Arrival literature

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Arrival literature is a term used to characterize a number of novels and stories in GDR literature that have been published since around 1960. The term was coined in response to the great success of Brigitte Reimann's arrival in everyday life (1961). The literary works belonging to this group such as Karl-Heinz Jakobs ' Description of a Summer (1961), Christa Wolf's The Divided Sky (1963) or Reimann's Die Geschwister (1963) are closely related to the “ Bitterfeld Weg ”.

Bitterfeld way

This is a doctrine, the concept of which was defined as early as 1958 at the fifth party congress of the SED . The GDR writers were asked to go to the factories in order to get to know the situation of the workers there, which was definitely reflected in the works of that time (e.g. Christa Wolf : Der teilte Himmel , 1963). Conversely, the workers should also be brought to literature (slogan of the conference: “ Pick up your pen, mate! ”), But this was hardly realized. Brigitte Reimann headed such a circle of writing workers in the Black Pump Combine. The most common form in which the workers wrote were the so-called brigade diaries . The SED leadership pursued popular education with the concept of the Bitterfeld path. The gap between social groups should be narrowed.

The NÖSPL (New Economic System of Planning and Management) was also formative for this time . A decentralization was decided here, which brought about a tendency to shift competence on site. This led to an appreciation of responsibility for the economic process and an appreciation of the middle class (especially engineers and party officials) because of their expertise. Through school or studying under socialism, these were shaped “true to the line” and can thus be described as the “first educated elite of the GDR”. In the literature, the main characters are now mostly younger people from the “intelligentsia” who have to prove themselves both at work and in private. B. also with Christa Wolf's The Divided Heaven . In addition to the east-west division, another tendency in this work is the appearance of female main characters.

A major turning point in the history of GDR literature is connected with arrival literature, because the works in question found more readers and also attracted benevolent attention in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Arrival novel

The arrival novel is a short novel and at the same time the prototypical representative of the arrival literature. In terms of literary history, it follows on from the secondary literature that dominated GDR literature in the 1950s. Two decisive innovations in the arrival novel are: 1. Its protagonists are young, not partisan and mostly of bourgeois origin (in the Marxist sense). 2. The antagonists are not outside saboteurs (hired by the West) as in the construction novels, but mostly older party cadres who act out of personal ambition and thus (according to the norms of the arrival novels) betray the actual values ​​of the party, which are also moral values . The arrival novels are therefore often characterized by a non-trivial conflict between partisan and moral norms. Not only do their typical heroes first have to learn to adapt, that is, to develop faith in socialism, to have a political awareness and to integrate into GDR society; but also the representatives of the party must question and adapt their behavior. "Arrival novel" was obviously a suitable term for literary politics, because the stories told in these short novels deal with the politically desired integration of young bourgeois figures and thus with the "arrival" of the new, socialist man. From the mid-1960s, this genre was replaced by the literature of planners and managers, whose protagonists are increasingly to be found at management level.

The generic terms mentioned are not always clear-cut, especially since there are works that do not want to fit into the respective temporal or typological framework. Erwin Strittmatter's novel Ole Bienkopp (1963) z. B. corresponds, with the exception of the strong conflict of norms, typologically more to the structure novel.

See also

literature

  • Matthias Aumüller: Arrival literature - explication of a literary-historical term. In: Wirkendes Wort 61 (2011), no. 2, pp. 293-311.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Cf. Eva Strittmatter, "Literature and Reality" [1962 (abridged)], in: Critique in Time. Literary criticism of the GDR 1945-1975. Volume 1: 1945-1965, ed. v. Klaus Jarmatz et al., Berlin 1978, 350-371.
  2. ↑ Cf. Matthias Aumüller: Minimalist Poetics. To differentiate the structural system in the novel literature of the early GDR . Münster: mentis, 2015, p. 268 ff.