“Helligkeitsverlust”:

 

The Reception of Franz Kafkaʼs Texts

 

in Gottfried Meinhold’s Die Grenze

 

(written 1970, published 2001)

 

Gabriele Eckart, Cape Girardeau, Missouri

 

It is well known that the reception of Franz Kafka’s works was problematic in the former GDR. Martina Langermann shows that after a heated initial discussion about the possible usefulness of Kafka’s literature for the population of the GDR, the functionaries responsible for culture under the leadership of the legendary Alfred Kurella put this author under the rubric of undesirable literary traditions.[1] A consequence of this action was the fact that: “Wer nach 1956 für Kafka optierte, machte sich konterrevolutionärer Positionen verdächtig”[2]. Finally, in 1965, the East Berlin Aufbau-Verlag published a small selection of Kafka’s texts, including Das Schloss. However, as Langermann points out, the book could not be acquired by public libraries of the GDR.

Five years after this publication, the East German author Gottfried Meinhold wrote the novel Die Grenze, which could be published only after the collapse of the GDR. In this novel, an East German photographer, called Quamann – people whom he meets frequently mispronounce his name as “Qualmann” (140[3]) because the impression he makes on people is that of a man who suffers – approaches a small town near the border with West Germany with the desire to leave his country. This desire seems to be his emotional response to the events known as the crushing of the “Prague Spring” by the tanks of the Warsaw Pact in 1968. In addition, his grandfather and father had been dreaming of leaving the GDR for political reasons; he had grown up listening to their reasoning and wishes to be able to cross the border. It is not that Quamann has to save his life in a literal sense; but rather his inner need to cross the border is triggered by his fear of becoming a political dissident in the GDR. If he did not escape to the West, he would have to “Anklage erheben” (22) against the state; however, he feels he is not courageous enough to become a dissident. Similar to the experiences of Kafka’s main protagonist with respect to the castle in Das Schloss, the closer Quamann comes to the place of his desire (the border), the more obstacles come up. Therefore, Udo Scheer is correct in stating in regard to the main protagonist: “je mehr er sich der Grenze nähert, um so unüberwindlicher wird sie für ihn.”[4] In addition, there are explicit references to Kafka’s novel Der Process – “probably one of the most analyzed novels of the 20^th century”[5] – to be found. The following study proposes to examine Meinhold’s reception of Kafka’s two novels.

At the beginning of the text, Quamann is talking to the man next to him on the bus that takes him to the town next to the border. While Quamann attempts to gather as much information as possible about the area between the town and the border that lies just south of the town, he tries to give the impression that the town itself, not the border, would be “sein Ziel, ein lange ausgedachtes, immer wieder geprüftes und wohl erwogenes Ziel vor anderen Zielen” (9). As it will turn out later in the text, this man next to him works as an informer for the authorities; his task is to keep an eye on suspicious people who take the bus to this border town to find out if they might want to escape. While the setting of Quamann’s adventures resembles more closely that of Kafka’s novel Das Schloss (a small, snow-covered town / village nestled at the foot of a castle), on the level of content, there are stronger similarities to Der Process as will be seen in the following.

In a conversation with the pharmacist of the town, Quamann says that the most interesting medical herbs probably grow in the areas that are “schwer zugänglich […] vielleicht sogar verboten” (137). The pharmacist answers with an explanation of the regulation of language:

Das Wort ‘verboten’ kennen wir hier überhaupt nicht, oder besser: wir haben uns seine Benutzung abgewöhnt. Es heißt entweder: nicht gern gesehen oder nicht erwünscht. Sie verstehen, das nimmt dem Ausdruck die Schärfe, besagt aber letztlich nichts anderes. Oder doch: Das Verbot deutet auf strafrechtliche Ahndung hin – im Übertretungsfalle. Unerwünschtheit dagegen zieht allenfalls Ermahnungen oder Zurechtweisungen, vielleicht auch ausdrückliche Mißbilligung nach sich. (137)

