The Promised Land? Feminist Writing in the German Democratic Republic by Lorna Martens (review)

Abstract

MLRy 98.1, 2003 249 ruins, and death. Linking many of these themes are wider concerns with identity (in particular poetic identity), time, memory, and loss. She also establishes intertexts with the work of Brecht and Holderlin, among others. Of course, in any study such as this individual readers may miss certain 'favourite' poets; I would have welcomed more examples ofwork by Elke Erb and Barbara Kohler, and feltthat the work ofestablished poets such as Heinz Czechowski or Heiner Miiller was sometimes given too much space. Similarly, in places I would have welcomed more reference to additional critics who have written on Braun and Grunbein, such as Rolf Juckeror Susanne Kirkbright. Owen's project was certainly a huge task, as is exemplified in her lengthy and extremely useful bibliography of sixty-eight pages. As a result, the introduction and second chapter are not as focused as the later chapters. While some topics, such as why poetry was particularly important in the GDR, are especially relevant, others, such as more general GDR literary history, did not seem quite as necessary, or ori? ginal. The introduction in particular takes too many approaches, from the nature of poetry to the background to the Literaturstreit. The conclusion, on the other hand, is much more specific, and considers the ways in which the poems analysed can be seen, more than ten years afterthe fall ofthe Berlin Wall, as 'GDR literature'. Owen's thesis is that 'both as a perspective and as a source of themes and ideas the GDR is resurrected in poetry' (p. 283). These ideas, like those on the role of the writer after 1989, which also run through the book, allow this work to participate in the wider debates about German literature that, even today, continue to influence how that art is both produced and understood. University of Wales Swansea Beth Linklater The Promised Land? Feminist Writing in the German Democratic Republic. By Lorna Martens. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. 2001. x +273 pp. ?i3.95; $19-95 (Pbk). ISBN 0-7914-4860-6(pbk). Literature's function as Ersatzoffentlichkeit in the GDR is well known; in this work, Lorna Martens considers literature as the 'principal site' (p. 3) of feminism in that state. In the firstthree chapters, she sets GDR feminism in its social and ideological context, and elaborates how feminist theories and demands in the GDR differedfrom those in the West as a result of the officialview that Socialism had solved the 'woman question'. Martens concludes that emancipatory tendencies in feminist writing in the GDR reflected official policy rather than challenged it. The texts that she analyses are not particularly illuminated by these comparisons, however, because their politi? cal intentions are already explicit: indeed, Martens frequently refers to characters as 'mouthpieces' (p. 113) for the authors' views. Attempts by Irmtraud Morgner and Christa Wolf to engage with literary form (surely an aspect of 'feminist writing') are not treated, yet some attention to form might have alleviated the impression Martens gives that they were simply following the Party line. In the final two chapters, which have no theoretical framework, Martens's focus on the feminist message propagated by the authors slips all too readily into looking at how texts portray 'The Reality of Women's Lives' (the title of Chapter 5). This approach?the text as sociologicaldocument rather than literary artefact?characterized early views of GDR literature and is now considered outdated. As a result, this reads like a book which might have been written ten years ago, especially as the literature featured is largely from the 1970s and early 1980s, with Wolf sMedea (1996) the only more recent textto get a (brief) look-in. That Martens takes this stance now suggests that her real concern is elsewhere. Overall, the work is directed towards an American audience, and in the frequent comparisons between the GDR and the USA, Martens seems more interested in 250 Reviews using the GDR perspective to engage with American feminist agendas. There is one telling point about American perspectives: Martens acknowledges that, with the exception of Wolf's work, the primary texts she examines have not been translated into English (although Morgner's monumental...