The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War

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I digress. In this case the Stasi convinced itself that one way to win the cold war was to convince the West that the their culture was not as good was by becoming better poets, hence the title of the book. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and during the reconstruction, Germany West and East discovered that art was something that could be held up to the light that appeared clear and beautiful with the occasional flaw of a Nazi here and there. Art was the new god. He snitched upon others, too. Oltermann points to the “unremarkable” quality of Berger’s own poems, despite the numerous prizes given to him by the regime. Spite got the better of him. He denounced more successful writers and poets, as well as his own editor when she was lukewarm about his work. Berger died in 2014, defending his actions to the end.

When Knauer finished reading it to the circle, he told me over lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant in Marzahn in 2019, there was a moment of silence. An ashen-faced kitchen worker, who had joined the group for the first time that day, rushed to the toilet. All the remaining eyes in the room were on the circle’s artistic leader. Uwe Berger said the poem was very technically advanced, and he was impressed with the skills the Chekists had acquired. The extraordinary true story of the Stasi’s poetry club: Stasiland and The Lives of Others crossed with Dead Poets Society .

I paid our bill. Outside the cafe, before we waved our goodbyes, Polinske said something that I couldn’t quite make sense of at the time: “The question mark at the end of a poem is worth a hundred times more than a full stop. I know that now, after thinking about it for a long time. But I didn’t know that then.” Stars, normally it's either 5 stars or nothing, so what's different here? Hard to say actually, a lot of books are set in events long since passed, or todays countries but in olden times or even in countries invented by the author. If it feels a bit odd that the Stasi report on the Stasi, don't be alarmed. Some 80,000 part-time domestic spooks reported to the professional spooks. It was a spooky world that even after all the attempts to pulp these files remains formidable to this day. Berger was also a snitch – one of the 620,000 informers on the Stasi’s books. When he wasn’t grassing on friends and neighbours (“an alcoholic”, “a bit senile”, “unstable”), he was sniffing out counter-revolutionary tendencies in the workshop he ran. As the Stasi’s institutionalised paranoia increased in the 1980s, so Berger became more vigilant. Ambiguity worried him. What was the poet hiding? Could he be an insurrectionist in the making?

If a sinner sins and knows not what they do, is it still a sin if someone doesn't point out that it is sinful? You can find more episodes of Free Thinking exploring German history and culture including: Florian Huber, Sophie Hardach, Tom Smith and Adam Scovell on New angles on post-war Germany and Austria https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006sjx Found that he often went off on tangents not directly associated or relevant to the history/story of the Poetry Circle itself. I suppose in the neurotic times of the early '80's and mutually assured destruction, when Ronald Reagan's 300-kiloton thermonuclear warheads were called "Peacekeepers", it's at least unsurprising that the GDR's Stasi could create a Wunderwaffe of their own out of sonnets, bathos and broken rhyme. It may have had its roots in the utopian days of building a "real existing socialism" with literature as a central pillar, extolling the virtues of the common man. Yet it ended with the writing circles' poetry and literature being co-opted by the out of touch dictatorship for its own ends. It certainly didn't bring out the best in people, or stop "das Volk" from turning against the state and looking westwards.By 1984 morale within the Stasi was suffering. The Wall couldn’t keep out western influence. There were stirrings of a peace movement among the young. Even the military preferred Eric Clapton and Steven Spielberg to homegrown music and films. But the leaders of East Germany were old and the country was slower to accept glasnost than the rest of the Soviet bloc. At least the end was bloodless: whereas Nazi Germany went up in flames, in the GDR “there were no burnt bodies, only pulped files”.

This way of doing things impedes the forward progress of TSPC, and if you're the type who prefers time in a constant left/right flow, you will no doubt become frustrated.

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The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War is just an amazing title for the book! The title alone made me want to read the book and learn more. The Stasi major who ran the informal poetry meet-ups at the Adlershof compound in the late 70s had an inexhaustible appetite for jaunty ditties (“This song is very popular / In our country the GDR” went one), and the poems produced by his students were often similarly lighthearted. Soldiers in their late teens penned love poetry that paid little attention to political debates. One young member of the secret police fantasised in free verse about being kissed by a young maiden who was unaware of his lowly rank, thus elevating him to a “lance corporal of love”. “Patiently I wait”, the lusty teenager wrote, “for my next promotion / at least / to general”. One soldier imagined, in a sestina, writing the words “I love you” into the dark night sky with his searchlight. “An egotist / in love I am”, went another verse. “Want you / to be mine / just mine / and hope never / to be nationalised”. Love poetry could be awkwardly at odds with a state that valued collective ownership over private property.