GDR Bulletin

Volume 5 Issue 1 Winter Article 11

1979

Brigitte Klump: Das rote Kloster. Eine deutsche Erziehung --- : Hotel Lux

Wes Blomster University of Colorado

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Recommended Citation Blomster, Wes (1979) "Brigitte Klump: Das rote Kloster. Eine deutsche Erziehung --- Ruth von Mayenburg: Hotel Lux," GDR Bulletin: Vol. 5: Iss. 1. https://doi.org/10.4148/gdrb.v5i1.445

This Review is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in GDR Bulletin by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact cads@k- state.edu. Blomster: Brigitte Klump: Das- rote11 Kloster.- Eine deutsche Erziehung --- Rut

Der Aufenthalt. 3y Herzann Kant. Berlin: honesty includes the acknowledgment of flaws in Poles and Russians as well. Thus, the nar• Rütten & Loening, 1977. 600 pages. DM 10,80. rator provides several examples of traditional From its very beginnings, GDR literature has antisemitic feelings among Poles. This cri• struggled with the themes of fascism, anti- tical view keeps within certain limits, and is semi tism, and war. Der Aufenthalt marks a counterbalanced by the suggestion of changes new quality in dealing with these themes, and and new beginnings: Niebuhr is told that adds new perspectives and insights (as does several good Catholic parents have named their Christa Wolf's comparable novel Kindheits• children Mordechaj after the leader of the muster) . Kant structures his story as an edu• uprising in the Warsaw ghetto (41?). cational novel: Mark Niebuhr, born and Formally and stylistically, Der Aufenthalt raised in a small North German town, becomes resembles Kant's earlier novels. But the a soldier in late 1944 at the age of eighteen, general mood is more somber, the satire is receives minimal training, is thrown into com• sharper, and Kant's pervasive humor includes bat, flees, and soon is captured. Several many grotesque elements. The "meandering" camps and prisons constitute the "Magic Moun• train of thoughts (the narrator's own expres• tain" where this unheroic hero is reeducated sion) may be too long-winded at times. With• in a slow and laborious process without the out denying Kant's skillfull use of leitmotifs help of a deus ex machina. Kant 's view of in general, the reviewer feels that the recol• education remains dialectical and open, even lections and recapitulations are occasionally somewhat sceptical, as stated in the motto, repetitive, and some passages in the witty which consists of six lines from Brecht's dialogues turn into belabored witticisms. Yet "Messingkauf": "So bildet sich der Mensch these minor shortcomings cannot impair the . . . Indem er uns gleicht und indem er uns accomplishments of this German "Bildungsroman^' nicht gleicht." and do not weaken the compelling symbolic Kant likes to tie his loosely structured force of many images, motifs, and scenes. We novels together with a central idea. In Per have to be grateful to Hermann Kant for the Aufenthalt, the central, dramatic idea is the work and pain that went into this entertain• question of Niebuhr's identity: Did he murder ing stirring, informative, and provocative a young Polish woman, or did he not? The confession. charge of being a war criminal forces Niebuhr to think about his part in the war—first in Theodor Langenbruch solitary confinement, then in a larger cell Georgia Institute of Technology shared with Polish petty criminals, and lastly, "at the bottom of the pit," in a ******** cell crowded with officers, SS lead• ers, and other Nazi charges. The Polish authorities finally establish Niebuhr's iden• tity. Although not guilty of the murder he he has been accused of, Niebuhr has come to realize how deeply he is actually involved in Das rote Kloster: Ejne deutsche Erziehung. By Hitler's war; that it was his young age more Brigitte Klump. Hamburg: Hoffman und Campe, than anything else that saved him from becom• 1978. 334 pages. 26 DM. ing guilty of more than killing two enemy sol• diers in combat, and that the roots of fascism Hotel Lux. By Ruth von Mayenburg. Munich: C. can be traced to ordinary life, for example, Bertelsmann, 19%. 352 pages. 32 DM. to inconspicuous instances of racism. Nie• buhr, at first confused, disoriented, "ver• "The red cloister" was the student name for the wildert," has become a human being who is now walled and well-guarded Institute for Journalism ready to live an active, responsible life. at , attended by Klump in the In his review of Der Aufenthalt, Marcel Reich- mid-1950's when it was the only training center Ranicki, the well-known West German critic, in this field in the GDR. The author, born in 1935, offers her account of these years after two praises this novel—some political and esthe• tic reservations notwithstanding—as a "seri• decades in the 3RD as a cathartic effort to come ous and honest book" (Frankfurter Allgemeine to terms with that part of her life which ended Zeitung, No. 133, June 11, 1977). Kant's when she came to the West.

