Echoes of Surrealism : : Challenging Socialist Realism in East German Literature, 1945–1990 / / Gerrit-Jan Berendse.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2021
• VerfasserIn: Berendse, Gerrit-Jan,
• Place / Publishing House: New York ;, Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (226 p.)

For many artists and intellectuals in East Germany, daily life had an undeniably surreal aspect, from the numbing repetition of Communist Party jargon to the fear and paranoia engendered by the Stasi. Echoes of Surrealism surveys the ways in which a sense of the surreal infused literature and art across the lifespan of the GDR, focusing on individual authors, visual artists, directors, musicians, and other figures who have employed surrealist techniques in their work. It provides a new framework for understanding East German culture, exploring aesthetic practices that offered an alternative to rigid government policies and questioned and confronted the status quo.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations, Definitions and Translations -- Introduction. The Surreal without Surrealism -- Chapter 1. The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Post-war Germany -- Chapter 2. Return of the Avant-Garde? Brecht & Co. in the GDR -- Chapter 3. ‘1968’ in the GDR: Franz Kafka and the Prague Spring -- Chapter 4. Flirting with the Enemy: The Absurd and Grotesque in 1960s Poetry -- Chapter 5. The GDR’s Surrealist Nerve Centre: Adolf Endler’s Strange Nebbich World -- Chapter 6. Wolfgang Hilbig’s Landscapes ‘Where the Minotaurs Graze -- Chapter 7. ‘Flip-out-Elke’: Elke Erb’s Surrealistic Poetry -- Chapter 8. Gabriele Stötzer under Surveillance: Feminism and the Avant-Garde -- Chapter 9. East German Advocates of Surrealism -- Conclusion. ‘Max Ernst Was Here!’ -- Bibliography -- Index