Abstract
The voice in Jürgen Fuchs’s poem belongs to a Stasi interrogator, a voice that the poet (1950–1999) carried inside him, and one that he was unable to silence during his life. This was also the driving force behind Fuchs’s quest to come to terms with the legacy of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. Fuchs suffered at the hands of the Stasi while he was in Untersuchungshaft in Hohenschönhausen. In addition, the Stasi subjected him and his family to ‘quiet forms of terror’: the sudden appearance of locksmiths during the night, the delivery of pornographic material, and anonymous telephone calls. Such tactics, however, are relatively trivial when compared to the explosive devices set off in front of his house that almost injured his daughter.2 It is therefore completely understandable that Fuchs became active in the citizens’ committees set up in regional Stasi offices as early as 1989. Fuchs had a very specific agenda for dealing with the Stasi, asserting that it is very important ‘daß wir uns sehr genau erinnern müssen. Daß es keinen Ausweg, keine Demokratisierung, kein Überwinden des Stalinismus gibt ohne Erinnern, ohne die ganze Wahrheit über all die Jahre’.3 He also saw it as a ‘historische Aufgabe’ to remember: ‘das Erinnern brauchen wir. Wir brauchen es in Bezug auf die Nazizeit, und wir brauchen es in Bezug auf den Stalinismus. Beides wird jetzt fast nochmal vermischt und kommt zusammen’.4
Kommse
Schlüssel
Hörnse auf mit dem Gesinge
Zwei zum Vernehmer
Jürgen Fuchs, ‘Immer noch’1
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Notes
‘Immer noch’ in Jurgen Fuchs, Tagesnotizen. Gedichte (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1979), p. 21. I would like to thank Dr. Rachel Halverson and Dr. James Parsons for their insightful reading of this essay. The comments made by Dr. Julia Hell (German Studies Association conference in 2000) were valuable in helping me formulate the conclusion.
Fuchs details his experiences with such tactics in BStU (ed.), Unter Nutzung der Angst. Die ‘leise’ Form des Terrors. Zersetzungsma/inahmen des MfS (Berlin: BStU, 1994).
Jurgen Fuchs, ‘Vier Vorschlage zum Umgang mit der Stasi’, Aufbruch in eine andere DDR, ed. by Hubertus Knabe (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989), pp. 59–68 (p. 61).
Jurgen Fuchs, … und Wann kommt der Hammer? Psychologie, Opposition und Staatsicherheit (Berlin: BasisDruck, 1990), p. 31.
Edwin Kratschmer, ‘Erster Versuch einer Ubersicht der Wirkung des literarischen Werkes von JUrgen Fuchs’, Gerbergasse 18 (Sonderausgabe zum Fuchs-Symposium 2001), p. 36.
This phrase comes from a five-part series in Der Spiegel that appeared in 1991 with the title ‘Landschaften der Luge’: 18 November 1991, 25 November 1991, 2 December 1991, 9 December 1991 and 16 December 1991.
Jurgen Fuchs, Magdalena. MfS. Memfisblues. Stasi. Die Firma. VEB Horch & Gauck (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1998). Hereafter M.
Gunter Kunert published his autobiography in 1997, which also combined a story with citations from documents. In Kunert’s case, however, it is clear that we are dealing with an autobiography, and not a ‘novel’ as Fuchs claims. See Kunert, Erwachsenenspiele. Erinnerungen (MUnchen: Hanser, 1997).
‘Einmischung in eigene Angelegenheiten. Gespach mit dem Autor Jurgen Fuchs’, Sonntag, 13 May 1990.
Michael Bienert, ‘Dissident bleiben’, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 17 July 1998.
In the first segment of the narrative, for example, Fuchs includes an excerpt of the interrogations that took place in Hohenschonhausen. Immediately thereafter he includes a scene from the present in which he reviews an IM case as part of his duties as a member of the staff. See M, 68–86.
Jurgen Fuchs, Gedachtnisprotokolle (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1977); Vernehmungsprotokolle (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1978).
In his review Joachim Walther bemoans the ‘WEB Horch und Gauck’, ein enttauschend platter Wortwitz, der bislang die Domane Hermann Kants war’. See Walther, ‘Wortkaskaden wie Gottesurteile’, Der Spiegel, 30 March 1998. Fuchs also criticised Walther’s own documentation of the Stasi, Sicherungsbereich Literatur (1996). See M, 243–6.
Hannes Schwenger, ‘Zu allem fahig’, Der Tagesspiegel, 22 March 1998.
Fuchs, ‘Landschaften der Luge’, Der Spiegel, 18 November 1991.
Julian Preece, ‘Damaged Lives? (East) German Memoirs and Autobiographies, 1989–1994’, in The New Germany: Literature and Society after Unification, ed. by Osman Durrani, Colin Good and Kevin Hilliard (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), p. 349–64 (p. 364).
Richard Terdiman, Present Past (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 25.
Helmut Bottiger, ‘Selbsterfahrung in der Gauck-Behorde’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 1998.
Udo Scheer, ‘Eintauchen in den Orkus der Diktatur’, Die Welt, 21 March 1998.
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Costabile-Heming, C.A. (2003). Jürgen Fuchs: Documenting Life, Death and the Stasi. In: Cooke, P., Plowman, A. (eds) German Writers and the Politics of Culture. New Perspectives in German Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403938756_13
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