CHRISTA WOLF’S KINDHEITSMUSER. AN EAST GERMAN EXPERIMENT IN POLITICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BY NEIL JACKSON AND BARBARA SAUNDERS

The initial reception of Christa Wolf s Kindheitsmuster has to a great extent con- ditioned the work’s present standing in the highly charged political climate of East and West Germany. The early reviewers-several of whom held overtly ideological viewpoints-neglected the author’s personal and literary achievement, concentrating instead on the work’s political implications. The present paper seeks to correct this assessment by examining the work principally in relation to two of the ‘patterns’ which it seeks to question: first, the nature of personal and collective attitudes to the past; and second, the writing of modern political autobiography.

Christa Wolf herself is the protagonist of Kindbeitsmuster, in which she attempts to project her personality on three levels. The first represents the heroine Nelly’s childhood and adolescence from 1929 to 1947, and traces the influence of National Socialism in the Reid on her school and family life. A second level is represented by Wolfs mature reappraisal of her ‘Fascist’ past. This takes place during the narrator’s first post-war visit with her husband, brother and daughter to Nelly’s home town, ‘L heute G’ (p. in Poland on loth and 11th July 1971. Third, there is the process of writing and reflection itself, from 3rd November 1972 to 2nd May 1975. Wolf chooses this broad framework to link three areas of significance in her own life to the immediate needs of the GDR. Further, she sees reconciliation with the Nazi (and Stalinist) past, combined with a critical reassessment of the present, as a crucial long-term issue for her contemporaries. Her work thus raises many sensitive subjects for the GDR, which she explores in three main areas: the political, the personal, and the literary.

Fundamental to every level of the text is the theme of ‘Vergangenheits- bewaltigung’, but the attitude which Wolf adopts towards it is far from typical. Unlike so many of her contemporaries-whether in East or West-her main argument is that neither German state has truly come to terms with its totalitarian heritage. Such an accusation is not likely to find favour in either part of the nation, and critics have consequently preferred to see the work in terms which correspond to their own preconceived ideas. Thus in the West, for example, Marcel Reich- Ranicki has acknowledged the importance of the theme for his own society, but he nevertheless regards it as a problem which more urgently needs to be faced in the East. Literature, he suggests, has failed badly in this respect: ‘Driiben wurde die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit immer wieder, und auch vor allem von der Literatur, verdrangt und verfalscht oder zumindest kritftig retuschiert’ . True, Wolf levels questions mainly at her own society, but it is her contention that the past has been ‘verdrangt’ rather than ‘bewaltigt’ in the whole of Germany. Critics in the GDR accept her claim only in so far as it relates to the West. As far as their own state is concerned they uy to ignore her references to Stalinism. On the one hand, they place Kindbeitsmaster in the ‘Tradition antifaschistischer deutscher

320 CHRISTA WOLF’S KINDHEITSMUSTER

Literatur’ , concerned exclusively with the ‘geistige Barbari~ierung’~ of the Third Reich and with the phenomenon of present-day fascism abroad and in the Federal Republic. On the other hand, they may admit to the continuing influence of Nazism on the behaviour of certain individuals in the GDR, but refuse to extend this logically to East German society as a whole. One such critic is Sigrid Bock,> who makes great play of Wolfs petit bourgeois background in order to suggest that the relevance of the book is confined to this class (one which supposedly no longer exists in the GDR). This line is taken up by Hans Richter, whose strictures most sharply indicate the objections of the East German establishment to the work. Accusing Wolf of turning Nelly into a ‘Klischee-Etikett’ for the whole of her generation and of having a ‘merkwiirdig distanziertes Verhaltnis’ to socialist society, he concludes: ‘dass in diesem Buch, leider, ein gewisser Zug zu falschem Verallgemeinern, zu unhistorischem Verkurzen, zu fragwiitdigem Analogisieren steckt’ . Her questioning of whether the past really has been faced in the GDR is regarded as a ‘Mangel an literarischer Objektivierung’7-in other words, a lack of partisanship.

Whatever the views of the critics, the very first sentence of Kindheitsmuster introduces its main theme in abrasive terms: ‘Das Vergangene ist nicht mt; es ist nicht einmal vergangen’ (p. 9).

