Sozialistischer Realismus

Sozialistischer Realismus, the official form of literary realism of the DDR (see Deutsche Demokratische Republik). Its main objectives were contained in the terms Parteilichkeit, Volksverbundenheit, and Geschichtsbewußtsein, which must be seen in the context of re-education, the prime concern of DDR cultural policy in the 1950s and 1960s.

Socialist realism was designed to induce a spirit of optimism within the framework of SED ideology and social and economic developments. A focal notion was that of the ‘positive hero’, who serves the community and displays an affirmative attitude to the vicissitudes of life, the scope of which is narrowed down by excluding any morbid aspects. The official organ for writers in the DDR was the Schriftstellerverband, headed by a committee and a president (from 1978 Hermann Kant). A notable variant was the so-called Bitterfeld experiment (abandoned by the 1970s), a policy adopted at the first writers' conference in 1959 at Bitterfeld, the aim of which was a closer co-ordination between writers and workers. Products of this experiment are known as Ankunfts-literatur (after a story by Brigitte Reimann). (See Bitterfelder Weg.)DDR socialist realism was modelled on Soviet policy as practised in Russia and other communist countries. As propounded under the influence of M. Gorky in 1934 at the First Congress for Soviet writers, this policy attempted to define the role of ‘realistic’ literature in the context of the socialist revolution, which K. Marx had envisaged, but which even among his followers had lacked coherence. The then current debate on realism included reassessments of Heine (works written during the revolutionary period) and Th. Mann's Buddenbrooks, as well as Brecht, whose theatre was considered to be too experimental and indebted to the West. The aim was to draw a clear line between bourgeois literature, including that engaging in social and politically orientated criticism, and literature that was uniformly committed to communist objectives. Johannes R. Becher was among German writers, who, during their exile in Russia, adjusted to the new style, and whose approach to tradition corresponds to Soviet/DDR policy styled Erbe.