Brigitte Reimann, Franziska Linkerhand, 1974/1998
Franziska Linkerhand is narrated with a penetrating intensity by the
eponymous narrator, the voice shifting constantly and easily back and
forth between the first person and the third, as Franziska Linkerhand
writes both deeply personally (in the first person) and also from a
more distant and coolly analytic perspective (in the third person) --
an effective technique. The shifts in voice are not systematic --
chapter by chapter or anything like that -- but rather flow back and
forth into each other; the same goes for time, as the novel is
presented roughly chronologically but also shifts back and forth,
past mixing in constantly with present-day (as well as a dose of
looking ahead: "Ich sehe sie nur unscharf, die sieben oder zehn
Jahre ältere Frau, die meinen Namen trägt, aber ich kann sie als
stumme Figur einsetzen und mitspielen lassen" ('I see her only
indistinctly, that woman, seven or ten years older, who bears my
name, but I can bring her in to play along as a silent figure') she
imagines at one point, already anticipatorily: 'curious, what she
experienced in those seven or ten years'). Her boss observes (or
complains) -- accurately --: "Sie wollen alles, und Sie wollen
alles sofort" ('You want everything, and you want everything
immediately') and this attribute also colors the entire narrative,
which seems, at every turn, to want to capture and convey everything
at once, constantly (yes, giving it a somewhat exhausting quality).
Franziska
Linkerhand is autobiographically-tinged, with Franziska slightly
younger than the author, and dedicating herself to architecture
rather than writing (although Reimann's own self comes through so
strongly that Franziska too can't keep herself from trying to write
as well). Franziska grows up in a genteel upper middle-class
household, her father a publisher and she very bookish from a young
age. The novel begins with a young Franziska and the collapse of
Germany at the end of the Second World War; among the memorable
experiences are those of a neighbor family's murder-suicide as the
Russians close in -- Franziska remembering seeing the bodies lying
there (and later uncertain whether she had actually glimpsed them
(before being pulled away by her much older brother), or just
imagined seeing them from the accounts she picked up around her).
The family
manages reasonably well in the early days of the German Democratic
Republic -- with infusions from holdings in the other Germany -- but
her parents struggle with the collapse of the world as they know it;
eventually they flee to the west, unable and uninterested in the
building of a new society -- a programme Franziska, on the other
hand, can believe in. Though the parents are largely distant figures,
they certainly shaped Franziska; while always strong-willed, she was
nevertheless formed under her mother's very strong hand -- and
received a strong grounding in European culture, especially music and
literature, in growing up in that environment. So also, for example,
in later years, as the political divide increases, her father doesn't
talk politics with her, but rather 'only about books, Marcus
Aurelius, Montaigne and Saint-Beuve'.
Franziska
marries very young -- an escape, too, from the in many ways stifling
home atmosphere --, but the marriage doesn't stand a chance, the
class differences between her and Wolfgang simply too great. He's
never even read a book, and admits that when he tries to, as a favor
to her, he falls asleep after two pages; the chasm between
intellectual Franziska and worker Wolfgang is too deep to ever be
bridged.
Franziska
studies architecture, her mentor the highly regarded Reger, who takes
her under his wing -- but she insists on going her own way. She
chooses not to continue assisting with the prestigious commissions
Reger is involved with and instead takes a posting in the
appropriately named Neustadt ('New City'), a new city being built
from the ground up, a grand, large-scale urban-planning project.
(Neustadt is a thinly-veiled Hoyerswerda, where Reimann also went to
work.) She is met there by another representative of the old-style
guard -- but it turns out it is his last day there; the new boss is
the young father of four Schafheutlin, temperamentally ill-suited for
a leadership position. Typically, too, despite the nature of the
project he heads, he does not live on-site, but rather in a house an
hour away (for the kids' sake, of course ...).
Schafheutlin
isn't happy to have to deal with a (prize) student of the legendary
Reger's -- his own experiences with the master were not the best,
either -- but Franziska immerses herself with a passion in her work.
She is completely on board with the programme, wanting the project to
succeed -- though it does wear on her that she is given tasks that
could easily be accomplished by someone with less training, as her
own talents are clearly being wasted here. Nevertheless, she is as
pro-active as she can be -- setting up an office to help new tenants
furnish their homes, for example -- and a somewhat friendlier
relationship with Schafheutlin eventually develops.
Franziska's
zest for life is extreme; she is impetuous and passionate, and
doesn't hold back, in word or deed. As the novel's opening makes
clear, her passion is also very much of the physical sort -- the
first sentence of the novel:
Ach Ben, Ben,
wo bist du vor einem Jahr gewesen, wo vor drei Jahren ?
[Oh, Ben, Ben,
where were you a year ago, three years ago ?]
She is fairly
uninhibited, drawn to men -- and almost always full of great longing.
Ben, as she calls the man she comes to know in Neustadt, is the ideal
she reaches for, but there are other men along the way -- not least
her protective brother, a nuclear scientist, who, however, is only an
occasional visitor. Ben is, or tries to be, a writer -- writing a
novel (or rather: 'what we are calling a novel, provisionally') --
and eventually recounting his prison experiences in the wake of the
1956 events in Hungary, part of the general disillusioning with the
system that Franziska encounters.
