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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.
“[The author’s] questions about the echoes of surrealism in the GDR lead him to unexpected places, but he always manages to connect the discoveries back to the topic of the interaction between surrealism and the cultural politics of East Germany…The breadth is impressive, and the story that emerges is interesting. Motivated graduate students might even use the volume as a kind of workbook, reading and analyzing specific works that Berendse mentions in passing. Indeed, pretty much any chapter in the volume could be a useful jumping off point for an interesting and worthwhile dissertation.” • The German Quarterly
“An interesting study of an under-researched aspect of GDR literature which demonstrates the diversity of its cultural and aesthetic traditions. This is the first time the impact of East German surrealism has been discussed as a cohesive subject.” • Jean E. Conacher, University of Limerick
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