Monika Maron

Monika Maron's first novel, published in the West in 1981 after the authorities in East Germany blocked its appearance there. It deals specifically with the topic of industrial pollution, but more generally with the sclerotic political culture of the DDR as it was experienced by the generation of people born in the 1940s, who found it difficult to accept their elders’ assurance that the revolution was complete and they were already living in the socialist paradise, so that any criticism show more would only play into the hands of the evil capitalist West.

The young journalist Josefa is sent to write a magazine article about the industrial town of B. (Bitterfeld). She soon discovers that the real story is not about heroic workers exceeding plan targets, or the new swimming pool in the workers’ leisure centre, but about an outdated power plant that endangers the people working in it, as well as belching out 180 tons of fly ash a year over the town, making it “the most polluted place in Europe”. Industrial injuries and lung disease are at appallingly high levels in the area. Management and workers all want the plant decommissioned and replaced, but central government is deaf to their worries. Josefa writes about the situation, with a “naive” sense of justice, but of course nervous editors won’t publish her article. Maron shows us how the fear of expressing criticism built into the system creates a completely unnecessary conflict between Josefa and her colleagues, and eventually damages her personal life and her mental health.

A powerful, strongly felt book, which perhaps goes some way towards explaining why Maron is still regularly getting into trouble for saying the wrong thing. show less

A project for a TV documentary leads the author to reflect on her relationship with her Jewish grandfather Pawel (whom she knows only through a box of letters written from the Ghetto of Bełchatów, where he was confined before being killed by the Nazis) and with her communist mother Hella. And through those relationships of course to get an insight into the ways that history interferes with our lives and personal feelings. Was Pawel so wise and tolerant in his last letters because of his show more experience of breaking with his own family when he left the Jewish faith? Was Hella such a staunch communist because she fell in love with and married a senior Party official? Did Monika herself become such a critic of the failings of the DDR because she was brought up to believe in the values that informed the anti-fascist struggle? Or vice-versa?

This is a very discursive, anecdotal sort of book, jumping about between "now" and "then", giving us little snatches of analysis of documents and photographs and then shifting to memories or speculations. But Maron has a lot of very interesting thoughts and questions: definitely the sort of book to make you reflect on your own family background and pose yourself a few questions about it. show less

Stille Zeile sechs was written whilst the dust of reunification was still settling, and is clearly meant as a gesture of closure. It deals with the classic problem that (metaphorically, at least), you have to kill your parents to make a revolution. As the only group of Germans with a solid, documented claim to have resisted Hitler, the reactionary generation of Stalinists running the DDR had an even stronger psychological advantage over their children than most, and Maron (who happens to be show more the step-daughter of a government minister from the early days of the DDR) is essentially saying with this book that it was only the death of her parents' generation that made the reform of the DDR possible, and that her own generation had to deal with this symbolic parricide before it could move on.

The narrator is Rosalind Polkowski, who has given up her academic job researching the early history of the labour movement in Saxony and Thuringia because she can no longer bear to "think for money". Instead, she agrees to take on the relatively mindless task of working as amanuensis two afternoons a week for an elderly man, Herbert Beerenbaum, who is writing his memoirs. Beerenbaum is a communist of the first generation, survivor of concentration camps and Russian exile, and has held important offices in the Workers' and Peasants' State. And of course it becomes increasingly difficult for Rosalind to take dictation and keep her mouth shut as he piles up the lies and platitudes and ignores the harm he has done, particularly when she finds out that Beerenbaum was responsible for hurting one of her own friends.

The big political story of this surprisingly short novel is mixed in with other threads of discussion about the anti-intellectualism of the founding generation of communists, about the male community of the local pub, the geography of Berlin, the untranslatability of Don Giovanni, and much else. Very rewarding and entertaining. show less

On her way to a funeral in another part of Berlin, Ruth suffers a sudden, inexplicable vision disturbance that makes it difficult for her to find her way to the cemetery. She ends up instead in a large city park that seems to be populated mostly by ghosts, including Olga, the mother of Ruth's first ex-partner Berndt (she's the one being buried), and Bruno, best friend of Ruth's ex-husband, the novelist Hendrik. And Margot and Erich Honecker (who still think it's 1990), and a dog called Nikki show more (who isn't necessarily a ghost at all).

Ruth is a Maron-like character who had always defined herself by stubborn resistance to the East German regime as personified by her stepfather; Olga had simply tried to lead a good life and stay under the radar, whilst Bruno drank himself to death as a form of inner exile. And the Honeckers still believe that socialism is going to come back and prove that they were right. And Nikki has smelled sausages...

So it's another opportunity for Maron to go back over her life-history and explore the way political conflict spills over into personal life, and how a broken political system breaks the people living under it and leaves them with guilts and resentments that the passage of time can never take away. But also to look more generally at ideas about death, the role of religious belief, good and evil, and all the rest. Possibly a bit much for such a slight little book to carry, but Maron just about gets away with it. show less