When
originally published in 1974, parts of Franziska Linkerhand were cut
and edited -- notably the mentions and discussion of suicide,
something that comes to the fore as the story progresses and that
troubles Franziska. She learns that there are two suicides or suicide
attempts weekly in Neustadt -- a sad reflection on this place that
she wants to see as a city of hope and the future. (So too she is
shocked when there is a rape in the city, something she had thought
(or at least hoped) inconceivable in this new world order.)
Reger's
warning words when she announces her plans to work in Neustadt --
"Sie sind erledigt, Dame. Wer sich in die Provinz begibt, kommt
darin um" ('You're done for, madam. He who goes into the
provinces will perish there') -- come to take on a whole new meaning.
Franziska is such a strong and strong-willed character that she can
not be crushed by events and experiences, but she sees the heavy toll
around her. She is an optimist, who tries to make the best of things
and manages mostly very carefreely, but she is also hyperaware of her
surroundings and those around her, as Franziska Linkerhand is
intensely penetrating, to an almost unbearable degree.
Franziska
Linkerhand is a novel one can call staggering, not least in its
breadth and depth, weight and range -- and its driven narrator. At
one point Franziska admits that:
Mein Bruder sagt,
ich bin neugierig wie ein Affe: Lauf und sieh, was es Neues gibt.
[My brother says
that I am as curious as a monkey: run and see what's new.]
Franziska is
constantly seeking out -- experience and understanding. But there's
also an astute constant reckoning, with everything, at every turn.
Emotional and even capricious, Franziska is remarkably
self-confident; she is aware of her many faults, of character and
actions, but she hardly ever harbors any real doubt -- and she always
propels herself forward. She's sharply observant and gets to the
quick -- not least in her self-examination. It's a remarkable
performance - breathless and dense, too, but almost always (and
constantly) also deeply engrossing.
Franziska
Linkerhand is also an unfinished novel, though not an unpolished one.
Arguably, much of it is almost over-polished -- though that also
makes the short final chapter all the more melancholily effective, a
last breath of sorts, too.
Franziska
Linkerhand is one of the highlights of East German fiction -- and all
the more powerful in its uncut version, finally published in 1998.
And, oh, what an incredible talent Reimann was, a terrible loss to
German literature that she died so young. - M.A.Orthofer
https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/ddr/reimannb_FL.htm
Brigitte Reimann, I Have No Regrets: Diaries,
1955-1963, Trans. by
Lucy Jones, Seagull Books,
2019
I enjoyed success
too early, married the wrong man, and hung out with the wrong people;
too many men have liked me, and I’ve liked too many men.
Frank and
refreshing, Brigitte Reimann’s collected diaries provide a candid
account of life in socialist Germany. With an upbeat tempo and
amusing tone, I Have No Regrets contains detailed accounts of the
author’s love affairs, daily life, writing, and reflections. Like
the heroines in her stories, Reimann was impetuous and outspoken,
addressing issues and sensibilities otherwise repressed in the era of
the German Democratic Republic. She followed the state’s call for
artists to leave their ivory towers and engage with the people,
moving to the new town of Hoyerswerda to work part-time at a nearby
industrial plant and run writing classes for the workers. Her diaries
and letters provide a fascinating parallel to her fictional writing.
By turns shocking, passionate, unflinching, and bitter—but above
all life-affirming—they offer an unparalleled insight into what
life was like during the first decades of the GDR.
“Reimann left
behind a string of novels and several years’ worth of diaries that
shed vivid light on life in East Germany from the 1950s to the 1970s.
This volume picks up her story shortly after a suicide attempt
following a miscarriage.” - Charlie Connelly
"Her diary entries are interesting reading, not only for those
interested in knowing more about Reimann, but as documents of events
and personalities involved in the literary history of the first
decades of the GDR." - Judith H. Cox
"(A) welcome
introduction to Reimann's work. (...) There is passionate
self-reflection, political insight and a fierce commitment to the art
of fiction on practically every page" -
Ian Ellison, Times Literary Supplement
Anna Seghers,
already an established writer with an international reputation before
the founding of the German Democratic Republic, was very much the
grande dame of literature in East Germany, but the generation that
followed her included some of the most significant German writers of
the second half of the twentieth century, notably the trio of women
novelist Christa Wolf (1929-2011), Irmtraud Morgner (1933-1990), and
Brigitte Reimann (1933-1973). Wolf is well-translated into English
(and many other languages), and by Morgner we at least have one of
the great post-war German novels, The Life and Adventures of
Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by her Minstrel Laura, but Reimann's
fiction remains untranslated into English (and under-translated into
most other languages, save Spanish and the languages of the former
Communist bloc), despite an impressive body of work that includes one
landmark novel (the seminal Ankunft im Alltag (1961; 'Arriving in
Everyday Life')) and one masterpiece, the posthumously published
Franziska Linkerhand (1974).
With the
publication of her diaries and much of her correspondence (including
a volume of letters to and from Christa Wolf), Reimann -- a shooting
star in the GDR, who enjoyed both critical and popular success there
from a young age -- has had somewhat of a renaissance in Germany over
the past two decades; it's unclear whether this is the best volume
with which to introduce her to English-speaking readers (as opposed
to her actual fiction ...), but it does at least give a good sense of
the woman, and of the East German situation and conditions in which
she worked (and, while often critical of these, it should be noted
that she remained generally supportive, working within rather than in
opposition to the system, certainly in the years covered here, and
did not seriously entertain the thought of, for example, going
abroad, to the other Germany (as one close family member, her brother
("a muddle-head") Lutz, did)). These diaries do, however,
certainly reveal and display her fundamental forthrightness, which
similarly marked her fiction, making for an unvarnished picture of
life in the workers' state that, in its focus on the essential-human,
nevertheless doesn't neatly fit the picture readers might expect.
