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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 GERMAN WRITERS AND THE INTERMEDIATE-RANGE NUCLEAR FORCES DEBATE IN THE 1980S DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Anne Marie Stokes, BA., M.A. The Ohio State University 1991 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Leslie Adelson Alan Beyerchen ---- Adviser Bernd Fischer Department of German Copyright by Anne Marie Stokes 1991 To my children, Jonathan and Nikolas ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation originated at the suggestion and under the supervision of Henry Schmidt, who, unfortunately, lived to see only the first half of the study. Henry provided excellent criticism of the first two chapters and of some segments of the literary analysis contained in chapters three and four. German studies, and, in particular, the German department at the Ohio State University, lost one of its kindest and ablest practitioners when he died. I miss him very much, both as a colleague and a friend. I would like to thank Leslie Adelson for her willingness to replace Henry as my adviser. Her consistently speedy return of draft chapters, replete with insightful remarks, and her gentle prodding, made it possible for me to complete the manuscript sooner than I had thought possible. I am also grateful to her for several visits she conducted in my stead to the graduate school in the final stages of my experience as an out-of-state research student. Thanks also to the other members of my advisory committee, Bernd Fischer and Alan Beyerchen, for their comments and suggestions, and to Max Schmidt-Schilling for introducing me to the work of West German children's author Gudrun Pausewang. And, thank you, Ray, for your practical assistance, intellectual advice, and, above all, your encouragement, throughout the entire dissertation process. iii VITA February 13, 1962 ............... Born - Glasgow, Scotland 1980-1985 ....................... Scottish Education Department Grant for study at University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland 1982-1984 ....................... Study at the University of Mainz, Mainz, Federal Republic of Germany 1985 ............................. B.A., M.A., Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, Scotland 1985-1987 ....................... Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1988-1989 ....................... Dissertation research in West Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany 1989-1991 ....................... Instructor, German Language School of Albany, Albany, New York FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: German TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................ iii VITA ........................................................ iv INTRODUCTION ................................................ 1 Endn o t e s ......................................... 15 CHAPTER PAGE I. NUCLEAR PROTEST MOVEMENTS IN WEST AND EAST GERMANY . 17 Endn o t e s......................................... 41 II. ANTI-NUCLEAR ACTIVISM OF WRITERS IN THE EIGHTIES .... 47 E ndn o t e s......................................... 89 III. "0, COME ALL YE FEARFUL!": AGITATIONAL LITERATURE OF THE EARLY EIGHTIES ............................... 97 E ndn o t e s......................................... 147 IV. BOOKS ABOUT THE B O M B ................................. 151 E n d n o t e s......................................... 198 CONCLUSION.................................................. 202 Endn o t e s......................................... 210 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................ 211 Primary Works ................................... 211 Articles, Essays, Interviews, Documents ........... 213 Secondary Works........ ........................... 216 v INTRODUCTION In the minds of many Germans, the terms "Geist" (intellect) and "Macht" (power), epitomized respectively by writers and politicians, are considered opposites, and for good reason. In contrast to France, where writers and politicians have traditionally respected one another, German writers have held themselves aloof from practical politics, regarding the latter with mistrust and scorn, or they have considered it their function to question the authority of those in power. This study addresses a recent example of oppositional political engagement by West and East German writers: opposition in the 1980's to NATO deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in West Germany. Evidence of withdrawal from political activism abounds in modern German literature up to and throughout the Weimar era. Obvious examples include the retreat of German Classicists and Romantics to the aesthetic realm following the French Revolution and the concern with the individual extant in works of German Expressionist poets and Modernists. During the same periods, however, there were individual authors and groups of writers who employed their literary production in an effort to undermine the prevailing order: the Jacobine poets, the Jung Deutschland Liberals, Heinrich Heine, Georg Buchner, and the "Arbeiterdichter" in 1 the nineteenth centrury, and Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht and Erich Kastner in the first half of the twentieth century. The experience of Weimar, the Third Reich, the Holocaust, and World War II, however, made many writers aware both of the fundamental need for writers' involvement in social and political matters and of the modest results that could be attained through the literary medium. In a concise and informative monograph that presents an overview of the extensive political writing produced during that period, C.E. Williams sums up the limitations. Political literature, he writes "could hope only for oblique and indirect results. The ultimate measure of political writing lay less in the extent to which it inspired political action than in the extent to which it shaped human consciousness."1 In exile, writers of all political persuasions who had recognized the need for the German populace to be warned of the dangers inherent in the National Socialist philosophy reached not only for their pens, but issued speeches and petitions. Already in 1947, writers' determination to concern themselves with the social and political affairs of their state found expression during the first writers' conference held in Berlin. At the end of the meeting, writers of a variety of political persuasions resolved to help Germany emerge from its political and intellectual isolation by keeping Germans morally conscious of the suffering they inflicted on other peoples under the Hitler regime; to combat all remnants of fascism and anti-semitism; to help preserve Germany from nuclear annihilation by working to establish peace within Germany and between the superpowers that had occupied and divided it; to strive to preserve cultural and linguistic 3 identity for as long as Germany remained divided; and to work for the establishment of a liberal and humanistic state.2 In the post-war era, writers in both German states sought to achieve these and other political goals through their literary production and political engagement as prominent public figures. The latter has been especially important since the sixties, when the influence of literature, especially high-brow literature, began to become increasingly limited due to the growing predominance of the electronic media, particularly in the West.3 Vaterland. Muttersnrache. Deutsche Schriftsteller und ihr Staat von 1945 bis heute'1. a collection published in 1979 of political essays, speeches, manifests, open letters, poems and polemics, bears witness to the extensive political engagement of writers in West Germany through the seventies. Included are documents testifying to their opposition to the division of Germany and rearmament in the fifties, and constrictions on personal freedom or threats to democracy such as the Spiegel Affair of fall