German Life and Letters 58:1 January 2005 0016–8777 (print); 1468–0483 (online) © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. UNCORRECTED PROOF ‘ZEIT DER NICHTÜBEREINSTIMMUNG’: CENSORSHIP DISCOURSES ABOUT AND IN JUREK BECKER’S SCHLAFLOSE TAGE BEATE MÜLLER 1 ABSTRACT Schlaflose Tage marks a turning point for Jurek Becker: it is the only one of his novels which was never published in the GDR, and after its failure to gain authorisation in 1977, Becker left the GDR. The publishing negotiations concen- trated on contentious elements of the fictional text, as well as on Becker’s demands and his public demeanour. As was often the case, political concerns rather than aesthetic preferences proved to be decisive – the ban came as a reaction to Becker’s critical interviews in West German print media. Neverthe- less, it is important to study the arguments advanced about the manuscript, because they offer an insight into the ways in which those who worked in the GDR’s ‘Literaturbetrieb’ received and responded to a text which they regarded as violating political sensitivities. An analysis of the logic of these censorial dis- courses shows that they focus on plot elements of the novel, on direct statements by its central characters, and on ideological issues related thereto, while ignor- ing Becker’s more subtle representations of censorship which underpin the macrostructural levels of plot and dialogue: metaphors, symbols, parables, and intertextual references. I In the first of his Frankfurt public lectures, Becker addressed the sig- nificance of GDR censorship. He severely criticised censors: ‘immer sind sie reaktionär, immer haben sie unrecht.’ 2 Assuming that good literature is motivated primarily by its author’s desire to highlight the flaws 1 Financial support for the research on which this article is based was provided by the Small Grants Panel of Newcastle University’s Research Committee. This assistance is gratefully acknowledged. I should also like to thank Colin Riordan, Tina Fry and Alan Menhennet for their comments on an earlier version of this paper, which was presented at the conference ‘Silence and Expression’ (Texas A & M University, April 2000). It focused on the publication history of Schlaflose Tage, a topic I explo- red in detail in ‘Hinter verschlossenen Türen auf der Bühne deutsch-deutscher Öffentlichkeit: Publi- kationsgeschichten über Jurek Beckers Roman Schlaflose Tage’, in Beate Müller (ed.), Zensur im modernen deutschen Kulturraum, Tübingen 2003, pp. 195–214. I am indebted to archivists from the Berlin Bundesarchiv, the Stiftung Akademie der Künste, and the Stasi File Authority for their help, as well as to Christine Becker, Klaus Höpcke, Dieter Schlenstedt, Horst Simon and Elisabeth Borchers for their willingness to be interviewed. 2 Jurek Becker, Warnung vor dem Schriftsteller: Drei Vorlesungen in Frankfurt, Frankfurt a.M. 1990, p. 18. Further references appear in the text. CSE: AR GLAL 005