Theater in the Planned Society COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES ImUNCI Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures From 1949 to 2004, UNC Press and the UNC Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages and Literatures published the UNC Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures series. Monographs, anthologies, and critical editions in the series covered an array of topics including medieval and modern literature, theater, linguistics, philology, onomastics, and the history of ideas. Through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, books in the series have been reissued in new paperback and open access digital editions. For a complete list of books visit www.uncpress.org. Theater in the Planned Society Contemporary Drama in the German Democratic Republic in its Historical, Political, and Cultural Context h. g. huettich UNC Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures Number 88 Copyright © 1978 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons cc by-nc-nd license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons. org/licenses. Suggested citation: Huettich, H. G.Theater in the Planned Society: Contemporary Drama in the German Democratic Republic in its Histor- ical, Political, and Cultural Context. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978. doi: https://doi.org/ 10.5149/9781469657585_ Huettich Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Huettich, H. G. Title: Theater in the planned society : contemporary drama in the German Democratic Republic in its historical, political, and cultural context / by H. G. Huettich. Other titles: University of North Carolina studies in the Germanic languages and literatures ; no. 88. Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [1978] Series: University of North Carolina studies in the Germanic languages and literatures. | Includes index. Identifiers: lccn 76-20606 | isbn 978-1-4696-5757-8 (pbk: alk. paper) | isbn 978-1-4696-5758-5 (ebook) Subjects: German drama — Germany, East — History and criticism. | Communism and literature. | Literature and state — Germany, East. Classification: lcc pt3721 .h8 | dcc 832/ .91409 FOR MY PARENTS Contents Preface Xl Acknowledgments xiv Addendum to the Preface xv Introduction: Theater in Flux, 1945-1949 I. Veterans Into the Breach: Griinberg, Wolf and Wangenheim 10 II. The Emergence of the Socialist Perspective: 1951-1956 25 III. Toward a Socialist National Theater 50 IV. The Dialectic Digression 59 V. Brown Coal Dialectics 71 VI. In Search of the Mainstream 85 VII. Collective Bucolics 94 VIII. The Bourgeois Aesthetic: Up Against the Wall 112 IX. Heavy Traffic on the Party Line: The Plays of 1963-1964 123 X. Ruminations and Rejections: The Eleventh Plenary Inquisition 132 XI. Tht· Contemporary Topical Drama 141 Bibliogr:1phy 155 Index 162 Preface The American reader's exposure to the literature of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), generally known as East Germany, has been minimal. In the area of German studies, however, the study of the culture of the GDR has been the fastest-growing discipline at American universities in recent years. Today in the United States, public recognition of the GDR is at an all-time high. Since 1969 the attention given to the "other" German state by government agencies, the media, and educational institutions has steadily increased. This achievement of a new "higher profile" in the public mind is partly due to the GDR's recent efforts to improve its international public relations and to relax cold war tensions. But the primary credit for this new focus must be placed where it rightfully belongs: with historical necessity. For twenty years the GDR was deliberately ignored in sources of public information in the vain hope that it would indeed go away if ignored long enough. By 1969, however, the GDR could no longer be ignored. Economically it had come to rank among the top ten industrial nations of the world: it was the second largest industrial producer of the Warsaw Pact nations. As such, it had forced other nations to recognize its growing importance in international rela­ tions: it had become a potential trade partner. These developments culminated in the GD R's admission to the United Nations in 1973 with status equal to that of the other new member, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), and, finally, in the formal diplomatic recognition of the GDR by the United States in the fall of 1974. Americans who are interested in the cultural life of the GDR must first be prepared to dismiss those preconceived notions of "German Culture" which are usually gained through exposure to German history or to the cultural life of the Western, Americanized Federal Republic. The GDR, geographically "Middle" rather than "Eastern" Germany, is a "socialist democracy," i.e., a socialist state based upon a governing communist XI party. In its simplest definition, the GDR is indeed a Communist country. GDR cultural life thus follows a set of rules that do not correspond to the more familiar patterns of West Germany or the United States. Like all Communist states, the GDR is a centrally planned society. Conse­ quently, its literature is a planned literature. This is nowhere more evident than in the production of drama. Socialist realism, the "historically concrete repre­ sentation of reality in its revolutionary development," confines the East German theater to the topical representation of contemporary life in the German Demo­ cratic Republic. The Socialist Unity Party (SED) envisions the theater, tradi­ tionally Germany's "moral institution," as a vehicle for the transmission of a socialist morality. The SED's cultural policy places the contemporary topical drama of the GDR in the vanguard of cultural-political activity; it is at once one of the prime educational tools of the planned society and its most effectively planned literary genre. This politicization of the theater makes the dramatist a political figure, and his work a political phenomenon. A primary task of the present volume is to investigate the strategies used by various dramatists to respond to this social mandate and the way in which their imposed social role affects the nature and quality of their work. To the liberal West the social-political mandate under which the GDR dramatists must work represents the most fascinating aspect of their literary situation. This study attempts to examine the development of contemporary GDR dramatists and their theater within the framework of the GDR's socialist/ Communist system and to trace the reciprocal relationships between the drama­ tists and their planned society. We could do worse than to take our own drama and dramatists as seriously as the GDR regards hers. Given these circumstances, a note on the methodology of this study will be of benefit to the reader. The present study has two major objectives: (1) To trace the development of the GDR's contemporary topical drama (GDR drama about the GDR) in its historical context; and (2) to define the sociopolitical function of drama and dramatists in that society. These objectives necessitate an historical approach which I have tried to apply as objectively and consistently as possible. From the very beginning, it was evident to me that to separate politics from literature, art from society, and history from literary history would not only be a thankless endeavor, but a fruitless one as well. I am convinced that the literary artist, and especially the writer of drama, engages in a social function in any society. In the GDR, this function is raised to another degree, to a political func­ tion. Necessarily, this implies certain controls and restrictions to which the dramatist must tailor his work, since the primary function ofthe dramatist's work is not defined by the dramatist, but by the cultural policy of the state which fluctuates with the historical development of the GDR. Here, the all-important questions of artistic freedom and aesthetic quality become unavoidable. To do full justice to these questions, however, would entail Xll an incisive ideological critique of the sociopolitical structure of the GDR which I do not presume to present in my historically oriented study of contemporary drama. Furthermore, I am not convinced that "artistic freedom" and "aesthetic quality" are causally related-however these concepts may be defined. Existing definitions of these concepts do not significantly rise above justifications of subjective personal taste tied to personal ideology. In my own subjective taste, I may value the drama of Heiner Muller far above that of Helmut Sakowski. This however only defines my taste as an American middle-class scholar, but says little indeed about the historical function of the theater in the GDR which is my primary object of inquiry. For those who wish to pursue this question further, within the framework of this study or outside of it, I have carefully and objectively outlined the ideo­ logical consistencies and inconsistencies in the cultural policy of the GDR to the extent that available historical evidence permits. Thus the reader may make his own aesthetic and ideological judgments in reference to the cultural-historical processes, the dramatists, and the works encompassed in the present study. * * * A word about the terminology, abbreviations, and translations used: I have studiously tried to avoid the acronym game to which the GDR's bureaucratic jungle lends itself too readily. For obvious convenience, I use only two abbrevia­ tions, the English GDR for German Democratic Republic, and the German SED for Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party ofGermany). Although this seems inconsistent, it reflects accepted use in the literature. All other organizations are referred to in their non-abbreviated English-translations, again as they are being standardized in the literature: i.e., Free German Youth for Freie Deutsche Jugend, etc. Periodicals are referred to in full and cited with their original title.