„Ihr seid meine Hoffnung“ − Arbeit und Jugend im Werk Kurt Kläbers

Zusammenfassung

Kurt Kläber participated in many 20^th century aesthetic movements. His dedication towards working-class, revolutionary literature throughout the 1920s and ’30s has, however, largely vanished from cultural memory. This article addresses two notions within Kläber’s oeuvre – work and youth – and looks at how these are linked. In both phases of Kläber’s work, his proletarian literature like Arbeiterdichtung (Workers’ Poetry, which also puns on the word for a seal or gasket, which would be familiar to a factory worker) as well as his writing for children and young adults, Kläber’s literary texts point to a person’s need for orientation and identification. On closer examination a few lesser known texts, published after 1945, stand out. These texts have yet to attain an academic ‚seal‘ of approval. This article examines how Kläber, in taking up the tradition of an emphatically youth-oriented and working-class literature, advances the discussion around a new start for society, and it describes his later rediscovery by publicists and apologists for East Germany as a proletarian poet engaged in class warfare.