Published by New Prairie Press, 1979 1 GDR Bulletin,- 12 Vol.- 5 [1979], Iss. 1, Art. 11

Moscow'3 Hotel Lux became the official residence difficulty in evaluating the book lies in of the Comintern beginning with the Third Inter• iding whether Klump is a 20th century Gretchen national, for which Lenin had called while in only the parody thereof. She took leave of exile in 1914. During the second war, it became ;ple agrarian beginnings ambitiously determined a major ghetto within the USSR for leading become a drama critic—out of socialist Communists who sought refuge from countries Hnitment. The book contains the material, of a overrun by fascism. It sheltered an average of Lvial novel: a naive country girl, largely 600 persons from 20 nations in these years; :ause of her physical beauty, finds herself among them Germans were heavily in the majority. rolved with the men who are to become leading Mayenburg—then the wife of the Austrian Ernst gures in the cultural-political life of the Fischer—lived in the Lux from 1938 to 1945. 3 a generation later. The secret police enter on the scene; the heroine is given assign- Through her residency she was in a position to nts to be executed, through erotic surrender observe the deeply personal and often dark side necessary. Hopeless conflicts between ideal of the lives of those who were to return from d reality beset the girl; attempted suicide exile to undertake the institution of Soviet- rsens her lot. Flight to the West is the only styled socialism in their native lands. Wilhelm urse which remains open to her. Pieck and were among Mayenburg's daily associates, as was , who was .e surprise is that the book rises far above to leave Communism for a position of leadership -nality. Klump's story derives its signifi- in the West German SPD. tnce from the intensity of pathos with which : is told. The book is an exposition of the story of life in the GDR related by Klump; Lux residents were i addition to the early portraits of contemp- the victims of nocturnal arrests, purges and rary leaders in the GDR, Klump tells of her liquidations at the hands of the NKVD, whose ssociation with Rainer Kunze and Helga Novak model is followed by the SSD—the-""— in n Leipzig and with in 3erlin. its control of the students in the "red cloi• ster". The tragedy which extends beyond Mayen- he author's dual interest in theater and jour- burg's documentation lay in the inability of the alism prompted a visit to the 3erliner Ensemble committed individuals who^lived there to exclude here she won the sympathy of . from their post-war political activity the mach• his, in turn, made possible for her a nracti- inations of the police state. um at that theatre immediately after the death f Brecht in 1956. It is unfortunate that Mayenburg did not concen• trate upon a more detailed account of her own t is Weigel who emerges as the great positive years in the Lux; she has chosen rather to en• igure of the book; indeed, the motherly con• gage in extensive reconstruction of events in ern which she expressed for Klump makes of her which she was in no way involved, such as the lmost the heroic stereotype demanded by doc- struggle for the control of China in the 1920's rinaire socialist realism. Weigel suggested riting as therapy for the obviously troubled and Trotski's murder in Mexico in 1940. Her ;irl, for which reason she stands as the god- Lux co-inhabitants included such literary fig• tother of this project, completed 20 years after ures as Erich Weinert, , Theodor :he advice was given. The book demands inclu- Plievier, Fritz Erpenbeck and even Johannes R. iion in the ^recht bibliography. 3echer. All, however, are mentioned only in passing. ;iump represents that multitude of GDR citizens Although both books are highly interesting and /ho want socialism, but not the socialism now even entertaining, it is Klump who has made the )racticed there. She stresses, therefore, that ler book is not a betrayal of socialism, but more significant contribution to cultural and *ather the unmasking of its traitors. historical documentation. Wes Blomster University of Colorado

https://newprairiepress.org/gdr/vol5/iss1/11 DOI: 10.4148/gdrb.v5i1.445 2