Playwright and novelist Christoph Hein, who enjoyed tremendous popularity in both Germanies during the 1980s, remains the East's most successful post-unification writer. Critical both of Soviet-style communism and Western consumer capitalism, Hein chose to remain in East Germany and work toward the liberalization of the communist system. Although his pre-1990 works implicitly reject the skewed reality promoted by the regime, his methods appear at first glance to be totally apolitical: he tells the material truth as he sees it, describing characters and their social settings and allowing these things to speak for themselves. This sort of honesty would seem to be nothing remarkable; yet it proved fatal to the state's rhetoric of progress, personal fulfillment, and moral superiority to the West. Today, Hein uses the same literary tools with which he once deconstructed communist rhetoric to attack the complacency of unchecked capitalism. Robinson concentrates on Hein's prose fiction rather than his dramas, since, among other reasons, his plays are little known in the U.S. and U.K., while his novels and many novellas have been translated into English and have brought him a measure of fame in the English-speaking world.
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Editorial Reviews
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From this well-written, jargon-free study, the reader can learn much about Hein's concerns as a writer, the sociopolitical contexts of his work, his views on literature and history, his literary contribution tothe GDR's demise, and new directions suggested by his narrative and dramatic work in unified Germany. --Choice
'Robinson's ayalysis is insightful and supportive of his thesis of the deconstructive nature of Hein's work.' --Monatshefte
Robinson's book provides a clear, readable introduction and overview... It will be of special value for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. --German Quarterly
'Robinson's ayalysis is insightful and supportive of his thesis of the deconstructive nature of Hein's work.' --Monatshefte
Robinson's book provides a clear, readable introduction and overview... It will be of special value for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. --German Quarterly
From the Inside Flap
The dissolution of the German Democratic Republic in 1989-90 concluded a still poorly-understood era of literary experiment and subtle political activism. Although the East German government was able to suppress overt dissident movements like those in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and despite the decades-long imposition of artistic orthodoxy in the form of Socialist Realism, the regime failed to stop innovative writers from developing literary strategies of dissent that ultimately weakened its grip on power. One such writer was playwright and novelist Christoph Hein, who enjoyed tremendous popularity in both Germanies during the 1980s, and who remains the East's most successful post-unification writer.
Critical both of Soviet-style communism and Western consumer capitalism, Hein chose to remain in East Germany and work toward liberalization of the communist system. Although his plays, stories, and novels implicitly reject the skewed reality promoted by the regime, his methods appear at first glance to be totally apolitical: he tells the material truth as he sees it, describing characters and their social settings and allowing these things to speak for themselves. This would seem to be nothing remarkable -- and yet it was fatal to the state's rhetoric of progress, personal fulfillment, and moral superiority to the West. Today, Hein continues to resist promoting an alternative ideology or politics of his own, instead choosing to "chronicle" and implicitly critique contemporary society, using the same literary tools with which he once deconstructed communist rhetoric to attack the complacency of unchecked capitalism.
Robinson analyzes Hein's plays, short stories, and novels within a context of East German political intrigue and cultural policy. He devotes particular attention to Hein's prose fiction, which has achieved Anglo-American recognition with the translation of two novels, The Distant Lover and The Tango Player.
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This review is from: Deconstructing East Germany: Christoph Hein's Literature of Dissent (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) (Hardcover)
The description provided by Amazon is not for Bodek's book. Bodek wrote an historical account of theater in Berlin at the end of the Weimar Republic.
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