Afterwards, the pharmacist explains that indeed, since even the use of the word is forbidden, there would be an investigation if somebody picked herbs too close to the border: “Eine Untersuchung wird es in jedem Fall geben, und die kann sich hinziehen. Es bedeutet stets: ausgedehnte Untersuchungshaft” (137). Here, we come close to the situation of Joseph K. who has been arrested one morning and does not know what for. “Bestenfalls so etwas wie Halbarrest, eine Art Quarantäne,” the pharmacist explains, “aber das sind schon die Ausnahmen mit gewissen Restfreiheiten oder Freiheitsresten – gestutzte Freiheit oder gemilderte Unfreiheit, für die der Häftling nach einer gewissen Zeit sogar Dankbarkeit empfindet” (137-38). Taking the point of view of the authorities, he adds that this situation of limited freedom has a positive effect: “Der Untersuchte denkt mit ganz anderer Konsequenz über sein Verhalten, was sage ich: sein Leben und seine Lebensgrundsätze nach. Das soll er ja auch” (138).

Quamann finds a room in the house of the land surveyor’s assistant, Eva Rauch, whom he met in the inn. As a political prisoner on parole, during which time she is obliged to denounce people who come to the town with the desire to cross the border, she is in this situation of limited freedom that has been described by the pharmacist hypothetically. She is not imprisoned, can move around; however, being on parole, she is not free. Quamann and Rauch learn to trust each other and make plans to escape together. The weather is perfect, a snowstorm – their traces would be invisible for the “Spürhunde, die als Helfer der Grenzwächer gefürchtet waren” (93) besides other advantages. However, when it is time to go, Rauch finds Quamann asleep with a fever and leaves for the border without him. The next day, Quamann will be told by Dr. Domenula, the town’s treasurer, that soldiers found her dead body in the snow on the way to the border. Deeply shocked by the news of Rauch’s death, Quamann learns that he is under suspicion of being (at least partially) responsible for it. As becomes clear from Dr. Domenula’s statement, Domenula will be himself a member of the court:

Doch muss ich Sie darauf aufmerksam machen, dass Sie selbst in die anstehende Untersuchung einbezogen sind. Sie haben die Mitteilung sehr heftig – erschrocken, entsetzt, betroffen – aufgenommen. Es ist mir nicht entgangen. Die Gründe dafür könnten wichtig sein – für die Klärung des Geschehens. Sie sollten sich also darauf einrichten, dass Sie sehr bald dazu befragt werden. (151)

In this situation, under surveillance, Quamann can neither try to cross the border nor return to his hometown because he is caught in the investigation. Like Kafka’s protagonist Josef K. of Der Process, Quamann is not put in handcuffs and taken to jail after his arrest, but he is also not free. Desperately, he asks himself for what reason he might be considered guilty. Is it because “seine Auffälligkeit als Grenzgänger sie [Eva Rauch] angesteckt haben mochte”? (150) Was his desire to cross the border contagious? If true or not, it seems to him that it cannot be valid in a judicial sense. How will the judge decide? The text ends at this point; the reader can only guess how Quamann’s life will continue. As Vivian Liska states, in Kafka’s novels “you never get closure; you don’t arrive anywhere”[6]; the same must be said about Meinhold’s novel.

However, the last sentence shows a spark of hope in the word “vorerst”: “Sein Schicksal hatte ihn längst eingeholt; er würde es notgedrungen billigen und sagte sich, er täte gut daran, die Unentrinnbarkeit vorerst in Kauf zu nehmen” (161).

Significantly, Clayton Koelb states: “The space of Kafka’s fiction is a place neither here nor there, an in-between world in which the protagonists seek to clarify a problem of their existential status (arrested or not arrested, i.e., guilty or innocent, admitted or not admitted, i. e., belonging or not belonging).” As Koelb adds, “These characters are properly concerned about their place in the world” (40). After Eva Rauch’s death, Quamann is exactly in such an ambiguous place, neither here (in the border town), nor there (in his hometown), nor over there (in the West beyond the border where he wishes to be). In this in-between world, he needs to clarify the problem of his existential status, which is, in his case, to what degree is he free? Or is he not free at all?

