When I went to school in the 1990s, GDR literature wasn’t taught or read. It was treated as something shameful. I didn’t dare to pick up a book by an East German writer, even though many of them were in our library at home in Leipzig. Looking back, I believe the reason was the public perception of the old socialist republic. It scared me off.
When the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, it marked the beginning of the end of East German art and literature. Everything that had shaped our cultural history was thought away, spoken away and written away. West Germans took sovereignty over the narrative, and their verdict was clear: the former East German state was wrong in every aspect and worth nothing. This also meant books, plays, paintings, sculptures, films and music were buried and left behind, because they too were considered wrong.
In recent years, the discourse has shifted. After decades in which the German public had – rightfully – processed the hard, important narratives about injustice, oppression, propaganda and monitoring in the GDR, there was finally some room to revive the lost cultural heritage of East Germany. Iconic writers such as Brigitte Reimann were rediscovered. In 2023, three of her books were republished, and her story Siblings was finally translated into English, receiving international praise 50 years after her death.
Several writers today have dedicated novels to the vanished country and its citizens. From the outside, one might think there is a sort of comeback for East German stories and writers, especially women, whose biographies, voices and books are suddenly crossing borders and captivating readers worldwide.
This spring, Jenny Erpenbeck, born in East Berlin in 1967, won the International Booker prize for her novel Kairos. Erpenbeck received huge praise everywhere and was considered a potential Nobel prize winner – except in Germany.
Here, Erpenbeck is accused of whitewashing GDR history. Historians and west German-dominated “feuilletons” claim that the international – especially the English-speaking – press is romanticising the former socialist state and downplaying its cruelties. A new cultural dispute has emerged, which will probably continue through the elections in September in three east German states – and may even escalate.
Some of the accusations made against Erpenbeck have been quite severe. One newspaper article described her work as offering “a benevolent, sometimes even loving view of socialism”. Another pointed out that Erpenbeck “grew up in a communist parallel world with all kinds of privileges” and would therefore portray the GDR as a “place of longing and hope”. None of it was meant as a compliment, but as proof of her delusional perspective.
When Kairos was published in 2021, hardly anyone in Germany talked about it until its nomination for the International Booker prize. The novel is set in East Berlin in the late 1980s and the early years after reunification. It tells the love story between Hans, a married writer in his early 50s, and 19-year-old Katharina. Erpenbeck believes there is hardly a book that tells a worse story about the GDR – autocracy and manipulation literally dig into Katharina’s flesh, she told me when we met a few weeks ago. Hans was a member of the Stasi. “Where is the glorification in that?” she asked.
It’s OK to not like the novel’s protagonist and her bohemian life in East Berlin. But what is forgotten in the current debate is that Katharina is a fictional character, and Erpenbeck is not a historian but a writer. She is primarily concerned with uncovering emotions, subjective experiences and memories.
Many critics resent the way Erpenbeck describes West Germany. Katharina does not view it as a place of freedom she longs to be a part of. As Erpenbeck has admitted in many interviews, it was the same for her. Should she have written about the immense gratitude of an East German girl who is finally allowed to visit the beautiful west? Probably, since any criticism of West Germany and capitalism is still not tolerated.
Not surprisingly, Erpenbeck’s main critics have been male. In a case of life imitating art, the author is an emancipated woman who forgets how to be submissive and is punished for it.
Erpenbeck is not the only female writer accused of having a naive and deluded view of the GDR. The author and historian Katja Hoyer, 39, whose book, Beyond the Wall, was an international bestseller, received almost no praise in Germany, where the book was viewed as a work of fundamental ignorance and “not only disappointing but a real nuisance”. It has also been a shock for some that an ardent socialist such as Reimann and her story Siblings received a euphoric review last year in the New Yorker.
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There is a specific German word, Deutungshoheit, meaning sovereignty of interpretation. When it comes to historical events within the country, it is as frequently used as our beloved Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Thirty-five years after Germany’s reunification, we are debating what constitutes historical truth and who holds the sovereignty of interpretation over East Germany. This discussion has reached a point where literature and books are being weaponised. How does German culture fare abroad when people such as Erpenbeck, Hoyer or Reimann suddenly set the tone? When East German women determine the international image of the GDR? One answer is: we won’t have it.
Growing up in Leipzig, the adults who brought me up were shaped by socialism and were considered losers after the wall came down. As a result, they carried with them an overwhelming feeling of shame. Now for some, that shame has spiralled into anger and an urge to rebel against the status quo. Unfortunately, their means of protest is the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). According to polls, the AfD could become the strongest force in Saxony, the state where I grew up. This is incredibly dangerous and intolerable.
At the same time, the AfD is not solely an east German problem, as it is often made out to be. The founders and leaders of the far-right populist party are all west Germans. And maybe the uncomfortable truth lies right here: there is no “your story, my story” any more when it comes to East Germany. It is our story, one story consisting of many different perspectives, and if Germans do not acknowledge east German history as an equal part of our culture – if experiences and memories continue to be judged, dismissed, ignored, and washed away – there won’t ever be a truly unified Germany, something that Reimann predicted in the 1960s. But who listens to a woman born on the wrong side of the tracks?