These words may surprise on two counts. First, because they are a paraphrase of Faulkner, and second, because they have already been used in the GDR. In 1968 Wolfgang Joho, a well-established conformist writer, incorporated them as the preface to Das Klassentreffen,8 a novel to which no East German critic took exception. Like Wolf, Joho deals with the subject of ‘Vergangenheitsbewiiltigung’ , and in addition to the Faulkner quotation, there is a further noticeable parallel between the two authors. Wolf prefaces her work with the disclaimer that all her characters are ‘Erfindungen der Erzahlerin’ : if her readers recognize themselves in the book, she says, this must be attributed to the ‘Mangel an Eigentumlichkeit’ in her contemporaries’ behaviour. Similarly, in a postscript to Das Hassentreflen, Joho tells his readers that they will nowhere find the characters in his novel ‘und dennoch existieren sie alle. ’ However, these apparent similarities (quite possibly deliberate allusions on Wolfs part) serve only tu draw attention to the actual gulf which separates the two works. The contemporaries to whom Wolf refers are fellow citizens of the whole of Germany: in Kindheitsmuster the past concerns ‘us’, in Das Klassentreffen it concerns ‘the others’ in West Germany. Writing his novel in the manner of an ‘exposi’ of a supposed cross-section of West German society, Joho follows his government’s line in denying the relevance of the Nazi past to East German society. In East Germany, the foundation of the German Democratic Republic in 1949 is regarded as a historic caesura, a clean break with the past of Hider’s Germany. The GDR looks for its roots not in the fascist Third Reich but in the ‘humanist’ tradition of Goethe and the socialist writers of the Weimar Republic. It is the complacency and self-satisfaction inherent in such an attitude-amply demonstrated in Das Klassentreffen- that Wolf is trying to combat. Her demand for self-analysis, her concern for truth and what she calls ‘subjektive Authentizitat’ 9 (reality described on the basis of the writer’s own experience), and her preoccupation with memory and the past, are determined

CHRl STA WOLF’S KINDHEITSM USTER 32 1

by her conviction that certain modes of behaviour in the GDR have their roots in past totalitarian structures. Wolfs generation grew up under Nazism but now lives in a Marxist society-in Wolfs view, a situation leading to a ‘widerspriichliches Kontinuum’ . l o The insistence with which she worries at the problems of memory should be seen as a reaction to the persistence with which her fellows try not to remember: ‘ein Volk, dessen Gehirne traumend den ihnen gegebenen Befehl befolgen: loschen loschen loschen’ (p. 198). Unwilling to face up to it, Germans are trying to pretend that the past never happened-like Nelly’s Uncle Dunst, who ‘really can’t recall’ the Jew whose sweet factory he bought at an unscrupulously low price (p. 198). (Similarly, in Das Klassentreffen, the (West German) factory manager with the excellent memory cannot recall the ‘Tintenitzig’ affair-the baiting of a Jewish schoolboy.) Wolf demonstrates how unsatisfactory such a non- solution is by including in her book some reactions to the pre-publication reading of a chapter from it. She shows the German who cannot come to terms with his ‘Schuldgefuhl von damals’ (p. 402), she shows the friend, who was sent from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz and for whom reality is ‘seitdem hinter einem Schleier’ (p. 433) and she shows the Jew resolved never again to set foot in Germany. These people are suffering the ‘main symptoms’ of what she calls the ‘Uberlebenssyndrom’ (p. 433): fits of depression, difficulties in establishing friendships, chronic anxiety, nightmares, guilt-complexes, lacunae in the memory and even paranoia. In addition, the figure of the narrator’s daughter, Lenka, helps to support her claim that in spite of the doubtless ‘correct generalizations’ (p. 239) of text books, the younger generation in Germany still does not under- stand their parents’ past. And, of course, the breakdown of Wolfs own authorial personality into three parts (Nelly, narrator and author) is the most far-reaching demonstration that until her contemporaries confront their own past experiences they will continue to live with damaged psyches in a state of self-alienation.

