“Correcting” Myths: Reinhard Jirgl’s Poetics

Um Ein Publikum am Lesen von Büchern, die des Lesens wert sind, festzuhalten, dazu bedarf es wahrlich eines Stein-Kopfes!” This assessment of the reading public may well be considered a defining characteristic of Reinhard Jirgl’s writing. Not only does the expression “Stein-Kopf” refer to the eponymous peak in the Taunus mountain range, which Jirgl became acquainted with during his time as writer-inresidence in Bergen-Enkheim, it also captures the ethos of obstinacy that characterizes his poetics. It can of course be argued — as the satirist Gerhard Henschel has — that such self-positioning is pompous or elitist. Those familiar with Jirgl’s work, however, will be aware that it was precisely his linguistic nonconformity that pushed him to the margins of cultural life in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In spite of the greater recognition he has enjoyed since the fall of the Berlin Wall (culminating in the prestigious Georg Büchner Prize in 2010), his position as a writer in united Germany has continued to be that of an outsider.

Jirgl was born in 1953. He made his breakthrough in 1993 with the award of the Alfred Döblin Prize for the manuscript of his novel Abschied von den Feinden, which the Hanser Verlag published soon afterwards. Up to that point, which he has referred to as a “persönliche Wende,” he considered himself one of those “Talent[e], die stets entmutigt werden.” His first manuscript, entitled Mutter Vater Roman, which he submitted to the Aufbau Verlag in East Berlin in 1985, was rejected because of his supposedly “nichtmarxistische[] Geschichtsauffassung” (GT, 815). In spite of staunch support from his distinguished fellow author Heiner Müller, Jirgl remained a “Schriftsteller in der Anonymität” (816), suffocating as a result of what he has described as a “gezielt[e] Unterbindung von Kreativität durch die undurchschaubare DDR-Zensurbehörde.”Ultimately, however, it was this very lack of recognition then that has made him all the more unwilling to compromise his art since.