening Ande, a fiend of Max7and a

"bewiihrter Aussteiger" dismayed with both the GDR aod unified Germany, owns the

cafe and his like-minded., eco-friendly acquaintances populate the "Stammtisch."

However, it is not the people at the "Stamrntisch" that hold Mirime's interest, but rather

the interaction she observes between the others in the cde. She beholds two unemployed

men., who, she speculates, "waren hier sicher schon eingekehrt, als die Kneipe noch nicht

an die Fremden gefden war, die den Tresen belagerten und allesamt Freunde des Wirtes zu sein schienen," (Urn81) sitting near a couple fiom the West, cbdurstigeTouristen,"

(Urn82) by the fiont entrance. Her description of the two couples betrays her feelings about the relations between the East and the West of the city. She portrays the Western

German literature: "Ich glaube, d& die Zeit van, im Grude, wann ist der Borchert gatorben, '47?, war ja HeinrichsdorfFS). tourists as unwittingly threatening predators: on the prowl for a glimpse of the ccexotic''

East German culture, and yet uninterested in the reality of everyday East German life that surrounds them, and oblivious to the sentiments of the ccOssis"at the table next to them:

... geubte Reisende und als solche im Osten unterwegs, vielleicht

absichtlich von der Touristenrouteabgewichen adder Suche nach

Autheutischem, durch keinen Insfinkt gewamt vor dem Eingeborenen, der

sie Mse belauerte* weil er sie.. .als Eindringlinge aus dem Lager der Sukeren betrachtete, _ - - die sich hier-. - iiber kun oder lang als Herren auf33hren wiirden. - - (UdNN 83)

Marianne's portrayal ofthe cceingeborenen'7East Germans' reaction to the couple is equally ironic. In observing them, she conjures up a precise caricature of resentful

"bOssis,"who perceive the West German couple as being perhaps wilfully unaware of the presence of the East Germans, and unconscious of their role as ccoppresson." Marianne imagines the East Germans' perceptions of the West Germans, charactensing them further as the "[Gegner], der [die zwei Miinner] ahnungslos oder bewul3t ignorierte, nicht wahrhaben wollte.. ." (UdNN 86). She observes them interpreting the arrival and presence of West Germans here as an implicit reminder of the many hardships of the former inhabitants of the GDR, and bitterly recollecting their history as a series of betrayals :

.. . in den Pausen einvemehrnliches Vergleichen und Sumrnieren der

geschichtlichen Ertrage: Untenn Strich plusminus null fGr ihresgleichen,

frirher betrogen und heute wider und jedesrnal von den eigenen, erst den

Klassenbridern, nun den Landsleuten, mit denen man unbedingt vereinigt sein wollte, war ja das Richtige, aber wer konnte ahnen, wie die sich dann

auffiitven wiirden. -.(UdNN 85)

The lack of interaction here is significaut, and neither party feels positively toward the other: the ccOssis"are embittered towards the "intruders," and the "'Wessis" are oblivious to the '2inheimischen."- And yet, the colour with which Marianne describes the two pairs betrays the enjoyment she finds in elaborating upon what she observes and imparting her own feelings and prejudices to her representation of them. The reader wonders whether the narrator is entirely reliable. Cleverly, Marianne's choice of words conveys not only a sense of the tensions and sentiments that are certainly extant in post-unification Berlin, but also a resounding impression of her urge to concoct stories about the people surrounding her, according to her own ideas about unification. Bunneister achieves a masterful balance of suspense as to whether the rising tension in the situation is about to explode, or whether, bored, the narrator is merely flexing her fmtasy muscles. As the

East German men's anger seems to reach a pealr, the tourists decide to leave the cde.

Marianne's description of their departure is also very telling with regard to the power relationship between the two parties, and by extrapolation about East and West Germany.

The representation of the two pairs is reinforced through the description of their exit fiom the cde. With confidence and self-assuredness, the West Geman couple c'z<e.. .Miinzen auf den Tisch, nabm seine Sachen und ging hinaus, auf der StraOe einen Moment unschliissig, in welche Richtung dam ab nach rechts, den Weg zur U-

Bahn" (UcINN 88). Nonchalant and accustomed to making decisions, the West Germans are only briefly undecided as to which direction they should take to get to the metro.

They do how what their destination is, and they quickly and confidently decide upon the appropriate route to take them there. The East German men's reaction to the couple's

departure is one of bewilderment, unsure of how to respond to their ccopponents"'

complete disengagement fiom their imagined stand-off: :'?)er Alte und der Junge guckten

hinterher, verdutzt, weil ihnen unvenehens der Feind abhanden gekommen, und

unentschieden, ob sie &sen schnelles Verschwinden als Sieg oder Niederlage verbuchen

sollten" (Urn88). The slow, befiddled reaction that Marimaknbes to the East

Germans conveys a complete lack of control on their part in the imagined battle to protect

their property and culture Born an enemy that seems completely oblivious to their

existence. She describes their lack of initiative and power once again when they leave

the cafe, shortly after the depamne of the "enemy":

DrauDen verharrten sie ungefahr an derselben Stelle wie vordem der

en*schte Feind, aber laager und anscheinend uneins, wohin. Sie drehten

die KBpfe, wiesen nach links, nach rechts, gingen schlieDlich aufdie

anderen StraOeuseite, blieben wider stehen und berieten weiter ,,,

SchlieDlich gingen sie los, in Richtmg U-Bahn (UdNN 96)

Following in the footsteps of the departed West Germans, the men are unsure of which

way they want to go, not because they are unfamiliar with the whereabouts of their

destination, but because they do not know what their destination is. Fdly, for no other

reason than an inability to think of a better place to go, they head in the same direction as the "Wessis" minutes before them.

Through her acute narration of this sequence, Marianne casts on a relatively innocuous scene all the weight of the political issues of the moment Each pair reflects its own state's reaction to unificsrtion- The West Germans, confident in their wishes and goals, are only momentarily codbed by their environment, and then carry on with their

plans. West Germans are accustomed to having to make decisions as consumers and

citizens in everything that they do; emerging from their history as a capitalist nation, they

are confident in what they want and where they want to go. The East Germans, on the

other hand, resewof the very presence of the West Germans, are confused when given

the choice of direction to take- Theu government, whose fundamental foundations have

now disappeared, had always afforded them with the answer to questions of political

direction. Confkonted with a decision of which direction to take, they are confirsed, and

take the "road most travelc toward the U-Bahn. Significantly, there are numerous

other directions they could have taken, and indeed begin to take, but ultimately they

follow the West Gennans' lead-

Marianne's interpretation of this scene reflects her own position towards her

fellow ex-GDR-citizens. She is dismayed by the fact that many of them are so quick to

follow the West's example of a capitalist democracy and tries to show that alternatives exist, but that East Germaos, in their haste to catch up with Western standards of living, are ignoring them. When Max comes over from the bar to join Marianne, he remarks that he, too, had noticed that ''hier der Klassenkampf [schwelte]" (UdNN 97). The reader is thus Iefi with the impression that the tensions that b-anneretays are indeed at least somewhat representative of the socio-political situation in WedBerlin. However, her interpretation of their departures also establishes the pleasure she takes in weaving her own political views into the everyday.

The division of physical space within the deoffers a further metaphorical layer-

Marianne identifies three distinct groups of people within the cafie, each of which occupies a particular area of the mom. The two East German men and the West Geman

couple sit at the &oatofthe cafet near the bright, open entrance; k his group of

flighty and hyper-optimistic "Szenetypen," stand around the bqand a small, sombre

group who sits around the "Stammtischn are quietiy taking part in a public reading- Each

group represents a particular reaction to the contemporary circumstances. Remarkably, -

the political awareness represented in each group increases corresponding to the distance

it is removed from the entrance to the cde, the threshoId to the outside world (VdNN

84f ). Likewise, the further each group is removed fiom the entrance, the less clear it is

what precisely their approach entails and, consequently, to what extent it will be

successfuL The group closest to the door, for example, are pervaded with a repressed

hostility toward one another and offers no good model for improving the situation of

unified Germany, whereas the firrthest group from the door speaks in even, hushed tones,

not suggesting that they have an answer to the problems they all are facing, but at least

not failing as clearly as those at the ftont The relative clarity with which the former

group is portrayed reflects the fact that this approach has been tried and has not

succeeded; the lack of clarity with which Marianne perceives the latter group reflects her

uncertainty as to whether such an approach has a better chance for success, or what precisely it invoives,

In the front of the ca6e sit the East German men and the West German couple.

