IN 1964 FOLLOWING A VISIT TO THE GDR, a number of journalists from Die Zeit, including the newspaper’s subsequent editor Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, published a book about the country and their experiences there. This visit found its way into GDR literature, being clearly referred to in the novel Das Impressum of 1972 by Hermann Kant, who, as a favored son of the GDR, was presumably one of the journalists’ interlocutors. The egregious Kant, however, wins no prizes for subtlety in renaming Dönhoff Lehndorff and in his main figure’s characterization of her as — because of her pleasant manner — the most dangerous of enemies. In this context what is significant is the title given to the volume: Reise in ein fernes Land — Wirtschaft und Politik in der DDR. If one recalls Neville Chamberlain’s infamous characterization of Czechoslovakia as “a far off country of which we know little,” then the implications of this title become clear. Although many West Germans continued to visit the GDR, especially to see members of their family, until that state’s demise, it is fair to say that it played a very limited role in intellectual discourse once division appeared sealed by the construction of the Berlin Wall. Hence in the 1980s Peter Schneider, as a resident of West Berlin, complained about the loss of a direction on the compass, meaning the GDR and points east, while at the time of unification Patrick Süskind willingly admitted that, as a citizen of the Federal Republic, remote parts of Western Europe, such as the Outer Hebrides, felt closer to him than the GDR. There are inevitably exceptions, for example Thorsten Becker’s 1985 story Die Bürgschaft with its GDR setting. Nevertheless one wonders with hindsight whether the stir caused by this work had more to do with what at the time was an exotic setting than with its literary qualities.

Since unification there has been a change. This chapter will consider three novels with a significant GDR setting written by westerners since unification. The first, Die Verteidigung der Kindheit (1991), is by Martin Walser, born in 1927 and hence an author old enough to have memories of a single Germany.