Writing in Red: The East German Writers Union and the Role of Literary Intellectuals

This book explores how the East German Writers Union became a site for the contestation of writers' roles in GDR society with consequences well beyond the literary community.



In the German Democratic Republic words and ideas mattered, both for legitimizing and criticizing the regime. No wonder, then, that the ruling SED party created a Writers Union to mold what writers publicly wrote and said. Its chief task was ideological: creating a socialist and antifascist culture. But it was also supp...