Christoph Hein is one of the best-known authors of the former GDR, and his works of fiction have been widely interpreted as responses to and critiques of socialist society. In this study, David Clarke undertakes a detailed analysis of all of Christoph Hein’s major works of fiction from Der fremde Freund (1928) to Willenbrock (2000) in order to explore Hein’s critique of the GDR regime, whilst also demonstrating how aspects of that critique provided a starting point for Hein’s rejection of capitalism both before and after German unification. For Hein, socialism had failed to make good its promise to create a community bound together by common values and goals, preferring instead to impose conformity upon its citizens. Capitalism, he believed, was equally unable to meet the need for community, and Hein sought to demonstrate the consequences of this state of affairs in the figure of Wörle in his first post-unification novel, Das Napoleon-Spiel (1993). After this point, Clarke argues, Hein was nevertheless forced to re-examine his criticism of capitalism, a process which ultimately led to the more differentiated and convincing portrayal to be found in Willenbrock.

Only recently freed from communism, an East German businessman enjoys the delights of capitalism as a used car dealer, until a string of seemingly unrelated accidents begins to cause his new life to unravel.

Set in 1968 Leipzig, Christoph Hein's novel is the story of Dallow, an apolitical academic who has just returned to civilian life after serving twenty-one months in prison. His crime: he was the substitute piano player in a student cabaret in which seditious verses were sung. Dallow returns to a life in of loveless sex, police harassment, and brutality, revealing how a corrupt system perverts all human interaction, and how lives are ruined by malicious caprice.

This book explores how writers adhered to, played with, and subverted the formulaic precepts of educational transformation in the German Democratic Republic.

Obwohl die DDR nunmehr ein abgeschlossenes Kapitel in der deutschen Geschichte geworden ist, halt die Auseinandersetzung um das, was von ihr bleibt, auch im Abstand von mehr als zehn Jahren an. Selbst nach dem deutsch-deutschen Literaturstreit unmittelbar nach der Wende, der seinerseits schon Ruckblicken und Bilanzierungen ausgesetzt wurde, bleibt der Stellenwert der Literatur in und aus der DDR ein umstrittenes Terrain. Ungeachtet dessen, dass es Einhelligkeit in literarischen Fragen ohnehin nicht geben kann, sind die Urteile zur Literatur der DDR naturlich auch von den Erfahrungen und Erlebnissen mit der DDR gepragt. In diesem Band haben wir uns fur eine Sicht von aussen und von innen gleichermassen interessiert.

This book begins to recover the global history of solidarity as a principle of authorship, taking Anna Seghers (1900-1983) as an exemplar and reading her alongside prominent contemporaries: Brecht, Carpentier, and Spivak.

"Understanding Contemporary Germany is a wide-ranging survey of Europe's largest and most powerful country. It examines political, economic and social aspects of post-unification Germany, as well as considering questions relating to German identity." "More specifically, it discusses whether the new Germany is a stable democracy based on solid political and economic foundations. It assesses the extent to which the German people is at ease with itself following the traumas of the country's history." "By looking at a wide range of topics and including a cultural dimension, Understanding Contemporary Germany seeks to widen debate on Germany in a way which will be useful to all who study or work in the fields of German or European studies. Its conclusion is that, in contrast to the widespread fears expressed both in the country and outside, the new Germany largely remains a stable and reliable partner in European and world affairs."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Contains nearly 6000 entries that provide a bibliography of interpretations for short stories published between 1989 and 1990.