The numerous reviews that followed the Western publication of Hein's book (under the title Drachenblut) show a number of differences that can only be attributed to ideology, but also many similarities to their eastern counterparts. Reviewers took various positions concerning the relevance of the novella to Westerners -- whether it was to be understood as an East German book, a German book, or a book of universal significance (although these categories clearly are not mutually exclusive). Such an approach to a book published in another country would normally be unobjectionable, but the unique situation (and rivalry) of the two Germanies often complicated commentaries that were ostensibly literary in their scope; to classify something as "of East Germany" or "of all Germans" means to address political and cultural questions sensitive for all Germans and, indeed, all Europeans. But in spite of the ideological landmines, other critics voice many of the same interests as their GDR colleagues, examining the formal operation of the novella, assessing its intended impact on the reader (in whichever potential readership), and inquiring into the psychological verisimilitude or implausibility of the characters. The establishment view, represented by such journalistic literary arbiters as Die Zeit and the Frankfurter Allgemeine  Zeitung, placed Drachenblut squarely in a pan-Germanic or universal frame of reference: the novella was to be read as a commentary on social conditions peculiar to all post-war industrial societies, not just the GDR. Die Zeit reviewer Rolf Michaelis, after discussing the rootedness of Hein's novella in GDR history, warns: It would be wrong to miscontrue this book as a lament over relations inside the GDR, as the West German title Drachenblut might suggest. As depressing as the "content" may be, this is a "positive" book, because all its pain has been elevated [aufgehoben] into art. Have the dialecticallyschooled authors of the GDR advanced beyond those many pathos-obsessed Western authors who merely dabble in human misery?16 .DB 18 Falsch w„re es, dieses Buch als ein Klagelied ber die Verh„ltnisse in der DDR miázuverstehen -- wozu der westdeutsche 9 Titel, `Drachenblut', verfhren k”nnte. Dies ist, so deprimierend der `Inhalt' sein mag, ein `positives' Buch: weil aller Schmerz aufgehoben ist in Kunst. Sind dialektisch geschulte Autoren der DDR da weiter als manche, nur mitleidsschtig im Elend grndelnden Autoren des Westens? ("Leben ohne zu leben: Christoph Heins erstaunliche Novelle Drachenblut," Die Zeit, No. 46, 11 November 1983, [Sec. ?]: 1.) .DQ Michaelis echoes the position of the favorable East German critics who excused the bleakness of Hein's picture of society as ultimately redemptive, but with a difference: in accord with the formal and stylistic emphasis of the whole review, the redemption is purely aesthetic, instead of being a call to Bewuátsein and social action. Something of the latter sort might nonetheless be implied by Michaelis's surprising indictment of superficial Western authors and their artistic treatment of adversity. Hein's work tolerates and examines intellectually the extremity of misery rather than submerging it in sentimentalism and pathos. Writing for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Uwe Wittstock identifies the subject of the book as a "psychic crippling" that has become an everyday occurence in industrial societies; the fact that nobody in East or West perceives it anymore as abnormal merely suggests the extent of the problem.17 The reviewer for the Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt18 predicted that the novella should be as powerful in West Germany as in the GDR, and the Rheinische Merkur / Christ und Welt19 reviewer asserts that most of the events in the book could just as easily have taken place in the West. The reviewer for the General-Anzeiger emphatically agreed: "It makes no difference that Hein has set the action in the GDR. The scenery is scarcely noticeable. The problem is the same everywhere: to survive, without thereby losing one's life."20 And not too surprisingly, one of the most forceful arguments for the book's wide applicability appeared in a Swiss review, facilitated perhaps by greater detachment from the political and cultural tensions