Imagining resistance to the “colonization” of east germany by west germany in novels by günter grass, christa wolf, and volker braun

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-1-2017

Abstract

Although East Germans voted overwhelmingly for reunification in 1990, the liquidation of East German businesses and properties by the Treuhand agency tasked with fusing the economies of the formerly separate nations, shady business practices, and mass layoffs caused many ex-GDR citizens to regard themselves as victims of neocolonialist exploitation. The formerly West German author Günter Grass and the previously East German authors Christa Wolf and Volker Braun wrote novels in which resistance to this perceived neocolonialist evisceration of East German identity, businesses, and institutions takes place. Grass fuses the first and the second epochs of unification in his novel Ein weites Feld in the personage of the Theodor Fontane revenant Theo Wuttke to underscore the malevolent realties of a politically rather than culturally integrated German state, while Wolf configures the West German colonization of East Germany through the palimpsest of the Ancient Greek Corinth state’s colonialist treatment of Colchians in their territory in Medea. In Die hellen Haufen, Braun creates an imaginative revolt by East German workers against their West German overlords. In all three novels, resistance is shown as futile, but the utopia of democratic socialism is nevertheless invoked. By way of contrast, the positive view of reunification by authors Martin Walser and Monika Maron is also briefly presented.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Colloquia Germanica

First Page

205

Last Page

227

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