Category Books

German Writers & The Politics Of Culture »

Authors: Paul Cooke (Editor), Andrew Plowman (Editor), Andrew Plowman
ISBN-13: 9781403913265, ISBN-10: 1403913269
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Date Published: March 2004
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Paul Cooke

Paul Cooke is a Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Leeds.

Andrew Plowman teaches German Language, Literature and Film Studies in the School of Modern Languages at the University of Liverpool.

Book Synopsis

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall many East German writers were praised in the Western world as dissident voices of truth, bravely struggling with the draconian constraints of living under the GDR's communist regime. However, since unification, Germany has been rocked by scandals showing the level to which the Stasi, the East German Secret Police, controlled these same writers. This is the first study in English to systematically explore how the writers have responded to the challenge of dealing with the Stasi from the 1950s to the present day.

	Acknowledgements
	Notes on the Contributors
	List of Abbreviations
	Introduction
1	The East German Ministry of State Security and East German Society during the Honecker Era, 1971-1989	3
2	Uwe Johnson's Awkward Legacy: A Sympathetic Secret Policeman of the pre-Stasi Era	25
3	The Stasi as the Force of Evil: Collin's Faustian Struggle with the Stasi Boss Urack in Stefan Heym's Collin	41
4	'Die Tragikomodie Deutschland': Scenes from No Man's Land in Martin Walser's Dorle und Wolf	57
5	Tallhover or the Eternal Spy: Hans Joachim Schadlich's Stasi-Novel Tallhover	71
6	'Ich, Seherin, gehorte zum Palast': Christa Wolf's Literary Treatment of the Stasi in the Context of her Poetics of Self-Analysis	87
7	'Konnte man sagen, du seist ein Spionchen?': Erich Loest's Fallhohe	107
8	Telling Tales: Moral Responsibility and the Stasi in Uwe Saeger's Die Nacht danach und der Morgen	121
9	The Stasi as Panopticon: Wolfgang Hilbig's "Ich"	139
10	The Stasi, the Confession and Performing Difference: Brigitte Burmeister's Unter dem Namen Norma	155
11	'Bekenntnisse des Stasi-Hochstaplers Klaus Uhltzscht': Thomas Brussig's Comical and Controversial Helden wie wir	173
12	The Stasi as Literary Conceit: Gunter Grass's Ein weites Feld	195
13	Jurgen Fuchs: Documenting Life, Death and the Stasi	213
14	Escaping the Autobiographical Trap? Monika Maron, the Stasi and Pawels Briefe	227
	Bibliography	243
	Index	257