Beyond Paper Heroines: Maxie Wander’s Guten Morgen, du Schöne and its Reception in the GDR

  • Patricia Harbord
Chapter

Abstract

In 1977 a book was published in the GDR which generated an unusual level of excitement amongst the country’s large reading public, and particularly amongst women. For several years afterwards, this book was the subject of continuing animated discussion. It appeared at a time when many literary texts in the GDR, especially those by female writers, were questioning their society’s accepted notions about femininity, and were casting doubt on the validity of current discourses on women. However, this particular book challenged established ways of writing about women more radically than any other GDR publication before or since. It was received with enthusiasm by the prominent GDR women writers Irmtraud Morgner and Christa Wolf who praised it for its openness, welcoming it in much the same spirit as Soviet intellectuals have welcomed the rise of glasnost in the culture of the Soviet Union in recent years.’ The new publication was like a signpost pointing towards new, richer and more subtle ways of representing subjectivity in general, and female subjectivity in particular, within the bounds of a Marxist-Leninist aesthetic. This book was Guten Morgen, du Schöne (Good Morning, My Lovely) a collection of interviews with women of a variety of ages, origins and occupations.

Keywords

Single Mother Oral History Capitalist Country Socialist Society Youth Welfare 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 1991

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  • Patricia Harbord

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