“THEN YOU GET ON THE PLANE AND HEAD WEST, YOU JUST GO WEST, THAT IS HOW EVERYBODY HAS DONE IT …”: THE TRAVEL TOPOS IN POST-UNIFICATION GERMAN LITERATURE Regina Weiss Faculty Sponsor: Barbara Mabee Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Oakland University

Abstract After forty years of separation, Germany was reunited after the fall of the Berlin Wall during the night of November 9th, 1989. The swift reunification was implemented in a wave of euphoria even though many citizens in Eastern and Western Germany had not welcomed it. Citizens in both parts of Germany were confronted with a new culture and life-style but for Eastern Germans the quest for their lost identity was especially intense. In a representative selection of the “Postwende -Literature” I analyze texts by Angela Krauß Die Überfliegerin (1995), Jens Sparschuh Der Zimmerspringbrunnen (1995), Uwe Timm Johannisnacht (1996) und Claudia Rusch Meine freie deutsche Jugend (2003). Travel becomes the “Topos” of discovery of a new world and the search for a new identity. The protagonists experience a transformation from a state of paralysis to a state of self reflection and self identification on their necessary and often grotesque and humorous voyages. Through a fine lens of observation the authors show us in a satirical way the miscommunication between Eastern and Western Germans and a prevailing sense of disorientation and chaos. The plots in the texts also portray the distrust brought about by the socio cultural changes in either society. After all, subsequent to the separation for forty years two different cultures should become one again.

The night of November 9, 1989 was the night of the peaceful revolution and the night of the biggest euphoria in Germany’s history. The Berlin Wall fell and Germany was united after 40 years of separation. Inspired by Glasnot and Perestroika, concepts for political reform and renewal, a grass roots

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movement had developed in the eighties in East Germany, which finally led to the opening of the GDR (German Democratic Republic) to the West. Even though many citizens in East and West Germany had not supported unification, it was carried out in less than a year, on October 3.1990. According to Konrad Jarausch, “only one of the two states collapsed and the other in effect took over the former’s territory, imposing its own system on the loser” (Jarausch 11). As a result, however, a long phase of uncertainty and disorientation set in among the citizens in eastern Germany, a term that replaces East Germany after unification. Unanticipated social and cultural changes in the new Germany sent citizens from both sides of the borders on the search for a joint history and a new German identity. This collective search for a new national identity followed decades of long separation between two separate German states. Germany had been split into four zones of occupation after World War II in 1945. In the Russian zone, private property was confiscated and the industry was nationalized. The German Communist Party (KPD) and the German Socialist Party (SPD) were merged as the new Socialist Party (SED). The new state of the GDR (German Democratic Republic) was founded on October 7, 1949. The travel ban for citizens from West Berlin to the Eastern part of the city took effect in June 1952. From that point on the East German society was militarized through the establishment of the State Security Service or for short “Stasi”. The constant stream of refugees from East to West Berlin was finally brought to an end when the Berlin Wall was erected on August 13, 1961. From then on the travel possibilities for East Germans were brutally restricted. As a result, the travel permit was limited to East Germany and other socialist or Eastern countries. Consequently, the next twenty eight years were the years of separation from families and friends in West Berlin, the rest of Germany and the free world as such. Therefore, for many East-Germans travel became a symbol for freedom, individuality and selfdetermination. Subsequently after the fall of the wall a new kind of literature emerged, the so called PostUnification Literature. It turned out to be the voice of authors from eastern and western Germany who expressed what many thousands of people felt on both sides. These authors have explored the new cultural landscape which still reverberates in peoples’ minds. In a representative selection of PostUnification Literature, I analyze the travel topos as a means of rediscovery of the lost identity and lost

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ways of life. In the selected literature, travel is often a beginning to a new life and an initiation for personal transformation. I analyze texts by Angela Krauß, Die Überfliegerin (1995, The continent crosser); Jens Sparschuh, Der Zimmerspringbrunnen (1995, The room fountain); Uwe Timm, Johannisnacht (1996, Midsummer Night) and Claudia Rusch, Meine freie deutsche Jugend (2003, My free German youth1). Rusch’s text is a reference and play on words on The Free German Youth – Freie Deutsche Jugend – or FDJ. This organization was the communist youth movement between the ages of 14 and 25, which was indoctrinated by the state to become loyal citizens and committed to the state and the Socialist Unity Party. In all four texts under discussion in this paper, unification causes the protagonists to undergo a transformation from a state of paralysis to a state of self-reflection and self-identification through their necessary and often grotesque and humorous travel experiences.  