(Indeed, one (main) reason her work was underestimated in the Federal
Republic during her lifetime (and for some time after) surely was
because this was an unfamiliar, much more intimate-personal approach
to political writing (indeed, an expansion of the concept) than West
German readers could conceive of, a different take than the
then-(completely-)prevailing intellectualized-theoretical (on the one
hand) or (all too explicitly) socialist realist (on the other) ones.)
The diaries
cover the years 1955 to 1963. Reimann was still very young when they
begin -- she had just turned 22 a bit over a month earlier -- and
unfortunately these are the earliest surviving parts of the record:
in 1959 (as she notes here) she burnt her diaries from 1947 to 1953
("all 20 of them [...] I've burnt my childhood, my youth, and
all the memories I don't want to recall any more"); briefly she
holds back more recent ones:
I've only kept
the last ones from '53 on, at least for now. Even though they contain
the dirtiest and unhappiest chapters: my doubt and desperation about
our cause, my first steps as a writer, my marriage to Günter,
objections to his drinking, my adultery and sickening, deceptive
maneuverings, decadence and tedium, misplaced illusions, nights spent
agonizing over books never published, weeks and months spent in
perpetual drunkenness, waking up in strangers' beds -- quandaries,
wrong turns, mistakes, cheap ways of getting high ...
The respite
is only temporary (albeit also only partial):
I've just decided to
throw away the books from '53-'54 after all. Love stories from an
overstretched imagination, away with it all !
Still, she
held onto four years worth of diaries, from 1955 on to that point --
covering also much of the activity she describes. Gone, however, are
also the accounts of important markers left unmentioned in what she
is ridding herself of: two years spent as a teacher and -- surely
more significantly -- the January 1954 (essentially still)birth of a
child, and her subsequent suicide attempt. And while she later does
repeatedly long for a child of her own, this past is never delved
into at all closely in the pages of the surviving diary (as
published) -- a closed book.
The burning
of the older diaries leads to the then-still-just-twenty-six-year-old
summing up well enough:
I enjoyed success
too early, married the wrong man, and hung out with the wrong people;
too many men have liked me, and I've liked too many men.
Men do figure
prominently, beginning with first husband Günter Domnik; the diaries
only cover the period to 1963, but in that period she will already
have married her second husband and fallen in love with the man who
would go on to be her third. Reimann was quick to fall passionately
in love -- an occurrence so frequent that she refers to her: "many
three-day loves", raptures that were inevitably reciprocated by
the men taken by the apparently completely bewitching beauty. She
feels some Catholic guilt, but on the whole can't seem to help
herself -- and there seems to be at least a playful note of pride in
her observation that: "Wherever I am, I cause disturbance,
mayhem and trouble". She claims some shyness -- and occasionally
admits to being in overwhelmed awe (such as when she encounters Anna
Seghers) -- but clearly can and does effortlessly wrap men around her
little finger; we only get her perspective here, but in this like
practically all other regards there doesn't seem to be much
dissembling.
The opening
entry, from August, 1955, marks a small new beginning, Reimann
explaining that she and husband Günter have broken up -- and that
she has to start a new diary because he took the old one ("He
wants to use it against me in the divorce"); although she gets
the older diaries back, she does -- as noted -- eventually destroy
them all up to this point, so clearly she sees this as turning point.
The collapse of her marriage and break from her husband would seem to
be an appropriate cæsura -- but in fact it's not quite as hard and
complete as initially suggested: the marriage putters on, in some
form, for a while: "Günter still comes, and I can't always
refuse him", and when he is arrested in late 1957 for "resisting
state authority" (he beat up a policeman) and she vows to
herself that for the six months he gets sentenced : "I won't
cheat on him. I can bear being without a man" (spoiler: she
can't). She meets Siegfried Pitschmann -- "one of these people
who'll end up committing suicide or going insane, I'm sure. And what
a mighty talent !" --, the man who would go on to become her
second husband, and it is only after Günter is released from prison
that she really breaks from him, some three years into this diary --
though at that point he has some difficulties letting go.
Somewhat
confusingly, Reimann generally refers to Siegfried as Daniel (or Dan)
-- having decided that: "that awful young hero's name Siegfried
doesn't suit this sensitive, tender, almost fragile Daniel at all".
He is also a writer, and the two of them live the struggling-artist
life together, eventually getting married and moving to the rapidly
expanding industrial town of Hoyerswerda, where they both had
positions as sorts of writers-in-residence, actively taking part in
industrial work, but also providing education for their fellow
workers while giving them some time to write.
Reimann and
Siegfried/Daniel's relationship is passionate but difficult, as
Reimann is easily led to stray. She acknowledges her (flesh-)weakness
-- indeed, her diaries get her in trouble again as Siegfried reads
them (even after she has said she has gone to pains to hide them ...)
-- but also seems sincere about her deep feelings for Siegfried --
and, often, for the others ..... At one point she explains:
I just like being
adored, or even loved; I need to feel validated, that's almost all
it's about.
But that
doesn't seem entirely accurate; validation is important to her -- in
her writing, as well -- but she's also very confident, about both her
abilities and, generally, herself. Still, she expresses annoyance at
being a lust-object:
I'm damned never to
find friendship because of my gender; men are incapable of separating
body from soul. Not one of them understands that I want to be loved
for my intelligence, my talent or, to use that word again, my soul.
