Science Fiction Literature in East Germany

Front matter

Scien rature

Downloaded from Sense at 01/11/2019 02:27:22AM many, ritzsche

EAST GERMAN STUDIES / DDR-STUDIEN

Index

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289 321

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Acknowledgements

All projects are the sum of the work of many people behind the scenes. Throughout the research and writing process, I have benefited from the advice and moral support of numerous individuals, all of whom I cannot name here, but whom I wish to thank nonetheless. First of all, I wish to extend my appreciation to Jack Zipes, Arlene Teraoka, Rick McCormick, Mary Jo Maynes and John Mowitt, who have been patient and forthcoming with extensive resources and critique. Thomas Kramer and Vibs Petersen also provided valuable commentary. I would like to thank the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Office of External Affairs at the Freie Universität, Berlin, the Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch at the University of Minnesota, the University of Minnesota Graduate School and Illinois Wesleyan University for financial support that proved invaluable for the completion of this project.

For their time and insight into the world of East German science fiction, I would like to thank authors Johanna and Günter Braun, Alexander Kröger and his wife Susanne Routschek, Carlos Rasch, Karlheinz and Angela Steinmüller, Michael Szameit and editors Ekkehard Redlin and Erik Simon. Many contacts and opportunities would have passed me by if it had not been for the industrious members of the Andymon science fiction fan club, including, among others, Wolfgang Both, Siegfried Breuer, Ronald Hoppe, Hardy Kettlitz, Hans-Peter Neumann, Klaus Scheffler, Ingolf Vonau, and Anita Winkler. We miss collector Hans-Jürgen Erich. The staffs of the Bundesarchiv-Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Amerikanische Gedenkbibliothek-Berlin, and Phantastische Bibliothek Wetzlar have been invaluable. In addition, I wish to acknowledge the Das Neue Berlin/ Eulenspiegel Verlag, which furnished and granted permission to use the original book cover artwork from Del Antonio’s Heimkehr der Vorfahren, Johanna and Günter Braun’s Unheimliche Erscheinungsformen auf Omega XI and Angela and Karlheinz Steinmüller’s Der Traummeister.

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For careful and consistent reading, I would like to thank Gun Edberg—Caldwell, Barbara Drescher, Rachel Huener, Beth Muellner, and Leo Riegert. Stokes Schwartz caught errors that I could no longer see. My student assistant Matt Thompson worked tirelessly at a tedious research task. Thanks are also due to Marina Balina, Kathy Brown, Robert Doebgen, Klaus Frühauf, Detlef Kannapin, Ludmila Kizer, Patrick McLane, Julie Prandi, Heidi Soneson, Nancy Sultan, Lyman Tower Sargeant, and Gerhard Wiechmann. Finally, I cannot begin to adequately thank my family, Nan and Dave Fritzsche, Tanya Losey, and Stokes Schwartz, for their unwavering moral support and painstaking reminders that there is a life beyond the book manuscript.

This book is a result of the input of many individuals. Still, this author has been the one to sift through and analyze the information provided. Therefore, any errors or oversights are my own. In addition, all English translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. If a book exists in English translation, I deferred to this translation.

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List of Abbreviations

KPdSU

MfK

Committee or interest group (Arbeitsgemeinschaft) Committee or interest group (Arbeitskreis)

German State Archive (Bundesarchiv)

Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland)

German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik)

East German State Film Studio (Deutscher Film Aktiengesellschaft)

German Writers' Union (Deutsche Schriftstellerverband) Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend)

Federal Republic of Germany

German Democratic Republic

Office of Publishing and Book Sales (Hauptverwaltung Verlagswesen und Buchhandel)

Unofficial Informant (Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter)

Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands)

Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Kommunistische Partei der Sowjet Union)

Ministry of Culture (Ministerium für Kultur)

SAPMO Archival Foundation for Party and Mass Organizations of

SED

Stasi WTR

ZK the GDR in the German State Archive

(Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv).

Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland)

Ministry for State Security (Staatssicherheitsdienst) Scientific Technical Revolution (Wissenschaftliche-technische Revolution)

Central Committee of the SED (Zentralkomittee)

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Chapter One Introduction

The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 signaled the political and geographical demise of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). This collapse became official with the reunification of the two Germanies on October 3, 1990. Germans on both sides euphorically tore down the wall that had separated them since 1961. Although it has been more than fifteen years since the removal of this physical obstruction, mental barriers between eastern and western Germans, formulated during the Cold War, have proven more difficult to dismantle. The various social, cultural and political discourses that shaped the identities and experiences of East and West Germans persist. They are reinforced by new prejudices and assumptions that often lead to misunderstanding and resentment.

Despite reunification, the persistent mentality of division in Germany demonstrates that 1990 can by no means be termed a “Stunde Null” or zero hour from which Germany started anew. To consign GDR culture to the past would leave intact an interpretation shaped by the Cold War and limited by inadequate access to extensive documentation. Moreover, many of today’s Germans experienced and participated in the GDR’s challenges, successes, and offenses. Although the everyday reality of political oppression is central to an understanding of life in East Germany, this multifaceted society constantly changed and transformed in response to a variety of international and domestic influences. The continued study of East Germany, therefore, contributes to a more comprehensive depiction of the country and its inhabitants. If Germany is to overcome the deep divisions that contribute to today’s political, economic and cultural instability, each side must attempt to understand the “other.”

The study of the country’s science fiction is one way in which to access the “alien” world of East Germany. Anita Mallinckrodt observes that popular literature holds “many keys to understanding

Sonja Fritzsche - 978-1-78874-565-9 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/11/2019 02:27:22AM via free access another people” (9). In her study of East German dime novels, she describes the necessity to look beyond “dissident” writing to gain a view of life there from diverse sources. Frederic Jameson has expressed a similar belief regarding East German science fiction, more specifically. He writes, “[A]part from the literary merits of individual texts — [it] has great value as a cultural symptom, as one privileged way of taking the temperature of a social system at a particular historical moment” (“Science Fiction and the GDR” 199). A literature concerned with contemporary events, science fiction is integrally related to its historical context and, therefore, provides a unique view into East German cultural practices. An analysis of this science fiction literally constructs a path, which leads to alternative socialist worlds and times. At the same time, through an examination of the texts and their reception, we begin to see how the contributors to this discourse understood their surroundings and themselves.

GDR science fiction is of special interest, since it developed in relative isolation from the discursive conventions in and about Anglo- American science fiction. It took its cue from Jules Verne and selected German, Polish, Czech, and Soviet science fiction publications. In addition, GDR science fiction contributed a great deal to the satirical tradition started by Polish author Stanislaw Lem in the mid-1960s. Banned under the National Socialists, limited Anglo-American texts first became available in the GDR in the late 1970s and 1980s. A predominance of translated, Anglo-American science fiction excluded any notable parallel development in West Germany.

The popularity of science fiction in East Germany also makes it worthy of greater scholarly attention. The GDR possessed a significant science fiction tradition, more so than that of the BRD due to the fact that it was artificially shielded from competition with the Anglo-American translations.' Like detective and adventure novels, all East German science fiction titles consistently sold out (Kruschel, “Zwischen” 155, Klotz and Matzer 106). By 1990, some 151 novels appeared, which was by far the dominant form of science fiction in the GDR. Furthermore, over six science fiction anthologies, twelve

1 Some science fiction writers were able to live for one year from the proceeds from one book (Klotz and Matzer 107).

Sonja Fritzsche - 978-1-78874-565-9 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/11/2019 02:27:22AM via free access children’s books, fifty-four dime novels, fifty-six short story collections, and countless other short stories in magazines and journals appeared as well.” Additionally, the East German film studio, Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA), produced six, feature science fiction films.” Furthermore, unlike those interested in detective and adventure novels, science fiction readers in the East formed a number of clubs in which to discuss and swap books. These clubs are but one facet of what was to become a self-selected, science fiction “niche” or “ghetto” in western terms.

