PRAGUE – PARIS VIA EAST- AND WEST-BERLIN:
EAST GERMAN LITERATURE AS THE SEISMOGRAPH OF A EUROPEAN PROTEST MOVEMENT

It is generally assumed that the events comprising the student movement in West-Germany in the sixties are not paralleled by similar events in the former GDR. However, newer research suggests that even though comparable historical events are missing, the influence of different European student movements found fertile grounds in East-Germany and influenced long term political, social and aesthetic developments in the GDR (cp. the exhibit “Protest! Literatur um 1968” at the Literaturarchiv in Marbach in 1998 and the exhibit “Bohème und Diktatur in der DDR: Gruppen, Konflikte, Quartiere” at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin in 1997). In his revised Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR, Wolfgang Emmerich calls for further research in order to show the fruitful dialogue between East- and West-German literature during the time of protest.

As I argue, the seeming absence of massive student protests in the East does not mean that the West-German, European and global political and social unrest did not effect East Germany’s youth, artists and intellectuals. In this paper, I am presenting a re-reading of canonical East-German literary texts, among them Irmtraud Morgner’s Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz (1974), Ulrich Plenzdorf’s Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (1972), and Christa Wolf’s Nachdenken über Christa T. (1969), that demonstrates that East-German discourses of protest and opposition of the time were firmly embedded within a German-German and European context. They were politically motivated and had long-lasting effects, leading to a reconsideration of the founding myths of the GDR and, ultimately, to the opening of the Berlin Wall. I propose to read East-German literature as a seismograph not only of East-German dissent, but also of ruptures in West-Germany and Europe during the sixties.

Susanne Rinner is teaching at the Department of German at Georgetown University, Washington DC. She received her Ph.D. from this very department in 2003. She is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively entitled “Erinnern und Erzählen: Die Darstellung der Studentenbewegung und des Nationalsozialismus in der deutschsprachigen Literatur nach 1989.“ Her research interests include twentieth-century and contemporary German literature, film, and culture; cultural memory and questions of personal, social, and national identity; sexuality and politics; and social and protest movements. Susanne Rinner had numerous opportunities to present and publish her research on a variety of aspects related to the sixties student movement.

Two recent articles include „Sprengen oder sprechen lassen? Der generations- und geschlechtsspezifische Umgang mit der Erinnerung in Uwe Timms Rot“, accepted for publication in a volume about Uwe Timm’s literary works, edited by Ingo Cornils and Frank Finlay, published by Königshausen & Neumann, and “Milieux de Mémoire and Lieux de Mémoire in Contemporary German Literature: Remembering the United States.” In: Davis, Belinda, Martin Klimke, Carla MacDougall, and Wilfried Mausbach, eds., forthcoming. Changing the World, Changing Oneself: Political Protests and Collective Identities in the 1960s/70s West Germany and U.S. New York: Berghahn Books.

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