between the two German states. Writing for Die  Weltwoche, Klara Obermller locates Hein as the representative not of one nation or social system, but of the first post-war generation, whose impact on world events has been stifled by historical circumstance: .DB 19 "Eine `unerh”rte Begebenheit' schildert Heins Buch sicherlich nicht, sondern eine Psychische Verkrppelung, wie sie in den Industriegesellschaften unserer Zeit allt„glich geworden ist. Daá man sich aber an ein solches Schicksal in Ost und West schon nahezu gew”hnt hat und es oft genug kaum noch wahrnimmt, ist vielleicht doch unerh”rt." ("Letzte Liebe in der Seelenwste: Die Novelle `Drachenblut' des in der DDR lebenden Schriftstellers Christoph Hein," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 216, 17 March 1983: ?). .DQ .DB 20 Gabriele Kreis, "In diese Haut dringt nichts mehr ein: Christoph Hein: Drachenblut -- die karge und kunstvolle Geschichte eines Lebens am Leben vorbei," Deutsches Allgemeines  Sonntagsblatt, No. 51, 18 December, 1983: 22. .DQ .DB 10 21 J”rg Bernhardt Bilke, "In der DDR verboten: Laufen, um nicht hinzufallen: Lindenblatt und Drachenblut: Christoph Heins Novelle," Rheinische Merkur / Christ und Welt, No. 41, 14 October 1983: 35. Rpt. with revisions in Neue Deutsche Hefte, 30, iv (1983): 833-835. .DQ .DB 22 "Es spielt keine Rolle, daá Hein die Handlung in die DDR gelegt hat. Die Kulisse ist kaum erkennbar. Das Problem ist berall dasselbe: šberleben, ohne dabei das Leben zu lassen." (M.R., "Kaltbltig, " General Anzeiger, No. 28/519, 3 November 11 1983: 32.) .DQ In his novella Drachenblut, Christoph Hein tells the story of a woman who is representative of many in this country, which, "risen out of the ruins," had to start over again from scratch, and though unrecognized for years, meanwhile became impossible for its adversaries to ignore. The generation of Claudia -- and also of Christoph Hein himself -- lived through this recovery without being active partners in it. It grew up in relative prosperity and illusory security, not so different from its counterpart in the Federal Republic; antifascist struggle and social reconstruction are for it mere words from the memory-hoard of its parents. These people are tired of hearing about it, and they are no longer willing to be blamed for the fact that the historical hour has given them no occasion for militant activism.21 .DB 23 "Christoph Hein erz„hlt in seiner Novelle `Drachenblut' die Geschichte einer Frau, die fr viele steht in diesem Land, das, `auferstanden aus Ruinen', aus dem Nichts wieder anfangen musste, jahrelang nicht anerkannt wurde, mittlerweile jedoch auch von seinen Gegnern nicht mehr zu bersehen ist. Die Generation von Claudia und auch von Christoph Hein selber hat diesen Aufstieg miterlebt, ohne aktiv daran beteiligt gewesen zu sein. Sie ist in relativen Wohlstand und trgerische Sicherheit hineingewachsen, nicht viel anders als ihre Altersgenossen in der Bundesrepublik; antifaschistischer Kampf und Wiederaufbau sind fr sie blosse Vokabeln aus dem Erinnerungsschatz der Eltern. Sie k”nnen's schon nicht mehr h”ren und wollen nicht l„nger dafr verantwortlich gemacht werden, dass ihnen die historische Stunde keine Gelegenheit zu k„mpferischen Einsatz gegeben hat." ("Das Leben wird doch eine Pointe haben: Gedanken zur Novelle `Drachenblut' von Christoph Hein," Die  Weltwoche, No. 4, 26 January 1984: 39.) .DQ Obermller scolds partisan critics in the West for failing to see the novel as more than an indictment of socialist alienation: "Christoph Hein captures in his novella the texture of life for many of his contemporaries -- Dorothee S”lle once labeled it the banality of missing transcendence. To explain this as uniquely East German is to oversimplify matters."22 .DB 24 "Christoph Hein trifft in seiner Novelle das Lebensgefhl vieler seiner Zeitgenossen -- Dorothee S”lle hat es 11 einmal die Banalit„t der fehlenden Transzendenz genannt. Wer es fr DDR-spezifisch erkl„rt, macht sich die Sache zu einfach." .DQ Examples of the kind of review Obermller has in mind include those of the Frankfurter Rundschau and Saarbrcker Zeitung, where a patronizing or hostile attitude toward the GDR is joined to obliviousness of the degree to which Hein's book describes conditions common to industrial societies