Thinking about Christa T.

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Thinking about Christa T. is a novel by Christa Wolf , which - completed on March 1, 1967 - was published in 1968 by Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle / Saale. The publication of the novel, which was initially only allowed to appear in a very limited edition in the GDR , was preceded by a long censorship process.

1943 to 1962 - twenty years in East Germany: The author writes about a Christa T., but the text suggests that this is Christa W.'s “message ... from the innermost interior”. In the afterword it says that the author has thought about the vita of her childhood friend Christa Tabbert-Gebauer (* 1927, † 1963), who died at an early age. Christa Wolf is said to have come up with the initially unproductive material after the depressing experience of the 11th plenum .

content

The place where the narrator and Christa T. met at school in November 1943 is a two-hour drive from Berlin. Beyersdorf and Altensorge are neighboring towns. Christa T., daughter of a village school teacher, comes from Eichholz near Friedeberg, about 50 kilometers away . Even after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , the young girls in the class remained loyal to Adolf Hitler .

The narrator and Christa T. lose sight of each other in 1945, but meet again in 1952 at the University of Leipzig while studying education. Rethinking is the order of the day; there are new names on the brochures: Gorky and Makarenko . Christa T. reads Dostoevsky and writes. While writing, she discovers and asserts herself on her “way to herself”; approaches things. During the several years of teaching in Leipzig, Christa T., who is considered unrealistic, sometimes leaves her fellow students - having become restless - but always comes back. She does not follow her parents' wish to take over her father's position. In the Leipzig years, the future educators envisioned their paradises - regardless of whether they were heated with gas or nuclear power, it was their refuges, it was their business. Over the years, the castles in the air evaporate. The dispute over the design of the utopias turns into unanimous choir singing.

Christa T. finished her studies on May 22, 1954. In Leipzig she met Justus, a veterinarian, whom she married in 1956. Their daughter Anna is born in the same year. Sometimes Justus visits his relatives in West Germany. In the seven-year marriage, two more children are born. Justus and Christa T. often drive across the country together. For her sketches “Around the Lake”, Christa T. lets the farmers tell her stories. The couple later decide to stay in the country where Justus works as a veterinarian. The couple are building a lonely house on a small hill by the lake. In the GDR, building means a considerable effort for intelligentsia without "connections". Marriage is happy; Christa T. only allowed herself an affair with a hunting friend of Justus once. The horned man solves the problem by impregnating his wife one more time.

Christa T. swallows tons of prednisone for leukemia . Sick of Panmyelophise to the death , Christa T. gave birth to her third child, a girl, in the fall of 1962. She dies the following February.

Self-testimony

"Everything that I have written so far, not least this book, arose out of partisanship for the socialist society in which I live."

Form and interpretation

Remorse

Kähler writes that Christa Wolf interspersed her long pensive reflection “with nervous poetry tormented by remorse”. He is addressing the brooding basic element of the text. After Christa T. dies, the narrator receives the left diaries, letters, stories and drafts. Quotes from it are given in italics in the text. Writing down the text, the narrator, sitting in front of the papers, thinks about the life of her deceased friend and comes up with fundamental questions: If the narrator turns the “scribbles” into a presentable text, would the author of the raw material have approved that during her lifetime? Why, the reader might also ask, is the narrator even concerned with Christa T.'s life picture? Wouldn't “bigger, more useful resumes” be much more relevant? And does the narrator even have the right to publish all of this? After all, she has never been to Christa T.'s bedside. But the narrator has to think of Christa T.'s laugh - an unforgettable, indescribable laugh. Further reasons for the narration are found: Christa T.'s “bitterness out of passion” (who shows herself for the narrator in an episode in the hospital) is one. A second reason concerns the exemplary person: Christa T. is a person who has never arrived forever and ever. The protagonist was anything but unscrupulous and looked into the future with imagination.

Judgments

The narrator makes judgments. For example, Christa T. let herself drift.

