4 - Suicide and the Reevaluation of Classicism: Christa Wolf's Kein Ort. Nirgends

Summary

CHRISTA WOLF's KEIN ORT. NIRGENDS (1979) was influenced by the November 1976 expatriation of singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann. Whereas Heiduczek's Tod am Meer was written before the Biermann affair took place (and published two months after the affair), Wolf's novel was written after the affair, an event that had a profound effect on Wolf. She had signed a petition against the decision to expatriate Biermann and consequently faced restrictions and later dismissal from her leadership position in the Schriftstellerverband (Writers Union). Wolf purportedly felt as though she had her back against the wall, a statement she made during an interview with Frauke Meyer-Gosau for the West German periodical alternative in the winter of 1982, implying that Wolf felt that her political and literary possibilities had become limited in the GDR. But neither Biermann nor Wolf wanted out of the country, at least not permanently. In November 1976, Biermann gave a concert in Cologne and wanted to return to the GDR, but he was forced to remain outside the country. Like Biermann, Wolf had some freedom to travel, visiting Greece in 1980, for example, but she always willingly returned to the GDR. For Wolf, being in the GDR and being a writer were intertwined. She made a pact with Franz Fühmann that if one of them became incapable of writing, that person would leave the GDR. She continued to write and remained in the country. As David Bathrick describes, writers such as Wolf understood that leaving the GDR would only strengthen the rhetorical binaries of the Cold War, in particular the literary historiographical binary of ill, irrational, capitalist literature versus healthy, rational, communist literature. If her literary works are any indicator, Wolf wanted to reevaluate the literary heritage of the GDR, rather than merely run from it. Indeed, Kein Ort. Nirgends, written after the Biermann affair, is the first major instance in Wolf's oeuvre of such reevaluation. Others were to follow. The impact of the Biermann affair on Kein Ort. Nirgends has long been acknowledged. Ann Stamp Miller, for example, writes:

After Biermann's expatriation, the writers had to find other ways of expressing their voices, either by coding their literature or writing as voices from a more distant past.