The
relationships she describes, however, suggest she's wrong: men seem
quite obviously attracted to her for those very qualities, and a
fierce independent streak. Beyond that, she seems equally incapable
of separating body and soul as she falls into one passionate affair
after another. One occasion where she turns the man away leads to
some introspection, pointing towards some of her confusions:
Kaufmann tried to
seduce me (God that makes it sound as if I'm a shocked
seventeen-year-old kid). Okay, he wanted to sleep with me. [...] He
tried it on and, what the hell, has something to offer -- a man if
ever there was one. Now he sits there, shaking his head, looks at me
and doesn't understand what's going on. I don't either by the way. It
would definitely have been a pleasure with him and it did me good to
hear his endearments, and I returned his kisses, but I can't go any
further. [...] An aroused man brings on a physical aversion,
something close to disgust; I'm turned on, yes, but repelled at the
same time, and in a flash I'm sober and very clear-sighted, and then
I lash out, and they stand there, troubled and disappointed, and
think I'm abnormal and say that I'm not a real woman. The path to
these affections that I open up -- not always innocently -- is only
ever through a meeting of minds, work, conversation, never just
physical attraction.
Interestingly, for someone who sleeps around so much, Reimann doesn't
make particularly much out of sex itself; it's only in late 1963, for
example, that she specifically mentions a deeper physical pleasure:
"I have discovered my body and the bliss of physical love with
Jon" (whom she left Siegfried for, and who would become husband
number three)
As intense as
her relationships -- both the brief and the more extended ones --
are, Reimann throws herself into her work with similar abandon (and
at one point insists: "Work is the only thing that counts").
In 1956 already -- she's just twenty-three -- she notes:
On the outside,
everything's going as well as it possibly could. I have a good
husband, have a book published, have contracts for new books, have
money, have a comfy room, and I have the looks (and can dress) that I
have men aplenty -- for a day or a week or longer, whatever takes my
fancy. But in truth ? My ambition is unstoppable, I want to write
good books, have fame -- will I ever have it ? [...] I'm deeply
unhappy.
So too, at
the beginning of this diary -- and to differentiate it from the
earlier ones ? -- she explains:
This diary is not
dedicated to my adulterous escapades; it's not about love and
liaisons -- I want to record whatever happens to me on my journey to
becoming a writer. Yes, I write -- some already refer to me as a
writer -- but inside I feel I'm a dead loss, a literary nobody; I
want to write good things, to work, to dedicate my whole life to this
one aim; to help people through literature, and fulfil my duties, the
duties we share towards the rest of humanity.
Reimann does
seem to believe in the experiment that the GDR appeared to be, and
the role of the artist in it -- even if she is repeatedly
disappointed by the prevailing conservatism. When her brother Lutz
takes his family to West Germany in 1960 she wonders:
Families torn apart,
conflicts between brothers and sister -- what a literary subject !
Why doesn't anyone tackle it, why doesn't anyone write a topical book
? Fear ? Inability ? I don't know.
East Germany
took culture and culture-in-the-workplace seriously, and Reimann was
active in this both on the local and then national level -- though
enthusiasm among writers seems to have sometimes been limited, as she
describes when she settled in in Hoyerswerda: "Last week, the
worker writers' circle was set up. Of the twenty invited, only four
turned up; none with any potential, I imagine". Amusingly -- and
demonstrating her sharp eye -- Reimann in this instance doesn't
dismiss all the would-be writers that show up after all:
Only little
Volker Braun, who got his school-leaving certificate and then worked
on the factory floor for four years, seems to be gifted. He reminds
me of my Ulli-brother -- in every respect a late developer.
The 'late
developer' Braun (Rubble Flora, etc.) would, of course, go on to
become one of the leading German poets (and a significant writer of
prose as well) -- and is still publishing, almost sixty years (!)
after Reimann wrote this. - M.A.Orthofer Read more here
Brigitte Reimann was
an East German writer and an avid chronicler of her own life
through her diaries. In this new book we follow her as she becomes a
successful writer, but at a turbulent time for her and the GDR in
the years between 1955 and 1963.
Reimann was like
many people in their 20s; too much drink, too many men, and too much
doubt about her future as a writer. The diaries are unusual for this
period in detailing her affairs with numerous men. It seems a very
modern book in that sense – reflecting a present day obsession (now
played out in social media) with the importance of self. She says
“The diary is not dedicated to my adulterous escapades; it’s not
about love and liaisons – I want to record whatever happens to me
on my journey to becoming a writer.”
But self and navel
gazing was not what was expected of writers by the GDR state.
Reimann knew this, and in the diary says, . “I want to dedicate
my whole life to this one aim;to help people through literature, and
fulfil my duties, the duties we share with humanity”.
Her first two books
were rejected by the publishers on the grounds they were counter
revolutionary, decadent, morbid, bizarre and this took a toll on
Reimann. “It was a damned hard blow, and it took me a long time to
recover.”
Reimann was
regularly visited by the Stasi. She had spoken up for writers who had
been persecuted by the State and was not surprised when they turned
up at her door. Forced to sign a statement of secrecy and adopt the
code name “Caterine”, she agreed to pass on “legitimate
complaints about errors and inadequacies to the Stasi so they can
take remedial action.” Reimann refused to name names, but she
still believed in the socialist state. “When compared with
capitalism, it represents a higher development, a progression of
mankind.”
