A review of SIBLINGS by Brigitte Reimann (English translation by Lucy Jones, 2023)
First published in German in 1963 in the then GDR/DDR (East-Germany), this book came across my horizon some 50 years later, in English, due to my long-time relocation from Germany to New Zealand. It may sound odd for a native speaker of German to first read a German book in English but living in an English-speaking country a long way from Germany means, it is not that unusual to come across English translations of German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and what have you of both contemporary and past literature. Indeed, there has been an upswing is such translations, given perhaps the somewhat arid field of contemporary English literature. In any case, I am very grateful to now have read Reimann’s Siblings – with a wish to someday read the original version in German, if only to find out if the German version matches the very good English equivalent. Often one finds that a translation is second best but occasionally it is the other way round, and I suspect this may well be the case here. As a living witness of the 60s Zeitgeist in Germany – and eager onlooker and occasional visitor from afar since then – I am thrown back to my West German upbringing in Bavaria, as a child of refugees from the Sudetenland, what with my relatives always looking back to their ancestral East, East-Germany included, as I had friends whose parents had fled Leipzig, telling stories about the good life they had had there before the evil Russians came, and how the obedient German communists took away their factories and mansions – a bit like Reimann’ Elisabeth Arendt tells the story of her grandfather’s factory being nationalized, albeit here with full consent by the main protagonists. I, of course, grew up with a heavy dose of anti-Soviet and anti-Communist propaganda, only questioning the gross manifestations, like the emerging neo-Nazi movements in West-Germany, when I was in the last year or so at high school (the fairly prestigious Gymnasium Hohenschwangau). Some of our younger teachers were liberals who somehow managed to get our class of 69 to go on a trip to East-Berlin to see a Berthold Brecht play at the Berlin Ensemble. Obviously, we had to pass through the land corridor to West-Berlin first and then be taken to the border crossing into East-Berlin, through a warren of fences and gates, only to emerge on the other side, on a dimly lit road that led to the Berlin Ensemble. The play, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (German: Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui) was probably lost to most of us but I do remember a certain realisation that life in the DDR was ‘real’ and not a figment of the imagination dreamt up by the West-German media (and the West in general) whereby the poor East-German people were brutally oppressed by sub-machine gun toting Stasi characters. Years later there was a longer sojourn in West-Berlin in 1977/78, where our daughter was born before we moved back to New Zealand. During that time, we never made it to the East. I worked in a factory that produced dynamos for bicycles, and some of the older workers there told me stories of how their families had been split up by the ‘wall’, sometimes sure, sometimes unsure who to blame. We lived in Kreuzberg, and we took walks along the wall, not being the ‘heroes for one day’ according to one David Bowie who had also spent some time in West-Berlin. This was the time of the RAF and sub-machine toting West-German Berlin police stood at the entrances to the subway, watching out for the dreaded terrorists. To read now what was going on, on the other side, during the late 50s, early 60s, is therefore quite a revelation, even if it technically is a book of fiction. Calling myself bit of a socialist now – who has never lived in a socialist state – I do wonder if by chance I had been born on the other side, and grown up in the DDR, having graduated from high school and then what? Study psychology as I initially did at the LMU in Munich in 1970, only to be a severely disaffected student who joined the APO (Außerparlamentarische Opposition - German for extra-parliamentary opposition, commonly known as the APO)? Looks more likely I would have studied engineering, as the socialist DDR needed such dedicated folk to run the factories and lift the economy of the DDR to the heights of an egalitarian utopia. Or as a more rebellious character I would have enrolled the arts, as Reimann’s character Elisabeth Arendt did, painting in the genre of socialist realism. Since in the early days, before the borders closed, it was no problem to just walk over to West-Berlin, and all those who did, like Elizabeth’s older brother Konrad, and then be transported to West-Germany proper. Later with the wall from 1961 onwards the so-called escapes became more difficult – or murderous from the Western perspective. In fact, in the early days, it was no problem to cross from East-Berlin to West-Berlin and back to East-Berlin without too many problems, as in the story of the ‘siblings’, when Konrad comes to West-Berlin inviting his mother and sister to come over to the Kurfürstendamm and have coffee at the Kempinski (an upper class hotel). The meeting is a disaster because Elisabeth cannot come to terms with her traitorous brother who forsook his good socialist home for the capitalist West that is drenched in blood from the exploitation