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

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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. Not all of the poems were sufficiently confessional: some of the aspiring poets had a disconcerting habit of disguising rather than revealing their true feelings. One sergeant-major, though “undoubtedly talented”, was worryingly “cool, sceptical, self-controlled”. “The thing to get to the bottom of,” Berger wrote in his report, “would be to find out what is really behind the mask, at the bottom of his soul.”

Of course art in the East was required to be blended with Marxist-Leninism, and where better to start with the blending than with those art-loving jokers in the East German secret police, the Stasi.Oltermann introduces us to some fascinating characters in service to the state who very often wrote crap but sometimes produced thoughtful, high quality work which Ewe Berger, the leader of this sewing circle, promptly reported to his superiors in the Stasi. 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. 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. The poems of the talented teen Alexander Ruika, Berger wrote in a report in April 1983, were “ambivalent”: he had a problem with “power” under socialism. On subjects like collectivism, life in the army and revolution, he reported, the young lyricist was hard to pin down: he was “openly in favour”, but “subliminally against”.

On 25 October 1984, Berger wrote that Knauer had read out a poem about a dream in which he flew a kite that “escapes from narrow confinement and sails into freedom”. Berger explained that the kite was what poets called a metaphor, and that the poem was a covert call for East German army personnel to cross over to the west. Working my way through piles of paperwork in the Stasi records archive, I discovered hundreds of poems that were produced by the Working Circle of Writing Chekists, including those that weren’t included in the secret police’s official anthologies. What became increasingly clear was that not all the young men who gathered at Adlershof once a week wanted to write weapons in verse form. They wanted to write poems that did something poetry was good at: asking questions rather than giving answers.

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As the Stasi men at the Adlershof House of Culture became increasingly accomplished poets, the man brought in to teach them verse turned spy again. Berger resumed his activity as an unofficial collaborator in October 1982 with a series of short profiles. One 20-year-old corporal was “clumsy” with a “low level of education”, but also “open and direct”, and therefore useful: he naively confessed that other comrades had warned him off joining the poetry circle because he would be forced “to wave the red flag” there. In this article, I will discuss the importance of poetry circles and how they have impacted certain social groups for the better. I will also explain that I host a relaxed writing group free of charge and that everybody is welcome to join.

What I find both beguiling and strange about books like this is that it is set in a country that no longer exists and in a culture that has disappeared. 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. Berger’s report on Gerd Knauer’s long nuclear-war poem The Bang was particularly troubled by the stanza about Odysseus and Karl Marx. The syntax was ambiguous, he wrote: when Marx said “they are doing it because of me”, was the “it” referring to the other philosophers’ silence, or to nuclear war? And if the latter, were “they” Marx’s followers or his enemies? “The question of guilt is not answered unambiguously,” Berger noted in his report. Knauer implied that “Marx has invented social revolution and is therefore to blame for the imminent annihilation of mankind,” a thesis that amounted to nothing but “idealism and acceptance of surrender”.Overseeing this inky mission was the circle’s leader, Uwe Berger, who, after some searching, believed he had found his star student. Alexander Ruika was a recruit who had followed his colonel father into the Guards Regiment, an elite training ground for Stasi recruits. What separated Ruika from his fellow versifiers was his use of figurative language, the “mastery of metaphor” that Aristotle believed was the mark of genius. Oltermann traces his early successes – a string of awards, publication in prestigious literary magazines – but also hears a dissenting voice in his poems that suggests Ruika was not a model Chekist but “the Hamlet of the Stasi poetry circle”, a soul at war with himself. His ambivalence becomes almost a test case in this account – how to reconcile the free fluidities of poetry with the ideological constrictions of communism. Be prepared for a sting in the tale. Berger implied that his work as an informant came to an end once he took over the poetry circle at Adlershof The 1920s Philosophy's Golden Age https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q380 Wittgenstein changed his mind, Heidegger revolutionised philosophy (and the German language), and both the Frankfurt School and the Vienna Circle were in full swing. poets, including Ted Walter (1933 - 2012), who was for many years an associate member of Shortlands Poetry Circle. A study published in the journal “Poetry Therapy” found that poetry circles can be an effective way to promote social inclusion for people with mental health problems. The study found that participants in the poetry circles reported feeling less isolated and more connected to others. They also reported feeling more confident in their ability to express themselves.