The description of the atmosphere of the town – an “armselige, verworfene Stadt” (63) that reminds us of the wretched-looking village in the novel Das Schloss – represents the atmosphere in the GDR in the late sixties and early seventies when the movement in Czechoslovakia to create a more democratic socialism had been crushed. The noun “lethargy” would describe it the best: “Ich hätte nicht gedacht,” says Dr. Domenula to Quamann, “daß es so viele ratlose, vor sich hinlebende, lethargische Menschen an einem Ort gibt” (152). It is the same lethargy that we encounter in the village in Kafka’s novel Das Schloss, and which leads K.s friend Frieda to dream of emigrating to France or Spain. Interestingly, Dr. Domenula in Meinhold’s novel uses the word “Schlafwandler” (146) for people whose lives are drenched by this lethargy. To explain his reasons for this pessimistic judgment, he says:

Freilich, um hier am Leben zu bleiben, ich meine: lebendig im besten Sinne des Wortes, braucht man täglich frische Gedanken. Aber man hat nur frische Gedanken, wenn man hellwach und lebendig ist. Eine fatale Wechselwirkung, wie Sie auf den ersten Blick sehen können. Ein rechter Teufelskreis. Nur: wenn die innere Stimme schweigt, zerfällt die innere Welt, die wir der äußeren entgegensetzen können, und wenn es soweit ist, regiert uns die äußere Welt und macht mit uns, was sie will. (146)

Quamann, who has listened very attentively, says: “’Sie haben […] die Lage sehr genau durchdacht. Aber es ist nichts, das nur für die Grenzgegend bezeichnend wäre. Ich komme aus einer ziemlich großen Stadt.’ (Er wollte nicht sagen: aus der Hauptstadt)” (146). In other words, according to Quamann, a large number of the citizens of the GDR, including its capital, Berlin, suffer from this lethargy, walking around like sleepwalkers and, to stay alive dream of crossing the border.

Besides lethargy, Quamann encounters a deep distrust of strangers in the town (similar to that encountered by Kafka’s K. in Das Schloss on his arrival in the village where he hopes to start working as a land surveyor). Among other reasons, people think these strangers could be spies. Could not also he, Quamann, “ein sich verstellender oder Unbedarftheit vorspiegelnder Informant sein” (93)? This thought throws him into despair: “Daß er in den Verdacht geraten war, eher ein Spitzel zu sein als ein möglicher Grenzverletzer, entsetzte ihn” (92).

As in Kafka’s novels, dialogues drive the plot. The most interesting dialogue in regard to life in the GDR and also to Quamann’s character, as we will see later, is the one between Quamann and Eva Rauch. As the land surveyor’s assistant, she knows best what he desperately tries to find out: “die klare Beschreibung seines Weges zur Grenze” (23). First, she distrusts Quamann as a possible informer of the state police; later, she learns to trust him. She confides to him that as part of her duties during the probation, she has to watch out for possible border trespassers. However, when Quamann asks her if that means she has accepted “[ihr] Leben in diesem Lande zu beschließen” (90), she asks back:

Sie meinen – man sollte sich nie und nimmer damit abfinden, sich lebenslänglich auf diese Reglementierung oder Internierung einzulassen. Oder Sie meinen, eine angemessene Art, sein Nichteinverständnis dafür kundzutun, sei der Versuch, die Grenze – wie heißt es noch – illegal zu überschreiten. (90)

While they exchange the reasons for their desire to leave the GDR – she had been sentenced and released on parole as a political dissident in the wake of the Prague Spring; both of them suffer from the fact that it was a “Land der Lüge” in which you could only “vegetieren […],” not “gedeihen” (96). Finally, they discuss practical details of crossing the border, which to his surprise was not a trench or a fence, but a “Zwischenfeld” full of “elektrisch geladener Drähte, wie man es von Lagern her wusste” (94).