But when her
husband is imprisoned she has to call on the Stasi for help, whilst
knowing that there will be a price to be paid. It is not clear from
the diaries what this is, as she continues to rail against the
authorities and is given a job working in a refinery, as well as
being a writer in residence.
With her second
husband, Daniel, Reimann moves to Hoyerswerda, a new town, to take
up their jobs in the refinery. They are expected to work in the
laboratory, as well as taking on responsibility for a group of
workers in a workers writers’ circle. She says; “The plant is
starting to squeeze their money’s worth out of them. We’ve been
reading manuscripts, giving receptions for writing workers, having
hour long discussions; now we’re style-editing a brochure.” This
is on top of working on the shop floor, including grinding valves
which seems to bring her more satisfaction. “Felt wonderfully
strong in overalls and with dirty hands-a new feeling, slightly
exuberant.”
Reimann confesses to
being “middle class”, no doubt brought on by working side by
side with manual workers. Inspired by her time there she writes a
classic of socialist realism Arrival in Everyday Life, the story
of three young people who postpone their studies to work in a plant
in Hoyerswerda.
But her successful
career is dominated by the politics of the Cold War. Her brother
escapes the country, the Wall goes up, and the political atmosphere
for writers depresses Reimann. The diaries are revealing for her
continued affairs with men and her failed marriages – she marries
four times – excessive drinking and much personal unhappiness. She
died in 1973 of cancer, aged just 40.
My copy of I Have No
Regrets did not include an introduction, and so I do not know who
agreed to publish the diaries. Maybe they should have been edited as
I did feel the reader was given too much information about her love
life. I felt sorry for her that she had no close female friend with
whom she could have shared the doubts and depressions of her life.
Reading the diaries without being able to read Reimann’s novels is
also a problem and hopefully the publishers will now consider
publishing them. - lipstick
socialist
https://lipsticksocialist.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/my-review-of-i-have-no-regrets-diaries-1955-1963-brigitte-reimann/
Edith Piaf, whose
celebrated anthem the title of this book evokes, died in the same
year that Brigitte Reimann’s diaries end. While this of course is
coincidental, reading these diaries does leave one with the
impression that the singer’s vivacity, passion and pragmatism have
been expressed by a writer. Almost every day when Reimann wakes up
(often after a night of heavy drinking), when she starts on a new
writing project or a new diary entry, or when a new man enters her
life, she sweeps away her past. In November 1959, she records how she
burnt her earlier diaries, spanning 1947 to 1953. I Have No Regrets
contains no mention of the premature birth and death of her child in
1954 or Reimann’s subsequent suicide attempt. It does, on the other
hand, contain many fresh starts.
In a letter to
Reimann in February 1969, Christa Wolf, approaching her fortieth
birthday and wondering whether their generation of East German
writers would ever finish the work they set out to do, asks “What
have we done by the time we reach forty? My goodness, there’s no
sugar-coating it … Who will ask about us later?” Not only is this
a tragically prescient question given Reimann’s death from cancer
just a few years later, in 1973, at the age of thirty-nine; it also
prefigures her relative lack of international renown today. Her work
deserves a much wider reading public outside Germany, where she
remains best known for her ambiguously autobiographical final novel
Franziska Linkerhand. Unfinished on her death, this anarchic and
assertive book was nonetheless published in censored form the
following year, then in full in 1998. As recently as January 2019 it
was newly adapted for the stage at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.
In spite of Reimann’s early death, she left behind fourteen works
that were published between 1953 and 1974 as well as two unfinished
novels published in one volume entitled Das Mädchen auf der
Lotusblume (“The girl on the lotus flower”) in 2003 (none are
currently available in English). The eight years of irregular diary
entries that make up I Have No Regrets, edited in German by Angela
Drescher and now translated into English by Lucy Jones, are a welcome
introduction to Reimann’s work.
We begin with an
entry composed in her hometown of Burg bei Magdeburg in the former
GDR after the dog days of… - Ian Ellison
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/i-have-no-regrets-brigitte-reimann-review-ian-ellison/
Brigitte Reimann, It All Tastes of Farewell:
Diaries,
1964–1970, Trans. by Steph
Morris, Seagull Books; New ed., 2021
It All Tastes of
Farewell is a frank account of one woman’s life and loves in 1960s
East Germany. As a writer, Brigitte Reimann could not help but tell a
compelling story, and that is born out here in her diaries, which are
gripping as any novel. She recorded only what mattered: telling
details, emotional truths, and political realities. Never written for
publication and first published in full in German only after the fall
of the Berlin Wall, these diaries offer a unique record of what it
felt like to live in a country that no longer exists, was represented
for years largely through Cold War propaganda, and is still portrayed
in fairy-tale Stasi dramas. Here we get a sense of lived experience,
as if Doris Lessing or Edna O’Brien had been allowed in with their
notebooks. This volume continues where her earlier book of diaries, I
Have No Regrets, left off, in 1964. It sees Reimann grow wistful and
at times bitter, as her love life, her professional life, and her
health all suffer. Yet throughout she retains a lively appetite for
new experiences and a dedication to writing. Finally she finds
security in a surprising new love, and although she died soon after
this volume ends, the novel she was writing was to become a much-read
cult hit after her death.
A remarkable
document from a time and place that we still struggle to see clearly,
It All Tastes of Farewell is unforgettable, a last gift from an
essential writer.
It All Tastes of
Farewell is the second volume of Brigitte Reimann's diaries,
following on I Have No Regrets and covering the years 1964 to 1970.
