Uwe Johnson, Mutmassungen über Jakob [Speculations About Jacob]

Alfred D. White (Cardiff University)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1959

Places

Germany (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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After failing to publish his relatively conventional novel

Ingrid Babendererde

, Johnson set out in 1958 to produce a novel of undiluted, stringent modernism, filled with potentially explosive attacks on some aspects of the German Democratic Republic. The novel asks several controversial questions: why the GDR is not the ideal state, nor on the way to it; why states cannot tolerate freedom; whether any political form gives ground for hope; how much dissidence can be tolerated. In order to publish this in the Federal Republic and still live in the east, he thought of using a pseudonym, but, persuaded that his cover would not hold, decided instead to move to West Berlin in July 1959.

The novel is set in 1956, the year of Khrushchev’s self-distancing from Stalin’s excesses and of the

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1686 words

Citation: White, Alfred D.. "Mutmassungen über Jakob". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 June 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16830, accessed 26 April 2024.]

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