The price of the successful Emancipation in the GDR- Society: the price of life, using the example of Chistoph Hein’s texts The Distant Lover und Mrs. Cover Image

„Der Preis Einer Gelungenen Emanzipation“ in Der Ddr-Gesellschaft: „Der Preis Des Lebens“
The price of the successful Emancipation in the GDR- Society: the price of life, using the example of Chistoph Hein’s texts The Distant Lover und Mrs.

Author(s): Oana Andreea Maria Vieru Gorbănescu
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Universitatea »1 Decembrie 1918« Alba Iulia
Keywords: emancipation; GDR; equality of man and woman; horizon of expectations.

Summary/Abstract: The writer Christoph Hein illustrates in two of his most successful works - the short novel The Distant Lover published in 1983 and the novel Mrs. Paula Trousseau published in 2007, the story of two emancipated women from the GDR [German Democratic Republic] society. Interpreting these novels, whose plots take place under the socialist regime, is difficult for the western reader, who has to separate himself from the horizon of expectations of a non-living-in-the-GDR-citizen, especially since none of them reflect Walter Ulbricht’s promoted Bitterfeld Way nor the print of the dissident’s works. That does not mean they do not treat political, ideological or moral problems, but there is no comment on the events in the east, but a linear representation of various life episodes of singular individuals. The historical events help only on the accuracy of the understanding of the texts. The literary quality wouldn’t be affected even if the action and people would have been taken out of the context of a Western society. The GDR system aimed from the beginning towards the statutory equality of man and woman. The state not only militated in theory for the woman’s rights at work, but it guaranteed them and stood for their factual feasibility. Despite these efforts, the woman was represented in the social, economic and political life to a much lesser extent than their male counterparts. From this point of view, it can be declared that the GDR woman was doing a bit better than Western woman. Both of Christoph Hein’s novels deal with themes that are viewed in a very different light after the political and social events of 1989. Even though the novel Paula Trousseau was written eight years after the fall of the Wall, it maintains the style of the writer in the socialism and is regarded as a chronicle of the GDR. These two novel, although temporally and particularly ideologically different, share the story of successful emancipation and at the same time the price which needed to be paid: the price of life. The gap between ideology and practice have caused also in our daily life sacrifices and conflicts that could not be ignored by literature.

  • Issue Year: 14/2013
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 305-322
  • Page Count: 18
  • Language: German