Repetition

The style element of repetition is used in various ways. There are the numerous anticipations of the end of Christa T., which are relatively evenly distributed throughout the text. Leukemia, the cause of Christa T.'s death, is communicated in good time. Another obvious repetition is the mention of Christa T. as a trumpet player after the episode introducing this motif in the first chapter. If the narrator refers to it, she probably wants to articulate one of her fundamental writing concerns: Christa T. was a woman who always took her right to “live according to [...] her own laws”.

honesty

In his request for permission to print, the Halle publisher Heinz Sachs wrote to the censor: "It is an ingenious, unematic, thought-provoking book, a psychologically profound, honest book ..." This assessment perhaps relates to the circumstance that Christa Wolf struggles with the text throughout the entire text. A certain confusion in the narrator's lecture is justified by the condition of Christa T.'s estate (loose slip of paper).

The text is partly experimental. If a rendition of longer reflections by Christa T. initially gives the impression that the previously uncertain and doubting narrator has transformed into an omniscient narrator, then the relativization follows: it could have been so. Christa Wolf does not allow herself to be emotional at any point; nevertheless, the description of Christa T.'s death in the last chapters of the book is very intensive. Brigitte Reimann meets this reading feeling on March 19, 1969 with the sentence: “How much it concerns you!” Sarah Kirsch was also “at the end ... close to crying” and Reiner Kunze sums it up: “The book has me extremely (innermost ) touched."

censorship

At the time, publishers had to enclose external reports with their application for printing permission. In this case, the external expert Günter Caspar recommended “printing in large numbers” on the grounds: “Christa Wolf has also taken in as much historical-political reality as is possible with such material and topic, and so organically on the characters related that nothing seems to be attached anywhere. ”In retrospect it remains a mystery and certainly also admirable how the author succeeded in getting this text through the censorship in 1968 . After all, on May 2, 1968 the censors approved the printing of the manuscript on the grounds, among other things, that the text was “full of beautiful confessions to socialism”. Christa Wolf brought allusions through the censorship, the background of which a reader from the late 21st century will hardly recognize without comment (for example the mention of the fighting in Budapest ). On the other hand, there is no lack of commitments to socialism. For example, fleeing the republic is condemned; the narrator and Christa T. are not thinking of leaving the GDR.

philosophy

The text opens in considerable depth. This not only refers to the witty short excursions into the literary history of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries that run through the book, but also direct philosophical statements. For example, in Christa T.'s papers, the narrator finds a strange question about the nature of the facts. Christa Wolf gives an answer that the materialistically trained reader from the GDR in 1968 probably had to digest first: facts are "traces that the events leave behind us."

Undecidabilities

Faulty information can be found in some text passages, although it cannot always be said whether the author uses this to characterize her characters or whether she would like to sign off the reader. For example, it is claimed that "longing" comes from "seeing". Obviously, this is not the case - the verb "to long" comes from "to be troubled" or means "to desire with love". During her school days in Leipzig, Christa T. wrongly assigned the “ Ik gihorta dat seggen ” to the Merseburg magic spells . In addition, she occasionally uses Low German expressions and does not shy away from pleonasm such as “true reality”.