This suggestion could hardly be welcome in the GDR. But what gives Kind- heitsmuster a potential ‘Sprengladung’,l’ at least equal to that of the earlier Nachdenken iiber Cbrista T., l 2 is Wolfs extension of her theme beyond the individual to East German society as a whole, her claim that ‘Gegenwart und Vergangenheit. . . . sich nicht nur ‘ ‘ treffen” sondern aufeinander wirken’ . ‘3 In order to prove this, she does not just include references to the Vietnam War, Chile, Greece and the Middle East, she also brings up the question of Stalinism. Thus she recalls the exile of Brecht and Erika Mann, and also, in an ironically bracketed aside, that of Kreszentia Muhsam: ‘(die, was nicht verschwiegen werden soll, in der Sowjetunion, wohin sie geflohen war, spater in ein Lager kam.)’ @. 360). When discussing the bombing by the Nazis of Guernica, Wolf deliberately mentions the news (contained in the same newspaper) of Stalin’s show-trials in Moscow. Pointedly, she asks why the execution of eight Soviet generals in 1937 should seem so important to her today, ‘als ginge sie dich personlich an’ (p. 195). Wolf indirectly answers her own question by introducing into her book the apparently irrelevant suicide of the teacher, M. , and his fiancee in present-day East Germany. In approaching this episode, the reader should bear in mind the importance of the topos of suicide in Wolfs work as a whole. As early as Der geteilte Himmel, l4 the heroine attempts suicide before reconciling herself to the

322 CHRISTA WOLF’S KINDHEITSMUSTER

conflict between her allegiance to her lover and that to the GDR. In Nacbdenhen iiber Chrirta T., the heroine’s death from cancer can be seen as a thinly-disguised metaphor for suicide-especially when the narrator speaks of ‘Todeswunsch als Krankheit’.’l And the two central characters of Wolfs latest novel, Kein Ort. Nirgends., l6 Kleist and Gunderode, are both known from history as suicides. So the suicide in Kindbeitsmuster is no isolated phenomenon. M.’s attitude to the truth (one should, he maintains, be able to pretend to admire a set-text, without giving up one’s real, low opinion of it), h s attempts to innovate at school (frustrated by the other teachers) and his fiancie’s unexplained failure to be allowed to study medicine, in spite of her outstanding qualifications-all this implies that the double suicide is provoked by the victims’ encounter in the GDR with ‘Verhaltens- weisen’ determined by the totalitarian past. Wolf rejects suicide as a solution, but her distinction between M.’s inability to face life in East Germany and her own ‘gelegentliche Verzweiflung’ (p. 145) contains a tacit admission that she shares, at least to some extent, his views. Moreover, she chooses to cite a barely ambiguous quotation from Musil that M. has underlined: ‘Man hat nur die Wahl, diese niedertrachtige Zeit mitzumachen (mit den Wolfen zu heulen) oder Neurotiker zu werden’ (p. 144). This, then, is why the 1937 show-trials concern Wolf- because the GDR has no more faced up to Stalinism than it has to Nazism. The reader must be struck by the tensions revealed within the family group during the trip to Poland. the narrator is uneasy and defensive with her daughter, Lenka; in her brother, Lutz, she shows one of those determined to forget the past; and in her husband, H . , who remains a shadowy, unnamed figure, often seeming to disapprove of his wife’s soul-searching, we see someone who lives only for the present, not for the future (p. 322). Most significantly, the narrator herself suffers from nightmares, an expression of the anxieties produced by suppressed memories. In particular, she dreams that she is present at Stalin’s funeral and asks the mourners in her nightmare, with heavy symbolic overtones: ‘So ist er schon tot? Er liegt da schon? Und wen beerdigen wir eigentlich?’ (p. 322). Those who do not confront the past, Wolf asserts elsewhere in the book, are doomed to repeat it-by trying to ignore Stalinism, she implies here, one perpetuates it. Kind- heitsmuster is a plea (in terms recalling the quotation from Johannes Becher so important in Nachdenhen uber Chnsta T. - ‘Wann-wenn nicht jetzt?’)’? for these issues to be discussed: ‘Wann. . . . werden wir auch dariiber zu reden beginnen?’ (p. 322).