These are average citizens, and presumably quite representative for each state. Their reaction to one another is based on resentment and dislike on the one side and exoticisation and condescension on the other. These people's interactions are governed by instinct and stereotypes (UdNN 83) and not by an intellectual struggle with the issues at hand The East Gennans in the fiont of the cafe are unhappy with the current situation

but prove incapable of doing anything to change it or act on their fedings. The outcome

of this cbc~nfLi~77is fnuiess. No communicationoccurs, and no fixther understanding

results fiom it: if anything, the encounter serves to reinforce the stereotypes.

Further in from the entrance, sitting ''an der Theke," are a group of Max' fiends,

with whom he shares his political beliefs. warme portrays this group as typical of the

'alternative" scene in Berlin These people see themse1ves as politically and

environmentally mindfirl and indeed have a more objective and less self-pitying

awareness than the pairs at the fiont of the cafie. However, although Marianne only

barely discerns the gist of theu conversation over the noise in the cafeyshe dismisses

them as too radical and UIlfocussed While they do attempt to make plans to realise their

aims, these ideals appear abstract and to her: "Sie erschienen mir selbtgewia

und nachdenklich aufsorglose Art, als wiire mit dem Leben zurechtzukommen und das

Richtige zu tun eine Auf"bey deren L6suug zugesichert war, mochte es im eiazelnen

auch schiefgehen" WdNN 89). This group's attitude does have the potential for more effective, positive solutions than that ofthe people at the front., but does not seem

sufficient in view of the immense problems with which their era presents them. In the wake of unification, these people are optimistic about changing their environment for the better, in a manner that clearly does not correspond with Marianne's own generally pessimistic view after the collapse of the GDR

The third group in the cde is seated at the dark rear of the room. Significantly,

Marianne only mentions their presence, and cannot fkther descni their actions or attitude. They remain impenetrable to her comprehension: .. . es [gab] hinten einen sehr grok, nmdea Fisch]. In seiner Mine war

vennutlich ein Schild rnit der Inschrift Stammtisch aufgepflanzt, nun

verdeckt von zusammengertickten Riicken, am deren Richtung Rauch und

monotones, ununterbrochenes Sprechen kam, es Hang, als ~dedort

vorgelesen. (UdNN WE)

The reader cannot overlook the distance that exists between the working class East

Germans at the from of the deand the obscure intellectuals at the back The group in

the back appears oblivious to the other Life in the cafe* and their "monotones Vorlesen"

strikes the reader as stiff and scholastic in contrast to the animated conversations occurring elsewhere. In this way, BBurmster gently mocks herseIf and other intellectuals for the gravity with which they contemplate their situatiom However, Marianne has a difficult time discerning what precisely this group at the back table is discussing. Their distance fiom the author and from the front of the cde is not only physical, but also mentai, This distance is indicative of the intellectual'dwciter's removal from the everyday world, and of the average person's Limited understanding of his or her perspective. However, although it is evident that the intellectuals in the back are distanced fiom the rest of society, Marianne's inability to make out their conversation also implies that she does not and cannot reach any conclusion about their success in coming to terms with the changes wrought by unification. Whether an intellectual perspective fares better in adjusting to the new reality remains unclear to both Marianne and the reader. This allows Burrneister to leave the question open as to whether authors play a useful role in the new Germany, and whether her own interpretation of the situation in this novel is valid, In the end of the novel Marianne re- to the same de,this time bringing

Norma with her. At this point, after her elaborate lie about her past has brought about her separation fiom Johannes that day, she no longer focuses on the politics of division among the people in the cde- Rather, she seeks out the more constructive aspects of the

"post-revolutionary7' situation, which she thinks loosely parallels the aftermath ofthe

French Revolution Norma manages to cajole her back into her "people-watching" mode, and together they conceive stories about the people theysee in the cde. However, regardless of the liberation she feels in concocting a story about the longhaired man standing with Max' friends at the bar, she comes to the realisation that she can

"CkJeinern...eine wake Geschichte egen,dip aicht seine war" (LJdNN 270)- Over the course of the novel ManManamebecomes more hopefbl in her outlook on the firmre of the new Germany. She feels inspired to use her observations of the city to build constructively toward its fuhue, as opposed to focussing her negativity on the West and her husband's departure there At the same time, however, she realises that there are limitations to the stories she is at liberty to invent.

The cafe serves in both novels as a place in which to obsene people's reactions to their political environment However, each narrator's awareness of her observations has an effect on how the reader interprets these observations. In In Berlin the &e mirrors

"die Liebmann's" own inner conflicts resulting fiom the turmoil of unification; in Unter dem Namen Norma Marianne uses the cafe as a mirror to reflect the prevalent societal attitudes toward unification. 'Pie Liebmann" observes things about others that inform the reader of her thoughts: her practical assimilation of the views of those arouad her indicates how closely she identifies with the dissident spirit Marianne's observations, by contrast, while more distanced and "scientific," r& her own disposition in a different way. She makes up stories outright, and her self-conscious stereotyping reflects the distance she feels to people around her. Marianne finds her identity in the cde by establishing herself as the distanced observer, "die Liebmanu" finds her own identity as one of the cde's dissidents- For both narrators, however, the cde fimctions as the place they go in order to capture the "spirit* of the times.

2. Outdoor Spaces in the City

Although Unter dem Namen Norma and In Berlin share the apartment and the cde as their most central spaces in the city, Burmeister and Liebmann diverge in the places on which they focus in their further description of Berlin. Burmeister uses a doubling technique in Marianne's approaches to the city in the two halves of her novel to underline her change in attitude toward the city; "die Liebmann" tends to emphasise certain parts of the city, creating leitmotivs that run throughout her narration In each of the two sections of Unter dem Namen Noma, Marianne contemplates the city early in the morning - upon arrival at her howand in Berlin, respectively - and late at night, as she walks home. 'Die Liebm-" on the other hand, focuses on particular elements of the city throughout the course of the novel: the sidewalk and the SBahn. The narrator uses these places as tools with which to chart the progress of change in "'her"Berlin over the course of the four years (1987 to 1991) that the novel spans. In both novels, the nacfators' descriptions of these places indicate to the reader how their feelings toward the city and toward their political environment change over time. a. Marianne's "Outer" City

Burmeister opens the first section of Unter dem Namen Norma with Marianne7s narration of her approach to the house in which she Lives. This house is clearly very dear to her, and her understanding and observation of it lead her to regard it as the centre of her life in Berlin. It initially appears similar to dl of the other houses on Luisenstdet an average GDR apartrnent-bow, and therefore a "monstrosityy7in the light of new building standards of unified Germany: "durchschnittiich dilrftig, wie es war und blieb, so daD jetzt, in neuern Licht, seine HaSlichkeit kolossal erscheinf' (Urn7). However, for anyone who cares to take the time to look, it becomes apparent that the inhabitants of the house lend it colour, and that they are not, as one would initially presume, merely 'eine graue, grihnliche Masse, in vier Schichten auf das Vorderhaus und die hinteren Eingiinge

A bis E verteilt" (UW7). The fact that the house is precious to her is obvious in her detailed attention to it, which lends it individuality, wiping out the stereotypes of monotony that might otherwise prevail: =Wem man jedoch eine Weile stehen bleibt, treten aus den Ttiren Einzelw, die liicheln oder zufdlig bunt sind und das Gesamtbild verwischen, so did3 sich wenig Allgemeines mehr sagen lat -2' (UdNN 7). In describing the house and her street as spaces that have withstood historical turmoil and thus proven their stability and earned her affection, Marianne establishes a paradigm for the beginning of the second section of the book as well.

