poetry and politics around 1968 dr nicola thomas nicola.thomas@queens.ox.ac.uk poetry since 1945 lecture 2

last week’s questions… Was the period after 1945 a complete break with what came before, or was there some continuity? Is it possible to write poetry ‘after Auschwitz’? Is post-war poetry ‘difficult’, ‘hermetic’, not interested in communicating with its readers?

this week’s questions… How politically engaged was/is post-war poetry in German? What ideas of authorship are important in post-war German poetry? How effective was Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the process of coming to terms with the past in German literature? How did the GDR and West Germany handle Vergangenheitsbewältigung differently?

gdr/ddr frg/brd Overlap and correspondence as well as differences Deal with them as separate literary cultures? GDR = marginal? Conflate them? But then GDR context might be forgotten Scholarly approaches to the GDR always inflected by ideology frg/brd

the political context Political and economic circumstances Technological advancements Globalisation and mass migration Culture and counterculture, including student movements

cultural policy in the gdr “Unsere DDR ist ein sauberer Staat. In ihr gibt es unverrückbare Maßstäbe der Ethik und Moral, für Anstand und gute Sitte” “Nihilismus”, “Skeptizismus”, “Pornographie” (Hoenecker, 1965) “Dann werden die Schriftsteller und Künstler ohne Zweifel nicht nur die richtigen, unserer sozialistichen Gesellschaft nützlichen Themen in den Mittelpunkt ihres Schaffens stellen, sondern auch die ganze Breite und Vielfalt der neuen Lebensäußerungen erfassen und ausschöpfen” (Hoenecker, 1971) Biermann exiled “wegen grober Verletzung der staatsbürgerlichen Pflichten“ (1976) 1965 1970 1975

 brecht and benn Hans Magnus Enzensberger, In Search of a Lost Language (1963)

hans magnus enzensberger Born in Bavaria in 1929 Key works: Museum der modernen Poesie (1960); Landessprache (1960); blindenschrift (1964). ‘Endlich, endlich ist unter uns der zornige junge Mann erschienen […] Es gibt glückliche Länder, in denen er in Rudeln auftritt … Bei uns gibt es nur einen, immerhin: dieser eine hat geschrieben, was es seit Brecht nicht mehr gegeben hat, das große politische Gedicht’. (Andersch)

gdr poetry Sarah Kirsch (1935-2013). Rainer Kunze (1933-), Volker Braun (1939-), Wolf Biermann (1936), Peter Huchel (1903-1981), Johannes Bobrowski (1917-1965) ‘extremen Hang zum Austausch’ (Berendse) ‘Teamwork-Attitude’ (Kirsch) ‘wandellose Werkstatt’ (Elke Erb)

wolf biermann Key publications from this period (published in FRG): Wolf Biermann zu Gast bei Wolfgang Neuss (1965, live recording) Die Drahtharfe (1965, poetry collection) - only published in the FRG. Chausseestrasse 131 (1968, record) Mit Marx- und Engelszungen. (1968, poetry collection, ) Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen. (1972) Banned from performing in the GDR in 1969, then expelled from GDR while on tour in the West in 1976.

sarah kirsch Key publications during this period Gespräch mit dem Saurier (1965) Landaufenthalt (1969) Zaubersprüche (1973) Katzenkopfpflaster (1978) 1963: overly subjective, bourgeois Innerlichkeit 1971: example of the ‘Breite und Vielfalt’ of socialist life 1977: moved to West Germany in the wake of the Biermann affair

vergangenheitsbewältigung? Adorno’s critique: the past cannot be ‘overcome’ Grass and Enzensberger’s direct involvement in WW2 Relevance in GDR context?

conclusions Ways in which post-war poetry was political often related to the two poles of Brecht and Benn. ‘Vergangenheitsbewältingung’ often talked about but c.f. Adorno – how can we ‘overcome’ the past? Post-war poetry highly political: not just in content but also in form and its approach to the idea of ‘lyric’ poetry i.e. the poetry of private emotion.

references Image: ‘la lute continue’- French poster (created by Atelier Populaire) for the student protest movements of 1968