While the publications of East Germany’s literary avant-garde are well documented in the United States, little is known of the popular literature that prospered behind the wall. The availability of GDR popular literature restricted its study in both the United States and in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Writing by more distinguished East German authors often appeared in West German editions and was discussed, not only by academics, but also in prominent newspapers and magazines. In contrast, the occasional detective or science fiction novel that did appear in the West attracted much less critical interest.

This book sets out to identify several historical, methodological, and literary gaps in the study of GDR science fiction. First, it introduces the English-speaking reader to this tradition, and, in doing so, locates it both aesthetically and historically. As some might not be familiar with East Germany, I include details with which the expert is already familiar. To this end, my project analyzes cultural policy

2 The dime novel series “BASAR” from Verlag Neues Leben and “SF-Utopie” from Verlag Das Neue Berlin both regularly appeared in circulation rates of 50,000 copies and “Das Neue Abenteuer” from Verlag Neues Leben appeared in a rate of 100,000 copies per publication. Most novels in the series “Spannend erzählt” from Verlag Neues Leben, for instance, started with 20,000 and were often brought out in subsequent editions (Steinmüller, Vorgriff 10, 12 and Neumann, Bibliographie 888-930).

3 These include: Besuch bei Van Gogh (Dir. Horst Seemann, 1985), Eolomea (Dir. Hermann Zschoche, 1972), Im Staub der Sterne (Dir. Gottfried Kollditz, 1976), Der Schweigende Stern (Dir. Kurt Maetzig, 1959), Signale (Dir. Gottfried Kollditz, 1970) and Der Mann mit dem Objektiv (Dir. Frank Vogel, 1961). In addition, a made-for-television film Abenteuer mit Blasius ( Dir. Egon Schlegel) also appeared in 1975.

Sonja Fritzsche - 978-1-78874-565-9 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/11/2019 02:27:22AM via free access pertaining to science fiction and provides an overview of major thematic developments in the genre in the GDR. In the process, it concentrates on the novel in an effort to provide a broad, yet focused, look into the development of GDR popular literature over the course of the country’s forty-year existence. The book’s chronological organization is not designed to construct a linear narrative of a national genre. It provides a unique view of major events in GDR history and conveys particular German practices in the writing of science fiction.

Second, my study raises key theoretical issues that affect the broader field of GDR literature. It questions the notion of the “subversive,” which has driven studies of East Germany through the Cold War and beyond. In doing so, it interrogates assumptions surrounding categories of “high” and “low” literature as well as center and periphery by contextualizing their application. Drawing upon a variety of original sources, I assume a gradation of participation within the system and demonstrate how a number of science fiction authors and editors were able to influence policy to their own ends. In the process, I present a model of interactive relations between elements of GDR state and society.

Finally, this project defines GDR science fiction as a literature of both affirmation and subversion. It looks at the ways in which authors employed the genre’s qualities of estrangement, both in terms of utopian literature and as a literature of the fantastic, to strengthen and criticize GDR socialism. To do so, my study takes an in-depth look at novels by three authors, whose writing resonated with a large number of GDR science fiction enthusiasts. These publications are: Eberhardt Del Antonio’s Heimkehr der Vorfahren (Return of the Forefathers, 1966), Johanna and Giinter Braun’s Unheimliche Erscheinungsformen auf Omega XI (Uncanny Manifestations on Omega XI, 1974), and Angela and Karlheinz Steinmiiller’s Der Traummeister (The Dream Master, 1990).

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Scholarship on East German Popular Literature

While studies in science fiction flourished in both Great Britain and in the United States during the seventies and eighties, primary literature in the German language has garnered sporadic attention.* West German literary scholars have shown interest in the critical study of science fiction only recently. This lack of interest can be attributed to a general mistrust of popular literature, an attitude, which can be traced back to the Enlightenment.’ In the sixties, seventies and eighties, many West German sociologists concentrated on the potential for escapism and conformism among readers of popular genres.‘ Nevertheless, several calls for a critical study of the aesthetics of this literature in both Germanies surfaced in the West.’ In 1970, Hans