The female protagonist in Angela Krauß’ The continent crosser, experiences a personal

transformation on her travel from the East to the West and back again via Russia. Traveling by plane becomes a fantastic motif of exploration of the inner self. On the course of her trip she leads us through inner monologues into a world of changing realities and adventures in the fantastic literary mode. She uncovers her anxieties and is able to reconstruct herself at the end of her journey. Also Jens Sparschuh’s protagonist Hinrich Lobek in The room fountain, has to undertake a trip to conquer his imprisonment in his apartment, which he refers to as a “cave”. Sparschuh is sending him on his self identification trip initiated by a newspaper advertisement. Humor and satire as well as a good portion of self criticism depict the author’s view of the disposition of the German people and the need of East Germans for self-reconstruction. In Midsummer Night, the author Uwe Timm gives his protagonist the position of a neutral observer. However, bodily distorted by a haircut he becomes a grotesque and ridiculed figure on both sides of the previously divided city. On his quest for a potato archive that includes eastern and western Berlin, he experiences what has often been referred to as “the existence of the wall in the minds or heads of the people.” Claudia Rusch tells us in her witty and entertaining autobiographical

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All translated titles and quotations from unpublished German texts into English are my own 

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story how she was affected by the travel restrictions of the former GDR. Her memoir My free German youth, conveys her desire to travel and her images and day dreams of a world outside of the Berlin Wall. For a majority of the writers coping with the loss of their home country and identity happens through retrospection and reflection, often in a humorous and satirical manner. Thus, Claudia Rusch in My free German youth describes her mother’s longing, “ to travel to Sweden by boarding the big white ship in the distance.” This longing is also felt by the first person narrator when she states, “[…] likewise for me, Sweden was a fairy tale land, an enchanted place. A place, we were not allowed to go to,[…]” (Rusch 9). To feel the intensity to be imprisoned, not to be able to travel as you please, “comes close to a loss of consciousness, a feeling this white ship triggers in her over and over again.” (Rusch 15). Travel becomes for the narrator a symbol of a personal and a cultural revolution. In contrast, after the fall of the Berlin wall, travel turned out to be a great disappointment for her. Her first trip to France, the country of her dreams, turns out to be an unnoticed and unspectacular event. She travels by car at night with her friend across the border and finds the boarder-patrol station deserted. She remembers, “I was fascinated and shocked at the same time. Not only that the most defining moment in my life goes by unnoticed, I did not even receive the official French immigration seal in my passport.”(Rusch 80). After all, in her imagination, travel was always the path to a better and more colorful world. Angela Krauß’ protagonist in The continent crosser experiences her travel into the West differently. Although, she too grows up with the desire to travel, she lives through a metamorphosis of expansion of her consciousness on her “poetic dream- and memory-travel.” (Mabee 1). She undertakes a week-long trip towards America, which is interrupted by short stops at friends’ homes. This journey from the East to the West and back depicts her inner transformation from self-doubt to self-discovery. The starting point for this travel is her apartment near the central railway station in Leipzig. The train station becomes, similar to Jens Sparschuh’s The room fountain, a turning point for new pathways. One night the protagonist in The continent crosser finds herself in her apartment room across the central railway station, looking out of the window, realizing, “[…] everything out there is standing in a strange world.”(Krauß 10). She becomes conscious of her inability to act and thus the years of her paralysis are over. The wall paper in her room stands for her past and she is starting to peel away these layers of her

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past. She takes in the reality around her,” Everybody around me is already taking action.”(Krauß 11). She is letting go of her old memories and there is no space for her partner either. She has to let him go too, she says to herself, ” Our love has not been touched yet by our future, our love has not been found yet by our future, […].”(Krauß 31). Also expressed in Barbara Mabee’s essay on this text, the protagonist’s search for identity is illustrated by literary styles of modernism such as montage, stream of consciousness, and inner monologue (Mabee 1). In such inner monologues we learn about Krauß’ protagonist’s willingness to travel, but also of her inner fear to travel by plane, from Krauß’ text, “ My future is roaming the world out there”(Krauß 11). Despite her inner fear, she boards a plane to America, where her future awaits her. She flies towards sun down only to arrive at sun rise in a new world. Like in a dream she is being carried through the universe, “ I did nothing do end this flight “( Krauß 59). On stops of her trip through the United States, she experiences the diversity of nature as well as new societal structures. Her flight is a dream-like experience for her and the first few nights she lies awake in the new continent thinking about her change of places, and ” I left one earth and entered a new one”(Krauß 61). She encounters new people and new creatures, among them a blue bird which stands for the transcendence of her travel experiences as in the Romanticism of the 19th century. She continues to travel towards the West, from Twin City in Minneapolis to San Francisco. She keeps on going until she arrives in the East again. Therefore, the protagonist is able to gain a distant view from her old life through her journey that contains realistic, fantastic, and surrealistic elements. She encourages her fellowcitizens to go on such inner journeys. She concludes, the old has to be analyzed in order for new forms of life to be possible. Jens Sparschuh’s The room fountain shows parallels to Krauß’ text by setting the stage for the protagonist’s inner journey and his inner growth beginning in his apartment. Hinrich Lobek the main character, who has hardly left his apartment since the fall of the wall is a jobless former agent for the communal housing administration, which was clearly under the auspices and control of the Stasi. His trip by train, unlike the poetic travel of The continent crosser, turns out to become a confrontation with the new socio-political reality. Three years after the fall of the wall, he his is still not able to take action and

