After the Revolution — What Then? Peter Hacks' Theory of a Socialist Classicism

Authors

Margy Gerber, Bowling Green State University

Abstract

Quotations from theoretical writings, dating from 1960 to the present, of the East German playwright Peter Hacks differ conspicuously from the theory of socialist realism, still the official aesthetic doctrine of the G DR. That Hacks should venture from the straight and narrow of the officially approved is, to be sure, not uncharacteristic behavior for him: ever since his arrival in East Berlin from Munich in 1955, he has repeatedly caused raised eyebrows, if not wrath, in official places; two of his plays both dealing with the GDR, Die Sorgen und die Macht (3 versions, 1959-1962) and Moritz Tassow (1961, first staged 1965), were sharply criticized in the party press and soon withdrawn. Hacks was one of the writers censured at the 11th plenum of the central committee of the SED in December of 1965. And, generally speaking, Hacks has existed only on the fringe of the East German literary scene. As a Zugereister <>/em>who has insisted upon maintaining his independence, and as an intellectual whose erudition smacks of the bourgeois, Hacks has never been totally acceptable to the party establishment.