4 Much science fiction discourse of the twentieth century in the West has centered on the Anglo—American tradition. Foreign publications remain isolated to their country of origin. The majority of foreign/non-western science fiction stays untranslated or unavailable, as in the case of many authors from the former East Bloc. Publications in English on East German science fiction include Frederic Jameson “Science Fiction and the German Democratic Republic,” Werner Forster “Time Travelling into the Present: Science Fiction Literature in the GDR,” Barbara Mabee “Astronauts, Angels, and Time Machines: The Fantastic in Recent German Democratic Republic Literature,” J.H. Reid “En route to Utopia. Some Visions of the Future in East German Literature,” William Walker “Contemporary GDR Science Fiction: The Example of Johanna and Günter Braun,” as well as Darko Suvin’s article on Johanna and Giinter Braun “Playful Cognizing” and anthology of Eastern European science fiction Other Worlds, Other Seas. Förster’s article is the only one by an East German to appear in English.

5 See Schulte-Sasse, Die Kritik an der Trivialliteratur seit der Aufklärung.

6 See Michael Pehlke and Norbert Lingfeld’s Roboter und Gartenlaube: Ideologie und Unterhaltung in der Science-Fiction-Literatur and Walter Nutz Der Trivialroman.

7 See Jörg Hienger Unterhaltungsliteratur. Zu ihrer Theorie und Verteidigung, Richard Albrecht Das Bedürfnis nach echten Geschichten, and the useful bibliography by Ludwig Fischer, Dietger Pforte, Kristina Zerges and Hella Dunger, eds. Zur Archäologie der Popularkultur. See also Barbara Gentikow ““Spannungs- und Unterhaltungsliteratur’ der DDR” and Manfred Nagl “Neu in der DDR.” Austrian Franz Rottensteiner made significant contributions to the

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Friedrich Foltin lamented a widespread presumption that this type of literature fails to contribute to the broader understanding of the human condition or push aesthetic boundaries (3).

East German science fiction remained doubly marginalized. In the West, “German science fiction” referred to publications from the Federal Republic only. Very few works on the subject acknowledged the GDR’s tradition or granted it more than an ancillary role.* Many assumed GDR science fiction to be an instrument of the Socialist Unity Party (SED).’ One notable exception is Anita Mallinckrodt’s sociological study of East German dime novels that includes a wellresearched history of GDR popular literature with reference to science fiction. In addition, Horst Heidtmann completed a structuralist analysis of East German science fiction in 1982.

A considerable amount of documentation existed on the eastern side of the wall. Academics and literary critics initially saw popular literature as a bourgeois tool of class warfare. Many remained opposed to the creation of a “socialist alternative” to compete with the West.'° Consequently, they left the theorization of early GDR science fiction to the authors, editors, and party functionaries directly concerned.'' In the seventies, East German pedagogues conducted an study of German science fiction in his science fiction journal Polaris and his article “Die ‘wissenschaftliche Phantastik’ der DDR.”

8 See Manfred Nagl Science Fiction in Deutschland and Hans-Joachim Schulz Science Fiction.

9 See Sven-Aage Jorgensen’s “Valium des Volks? Die utopische Science-Fiction in der DDR.” Gerd Henning equates GDR mass culture with propaganda in “Mass Cultural Activity’ in the GDR. See also Reinhold Krämer’s Die gekaufte “Zukunft.”

10 See Fritz Lange “Schund und Schmutz — ein Teil imperialistische psychologischer Kriegsführung” and Arno Hochmuth and Hinnerk Einhorn “Geschäft mit der Zukunftsangst.”

11 See for instance Erich Sielaff “Zur Frage des Unterhaltungromans,” Eberhardt del Antonio “Für oder wider utopische Literatur” as well as a policy brief of the HR Jugend- und Kinderbuch “Hinweise für die Diskussion der Themenpläne 1956 und der Perspektivepläne bis 1960 auf der Planungsgemeinschaft Kinder und Jugendbuch Ende November 1954.”

