Building Socialism: Architecture and Urbanism in East German Literature, 1955-1973

(Paperback)

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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 Mller, Christa Wolf, Gnter Kunert, Volker Braun, Gnter de Bruyn, and Brigitte Reimann responded to enormous new factory complexes, experimental new towns, the demolition of Berlins 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 Germanys literary architecture also represents a sophisticated theoretical reflection on the intractable problems of East Germanys 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.

Reviews

Though Swopes book is not the first study of literature and architecture in the GDR, it is the most thoroughly researched and far reaching published to date and breaks new ground on the topic of built space in the GDR. Summing Up: Highly recommended. * CHOICE *
A stimulating, lucid, and well-researched study that makes for a crucial and timely contribution to the Marxist discourse on built spaceespecially the research of the various authors personal librariesthe architectural heritage of the GDR in the cultural imaginary, and the still often underappreciated quality of the literary and theatrical works of the East German state. * Modern Language Review *
How do writers imagine buildings and their interior design How do politics shape architectural debates and how do those make poetry and prose In answer to these kinds of questions, Curtis Swope offers intriguing close readings of the GDRs literary imagination of architecture based on rich sources with an international scope. This book will shape the study of the GDRI was unable to put it down until I had read the last page. * Barbara Mennel, Associate Professor of German Studies and Cinema Studies, University of Florida, USA *
Thanks to Curtis Swope's thoughtful research into previously unexplored territories, this book for the first time illuminates the architectural spaces that frame socialist approaches to modernity and East German literaturethus extending a spatial trajectory in modern literature that reaches back to Dickens, Balzac, and Tolstoy. * Helen Fehervary, Professor Emerita of Germanic Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University, USA *

Author Bio

Curtis Swope is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA.