Phillip S. McKnight.  "Alltag oder Anarchie:  GDR Everyday Life 
as a Provocation in Christoph Hein's Novella Der fremde Freund."  
Unpublished essay read at 1987 Conway, NH GDR symposium.  
Typescript.

2.  "One thing which does remain clear in his novella, and in 
his other writings, is Hein's remarkable skill at portraying 
ordinary people living ordinary, everyday lives in such a way as 
to provoke the reader into an introspective and unsettling 
intellectual response.  These descriptions also extend to such 
pseudo-revolutionary types as Cromwell and Lassalle and to 
apathetic GDR-anarchists such as AH Q and Wang. . . .  Few 
writers take the pulse of normalcy in a cross-section of society 
as well as Hein.  No heroes, no role models, just ordinary 
people leading an everyday existence.  The question is, how can 
this normalcy constitute any sort of meaningful life or any 
fulfillment of socialist goals?"

5.  "Perhaps socialist literature -- or any literature -- 
occasionally sees its function defined as a means to `cure' the 
reader."

7.  "The western reader is unlikely to have an operative notion 
or a collective concept of an enlightened and humane society of 
the future, a concept which is an integral part of the education 
of Claudia, who grew up in socialism, and of Hein's contemporary 
readers in the GDR.  The individualization of the Claudia-
character is based on socio-political issues relevant to the 
GDR. . . .The GDR reader's partnership with the author has a 
different significance than that of a western reader.  Althoguh 
the author's responsibility for the future may appear to be 
objectively detached, the GDR reader's probably is not."

8.  About the Katherine episode:  "Although Hein tended [in 
workshops at the Univ. of Kentucky in 1987] to downplay the 
importance of this episode, it nevertheless forms the structural 
turning point in the novella and the inner turning point for 
Claudia's development.  In agreement with Hein's view, the 
political importance of the incidentneed not be exaggerated, but 
the personal trauma which ensued should not be overlooked." 

"This passage relates the first time in Claudia's life where 
she -- and her classmates -- are shown to displace political and 
ethical issues with the trivia of `Alltag' -- they were 
uninterested in the central issues, which presented a forum for 
the possible heated and opinionated discussion about a key 
dialectic and existential problem with ramifications for the 
future conduct of their lives.  The alternatives consisted of 
denouncing one of the brightest students in the class in order 
to subjugate the individual tothe political collective or to 
denounce her so that they could go home and not have to listen 
to the teacher's harangues." 

(This is wrong -- there was never any opportunity to have any 
sort of open discussion -- this is absurd.  These are children, 
and this is Stalinism in the GDR.  The entire matter of 
discussion is displaced by a structure of POWER alone.  Silence 
or acquiescence are the only alternatives in this situation; 
this is organically connected with Claudia's repeated 
statem,ents that she learnbed how to be silent (mainly in 
connection with the central illustration of power -- the Panzer 
-- and with her tendency to become verbose when drunk -- flip 
side of the same coin.  The personility she has today has 
something to do with the power situation she is introduced to 
here -- an enforced passivity, isolation, silence.  This is the 
meaning of hiostory, the true form of the whole 
determinism/free-will question raised in this novel.)