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The healthcare system of the German Democratic Republic, based on Soviet models, reflected the importance the socialist state assigned the health of both its citizens and of the metaphorical nationalbody meant to represent and promulgate the nation's political vitality. Yet many East German literary writers depicted characters ailing and under medical care, and even after the country's dissolution in 1990, writers who had lived there continued to portray sickness and the GDR healthcare system prominently in their fiction.
This book offers an innovative reading of such texts - both by theGDR's most prominent writer, Christa Wolf, and by younger writers raised in the GDR but active mainly after 1989 - employing historical research on the healthcare system and feminist and queer theoryto get at socialism's legacy. It develops a new approach to East German literature that underscores the impact of forty years of Marxist-Leninist thought on post-GDR poetics. Intertwining aestheticswith politics, the book employs the Foucauldian concept of the "symptomatic body," in this case a female character's body on which historical and political events inscribe physical or psychological illness, in so doing revealing a specifically East German literary convention: employment of such "symptomatic bodies" to either enforce or rebel against political and social norms.

Sonja E.Klocke is Assistant Professor of German Studies and Affiliated Faculty in Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

German literature --- Diseases in literature. --- Medicine in literature. --- German literature. --- History and criticism. --- Germany (East). --- Medical care in literature --- Christa Wolf. --- East German literature. --- German Democratic Republic. --- fiction. --- medical care. --- symptomatic body.

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Literatur, die sich in gesellschaftlichen und politischen Prozessen kritisch zu Wort meldet, ist seit 1989 auch in Deutschland wieder deutlicher zu vernehmen. Sie nimmt Stellung zu den dringend anstehenden Problemen wie (Im)Migration, Re-Nationalisierung, Rassismus, Globalisierung, Überwachungsstaat, Neoliberalismus. Die Formen und Weisen der literarischen Stellungnahmen sind Gegenstand der in diesem Band versammelten Untersuchungen. AutorInnen wie Ulrich Peltzer, Juli Zeh, Kerstin Hensel, Navid Kermani, Uwe Tellkamp, Antje Rávic-Strubel, Ilija Trojanow, aber auch neue und neu inszenierte Erzählgenres wie Dorfgeschichte, Reisebericht oder Kriminalroman werden in eingehenden Analysen auf ihr kritisches Potential hin untersucht.

German literature. --- transnationale Literatur --- Ulrich Peltzer --- politische Literatur --- politically engaged literature --- Navid Kermani --- Migration --- migration --- Kerstin Hensel --- Julie Zeh --- Ilija Trojanow --- globalization in literature --- Globalisierung in der Literatur --- engagierte Literatur --- Antje Rávic-Strubel --- post-1989er Literatur --- German literature - 20th century - History and criticism --- German literature - 21st century - History and criticism --- German literature --- 1900-2099

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Interest in Christa Wolf continues to grow. Her classics are being reprinted and new titles are appearing posthumously, becoming bestsellers, and being translated. Energetic scholarly debates engage well-known aesthetic and political issues that the public intellectual herself fore-fronted. This broad-ranging introduction to the author, her work and times builds upon and moves beyond such foundational interpretative frameworks by articulating the global relevance of Wolf's oeuvre today, also for non-German readers. Thus, it brings East German culture alive to students, teachers, scholars and the general public by connecting the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the lived experiences of its citizens to nations and cultures around the world. The collection focuses on topical matters including the search for authenticity, agency, race, cosmopolitanism, gender, environmentalism, geopolitics, war, and memory debates, as well as movie adaptations and Wolf's film work with DEFA, marketing, and international reception. Our contributions - by senior and emerging scholars from across the globe - emphasize Wolf's position as an author of world literature and an important critical voice in the 21st century.

Women authors, German --- Christa Wolf. --- GDR literature. --- German literature. --- Literatur / DDR. --- LITERARY CRITICISM / General. --- German women authors --- Wolf, Christa --- Volf, Krista --- Ihlenfeld, Christa Margarete --- Criticism and interpretation.