The marked social relevance of Wolfs writing has led to partial neglect of its highly personal significance. True, the author has herself never made a secret of the autobiographical nature of her work, yet at the same time she is anxious to affirm her political allegiance to the GDR. Wolf is actively involved in many fields of public Me, but in a system which insists on overt political and social commitment an individualistic work dealing with the past, such as Kindheitsmuster, runs the risk of irreconcilability with the Party line. Wolf may both consciously and un- consciously avoid such a conflict with the authorities, even though her reputation as a creative writer is established. Paradoxically, however, the repressive nature of the censor may be creative, since individuals are forced to turn to their own resources in the face of an,inflexible regime. This produces growth in precisely

CHRISTA WOLF’S KINDHEITSMUSTER 3 2 3

those areas the authorities wish to suppress. The quality of Wolf’s work thus over- rides Party values, and we may examine Kindheitsmuster as an autobiography as long as we are aware of its unique position and its literary and political connotations.

In an essay published during the work’s composition, Wolf restated her com- mitment to the literary innovations necessarily involved in linking a personal, subjective reality to productive political and social change:

Nicht, um unnotigerweise gesellschaftliche Kr%fte an die Vergangenheit zu binden, sondern urn sie produktiv zu machen fiir die Gegenwart, hat eine andauernde, unerschrockene Arbeit gerade an jenen Vergangenheitskomplexen statttufinden, deren Beriihrung schmerzt. Ein Vorgang, der mit Konsequenz betrieben, zu literarischen Entdeckungen fiihren konnte, auf die wir nicht gefasst sind. l 8

This passage could well serve as a motto for Kindheitsmuster, for in this work the author demonstrates a mood of self-confrontative composition which she believes may offer valuable emotional, political and social insight. In her eyes, experience which has inhibited constructive personal growth (and consequently effective political change) contains crucial potential for future social development, and she therefore sets about radically exposing a life which has been largely formed by a totalitarian past. Yet despite the work’s obvious concern with idenufable personal and political realities, both past and present, Wolf does not designate Kind- heitsmuster an ‘autobiography’. Further, the title is neither traditional, nor immediately reminiscent of any one particular literary genre. Its reference to ‘patterns’ is at once rich in linguistic associations as well as sufficiently ambiguous to justify Wolfs later elucidation of their function within the text. The role of stylistic experimentation throughout must be seen both in relation to the personal immediacy of the experience Wolf presents and to the social criticism her ex- ploration contains.

The use of fictional devices (e.g. imaginiry place names and characters) is a conscious confrontation of the presence of fiction and fantasy in the life of the individual, far removed from a sentimental evasion of responsibility. The post- war generation (the book is dedicated to Wolf s daughters) senses the emotional gaps left by the ‘accepted’ view of history and Wolf tries to supplement this, whlst maintaining a critical awareness of the present. She attempts to reveal the fear underlying a whole generation’s behaviour under the Nazi regime, thus implying not only that the GDR has taken insufficient account of the manipulation of terror in its view of the Nazi past, but also that an official recognition of its individual consequences could prove to be a progressive rather than a retrogressive step.

Wolfs efforts to free autobiography from its traditionally authoritative narrative patterns find echoes in many modern European examples of the genre. However, in her case stylistic devices formerly associated with the novel, the biography, or the essay are employed autonomously rather than borrowed awkwardly, as in other recent experiments. This freedom of interaction reflects the subjectivity governing our age, our mistrust of linear narration and of a positive conception of history, whilst endeavouring to place hope in a critically subjective vision of experience.