Sonja Fritzsche - 978-1-78874-565-9 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/11/2019 02:27:22AM via free access historical survey of East German popular literature.'” The first comprehensive, Marxist-Leninist theory of science fiction in East Germany appeared in 1977.'” A series of dissertations in the eighties analyzed specific themes, for example, as the portrayal of women and of the alien, as well as elements of utopia and dystopia.'*

Over the past fifteen years, a new generation of German and American literary scholars has begun to address the significant number of romance, science fiction, detective, adventure, and war novels that appeared in the GDR. Recent approaches to GDR popular literature outline ways in which it, while limited in scope by censorship, nevertheless provided the reader with entertainment, excitement, relaxation, education, and, in some cases, criticism of an authoritarian regime. In the area of GDR science fiction, Thomas Kramer provides an in-depth look at the influences of Karl May and Hans Dominik on the comic book Mosaik in Micky, Marx and Manitu. Michael Grisko, Detlef Kannapin, Stefan Soldvieri, and Gerhard Wiechmann all have published on GDR science fiction film."

12 See Schröder, Gustav ed. Potsdamer Forschungen. Untersuchungen zur sozialistischen Unterhaltungsliteratur.

13 See Adolf Sckerl “Wissenschaftliche-phantastische Literatur. Überlegungen zu einem literarischen Genre und Anmerkungen zu seiner Entwicklung in der DDR.”

14 See Mikaela Blume Untersuchungen zur Rolle der Frau in der Science-Fiction Literatur der DDR seit 1970, Annette Breitenfeld Die Begegnungen mit außerirdischen Formen. Untersuchungen zur Science-fiction-Literatur der DDR. and Karsten Kruschel Spielwelten zwischen Wunschbild und Warnbild. See also Werner Förster “Realität und Entwurf. Zu einigen Aspekten des Genres Phantastik in der DDR-Literatur der siebziger Jahre,” Thomas Hartung Die Science-fiction Literatur der DDR von 1980-90 and Sabine Vollprecht Science-Fiction für Kinder in der DDR. These dissertations were written in the GDR and published in the years immediately following unification.

15 See also Brigitte Kehrberg Der Kriminalroman in der DDR 1970-1990, Dorothea Germer Von Genossen und Gangstern, Reinhard Hillich and Wolfgang Mittmann Die Kriminalliteratur der DDR, Catrin Gersdorf “The Digedags Go West” and Thomas Beutelschmidt and Henning Wrage on literary adaptation in GDR television. More general reassessments of German popular literature include: Walter Nutz’ more recent publication Trivialliteratur and Populärkultur and Helmut Schmiedt Ringo in Weimar. Begegnungen zwischen

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Authors, editors and fans from the former East Germany have also made a substantial contribution to the study of East German science fiction. Udo Klotz, Michael Matzer, Karsten Kruschel, Erik Simon, Olaf Spittel, Angela and Karlheinz Steinmiiller, and others published reflective articles on East German science fiction after reunification. In 1995, Angela and Karlheinz Steinmiiller examined the social and political context of GDR science fiction through the late 1960s, in a perceptive, inside commentary on writing during this time period. More recently, a detailed account of the East’s science fiction fandom appeared. Entitled Geschichten aus der Parallelwelt (Stories from a Parallel World, 1998), it was written and edited by former fan club members Wolfgang Both, Hans-Peter Neumann, and Klaus Scheffler. Their account provides a valuable view into the structure and activities of one popular cultural niche.'®

Science Fiction as Popular Literature

The notion of popular or mass culture has long been equated with forms of “low” societal value. Horkheimer and Adorno reinforced this assumption through their influential definition of this literature’s “manipulative capacities” when produced by the culture industry (148). David Bathrick, however, has described a shift in Western thought away from Horkheimer and Adorno’s definition. This new approach focuses on the potential for political activism in mass culture through a Brechtian revolutionary aesthetic in a bourgeois socioeconomic structure that is full of gaps and fissures, rife with contradiction and the potential for change (Bathrick, “Reading” 246). Indeed, theories from alternative Marxists such as Brecht, Walter Benjamin and Stuart Hall, Richard Hebdige, and Richard Hoggart of

Hochliteratur und Popularkultur.See also my article “Auf dem Weg zur Venus. Die Entdeckung ostdeutscher Populärkultur: Der schweigende Stern.”

