GDR-gender-What is the men’s position?

“There she, Katharina Sprengel, twenty -five years old, in her nightgown, in her bed, had slept in her bed for three days, and her body had the male characteristics.” These seemed “very well”. But how would it go on? It is the cover story of “Blitz from Heiheitm Heaven”, written by Sarah Kirsch in a volume with stories about the resolution and the change of gender – published in the GDR in 1975.

At that time, seven authors worked on this experiment, which was not only unusual for the GDR literature. The idea came to Edith Anderson, on June 17, 1970, when the painter and writer Gotthold Gloger celebrated his 46th birthday. “It was nice to sit on the crumbling terrace of a” storm -free booth “,” she recalled in a lecture about this band. At that time, Peter Hacks, who was moved from the FRG to the GDR in 1955, was also among the guests and also went unusual paths. “If that were my property, I would design it like Versailles,” he said at the birthday party and told about the play “Omphale” where he was writing. It is about a queen in ancient times who marries Heracles, but she wants to swap the roles.

On the way back in the car, Anderson told about the chief lecturer of the construction publisher. Why wasn’t he immediately enthusiastic? Simply because he was shining in his men’s soul – like several writers, in which Edith Anderson asked. “Oh cursed! O cursed! A very terrifying dream, «Hermann Kant burst out. Franz Fühmann was horrified: »A woman! That’s worse than Kafka! Much, much, much worse than waking up into an enormous vermin! ”Later he apologized for these words.

It was a difficult path to this anthology, which was published by Hinstorff in 1975, was soon out of print and was only reissued today. In his well -founded epilogue, the literary scholar Carsten Gansel quotes the editor Anderson: At that time there was still “little awareness of the women’s movement”. The women in the GDR had enjoyed rights and advantages that they may have been envied by the “Women in West Germany and the United States”, but they had been granted “as part of socialism”, “without ever having to fight for it”. However, the women had to fight for it in their families and then the laboriously achieved self -confidence of the mothers passed to the daughters.

Feminist Edith Anderson was not wrong that it was ultimately the “ancient patriarchy” that opposed her anthology. As a cultural editor of the communist daily “Daily Worker”, the Jewish-American journalist had met the German exile Max Schröder. She followed him to East Berlin in 1947, also because he encouraged her as a writer. Her novel “A Man’s Job” has recently been published, which inherently shows the structures of patriarchal oppression.

You don’t just get rid of them by law. Century -old behavioral patterns are deeply rooted. It is actually funny: when a man turns into a woman in the band, this process seems more frightening to him than the other way around. Karl-Heinz Jakobs introduced himself what a matriarchy for the beautiful city of Quedlinburg would mean. The first-person narrator in Rolf Schneider’s “Meditation” was convinced anyway to “live under a dictatorship of the women”, but has to correct his views when he experiences the “exposure to male superiority claims”. After all, he sees no other way out than to turn into a bee queen, also because his wife deals with him so controversially.

In Günter de Bruyn’s story “gender exchange”, a love night leads to the request from which I switch to you. Karl becomes Karla and even meets compassion and understanding at the workplace. But soon the coffee and flower casts are expected. And “one found more interesting than my specialist knowledge”. But the worst: his lover Anna wants to stay Adam and now looks at him with “cold men’s eyes”.

At that time I didn’t know the GDR edition, but I remember how I heard about Christa Wolf’s story “Self-experiment” and how little curious I was. I found that a woman can be made a man. Now I realize what is in this text: daring of a scientist who wants to find out the opposite sex through her transformation, because she is secretly in love with her professor. As the “Head of the Gender Conversion Working Group”, she lets the drug “Petersein Masculinum” inject and the antidote a little later. She got a so -called men’s soul, but the feminine does not disappear into it. As a double being, it is “spy in the hinterland of the opponent” and holds the mirror to him.

In a similar conflict, Alyda, the first-person narrator in Edith Anderson’s story “Your Forever or never”. As a lover of a married man, she is more confident than his wife, feels equal, respected and yet is not entirely happy: “How can women be emancipated when men are not?”

In her essay “Myths and Possibilities” asks Annemarie Auer: “What is the most of the men’s position today?” She is interested in matriarchal structures in history and leads the double burden of working women in the field. It still exacerates under today’s conditions. Like the eight -armed goddess Durga, they should be: at work, take care of her appearance, do everything for the family, maintain relationships, raise children, ensure healthy eating and exist for the old parents, in digital gears. And love as beautiful as in the cinema.

Edith Anderson (ed.): Lightning out of the Heigh. Afterword Carsten Gansel. The other library, 300 pages, born, € 48.