Other interesting dialogues that drive the plot are those between Quamann and the Lutheran minister’s wife (who tells him that one must cross borders inside one’s heart, not in the outside world) and those between Quamann and the town’s physician. With the latter, Meinhold’s main protagonist discusses the connection between soul and body in regard to illness. In Quamann’s case, the physician diagnoses the connection between a certain lack of physical stability, certain “Organstörungen” caused by the “Befürchtung, [sein] Leben in der Monotonie zu vergeuden” (126). He explains:

Nun ja, der Mensch ist auf Vielfalt angelegt. Das Stereotype, die lähmende Eintönigkeit quält ihn bis zum Höchstmaß des Verdrusses, und das ist immer pathogen, ich meine krankheitserzeugend. Es geht also nicht um das Quälende eines Leidenszustandes oder einer drückenden Sorge, sondern um die Folgen des Gequältseins für die inneren organischen Zustände, seine Rückwirkung auf das Funktionieren biochemischer Zustände. (126-27)

Quamann listens with growing attention; especially, the word “Helligkeitsverlust” that the physician uses in the following – Quamann had never heard a word like this out of the mouth of a physician – surprises him. As the physician states,

Die Verdüsterung der Innenwelt, der innere Helligkeitsverlust begünstigt Informationsverluste in den organischen Kreisläufen, überhaupt verringerte Zirkulation, auch des Blutes. Die Botenstoffe geraten nicht schnell genug an die Stellen, wo ihre Wirkung benötigt wird. Und da haben dann geringfügige Belastungen oder Änderungen im Lebensgefüge, im täglichen Zeitablauf der Gewohnheiten Verluste an Stabilität zur Folge. (127)

Remembering a “fatale […] Lähmung aller inneren Kräfte und Regungen” (127), Quamann thinks: “Helligkeitsverlust leuchtete ihm eher ein als Verdüsterung. Verdüsterung der Innenwelt. Das Verdämmern. Er entsann sich, wie er oft stundenlang dagesessen hatte, ohne sich zu rühren, ohne dass ein Gedanke sich in ihm gerührt hätte.” (127).

The physician is not sure about what to advise him and sends him to the pharmacist to get an herbal drug that they produce together – obviously, this drug is much in demand as Quamann will find out in the drugstore.

Many more similarities with Kafka’s novels could be listed; however, there is a major difference regarding the constitution of the main characters. While Kafka’s main protagonists, K. and Josef K., are outspoken, Quamann is much more careful in choosing his words. Although he is dreaming of leaving the GDR and comes relatively close to the border during his trip, he is actually undecided and gives the impression of irresoluteness. In chapter eight of Kafka’s Der Process, superstitious people patiently waiting in front the offices of the court claim they can see the sign of his future conviction on Josef K.s lips. Of course, what they can see on his lips is his defiant attitude towards the court; these people know from experience that this attitude is what he will be judged for in the end. In Quamann’s case, Edwin Kratschmer is right stating that metaphorically the border also expresses his inability to cross his inner limitations: “die streng bewachte Landesgrenze ist auch Großmetapher für das Unvermögen, seine vielerlei eigenen Grenzen überwinden zu können.”[7] Unsure about whether he has really the courage to cross the border or not, he gets a fever and falls asleep exactly at the moment when it is time to leave. Since Eva Rauch had made it clear to him that only two people together can successfully escape the country in this border area, he is indirectly guilty of her death.

Uwe Kolbe in his recent controversial essay on Brecht also interprets Kafka’s parable Vor dem Gesetz and states that the text clearly demonstrates the path to one’s individual freedom:

Ein ‘Mann vom Lande’ verbringt dort sein Leben, ohne zu begreifen, dass die Tür nur seine eigene ist. Alles, was damit zu tun hat, also mit seinem Anspruch auf Recht und Gerechtigkeit, obliegt seiner eigenen Entscheidung. Er muss nur aufstehen und eintreten. Dazu gehört Mut. Der ‘unterste’ Türhüter steht für den ersten erkannten Kreisschluss im eigenen Denken, für den ersten erkannten Haltungsschaden aus der Erbmasse, der dich zum Gefangenen machte. Mag das ‘der unterste Türhüter’ sein, von einem zum anderen wirst du wachsen, freier denken und freier sein.[8]

In Quamann’s situation, the man on the bus who can easily conclude from Quamann’s questions that this is a person who dreams of escaping the country, stands for the first doorkeeper; unconsciously, Quamann guesses correctly that this man works as an informer and the authorities might be alerted as soon as they both leave the bus. As a consequence, instead of developing the courage to break out of the inner circle of fear, as Kolbe tries to encourage us to do (Brecht, according to his judgment, was not able to do so during his years in the GDR), Quamann loses the little courage he has and behaves more and more cowardly. Although he walks around and talks to people, in his mind he is sitting in front of the door to the law as Kafka’s man from the country does – just waiting to see what is going to happen.