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realizes his slow decline, “The social circles in which I have lived have had become increasingly smaller in the last few years” (Sparschuh 10). Also his actions demonstrate the same routines and actions in which he was engaged in the former GDR. He is still writing in his journal, however this time he is recording observations about his wife along the lines of a Stasi report. While she is able to adapt to the new times and is successful in her profession, he gets stuck in their apartment. After three years of miscommunication with his wife, his small apartment turns into the inner life of an animal. His hobby room is the intellectual space where he can be still creative. As for the rest of the apartment he feels already dissolved,” According to this my hobby room was the intellectual head quarter, the brain of the apartment. And this is how it was! Because, as soon as I left my hobby room and lay down on the sofa looking out the window, the feeling of being digested came over me”( Sparschuh 12). Despite his state of inner paralysis, he is able to act by answering to a job advertisement in a local paper. Unexpectedly, he receives an invitation to the sales convention of a firm named PANTHA RHEIn which sells room fountains. Sparschuh delineates Lobek’s professional advancement to a miracle worker in sales in his old home country only to be experiencing a downfall shortly afterwards in many different arenas. The author depicts in a humorous self-critical analysis and satirical way the sell-out of the former East Germany to the capitalistic and insatiable West. Moreover, the author offers his readers new views concerning the attitude of westerners towards easterners. Sparschuh’s hilarious story telling gives the readers reason to laugh about this dreadful comical hero who fights like a Parsifal in the western society. The drastic change in his life occurs on the protagonist’s train ride to the High Black Forest where the convention and his training by the company is taking place. The symbolic name of the train, ” train to hell valley” , mirrors his inner state of mind. It is a ride to the unknown and to the unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that the name of the train station where he gets off is, ” kingdom of heaven” , he feels immediately imprisoned. His remarks, ” I was surrounded by mountains. No exit” ( Sparschuh 24). It is the first time that he has arrived in the West and he feels like a prisoner again. The intertextuality is illustrated by the quotation of the famous poem “ The Roman fountain” by the Swiss writer Conrad Ferdinand Meyer,

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which underlines the title of the novel and the fact that Lobek when listening to the recitation of the poem thinks back to his lonesome mornings in his apartment, ” I see myself…. in the mornings at home wandering through his apartment, whistling my morning song ….. watering my flowers, the water was flowing …. and it made me very quiet, totally calm”(Sparschuh 30). In this way the room fountain was something Lobek could personally relate to and somehow explains, among other facts, his swift advancement as the unsurpassed sales man from East Berlin. However, his professional success is short lived because at the same time his marriage is falling apart. Yet, there is hope at the end of the novel that there will be a new and better life on the horizon: He decides to spend his Christmas at the railway station in hopes that he will see his wife as she is boarding a train on her customary visit to her mother over the Christmas holidays. Many trains are arriving and leaving. The protagonist is waiting for his new chance. Just like in Angela Krauß’ The continent crosser, the train station becomes a juncture for new possibilities and for a fresh beginning for the protagonist. In contrast, the travel of the protagonist in Uwe Timm’s Midsummer Night portrays for the reader the bewilderment and disorientation of the citizens in Berlin after unification. Uwe Timm, a West German, depicts the everyday life of the united city of Berlin as a humorous and satirical kaleidoscope. Through a horribly damaging haircut in East Berlin, his protagonist becomes a grotesque and ridiculed figure and, therefore, as a socially marginalized person, a neutral observer of events in Berlin. During three adventurous, exciting, and chaotic days in June 1995, the same days when the Reichstag was wrapped by the American artists Christo and his wife Jeann-Claude, the protagonist experiences the Midsummer Night in Berlin together with the millions of visitors who were in the city. The main character in the story is an author who has been experiencing a writer’s block for quite some time. At his lowest point he gets an offer from a publisher to write an article about the ordinary potato, a staple in the German diet. For this reason his trip is rather subtle and provides unexpectedly an opportunity for the protagonist to pursue his search of his lost identity. He flies to Berlin and once there he travels back and forth between the formerly divided city. On his odyssey and in pursuit of finding the potato archive, he gains insights into the true face of the westerners and likewise into the habits of the easterners and foreigners in the city. As the critic Welsh remarks, ” Most western Germans have seen