everywhere. These articles mirror to a great extent the remarks of the more hostile GDR reviewers, demonstrating how threatening Hein's book must be to the utopian fantasies of either ideological camp. The ideologically skewed reviewers on either side miss the point that the book implicitly critiques the West as well as the East, seeing it instead as merely a blow against the GDR, to be condemned or praised in accordance with one's allegiance. In the Frankfurter Rundschau, Stephen Reinhardt begins with a straightforward treatment of the dream prologue and the complex of memories surrounding Katherina, organized along vaguely Freudian lines, but then swerves unaccountably into gratuitous comparisons between official GDR myths and the picture of everyday GDR life provided by Hein. In Christoph Hein's narrative . . . there remains hardly a trace of a state-supported social utopia. What looks back . . . out of the mirror is no touched-up portrait: bored young people, the anonymity of inhuman apartment-ghettos, the isolation of old people, male aggressiveness, careerism. Only for Claudia's father, an old communist, do "politics and work-place problems" have a central place. He regards his daughter (who, absorbed in her work routine, cares nothing for politics) with mistrust, fearing that this generation will fritter away everything he has lived for.23 .DB 25 "In Christoph Heins Erz„hlung . . . ist von einer gesellschaftlichen, von der Gesellschaft getragenen Utopie kaum noch etwas zu spren. Was aus dem Spiegel . . . zurckscheint, hat nichts mit einem gesch”nten Abbild zu tun: sich langweilende Jugendliche, die Anonymit„t menschenfeindlicher Wohngettos, die Vereinsamung des Alters, m„nnliche Aggressivit„t, Karrierismus. Allein fr Claudias Vater, einen alten Kommunisten, stehen `Politik und Betriebsprobleme' noch im Mittelpunkt. Miátrauisch blickt er deshalb auf seine an Politik uninteressierte, in der Routine ihres Berufs versinkende Tochter, in der Furcht, daá diese Generation verspielen wird, wofr er gelebt hat." ("Vom Schweigen und Verswcheigen: Christoph Heins wichtige Novelle `Drachenblut,'" Frankfurter  Rundschau (Zeit und Bild), No. 234, 8 October 10 1983: 4.) .DQ This discription of the novel is unobjectionable, except for the assumption about GDR literature upon which it is based. To imply that all literature in the GDR depicted a "state-supported utopia" is to vastly oversimplify matters; the literary ferment of the sixties and early seventies and the resultant retrenchments of the late seventies bespeak a much more varied history. Reinhardt grasps the conflict between the 12 "Aufbaugeneration" and its successor, yet gives no hint that this problem has ever been aired before, or of what the consequences were. The real question, which Reinhardt obscures, is how far the publication of Hein's book represented a breakthrough parallel to the publication of Ulrich Plenzdorf's Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. in 1972, and what consequences, if any, followed. In view of the highly ambiguous, even contradictory cultural policies that followed the Biermann affair, Hein's publication is indeed considerably harder to account for than was Plenzdorf's, which followed directly from Erich Honecker's utterances about the end of literary tabus. Through much of his review, Reinhardt employs terms drawn from the fund of East German clich‚s to describe what Hein's novella is saying about its society: The demand and the readiness to blunt "fundamental contradictions" into "non-antagonistic" ones, to solve "Problems", is extinguished in Hein's main character, having yielded before the acquiescent insight that "genuine problems" are insoluble: "You drag them around with you your entire life, they are life, and one way or another you die of them." In other words: reality consists of the enduring existence of insoluble contradictions -- even in "actual" socialism. All that is left from the enthusiastic idealism of the reconstruction generation is a diffuse materialism; the earlier feelings of solidarity have shrivelled into mistrust and mere self-protection.24 .DB 26 "Das Verlangen und die Bereitschaft, `Grundwidersprche' zu `nichtantagonistischen' zu entsch„rfen und `Probleme' zu l”sen, ist in Heins Hauptfigur erloschen und der resignativen