The second part of the novel opens with Marianne's arrival in Berlin. After a long train ride through the early hours ofthe moming fiom Mannheim, she finally catches sight of Berlin. As she descnis her house as a positive space in the beginning of the fist section, so does she represent Bedin as a positive space as she flees fiom the

negative memories of Mannheim and her visit with Joharmes. She feels overcome with

relief at the mere sight of the city and the knowledge that it is dl as she remembered it,

and has not moved in her absence: ccWirhaben die Stadt erreicht Alle muser, an denen

der Zug jetzt vorbeifahrt, sind Hauser in Berlin Die Stadt ist da, hat sich nicht von der

Stelle gedxt, w-nd man ihr fin eke Weile den Riicken kehrte" ([JdNN 175). In contrast to Johannes and the rest of her lifeTthe city provides a wostancy that is

comforting. Feeling deserted, she is like a child who fears that everything will disappear once it is out of sight Indeed, she describes the train's entrance into the city as an envelopment; the personified city is reminiscent of a mother taking children into her arms to comfort them: "'Adunverriickten Gleisen nimmt [die Stadt] den Zug in sich a& Ihre heirnkehrenden Einwohner begiikn sie irn stillen. Oder h6rbar. Da biste ja, sagt weiter vorne eine Miinnerstinme und Wingt gem(UdNN 175). She describes many similar emotional reactions of other passengers on the train, depicting the arrival in the city as a happy reunification between the people and their home. Just as the first section describes the apartment building in terms of endearment, in the second part the city of Berlin as another dear and familiar home. Within the context of unified Germany, Berlin is as dear and as comforting to Marianne as her own living room.

After dropping the bulk of the train's passengers off at Westkreuz and Zoo

Station, the train continues on to bring Marianne to the Friedrichstde station. After weeks in the West, the disparity between East and West Berlin is stark. In contrast to the

"unversehrt wirkenden Stadtteile" of the West, the East is a hauntingly barren space, "bei deren Anblick ein Fremder an Erdbeben, Krieg und marodierende Banden denken, sich fbchten kBnnte, auszusteigen," but which its inhabitants are nonetheless happy to reach:

'Die Einheimischen nehmen erleichtert ihr Gepiick" (UW177). One cannot underestimate her own joy at reaching the intimate territory when she disembarks at

FriedrichstraOe. The confusing and overwhelming signs and symbols of the city are all familiar to her, although they would certainly disorient a newcomer:

Niemand wamt vor dem Weitergehen, hinunter dmch Giinge und Hallen,

vorbei an Schildem voller Namen, GroDbuchstaben und Zahlen, and

Pfeilen, Piktograrnmen, Durchgangsverbotea, treppauf treppab durch ein

beschrifietes Labyrinth, in dern Fremde verloren sin& wenn ihnen kein

gliicklicher Zufidl, kein Ortskiindiger hil& diesem Bahnhof tu

entrimen. - - (UdNN 184)

Marianne describes the train station as a labyrinth laid out with enough signs to thoroughly confuse the unfamiliar passer-through, but the twists and tums of which she knows and is able to navigate. This comparison of the station to a ccbeschrifietes

Labyrinth" is a reference to the writings of earlier fliineurs. The city as a maze is a popular nineteenth-century metaphor that takes on semiotic complexity as signs, directions and advertisements proliferate in all of Berlin's comers at the close of the twentieth centwy- As the Friedrichstrak station transforms fiom a sombre border crossing into a bustling central hub, no one is sure in what direction to head. In a similar sense, unified Berlin, with all its potential avenues and directions, is the ultimate labyrinth. Just as the two East German men leaving the c&e were unsure which path to take, no one knows which direction is the c'right" one for Berlia The many signs overload the navigator and become meaningless or even confusing. Significantly, Marianne is able to find her way through the station "aus alter Gewobnheit" and without

the help of the many signs: "Mirmul) niemand heKen, ich keme den Weg" (UdNN 184).

She is speaking not only ofthe way to her apartment here, but also - somewhat smugly -

of the way into the hefor the new Berlin, which, according to Man'anne, involves

reflection on and incorporation of the past when rebuilding the city and society- This

optimism and self-assurance, which are inspired by her familiarity with and love for

Berlin, anticipate her outlook at the end of the second section, where she looks positively

into the future for the new Berh

b. Marianne's 'Inner" City

Burmeister also devises a parallel between the endings of the two sections of the

novel. In both, Marianne finds herself walking home at night and contemplating the city,

the first time alone after an argumentative telephone conversation with Johannes from the

new telephone booth a short distance from her apartment; the second time together with

Norma. Her walk home alone through the still streets on 17 June offers her an opportunity for solitude and reflection on the nature of her neighbowhood, Berlin-Mitte, in the newly unified city. Almost three years after the collapse of the Wall, which stood only a block away from her house, she still observes the former boundaries of the city.

Although she does venture over to the other side of the former course of the Wall, the fact that she can do so is still remarkable to her. "Ich wdte, wie es jenseits der S-Bahn-

Briicke aussah. Ich konnte die StraDe zuendegehen, nick mehr aufeine eiseme Wand zu.

Erleichterung spiirte ich immer noch, inmikchen ohe ein GeMdes Unwirklichen" 1 11). Indeed, she often retraces the course of the habitual stroll of her deceased

neighbows along the come of the Wdl, observing the boundary of the Wall as though it

were still there. The area of the city on her side of the former border is clearly more

familiar to her than what lies beyond: "Aus der schmalen StraDe k~mteich hinaus auf

freies Gelwde, aber es istmir unheimlich geblieben Ich halte mich in der N&e der alten

Mauern mit ihrem alten Geruch, hier in meinem Dorf' (Urn1 15)- The separation

Marianne feels fiom the Western half of the city is evident, and is complemented by the

almost alienated objectivity with which she takes in the city on this evening- She refers

to the cbseltsameStille" that reigns in the empty streets, which are haundngly lit by the

moon and the street lanterns, and dominated by a shimmering statue depicting a man

conquering a beast? Her alienation changes to subjectivity as she becomes nostalgic about the city and the prospect of leaving it:

Nach diesem schmutzigen Flu& der grauen UferstraOe, dern

monumentalen Grenzbahnhof, nach den Ziigen Uber StraI3enverkehr und

Wasser hinweg, der Weidendammbriicke mit kern gul3eisemen Zierat,

nach den Lastkihnen, den Mowen, dem farblosen Winterhimme1 und dem

Geruch verheizter Braunkohle, nach diesem Bruchstiick Stadt Wdeich

im Exil Heimweh haben-+. (Urn1 16)

It is in this vulnerable state that she is '%kited" by her imaginary daughter, Emilia, who hovers luminescently above the River Spree as Marianne gazes out £?om the bridge.

Emilia has a ghost-like presence, and her constant challenges function as a manifestation of Marianne's conscience, her feelings of failure and her emotional pain Mer this

This statue is dedicated to Rudolf Vucbw. a microbiologist who lectured u the Berlin University in the mid-nineteenth century, and who was a pioneer in research on the human immune system draining encountert Marimnets perception ofthe city greatly alters, and the city now appears harsh and unfriendly 'Die SaaOe war hart, die Wuserwiinde waren ha* die

Latemenpmhle, die Autos am Stdenrand und die wenigen, die no& vorbeIfUhren, alles urn mich her war hart.. ." (UdNN 126). Once again, the city reflects Marianne's own frame of mind She cannot separate Berlin fkom her own person; she can only see it through the filter of her own sentiments.

