DESPITE KARL-HEINZ JAKOBS's SUPPORT of the ideology of modern socialism, he has in the last decade become estranged from the East German socialist state. His writing shows great commitment to the concerns of socialism — concerns he felt first hand as a citizen of the German Democratic Republic. But the critical eye he cast toward that state in the 1970s and the support he gave to intellectuals chastised by the East German authorities led to his removal from the ruling SED (Socialist Unity Party) and, in 1981, to his relocation in the West. He now lives with his wife and teenaged son in Velbert, Rhineland.

Jakobs was born in 1929 in the East Prussian village of Kiauken. After the war, he pursued several trades other than writing before finding work as an editorial assistant and journalist. These early jobs included construction work, mining, and masonry — employment that entailed international travel. In 1967/68, he worked for ten months building walls as part of a construction crew that hoped to aid economic development in Mali. Masonry still has great attraction for him; he says he “couldn't live on poetry alone.”

In 1956, Jakobs began two years of study at the Johannes R. Becher Literary Institute in Leipzig, after which he turned full time to freelance writing. As for his studies at the Becher Institute, he there became convinced that “all good East German writers come from Leipzig.”

His first novel, Beschreibung eines Sommers (1961), met with unprecedented success in East Germany, selling a half-million copies. His career since then has won him critical acclaim and honors that include the prestigious Heinrich Mann Prize. Among his later works are six further novels (two of them based on travel experiences in the Soviet Union and Africa), three story collections, a volume of essays, and a recent, largely autobiographical book Das endlose Jahr. Begegnungen mit Mäd (1983), which deals with the events that followed the revocation of “dissident” East German writer Wolf Biermann's citizenship.

The Biermann affair — especially since it followed close on the heels of writer Reiner Kunze's expulsion from the East German Writers Union — brought protest from a number of that country's prominent writers and intellectuals, including Jakobs.