324 CHRISTA WOLF’S KINDHEITSMUSTER

Autobiography’s thematic emphasis has thus begun to shift from retrospection towards a concentration on a search for fulfilment in the present with critical reference to the past. This is no less true of Kindheitsmuster, where the author’s preoccupation with the problems of her immediate environment is paramount: ‘Denn Gegenwart ist ja nicht nur, was heute passiert. . . . Gegenwart ist alles, was uns treibt, zum Beispiel heute so zu handeln oder nicht zu handeln, wie wir es tun. ’ l9 In addition, Wolf maintains that a rounded, one-dimensional ‘auto- biographical identity’ is absent from this work for specific personal reasons. She sees in GDR literature adequate representation of a protagonist’s rapid adoption of an anti-fascist stance, but misses recognizable aspects of her own experience- that is, the slow emotional recovery from deep impressions conditioned by fear. T h ‘deficiency’ provides the major impetus for her own version of the consequences of Fascism. At first she attempted to use ‘Ich-Sril’ and linear narration, but was dissatisfied with the resulting ‘thinness’ of texture, which hindered the desired portrayal of ‘merkwiirdig gespaltene Menschen’ . Wolf realized that only by means of several interacting levels of narration, and particularly by distancing the child Nelly through the third-person, could she reflect her personal ‘Fremdheitsgefiihl gegeniiber dieser Zeit’ .20 For Wolf, there exists in time an indistinct watershed, after which she loses the means of direct identification with her childhood ex- perience-hence the lack of a defined authorial identity in Kindheitsmuster. The future potential of Wolfs major characters prevents the construction of a fixed personality and insists that we face the creative possibilities of the present rather than indulging in nostalgic contemplation or ignoring the significance of our individual past.

In this work, then, Wolf accepts the most daring challenge of her career as an autobiographical writer and literary innovator. Techniques first seen in Der geteilte Himmel and Nachdenken uber Chrzita T. are here developed with even greater force and consistency, representing a further advance in her stylistic experimentation. The theoretical basis for the highly original fusion of epic prose, documentary material, autobiography and philosophical reflection is explained in the article ‘Lesen und SchreibenI2l. Prose, she says, can only be realistic and exploratory if based on the author’s own experience. The role of the author is not to purvey some spurious ‘wissenschaftlich verallgemeinerte Erkenntnis’ 2 2 for slavish imitation. On the contrary: ‘Die Prosa sollte unbestechlich auf der ein- maligen Erfahrung bestehen und sich nicht hinreissen lassen zu gewaltsamen Eingriffen in die Erfahrung der anderen, aber sie sollte anderen Mut machen zu ihren E~fahrungen.’~’ ‘Selbstbehauptung als P r o z e ~ s ’ ~ ~ is, for Wolf, the primary function of literature, reading as well as writing, but this is not mere subjectivity, for the author’s experience must be socially relevant. Citing Anna Seghers’ view of the author as ‘Umschlagstelle vom Objekt zum Subjekt und wieder zum Objekt’2’, Wolf sees herself not as a model, but as a mediator of experience, encouraging the reader’s active participation in the literary process. However, Seghers approaches the literary object from a subjective stance in order to arrive eventually at some sort of objectivity. Wolf, on the contrary, achieves an almost exactly opposite effect. She starts with a literary subject (i.e. one taken from her own range of experience), which she then tries to appraise objectively in order to

CHRISTA WOLF’S KINDHEITSMUSmR 325

reach ultimately a ‘subjective authenticity’-she aims at ‘das Subjektwerden des Menschen’26. This can be seen in Kindheztsmzlster in the shifting time-planes, indicated by changes in the grammatical person. Nelly is referred to as ‘es’, distancing her from the ‘du’ narrator: the subject is being examined objectively. The shift back from the narrator’s objective stance to a subject, whose experience has been shown to be authentic, then occurs with the reintegration of Nelly and narrator on the third level of the text, in the authorial personality actually writing the book. ‘Es’ and ‘du’ merge into one person, but this reunification is ambiguous, expressed at the end of the work in the uncertain rediscovery of the first-person form-‘Ich weiss es nicht’ (p. 530), and so the process is left open. Wolf writes not on the basis of a past already overcome, but on the basis of ‘Erfahrung, die zu bewaltigen isC27.

