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Echoes of Surrealism
Challenging Socialist Realism in East German Literature, 1945–1990
Gerrit-Jan Berendse
238 pages, 1 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-80073-068-7 $120.00/£89.00 Hb Not Yet Published (May 2021)
eISBN 978-1-80073-069-4 eBook Not Yet Published
Reviews
“An interesting study of an under-researched aspect of GDR literature which demonstrates the diversity of its cultural and aesthetic traditions. This is the first time the impact of East German surrealism has been discussed as a cohesive subject.” • Jean E. Conacher, University of Limerick
Description
For many artists and intellectuals in East Germany, daily life had an undeniably surreal aspect, from the numbing repetition of Communist Party jargon to the fear and paranoia engendered by the Stasi. Echoes of Surrealism surveys the ways in which a sense of the surreal infused literature and art across the lifespan of the GDR, focusing on individual authors, visual artists, directors, musicians, and other figures who have employed surrealist techniques in their work. It provides a new framework for understanding East German culture, exploring aesthetic practices that offered an alternative to rigid government policies and questioned and confronted the status quo.
Gerrit-Jan Berendse is Emeritus Professor of the School of Modern Languages at Cardiff University. His publications include Die Sächsische Dichterschule (1990), Grenz-Fallstudien (1999), Schreiben im Terrordom (2005), Vom Aushalten der Extreme (2011), and Baader-Meinhof Returns (2008), edited with Ingo Cornils.
Subject: Literary Studies History: 20th Century to Present
Area: Germany
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations, Definitions and Translations
Introduction:I The Surreal without Surrealism
Chapter 1. The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Post-War Germany
Chapter 2. Return of the Avant-Garde? Brecht & Co. in the GDR
Chapter 3. ‘1968’ in the GDR: Franz Kafka and the Prague Spring
Chapter 4. Flirting with the Enemy: The Absurd and Grotesque in 1960s Poetry
Chapter 5. GDR’s Surrealist Nerve Centre: Adolf Endler’s Strange Nebbich World
Chapter 6. Wolfgang Hilbig’s Landscapes “Where the Minotaurs Graze”
Chapter 7. “Flip-out-Elke”: Elke Erb’s Surrealistic Poetry
Chapter 8. Gabriele Stötzer under Surveillance: Feminism and the Avant-Garde
Chapter 9. East German Advocates of Surrealism
Conclusion: “Max Ernst Was Here!”
Bibliography
Index