Echoes of Surrealism

Challenging Socialist Realism in East German Literature, 1945–1990

Gerrit-Jan Berendse (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

226 Seiten

2024
Berghahn Books (Verlag)
978-1-80539-720-5 (ISBN)

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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.

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

Erscheinungsdatum	10.09.2024
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-80539-720-6 / 1805397206
ISBN-13	978-1-80539-720-5 / 9781805397205
Zustand	Neuware