THE QUEST FOR AN ORTHODOXY: RECENT DIRECTIONS IN LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Abstract

LATE in 1972 Wilhelm Girnus, editor of Sinn und Form and one of the most influential of GDR politicians of culture, asserted the necessity for continued public discussion of questions pertaining to aesthetics, art and literature. Sinn und Form is the official journal of the East German Academy of the Arts and therefore it is not surprising that Girnus's statement, and others made by him editorially during that year, were given their impetus by a pronouncement on literature and literary criticism issued by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1972, which stated that since literature is a public matter, it is essential that problems of literature and of literary theory should be the subject of continuing debate.1 A sequence such as this, where an official party statement is taken up and used as a guideline by those who determine cultural policy and oversee its application, is typical of orthodox approaches to literary questions in the GDR, so that the development of East German literary theory since 1949 can be understood only in the context of the country's political -history. It is punctuated by a series of pronoucements made ex cathedra by both Soviet and GDR official sources, principally in the resolutions of the party congresses of the CPSU and the East German Communist Party (SED), and of the conferences of the official writers' organisation (DSV) and of similar Soviet institutions such as the Maxim Gorki Institute in Moscow. It must be remembered that the East German Academy of Sciences classifies the study of literature as one of the social sciences. According to the principles of dialectical materialism iiterature is an educational instrument of the highest importance to the progress towards communism; its form and function are consequentially of central concern to socialist ruling cadres. The changing aspects of literary theory and of critical concepts now rigid, now showing some measure of flexibility represent a coming to terms on the part of theorists and critics with changing political ideas. Since 1956 the proclaimed purpose of the poli-