The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War
PHILIP OLTERMANN
(FABER, 202 PP, £14.99)
Tablet bookshop price £13.49 • tel 020 7799 4064

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Philip Oltermann’s The Stasi Poetry Circle is that his subtitle, The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War, is not in the least hyperbolic. This fast-paced, densely researched book affords the reader a chance both to reflect on the complexities of totalitarianism and to chuckle at aspiring poets’ follies: dextrously packing these elements into a single absorbing read.

The author was brought up in the former West Germany, educated in the UK, and now lives in Berlin. This brings immediacy to his account – he’s been able to interview his story’s surviving protagonists – but also a deepened understanding of German culture. Oltermann introduces us to an East German society deeply influenced by Johannes Becker, poet and policymaker, whose legacy was the idea of a Literaturgesellschaft. The whole state was a “literature society”, with writers seeded throughout it on what became known as the “Bitterfeld Path”, rather than clustered in clubbable, purely literary settings. Literature’s role was centrally to help create a society of workers capable of correct Marxist understanding by inspiring, educating and modelling ideas for them.