The conclusion of the second section of the novel parallels the conclusion of the first in its notion ofthe city as reflection of the narrator's emotional state. Burmeister reveals Marianne's optimistic attitude about coming to terms with unification not only through her conversation and pact with Norma and Max, but also through her portrayal of the city as she sits in the cafi at the end of the novel. She resolves that fiendship and mutual support amongst East G~rmansare the key to survival and happiness in the hture.

This resolution represents a conscious decision not to follow Johannes' example of

"selling out7' to the West. With this newly discovered idealisation of mutual support,

Marianne personifies the buildings on the street and perceives them as supporting each other in dealing with the consequences of their GDR past: "... hohle] brcickelig[e]

HIiuser, die aussehen, als stiitzten sie sich gegenseitig, als seien sie in gemeinsamem

Verfall miteinander verwachsen.,." (VdNN 272). She does not walk home alone on this evening, as at the end of the first hall; but is accompanied by Noma. The two women have just sworn a friendship pact, and this walk home together indicates Marianne's resolution to use partnership and mutual support to fight the loneliness and disorientation resulting from the changes brought on by unification. Marianne clearly leaves behind the confusion and self-doubt that overwhelmed her during her walk home through the city in the fim section. Indeed, as she enters the courtyard ofher apartment house. she remarks to herself that Emilia, the embodiment of the failures of the past, does not plague her this evening. She explains Emiliaysabsence with the fact that if Emilia were here, she would be forced to recognke that "anscheinend sei mir doch noch ru heWen7' (UdNN 286).

c. The Sidewalk in In Berlin

Whereas Burmeister presents h4ariame'smost significant observations about the city as a set of parallel beginnings and conclusions to the two halves of Unter dem Namen Norma,

Liebmann uses a set of leitmotivs to reflect "die Liebmann's" attention to specific details. The general decrepitude of the city is the focus for many of her descriptions, but the buckled sidewalk in particular - cchuckligesPflaster9'- recurs in her observations. She uses the buckled sidewalk as a metaphor for the surfacing of a yet unsurrnounted pt-

Near the beginning of the novel "die Liebrnann" establishes the association of the uneven ground with the past: "... an den EinschuBlcTchem halten sich Dreckbatzen von viem-g

Jahren, von fiinf3rig, von sechzig, das Trottoir wellt sich, Pflaster wechselt mit Pfiitzen und Erde.. ." (E3 18). Superficially it seems that "'die Liebmann" is complaining about the lack of public maintenance and construction in East Berlin. However, her choice of words makes it clear that she is not just criticising the present government, but also past regimes are "haunting" her. Her allusion to build-up of dirt on the walls of buildings literally refers to the mud splattered by passing streetcars, but figuratively implies that time has not "cleansed" the GDR of its past, but rather that a lack of attention to the past has compounded the "dirt" on this State. Her reference to bullet-holes, left in facades by the tanks in the 1945 Battle of Berlin, draws the reader's attention to the Nazi paq and reminds us of the victory of the Soviet army that led to the formation of the GDR The stress of consrantly having to confront the past results in the welling up of the concrete of the sidewak and these two sentences run into each other, demonstrating the connection between the two thoughts. Thus, the buckling of the concrete, while, like the dirt build- . up on the walls, literally a sign of negligence, is also a representation of the unattended past, which, under the immense pressure ofpresent circumstances, is forced up and causing imperfections in the surface.

'Die Liebmann" again draws on this metaphor while observing people on

Oranienburger Stral3e. She encourages the reader once again to ponder not just the state of the sidewalk, but to question what is underneath it: 'Dunkle Berliner Hauser, denen der Putz abMlt aufdas nasse Master, das schief und hucklig die Erde bedeckt, wenn da

Erde drunter ist, was man bezweifeln k6nnte77(IB 44). Although literally there is earth underneath the sidewalk, she encourages the reader to think metaphorically of what might be pushing toward the sltrface in terms of unresolved issues of the past. She asks ironically why the "long-suffering'" GDR citizens should be obliged to clean up the disarray of the broken concrete:

FuDgmger, gebeugte Gestalten, wie die brav ihre F& draufsetzen, in eine

bestimmte Richtung gehen, den Mund dabei halten im Dezember. ..

Warm sollen die sich denn bucken und Steine aufhekn, die Hade

schrnutzig machen, nur weil die br-keln, fallen, aus dem Waster ruckeln,

iiberall auf sich adtnerksam machen, die Steine, und anders wird das nicht

mehr werden (lB 44) In her own journey into the past through her remembrance ofher childhood, she

establishes the buckled ground as an image of an "uneven" past The buckled ground

appears again in her recollection of her disappointing first visit to the West in the early

1950s. Having been told by her nanny, rise, of the wealth and riches that abound there,

she instead Grids "eke Stelle--.wo wohl ein Haus fehlte, der Boden war huckiig und - Ziegelsteine ragten iiberall raus, da standen Tische und Gartenstehle, und Uses

Schwester. .. " ('51 18). The floor she depicts here is noticeably more jagged than the

sidewalk in the GDR, with bricks protruding in many places. The particularly ragged

floor mirrors the atrocities of the Nazi past Neither East nor West Germans had

managed to deal with the Holocaust in the early 1950s, and as a result, the "scars," as

represented by the patchy floor and protruding bricks, have not yet begun to heal, and are

still quite visible. Perhaps more significant, however, is the fact that this is "die

Liebmann's" first visit to the West, which nse has promised her will be opulent, wealthy

and luxurious beyond her imagination Indeed, the train station, where they - and all

other tourists - fust arrive, f'blfils this expectation: "...in der Bahnhofshalle [gab es]

iiberall kleine Verkaufsstiinde, in denen es leuchtete, glitzerte .. . " (IE3 11 8). However, the contrast provided by the ramshackle condition of Use's sister's cchouse~'illustrates the superficiality of the sheen of the West That the child's attention is focussed on the buckled floor of the "house," is a reminder that West Germany, despite the beginnings of its economic success, the Wirtschaftswunder of the 1WOs, nevertheless is burdened by the past. This flashback into her past is the point at which 'die Liebmann" realises that she must come to terms with her own past in order to achieve contentment, and that leaving the GDR for the idealised West is no solution. In the final pages of the novel the reader finds that unification and the rush of new construction projects io Berlin have seen to the repair of the sidewalks: meBiirgersteige in der Oranienburger sind neu gepflastert.. ." (IB 167). As "die Liebmann" looks toward a more optimistic future, the restoration of the sidewalks implies that the unification of

Berlin furthers the process of resolving and coming to terms with the pastZ4Whereas

'die Liebmann's" complaints of the broken sidewalks was directed at the GDR she no longer resents her East Geman past in the way she did. At the end of the novel she reconciles herself with her past, and no longer clings to her notion of the GDR as enemy.

Rather, she has come to realise that both national and personal identity are constructs7and as such are subject to change.

d. The S-Bahn in In Berlin

The other site that receives particular attention in Liebinam's novel is the S-

Bahn. 'Die Liebmann" nanates her travel on the SBahn at various points throughout the novel. The S-Bahn fimctions as a connection between the East and the West of the city, and frames the nartative. The reader's first picture of Berlin is from the S-Bahn, with which "'die LiebrnaM" travels home fiom the airport, after arriving fkom Vienna The S-

Bahn here provides her entrance to the East from the West, and a glimpse at the multifarious nature of Berlin's population. On th-s S-Bahn ride fiom Schonefeld to

- - 24 It is debatable whether Germany will ever be able to overcome its pm, However, Berlin's role has obviousIy changed immensely with unification- Whereas it was previously the focus of the Cold War and of East and West efforts to outdo one another, Berlin is now able to flourish as a city in its own right- It is currently madly building toward the fimre, but for some reason this enables it to reflect on its past: countless museum and gallery exhi'bits treat the honors of the Nazi years, and also the division of the nation The opening of the Jewish Museum in Berlin in 1999 shows a substantial commitment on Berlin's part to ensure that its past is a part of its cityscape- Pankow she shares the train for a few stations with a loud "Wokevon Menschea": "ko laut ist es jetzt, Bdfen, Meifen, einer singt .. . " (R3 13). Immediately after they disembark, an older couple boards the train, and with their dowdy placidity "die

