A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/140150 Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications IDENTITY, COMMUNITY AND CONTINUITY IN THE EAST GERMAN NOVEL Attention is drawn to the fact that the copyright of this thesis tests with its author. GEORGE DENNIS TATE, B.A. (Dublin), M.A. (McMaster) This copy o f the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the author’s prior written consent. A Thesis for the Degree of Doctor cf Philosophy submitted to the University of Warwick Department of German Studies September 1977 IDENTITY, COMMUNITY AND CONTINUITY IN THE EAST GERMAN NOVEL GEORGE DENNIS TATE, B.A. (Dublin), M.A. (McKaster) A Thesis for the Degree of Doctor cf Philosophy submitted to the University of Warwick Department of German Studies September 1977 V CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements iii Summary .. iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 - THE UTOPIAN PROJECTION. Johannes R. Becher : Abschied .. .. .. 2? The Effects of E x i l e .......................... 28 The Autobiographical Structure of Abschied .. 34 The Bourgeois Ethos: 'Das Strammstehende Leben' 46 The Quest for a New Identity: 'Das Anderswerden' 57 Socialist Utopia: 'Das Standhafte Leben' .. .. 63 The Continuation of Abschied in the East German C o n t e x t ..................................... 74 Becher's Diary of 1950: Auf andere Art so große Hoffnung................ ..... ........... 79 The Private Reassessment:Wiederanders .. .. 84 CHAPTER 2 - THE RHETORIC OF SOCIALIST TRANSFORMATION. Eduard Claudius: Menschen an unsrer Seite and Hans Max-chwitza : Roheisen .. 95 ■Socialist Reportage' as the Antithesis of Realism 96 A Closer Look at the 'Neuer Mensch' - Menschen an unsrer Seite .. .. .. .. ............ 107 Literature in an Ideological Straitjacket 119 Industrial Revolution in an Organic Community - Roheisen ................. ................. 129 Roheisen and the Fourth Writers' Congress 143 CHAPTER 3 - THE IDENTITY PROBLEMS OF THE WAR GENERATION. Herbert Otto : Die Lüge Dieter Noll : Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt Max Walter Schulz : Wir sind nicht Staub im Wind Franz FUhmann : Das Judenauto GUnter de Bruyn : Der Hohlweg ........... The Ambiguity of Community: Franz FUhmann's Kameraden .................... •• •• The Fallible Hero and the Revival of the 'Bourgeois Individualism' in the Central Figures 171 The Experience of War ..................... 182 Patterns of Post-War Development ........... 191 Resistance to 'Gro/8e Worte' as a Basis for Identity..................................... 203 'Erpreßte Versöhnung' and its Literary Conse­ quences ..................................... 213 t u.PTER 4 - CONTINUITY AND CONFLICT IN THE GDR'S DEVELOPMENT Brigitte Reimann : Die Geschwister Christa Wolf : Der geteilte Himmel Erwin Strittmatter : Ole Bienkopp Erik Neutsch s Spur der Steine Hermann Kant : Die A u l a ................ 223 The Two Faces of the 'Cultural Revolution' .. 226 The Narrator as M e d i a t o r ..................... 243 The Reckoning with the Stalin Era ........... 239 The Limits of Community ..................... 284 The Private Dimension to Self-Fulfilment .. .. 303 The Parting of the Ways: The Eleventh Plenum .. 316 CHAPTER 5 - SUBJECTIVE REALISM - THE CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL. Günter de Bruyn : Buridans Esel Christa Wolf : Nachdenken über Christa T. Hermann Kant : Das Impressum Brigitte Reimann : Franziska Linkerhand .. 325 The Retreat to the Self .. .. ........... 326 Fiction and 'Subjective Authenticity' .. .. 341 The Threat to Identity within the GDR .. .. 359 The Urban Context of Contemporary Socialism .. 377 The Dream of Wholeness .. .. .. .. .. 392 CON C L U S I O N .......................................... 403 Footnotes •• . • .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 411 Bibliography 446 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to acknowledge the wholehearted cooperation I received while carrying out research for this thesis in the Jouannes-R.