The Politics of Reception Theory in the GDR

BATHRICK 125 DAVID BATHRICK THE POLITICS OF RECEPTION THEORY IN THE GDR From its very beginnings, Marxist literary criticism in the German Democratic Republic has been marked by a rigorous adherence to the policies developed in the Soviet Union during the 1930s and an even stronger aversion to ideas and impulses from the West. While this was particularly true for the period immediately following its founding in 1949, such orthodoxy continues even after de-Stalinization. When in the early 1960s Czech theorists returned to the writings of structuralist Jan Mukarovsky in an attempt to develop an historical materialist aesthetic more sensitive to the unique historical development of literary forms,1 critics of the GDR held firmly to the tenets ofa "classical" Sociahst Realism, with its emphasis upon the genesis ofa work and upon the primacy of extra-literary causal determinants for its creation. This orthodoxy was again in evidence in 1963, when Communists from all over the world met in Liblice, Czechoslovakia for a reassessment of Franz Kafka and the notion of literary modernism. In the absence of a Soviet delegation at the conference, Klaus Hermsdorf and Helmut Richter of the GDR stood manifestly alone in their defense of the anti-modernist doctrines as articulated by Karl Radek at the 1934 Soviet Writers'Congress.2 Of course, there are historical and political reasons for this. The issue at Liblice was not just Kafka or literary modernism, but alienation under Socialism. The notion that Kafka's vision might have grasped the deformed character of contemporary bureaucracy an sich was seen to threaten the justification of existing socialist systems as necessary stages in the transition to Communism. SimUarly, the refusal by GDR critics to countenance literary experimentation was not simply a matter of literary taste or the result of an exercise in deductive reasoning. Rather taste and reasoning themselves have been rooted in and shaped by the entire struggle of this second German state to maintain itself as legitimate heir to the true German tradition. Saddled with an imported revolution and held in constant comparison to the economic miracle of the other Germany, the GDR has been particularly vulnerable and hence resistent to the cultural currents from the West; thus particularly reliant upon its link to the traditions of the Soviet Union. The field of literary criticism has been one of the arenas of this struggle. WhUe this literary cold war has been especially apparent in the relations between the two Germanies, there are recent indications that the situation is changing. Reasons for this may be traced to developments and upheavals within both societies. The politicization of West German universities since 126 MINNESOTA REVIEW 1968 has seen the development of neo-Marxist and neo-orthodox Marxist writings which can no longer be ignored or unilaterally dismissed as was done with New Criticism in the 1950s.3 Within the GDR itself there has been a persistent and growing call for cultural policy attuned to the interests and needs of the society in which it functions.4 The Brecht-Lukács debate and the discussions around the problem of literary heritage represent the beginnings of internal change and of a real dialogue between East and West. The more recent publication of a major collective work dealing with structuralism and reception theory is an important continuation of this process. Gesellschaft Literatur Lesen5 (Society Literature Reading), subtitled "the reception of literature viewed theoreticaUy," represents the most coherent and ambitious attempt from within the orthodox position to take issue with but also to appropriate "bourgeois" theories of reception for a Marxist aesthetic. Although its inception may be seen as a response to a number of new currents in contemporary critical thought, one work in particular stands out as its antecedent and catalyst. The publication of Hans Robert Jauss's Literaturgeschichte als Provokation6 in 1967 has challenged Marxists and New Critics alike to rethink the limitations of an older aesthetic based on "production and depiction." As a German-speaking Swiss scholar of Romance literatures , who himself had been active in the struggle against Fascism, Jauss seemed ideologically and geo-ethnically suited to the task of mediating between French Structuralism on the one hand and the Marxist, phenomonological and...