Christoph Hein
Born	(1944-04-08) 8 April 1944 (age 68) Heinzendorf, now Jasienica, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland
Occupation	Novelist, translator, Essayist
Nationality	German
Period	1980–present
Notable award(s)	Heinrich Mann Prize 1982 Erich Fried Prize 1990 Solothurner Literaturpreis 2000 Austrian State Prize for European Literature 2002
www.suhrkamp.de/autoren/autor.cfm?id=1845

Christoph Hein (born 8 April 1944) is a German author and translator. He grew up in the village Bad Düben near Leipzig. Being a clergyman's son and thus not allowed to attend the Erweiterte Oberschule, he received secondary education at a gymnasium in the western part of Berlin.^[1] After his Abitur he jobbed inter alia as assembler, bookseller and assistant director.^[1] From 1967 to 1971 Hein studied philosophy in Leipzig and Berlin. Upon graduation he became dramatic adviser at the Volksbühne in Berlin, where he worked a resident writer from 1974.^[1] Since 1979 Hein has worked as a freelance writer.

Hein first became known for his 1982 novella Der fremde Freund (The Distant Lover). From 1998 to 2000 Hein was the first president of the pan-German PEN-Centre.^[1]

Works[link]

• Die Witwe des Maurers (1980)
• Frank, eine Kindheit mit Vätern (narrative, 1980)
• Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois (narratives, 1980)
• Cromwell und andere Stücke (plays, 1981)
• Der fremde Freund (novella, 1982, in Western Germany: Drachenblut, English translation The Distant Lover)
• Die wahre Geschichte des Ah Q (play, 1982)
• Das Wildpferd unterm Kachelofen (children's book, 1984)
• Horns Ende (novel, 1985)
• Schlötel oder Was solls (play, 1986)
• Öffentlich arbeiten (essays and interviews, 1987)
• Passage - ein Kammerspiel in drei Akten (play, 1987)
• Die Ritter der Tafelrunde (play, 1989)
• Der Tangospieler (narrative, 1989, English translation The Tango Player)
• Als Kind habe ich Stalin gesehen (essays and speeches, 1990)
• Das Napoleon-Spiel (novel, 1993)
• Exekution eines Kalbes und andere Erzählungen (narratives, 1994)
• Randow - eine Komödie (play, 1994)
• Von allem Anfang an (autobiography, 1997)
• Willenbrock (novel, 2000, made into a movie in 2005, English translation Willenbrock)
• Mama ist gegangen (children's novel, 2003)
• Landnahme (novel, 2004, English translation "Settlement" to be published November 2008)
• In seiner frühen Kindheit ein Garten (novel, 2005)
• Frau Paula Trousseau (novel 2007)
• Über die Schädlichkeit des Tabaks. Rede an die Abiturienten des Jahrgangs 2009

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Christoph Hein

Stefan Heym
Heym on 4 November 1989
Born	Helmut Flieg (1913-04-10)April 10, 1913 Chemnitz, Kingdom of Saxony, German Empire
Died	December 16, 2001(2001-12-16) (aged 88) Ein Bokek, Tamar Regional Council, South District, Israel
Pen name	Stefan Heym, Melchior Douglas, Gregor Holm
Occupation	writer
Nationality	Germans
Citizenship	German
Alma mater	University of Chicago
Period	1938-2003
Notable award(s)	Heinrich Mann Prize 1953 National Prize of East Germany 1959 2nd Class Jerusalem Prize 1993

Helmut Flieg (April 10, 1913 - December 16, 2001) was a German-Jewish writer, known by his pseudonym Stefan Heym. He lived in the United States (or served in its army abroad) between 1935 and 1952, before moving back to the part of his native Germany which was, from 1949–1990, German Democratic Republic (GDR, "East Germany"). He published works in English and German at home and abroad, and despite longstanding criticism of the GDR remained a committed socialist.

