Interrogating Utopia: The Science Fiction of the German Democratic Republic in an Age of Globalization A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Thomas P. David IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Rembert Hüser, Adviser April 2012 Copyright © 2012 Thomas P. David i Acknowledgements Here at the outset, all due gratitude and appreciation must be given to the faculty and staff of the Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch at the University of Minnesota for their support over the years. The time at the Humboldt Universität and Freie Universität in Berlin was instrumental in gathering and researching the material for the dissertation. Opportunities to share ideas and receive feedback were afforded through the Center for German and European Studies and DAAD. The staff of the Bundesarchiv provided useful assistance and guidance in investigating its holdings. A welcoming place at their meetings was kindly offered by the members of the Andymon fan club, among whom Hardy Kettlitz deserves special mention for providing a digital archive of the SF magazine, Alien Contact, from which the material for chapter 3 was drawn. The authors Olaf R. Spittel, Angela and Karlheinz Steinmüller, and Michael Szameit were gracious, patient, and prompt in sharing their insights and answering questions—as well as some of the material that proved to be more difficult than usual to find in the used bookshops of the former East Berlin. And of course, a particular—and resounding—note of gratitude and appreciation must be extended to the members of the committee: Tim Brennan, Jim Parente, Matthias Rothe, and Rembert Hüser. To family and friends, who knew and know who they are, all the more so—especially to Sally, Oliver, and Sunshine to whom this dissertation is dedicated for their inspiration and illumination along the way. ii ―Ruhig bleiben. Nicht ausflippen. Abstand halten.‖ —Ludwig Fenster in conversation iii Abstract The thesis of this dissertation is that the science fiction of the German Democratic Republic addresses the nature of the technologically-advanced society that has emerged since the end of the Cold War and the concomitant economic, social, and political processes that today are collectively designated by the concept of globalization. It does so, because science fiction is a genre of modernity that innately considers issues of technology, science, and progress by employing the technique of temporal dislocation. The science fiction of the GDR is one national variant of this genre that maintains the prerequisites and conventions that define this modern genre across national borders and on the global scale that is this genre‘s traditionally acknowledged ambit. This dissertation comparatively investigates the thematic and formal ways in which specific science fiction novels and short stories from the period 1979 – 2000 by GDR authors narrativize key elements of the discourse of globalization. By examining the ways in which the theoretical understanding of the science fiction genre in the West corresponds with that of the GDR, and providing comparative literary examples from both East and West, it shows how these works are representative examples of the science fiction genre that utilize the concepts of temporal contraction and technological dependence that are also manifest in the discourse of globalization. Systematically treating both discourses through the juxtaposition of science fiction text and iv globalization theory, this dissertation demonstrates how these socialist narratives both foreshadow and explore the discourse of globalization from the local perspective of the GDR in a global world that was not yet determined by the events of 1989 and the end of the Cold War. The dissertation consists of three core chapters in which a specific science fiction story from the GDR is examined in relation to a particular aspect of globalization. These aspects are surveillance, access, and annexation. Alternately, they could also be described as globalization as a political project, as a chimerical projection, and as an imperialistic project of transnational Americanization. Through close textual analysis, this dissertation illustrates the ways in which these themes are manifested in the science fiction of the GDR in conjunction with and in comparison to the discourse of globalization. Through the employment of examples from the commercial media landscape, it examines how science fiction has become a customary practice and general hallmark of the era that is commonly designated as globalization. Science fiction and globalization, both of which are utopian in scale and scope, are not only mutually compatible, but are also logically analogous. And in this sense, GDR science fiction is not only representative of an international genre of modernity, but also of ideas and intellectual currents in play and under debate in the political, economic, and social spheres of the existing wider world. