Slinging Mud? Public Discussion of the Case of Oskar Pastior: A German-Romanian Comparison

Abstract

This article examines the recent discussion of Romanian-German writers’ involvement with the Securitate since the airing of Oskar Pastior’s file in 2010. Drawing principally on German and Romanian newspapers, journals, and blogs from 2010–11, I argue that while the Stasi debates of the early to mid-1990s were more concerned with examining literary and political traditions in order to effect reorientation in a new political and societal landscape, the Romanian-German discussion recognizes the need to transcend personal loyalties and enmities, but rarely achieves it. The Romanian-German discussion’s high degree of differentiation and moderation represents an advance on the German polemics of the early 1990s, but the debate appears to be stuck somewhere between the documentation of biographical detail and a search for an effective way to read contentious source material.