Is anyone responsible for what happens to Mahlke

1
Is anyone responsible for what happens to Mahlke?

• um die ewige Katze von der ewigen Maus
  abzulenken (Ch 2)
• Whose eternal pattern?
• Grass or Pilenz? Who is responsible for the
  structuring of the book? Wer schreibt mir einen
  guten Schluss?
• Does an eternal myth not absolve any
  participants from responsibility. Why is Pilenz
  unwilling to name things by their name?

2
Gibt es Geschichten, die aufhören können? (end
of Ch 10)

• What does the book (and its way of being told)
  say about post-war German society and its
  relationship to the idea of guilt for what
  happened 1933-1945?
• is Pilenz still in contact with schoolfriends?
• Where does the book end?
• Where is he himself located?

3
Pilenz, 1959

• Ch 9 Noch heute, wenn ich, was selten vorkommt,
  das Kolpinghaus verlasse
• (Adolf Kolping, 1813-1865, founder of Catholic
  Gesellenvereine).
• den Kölner Gesellenverein, eine
  Selbsthilfeorganisation, die durch soziale
  Unterstützung sowie mit Freizeit- und
  Bildungsangeboten verhindern sollte, dass
  unselbständige Handwerker ins Proletariat
  abrutschen und sich dem Christentum entfremden.

4
The politics of remembering

• Is literature an ideological instrument stories
  that seduce readers into accepting the
  hierarchical arrangements of society? (J.
  Culler).
• Does literature merely reflect or critically
  reflect upon society?
• Grasss work creates a public sphere for
  discussion of memories literature becomes the
  forum through which the past, and the present,
  can be discussed in West German society.
• Telling uncomfortable, unsettling stories

5
Literature in the GDR

• Post NS awareness of literature as an
  ideological / political instrument
• Use it to reflect (and help construct) a social
  reality
• Four phases
• 1945-1949 Antifascist-democratic renewal
• 1949-1961Aufbau des Sozialismus
• 1961 Ankunft im Alltag
• 1971 The entwickelte sozialistische
  Geselleschaft

6
Antifascist-democratic renewal

• Writers returning from exile (Brecht, Anna
  Seghers)
• Educate the people in terms of democracy and
  humanism
• (Re)claim the humanist tradition (Goethe .
  Schiller - cf. Ch.9 Schillerzimmer)

7
Socialist Realism

• With formation of GDR, the SED (ruling party)
  demands literature that reflects the problems of
  the day (and how they are being overcome)
• 1. Parteilichkeit
• 2. Volkstümlichkeit / Volksverbundenheit
• 3. Postive (proletarischer) Held
• To help create the socialist personality

8
A socialist literature

• 1959 Bitterfelder Weg
• Writes should go into factories to get to know
  the proletariat
• Greif zur Feder, Kumpel
• Christa Wolf, Der geteilte Himmel (1963), based
  on her experiences in VEB Waggonbau in Halle,
  participating in a Zirkel schreibender Arbeiter

9
Ankunft im Alltag

• 1961 Phase of sozialistischen Aufbaus over
• From ich to wir
• Rather than reflecting a utopian reality, writers
  reflect upon the existing situation critically.
• Contrasting rich, private, subjective sphere and
  technological / bureaucratic social world.
• Christa Wolf, Nachdenken über Christa T.

10
Real existierender Sozialismus

• 1971 Erich Honecker in power
• Ent-tabuisierung of literary topics
• Wenn man von den festen Positionen des
  Sozialismus ausgeht, kann es meines Erachtens auf
  dem Gebiet von Kunst und Literatur keine Tabus
  geben. Das betrifft sowohl die Fragen der
  inhaltlichen Gestaltung als auch des Stils."
  (Erich Honecker Dez. 1971)
• 1976 Ausbürgerung of Wolf Biermann

11
GDR literature since 1976

• Increasing focus on the status of the allseitig
  entwickelten Individuums, and its place within
  the bureaucratic systems of GDR.
• Investigation of GDRs history how it became
  what it was.
• Increasing critique of the states relationship
  to the environment
• Move from specific critique of GDR to
  Zivilisationskritik the imbalance between
  science/reason and instinct, to the detriment of
  the human

12
Der fremde Freund

• Published 1982
• Breaks all the doctrines of Socialist Realism
• Published in East and West. Much criticized in
  Eastern press for lack of positivity.
• Does not even show a rich subjective world in
  contrast to a bureaucratic society
• Alienation in the modern world.
• Narrative perspective not that dissimilar to
  Kafka we have to spot the limitations of the
  protagonists thinking discrepancy between her
  view of the world and herself and what is
  actually the case,

13
Der fremde Freund

• Focus Chapter 9
• Why does the narrator travel to G.? Does she
  know?
• What does the chapter suggest about the way the
  past shaped the narrators identity?
• What insight do we get into the relationship
  between the narrator and Henry?

14
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