Echoes of Surrealism

Challenging Socialist Realism in East German Literature, 1945-1990
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-80073-068-7
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 226 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 485 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Berendse, Gerrit-Jan

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Einzelne Künstler: Biographien, Monografien
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Deutsche Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations, Definitions and Translations

Introduction: 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

Über Autor(innen)

Berendse, Gerrit-Jan
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.