The focus here is on her slow progress with her novel Franziska
Linkerhand -- a novel that was then only published posthumously, in
1974 (and unabridged only in 1998; it has still not been translated
into English) -- while her personal life remains tumultuous: another
marriage (to Hans Kerschek, called Jon here) goes south here, and by
the end of these diaries she is preparing for her fourth marriage, to
Dr. Rudolf Burgartz (ten years her junior), and increasingly
debilitated by the cancer that would kill her, aged only thirty-nine,
in 1973. It is also a time of political change in the German
Democratic Republic, any hope for a continuing turn towards
liberalization already dim by the mid-1960s and finally completely
dashed by the Prague Spring.
Reimann is
well-settled in the model city of Hoyerswerda at the beginning of
these diaries, but much of the strain on her marriage certainly comes
from her husband often having to work elsewhere, while Reimann needs
companionship and particularly enjoys male company. (The GDR literary
industry, which she was very much part of, was male-dominated, but
even beyond this it is noteworthy how few female friends she has (or
at least mentions having), and how little time she spends in female
company; Christa Wolf is among the few women she feels she can (and
does) turn to, but they only rarely actually meet.) These diaries
also cover the time of her move to Neubrandenburg, a transition to a
somewhat more traditionally metropolitan setting.
Reimann's
diaries are an interesting outlet: a record of events along with some
reflection, confessional but not a comprehensive outpouring. She
mentions that there are things that she can not bring herself to
write about, for example, -- though also admits using the diaries as
a place to record things she doesn't feel she can write or otherwise
share with acquaintances -- but she also only turns to it
intermittently, with days and weeks often passing between entries. In
1966 there's a falling-off, months between some of the entries --
even as she notes, in one catch-up post, that life has been
particularly eventful; it's well into 1968 before she really picks
things up again.
Through it
all, there's a surprising evenness to how she relates events. Only
very rarely are there any sort of outbursts, and even as she presents
herself as a very emotional person, easily carried away, her accounts
remain calm, almost neutral. So also major events, such as her
receiving the Heinrich Mann Prize, a leading literary prize, are
presented with only a bit of reflection -- and, even more remarkably,
she deals with her cancer diagnosis simply and matter-of-factly. This
consistent approach is all the more striking when compared to how she
describes herself: 9 August 1968 she gets the benign results of a
medical procedure and admits to incredible worry and now relief -- a
rare use of an exclamation point making it all the clearer how great
her relief is:
Gott, war ich
glücklich ! Monatelang diese Tagsüber verdrängte Angst, ich hätte
vielleicht Krebs...
[God, was I happy !
All these months the fear I repressed during the daytime that I might
have cancer...]
(Typically,
the earlier entries in fact give no hint how much this had been
troubling her -- though admittedly this is from a period when she
wasn't writing much in her diary (perhaps because of these fears ?).)
As readers
familiar with her biography are all too aware, the respite was
short-lived: on 11 September she gets the bad news: she has cancer
and her right breast has to be removed. It's not even the first thing
she mentions in that day's entry, and beyond noting that it came as a
'terrible shock' she only devotes a few lines to it. So also after
the operation, she devotes only a few lines to it -- and, beyond the
annoyance at the weakness in her arm from the procedure and what they
cut away, it barely rates a mention afterwards. Admittedly, again,
there are long gaps between entries here, but the impression here and
throughout is of a person who just wants to -- and admirably manages
to -- move on. (Of course, in some respects, such as her more
intimate relationships with men, she moves on almost shockingly
easily, or even desperately.)
Illness --
back problems as well as the cancer -- and hospital stays come more
to the fore at the later stages, but Reimann doesn't wallow much,
complaining mostly about the inconvenience and being kept from
writing.
Writing
remains central to Reimann, and it is her Franziska
Linkerhand-project that consumes her; it is one of the few stable
elements in her life -- though also marked by instability as she
often struggles with parts of it. The (shifting) political situation
complicate matters too, with a constant give and take with the
authorities, as also the early chapters of the novel circulate and
she gets reactions to them; by 1968 her disillusionment with the
system and her annoyance with her own self-censorship have come much
more to the fore. She finds her earlier books limited, but also notes
that some of what she wants to express is untenable in the society
and political system she operates in:
Ich möchte
schreiben, nur so kann ich existieren, nur, mein Gott, was ich
schreiben möchte ... Ich werde es tun, Arbeit für die Schublade.
Das Buch allerdings muß fertig werde, das enthält wenigstens eine
Spur dessen, was ich zu sagen habe
[I have to write,
that's the only way I can exist, only, my God, what I want to write
... I will do it, works for the drawers. The book, however, has to
get done; that at least contains a trace of what I have to say.]
Often
emotional, especially in her relationships -- things get way out of
hand on a number of occasions --, Reimann nevertheless has her
writing to turn back to, the foundation that is ultimately her
bedrock even as all else is inconstant. As a melancholy Reimann
admits at one point, getting at the crux of her difficulties with
men:
Ich sagte: der
Schriftsteller is stärker als die traurige Frau. Ja, sagte er, bei
dir siegt immer der Schriftsteller.
[I said: the writer
is stronger than the sad woman. Yes, he said, it's always the writer
in you that comes out on top.]