Life[link]

Early life[link]

Helmut Flieg, born to a Jewish merchant family in Chemnitz, was an antifascist from an early age. In 1931 he was, at the instigation of local Nazis, expelled from the Gymnasium in his home town because of an anti-military poem. He completed school in Berlin, and began a degree in media studies there. After the 1933 Reichstag fire he fled to Czechoslovakia, where he took the name Stefan Heym. In Czechoslovakia, the only remaining democracy in Central Europe at that time, he worked for German newspapers published in Prague such as Prager Tagblatt and Deutsche Zeitung Bohemia and also managed to have some of his articles published in translation by Czech newspapers. During this time he signed his articles under several pseudonyms, Melchior Douglas, Gregor Holm and Stefan Heym.^[1]

United States[link]

In 1935 he received a grant from a Jewish student association, and went to the United States to continue his degree at the University of Chicago, which he completed in 1936 with a dissertation on Heinrich Heine. Between 1937 and 1939 he was based in New York as Editor-in-Chief of the German-language weekly Deutsches Volksecho, which was close to the Communist Party of the USA. After the newspaper ceased publication in November 1939, Heym worked as a freelance author in English, and achieved a bestseller with his first novel, Hostages (1942).

From 1943 Heym, now an American citizen, contributed to the World War II war effort. As member of the Ritchie Boys, a unit for psychological warfare under the command of émigré Hans Habe, he experienced the 1944 Normandy landings. His work consisted of composing texts designed to influence Wehrmacht soldiers, to be disseminated by leaflet, radio and loudspeaker. These experiences formed the background for a later novel, The Crusaders, and were the basis for Reden an den Feind (Speeches to the Enemy), a collection of those texts. After the war Heym led the Ruhrzeitung in Essen, and then became editor in Munich of the Neue Zeitung, one of the most important newspapers of the American occupying forces. Because of his pro-Soviet inclinations Heym was transferred back to the US towards the end of 1945 and was discharged because of "procommunistic" mindset.

In the following years he worked as a freelance author once again. In 1952 he gave all his American military commendations back in protest of the Korean War and moving first to Prague, and in the following year to the German Democratic Republic (GDR, "East Germany").

GDR[link]

In the GDR Heym initially received privileged treatment as a returning antifascist emigre. He lived with his wife in a state-provided villa in Berlin-Grünau. Between 1953 and 1956 he worked at the Berliner Zeitung, thereafter primarily as a freelance author. In the early years of his life in the GDR Heym supported the regime with socialist novels and other works. Heym's works, which he continued to write in English, were published by a publishing house founded for him, named Seven Seas Publishers, and in German translation were printed in large numbers.

Conflicts with the GDR authorities became apparent from 1956 on, as despite the destalinisation of the leadership the publication of Heym's book on the 17 June 1953 uprising, Five Days in June, was rejected. Tensions increased after 1965, when Erich Honecker attacked Heym during an SED party conference. In 1969 Heym was convicted of breaching the exchange control regulations after publishing his novel Lassalle in West Germany. He was nonetheless able to leave the GDR on foreign trips, such his two-month visit to the US in 1978, and his books continued to appear, albeit in lower print runs, in the GDR.

In 1976 Heym was among those GDR authors who signed the petition protesting the exile of Wolf Biermann. From this point on Heym could only publish his works in the West, and he began composing works in German. In 1979 he was again convicted of breaching exchange controls and excluded from the GDR Authors Association. Heym expressed support for German reunification as early as 1982, and during the 1980s supported the civil rights movement in the GDR, contributing a number of speeches to the East Berlin demonstrations in autumn 1989.

Stefan Heym's grave

After reunification[link]

In the years after reunification Heym was critical of what he saw as the discrimination against East Germans in their integration into the Federal Republic, and argued for a socialist alternative to the capitalism of the reunited Germany. At the federal elections in 1994 Heym stood as an independent on the Open List of the then Party of Democratic Socialism, and won direct election to the Bundestag from the seat of Berlin-Mitte/Prenzlauer-Berg. As chairman by seniority he held the opening speech of the new Parliament in November 1994, but resigned in October 1995 in protest against a planned constitutional amendment raising MPs' expense allowances. In 1997 he was among the signers of the "Erfurt Declaration", demanding a red-green alliance (between SPD and Greens) to form a minority government supported by the PDS after the 1998 federal elections. He died suddenly of heart failure in Ein Bokek in Israel whilst attending a Heinrich Heine Conference.