Liebmann" offers a contrast to the rowdiness of the departed group: "zeigt sich die vorbeifahrenden BBume, haben alle noch hub drauf, so ein schoner Herbst isses - gewesen, kann man nicht meckem" (IB 13)- in this inidal ride into the East, "die

Liebmann" encounters groups of people who represent the different sides of Berlin on which she comments in the course of the novel: the chaotic and somewhat unbearable element of the city that grates on her, and the peaceN, reflective affection for the city that the couple displays. This duality prepares the reader for "'die Liebma~'~" ambivalent feeling about Berlin, for the fact that she is mure how she feels about the city. Furthermore, this initial S-Bahn ride establishes the intrinsic role of the past in the narrator's relationship with Berlin. As she observes the landscape outside the train, she compares it to her experiences during her childhood: ".. .ein Berliner muD einen Garten haben, sonst kommt er nicht iiber die Runden, historisch, das war ein Fehler, daB sie die

Giirten abgeraurnt haben, .. . ewig ist sie als Kind an Wenvorbeigefshren mit der Bahn, endlos Lauben im Schnee und GarteILZiiune bis zum Horizoot" (IE3 13). This reference to the past makes it clear that the narrator bas grown up in Berlin and signals to the reader that her memories have a significant function in her perception of the city.

This entrance to East Berlin sets a precedent for the rest of her travel on the S-

Bahn, to cross the border between East and West Berlin. For much of the novel the city train functions as a gateway or bridge. It is the backdrop for her emotional farewells fkom her lover, before she obtains the pass to travel to the West (IB 67,72). The S-Bahn is also the means of her own gleell passagp fiom East to West after she receives travel passes for her daughter and herself. When she departs from the FriedrichswDe station she is able the first time to see beyond the Grenzkontrolle that has always blocked her passage to her lover, and which she perceives will free her from the oppression in East

Germany. Her anticipation of boarding the train to the West and leaving the East behind her mounts as she w&ts on the platform:

-.wird sehn, wie die Tochter den Mund timet, weil die Tiiren des Zuges

sich langsam schlieh - wir fahren!. .. wird immer weiter gucken konnen,

wird die game St& sehn aufeinmal, so hoch fUrt die Bahn fiber

Brkken.. .und vom Osten wird sie gar nichts mehr sehen, der kt

weg.. .die Tochter lacht laut.. .kann gar nicht aufh6ren zu lachen.. . (IB 78f.)

The striking paradox in "die Liebmann's" words here reveals her partiality to the West: she is excited that she soon will be able to see 'die game Stadt aufeinmal," and immediately contradicts herself by enthusiastically adding that she will see "gar nichts mehr" of the East She sees the West as "the whole Berlic" eager to get the East out of her mind This idealisation of the West soon proves to be a case of desiring the unattainable, and she realises once she arrives in the West that Berlin indeed does not constitute an intact city. Just as the Friedrichstrak station is the western boundary of

East Bedin, so does Zoo Station represent West Berlin's easternmost limit: ". .. Bahnhof

Zoo ist der Osten, die Pforte zurn Osten... [die Liebmann] guckt an der Fassade zur

Bmcke, Gleisb~cke~ber die Strak gebaut, im Schatten darunter Passanten. .." (IB 89).

Thanks to the DienstreisepoP that the government has awarded "die Liebmann" as a writer, she is able to pass fklyfiom East to West Berlin, and she uses this oppommity to visit her old home on several occasions (IB 90,93). The S-Bahn provides a bridge between the two worlds for her. As she fkquently rides it to travel between East and

West, she connects the separated halves of the city in her mind, and becomes almost oblivious to the border that still exists:

herMutiger geht die Liebmann nun doch in den Men, und wenn sie

so InvalidenseaDe -schen MetalMunen, Schlagbamnen und auch

vereinzelten, griinlich gekleideten Grenzsoldaten dem Drahtzaun sich

niihert... hat sie auf hundert Metem schon alles vergessen dort hinter sick

alles, die Tochter sogar.. . (IB 93)

With the aid of the S-Bahn, "'die Liebmann" has already started to 'Year down" the Berlin

Wall and turn Berlin into a whole city.

Once "die Liebmann" comes to terns with the implications of a unified Berlin, she sees unimpeded travel on the S-Bahn fiom East to West as the ultimate sign of the wholeness she has found. Indeed, she delivers her final narration of Berlin from the S-

Bahn, revelling in the new openness of the city: "Berlin ist offen. Wer will, von

Sch6nefeld bis rum Zoo, wer nicht aussteigt, der sieht Berlin ganz" (5 167). As she lists the sights that pass by the window of the train, the reader gets a sense of the diversity that the new Berlin encompasses: cCZ~erstGrasflachen, griin, dam Ziiune vor Giirten, tausend

Wiinde mit Fenstern, Fabriken, die Spree ... das sind Krankenkuser, Museen,

Kasernen..." (IF3 168). The contrasting images recall the different groups of people on the first S-Bahn train in the novel. Now, however, the diversity is not just that between the generations and ethnicities, but is reflected also in the physical diversity of the city. 'Die Liebmann" has grown content with the city at this point She sits in the train with her new partner, the ''=M6belpolierer,'' with whom she shares a very similar past, ad, happily pointing out objects through the window to each other, they are reminiscent of the couple whom "die Liebmann" observed in her S-Babn ride at the beginning of the novel: "Die Liebmann sitzt drin ... md der Freund sitzt drin, der MGbelpolierer, und sieht aus dem Fenster, guck doch mal, guck doch mal, ruft er" (IB 168). 'Die Liebmann's" contentedness with the city results not merely fiom the collapse of the GDR, but more from having come to terms with her own seE As the GDR still existed, "die Liebmann" identified herself largely with relation to her state: as a dissident against it Once she leaves for the West and finds that she can no longer define herself in this way, her sense of identity begins to disintegrate concurrently with the collapse of East Germany. Her crisis in the novel results fiom a need to identify herself and find her place and role in society, and she reaches back into her past to find roles with which she used to identifl.

She is unsuccessful in this attempt, and finds nothing that fulfils her. She comes to the realisation that she needs to lose her bias and be open to the future. The stage that she is entering in her life is uncharted, as is the stage upon which Germany embarks with unification. The repeated statement 'Berlin ist offed' (IF3 165, twice, and 167) underscores the fact that it is open in more than one way. The removal of the Wall and of tense Cold War politics bas opened Berlin up physically, but the city's hture is also open to an endless number of possibilities, and nobody knows what course it will take from this point. B. The Role of Burmeister's and Liebmann's ETheurs

There is no doubt that Brigitte Bunneister and Irina Liebmann place the city in a role of central importance in Unter dem Namen Norma and In Berlia using it to mirror

the political and social climate around them. Both are certainly city writers, but are they flheun? To what extent do they Nfil the same role for their city as the traditional flheur did for his, and do they at all resist donning his mantle? Both authors share similarities with the traditional flheur their critical perspective on city life alienates them from people around them, they use the city as a tool to overcome their emotional disorientation, and their observations of the city capture the climate of Berlin's past and present. At the same time, however, they are reluctant to assume specific aspects of the persona of the flineur. Burmeister's and Liebmann's fliineurs differ fiom the traditional figure in terms of their gender, as I have demonstrated in the third chapter, and in terms of their GDR background-

1. Alienation and the City as Metaphor

The original flheur keeps a paradoxical balance between the ability to blend in with the crowd, and the sense of alienation derived from a self-awareness that distinguishes him corn that crowd. The reader finds this dichotomy re-created in both

Burmeister's and Liebrnann's narrators, in diffiereni degrees. Marianne is far more conscious of her role as observer and narrator than is "'die Liebma.." She is aware of her alienation fiom the people she watches in the city. In her critical observations of the familiar people in the courtyard outside her apartment window, and of the strangers

whom she encounters in the cde, she clearly establishes a distance between them and

herself. Despite certain obsewations betraying sympathy for a person or attitude she

depicts, Marianne is nonetheless distinctly alone in her fascination for observing and recording. Marianne also displays the-same awareness of her unobtrusiveness that one

finds in the original flineur. In the cafie she specifically addresses the comfort she takes in her anonymity as she spins tales about the others around her "Mir folgte kein Blick, solange ich blieb, wo ich war. Durch fortwihendes kinunauE%allig werden

Stillhalten, ikrgehen ins Inventar dieser Straknkaeipe, einer unter vielen, ahnlich zusammengewOIfelten im Schatten hoher brkkelger Hiher.. ." (Urn272). Clearly she is aware that her anonymity affords her a vantage point fiom which she can effectively observe the goings-on in the cde.

