[O]ffers a highly convincing and much-needed insight into the context in which better- and lesser-known authors in East(ern) Germany worked.
MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW
Brockmann impresses with the density and depth of his analyses, illuminating in new ways the complex cultural-political fabric of the postwar years. . . . [A] major contribution to GDR and postwar scholarship.
GERMAN ... Read moreSTUDIES REVIEW
[N]ot just suspenseful to read and impressive due to its wealth of new material and ideas, but it is also a central study, particularly because of its success in demonstrating the necessity for and productivity of reexamining views that became dominant in the 1990s.
WEIMARER BEITRÄGE
This book represents an important resource for scholars working on East German literature and its relation to historical and political events in the immediate post-war period.
FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES
Brockmann's study lucidly demonstrates that East German literary culture in the 1940s and 50s was indeed full of public discussion about the direction of East German literature and that writers' voices were raised and heard. . . . Brockmann's contention that GDR literature was always offering a thorough treatment of the fallout of Nazism and the Holocaust is utterly compelling. . . . a study that will be necessary reading for future research that looks to the East German literary culture of this period . . . .
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES
[This] book is the best work in English to date on the role of intellectuals in the first decade and half of the GDR.
CHOICE
The value of the study lies above all in its feat of synthesis. It concentrates on a period whose analysis has not yet been undertaken with this level of thoroughness. . . . A consistently exciting read. . . .
ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR GERMANISTIK
This book is a must for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the complexity of early East German culture and to gain a better understanding of how intellectual and literary endeavor . . . became the vital cornerstone of a 'writers' state.
BRECHT YEARBOOK
Offers a much-needed look at the context in which authors in East(ern) Germany lived and worked-and at their 'state' of mind-in the early post-war years. . . . Brockmann's impressive breadth of knowledge and clear writing style make this book an invaluable contribution for scholars and students alike.
MONATSHEFTE
Overall, Brockmann's study is an impressively multilayered and, in its multiperspectival method, impressively insightful account of early GDR literature. It positions itself resolutely against a careless forgetting of history in the literary study of the two Germanys.
Franz Fromholzer
PHILOLOGIE IM NETZ
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