Click cover to enlarge

 Open access under:
CC BY 4.0

A contribution to: Working Papers in the Humanities 1

Edited by Astrid Ensslin and Jennifer Shepherd

MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities 1

Modern Humanities Research Association

open

Abstract.  This working paper examines the poem ‘hunger, durst & sucht’ [hunger, thirst & drugs] written by Bert Papenfuß around 1995. My wider research project is the literary response to the Wende (the collapse of the GDR and German reunification) in 1989–90 by the poets of Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin, who were famous for their resistance to the literary and political establishment of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Papenfuß was one of their leading poets pre-Wende and became even more famous after reunification. The paper will ask how Papenfuß responds to German reunification in this poem. The argumentative model that I have chosen involves using an existing, but at best partial interpretation of the poem as both a springboard and a foil. In particular, I argue that Jörg Döring’ s interpretation can be considered a ‘western’ reading that fails to take account of the particular intellectual heritage and life experiences of East German subversive poets. I will argue that this poem shows that living conditions for the authors of Prenzlauer Berg in reunited democratic Germany are even worse than they were under the dictatorial GDR regime. It is worthwhile examining this poem in particular because it shows the Wende as a turning point from misery to even greater misery. For the poets of Prenzlauer Berg, the living conditions of a united Germany destroy their writing culture, exclude them from the variety and richness of cultural life and, above all, they take away their pride. This is a perspective which is hardly discussed in secondary literature. Scholars seem to take for granted that the change from a dictatorial regime to a democratic system would automatically improve working conditions for authors. However, my reading of the poem demonstrates that this is not true for the writers of Prenzlauer Berg.

Full text.  This contribution is published as Open Access and can be downloaded as a PDF, or viewed as a PDF in your web browser, here:

Link to full text as PDF