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little reason to adjust their identity but, likewise, the experience of unification has heightened the differences between eastern and western Germans” (Welsh 108). Uwe Timm portrays exactly these differences of identities and sensibilities in a very amusing way without moralizing them. In conclusion, it can be said, that many authors from the East as well as from the West were depicting the new life style in a united Germany and the up-rootedness and loss of identity of Easterners through fiction and sometimes autobiographical texts. Writers from both parts of Germany, have focused on eastern Germans’ need to come to terms with their past under an oppressive regime and to face the challenges of their transformation. The German scholar Katharina Gerstenberger addresses these issues in her analysis of transitions in the new German society, ” As German identity after 1989 must define itself in a global context, literary texts probe the specificity as well as commonalities of subject positions, allowing individual, social, ethnic, gender, and national identities to rub against one another. Identity becomes textual rather than solely biographical or biological” ( Gerstenberger 154). The coming to terms with the past is not just about individual stories and the loss of identities but it is also about confrontation with the cruelties of a repressive and dictatorial political regime with no respect for human rights. The humor and the satire in literary texts allow a venting of frustration over the oppression and the intolerance and injustice of a political system. However, the agony and death of many citizens by this inhuman regime cannot be laughed away and taken lightly. I chose the travel topos not only to illustrate the undertaking of a trip as a means to reconstruct oneself, but also to reveal what travel in the GDR meant. The evolving picture of the white ferry in Claudia Rusch’s My free German youth describes this feeling of enclosure in a very serious manner, ” … and I thought about my feeling of hopelessness when I thought about that white ship. I thought about that feeling, I felt excluded from the world, imprisoned and forgotten in the East” (Rusch 15). For Rusch it was a looking back to her childhood and a coming to terms with it. In contrast, in Angela Krauß’ text, travel becomes for her protagonist the medium to rediscover and accept who she is. During her tour across the continent she is finding her inner self, ” I was part of a global diversity, I had never imagined” (Krauß 85). Furthermore, she is warning us of an ostentatious , superior attitude, and overstimulation in western society that will lead to losing one’s inner self.

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While Rusch’s perspective is an autobiographical one, Jens Sparschuh presents us with a fictive first-person narrator in his book The room fountain. Sparschuh’s narrator Lobek lives through difficult transitions in the story. Despite his desperate situation on account of his loss of employment after unification and the inevitable changes around him, he does not give up. Jens Sparschuh comments about his hero in an interview with Jill Twark, an American Germanist, in Berlin on January 31, 2000, ” …he is an ambivalent character, an ambitious looser who never gives up his fight” (Twark 371). Through the eyes of a neutral observer, who can distance himself from the events, Uwe Timm presents us in Midsummer Night with the search for self definition and a new beginning in a textual, along the lines of Gerstenberger’s definition of identity, rather than biographical way. The common denominator of these books is the quest for self-definition after the experience of chaos, transitions, and ideological trauma as experienced by many people after reunification. These four well known authors express in their texts personal and political implications of their search for a new Germany with a new Germaness. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall the quest is not over yet.

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Bibliographie Gerstenberger, Katharina. "Transitions: Form and Performance after 1989." German Literature in a New Century. Eds. Gerstenberger Katharina and Herminghouse Patricia. Berghahn Books, 2008. Konrad, Jarausch H ed. "After Unity: Reconfiguring German Identities." Vol. 2. Reshaping German Identities: Reflection on the Post-Unification Debate. Berghahn Books, 1997. Krauß, Angela. Die Überfliegerin. Frankfurt Am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1995. Mabee, Barbara. "Das Weltbild korrigieren. Nachdenkliche Fortsetzung der Fahrt": Angela Krauß‘ poetisierte Amerikareisen als Umdenkprozesse und Aufbrüche zu neuen Lebensmustern." Glossen Sonderausgabe/Special Issue. 2004. Dickinson. 27 Jan. 2009 . Rusch, Claudia. Meine freie deutsche Jugend. 2nd ed. Frankfurt Am Main: S.Fischer Verlag, 2007. Sparschuh, Jens. Der Zimmerspringbrunnen. 13th ed. Köln: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1995. Timm, Uwe. Johannisnacht. 7th ed. Köln: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1996. Twark, Jill E. Humor,Satire,and Identity. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007. Welsh, Helga A., Andreas Pickel, and Dorothy Rosenberg. "East and West German Identities: United and Divided?" After Unity: Reconfiguring German Identities. Ed. Konrad H. Jarausch. Berghan Books,1997.

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