He was one of the key enablers of the regime in decay of the GDR. With his poems and his prose, he was the East German authorities to be a thorn in the eye. Later, Kunze met in the FRG with criticism.
You look back to the time when it is in the writers ‘ scene in the GDR, so violently raged, the events from a different era seem to be. Over 40 years later, many young people hard to imagine, that in a part of Germany at that time, the censors were in Power and the Intellectuals, the word prohibited. Cinema and television keep the memories with their many Stasi-films, and mores images from the GDR. But anyone who reads even really the books from the GDR of that time, by authors such as Reiner Kunze, Wolf Biermann or Christa Wolf?
In the Occur quietly, but persistently
Something quite different it is when you’re sitting with one of the former actors. Reiner Kunze celebrates on the 16th. August 85. Birthday. To Kunze, the once the most famous poet of the GDR, it became silent. This may also be associated with its type, and its Occurrence together – then and now. Kunze is a restrained and modest appearing man. The prevented him from a few decades ago, but not to rebel against the injustice of the GDR.
Reiner Kunze and his wife, Elisabeth, 2008
Reiner Kunze was books with his poem, and then especially with his prose sketches, which were published under the title “The wonderful years” in 1976 in the West of Germany, to agree with one of the most important Opposition in the GDR. A year later, they drove him from the country. Kunze went with his wife, from the CSSR root Doctor Elisabeth Littnerová, in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Reiner Kunze: “Not as brave felt”
He was brave? “We have not felt so,” says Kunze today. “It played no role at all in our Thinking, that we are brave.” The reality have it demands that you react. The incursions, which are a came and from which nothing else could be as a poem, which had to be formulated. Kunze told today about this politically turbulent time, from the perspective of the poet. “These ideas came from the reality and from what in the us happened because of this reality.” You can’t just push aside. The thought “have worked and you had to write, and you had to hold out the head”.
Writing to survive – so you could bring it to a common denominator. Kunze would not take this formulation is probably in the mouth. That would be him dramatically. Kunze is a man of quiet sounds. He speaks in a hushed voice. But the words have it all. “I have written very little,” says the Poet in retrospect. But he had never suffered among them, that to him nothing had occurred.
Two different characters
In a few words only – Michael’s poems are mostly very short, and also “The wonderful years” how then spotted a thought – has he upset the Stasi and party bigwigs to the blood. Wolf Biermann, his great comrade-in-arms, was carved from a different wood. Not less brave, but loud and openly provocative, with a guitar equipped and sharp-tongued. Kunze was different: persistent and consistent, uncompromising, and profound. And, above all, independent. When he came in 1977 in the Federal Republic of Germany, he moved to Bavaria, at the time, Franz-Josef-Strauß-Land. Have him taken to the West, some bad.
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Reiner Kunze, 2013 in the DW-Interview
Also be Interview he gave shortly after his Resettlement in the West-TV, met with a criticism – in both the East and West. What he encountered at that time also a lot of sympathizers in front of the head? Kunze recalled in an interview with Deutsche Welle: “I said at the time: ‘From hence, where we come from, and I do not mean the direction of the heavens, but the Regime, as there is no new beginning for mankind is coming’.” The irritated, at the time, many West German Left.
Kunze: “I am a writer of German language”
Friends and supporters had distanced himself, remembers the writer. In West Germany, many intellectuals of a socialism with a human face dreamed. One who called things by their right names, without any romanticizing, to provoke. “I’ve never felt than any of the part of the writer. I am a writer of German language,” says Kunze: His home was of course Germany, but in the first line there, where his wife was – and in the German language.
Deeply impressed by the man and his work: Norbert Lammert
This upright posture has impressed on the other side, to many, even politicians. Kunze is perceived today as one of the great, brave men of the GDR-literature, which have independently been fighting all ideologies for the freedom of the word.
Five years ago, the then President of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert, left, during a ceremony to honor the poet’s act: “Reiner Kunze is someone who reaches me at an early stage and has impressed, and the way he reacts with great personal commitment and at the same time recognizable distance on social realities, to me, very impressed,” says Lammert in the DW-interview.
It happy years followed in the West
For Kunze the year of 1977 was, after he had settled in the South of Germany, near Passau, Germany, for the beginning of a fertile period: “the Creator began most, the happiest years of our lives.” Then, after a small Pause, he adds: “What do you mean, it had been uncomplicated years. They were, they are still complicated.”
Ceremony at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin in 2013 to 80. Birthday: Kunze (2. of R) with speakers and guests
“I have rarely met a person in whom the ideas that I had due to the texts of the people that have confirmed so nearly complete as in this case,” said Norbert Lammert.
It is this inner conviction is power, peace and perseverance that you admire in a conversation with Kunze. If you’re sitting with this man in the German history and its narratives from a seemingly long-past time is listening, then says to feel the breath of history.
The interviews with Reiner Kunze and Norbert Lammert, Jochen Kürten led before 2013, on the occasion of a book presentation in Berlin. Finally, the hour was released by Reiner Kunze: “with yourself. Poems”, S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2018, ISBN 978-3-10-397376-1.