Partisans of Transformation: Resentful Dissent and Radicalization after 1989 in Contemporary Literature

Abstract

The article examines the response to the transformations since 1989/90 in eastern Germany through the lens of three German novels and one Hungarian novel, drawing on Kurt Drawert’s social-psychological observations as well as the “change-averse” characters depicted by Ingo Schulze, Lutz Seiler and László Krasznahorkai. In a first step, the concept and figure of the partisan as catalysts for – or reactions to – societal change are defined with reference to an essay by Herfried Münkler (1990) and in conjunction with Roman
Schnur’s Theory of Civil War (1983). Important contributions for adapting this perspective to the contexts of 1989 revolution and transformation are provided by Krastev & Holmes (2019), Andreas Reckwitz (2024), and Hans-Jürgen Schings (2024). Subsequently, two chapters read the poetics of transformation articulated in these novels with regard to unease and radicalization as manifested in their characters – first in Drawert’s Dresden, die zweite Zeit (2021) and Seiler’s Kruso and Stern 111 (2014, 2020), and then in Schulze’s Die rechtschaffenen Mörder (2020) and Krasznahorkai’s Herscht 07769 (2022). The analysis shows that these texts – most of which emerged, as it were, on the “hem” of the epoch of post-1989/90 transformation – transpose phenomena of backsliding and populism into characters who may be read as partisans of transformation. Consequently, the conclusion and outlook return, with additional examples from the region, to the significance that literature and the arts might hold for societal and political discourse.