[In the following review of Die fünfte Grundrechenart, Bullivant explores Hein's views regarding the impact of the German Democratic Republic on German literature.]

This volume, arguably more than any other individual work, brings home to us just how fast things German have moved in a little over two years. In 1990 Hein was very much center stage in German intellectual and literary life: he was one of the most outspoken writers in the events of the autumn of 1989, his novel Der Tangospieler and his play Die Ritter der Tafelrunde had just appeared and were the subjects of lively debate, and in May 1990 he received the first Erich Fried Prize. Since then little has been seen or heard of him, and his works are no longer available in the Luchterhand imprint. The return of the rights to his and other ex-GDR writers' works to the Aufbau Verlag has, in turn, precipitated a very real financial crisis for the West German publisher which specialized in the marketing of GDR literature and had such great commercial success in the early eighties with Christa Wolf's Kassandra and Hein's Drachenblut (cf. Die Zeit, 1.3.1992).

The collection of texts in this volume is somewhat eclectic and includes pieces on Benjamin and Arno Schmidt, a “laudatio” in honor of Max Frisch, a speech on the occasion of Tucholsky's 100th birthday, and a piece on Stalinism in the GDR dedicated to Gustav Just, the former Assistant Editor of Sonntag and one of the victims of the show trial against “Janka und andere.” The interesting core is represented by a series of speeches, interviews, and articles made between 1987 and the end of 1989 (one of which appeared in the New York Times' Sunday Magazine under the title “East Berlin Diary” [12.17.1989]). These are all marked by a brave and unambiguous stand against what Hein felt to be wrong in the GDR and which also are so revealing about the latter days of that state and the hopes and aspirations of intellectuals like Hein for it.

The common theme of these speeches, even before the first unrest in the summer of 1989, is Hein's belief in the reformability of the state. He had understanding for those who could no longer tolerate life there, but he counted himself as one of those determined to stay, “um diese Gesellschaft zu verändern und zu verbessern” (p. 172). He was convinced, he said in an interview with Der Spiegel in October 1989, that the general feeling in the country was that the mere removal of socialism would be “zu wenig,” that there was a consensus among reformist groups, intellectuals, and the people that socialism could be changed and democratized. This belief in the possibility of a new socialist order also set the tone of an interview with the Berliner Zeitung in early November, in which he asserted that “Veränderung der Produktionsverhältnisse, der Eigentumsverhältnisse … steht überhaupt nicht zur Debatte” (p. 190). This confidence undoubtedly gave him the courage to take a firm line against the old guard in his work in the commission investigating brutality against demonstrators in October 1989, despite the knowledge that “wenn sie die alte Macht wieder in ihre Hände bekommen, werden sie sich mit uns beschäftigen” (p. 206). Perhaps the most unambiguous indication of his commitment to the way of life in the GDR was his belief, in spite of those instances of brutality, in the desirability and the possibility of “die Organe der Staatssicherheit in ihrer gewiβ nicht einfachen Arbeit” once again being respected by the people, notwithstanding the narrow escape from “die chinesische Lösung” on the streets of Leipzig (p. 192).

In a letter to the Rowohlt-Verlag in late November 1989 Hein claimed with some modesty that “die Intellektuellen haben in den vergangenen Jahren einen kleinen Beitrag geleistet, um zu diesen Veränderungen zu gelangen” (p. 210). They were now playing their part in “ein sehr gewagtes Experiment”—the attempt to build a socialist society. This, he maintained, “könnte dann für die vom Western derzeit gewünschte Wiedervereinigung eine brauchbare und zukunftsweisende Grundlage abgeben.” The formulation does, however, betray a certain shifting of ground, in that only weeks before he had been maintaining that there was no desire in the GDR for reunification. There followed another cautionary note, the first recognition of the impact of what was happening on the streets of Berlin: “Wenn wir scheitern, friβt uns McDonald.” The gulf between the utopian hopes of Hein and other reformist intellectuals and the interests of “the people,” who had been encouraged on November 4 on the Alexanderplatz to dictate the course of change, was quickly becoming apparent. On December 4, 1989 Der Spiegel published Stefan Heym's “Aschermittwoch in der DDR,” in which he bemoaned his fellow citizens” storming of the “Grabbeltische” in the West, and itself asked in a leading article, “Bleibt die Avantgarde zurück?” arguing that, despite the demonstration on the Alexanderplatz, writers in the GDR had never taken a leading role in political debate along the Czechoslovakian model. The consensus of which Hein had spoken with such confidence but weeks before was now clearly gone, if it had ever existed at all: in his speech in honor of Max Frisch, given in Düsseldorf on December 13, he now said that while the decisive battle against the archdragon of the old state had been won, the one for the future course of the state had yet to be decided: “Aber schon lauern andere Gefahren auf uns, andere Drachen, friedlichere, buntere, die uns groβen Konsum verheiβen, und die um so verlockender sind, als sie lange Entbehrtes anzubieten haben” (p. 228). This world, represented by the old Federal Republic, he regarded as an undesirable “Ellbogengesellschaft, die auf Kosten der sogenannten zweiten und dritten Welt lebt, die auf Kosten der Nachfahren, der eigenen Kinder lebt. … (p. 228).

By March 1990 the struggle had been decisively lost, Hein was facing the inevitability not of reunification, but of the “Einverleibung der DDR” (p. 130). That defeat clearly does not have quite the impact for a writer of Hein's generation (b. 1944) that it has for, say, Christa Wolf (b. 1929) or Stefan Heym (b. 1913), for whom the loss of a socialist utopian hope means, he feels, “throwing away” his life (cf. Die Zeit, 12.6.1990). However, although there is no longer the alternative that presented itself in 1945 (socialism), the situation for writers in the East like Hein and those in the West who dislike the way unification took place is not dissimilar to that of the new generation of writers that emerged after the Second World War in West Germany. The alienation from the values of the state that marked the writing of “post-war German literature,” as Frank Schirrmacher understands it, could well be passed on to a new generation, if only as a “negative utopia.” One possible sign of that was Hein's cynical “Wir haben Angst zu verarmen” an attack on the materialism and racial intolerance of the Federal Republic that is in keeping with his viewing it as an “Ellbogengesellschaft.” Another possible consequence of German developments, but one pulling in a different direction, was also suggested by Hein in Die fünfte Grundrechenart and is, surprisingly, very much in line with polemical views expressed by Frank Schirrmacher, Ulrich Greiner, and Karl Heinz Bohrer in the last two years. He felt that literature in the GDR had been forced by the socio-political situation and censorship into becoming an informative counter discourse, whether writers liked that or not. Freedom from those shackles could, he claimed, bring about a situation in which “Kunst wieder auf ihre eigentlichen Aufgaben zurückgeführt [wird]. Langfristig wird eine Entlastung von Literatur stattfinden” (p. 193). The confusion and bitter wrangling that mark much of discussion about the immediate past of—particularly East—German literature offers little in the way of clues as to whether this possibility might come about. Heym claimed in Die fünfte Grundrechenart that it would take three generations, and all the signs are that he might well be right.