Looking Back from the 1990s

ON THE EVE of unification, a debate was triggered in the feuilletons of German newspapers by the publication of Christa Wolf's “Erzählung” Was bleibt (1990), in which an author describes her life under surveillance by the East German Security Service (Stasi). This debate, known as the “Literaturstreit,” centered on Wolf herself, and on those other East German writers who had, in West Germany, formerly been admired for their between-the-lines criticism of the GDR. Had they staged literary resistance, as Wolf's story appeared to imply, or had they in reality been lackeys of the state, shoring it up to the bitter end? When it became clear in 1992 that Christa Wolf had not only been spied on by the Stasi, but had also herself, between 1959 and 1962, been used as a GI (“Gesellschaftlicher Informant”) and IM (“Informeller Mitarbeiter”) by this notorious organization, the debate flared up anew (Vinke 1993). She was not the only example of such collaboration. Writers uncritically loyal to the GDR state, such as erstwhile President of the GDR Writers' Union Hermann Kant, had worked together with the Stasi — yet so had writers of more critical persuasion, such as Heiner Müller, and innovative, unconventional authors such as Sascha Anderson, angrily dismissed by Wolf Biermann as “Sascha Arschloch.” The debate soon extended beyond critical scrutiny of East German literary biographies as West German authors were also subjected to a re-evaluation.