Monsieur – wir finden uns wieder
(Monsieur – we'll find each other again)
‚Reading these letters has once again made it clear to me
that we in the West have every reason to regard our East German colleagues
with the utmost respect. Some of them showed a level of courage
that many of us have never had to prove.‘
Günter Grass
In 1978, a year that was still fraught with the consequences of the protests against the expatriation of the singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann by the GDR authorities, Franz Fühmann wrote in a letter to Christa Wolf from Märkisch Buchholz ‚God, the author of all, will make sure that we will find one another.‘ Of course, they‘d actually already known each other for a long time. However, since the autumn of 1976, their sporadic messages from author to author had turned into a political correspondence, and an exchange of letters about their work that reflects the discussions amongst the artists and intellectuals who were critical of the GDR regime.
Christa Wolf was born in Landsberg / Warthe (now Gorzów Wielkopolski) in 1929. She worked as a research associate, editor and proofreader before the publication of her first book in 1961. Her extensive body of work won numerous national and international prizes. She died in Berlin in 2011.
Franz Fühmann was born in Rokytnice in Bohemia in 1922. He voluntarily joined the Nazi paramilitary SA whilst still in upper secondary school, was later conscripted into the Wehrmacht and taken prisoner of war by the Soviets. His work is characterised by remorseless self-investigation, and reflects his gradual transformation into a moralist. He died in East Berlin in 1984.
Fritzi Haberlandt was born in East Berlin and is well-known for her performances in the theatre, where she has worked with Robert Wilson, Michael Thalheimer, Jan Bosse and Armin Petras, for example, as well as her appearances in films such as Fog August, or TV series such as Babylon Berlin. Devid Striesow, originally from Bergen on the island of Rügen, studied at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art. He and Fritzi Haberlandt were in the same year there. He is above all known for his film and TV appearances, for example in I‘m Off Then and 3, and in the crime series Schwatz & Schwartz. In the theatre, he has performed, and continues to perform, under such directors as Jürgen Gosch, Karin Beier and Thorsten Lensing.
