“Only limited utopias are realizable”: On a motif in the plays of Peter Hacks

Abstract

GDR playwright Peter Hacks has spent his entire career working out the implications of political idealism in a world of limited freedom for action. In his adaptations of classical authors and his plays about the GDR, he demonstrates that “future‐oriented action” is possible, but that it must not be confused with either pure idealism or pure opportunism. This search for a middle ground where actions are based on possibilities beyond existing reality, while pragmatically acknowledging that reality, continues in Hacks’ post‐1989 plays. Hacks’ continuing faith in the possibility of progress has prevented him from despairing during the current period of disillusionment in Eastern Germany.