16 Both Neumann and Scheffler recently came out with a bibliography of East German fanzines.

Sonja Fritzsche - 978-1-78874-565-9 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/11/2019 02:27:22AM via free access the Birmingham school provided the methodological foundation for many of the recent cultural studies of reader agency in popular culture.” Feminist scholars, including Janice Radway, Tania Modleski, and Constance Penley, unearthed emancipatory uses of so-called “low” literature.

Former understandings of high and low literature still shape studies of GDR literature and must be re-examined to correctly describe their function in that context. Marxist-Leninist theory held items mass-produced under capitalism to be a type of commodity fetishism, similar to the Horkheimer—Adornian interpretation of products of the culture industry. However, this definition of mass culture and the definition of mass culture in East Germany differed in the SED’s embracing of technology. Horkheimer and Adorno could not find emancipatory power in the mass-produced item as it lost what Benjamin termed the artwork’s “aura” (152). Leading East German cultural officials perceived mass literature to be a revolutionary tool for the greater emancipation of the proletariat in the hands of the appropriate producers. Furthermore, mass production increased the availability of culture through greater distribution and lower prices. More importantly, it was not a bourgeois mass literature but a proletarian one that could bring about the “German cultural renewal” called for by cultural official Anton Akermann at the end of World War II. However, orthodox party members felt “genre” literature had no place amongst the new “high” literature of the working class. This view influenced policy on popular literature throughout the GDR’s existence.

In the United States, the study of popular literature often equates its production and reception with locations on the center and periphery of society, respectively. Due in part to Cold War tension, East German Studies in the United States has traditionally focused on acts of dissidence. While this is a valuable approach, the resultant assessment of East German literature is incomplete and restricted to a narrow set of

17 See for instance “Benjamin’s Passagen-Werk: Redeeming Mass Culture for the Revolution” by Susan Buck-Morss, Bond and Beyond by Bennett and Woollacott and Fredric Jameson “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture” among numerous others.

Sonja Fritzsche - 978-1-78874-565-9 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/11/2019 02:27:22AM via free access publications. Adele Marie Barker, in her study of Soviet popular culture, acknowledges that analytical distinctions often depend upon an observer’s location within a society or without (20). The same is true for American and West German students of East German literature, who focused on the publications at the “margins of acceptability” and canonized those who were critical of the Party. On the outside, this process created a type of elite determined by the category of subversion. In the case of canonical authors, like Christa Wolf and Heiner Miiller, for instance, the distinction between margin and center becomes less clear. Despite their controversial stance, they still possessed economic, cultural, and social capital internally as international representatives of a new East German cultural tradition. Indeed, in the early 1990s, the field of East German Literary Studies experienced a crisis, when it was alleged that Wolf and Miiller had been informants for the East German secret police."

To approach GDR popular literature solely with the intent of identifying aspects of dissent inadequately describes East German conditions of culture. A focus merely on the subversion of this hegemonic ideology fails to recognize Bathrick’s contention that few individuals in the GDR lived completely outside of the system. Rather, East German life was characterized by the negotiation of everyday life both inside and outside the Marxist-Leninist ideology that informed existence within the GDR (Powers 1-25). Furthermore, my study acknowledges various degrees of subversion in the GDR, and, in addition, sheds new light on the intricacies and complexities of state and societal relations within that country. In the words of Mary

18 The degree of Wolf and Miiller’s individual involvement with the East German secret police (the Staatsicherheitsdienst) differed. Müller was a registered “unofficial informant” (IM) under two separate code names and also admitted to speaking with the Stasi. However, no IM file has been found on Müller. Christa Wolf’s IM file primarily contains records of conversations that took place between 1959 and 1962. At the time, she was a committed member of the SED and was moving swiftly up in the party ranks. Three years later, she broke with the party. By 1968, the Stasi had begun to observe her. Neither Wolf’s nor Miiller involvement with the Stasi compares to the allegations made against Prenzlauer Berg poets Sascha Anderson and Reiner Schedlinski. However, it threw assumptions regarding the role of the GDR public intellectual as dissident into question. See Bathrick Powers, 21-22, 221-225.

