Output details

Complicity, Censorship and Criticism: Negotiating Space in the GDR Literary Sphere

The elaboration of the monograph’s central thesis required collection and analysis of a considerable body of archival material, alongside examination of autobiographical, literary and journalistic texts. This involved work in three archives, each housing a large volume of relevant material: the Bundesarchiv, the archive of the State Security Service (BStU), and the Fritz-Hüser-Institut (FHI). The Stasi files of Heym and Kant were particularly extensive and required negotiation of a complex system of archiving and categorisation. The over 2000 documents in the FHI had not been previously researched and were, in part, un-catalogued, making identification of relevant material particularly difficult.