"Die Liebmann" also demonstrates an alienation fnnn her surroundings. For her, this alienation primarily takes the form of dissatisfaction with her environment, and identification with dissenters. haLiebmann Merreinforces this detachment through her depiction of "die Liebmann's" bdamental feeling of isolation from everyone around her. Not only does the reader learn of her past relationships that have failed, but also that none of the narrator's current alliances is fbctional either. She has no profound connection to any of her friends, she is unable to sustain emotional intimacy with her

West-Berlin lover, and even her relationship with her daughter, while amicable, is quite distant. At the end of the novel this isolation shows promising signs of abating, although her detachment remains. While one initially attributes her estrangement from society to her alignment with the cde's dissidents and to her discontentment with the GDR, she retains her distance from the object of her observations even after her dissatisfaction

abates. Even at the height of her fondness for her environment, she observes it with

penetrating precision and relative detachment (E3 168ff.).

Marianne and "dieLiebrnann" also have in common with the traditional flheur that they turn to the cityto resolve their feelings of disorientation. As the traditional

fliineur scrutinised the city to protest the accelerating pace of life duringthe rise of industrialisation and capitalism, both ManManaxmeand "die Liebmann" grapple with the physical space of Berlin in order to protest elements of their social environments with which they are unhappy. Having Lost a sense of belonging, each narrator experiences the need to affirm the space around her As such, both use the city and microcosms within the city as a metaphor for their feelings of disorientation and dissatisfaction.

This creation of metaphor is similar to the activity of both the nineteenthcentury

Parisian flheur and also Benjamin's Weimar flheur. The most common genre of writing for the Parisian fliineur was known as "phystoIogie," the purpose of which was

"die Scheuklappen des 'bornierten Stadttiers' vor[zustellen]" (Benjamin, Der Hanew

38f). Both Marianne and "die Liebmann" ccexposethe 'blinders"' of the people they encounter in Berw if somewhat ironically and self-consciously. Marianney for example, uses this strategy in her observations of the stereotypical behaviour of the East and West

Germans she sees in the cde, and "dieLiebmann" exposes the lack of resistance against the GDR government, in her observations of the "gebeugteGestalteny' of the passers-by who all "laufen in eine Richtung" (IB 44,39). The metaphorical nature of these observations of the city also reveals a similarity to Benjamin's view of the flheur, as the artist who could transform the "everydayyyEdebnis into the more transcendental Erj5ahnmg. By collecting and recording the a-ties and intemctions of the people

around her, and assembling them into a whole, each narrator creates a mosaic of her

impressions of the city. The motifs that nm through this collection of "everyday"

experiences bring to attention the undercurrents of Berlin Life, and grant the reader a

deeper understanding of the implications of individual events: they help transform the

"kveryda~~~experience into Eijkhmng (understanding). The narrators perceive

individuals and objects metaphorically to give them deeper significance. In the glances

exchanged between East and West Germans at Ande's cde, for example, Marianne

senses the hesitant hostility, lack of communication, and the underlying dynamic of

"takeover" that is synecdochic for the interaction between the newly unified German

states. Similarly, "die Liebmann" senses in the buckling sidewalks of the East German

capital the tension of the past building up under the surface of the smoothly hctioning

society, that is, the society's need to come to terms with its past

2. The Self-Conscious Fllaeur

By adopting this Benjaminian role ofthe flheur, Burmeister and Liebmann assign the figure a new relevance. Rather than think of the flheur as unproductive idler, the predominant image of the flheur in the nineteenth century, both writers view him as an interpreter of the metaphorical nature of the city, as emphasised in Benjamin's work-

For Benjamin, the deeper purpose ofthe flheur was to protest against the rapid pace of the city. Whereas the wandering, collecting and observing that constituted the work of the flheur was considered by many to be socially inconsequential, Benjamin pointed out that these activities were only the figure's superficial fimctioa More crucially, the

fliineur represented the will to penetxate the surface of city life and protest against

apparent problems. The role of the flheur as protester explains why authors did not

employ the figure during the era ofthe GDR: because severe criticism of the socialist

society was censored The flineurys role as protester makes the figure attractive to

writers born in the GDR, as they begin to voice criticism ofthe past regime - and the

present system - more freely.

The legacy of the GDR has a significant influence on the attitude with which

Burmeister and Liebmarm approach the flheur-narrator. While the openness of the

unified Germany offers occasion to GDR writers to criticise society more openly, the

narrators betray hesitancy in embracing this role fully. Both narrators struggle with

questions of the legitimacy of their role as flheur. One can attribute this struggle to the

lingering influence of the restrictive conditions placed on authors within the GDR Under the official party doctrine of Socialist Realism, authors were expected to produce engagxerte Literutur, which would exert a positive effect on society by educating the reader about the benefits of socialism, and inspiring the individual to better society through his or her actions (Latta 244)- The indolence of flherie, of making up stories about passers-by in the city, would not likely be considered engagzert, much less

"realistic."

Indeed, Liebmann's earlier citynarrative novel Berliner Mietshaus, which was published in the GDR, did not engage in the imaginative and speculative process of flherie at all- Rather, it was much more a novel of documentation, in which she systematically interviewed all of the inhabitants of an old Prenzlauer Berg tenement house, and recorded the details oftheir lives and living conditions. This sort of

interpretation of the city was much more in keeping with the Socialist Realist conception of the author as reporter and chronicler of the fad,and its vaguely optimistic portrayal

of the positive sense of community in the GDR The subjective perspective of the flheur, by contrast, and the tactic of extrapolating from appearances to create a speculative approach to the sunoundings not in line with Realism, was frowned upon.

After the fall of the Wall, Marianne and "die Liebmann" are tentative about assuming the role of the flheur, because of the residual notion that this sort of fabdation does not constitute serious, or engugierte, literature. At the same time, however, both are aware that the role of the author has changed, as their forays into flherie as "serious literature" testify. Both narrators also hesitate to assert their perceptions of the city as superior or more relevant than those of others. This reluctance stems from a desire to avoid stereotyping the individuals they encounter, perhaps because of their own experience as subjects of West German stereotyping.

Marianne also displays a concern that the former citizens of East Germany may perceive the activity of obsewing others in the city as particularly negative because of the associations of observation with "spying" and collaboration with the Stmi- The question of the extent to which their narrators are comfortable assuming the role of the flheur reflects the authors' difficulties in defining the responsibilities of the author. Both

Burmeister and Liebmann convey th-s difficulty through their narrators' struggle for identity: in Unter dem Namen Norma this struggle is centred in the ambiguous nature of the character Norma, and in In Berlin it is reflected in <'die Liebmann's" effort to find her own identity. Marianne overtly questions her role as observer within the city, and the positions

taken by herself and her friend No- As she observes individuals &om her ament and in the cde, she seems tom as to whether she should feel guilty about "spying" on them and making up stories about them. The tirrt time that she is sitting alone in the caf', she regrets having passed up the opportunity to create more gossipy, entertaining tales about the West Gennan couple, and indicates that Norma's presence would have been the catalyst for fbrther fabdation:

Warum war sie nicht hier! Wir hatten dem entschwundenen Paar

Lebensgeschichten zusammengestellt, mehere, wed wir uns zwar auf

Akademiker, Ende vie- verheiratef zwei erwachsene Kinder,

evangelisch, Wohnung in Hamburg, Landhaus in der Toscana, in der

Freizeit Musizieren, Tennis, Gartenarbeit wahrscheinlich geeinigt hiitten...

