New Perspectives in German Studies General Editors: Professor Michael Butler, Head of the Department of German Studies, University of Birmingham and Professor William Paterson, Director of the Institute of German Studies, University of Birmingham Over the last twenty years the concept of German studies has undergone major transformation. The traditional mixture of language and literary studies, related very closely to the discipline as practised in German universities, has expanded to embrace history, politics, economics and cultural studies. The conventional boundaries between all these disciplines have become increasingly blurred, a process which has been accelerated markedly since German unification in 1989/90. New Perspectives in German Studies, developed in conjunction with the Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham, has been designed to respond precisely to this trend of the interdisciplinary approach to the study of German and to cater for the growing interest in Germany in the context of European integration. The books in this series will focus on the mod­ ern period, from 1750 to the present day. Titles include: Michael Butler and Robert Evans (editors) THE CHALLENGE OF GERMAN CULTURE Essays Presented to Wilfried van der Will Michael Butler, Malcolm Pender and joy Charnley (editors) THE MAKING OF MODERN SWITZERLAND 1848-1998 Paul Cooke and Andrew Plowman (editors) GERMAN WRITERS AND THE POLITICS OF CULTURE Dealing with the Stasi Wolf-Dieter Eberwein and Karl Kaiser (editors) GERMANY'S NEW FOREIGN POLICY Decision-Making in an Interdependent World Jonathan Grix THE ROLE OF THE MASSES IN THE COLLAPSE OF THE GDR Margarete Kohlenbach WALTER BENJAMIN Self-Reference and Religiosity Henning Tewes GERMANY, CIVILIAN POWER AND THE NEW EUROPE Enlarging Nato and the European Union Maiken Umbach GERMAN FEDERALISM Past, Present, Future New Perspectives in German Studies Series Standing Order ISBN 0-333-92430-4 hardcover Series Standing Order ISBN 0-333-92434-7 paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England German Writers and the Politics of Culture Dealing \\lith the Stasi Edited by Paul Cooke and Andrew Plowman Editorial matter and selection © Paul Cooke and Andrew Plowman 2003 Chapters 1-14 © Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 2003 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover I st edition 2003 978-1-4039-1326-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted * save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-51181-5 ISBN 978-1-4039-3875-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781403938756 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data German writers and the politics of culture : dealing with the Stasi I edited by Paul Cooke and Andrew Plowman. p. em.-- (New perspectives in German studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. German literature--Political aspects--Germany (East) 2. Germany (East). Ministerium fer Staatssicherheit. 3. German literature--Germany (East)--History and criticism. I. Cooke, Paul, 1969- II. Plowman, Andrew, 1966- Ill. Series PT3707.E27 2003 830.9'358--dc21 2003054918 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on the Contributors ix List ofAbbreviations xiii Introduction: Paul Cooke and Andrew Plowman xv Part One 1 1 The East German Ministry of State Security and East German Society during the Honecker Era, 1971-1989 3 Mike Dennis 2 Uwe Johnson's Awkward Legacy: A Sympathetic Secret Policeman of the pre-Stasi Era 25 Dennis Tate 3 The Stasi as the Force of Evil: Collin's Faustian Struggle with the Stasi Boss Urack in Stefan Heym's Collin 41 Reinhard K. Zachau 4 'Die Tragikomodie Deutschland': Scenes from No Man's Land in Martin Walser's Dorle und Wolf 57 Michael Butler 5 Tallhover or The Eternal Spy: Hans Joachim Schadlich's Stasi-Novel Tallhover 71 Karl-Heinz Schoeps Part Two 8S 6 'Ich, Seherin, gehorte zum Palast': Christa Wolf's Literary Treatment of the Stasi in the Context of her Poetics of Self-Analysis 87 Georgina Paul v vi Contents 7 'K6nnte man sagen, du seist einSpi6nchen?' Erich Loest's Fallhohe 107 Stephen J. Evans 8 Telling Tales: Moral Responsibility and the Stasi in Uwe Saeger's Die Nacht danach und der Morgen 121 Owen Evans 9 The Stasi as Panopticon: Wolfgang Hilbig's »Ich« 139 Paul Cooke 10 The Stasi, the Confession and Performing Difference: Brigitte Burmeister's Unter dem Namen Norma ISS Alison Lewis 11 'Bekenntnisse des Stasi-Hochstaplers Klaus Uhltzscht': Thomas Brussig's Comical and Controversial HeIden wie wir 173 Kristie Foell and Jill Twark 12 The Stasi as Literary Conceit: Gunter Grass's Ein weites Feld 195 Julian Preece 13 Jurgen Fuchs: Documenting Life, Death and the Stasi 213 Carol Anne Costabile-Heming 14 Escaping the Autobiographical Trap? Monika Maron, the Stasi and Pawels Briefe 227 Andrew Plowman Bibliography 243 Index 257 Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank the following people, first of all Professor Michael Butler from the University of Birmingham, who carefully read the whole manuscript and whose advice and experience has been invaluable throughout this project. Thanks are due to Jonathan Grix at the Institute for German Studies, Kristine Thelen and Professor Peter J. Kitson, and also to the German Department at the University of Liverpool for helping to fund a one-day colloquium in 2001 where many of the contributors met to discuss their chapters. We would like to thank Dr Wini Davies from the University of Wales Aberystwyth, as well as Professor Frank Finlay and the German Department, Professor Rachel Killick and the School of Modern Languages at the University of Leeds and Professor Dorothy Severin and the School of Modern Languages at the University of Liverpool for providing the necessary funding to see the project through to completion. Our appreciation also goes to Sarah Church at Echelon for her expertise in producing the finished copy and finally to Beverley Tarquini at Palgrave Macmillan for all her support. Paul Cooke and Andrew Plowman Leeds/Liverpool February 2003 vii This page intentionally left blank Notes on the Contributors Michael Butler is Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Birmingham. His publications include The Novels of Max Frisch (London, 1975), The Plays of Max Frisch (London, 1985), Frisch: 'Andorra l (London, 1985, second edition, 1994), and the edited volumes, Rejection and Emancipation: Writing in German-speaking Switzerland 1945­ 1991 (with Malcolm Pender, Oxford 1991), The Narrative Fiction of Heinrich Boll: Social conscience and literary achievement (Cambridge, 1994), The Making ofModem Switzerland, 1848-1998 (with Malcolm Pender and Joy Charnley, London, 2000), and The Challenge ofGerman Culture: Essays presented to Wilfried van der Will (with Robert Evans, London, 2000). He has written numerous articles on modern German literature, from the eighteenth century to the present day. He is General Editor (with William Paterson) of the series, 'New Perspectives in German Studies'. Paul Cooke is a Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Speaking the Taboo: a study of the work of Wolfgang Hilbig (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA, 2000) and The Pocket Essential to German Expressionist Film (London, 2002). He has co-edited, with Jonathan Grix, East Germany: Continuity and Change (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA, 2000) and East German distinctiveness in a unified Germany (Birmingham, 2002). He has published on German literature, film, politics and cultural studies. Carol Anne Costabile-Heming is Associate Professor of German and University Fellow in Research at Southwest Missouri State University. She is the author of Intertextual Exile: Volker Braun IS Dramatic Re-Vision of GDR Society (Hildesheim, 1997) and the co-editor, with Rachel J. Halverson and Kristie A. Foell of Textual Responses to German Unification: Processing Historical and Social Change in Literature and