As to the
writing itself, the contrast with Christa Wolf is revealing. As
Reimann herself notes, she respects Wolf's style but it isn't for
her; she finds Wolf's writing: 'essayistic -- I mean: she does not
fabulate' ("sie erzählt nicht"). Or, in blunter terms, as
Reimann quotes then-still Aufbau Verlag editor Klaus Gysi about the
difference between Reimann and Wolf's books: "Die Reimann weiß
wenigstens, wie ein Mann riecht" ('Reimann at least knows what a
man smells like'). Reimann obviously quotes the words approvingly --
and even says she's 'touched' by the remark -- and, while a very raw
way of putting it, it does indeed peg the two authors perfectly.
Politically
active -- in the writers' organizations that played such a
significant role in East Germany -- Reimann has increasing
difficulties reconciling her fundamental belief in the workers' state
with the realities of the regime. In 1965 already she worries about a
coming ice-age: "Überall herrscht Konfusion, die Stücke und
Bücher werden jetzt en masse sterben" ('There's confusion
everywhere, plays and books will die en masse now'), and she is
devastated by the events in Czechoslovakia in August 1968. As events
unfold in Czechoslovakia, she is is incredibly frustrated:
Ich habe geweint:
unseretwegen, über uns, aus Zorn. Zornig auch gegen mich selbst --
Mitmacher, Schweiger.
[I cried: for our
sakes, and about us, out of fury. Fury also against myself -- fellow
traveler, not speaking up.]
As with
everything else, however, she is also able to move on: politics and
her disillusionment feature, and there are consequences to her
reactions to the Prague Spring, but she does not obssess or indeed
let it affect her day-to-day life any more than it must (given the
role of the authorities over so many aspects of her life -- from
housing to publication). It's not indifference -- Reimann has and
continues to express strong opinions -- but, just as with the cancer,
she won't let it dominate her life. She manages to compartmentalize
this too.
Only men
drift constantly into her life, and add to her turmoil. She likes to
drink (a lot), and though she often withdraws she also enjoys those
long nights in the company of others. And those intimate nights in
the company of others. Even she seems bemused by her messy casual
relationships -- though admirably there's very little sense of shame
here. More problematic are the deeper relationships, such as with
husband 'Jon', which of course suffers from their frequent separation
and their lust (he too has an affair).
The
presentation of the material is well done -- with the one caveat that
there are a lot ellipses, material not included because of repetition
or for legal reasons. A more than thirty-page chronology of (world
and local) events; a summary chronology of Reimann's life; sixty
pages of helpful endnotes; as well as a names-index provide most of
the supporting material readers need. While much is only addressed
fleetingly, the diary does touch on much of the East German cultural
activity as well as the politics in these times; if not an ideal
primary text on these, the diaries nevertheless are useful
complementary material for anyone interested in this period and
subject-matter.
Reimann is a
fascinating figure -- an obsessed writer, enthusiastic reader
("Wochenlang Thomas Mann gelesen" ('reading Thomas Mann for
weeks on end') she notes after finally getting the complete works;
"Ich kann über nichts anderes mehr sprechen, das wird schon
manisch" ('I can't speak of anything else any more; I'm
completely obsessed')) -- even as she worries, late on, briefly about
no longer reading as much -- hard drinker (and smoker, which passes
almost unnoticed in those times when it was so ubiquitous that it
barely rates a mention), phenomenally active and involved. She
presents herself as very emotional -- mentioning incredibly heated
arguments and long crying-jags -- yet the diary-entries are very
controlled: she is almost always able to step back in her accounts,
though she also doesn't convey a sense of cold distance in doing so.
The absence of self-pity is welcome -- and, given some of what she
goes through, quite remarkable. Obviously, the entries only form part
of a picture -- but it's a rich part, and there's a great deal of
fascinating incidental information to go along with it.
Perhaps
difficult to appreciate without at least some sense of East German
(literary) life in the 1960s, It All Tastes of Farewell is
nevertheless both fascinating and gripping (not least, sadly, in the
reader's awareness of what's coming, a life that will be cut short).
- M.A.Orthofer
https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/ddr/reimannb_TB_2.htm
https://www.brigittereimann.de/
Brigitte Reimann, Das Mädchen
auf der Lotosblume
Das Mädchen auf
der Lotosblume collects two unfinished novels by Brigitte Reimann,
Joe und das Mädchen auf der Lotosblume ('The Girl on the Lotus
Flower'; written in 1957) and Wenn die Stunde ist, zu sprechen ...
('When it's the hour to speak ...'; 1956). (A more complete variation
of the latter has now been published as Die Denunziantin (2022).)
They are very different works, the first based closely on personal
experience (and written in the first person), the second much more an
attempt at engaging with the political situation in an East Germany
beginning to try to build a socialist state, but both already show a
clearly talented writer at work. Though unfinished, and at times
somewhat simplistic, they are by no means unpolished and much of the
writing is already very strong.
Echoes of
Reimann's early diary, I Have No Regrets can be found throughout Joe
und das Mädchen auf der Lotosblume. The young narrator -- just
twenty-two -- is named Maria and a painter, though several of the men
in her circle are writers (and while she doesn't speak much of her
own art-making, she does note that: "Wenn ich Schriftsteller wär
wie Joe und Hendrik, mir wär nicht bange um Stoff für Bücher"
('If I were a writer like Joe and Hendrik, I wouldn't worry about
finding material for books').) She writes from an artist retreat,
where her room is next to that of Joe, a writer more than a decade
older than her (and married with two children), whom she has become
intimately involved with. (Joe's real name is Walter Z., but she has
a habit -- as Reimann herself did -- of giving the men in her life
new names, and for her he is Joe, short for Johannes; he in turn
calls her Maja (the only one who is allowed to do so).)