(Urn88)

Clearly, since she provides the reader with this list of stereotypes, she is capable of imagining without Norma. However, she points out that these speculations are only the most obvious. If Norma were there, they would be able to come up with far more detailed speculation about the couple:

...[wir hen]aber kaum irber dieses Annoncematerial hinaus, da, wo es

erst spannend wurde, weil der einfache Soziologenblick, wie Norma mein

Ratevennogen nannte, nicht mehr ausreichte, um Eigennamen zu

ermitteh, Leibgerichte, Liebesverh~tnisse,Angewohnheiten, Phobien,

Haustiere, Ferienlekttire, Krankheiten und dergleichen, wir Varhnten durchspielen, entscheiden, bei Unentscheidbarkeit nebeneirtander

stehenlassen mu0ten.. (UdNN 88)

The difference between hkianne's two 'lists of facts" about the couple is that the first list consists of information at which she can easily guess, and then presume to be true, whereas the second list comprises details that Marianne can less easily pinpoint, and which she must admit are mere speculation Without Norma, Marianne's imagination is limited to speculations that do not go beyond stereotyping and prejudice. Marianne recognises that they would never be able to reach any sort of conclusion about these people's lives, and that the outcome would be strictly fictitious. Indeed, she mentions that they would invent different versions of the more personal and profound details about these people's lives, and would conclude tbat they cannot possibly determine which of their speculations, if any, are correct She is aware that her imaginings are not based on facts, and that she should not '%reate" a reality based on appearances. While I do not wish to suggest that the traditional flbeur was unaware of the fact that his observations did not necessarily correspond to reality, he certainly did not exhibit the same scruples about the implications of his fmtasy that Marianne does.

Marianne is also hesitant to assume the role of the flheur because of the stereotyping that is inherent in judging people by their appearances. She certainly proves herself capable of doing it in her first list of speculated Lebenrdeails about the couple.

However, her awareness of the implications of her fabulation implies that she is not oblivious to her narrow vision The East German Marianne perceives herself as the object of West German stereotyping, as becomes evident in the tale she invents to satisfy the expectations of the West German Corima Kling at her husband's housewarming party- As a consequence, she attempts*in her flherie, to be sensitive to the Iimtltationsof her own knowledge and the harmful nature of stereotypes. In her visit to the c&e at the end of the novel, Marianne recogm-sesthat manipulating the truth about someone, through the application of generalisations, can be dangerous: "'Keinem ... konnte ich eine wahre Geschichte arhihgen, die nicht seine war" (Urn270)-

Bunneister also reminds the reader that people still associate being "observed" with the personal infiltrations by the Stmi- During her second visit to the cafieMarianne makes up a story about a young man at a nearby table. When Norma passes him on the way back fiom the washroom, he stops her and asks her to tell Marianne, "er sei nicht scharf auf alte Weiber- Wie die mich mit Blicken verscblungen hat. Wher konnte man annehmen, jemand von Horch Bt Guck, sagte er, aber das entf"allt heutzutage, also

Anmache" (UW274). Burmeister draws the analogy between the flkeur and the

Stasi-agent, who are both interested in observing people, although with a different motivation- in her conversation with Corinna Kling, Marianne claims that she had worked with the Stasi under the name IM Norma Marianne's manipulation of the mah underscores the association of the flheur with the Stmi-Mitarbeiter,

When Marianne returns to the cde for the second time with Noma, the reader has the opportunity to observe the two ofthem engage in their game of concocting stories about the people. Marianne points out that Norma usually initiates this playfid fliinerie.

Norma's first "move" is a story about their waitress, followed by her challenging

Marianne to speculate about the group at the next table, whom she tauntingly refers to as

"ein Rude1 MenschheitsverbessereP: Normas Augen blitzten: Ich kam ihr mch! Ich spm, &end ich

hinabemah zu den jungen Mtinnem, daD sie mich beobachtete und zu

erkennen suchte, was ich den fiemden Gesichtern ablas-

- Nichts, sagte ich- Sie sind zu weit weg. Sie tragen ike Jugend wie eine

Maske-

Das 1ie~Norma nicht gelten Ich sollte mi.Miihe geben und nicht mit

Spriichen kommen-

- Der Lanmge, sagte ich, erinnert mich an jernand (Urn263)

Thus the game begins, and Norma invites Mariarme to make a connection between the

longhaired young man at the table and the French Revolutioaary Saint-Just, whose

biography she has been tnmlatiag Marianne emphasises that Norma's presence would

provide the inspiration for this creative process, "wozu ich alleine nie und mit niemand

sonst die n6tige Fantasie und Ausdauer besaD, nur animiert durch Norma, wenn sie Lust

nun spielen hatte" (UciNN 88). Norma hctions as a sort of catalyst for the namtor's

imagination to create stories about the people around her in the city. Marianne admires

Norma's free spirit: "Vielleicht hatte sie schon immer Grenzen unterlaufen, in denen ich mich einrichtete, umgeben vom fliigellahmen Schwarm meiner fieien Gedanken.

Vielleicht war sie weniger verletzbar und nicht aus Angst vor Schmenen in

Bewegungsabwehr so geiibt wie ich" (UdNN 276). Norma represents all that the narrator is not, and complements her personality to a degree that it seems possible that she might be a figment of Marianne's imagination representing Mariame's alter ego. Despite the fact that the Norma is undoubtedly the most central character in the novel, second only to the narrator, she does not actually appear until the final forty pages of the book. As the narrator's subjectivity becomes Increasingly apparent, readers find themselves questioning if Norma actually exists as a character. The critical reception of Burmeister7s novel provides a wide range of interpretations of Norma Most critics take her existence literally, and regard her as an actual character, that is, a friend and neighbow of Marianne

(AUdred, Cosentino, Ludtke Prigan, Soldat). Other critics, however, have suggested that

Norma is not a character. They maintain that Norma is the narrator's '2rfindung7':

'LNorma war die IM-IdenW&tder EniMetin endihrer Leipziger Studienzeitw

(Cramer 11 ), and that ?..[sic] eine Phantasie, eine 'Emheinung' darstellt, die die Ich-

ErziWerin in kenpsychologischen Ergriindungem begleitet" (Led& 16). It seems that

Burmeister, along with many other ambiguities in her novel, leaves Noma's identity open to interpretation She certainly includes many details to indicate that, as tong as the narrator is considered psychologically ccstable,"Norma is a "real" character. At the same time, however, a number of events (Marianne's apparent fabrication of a stereotypical

GDR past and her conversations with her imaginary daughter, to cite the most obvious) establish Marianne's extreme subjectivity, making it possible to read Norma entirely as an alter ego. Whether she is a "'real" character or not, however, Norma represents a model for what Marianne would like to be. As such, Norma's ability to create stories about the people that the two of them encounter in Berlin signals Marianne's desire to do the same. However, her avenion to the stereotypes of what it means to be East or West

German make it impossible for her to assume the stance of a carefree flheur.

'Die Liebmann" is not as acutely conscious of her role as observer and flkeur as

Marianne is. Her contemplation of the city appears more instinctive and less seKaware.

