{"id":5559,"date":"2017-12-22T14:05:14","date_gmt":"2017-12-22T19:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/?page_id=5559"},"modified":"2017-12-31T14:45:42","modified_gmt":"2017-12-31T19:45:42","slug":"5559-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/archive\/glossen-43-2017-current-issue\/5559-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Rezension: Sagen, was ist! J\u00fcrgen Fuchs zwischen Interpretation, Forschung und Kritik"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Carol Anne Costabile-Heming<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ernest Kuczy\u0144ski, ed. Sagen, was ist! J\u00fcrgen Fuchs zwischen Interpretation, Forschung und Kritik. Dresden: Neisse Verlag, 2017.<\/p>\n

Volume 42 of Glossen<\/em>, which appeared in December 2016, contained a text by Utz Rachowski entitled \u201cJ\u00fcrgen Fuchs kommt nach Polen,\u201d the opening speech of the J\u00fcrgen Fuchs conference held in Breslau (Wroc\u0142aw), Poland in November 2016. Sagen, was ist! J\u00fcrgen Fuchs zwischen Interpreation, Forschung und Kritik<\/em> is the compilation of contributions from that conference. It offers a multi-faceted perspective on the life, works, and lasting impact of the late writer, dissident, psychologist, civil rights and political activist J\u00fcrgen Fuchs (1950-1999). The volume is divided into three sections: (I) \u201c\u00dcber Grenzen hinweg\u201c; (II) \u201eErfahrungsraum Diktatur\u201c; and (III) \u201eZwischen Literatur und Politik.\u201c The conference organizer and volume editor, Ernest Kuczy\u0144ski explains in the introduction that F\u00fcchs\u2019s legacy focuses primarily on his activity as a dissident and oppositionist to the detriment of his role as a writer of poetry, documentary and fictional prose, a circumstance \u201cwas wiederum die heutige Auseinandersetzung mit seiner Literatur beeintr\u00e4chtigt\u201d (13). The volume\u2019s stated goal is to highlight Fuchs\u2019s literary works. Nonetheless, many of the authors do not disassociate the aesthetics from Fuchs\u2019s political activity.<\/p>\n

The essays in the first section situate Fuchs within a larger Eastern and Western European context. Essays on Fuchs\u2019s life and writing in West Berlin along with an examination of the dissidents Fuchs, Wolf Biermann, and Robert Havemann as reform communists summarize Fuchs\u2019s biography, but do not necessarily add any new details or insights. Other essays, however, examine Fuchs\u2019s work as dissident and as writer from the perspective of other nations, particularly Romania, Poland, France and the former CSSR. These contributions shed light on the ways that political criticism and literary engagement differed under various dictatorships, while simultaneously underscoring the common vision that was shared by dissidents across the Eastern Bloc countries. While some of the authors examine Fuchs\u2019s poetry, many underscore the importance of Fuchs\u2019s Ged\u00e4chtnisprotokolle <\/em>and Vernehmungsprotokolle<\/em> as underground handbooks of resistance.<\/p>\n

The second section begins with an essay by Kuczy\u0144ski entitled \u201cErfahrung, Erinnerung, Zeugenschaft. J\u00fcrgen Fuchs und die Literarisierung des Erlebten.\u201c Kuczy\u0144ski emphasizes the ways in which Fuchs\u2019s literary texts reflect authentic memories of his experiences in the GDR and West Berlin, repeatedly emphasizing the ways that the narrative voice projects \u201eZeugenschaft.\u201c His essay includes a comprehensive listing (through December 2016) of secondary literature about Fuchs and his literary texts in German, English, and other languages. All of the essays in this section address the way that Fuchs\u2019s writings (both fiction and non-fiction) depict experiences in a dictatorial regime. Noteworthy are essays by Christian Dietrich, who explores the religious aspect of Fuchs\u2019s poetics, Klaus Michael, who clarifies Fuchs\u2019s place (or lack thereof) in the East German literary scene, and Doris Liebermann, who describes the history of a recording made by Fuchs, Gerulf Pannach, and Christian Kunert in October 1976.<\/p>\n

The volume\u2019s final section contains eight essays that focus specifically on the intersection of literature and politics. Three of these focus on Fuchs\u2019s last literary work, the complex portrayal of the Stasi in the \u201cnovel\u201d Magdalena<\/em>. One essay analyzes the poetry volume Tagesnotizen<\/em> and another focuses on Fassonschnitt<\/em>, Fuchs\u2019s novel about the Nationaler Volksarmee. All of these essays contribute nuanced readings of Fuchs\u2019s major literary works, though it is disappointing that the essay writers seem unaware of the research on Fuchs that has been produced in the non-German speaking world.<\/p>\n

Overall, the volume accomplishes the goal which Kuczy\u0144ski set for it: \u201cdie Aufmerksamkeit auf den Schriftsteller J\u00fcrgen Fuchs zu lenken, seine Literatur im akademisch-wissenschaftlichen Umfeld zu verbreiten sowie einen Beitrag zur Etablierung und Belebung der J\u00fcrgen-Fuchs-Forschung zu leisten\u201d (15). It makes an important contribution not just to the body of scholarship on J\u00fcrgen Fuchs, but also to that on literature and dictatorships. The volume\u2019s contributors, many of whom were close personal friends of J\u00fcrgen Fuchs, fear that Fuchs\u2019s literary accomplishments will fall into obscurity. This volume is a first preventive step, and as it highlights the richness of Fuchs\u2019s literary contributions it also exposes the limited treatment that Fuchs\u2019s text have received in discussions of post-Wall literature in general. Perhaps readers of the volume will feel compelled to continue the dialogue with Fuchs\u2019s texts and keep Fuchs\u2019s literary legacy alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Carol Anne Costabile-Heming Ernest Kuczy\u0144ski, ed. Sagen, was ist! J\u00fcrgen Fuchs zwischen Interpretation, Forschung und Kritik. Dresden: Neisse Verlag, 2017. Volume 42 of Glossen, which appeared in December 2016, contained a text by Utz Rachowski entitled \u201cJ\u00fcrgen Fuchs kommt nach Polen,\u201d the opening speech of the J\u00fcrgen Fuchs conference held in Breslau (Wroc\u0142aw), Poland in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":282,"featured_media":0,"parent":5496,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5559","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5559\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}