The land surveyor, Eva Rauch’s colleague who understands her desire to cross the border, recognizes Quamann’s problem immediately when he first meets him in the inn by seeing a “träumerische[s] Flackern der Unentschlossenheit” (99) in his eyes. As Rauch explains to Quamann later, after she told him of the surveyor’s impression, there are kinds of decisions, “die man sich eingeredet hat, die aber eher so etwas wie Wunschträume sind, also immer etwas Träumerisches behalten haben.” (99) She adds: “Wenn jemand mit solcherlei Entschlüssen in unverhoffte Komplikationen gerät, zerrinnen sie – verfliegen sie” (99). As the plot of Meinhold’s novel goes on to develop, it turns out that Quamann’s decision to cross the border is nothing more than such wishful thinking. Being tired from walking around all day and having caught a cold in the snowstorm, Quamann unconsciously decides against leaving the country on that day. Rauch, whose desire to cross the border always has been a real decision, much stronger than Quamann’s wishful thinking, must go alone and dies.

Kafka’s parable is famous for its ambiguity. As Aarak Hüseyin states: “Jede Auslegung ist nur [eine] von vielen Interpretationsvariablen oder Deutungsmöglichkeiten.”[9] If we see Quamann as a kind of Kafka’s man from the country who spends his whole life sitting in front of the door to the law, then Meinhold’s interpretation is that the man himself is to blame for his failure; the obstacles on his way to freedom are in himself; consequently, he is wrong in blaming the authorities and their doorkeepers for getting stuck in what Kolbe calls the devilish “Kreisschluss”.[10] The word “Helligkeitsverlust” that stands out in Meinhold’s novel for its symbolic value not only refers to the atmosphere in the town and the country, but also to Quamann’s state of mind as that of someone whose decisions are muddled.

As is well known, several GDR writers had referred to Kafka in their literary texts. Those who came back from emigration after the war and chose to live in the East, as, for instance, Bertolt Brecht and Johannes R. Becher, had an ambivalent relationship to Kafka. Although they had read and often creatively adapted his works in the past, they considered Kafka to be “irrelevant”[11] to GDR readers; his work was considered decadent, an example of literature of alienation and not of commitment; and, according to the Party, there was no alienation in the socialist world. At the Kafka-Conference in Liblice in 1963, Paul Reimann, who gave one of the two opening lectures, compared Kafka with a mouse in a trap (running back and forth helplessly and dying in the end) in order to express his negative point of view about the irrelevance of Kafka for readers in socialist countries. He explains: “wir [he refers to communists] wollten nicht einer solchen Maus gleichen, wir konnten nicht die traurige Schlußfolgerung Kafkas hinnehmen, daß es kein Heil, keine Rettung gebe.” Instead, he and his comrades found what Kafka was unable to see: “daß es einen realen, sicheren Weg in die Freiheit gibt” – a path shown by Marx and Lenin. Of course, in order to continue to march in this direction of creating a world in which “Menschen zu leben und zu schaffen vermögen”[12], as the speaker concludes, another literature than that of Kafka was needed – that of socialist realism.