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Fulbrook, it is important to rethink not the “‘relations’ between, but rather the ‘inter-relations’ between, the overlapping and mutually informing elements of state and society” (Fulbrook’s emphasis 289). This new method reveals a much more complex and interconnected process of production and reception.

Science Fiction Discourse in the GDR

Recent contributions to East German Studies have focused on language as a means to shed new light on subversive acts in culture and society. Based in part on Michel Foucault, these studies have sought to examine the manner in which “the production of discourse [was] at once distributed, selected, organized and redistributed” in East German society and the role in which such discourses shaped practices of exclusion and inclusion (“Order” 52). Yet, as David Bathrick points out, many semiotic and cultural studies of East German ideological constructs theorize them in terms of black and white (Powers 15-17).

Such studies describe an exclusionary system that operated according to a framework of binary opposites, through which all cultural and social norms were evaluated and encoded. Determining what was “right” and “wrong,” “true” and “false”, “progressive” or “reactionary,” these values excluded or outlawed all those who did not operate within them. Designed to enforce a “singleness of meaning” in cultural understanding and interpretation, censorship then did not simply exist on a governmental level, but throughout all levels and facets of life in the public sphere. It created a total discursive system and determined the aesthetic norms implemented through official cultural policy. Those who chose to speak publicly, regardless of the form, had to demonstrate their Parteilichkeit (commitment to the Party). They not only complied with, but also internalized it in order to insure communicable meaning (Bathrick, Powers 15-17).

This model is on the whole very useful in understanding the discursive practices in East Germany. Still, the totality of this model is an ahistorical, theoretical construct, which becomes less accurate

Sonja Fritzsche - 978-1-78874-565-9 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/11/2019 02:27:22AM via free access when applied to a specific individual or societal context. Generational difference, shifts in political and ideological thought, combined with multiple levels of ideological compliance within state institutions, created degrees of totality and variation in meaning over time and space. Numerous discourses existed within this ostensibly total discursive system. Bathrick’s own analysis of the complex political and cultural roles of GDR literary intellectuals demonstrates the manner in which these authors sometimes “rewrote the master code from within the code itself’ (Powers 19). My study of GDR science fiction continues to question the existence and nature of this master code. In addition, it reveals the gaps and fissures that resulted from the overlapping of discourses on popular culture, literature and utopia that comprised official efforts to create and enforce that very master code.

Science fiction, itself, is a form of popular literature that blends the fields of science and technology with literature in an uneasy synthesis. This tension permeated the discourse on science fiction as it incorporated two foundational tenets of the SED’s Marxist-Leninist ideology: technological determinism and reeducation through literature. The primary focus of this evolving discourse concentrated on the role of science fiction within socialism and the instrumentalization of the genre’s utopian function. An analysis of this discursive focus makes up the core of this investigation. It makes visible the power relations present in the repeated redrawing of barriers around science fiction’s location in an “openly interrogative space” (Armitt 81). Party functionaries continually tried to contain science fiction within a Marxist-Leninist discourse built upon ideologically defined scientific or literary forms.

GDR cultural policy was constantly evolving to meet the needs of the current economic and political situation. Carol Anne Costabile- Heming writes, “concepts such as ‘socialist realism’ and ‘critical’ changed over time, often in response to the kinds of texts that writers were submitting for publication.” Consequently, “[n]egotiation constantly occurred as the borders of censorship were regularly redefined” (57). Certainly, the power to determine the ultimate course of cultural policy lay with the Central Committee of the SED. Many critical authors had their careers and personal freedom unjustly curtailed under the Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker regimes. Still,

Sonja Fritzsche - 978-1-78874-565-9 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/11/2019 02:27:22AM via free access the government’s actions were not always systematic. Particularly in the first decade of the GDR, overarching policy remained vague with regard to science fiction. In a sense, the primary agents of science fiction policy were the genre’s editors and authors who constantly navigated the boundaries of a programmatic literary policy. Their efforts point to the presence of diverse ideas concerning the nature and purpose of science fiction in East Germany.