Complicity, Censorship and Criticism: Negotiating Space in the GDR Literary Sphere

This study offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the cultural history of the German Democratic Republic. It examines the interaction between intellectuals and Party functionaries from a literary and historical perspective, drawing on and comparing archive material, autobiographies and the literary output of the selected authors. Divided into three case studies, the work focuses on the writers Hermann Kant, Stefan Heym and Elfriede Brüning, in the period 1966-1989, and considers in detail the questions of complicity, censorship and criticism in the literary life of the GDR.