‘Unverhofftes Wiedersehen’: Narrative Paradigms in Christoph Hein’s Nachtfahrt und Fruher Morgen and Exekution eines Kalbes

Abstract

Plot structures in Hein’s two collections of short stories are examined in the context of GDR historiography and in relation to the notion of ‘Chronist’ as developed by Hein himself and also by Hayden White, Jörn Rüsen, Frederic Jameson and Walter Benjamin. The open, chronicle‐like structure found especially in the ‘Berliner Stadtansichten’ in the earlier collection is seen as a corrective to the GDR’s teleological view of history. By contrast, the later collection of stories is marked by repeated use of a plot structure of ironic circularity, similar to that of Der Tangospieler, in which the present is confronted with the past in a kind of ‘poetic justice’, a quasi‐narrative irony present in history itself; it is seen at its clearest in the story ‘Die Vergewaltigung’, which makes explicit allusion to J.P.Hebel’s story ‘Unverhofftes Wiedersehen’. This change in narrative paradigm is interpreted as resulting from the pressures of history, comparable to the change in Benjamin’s view of historiography between ‘Der Erzähler’ and Überden Begriff der Geschichte, and anticipating, or indicating the necessity of, the ‘Wende’. The final story of Exekution eines Kalbes, ‘Ein älterer Herr, federleicht’, sees Hein reverting, in the light of post‐‘Wende’ proclamations of ‘the end of history’, to the corrective openness of the chronicle.