of its workers. When her younger brother Uli also wants to defect, drastic steps need to be taken to counter Uli’s disillusionment about how he was treated by the Party, i.e. not getting the job he deserved because of some vague connection he had with his professor at university who had defected to the West. This type of Communist Party corruption – and Uli not being a Party member – seems to be rife, so Elizabeth has to convince her brother that this actually is not the case. As such she retells the long story of her own brush with the almighty Party: she is maligned by a senior artist at her work, whom she considers a bad painter who sells his kitsch works to the factory at inflated prices, by virtue of being a Party member. His ruse is that he suffered under the Nazis and as such has superior socialist credibility. It turns out that was banned from painting under the Nazis but was merely exiled, i.e. not suffering that much. As he nearly manages to derail Elizabeth, the good Party secretary listens to Elisabeth’s final appeal, and he relents: an investigation reveals the bad artist’s misdeeds who throws his Party badge across the room when ordered to apologize to Elisabeth. Elisabeth is rehabilitated as a good socialist artist even though she is not a Party member. QED (an expression Reimann also uses). Socialism may not be perfect but it is the best system of government we have. Of course, the other side makes the same claim for their ideology, like JFK in 1963 in West-Berlin, saying “Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us”. For Uli though his sister’s feel-good story is not enough to convince him not to defect. It’s not that he believes the propaganda of the West – as his older brother apparently does with some fervour – indeed, he tells his sister that he is not giving up on communism and that he would join the (outlawed) KPD in West-Germany when he gets there. This sounds like an odd statement but there are historical precedents whereby communists flee their communist country, in order to fight for a better version of communism elsewhere, Trotsky being a prime example. Probably the best German example is that of Rudi Dutschke who finally crossed over to West-Berlin from East-Berlin in 1961, unhappy with the SED (the Socialist Unity Party of the GDR/DDR) while still an adherent of Rosa Luxemburg’ participatory radical communism. Dutschke became the leader of the Socialist Students Union (SDS) in West Germany, and that country's broader "extra-parliamentary opposition" (APO). Dutschke narrowly survived an assassination attempt by a neo-Nazi nutcase. Uli might have been of that mould. His sister’ failed attempt to convince him to stay needed drastic action: she tells her lover/fiancée Joachim, a very good, very intelligent and faithful communist and leader of an engineering work brigade. Joachim, the supreme rationalist talks to Uli and Uli gives in, unpacking his bags but bitter about his sister’s betrayal (he had said he only trusted her): “I won’t forget this” and “I’ll never forgive you”. This is how the novel begins and ends; a clever ‘who done it’ revealed at the very end. The figure of Joachim as the lynchpin of the story is perhaps the most surprising one: his unflappable seriousness, his command of scientific dialectic materialism, and his humanitarian love of people (and Elisabeth in particular) sounds almost too good to be true: a Soviet hero of extraordinary proportions living the most ordinary workers’ life imaginable. This may be wishful thinking on Reimann’s behalf but it is the most beautiful idea for an idealist communist utopia that all progressive people around the world wish for. Faced with the ugly truth of the current state of the world we are almost resigned to the impossibility of such a communist utopia and yet we know that there is no alternative. Riemann’s book underscores this with her extraordinary vision of an artist group in a socialist workers brigade, documenting the workers and their industrial landscapes. She has no patience with the art genre of socialist realism that merely produces posters of socialist clichés, as described via her bad artist who paints bad portraits of workers with clenched fists, decried by Elisabeth and her fellow workers as a painting of a trained ‘monkey’. Her idea of social realism is to paint the workers in their natural state as part of a wider aspect of nature that in essence is beautiful. Her vivid descriptions of the flora surrounding her house, her housing block, her factory, be it a humble walnut tree or a wilted forsythia, blend in with the man-made industrial landscapes that speak to a noble endeavours of the workers, be it a shipbuilding yard or a briquette factory. Her mentions of artists are as eclectic and as undogmatic as can be: Liebermann, Leibl, the ‘cheery landscapes’ of van Gogh. In her arguments with the bad artist who notes Kandinsky and Dufy as ‘anti-realists’, Elisabeth defines realism as imbued with human feeling rather than taking a photograph of something – as the bad artist is prone to. Later she comments on being a painter who does not need to ‘rack her brains over electronics or nuclear reactors or the concept of crisis theory’. Adding:
Not before I’ve worked out the mystery of the light sources in some of Rembrandt’s
and Correggio’s paintings anyway, with their surreal radiance emanating from a forehead or folded hands, a miracle that’s been pondered for centuries.