Einsicht gewichen, daá `wirkliche Probleme' nicht zu l”sen sind: `Man schleppt sie sein Leben lang mit sich herum, sie sind das Leben, und irgendwie stirbt man an ihnen.' Anders gesagt: Wirklichkeit, das bedeutet die immerw„hrende Existenz unaufl”slicher Widersprche -- auch im `realen' Sozialismus. Vom begeisterten Idealismus der Aufbaugeneration hat sich nur noch diffuser Materialismus erhalten; die solidarischen Gefhle von einst sind zusammengeschrumpft zu Miátrauen und bloáer Selbstabsicherung. .DQ "Fundamental contradictions" (Grundwidersprche, or antagonistische Widersprche), the contradictions arising from the capitalist class-society, in which each class is in an antagonistic relation to every other class, are conventionally contrasted to "non-antagonistic contradictions" (nichtantagonistische Widersprche), and likewise "problems," the societal contradictions arising within socialism, but resolvable because not based on fundamental differences of class interest. This distinction allowed GDR critics and ideologues in the 1960s to assimilate (with mixed feelings) such frankly critical books as Christa Wolf's Nachdenken ber Christa T. Reinhardt uses the terms sardonically, suggesting (not for the first time) that the distinction, though convenient, is imaginary. He also follows the common West German practice of 13 ridiculing the GDR's designation of its social form as "actually existing socialism" (real existierende Sozialismus), a formula that allowed any amount of self-exculpation while sounding self- congratulatory. Since few of these terms is to be found in Hein's text, one suspects again that the reading of the book follows in part from a set of reductive assumptions about the GDR. Equally striking is the unexamined assumption that Hein's provides insight into East Germany alone: The believability and fascination of this book no doubt derive from Christoph Hein's refusal to conceal the problems and contradictions in the other part of Germany -- rather, he addresses and expresses them. It also has to do with Hein's literary virtuosity: through his clich‚-free language, rich in suggestiveness and filtered through the consciousness of an East Berlin physician, he informs us how and why a person there defends himself from himself, and from his society, never daring to make the leap over the abyss and into uncertainty.25 (Emphasis mine.) .DB 27 "Die Glaubwrdigkeit und Faszination, die von dieser Erz„hlung ausgehen, h„ngen sicher damit zusammen, daá Christoph Hein Probleme und Widersprche im anderen Teil Deutschlands nicht verschweigt, sie vielmehr offen an- und ausspricht. Sie hat vor allem aber auch mit Heins literarischer Kunstfertigkeit zu tun, mit seiner klischeefreien Sprache, in der er uns, facetenreich und gefiltert durch das Bewuátsein einer Ostberliner Žrztin, mitteilt, wie und weshalb sich da jemand vor sich selbst und der Gesellschaft schtzt, und nicht den Sprung ins Ungewisse, ber den Abgrund wagt." .DQ In fact, for Reinhardt, the believability and fascination of the book appear to derive more from its susceptibility to a partisan misreading than from literary virtuosity. We are confronted with "problems and contradictions from the other part of Germany" and we learn what a person there (not here) must do to survive. The real hazard of uncritically accepting Reinhardt's appraisal is that it passes over the complexity of what Hein is saying about his country and his characters. As many other reviewers noted, Hein's attitude toward Claudia's quietism is highly equivocal, a mixture of sympathy, horror, and admonition, yet Reinhardt seems to accept Claudia as an objective, unflinching representation of GDR inevitability.26 Further, the book's hopelessness-effect is constantly balanced by internal ironies and inconsistancies. But because of his assumptions about the essential difference of the GDR, Reinhardt sees Claudia, too, as wholly different from himself, whereas the novella's effect is largely thwarted if one fails to identify with, and hence be frightened by her. .DB 28 In interviews and in private, Hein has endorsed both the positive and negative views of Claudia, evidently satisfied if readers respond to her actively: As a consumer of art, I am continually involved in a dialogue. In actual fact, books are not read