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Abstract iii Table of Contents v Introduction 1 Chapter 1 – 24 Surveying the Future: Global Reflections on Der Planet ohne Sonne Chapter 2 – 76 Accessing the World: "Duell der Tiger" as a Science Fiction of Globalization Chapter 3 – 128 Annexing Tomorrow, Celebrating Today: ―Happy Independence Day‖ and GDR SF at the End of the American Century Conclusion 181 Works Consulted 199 1 Introduction The tallest structure in the Federal Republic of Germany is the Berliner Fernsehturm. It rises 368 meters into the sky above the capital of the so- called Berliner Republik, the unofficial designation of the latest incarnation of a unified German nation-state that is meant to indicate the final arrival of a freely democratic Germany that failed to materialize in the revolutionary upheavals of 1848, 1918, and 1945. Beneath the towering mast of the antenna and underneath the array of television and radio transmitter equipment, the Fernsehturm features a distinctive mirrored-glass sphere that houses an observation platform and a rotating restaurant with a 360° view of the city. The Fernsehturm is both a popular tourist attraction that can be seen from throughout the city and from which the city can be viewed as well as a functional tool for the transmission of the broadcast media that make up the entertainment and information landscape of contemporary life. The Fernsehturm is, though, an artifact of the German Democratic Republic. It owes its placement at the center of Berlin to a personal decision by Walter Ulbricht, the Chairman of the Council of State of the GDR and one of its founding fathers. Constructed in a mere four years from components imported from various socialist and non-socialist states, the Fernsehturm was dedicated on 3 October 1969 and opened to the public four days later on the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the GDR. 2 The Fernsehturm was the solution to a technical problem in the GDR of how to transmit, effectively and efficiently, the audio-visual information of broadcast media that is a necessary element for the functioning of any modern state. ―Es legt an der Schwelle zum dritten Jahrzehnt der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik Zeugnis ab von deren hohem wissenschaftlich- technischen Entwicklungstand.‖1 The Fernsehturm was thus a concrete representation of the importance that was attached to science and technology in the construction of socialism in the GDR. The Fernsehturm was also, and perhaps just as importantly, an assertion of the GDR‘s sovereignty vis-à-vis its Western counterpart. It was a declaration of maturity that the relatively young socialist state had a stake in the future of Germany. It was a claim—all later historical facts to the contrary—that the GDR would be a permanent presence on German soil, the legitimate victor of history and the champion of a new German unity that by historical necessity was the cause and a means to establish a new economic, social, and political order. The GDR was not merely a young state in the historical trajectory of modernity—the construction and dedication of the Fernsehturm would only, some twenty years later and by no means discernibly at that time, come to mark its half-life of existence—but also one that asserted, as a fundamental affirmation of its right to exist, a claim to 1 ―At the threshold to the third decade of the German Democratic Republic, it bears witness to its high scientific-technical level of development.‖ Brandenburg, Ingrid, Rudolf Harnisch and Alfred Kubiziel. Fernsehturm Berlin. Berlin: VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, 1970. 9. Unless indicated otherwise, this and all translations from German to English throughout the dissertation are my own. 3 break with past precedents into a fundamentally different present in which capital, the collective expression of a community‘s productivity, would no longer be the exclusive privilege of the few, but rather the means by which the community‘s prosperity should be advanced. The utilitarian design of the Fernsehturm is an expression of this aspiration. It is the expression of a modernist functionality that derives from a conviction in the power of science and technology to advance the material well-being and security of humanity. The long, white silhouetted shape of the tower resembles the form of a rocket on its launching pad. Near the top, the mirrored-panels of the globe recall the simple, yet pioneering, effort to conquer space that was embodied in the Soviet Sputnik whose launch in 1957 announced the start of the Space Age. ―In 250 m Höhe wird sie [die Kugel] hell über der Stadt ‗schweben,‘ und die erfinderischen Hauptstädter können ihr neues Wahrzeichen dann ‗Spree-Sputnik‘ oder ähnlich liebevoll titulieren.‖2 Indeed, the metal sphere does hover above the city landscape. It is visible to citizen and tourist alike over a wide radius, reminiscent of a star that marks the city center—its futuristic design perhaps even suggestive to the imaginative observer of an Unidentified Flying Object from some science- fiction story.