As a result of such an approach, Kindheitsmuster is Wolfs most complex work to date. The reflective presence of an author evaluating events emphasizes the self- deception Wolf acknowledges at the heart of the individual and social psyche. I t also excludes any tension concerning ‘what-is-about- to- happen-next’ and stresses the associative basis of the prose, whch constantly reflects upon itself. The language strives to encourage the reader to question every word and every cliche and leaps to a new framework before it can become repetitive. Wolf deliberately juxtaposes issues which may appear mutually exclusive, but whose interdependence is vital to an understanding of her broad self-questioning stance. We move, for example, from an allusion to the possible consequences of the author’s pre-occupation with an officially ‘resolved’ past to Nelly’s childhood awareness of her individuality: ‘Falls es strafbar ist, die Grenzen zu verwischen . . . Falls es strafbar ist, auf die Grenzen zu pochen . . . Falls es stimmt, dass es niemandem gelingt, das eine tu tun und das andere nicht zu lassen . . . Nelly ist die Vorstellung, dass sie einmal nicht auf der Welt war, immer unertraglich gewesen’ (p. 96). The repetition of ‘Falls’ and ‘strafbar’, combined with the rhythmic symmetry of the sentence structure in the opening phrases, reflect the degree of persistence Wolf concentrates in her attack on ‘aruficial’ definitions as well as her fear that breaking down taboos may be as destructive as it is creative. The incomplete sentences suggest that the process always remains unfinished and requires constant revaluation. We cannot avoid drawing a parallel between Wolfs mature authorial self-confidence and Nelly’s childhood independence of mind, although the sense of Nelly’s individual powerlessness in the face of ‘eternal’ time may cast as much doubt upon the social effectiveness of Wolfs criticism as on the unacceptability of the political structures it attacks.

Wolfs unexpected use of pronouns, the shifting between ‘wir’, ‘du’, ‘es’, ‘sie’, ‘man’ and eventually ‘ich’ is generally recognized as one of the most forceful devices of the work. The reader is confronted with the interchanging perspectives of Nelly’s childhood, the process of writing itself, and a shared responsibility of reader and writer for the attitudes described. Wolf frequently addresses direct questions to the reader and to herself, as at the opening of chapter 4-‘Brauchen wir Schutz vor den Abgriinden der Erinnerung?’ (p. 95)-openly inducing in- volvement in the process of investigation. Our expectation of a fKm narrative stance is intercepted by this kind of device, preventing laziness on the part of the reader.

326 CHRISTA WOLF’S KINDHEITSMUSTER

Sentences are often incomplete and aphoristic, especially striking when they follow longer, more complex structures. Attention is thus focussed more sharply upon the particular group of words or turn of phrase Wolf wishes to emphasize. Longer sentences containing different subjects and frames of reference are some- times split up by a series of colons, underlining the interdependence of the con- trasting standpoints and creating a sense of discomfort and perplexity. Wolf s use of adjectives is often compulsive, stressing the pressure of emotional and intellectual effort her approach involves. For example, ‘unaufschiebbar’ , ‘anstrengend’ and ‘unvermeidlich’ appear within one short sentence: ‘Unaufschiebbare Frage, tu der die anstrengende Bewegung in verschiedenen Zeiten unvermeidlich fihrt’ (p. 95). The stress at the beginning and at the end of this sentence on the necessity and inevitability of confronting the limits and potential of memory provides a critical response to the preceding question, ‘Brauchen wir Schutz vor den Abgriinden der Erinnerung?’. The sentence also evokes a sense of weariness and historical repetition, thereby re-emphasizing a crucial human dilemma as well as a con- temporary crisis.

Wolf avoids excessive moralising by scrutinizing her own memory, defences and emotions as she writes:

(Dieser Satz, der a ls ‘wahr’ gelten kann, muss unter eine Menge halbwahrer oder etfundener Satze vermischt werden, welche ihrerseits, mehr noch als die ‘wahten’, wie bare Munzen klingen musssen. Der Hochmut, sich nicht taiischen zu wollen, fiihrt auf geradem Weg in die Sprachunmachtigkeit. Das ist dir bekannt.) (p.96).