reception

  • The response to the narrow band is enormous. De Wild lists 366 utterances.
  • On December 4, 1969, Lev Kopelev wrote a letter to Christa Wolf on the train from Yerevan to Moscow, stating, among other things, that her friend had "mastered the very hardest with the very softest.
  • Gabriele Wohmann , according to Klasson, thought the text was mediocre in 1969. Manfred Durzak praises the novel in which “utopia and reality are artistically maintained in a perfect balancing act.” Wolfram and Helmtrud Mauser have written their own book about the book. Just two examples from her rich pool of possible interpretations: Is Christa T. a pure Torin, someone who pretends to be professionally crazy? This would be supported by their incorruptibility - a goal cannot be corrupted. Or the passage from the metaphors: The hangover stands for the fear of violence, the wall for the narrow GDR, the swarm of crows for imminent death and the building of the house for home gain.
  • Christa T's existence is penetrated dialectically , whereby the narrator is aware that this is only "her version" of this incomplete, elusive story. Christa Wolf sees a way of putting a stop to the brutalization of young people in socialism.
  • In Christa Wolf's publications from the early 1960s, the protagonist should develop in accordance with the wishes of the society in which he lives. In this book, however, the tables are turned. Society should open up to the individual.
socialism
  • Horst Haase says: “This cheerful and confident confession in our time after all the conflicts and dangers makes this figure, this book valuable to us. Therefore we need this Christa T., ... "
  • Although Robert Havemann with the author unknown, but he wrote her on July 21, 1969 "This is [the book] much of our thinking about ourselves ... It is a book without any lie, without any. Enmity, just as we love this thing and yet could almost despair of it. "
  • Stephan Hermlin calls the novel 1969 " avant-garde , because it shows that building socialism is not only an economic, but above all a moral task."
East Germany
  • According to Gödeke-Kolbe, the novel is used to write GDR history in a self-reflective manner. Thomas von Vegesack from Stockholm thinks that Christa Wolf is writing against the intolerance of East German society.
Cold War
  • Heinrich Mohr describes the novel as a political issue Günter Zehm takes on Hermann Kähler's above-mentioned East Berlin review in “ Der Welt ” of March 27, 1969, according to which the novel is a conglomerate of Immensee and Gantenbein . Marcel Reich-Ranicki considers the book to be “easily attackable and difficult to grasp”. He says: “Christa T. dies of leukemia, but she suffers from the GDR.” Max Walter Schulz criticized at the 6th GDR writers' congress (28th to 30th centuries) May 1969), "that the other side [from the book] only needs to choose what you like." It is quite possible that Schulz had studied the FAZ on May 28, 1969, in which Rolf Michaelis read the passage with Christa T's suicidal intent from “early summer fifty-three” picked out and followed up: in early summer 1953 “after June 17”. Eberhard Röhner argues at the same congress: "Human self-realization appears ... as a withdrawal from the decisive problems of our time" Reich-Ranicki at least recognizes in this context that Christa T. is building her house in the GDR. Although Fritz J. Raddatz considers this prose to be “artistically balanced”, he cannot make friends with the affirmation of socialism. Barner and coworkers register a tendency among some critics from the West to overlook a character in a novel: the narrator.

literature

Text output

First edition
  • Thinking about Christa T. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 1968.
Used edition
  • Thinking about Christa T. Vol. 2 In: Sonja Hilzinger (Hrsg.): Christa Wolf. Works in twelve volumes. Luchterhand, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-630-87046-5 .

Secondary literature

  • Wolfram and Helmtrud Mauser: Christa Wolf: "Thinking about Christa T." . Wilhelm Fink (Uni-Taschenbücher 1457), Munich 1987, ISBN 3-7705-2441-1 .
  • Therese Hörnigk: Christa Wolf. People and knowledge, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-06-102746-7 , pp. 130-149.
  • Angela Drescher (Ed.): Documentation on Christa Wolf: "Thinking about Christa T." . Luchterhand, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-630-86776-6 .
  • Vera Klasson: Awareness, Emancipation and Women's Issues in " The Divided Heaven " and three other texts by Christa Wolf. Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Göteborg 1991, ISBN 91-7346-232-2 . Pp. 96-120.
  • Alexander Stephan : Christa Wolf. Beck, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-406-35362-2 , pp. 59-92. (BsR 603)
  • Barbara Dröscher: Subjective authenticity. On the poetics of Christa Wolf between 1964 and 1975. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1993, ISBN 3-88479-832-4 , pp. 77-106. (Diss. FU Berlin 1992)
  • Sabine Wilke: digging out and remembering. On the function of history, subject and gender identity in Christa Wolf's texts. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1993, ISBN 3-88479-806-5 .
  • Wilfried Barner (ed.): History of German literature. Volume 12: History of German Literature from 1945 to the Present . CH Beck, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-38660-1 , pp. 535-536.
  • Heidi Gidion: Christa Wolf's “Reflecting on Christa T.” Reread after twenty-five years. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Text + criticism. Issue 46. Christa Wolf. 4th edition: new version. Munich 1994, ISBN 3-88377-472-3 , pp. 48-58.
  • Henk de Wild: Bibliography of secondary literature on Christa Wolf. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-631-48735-5 .
  • Annette Firsching: Continuity and change in Christa Wolf's work. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1996, ISBN 3-8260-1208-9 , pp. 41-69.
  • Günther Drosdowski : Duden. Etymology. 2nd edition Dudenverlag, Mannheim 1997, ISBN 3-411-20907-0 . ( Der Duden series in 12 volumes , vol. 7)
  • Jörg Magenau : Christa Wolf. A biography. Kindler, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-463-40394-3 , pp. 192-233.
  • Stefanie Gödeke-Kolbe: Subject Figures and Understanding of Literature after Auschwitz. Novels and essays by Christa Wolf. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-631-50577-9 , pp. 215-267. (Dissertation Uni Frankfurt am Main 2002)
  • Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German authors A – Z. Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 .
  • Anita Gröger: told doubts about memory. A narrative figure in the German-language novel of the post-war period (1954-1976) . Ergon-Verlag, Würzburg, 2016. pp. 221–246 ( table of contents ) ISBN 978-3-95650-149-4

