Abstract
Through candid presentation of controversial events from the pre-history of the German Democratic Republic through the 1980s, Heiner Müller's five-play cycle Wolokolamsker Chaussee boldly confronts aspects of the past that had not yet been dealt with in socialist Germany. Unlike the official chronicle of GDR history, which claims total abolition of all traces of fascism and, in addition, ignores the role of Stalin in the shaping of its own identity, Müller's confrontation with his country's past draws attention to the heritage of both fascism and Stalinism. The view within official circles regarding fascism was that the 1945 establishment of a new political and economic system, based on the scientific socialism of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, voided the possibility for any further existence of fascism in the Soviet occupied zone of defeated Germany. Without overlooking continuities from the Nazi past into present-day GDR, Müller's cycle focuses on the fascism that has been conveyed through the socialist heritage-Stalinism. Depicted as a dictatorship of excessive bureaucracy held together by the terror and intrigue of a police-state, Stalinism, in Müller's text, is shown to have left a fateful imprint on the GDR.
Recommended Citation
Allen, Pam
(1990)
"Skeletons in the Closet That Smell of Stalin: Heiner Muller’s Wolokolamsker Chaussee ,"
University of Dayton Review: Vol. 20:
No.
3, Article 5.
Available at:
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/udr/vol20/iss3/5