the same way 14 they are written, every reader reads differently, according to the dialogue that takes place. Der fremde Freund was a spectacular example of this: there was fierce criticism for and against it, there were readers who said that it is a pessimistic book, and there were readers who said it is a profoundly optimistic book. This has to do with personal experiences, with the dialogical; people read according to their experience. (Als Kunstkonsument bin ich immerfort in einem Dialog begriffen. Tats„chlich werden die Bcher ja nicht so gelesen, wie sie geschrieben sind, jeder Leser liest sie anders auf Grund des Dialogs, der da stattfindet. Der fremde Freund machte das ganz auff„llig: es gab heftige Kritik dafr und dagegen, es gab Leser, die sagten, dies sei ein pessimistisches Buch, und es gab Leser, die sagten es sei ein zutiefst optimistisches Buch. Und das hat mit den Erfahrungen, mit diesem Dialogischen zu tun; man liest gem„á seiner Erfahrung. ["Gespr„ch mit Christoph Hein," interview with Krzyszt¢f Jachimczak, Cracow, 1986, Sinn und Form, 40 (1988), 2: 349.]) Although Hein stresses his own detachment from his works, renouncing the temptation to become a social prophet, his desire to engage the reader in a dialogue about history and reality clearly implies a politically engaged role, though not an ideologically fixed one. The responses of the readers, being neither "right" nor "wrong" so long as they occur, nonetheless disclose a great deal -- about the readers. .DQ A still more complex case of critical bias appeared in the Saarbrcker Zeitung. The reviewer acknowledges that East and West Germany share certain social problems and even a somewhat parallel history, but nonetheless treats Hein's novella as if it were understandable only in terms of its eastern setting. The oddness of this split consciousness emerges in comparisons between the two states which proclaim similarities while implicitly emphasizing differences: Christoph Hein provides candid information about the other German state. He shows how often there, as here, despite all the differences, national development can lead to negative results. There, as here, one finds psychological repression of all sorts (the reaction of many East Germans to their environment), a chief physician can scarcely cope with his personal problems, and the revolt by women against the sexual domination by men is well under way -- this even though career opportunities and the right to equal pay are doubtless more advanced over there than they are in West Germany.27 .DB 29 "Christoph Hein gibt offene Ausknfte ber den anderen deutschen Staat. Er l„át erkennen, wie oft doch die Entwicklung drben der hiesigen trotz aller gesellschaftlichen Unterschiede auch ins Negative folgt, und zwar selbst dort, wo der Marxismus den neuen Menschen geschaffen haben sollte. Da gibt es wie bei uns Verdr„ngungen aller Art, mit denen viele DDR-Brger auf die Umwelt reagieren, ein Chefarzt wird mit seinem pers”nlichen 15 Problemen kaum fertig, und der Aufstand der Frauen gegen die sexuelle Herrschaft der M„nner . . . ist in vollem Gange. Und das, obwohl in der DDR zweifellos die sich in beruflichen Chancen und in Lohn ausdrckende Gleichberechtigung erheblich weiter ist als bei uns." (Heinz Mudrich, "Žrztin, geschieden, keine Klagen: Novelle aus der DDR, im Westen ausgezeichnet: Christoph Heins `Drachenblut'," Saarbrcker Zeitung, No. 58, 8 March 1984: 7.) .DQ The non sequitur that East German efforts toward social equality for women have exceeded West German ones looks like praise of the GDR, but is really backhanded criticism -- despite progress in certain areas, the GDR remains generally wretched. The direction of all this is unclear until the very end of the article, when the reviewer says that Hein's book is "a story of deflated resignation in a society of functionaries."28 In other words, the similarities between the two states mean nothing for the book's "candid" attack on the effects of a bureaucratized society; the West German versions of East German social problems are mentioned only to help the Western reader imagine East German life in familiar, if slightly inappropriate, terms. Now the tone of an earlier catalogue of GDR facts can be more precisely pinned down; after stating that the novella focuses on