Maria
receives word that a friend of hers, the sculptor she calls Heiliger
Georg ('Holy George') has sustained serious injuries to his eyes,
with much of the story then recounting first her time in the atelier
she fled for this retreat, where Georg was part of her circle, and
then a visit by Georg to the colony, after she summoned him. She also
chronicles her complicated relationship with Joe -- all complicated
further by the small group of other residents at the retreat.
Joe und das
Mädchen auf der Lotosblume is a story of personal passions -- of the
kind familiar to readers of Reimann's diaries. Even as she and Joe do
become deeply involved and lovers, she recognizes and admits:
"Eigentlich passen wir gar nicht zusammen" ('Actually, we
don't fit together at all'). She is ardent but impetuous,
hard-drinking (as Reimann was) and intense. Typically, too, when she
sees a sign saying 'Entry Prohibited' she pushes through: "Ich
kann Verboten einfach nicht widerstehen" ('I simply can't resist
the forbidden').
It is a
somewhat melodramatic story, as Maria tries to navigate the power she
has over men and her own strong feelings --much as she does in her
diaries, as this novel is in many ways only a lightly fictionalized
variation on Reimann's own experiences. Reimann does add some drama
-- the injury to Georg; a confrontation with one of the other
residents at the retreat, an older female critic -- and a very short
second part of the novel suggests a new chapter (as, intriguingly,
the first part carries a dedication 'for Joe' while the second has:
'for Hendrik', another writer at the retreat who Maria gets close
to). Nevertheless, the novel does remain fragmentary, an interesting
example of an author fictionalizing her own experiences, but one she
hasn't quite managed to fully shape into a complete novel.
Wenn die
Stunde ist, zu sprechen ... centers around high school senior Eva
Hennig as she joins a class in her new school in the small city which
her mother has just been named mayor of. Stalin's picture is still up
on the school walls and the border to the Western occupied zone is
still porous. Eva's mother is dedicated to the Communist cause and
doesn't take advantage of her position by, for example, claiming
large living quarters; she's satisfied with an adequate apartment,
near to work. Eva barely sees her, however, since she keeps so busy
with her duties.
Eva
acknowledges that even otherwise: "Ich bin immer allein"
('I am always alone') -- despite, for example always having had
swarms of friends around her: "Aber das war auch bloß
äußerlich, verstehst du ?, ganz im Innern war ich doch immer
allein" ('But that was only on the outside, you understand ?
inside, I was always alone'). She is tasked with promoting the
political activity of her class, a group that can seem a bit
apathetic. Her privileged status -- not least, as the daughter of
such an important figure, which people always take into account when
dealing with her -- blinds her some to the issues some of her fellow
students face.
Maria's own
father was murdered at Buchenwald, while a Jewish classmate is a
survivor of Auschwitz (one of four and a half thousand Jewish and
half-Jewish children sent to Auschwitz, with only seventy-three
surviving when the Russians freed the camp). Reimann weaves in this
and other recent history well, including the situation at the school
and the compromises made there -- including the 1949 arrest of
student Kurt Hansen, just fifteen years old at the time, basically
condemned for the sins against the state of his parents -- an event
that still haunts the school, limiting the willingness of both the
school administration and the students to speak up and out against
injustice and the like. Meanwhile, while Eva maintains that joining
the FDJ -- the Freie Deutsche Jugend ('Free German Youth')
organization -- is purely voluntary, her eyes are opened to the fact
that, in fact, the pressure to do so is almost impossible to avoid,
students worried they will not get a spot at university if they are
not card-carrying members.
Wenn die
Stunde ist, zu sprechen ... is of particular interest for the
political issues it raises , and its description of East Germany at
that time -- presumably around 1953, before the East German uprising
(and the crack-down that followed). There's already decent story
here, but this too is an unfinished novel. The writing is less sure
than in Joe und das Mädchen auf der Lotosblume -- more juvenile too,
though given its largely high school setting that doesn't detract as
much as it otherwise might; still, it can feel more like a YA novel
-- also in its exploration of its themes -- than a fully adult one.
Tucked in all
this there is some very fine writing, including a description of the
school-building and: "das wunderliche Stilgemisch des alten
Gebäudes" ('the fantastical mix of styles of the old building')
-- Ionic columns, Corinthian arabesques, a Baroque sweep here, Gothic
windows there, suggesting the complex mix found in the school, and
this society, itself.
The two
pieces in Das Mädchen auf der Lotosblume don't offer the
satisfactions of complete works, but they are still of interest and
appeal -- fine stories, as far as they go, and showing a variety of
interesting approaches to dealing with a variety of themes (very
different themes and approaches in the two works). Joe und das
Mädchen auf der Lotosblume is also particularly interesting to
consider in light of Reimann's diaries, an author trying to create
fiction around her own experiences. Meanwhile, Wenn die Stunde ist,
zu sprechen ... gives a good picture and impression of a slice of
East German life from a time that is too rarely found in fiction (at
least in a more realistic way: most East German fiction describing
those times tends to present these as 'heroic', focusing on what is
seen as the positives in the struggle for a new society to emerge out
of the post-Nazi rubble).
This is a
solid collection that is worth reading not only for
Reimann-completists, suggesting already what a remarkable talent this
author was.- M.A.Orthofer
https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/ddr/reimannb1.htm