Heym was honoured with honorary doctorates from the University of Bern (1990) and University of Cambridge (1991), and honorary citizenship of Chemnitz, his birthplace (2001). He was also awarded the Jerusalem Prize (1993) for literature 'for the freedom of the individual in society', and the peace medal of the IPPNW. Previously he had won the Heinrich-Mann-Prize (1953), and the National Prize of the GDR, 2nd class (1959).

He was buried in the Weißensee Cemetery.

Works[link]

Written in English[link]

• Nazis in U.S.A., New York 1938
• Hostages, New York 1942
• Of Smiling Peace, Boston 1944
• The Crusaders, Boston 1948
• The Eyes of Reason, Boston 1951
• Goldsborough (novel), Leipzig 1953
• The Cannibals and Other Stories, Berlin 1958
• The Cosmic Age, New Delhi 1959
• Shadows and Lights, London 1963
• The Lenz Papers, London 1964 - concerns the failed revolutions in Germany in 1848
• The Architects written c 1963 - 1965, unpublished (published in German as Die Architekten, Munich 2000)- (Published in English under "The Architects" by Northwestern in 2005. ISBN 0-8101-2044-5)
• Uncertain Friend, London 1969
• The King David Report, New York 1973 ^[2]
• The Queen against Defoe, London 1975
• Five Days in June, London 1977 - concerns the 1953 uprisings in the GDR

Written in German[link]

• Collin (1979)
• Der kleine König, der ein Kind kriegen mußte und andere neue Märchen für kluge Kinder (1979)
• Ahasver (1981) - published in English as The Wandering Jew (1984)
• Atta Troll. Versuch einer Analyse (1983 )
• Schwarzenberg (1984) - about the Free Republic of Schwarzenberg
• Reden an den Feind (1986)
• Nachruf (1988) - autobiography
• Meine Cousine, die Hexe und weitere Märchen für kluge Kinder (1989
• Auf Sand gebaut (1990) - short stories
• Stalin verlässt den Raum (1990) - political writings
• Einmischung (1990)
• Filz (1992)
• Radek (1995)
• Der Winter unsers Missvergnügens (1996)
• Immer sind die Weiber weg und andere Weisheiten (1997)
• Pargfrider (1998)
• Immer sind die Männer schuld (2002)
• Offene Worte in eigener Sache (2003)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Małgorzata Dubrowska: Auseinandersetzung mit der jüdischen Identität in Werken ausgewählter Schriftsteller aus der DDR, Lublin, 2002. ISBN 83-7306-065-0.
• Hermann Gellermann: Stefan Heym: Judentum und Sozialismus. Zusammenhänge und Probleme in Literatur und Gesellschaft, Berlin, 2002. ISBN 3-932089-86-3
• Regina U. Hahn: The democratic dream, Oxford, 2003. ISBN 0-8204-5865-1
• Peter Hutchinson: Stefan Heym: the perpetual dissident, Cambridge, 1992. ISBN 0-521-40438-X
• Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Stefan Heym: socialist - dissenter - Jew, Oxford, 2003. ISBN 3-906769-71-2
• Meg Tait: Taking sides: Stefan Heym’s historical fiction, Oxford, 2001. ISBN 3-906766-42-X
• Dennis Tate: Shifting perspectives: East German autobiographical narratives before and after the end of the GDR, Columbia (SC), 2007. ISBN 1-57113-372-0
• Vladimir Tumanov (2009). “Divine Silence in Stefan Heym’s The King David Report.” Neophilologus: International Journal of Modern and Mediaeval Language and Literature 93 (3): 499-509.
• Reinhard K. Zachau: Stefan Heym, München, 1982. ISBN 3-406-08420-6

External links[link]

• International Stefan Heym Association
• Stefan Heym, Five Days in June book essay by Elizabeth Clark