Remarks

  1. ↑ The text is anything but easy to read. Stephan remarks that the author, narrator and title character are difficult to separate from their close interlinking (Stephan, p. 78, 1. Zvo). On April 14, 1969, Reiner Kunze wrote to Christa Wolf: “..., the pensive [meaning the narrator] captured my main interest. She is the "heroine" ”(quoted in Drescher, p. 78, 10th Zvu).
  2. ↑ After Magenau (Magenau, p. 18, 2nd Zvu), Christa Wolf attended secondary school (Magenau, p. 26, 12th Zvu) in her place of birth Landsberg and learned the refugee there (Magenau, p. 33, 11th Zvu) Know Christa Tabbert (that is Christa T.) in 1944 (Magenau, p. 26, 5. Zvo).
  3. ↑ In between is the Kleinbahn Zechow , Zantoch , Zanzin , Friedeberg.
  4. ↑ Dröscher points to the trauma of that generation - born around 1928 -: The schoolgirls got out of innocence in the BDM into the machinery of National Socialist thought and action (Dröscher, p. 86, 10th Zvu).
  5. ↑ Christa Wolf does not communicate the subject that Christa T. is studying (edition used, p. 44, 3rd submission). It sounds as if she could have studied German (see also Wilke, p. 34, 4th Zvo, Magenau, p. 52, 8th Zvu and Klasson, p. 96, 11th Zvu). Because at that time there were institutes for teacher training in the Leipzig area and other universities with educational faculties - for example in Zwickau and Chemnitz.
  6. ↑ Christa Wolf once said that literature is more interested in the restless and less in the satisfied and opportunists (quoted in Hörnigk, p. 138, 8th Zvu).
  7. ↑ Firsching (Firsching, pp. 60–69) discusses the references to Sophie von La Roche , Gustave Flaubert , Theodor Storm and Thomas Mann .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wilpert, p. 680, right column, 26th Zvu
  2. ↑ Magenau, p. 196, 9th Zvu
  3. ↑ Hörnigk, p. 133
  4. ↑ See the documentation in Angela Drescher (ed.): Documentation on Christa Wolf: "Thinking about Christa T." . Luchterhand, Munich 1991.
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 195, 13. Zvo
  6. ^ Afterword by the editor in the edition used, p. 225, 12. Zvo
  7. ↑ Magenau, p. 196 below
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 194, 2nd Zvu (see also Firsching, p. 48, 3rd Zvo)
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 44, 16. Zvo
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 62, 4th Zvu and p. 64, 1st Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 69, 2nd Zvu
  12. ↑ quoted in Drescher, p. 186, 10. Zvo (from: Christa Wolf: Necessary statement of December 22, 1969)
  13. ↑ Hermann Kähler in January 1969, quoted in Drescher, p. 68, 13. Zvu
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 99, 17. Zvo
  15. ↑ Edition used, p. 152, 17. Zvo
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 145, 5th Zvu
  17. ↑ Edition used, pp. 147–148
  18. ↑ Edition used, p. 189, 4th Zvu