The art of the artisan as such is no different from the art of the engineer who, like Joachim, is fascinated by cybernetics. Joachim tells Uli that ‘we need you’ to build our socialist state, we need your expertise, your skills, the knowledge gained in our system of education, to realize our collectivist dreams, to love each other. Uli is perplexed but kind of hopeful:
What kind of people are you anyway?
As we know now, the dream of a socialist utopia, in East-Germany and in the rest of the world did not eventuate – yet! Unlike Reimann who died young in 1973, we have witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, Putin’s Russia and his claim on the Ukraine resulting in a brutal war, China’s claim on Taiwan, NATO launching counter-offensives, the climate crisis, and so on and so on, as if we have learned nothing from history, only condemned to repeat it. The Guardian’s review of the book is testament to that: apart from the pseudo-liberal courage to feature such a book, the reviewer has absolutely no clue as to what this novel is about. For him this is just an ‘autobiographical’ account (which it is not) of ‘the horrors of dictatorship against the loyalty to one’s home’. There are no ‘horrors of dictatorship’ in the DDR in this book. Nor is it just a family saga, as the reviewer assumes, reminding us ‘that, east or west, there is nothing so strange or surprising as families’. Given the current UK politics sliding from bad to worse, one would have thought that the journalistic intelligentsia of the Guardian might have reflected for a minute or two what ‘east or west’ means in this context, apart from repeating the old JFK propaganda of East = dictatorship versus West = freedom and democracy. When families split up in the West it is usually not because one of them defects to the East, e.g. the unusual case of a US Gi defecting to North Korea. The miseries of life in the West are enough cause to break families apart. To situate sibling rivalry without political context is like saying that sporting competitions are some sort of neutral domain (should Russian tennis players be banned from playing in the West?). Reimann reminds us quite clearly that the break-up of a loving sibling relationship is based purely on politics. The reviewer also misses out on the important question of art in socialist society as opposed to the arts in the West. Reimann exemplifies workers’ art forms as situated within the work brigade, artists alongside workers, engineers, Party secretaries, and art celebrating the vibrant collectivism with human emotion. I just received an email from the NZ Arts Foundation that says:
Relieve the joy from our favourite night of the year – our Laureate celebration. With a stacked room of creative legends, generous givers, friends and whānau, and curious arts lovers; these pictures showcase what we're all about!
This in view of NZ’s recent scandal of a ‘generous giver’ – a wealthy business man and patron of the Arts – being convicted of sexual abuse, luring young artists into his den, promising them financial aid in their artistic careers if only they perform oral sex on him. Art as a business for rich collectors results in art that is worse than the bad art kitsch produced by Elisabeth’s near nemesis. No wonder that in above text the presumably penniless ‘art lovers’ come last. What is celebrated here in NZ are the endless contradictions inherent in a capitalist society. Corporate art critics pour scorn onto emerging artists who paint, with feeling, workers and industrial landscapes. To pay the rent they are forced to accept commissions from narcissistic patrons. Reimann, the genuine artist, lived a tragically short life in a vastly different era, and in vastly different place but she caught glimpses of what a better socialist world can be like. I shall endeavour to read her book in German so that I might get a bit closer to the real thing, lest Lucy Jones, the ingenious translator, has beaten me to it.
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