Christa Wolf

Wolf in Berlin, March 2007

Christa Wolf (née Ihlenfeld; 18 March 1929, Landsberg an der Warthe – 1 December 2011, Berlin) was a German literary critic, novelist, and essayist.^[1][2] She was one of the best-known writers to have emerged from the former East Germany.^[3][4]

Biography[link]

Wolf was born in Landsberg an der Warthe in the Province of Brandenburg;^[3] the city is now Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland. After World War II, Wolf and her family, being Germans, were expelled from their home on what had become Polish territory. They crossed the new Oder-Neisse border in 1945 and settled in Mecklenburg, in what would become the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. She studied literature at the University of Jena and the University of Leipzig. After her graduation, she worked for the German Writers' Union and became an editor for a publishing company.

She joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1949 and left it in June 1989. She was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the SED from 1963 to 1967. Stasi records found in 1993 showed that she worked as an informant (Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter) during the years 1959–61.^[4] The Stasi officers criticized what they called her "reticence", and they lost interest in her cooperation. She was herself then closely watched for nearly 30 years. During the Cold War, Wolf was openly critical of the leadership of the GDR, but she maintained a loyalty to the values of socialism and opposed German reunification.^[1]

Wolf's breakthrough as a writer came in 1963 with the publication of Der geteilte Himmel (Divided Heaven).^[2] Her subsequent works included Nachdenken über Christa T. (The Quest for Christa T.) (1968), Kindheitsmuster (Patterns of Childhood) (1976), Kein Ort. Nirgends (1979), Kassandra (Cassandra) (1983), Störfall (Accident) (1987), Medea (1996), and Auf dem Weg nach Tabou (On the Way to Taboo) (1994). Christa T was a work that—while briefly touching on a disconnection from one's family's ancestral home—was concerned with a woman's experiencing overwhelming societal pressure to conform.

Kassandra is perhaps Wolf's most important book, re-interpreting the battle of Troy as a war for economic power and a shift from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society. Was bleibt (What Remains), described her life under Stasi surveillance, was written in 1979, but not published until 1990. Auf dem Weg nach Tabou (1995; translated as Parting from Phantoms) gathered essays, speeches, and letters written during the four years following the reunification of Germany. Leibhaftig (2002) describes a woman struggling with life and death in 1980s East-German hospital, while awaiting medicine from the West. Central themes in her work are German fascism, humanity, feminism, and self-discovery.

Wolf died 1 December 2011 in Berlin, where she lived with her husband, Gerhard Wolf.^[5] She was buried on 13 December 2011 in Berlin's Dorotheenstadt cemetery.^[6]

Reception[link]

Wolf's works have sometimes been seen as controversial since German reunification. Upon publication of Was bleibt, West German critics such as Frank Schirrmacher argued that Wolf failed to criticize the authoritarianism of the East German Communist regime, whilst others called her works "moralistic". Defenders have recognized Wolf's role in establishing a distinctly East German literary voice.^[7] Fausto Cercignani's study of Wolf’s earlier novels and essays on her later works have helped promote awareness of her narrative gifts, irrespective of her political and personal ups and downs. The emphasis placed by Cercignani on Christa Wolf’s heroism has opened the way to subsequent studies in this direction.^[8]

Wolf received the Heinrich Mann Prize in 1963, the Georg Büchner Prize in 1980, and the Schiller Memorial Prize in 1983, the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in 1987, as well as other national and international awards. After the German reunification, Wolf received further awards: in 1999 she was awarded the Elisabeth Langgässer Prize and the Nelly Sachs Literature Prize, and Wolf became the first recipient of the Deutscher Bücherpreis (German Book Prize) in 2002 for her lifetime achievement.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Christa Wolf: Biography at FemBio – Notable Women International
• The quest for Christa Wolf an interview with Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns and Stephan Lebert about private chats with Honecker, a German society in check mate, the influence of Goethe, the shortcomings of Brecht, and the lasting effects of Utopia at signandsight.com.
• Christa Wolf at Find a Grave