Her use of documentary evidence, diary inserts and imaginative writing illustrates memory’s ability to distort experience as well as to come to terms with it. In addition, the sense of urgency conveyed by Wolfs style is frequently checked and reinforced by her characteristic reappraisal of the losses and gains involved in her method of writing and a consolidation of her aggressive authorial standpoint, as in the repetition of ‘Falls . . .’ quoted above, or as in ‘Gegendstandslose Fragen, als Vorwand fiir tatenlose Melancholie’ (p. 96). She consciously guides the reader through her rigorous probing of the boundaries of interpreting experience, and, hardly surprisingly, does not escape the strictures of certain critics for doing sozs. The examples cited above are all drawn from three pages of the book and are typical of the constant interaction of Wolfs stylistic variations. Since her material is emotionally charged, the anticipation of each new difficulty to a large extent preempts the reader’s own reflection. It does not, however, prevent him thinking radically about her ideas, and her style aims to foster a critical response (an essential part of self-confrontation) rather than a conclusive judgement. Wolf makes it hard for us to avoid comparing our own childhood with our present behaviour in its specific social and political context, even though in everyday life we overlook the way our needs are channelled and our responses conditioned. Wolfs apparently broad outlook does not guarantee real exploration, nor does she ever pretend that the approach she advocates is always successful. This explains why the final discovery of the ‘ich’ is, as we have seen, expressed in an uncertain, negative phrase.

CHRISTA WOLF‘S KINDHEITSMUSTER 327

It does not detract from Wolfs personal achievement, but if we follow her line of argument, we realize that she, too, is still striving to synthesize an unresolved past. The essay mentioned earlier supports this:

Zugleich aber lebt sie [Prosa], wie alle sogenannte Kunst, aus jenem Vorrat an urspriinglichem Verhalten, f i r das in der Kindheit der Grund gelegt wird. Ihre Bedingungen sind spontanes, direktes, riicksichtsloses Reagieren, Denken, Fuhlen, Handeln, ein unbefangenes (eben doch ‘naives’) un- gebrochenes Verhaltnis zu sich selbst und seiner personlichen Biographie- genau das, was wir eingebusst haben. 29

In Kindheitsmuster Wolf makes a relentless attempt to discover and restore the ‘patterns’ of her childhood, whose continuity has been unconsciously lost or deliberately repressed. As a consequence, she achieves a greater clarity of thought and mastery over her own experience with this work than with any of her previous novels. The concept of ‘subjective authenticity’, her ‘ideal of what literature should be’, 3O demands not only ‘individual or subjective interpretations of large- scale historical processes’,3’ but also a method of writing which allows the author constantly to review these interpretations. The book represents Wolfs personal view of the ‘historical processes’ of Nazism and Stalinism, which have left such deep marks on modern East German society. It signifies for her the culmination of years of self-questioning, necessary to articulate the intense degradation and pain infllicted by the Third Reich. Of particular originality for the GDR is the detailed examination of ‘Flucht’ in 1945 and of a visit to what was once a German town and now is neither readily accessible nor easily recognizable to those born there. Wolf claims that these two themes have been given insufficient public attention in the GDR, although they are fundamental to a history of the recent German past.32 She believes that every German has a personal need and a moral obligation to express the nature of his conditioning by the Nazi period in so far as he is able, and it is in anticipation of the social value of this kind of ‘Vergangen- heitsbewaltigung’ that Kindheitsmuster is written. Wolf has never pretended that this book would evoke direct political change, although she clearly set great store by its contemporary relevance. Its importance is not undermined by Wolfs sub- sequent revision of her stylistic technique:

Aber ich habe den Eindruck, diese Schreibart ist aus einer gewissen Not- wendigkeit entstanden, ich habe lange nach ihr gesucht. Ich glaube nicht, dass ich es immer so machen werde. Ich sehe vor mir ein paar Geschichten, die werden das reflektierende Element wenig oder gar nicht haben, weil sie es nicht brauchen, meiner Ansicht nach. 33

Significantly, her latest work, Kein Ort. NBgends., is a new departure. In this ‘Erzahlung’, Wolf adopts a position of more subtle intervention and call for change. As a fresh impulse in her writing, it owes much of its new direction to the autobiographical experimentation of Kindheitsmuster.