Langermann states correctly about the argument about Kafka in the GDR in the 1960s:

Es ging […] nicht nur um die Modernisierung der Kunst, sondern der Gesellschaft, mit oder ohne Kafka, in stalinistischen Traditionen einer ‘hart’ organisierten Gesellschaft oder im Zeichen der ‘Tauwetter’- und ‘Frühlingsmetaphern’, durch Demokratisierung und Öffnung der Gesellschaft.[13]

As we know from GDR history, the functionaries, who wanted to continue marching in the Stalinist tradition, have won. Trying to imagine their concrete point of view, the popular writer Bernd-Lutz Lange states in retrospect:

Der ‘Prozeß’ und ‘Das Schloss’ von Kafka handeln von einer höheren Macht, die unerreichbar ist. Von der gesichtslosen Maske der Bürokratie. Vielleicht fühlte sich mancher der Funktionäre ertappt, als er einen Blick in diese Romane riskiert hatte. Außerdem stellte der Autor zu viele Fragen, suchte zuviel. Er suchte Gott, den Sinn in einer absurden Welt und die Chance, sich als Individuum gegen die Macht der Bürokratie behaupten zu können. Das alles konnten Leute, die uniformiertes Denken wünschten, nur als geistiges Gift aus den Bücherschränken verbannen.[14]

As Ekkehard W. Haring states correctly, the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 made matters worse, leading to an offensive “öffentlichen Tabuisierung”[15] of Kafka in the GDR. In this period, only very established writers, as for instance, Anna Seghers, were able to publish texts that dealt with Kafka in a more positive way. In her novella “Die Reisebegegnung,” she interpretes him as a realist writer “der gleichsam für ein humanistisches Weltbild eintritt, in seinem Spätwerk allerdings die Aspekte der Ausweglosigkeit überbetont.”[16] Diplomatically, Seghers chose Kafka’s short text “Ein Kübelreiter” – one of the few texts, in which “der zeitgeschichtliche Bezug eindeutig identifizierbar [ist]”[17] – to proof her point of view that Kafka was a realist writer, at least at the beginning. As Haring states, besides such few references to Kafka in published GDR literature in this period, there were signs of a “schwer einzuschätzende[n] ‘unsichtbare Rezeption’”[18] in the population of the GDR. Gottfried Meinhold’s text – written only two years after the crushing of the Czech reform movement and well hidden until the fall of the Wall – can be considered an example of this invisible reception.

In 1983, on the occasion of Kafka’s hundredth birthday, there was a “Paradigmenwechsel mit Kafka”[19] in the GDR. Nine different publishing houses published all his major works with the exception of his journals; the Academy of Science in East Berlin held a conference devoted to Kafka. Although for the GDR scholars who participated in this conference “längst kein Stadium erreicht war, Kafka unverkrampft zu diskutieren”[20], it was a big step away from the former negative verdict on Kafka. Why did Meinhold not attempt to have his manuscript Die Grenze published then? After all, from this time on several literary texts were published in the GDR that intertextually referred to Kafka’s work in order to show his relevance for describing peoples’ lives in this country from a disillusioned perspective, see, for instance, Saiäns Fiktschen by Franz Fühmann. Meinhold (born in 1936) was an established linguist teaching at the Friedich-Schiller-Universität in Jena and, perhaps, he did not want to risk losing his position. In addition, besides his scholarly books, he had published science fiction novels, mainly at Historff Verlag. As Angelika Winnen shows, the authorities seriously reprimanded this publishing house after having published Klaus Schlesinger’s collection of short stories in Berliner Traum because one of them referred creatively to Kafka’s novel Der Process. The book had sold out fast; a second edition was not allowed to be printed after the press had branded it with expressions like “radikale Negativbilanz.”[21] If Meinhold had shown the manuscript of Die Grenze to his publisher, he, without doubt, would have argued against its publication. Not only is the “Negativbilanz” in regard to the GDR even stronger than in Schlesinger’s text, it also deals with the East-West German border – a taboo subject until the end of the GDR. However, the situation at the time might have been more complex since Meinhold applied the finishing touches to his novel only much later.

To summarize, there are strong references to Kafka’s Der Process and Das Schloss in Meinhold’s novel regarding the existential status of the main protagonists who are struggling with the questions of their place in the world and the degree to which they are free. In addition, the setting and atmosphere of Meinhold’s novel Die Grenze show strong similarities to those in Kafka’s novel Das Schloss.