  19. ↑ Edition used, p. 192, 5th Zvu
  20. ↑ Edition used, p. 72, 17. Zvo
  21. ↑ Edition used, p. 61, 6th Zvu
  22. ↑ Edition used, pp. 18, 15. Zvo
  23. ↑ for example the edition used, p. 132, 15. Zvo or also p. 189, 1. Zvo
  24. ↑ Edition used, p. 189, 12. Zvu
  25. ↑ Magenau, p. 200, 2nd Zvu
  26. ↑ Expert opinion of the Mitteldeutscher Verlag of January 11, 1968, quoted in Drescher, p. 49, 19. Zvo
  27. ↑ Edition used, pp. 118–119
  28. ↑ Edition used, p. 120, 13. Zvu
  29. ↑ Brigitte Reimann to Christa Wolf, quoted in Drescher, p. 73, 5th Zvu
  30. ↑ Sarah Kirsch on March 23, 1969 to Christa Wolf, quoted in Drescher, p. 74, 6th Zvu
  31. ↑ Reiner Kunze on April 14, 1969 to Christa Wolf, quoted in Drescher, p. 78, 13. Zvo
  32. ↑ Günter Caspar in the late autumn of 1967, quoted in Drescher, p. 40, 2nd Zvu
  33. ↑ Günter Caspar in the late autumn of 1967, quoted in Drescher, p. 40, 10. Zvo
  34. ↑ see also a voice from the 20th century: Gidion, p. 67, 5th Zvu
  35. ↑ Edition used, p. 148, 5th Zvu
  36. ↑ Edition used, p. 67, 4. Zvo
  37. ↑ Edition used, p. 192, 5. Zvo
  38. ↑ Edition used, p. 102, 15. Zvo
  39. ↑ Drosdowski, p. 664, right column, entry "sehnen"
  40. ↑ Edition used, p. 46, 7th Zvu
  41. ↑ for example the edition used, p. 120
  42. ↑ Edition used, p. 124, 9. Zvo
  43. ↑ de Wild, pp. 226-296
  44. ^ Lew Kopelew cited in Drescher, p. 182, 10. Zvo
  45. ^ Gabriele Wohmann's remarks from 1969, discussed in Klasson, p. 103, 14. Zvo
  46. ↑ Manfred Durzak, quoted in Klasson, p. 99, 18. Zvo
  47. ↑ Wolfram and Helmtrud Mauser, p. 62 and p. 99
  48. ↑ Wilke, p. 29, 12. Zvo
  49. ↑ Wilke, p. 30, 8. Zvo
  50. ↑ Wilke, p. 32, 3rd Zvu
  51. ↑ Wilke, p. 33, 6th Zvu
  52. ↑ Hörnigk, p. 144, 5. Zvo
  53. ↑ Horst Haase: Thinking about a book . Review in the NDL , East Berlin, issue 4/1969, quoted in Drescher, p. 80, 8th Zvu
  54. ↑ Stephan Hermlin, quoted in Drescher, p. 180, 16. Zvo
  55. ↑ Gödeke-Kolbe, p. 225, 8th Zvu
  56. ↑ Thomas von Vegesack, quoted in Drescher, p. 133, 6. Zvo
  57. ^ Heinrich Mohr, quoted in Klasson, p. 100, 4th Zvu
  58. ^ Günter Zehm, quoted in Drescher, p. 76, 1. Zvo
  59. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki in Der Zeit of May 23, 1969, quoted in Drescher, p. 104, 7. Zvo
  60. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki in Der Zeit of May 23, 1969, quoted in Drescher, p. 105, 16. Zvo
  61. ↑ Max Walter Schulz, quoted in Drescher, p. 113, 11. Zvo
  62. ↑ Edition used, p. 83, 13. Zvo
  63. ↑ Rolf Michaelis, quoted in Drescher, p. 111, 12. Zvo
  64. ↑ Eberhard Röhner, quoted in Drescher, p. 117, 12. Zvo
  65. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki in Der Zeit of May 23, 1969, quoted in Drescher, p. 106, 12. Zvo
  66. ↑ Fritz J. Raddatz in Der Spiegel of June 2, 1969, quoted in Drescher, p. 123, 9. Zvo
  67. ↑ Barner, p. 535, 1. Zvu