everyday life, the reviewer writes: .DB 30 "Eine Geschichte der abgepolsterten Resignation in einer Funktionier-Gesellschaft." .DQ It is merely advisable that the reader know a little about the social background against which this doctor's report takes place, a report about a life in the other German state. One is reminded they have there a housing allotment commission, that renters' vigilance committees are supposed to report anything suspicious to the state, that cars are bought on the hidden free market for double their official tax-value, that poetry readings take place in churches while at the same time job advancement can be difficult for practicing Christians. Or again, that one must save for two years to afford a trip to the Black Sea.29 .DB 31 "Fr den Leser ist es lediglich empfehlenswert, ein wenig den sozialen Hintergrund zu kennen, vor dem dieser Bericht einer Žrztin l„uft, ein Lebensbericht aus dem anderen deutschen Staat. Man wird daran erinnert, daá es dort eine Wohnungskommission gibt, daá eine Mietervertretung alles Verd„chtige dem Staat melden soll, daá Autos auf dem verdeckten freien Markt fr den doppelten Taxwert gekauft werden, daá in der Kirche Dichterlesungen stattfinden und daá zugleich das christliche Bekenntnis Schwierigkeiten beim beruflichen Vorankommen machen kann. Oder auch, daá fr eine Reise ans Schwarze Meer zwei Jahregespart werden muá." .DQ Here the emphasis is clearly on the otherness of the GDR, an otherness unfortunately exaggerated by the innacuracy and bias of some of the "facts" -- for instance, there is no single 16 housing commission, but many, run by individual companies and professional societies; and what would surely be called black- marketeering if carried on by tax evaders in West Germany here receives the more generous designation "hidden free market." What bills itself here as helpful "social background" slips readily into western self-congratulation, a sort of literary- critical analog to the political gesture the Berlin-based Axel Springer newspapers make when they put quotation marks around the initials GDR (a contemptuous reference to the supposed hollowness of all three words, "German," "Democratic," and "Republic.") The difficulty of maintaining objectivity expressed itself in a variety of other ways, as well. One finds the Frankfurter  Allgemeine Zeitung referring to Hein as a "writer living in East Germany" (in der DDR lebenden Schriftsteller) rather than an "East German writer," as though Hein's citizenship and residence were accidental or temporary.30 The Stuttgarter Zeitung criticizes Hein for his account of the events of 17 June 1953, charging that he "rather placating[ly] . . . recites the Party's cast-iron Offical Version: that nothing much had really taken place on that date" -- this in spite of the fact that Hein describes these events from the perspective of a small Thringian town, not as seen along the Stalinallee in Berlin.31 (Apparently it is a sin to describe the events of that date as anything other than a full-dress confrontation of the forces of Light and Darkness.) A truly blatant case surfaces in the Rheinische Merkur / Christ und Welt, where Hein's novella was reviewed beneath a headline that blared, "In der DDR verboten" (thus severely oversimplifying the complexities of the book's on-again, off-again GDR publication history.)32 .DB 32 The most extreme version of this thinking has been expressed by East German writer (now living in the West) Rolf Schneider, an original signer of the protest declaration against Wolf Biermann's expulsion from the GDR: "Their is only one German literature, the West German one. Some of its authors live in the GDR." ("Es gibt nur eine deutsche Literatur, die westdeutsche. Einige ihrer Autoren leben in der DDR.") (Quoted in Wolfgang Emmerich, Kleine Literatur Geschichte der DDR [Darmstadt & Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1981; corr. 1985], 223.) Schneider's remark is polemic, not literary history. .DQ .DB 33 "In einzelnen, etwa in der Beschreibung des 17. Juni .ú.