Whereas Burmeister creates a character who borrows fiom and ponders the role ofthe flheur, Liebmann is acting as a flheur herself. Liebmann7sintentional blurring of lines

between the author and the narrator, between first and third person point of view, and

between autobiography and fiction, adds an intriguing dimension to this complex

narration The author appears to be acting as a flheur, and reflecting on her past view of

the city. As the author and narrator frequently seem to blend into one, the reader

perceives that Liebmann is correlate to "die Liebmann" at a point in time subsequent to

the narration, and that she is indeed aware of her firaction as interpreter of the city Thus.

the narrator does become conscious of her role as flheur,

'Die Liebmann's" stacks of papers remaining from her earlier documentation of a

city street (compare Liebmann's own project Berliner Mietsbaus) illustrate that she is

aware of her role as documentarist of the city. Similarly to Marianne, she is not fully

comfortable with this role- Throughout the novel the remaants of her old project plague

her with the chaos they create, both in the cluttering of her physical living space and in

her hationat her dependence upon them. It is unclear why this past as city-

documentarist is so burdensome to "die Liebmam," Toward the end of the novel she

realises that it is not the documentation with which she struggles, but rather her stance as

observer: ".. .wie lange geht sie an diesen Wicken? Ich gehe ja gar nicht Ich stehe. Es

sind auch nicht Uiicken, genauer betrachtet sieht das eher wie Steizen aus,

Aussichtsturm. Und still ist es auch" (IB 158). She suddenly realises how isolating her

writing and observing are, and questions the relevance and consequence of her role:

"Solange das da ist, solange das alles so auf dem Papier steht, ist es da und auch nicht da,

die Bomben, die Triimmer, die toten luden, der Einbrecher aufdem Baikon und die

Girrteirose, nicht wirklich. Es ist aber wirklich passiert .. . Alles aufschreikn, keine Bewegung" @I3 158). This realisation makes her feel guilty about not having attempted to fight for political change in the GDR She is cornplicit in upholding the regime, both in her inaction and in her acceptance of the DiemeisepoS that enabled her to travel freely between East and West, a sign of the preferential treatment she received as an author and "cobserver." By accepting such preferential treatment she was condoning the

GDR government She did not suffer the same hardships as others in the GDR, &d yet felt justified in making her Living by documenting their lives. She recalls the guilt the

West Berliners who observed the city from the relative safety and comfort of the other side of the Wall must have felt: "Die Wachttiirlne an der Mauer, Berlin, fallen ihr ein, und auf der anderen Seite die Aussichtstiime zu uns rein, in unseren Zoo- Wie

Meoschen da oben standen, wenige, daO die sich schlecht fWten, konnte man sehen, und trotzdem: sie standen da oben" (IJ3 159). Implicitly, "'die Liebmd equates her own role as author with the voyeuristic, inactive observers who are not affected by the

"injustices" of the GDR government This realisation constitutes "die Liebmands" crisis: her identity as author and observer - or flheur- has triggered me1enting feelings of guilt and complicity.

Liebmann seems to conclude that the flheur's activities - observing and writing

- are not acceptable in times of oppression, because, in order to be published, the writer- flheur must comply with corruption that the c4free' flheur might not otherwise tolerate.

Oppression serves as Liebmann' s explanation of the flbeur' s hiatus since 193 3, throughout the Nazi period and the times of the GDR Her answer to whether the flheur can exist in united Berlin is ambiguous, but leaves the reader hopeful. Once the two

German states are unified, "die Liebmann" is content, and her thoughts do return to contemplation of the city However, she does not choose to write about it at this time:

"Wie sch6n es hier kt, denkt die Liebmam, aber da hat sie schon das game Papier

weggeworfen, verschenkt ... " (E3 170). The implication is that times are favourable to

the fliineur, but that "die Liebmann" is not willing to adopt the role herself because of the

associations it has with government-supporting activities. The narrator -presumably

representative of the author at a previous point in time - has ultimately chosen not to

write about the city after having fialIy thrown out her records from her early 1980s

project. In contrast to the aarmtor's resolution not to write about the city, the author has

just written another book about the city, casting doubt on '=dieLiebmann'~'~ suggestion

that she has cccurecr'herself of her urge toward £l&rie.

Burmeister7sand Liebmann's narrators are unable, or unwilling, to fdly assume

the carefree role of the flheur because of the residual effects of their GDR past. Each

nmtor's personal history affects the way in which she mod-fiesthe persona of the

fliineur before adopting it Marianne struggles with the concept of fabricating stones

about others in the city because of the danger of stereotyping, to which both East and

West Germans are exposed "Die Liebmann" does not experience the same conflict, but

does grapple with the guilt she feels at her complicity with the Party as "cdocumentarist77

of life in Berlin. At the same time, both authors flout the conventions of Socialist

Realism and create ambiguous characters that are not easy to label or identifl. This

ambiguity reflects the almost palpable uncertainty of the identity crisis of the unified

Germany and its "new" citizens. Very much in the vein of Socialist Realism, however, both narrators undergo cathartic experiences that help them modify their old views so as to come to terms with their surroundings. The residual eEects of the GDR and its literary doctrines have shaped Bumeisterysand Liebmann's £&em in such a way as to create a distinct image of the flheur of the Berlin of the 1990s. V. Conclusion

The return of the tlheur to literary Berlin has been a natural remion to the

upheaval and disorientation brought on by unification. For the first time in several

decades, the city's fi-e is wide open The challenge of a unified Berlin as the capital of

a unified Germany is overwhelming, but raises a number of questions as to how to

proceed into the future and what to make ofthe past Authors have adopted the figure of

the flheur to attempt to answer some of these questions. Significantly, it is not the

incarnation of the aimlessly wandering idler that has been revitalisd, but rather the

Benjaminian flheur: the intellectual observer who, by watching people and noticing

minute details in the city, is able to reveal the deeper currents running through society.

Brigitte Burmeister's and Irina Liebmann's flheur-narrators both seek out reflections of

the past in their observations of the city around them, and use these to create a strategy

for coping with the continuous changes affecting the city.

Although Marianne and "die Liebmann" have the traditional fliineur's sharp and

insightful eye, as well as his hate curiosity about their fellow city-dwellers, they also

incorporate unique qualities. Still influenced by the ideals of Socialist Realism, the narratordauthon struggle with the legitimacy of their speculative fiction, and lingering memories of the Stasi evoke uneasiness at the idea of observing or "spying on" people. Personal guilt associated with the observer's complicit stance - pePemna in the wake of the Literut~streitraging in the early 1990s -constitutes a fUrther remnant of the GDR past with which these new flhem have to cope. Moreover, the gender of these flheun, also a divergence Corn the traditional male flheur of previous eras, serves an indication of the GDRYspromotion of gender equality among its writers. These femde flheurs bring a new perspective to the role of the fliineur, expanding its realm of documenting life in the street to include the traditionally feminine private domain as an observation post Notably as well, the new flheu.is less cavalier in her attitude toward the city and its inhabitants than the traditional flhew- Rather, her outlook is fhught with selfdoubt and reflectios and she is hesitant to place higher stock on her perspective than on others'. One could argue that this uncertainty represents a more feminine perspective, although it appears equally to stem from the disorientation experienced with the new openness of unified Berlin-

The struggle to reconcile the insouciant attitude of the traditional fliheur with the rather burdensome East Gennan history has produced a new fliineur for the 1990s. This flheur is no longer protesting against the one-way street of progress, but transforms

Berlin into a two-way street: the effect ofthe immediate GPR past as well as fhe more removed Nazi past is evident in her portrayals of the city. Burmeister's and Liebmann's narrators do not remain "boggeddown" by their past, however. Rather, at the end of both novels, each narrator resolves to look to the Mewith optimism, a significant variance from the perfunctory protest ofthe traditional fliineur. Both of these contemporary flkeurs resolve their alienation £tom the society in which they live, in contrast to the traditional fliineur, who must remain at odds with his surroundings- These narrators choose to end their protest against society, and resolve to use the positive forces of friendship, support and selfawaeness to build the foundations of their "new" lives in unified Berlin. Particularly in this respect do the namtors betray the enduring influence of the former socialist state: as per the formula of Socialist Realism, the individual has come to terms with her surroundings. Thus, the flhew of unified Berlin creates a distinctive niche for hersew, adapting the role ofthe traditional fliineur to her specific needs in facing the firture of unified Berlin. Works Cited

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