 

 

Footnotes

[1] Langermann, Martina. “ʻFaust oder Gregor Samsa?’ Kulturelle Tradierung im Zeichen der Sieger.” In: Dahlke, Birgit; Langermann, Martina; Taterka, Thomas (Eds.). LiteraturGesellschaft DDR: Kanonkämpfe und ihre Geschichte(n). Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000, pp. 173-213, p. 175.

[2] Ibid, p. 178.

[3] Meinhold, Gottfried. Die Grenze. Weimar: VDG, 2001. All quotation from this primary source in brackets within the text.

[4] Scheer, Udo. “Prophet und Aussteiger – Habakuks erbarmungslose Selbstbefragung in Edwin Kratschmers Romandebüt Habakuk oder Schatten im Kopf und Gottfried Meinholds Grenzerfahrung.” In: Glossen, http://www.Dickinson.edu/glossen/heft16/scheer.html, 3/1/03.

[5] Zashin, Elliot. “Intersubjectivity in Kafka’s The Trial.” In: Journal of the Kafka Society of Amerika 37-8 (2013-2014), pp. 146-55, p. 146.

[6] See Anderson, Mark. “Where does Kafka belong?” In: Journal of the Kafka Society of America 39 (2015), pp. 149-60, p. 156.

[7] Kratschmer, Edwin. “In Grenzen überleben: Gottfried Meinholds Erzählung Die Grenze.” In: Weimarer Beiträge 47, 2 (2001), pp. 300-02, p. 302.

[8] Kolbe, Uwe. Brecht: Rollenmodell eines Dichters. Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer, 2016, p. 95-96.

[9] Hüseyin, Aarak. “Die Analyse der Parabel vor dem Gesetz.” In: Journal of International Social Research 3, 10 (2010), pp. 61-66, p. 65.

[10] Kolbe, Brecht, p. 96.

[11] Becher, Johannes R. “Forum der Nation. Deutsches Kulturgespräch. Rede auf dem ersten deutschen Kulturkongreß in Leipzig am 16.5.1951.” In: Becher, Johannes R. Publizistik III, 1946-1951. Berlin: Aufbau, 1979, p. 555.

[12] Weinberg, Manfred. “Die versäumte Suche nach einer verlorenen Zeit: Anmerkungen zur ersten Liblice-Konferenz.” In: Höhne, Steffen; Udolph, Ludger (Eds.). Franz Kafka: Wirkung und Wirkungsverhinderung. Köln: Böhlau, 2014: 238-57. 209-35, p. 215.

[13] Langermann, Faust, p. 176.

[14] Lange, Bernd-Lutz. Mauer, Jeans und Prager Frühling. Leipzig: Gustav Kiepenheuer, 2003, p. 293.

[15] Haring, Ekkehard W. “Produktive Missverständnisse. Zur Kafka-Rezeption in der DDR zwischen 1968 und 1989.” In: Höhne, Steffen; Udolph, Ludger (Eds.). Franz Kafka: Wirkung und Wirkungsverhinderung. Köln: Böhlau, 2014, pp. 238-57, p. 238.

[16] Ibis, p. 242.

[17] Bock, Sigrid. “Anna Seghers liest Kafka.” In: Weimarer Beiträge 30 (1984), pp. 900-15, p. 905.

[18] Haring, “Missverständnisse,” p. 238.

[19] Ibid., p. 244.

[20] Ibid., p. 249.

[21] Winnen, Angelika. Kafka-Rezeption in der Literatur der DDR. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006, p. 117.

 

 

Works Cited

Anderson, Mark. “Where does Kafka belong?” In: Journal of the Kafka Society of America 39 (2015), pp. 149-60.

Becher, Johannes R. “Forum der Nation. Deutsches Kulturgespräch. Rede auf dem ersten deutschen Kulturkongreß in Leipzig am 16.5.1951.” In: Becher, Johannes R. Publizistik III, 1946-1951. Berlin: Aufbau, 1979.

Bock, Sigrid. “Anna Seghers liest Kafka.” In: Weimarer Beiträge 30 (1984), pp. 900-15.

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