ú., ist Hein eher abwiegelnd, reportiert er die guáeisernen Ondits der Partei: so, als w„re damals eigentlich nicht viel gewesen." (Karl Corin, "Liebe zu M”beln statt zu den Menschen: Das Maá der Kunst ist der gellende Schrei -- Christoph Heins Novelle `Drachenblut,'" Stuttgarter Zeitung, No. 285, 10 December 1983: 50.) .DQ .DB 34 J”rg Bernhardt Bilke, "In der DDR verboten: Laufen, um nicht hinzufallen: Lindenblatt und Drachenblut: Christoph Heins Novelle," Rheinische Merkur / Christ und Welt, No. 41, 14 October 1983: 35. See Note 1 for the publication history. .DQ Even when apparently simple questions of narrative form or 17 psychological verisimilitude arise, ideology (as expressed in assumptions about literature) leaves its mark. In particular, the western reviewers tend to over-emphasize the superficially formal aspects of the novella, i.e. as opposed to the book's significance within a historical and sociological matrix. For a piece of writing emerging from so charged a political atmosphere as that of the GDR, and with such a heterodox stance respecting approved socialist guidelines for literature, such an emphasis, if left unbalanced, is bound to distort understanding. As the preceding examples have shown, Western critics often assume the nature of the social relevance a priori -- Hein's book either indicts the GDR, or it describes industrial society in general -- ignoring the ambivalence of Hein's narrative stance. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung thus condemns Hein for what it perceives as didacticism, which it accuses of ruining the plausibility of plot and character: Claudia says not one word that Hein would not have wanted her to say, that would not have suited his didactic project. Moreover, he allows Claudia hardly a word that goes beyond her insecurities. Even Henry seems little more than a schema, and his demise -- he is killed in a fight with a teenager -- seems unconvincing.33 .DB 35 "[Claudia] sagt kein Wort, das [Hein] nicht h„tte h”ren wollen, das ihm nicht in sein didaktisches Konzept gepaát h„tte. Zudem erlaubt er Claudia kaum ein Wort, das ber ihre Žngste hinausginge. Selbst von Henry sind nicht viel mehr als Schemen erkennbar, und sein Ende -- er wird von einem Jugendlichen im Streit erschlagen -- wirkt wenig berzeugend." .DQ Setting aside the complaint about Henry (who is supposed to strike the reader as a stick-figure, another form of false- consciousness), this censure of Hein's didacticism leads both to an oversimple reading of Claudia (whose hold on the reader derives from her mixture of self-knowledge and repression) and an over-quick dismissal of what the so-called didacticism in this case really consists of: the modelling of problems and contradictions for which no dogmatic answer is provided. Hein's complaint about the eastern critics who find him insufficiently didactic applies equally well to the western critics who find him too didactic: "All that the critics demand is a moral stance, that the writer should be a moral authority. I reject this . . . . I am not any smarter than my readership . . . ."34 Similarly, the Neue Zrcher Zeitung concludes that Claudia is psychologically unconvincing, despite having described her as a "complex, multi-layered figure" (eine komplexe vielschichtige Figur). The problem is that her represions are so eloquently expressed that they could only come from Hein: "Hence the character . . . seems more like a minutely crafted psychological model than an individual."35 Yet a closer look at the novella's evident purpose dispells such a criticism: Hein is trying to depict the way that personal (and by implication, official) history is assimilated and repressed, and for this he needs an articulate, intelligent character, one capable of rationalizing anything, at least for the short term. Claudia, like her 18 society, is not merely stupid and brutal, but also enlightened and deliberate in what it chooses to know about itself -- a paradox of much greater horror. .DB 36 "Was die Kritiker verlangen, ist doch allein die moralische Haltung, die moralische Instanz, die der Schriftsteller sein soll. Ich lehne das ab . . . . Ich bin nicht klger als mein Publikum . . . ." ("Gespr„ch mit Christoph Hein," interview with Krzyszt¢f Jachimczak, Cracow, 1986, Sinn und Form, 40 [1988], 2: 347.) .DQ .DB 37 "So wirkt denn die Figur . . . mehr als minuzi”s konstruiertes psychologisches Modell denn als Person . . . ." ("Die lange Schatten der Vergangenheit," Neue Zrcher Zeitung [Fernausgabe], No. 252, 29 October 1983: 45) .DQ