Building Socialism: Architecture and Urbanism in East German Literature, 1955-1973 (New Directions in German Studies Book 19)

__Building Socialism__ reveals how East German writers' engagement with the rapidly changing built environment from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s constitutes an untold story about the emergence of literary experimentation in the post-War period. It breaks new ground by exploring the centrality of architecture to a mid-century modernist literature in dialogue with multiple literary and left-wing theoretical traditions and in tune with international assessments of modernist architecture and urban planning. Design and construction were a central part of politics and everyday life in East Germany during this time as buildings old and new were asked to bear heavy ideological and social burdens. In their novels, stories, and plays, Heiner Müller, Christa Wolf, Günter Kunert, Volker Braun, Günter de Bruyn, and Brigitte Reimann responded to enormous new factory complexes, experimental new towns, the demolition of Berlin's tenements, and the propagation of a pared-down modernist aesthetic in interior design. Writers' representation of the design, construction, and use of architecture formed part of a turn to modernist literary devices, including montage, metaphor, and shifting narrative perspectives. East Germany's literary architecture also represents a sophisticated theoretical reflection on the intractable problems of East Germany's socialist modernity, including the alliance between state socialism and technological modernization, competing commitments to working-class self-organization and the power of specialist planners and designers, and the attempt to create an alternative to fascism. FC New Directions in German Studies Volumes in the series: Title Copyright Didication Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Part I Framing East Germany: Marxism, Architecture, and Literature Introduction Space in Architecture, Architecture in Marxism East German Theories of the Built Environment A Literature of Construction 1 Socialist Writers and Modern Architecture Brecht and Modern Architecture Benjamin, Adorno, and the Neues Bauen Operative Writing and Modern Architecture Seghers’s Realism: The Ambiguous Status of Description Part II Architecture, Theater, and the Early Years of the Scientific-Technological Revolution 2 Confronting the Construction Site: Heiner Müller from Operativity to Metaphor Buildings Against Paper Compromised Operativity and Spatial Metaphorics The Prinzip Auschwitz, Metaphor, and East German Built Space Built Space and the Body in Der Bau Carceral Communism: Construction Site as Prison Traditional Urbanism and Construction Site as Playground 3 Towards a Bourgeois Architecture: Helmut Baierl’s Frau Flinz and the Space of the Class Enemy Architecture According to Ulbricht Karl von Appen and the Making of Bourgeois Space Kultur im Heim Expropriation, Revolution, and Bureaucracy Science and the Socialist Future The Cult of Lenin and the Fading Dream Part III Architecture and Modernity in the Prose of the 1960s 4 Time at Home: The Domestic Interior in Günter de Bruyn, Irmtraud Morgner, Brigitte Reimann, Christa Wolf, and Gerhard Wolf Henselmann and the GDR Interior Prescriptions for a Socialist Wohnkultur The Crisis of Civilization at Home Nineteenth-Century Interiors and the “Vast Landscape of History” Epilogue: Gerhard Wolf 5 Literary Responses to East German Urbanism The Literature of the Communist Company Town Fantasies of Urbanity in the Castrated City From Axial to Arabesque: Christa Wolf’s “Unter den Linden” On the Threshold of History Living with Prefab High-Rises Conclusion Bibliography Index "Building Socialism reveals how East German writers' engagement with the rapidly changing built environment from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s constitutes an untold story about the emergence of literary experimentation in the post-War period. It breaks new ground by exploring the centrality of architecture to a mid-century modernist literature in dialogue with multiple literary and left-wing theoretical traditions and in tune with international assessments of modernist architecture and urban planning. Design and construction were a central part of politics and everyday life in East Germany during this time as buildings old and new were asked to bear heavy ideological and social burdens. In their novels, stories, and plays, Heiner Müller, Christa Wolf, Günter Kunert, Volker Braun, Günter de Bruyn, and Brigitte Reimann responded to enormous new factory complexes, experimental new towns, the demolition of Berlin's tenements, and the propagation of a pared-down modernist aesthetic in interior design. Writers' representation of the design, construction, and use of architecture formed part of a turn to modernist literary devices, including montage, metaphor, and shifting narrative perspectives. East Germany's literary architecture also represents a sophisticated theoretical reflection on the intractable problems of East Germany's socialist modernity, including the alliance between state socialism and technological modernization, competing commitments to working-class self-organization and the power of specialist planners and designers, and the attempt to create an alternative to fascism."--Bloomsbury Publishing "Building Socialism' reveals how East German writers' engagement with the rapidly changing built environment from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s constitutes an untold story about the emergence of literary experimentation in the post-War period. It breaks new ground by exploring the centrality of architecture to a mid-century modernist literature in dialogue with multiple literary and left-wing theoretical traditions and in tune with international assessments of modernist architecture and urban planning. Design and construction were a central part of politics and everyday life in East Germany during this time as buildings old and new were asked to bear heavy ideological and social burdens. In their novels, stories, and plays, Heiner Müller, Christa Wolf, Günter Kunert, Volker Braun, Günter de Bruyn, and Brigitte Reimann responded to enormous new factory complexes, experimental new towns, the demolition of Berlin's tenements, and the propagation of a pared-down modernist aesthetic in interior design. Writers' representation of the design, construction, and use of architecture formed part of a turn to modernist literary devices, including montage, metaphor, and shifting narrative perspectives. East Germany's literary architecture also represents a sophisticated theoretical reflection on the intractable problems of East Germany's socialist modernity, including the alliance between state socialism and technological modernization, competing commitments to working-class self-organization and the power of specialist planners and designers, and the attempt to create an alternative to fascism."--Source inconnue