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

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As far as Berger was concerned, however, the poetry circle was not for writing love poems. He believed verse was nothing if it was not political: “Poetry had to rouse emotion and boost the hunger for victory in class warfare.” Philip Oltermann (Photo: Sarah Bohn) 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. The extraordinary true story of the Stasi’s poetry club: Stasiland and The Lives of Others crossed with Dead Poets Society . Increased sense of community: Poetry circles can help people to feel a sense of belonging and community. This is because they provide a space for people to connect with others who share their interests. 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.

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”. 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. This utopian vision would rattle around policymakers’ heads even after Becher’s death in 1958. A year later, the Socialist Unity party launched a programme designed to bridge the divide between the working classes and the intelligentsia: writers would be made to work in factories or coalmines, where they would teach their craft to their comrades in so-called Circles of Writing Workers. Within a few years, every branch of industry had its own writers’ circle: train carriage construction workers, chemists, teachers. If you are interested in joining a poetry circle, I encourage you to do so. You may be surprised at how much you enjoy it and how much you can learn from it. 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.

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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.

To read and enjoy fiction you have to be able to suspend disbelief. To read and enjoy history you have to be able to suspend judgement. 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.” Poetry circles are a powerful force for uniting people through words. They provide a shared space for people to express themselves, connect with others who share their love of writing, and share their stories and experiences. Poetry circles have been used to unite people in a variety of settings, and they have been shown to be an effective way to promote social inclusion. 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/m0006sjxThe 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”.