328 CHRISTA WOLF’S KINDHEITSMUSTER

NOTES

Page references are to the Aufbau edition of Kindbeitsmuster, Berlin/ Weimar 1976

’Christa Wolfs trauriger Zettelkasten’. Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, 19 March 1977, un- numbered literary supplement. The same pattern is evident in other countries for which the work has relevance. Just as Reich-Ranicki plays down the importance of the past to West German society, W. V. Blomster objects to Wolfs criticisms of the recent American past. He sees her allusions to the Vietnam War as ‘cheapening’ the book with ‘the propagandistic dross of repeated references to American political machinations’ (‘Christa Wolf, “Kindheitsmuster” ’ , World Literature Todby, 5 1 (1977), 612.)

*

Hans Richter, ‘Moralitat als poetische Energie’, Sinn undFom, 29 (1977). 676

Heinz Plavius, ‘Gewissensfonchung’, Neue Deutscbe Literatur, 25 (1977). Heft 1, 140.

‘Christa Wolf: “Kindheitsmuster” ’. WeimerBeitrage, 23 (1977). Heft 9. 102-130.

HansRichter, loc. cit., pp. 677-678.

’ /oc. cat., p. 677.

Berlin/ Weimar 1968.

Wolf explains what she means by this concept in detail in an intelvicw with an East German critic: Hans Kaufmann, ‘Gespkich mit Christa Wolf, WeimerBeitrdge, 20 (1974), Heft 6,95ff.

lo ‘Gcspriich mit Christa Wolf‘, loc. cit., p. 103

Jiirgen Nieraad, ‘Subjektivitat als Thema und Methode realistischer Schreibweise. Zur gcgen- wartigen DDR-Literaturdiskussion am Beispiel Christa Wolf’, Litera:uwtjrenscha~liches Jahrbuch, 19 (1978). 293.

l2 HallelSaale 1968.

l 3

l4 HallelSaale 1963

Hans Kaufmann. ‘Gesprach rnit Christa Wolf, foc. crt., p. 99.

Nachdenken iiber Chrirta T., p. 92. Fergus McGaunn disputes the widely-held view that Christa T.’s death contains strong symbolic overtones hinting at suicide (or at least the rejection of life), but he ovcrlooks some of the evidence, including this quotation. (‘Gebrochcne Generationen: ChristaWolfmdTheodor Storm’, GLL, 31 (1978), 328-335).

l6 BerlinlWcimar 1979.

Nachdenken nber Cnita T., p. 89.

‘Ubcr den Sinn und Unsinn von Naividt’, in En@ungcn: Schnj3stcUcr iiber ihr Erztlngsiuerk, ed. Gerhard Schncidcr (Berlin, 1974). p. 173.

l9

2o

21

Neuwied 1972.

‘Diskusion mit Christa Wolf, Sinn undFom, 28 (1976). 862.

‘Diskussion . . .’. loc. cit., pp. 863-880.

Published in a collection of her articles under the same title: ksen md Schrcibcn, D w t a d t l

CHRISTA WOLF’S KINDHEITSMUSTER 329 22

23

**

Sigrid Bock, loc. cit., p. 112.

‘Lesenund Schreiben’, loc. cit., p. 199.

’Die zumutbare Wahrheit-Ingeborg Bachmann’ , Lesen undScbreiben, p. 124

‘Glauben an Irdisches’, Lesen undschreiben, p. 93

26 ‘Lesen und Schreiben’, p. 220

*’ ‘Gesprach mit Christa Wolf, lac. cit., p. 91.

28 Her mixture of technique has been seen by Hans Mayer, for example, as an intrusion on the ‘epic flow’ of the narative; and by Reich-Ranicki simply as proof that the book is ‘badly written’. Hans Mayer, ‘Der Mut zur Unaufrichtigkeit’, Der Spiegef, 1 1 April 1977, 185. Marcel Reich-Ranicki, foc. cit.

‘Uber den Sinn . . .’, loc. cit., p. 173.

Wolfs words in conversation with a British critic: Karin McPherson, ‘Christa Wolf in Edinburgh. 30

An Interview’, GDR Monitor, 1 (Summer 1979). 9.

3’

32

33

Karin McPherson, foc. crt., 8.

‘Diskussion . . .’, foc. cit., pp. 864-866.

‘Diskussion . . .’, loc. cit., p. 868.