Abstract
From its foundation in 1950 until the year before its dissolution in 1990 the Deutscher Schriftsteller Verband (DSV) played a key role in the organization of literary production in the German Democratic Republic. In view of that it is surprising that it has attracted only one monograph: Sabine Pamperrien’s German-language overview with edited documents of 2004. Pamperrien dealt in detail with the interaction of the DSV with its West German counterpart, the Verband deutscher Schriftsteller (VS). For the rest, her title Versuch am untauglichen Objekt (‘Study of an organization not fit for purpose’) reflects her somewhat limited focus on the DSV’s ideological profile. Thomas Goldstein’s new study represents the most comprehensive treatment of the DSV to date.
Goldstein’s research is informed by the latest historical work on the GDR generally. Moving beyond the simple totalitarian arguments which emphasized the regime’s repressiveness and emphasized the gulf between an ‘overbearing state and a beleaguered society’ (p. 11), Goldstein works in the framework created by the studies of Mary Fulbrook, Alf Lüdtke, David Bathrick, Jeffrey Kopstein and others who have studied the decidedly two-way interaction between state and society and the possibilities for small-scale resistance and the pressure on the regime to accommodate small aspirations. At the same time Goldstein is also interested in the DSV as an organization which by and large managed to channel if not to control aspirations until the later 1970s but which was, like the GDR regime generally, at a loss when it came to the much more open and challenging discussions that began to emerge in the 1980s.
Goldstein begins by considering the DSV in the context of serial attempts to organize authors into a national professional association since the Wilhelmine period. This was by no means an exclusively top-down process. Writers often looked to the state to restrict the free market, to protect their rights and to enforce certain ideological positions. As his second chapter makes clear, the DSV fitted in well with these expectations. While some complained about what the organization did not do, many were content to depend on the state in order to achieve a career, guarantee a livelihood, and enjoy a degree of prestige. Honecker’s early years as leader from 1972 seemed to promise a new beginning, with the promise of ‘no taboos’ in art. Yet the more open discussion soon led to the imposition of new restrictions and after the expatriation of Wolf Biermann in 1976 the DSV was instrumentalized as an agency that disciplined and silenced writers who were perceived to pose a threat to the East German state and its societal norms.
A further turning point came in the early 1980s when the DSV played a key role in the peace movement that protested against the stationing of US nuclear missiles on West German soil. The initial focus on the threat posed by Western nuclear weapons soon broadened to include discussion of environmental matters and humans rights issues. Gorbachev’s promotion of greater openness in the Soviet Union and its socialist allies from 1985 found a strong resonance in the DSV. The Tenth Writers’ Congress of 1987 saw East German writers openly criticizing the GDR and by 1989 some of the most prominent had become activists for socialist reform.
Ironically, by striving to create a better GDR, the writers helped destroy it. The disappearance of the East German state in turn made the DSV redundant and within a short time there was no such thing any more as an ‘East German writer’.
Goldstein writes with great clarity. His lucid and nuanced account of this prominent GDR association sheds new light on the history of literature and the arts in the East German state. Indeed it makes them into part of the main story rather than just, as so often, a reflection of the prevailing ideology. His book is a signal achievement.