-Becher-Archiv and the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in East Berlin, the Deutsche BUcherei in Leipzig and the Archiv ftlr DDR-Literatur und DDR-Germanistik in Mainz. Nearer home, I have received constant generous assistance from the staffs of the libraries of the New University of Ulster and the University of Warwick. I wish to record my special debt of gratitude to Professor Roy Pascal, who laid the foundations for much of this research in the M.A. seminar at McMaster University in 1969/70 and whose encouragement since has been inspirational. Professor Richard Hinton Thomas, my supervisor, helped me inestimably at the outset in placing my interest in East German literature in a fruitful wider context. Over the years he has guided the course of my work through his perceptive criticisms, and dealt with my various queries in an understanding and unfailingly constructive manner. The ' . responsibility for any errors in the detail or the general orientation of this thesis rests, however, entirely with me. Finally, I wish to express my sincere appreciation to Morag Stark for the meticulousness, industry and tolerance she has shown in recent months in dealing with the typing and formal presentation of my work. iii SUMMARY This thesis demonstrates how East German fiction has liberated itself from the ideological preconception that citi­ zens of the German Democratic Republic would automatically enjoy a qualitatively unique sense of identity. Although the novelists retain their socialist confidence in the perfect­ ibility of man, they have shown that expectations of pre­ industrial personal 'wholeness' and communal harmony are illusory in a technologically advanced society. Continuity is seen to be inseparable from conflict, in terms of individual, social and cultural development. Socialist Realist theory of the 1930's is shown to have been influenced as much by Expressionist notions of identity and revolution as by the aspirations of the Weimar classicists and Marx. Its hostility towards Brecht's dialectical view of realism has proven ill-judged. The five chapters highlight the main stages in the restoration of the criteria of realism to the depiction of man and society in the GDR. The utopian hopes of the exile years, and the inherent contradictions in Socialist Realism, are illus­ trated through the analysis of Becher's Abschied in the light of his Wiederanders fragment. The rhetorical insubstantiality of the first industrial novels is exposed through studies of the work of Claudius and Marchwitza. Chapters 3-5 show, by means of comparative analysis of three distinct groups of thematically related novels, how the new generation of writers has gradually established new standards of authenticity and formal subtlety. The detailed consideration of the 'Entwicklungsromane* centred - iv on the post-war identity crisis, the historical perspective on the GDR's development in the 'Bitterfeld' fiction, and the more penetrating 'subjective' prose-works of the late 1960's demon­ strates the outstanding achievements of Strittmatter, FUhmann, Wolf, de Bruyn and Reimann. An important body of modern German fiction is hereby placed in a revealing literary-historical context and new light thrown upon unjustly neglected individual works. Der freie Mensch, das freie Volk auf freiem Grund ist die Forderung unserer Epoche geworden, aus der Forderung der Epoche Goethes hervorgehend. Dem Licht im Westen.#, das zur Zeit Goethes aufging, ist in unserem Zeitalter der Glanz gefolgt, den die russische Revolution Uber uns ausstrahlte ... Ein von einer unermüdlichen harmonischen Menschentätigkeit erfülltes Panorama, das ist die friedliche Aussicht, die uns Goethe als das Bild einer künftigen Menschengemein­ schaft entwirft. Johannes R. Becher Schiller ist mit uns in diesem geistigen Befreiungsprozeß, in dem der arbeitende Mensch in seiner sozialistischen Entwicklung vom Ich zum Wir gleichzeitig zu einer bewußt handelnden, freien, voll mitverantwortlichen und allseitig entwickelten Persönlichkeit emporwächst ... (Heute) ist es ... unsere sozialistische Gesellschaft, ... die in ihrem weiteren Übergang zur kommunistischen Gesellschaft auch Schillers Traum einer harmonischen Gesellschaft ohne Klassenspaltung verwirklichen wird. 2 Alexander Abusch Although the leadership of any newly established state is bound to be eager to instil a sense of individual commitment and community pride amongst its citizens, there is something quite exceptional about the terms in which cultural spokesmen for the German Democratic Republic have defined the strength of identity being built up in their homeland under socialism. Throughout the first epoch in its existence, the period up to 1971 marked by Walter Ulbricht's leadership of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), East German literature has had to come to terms with this totally idealised official view of identity, which seeks to reconcile self-unity, communal harmony goal occur in speeches made in Weimar, commemorating the bicentenaries of the birth of Goethe and Schiller, in 19^9 and 1959 respectively, and that both speakers