The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War

— —

Philip Oltermann

The Stasi Poetry Circle

The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War

Philip Oltermann

$32.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Faber & Faber
12 April 2022

History; European history; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; Social & cultural history

'Liebe Mitstreiter', he says. Dear comrades in arms. Today we are going to learn about the sonnet.

Berlin, 1962. Morale is at rock bottom in East Germany, thrown into chaos by the new Berlin Wall. The Ministry for State Security is hunting for a new weapon in the war against capitalism - and their solution is stranger than fiction. Rather than guns, tanks, or bombs, the Stasi resolve to fight the enemy through rhyme and verse, winning the Culture Wars through poetry - and the result is the most bizarre book club in history.

Consisting of 15 secret agents - from WW2 veterans to schoolboy recruits - the 'Working Group of Writing Chekists' met monthly from 1962 until the Wall fell. In a classroom adorned with portraits of Lenin, the spies wrote their own poetry and were taught verse, metre, and rhetoric by East German poet Uwe Berger. The regime hoped that poetry would sharpen the Stasi's 'party sword' by affirming the spies' belief in the words of Marx and Lenin, as well as strengthening the socialist faith of their comrades. But as the agents became steeped in poetry, revelling in its imaginative ambiguity, the result was the opposite. Rather than entrenching state ideology, they began to radically question it - and following a radical role reversal, the GDR's secret weapon dramatically backfired.

Weaving unseen archival material with exclusive interviews from surviving members, Philip Oltermann reveals the incredible hidden story of a unique experiment: weaponising poetry for politics. Both a gripping true story and a parable about creativity in a surveillance state, this is The Lives of Others meets Dead Poets Society - and history writing at its finest.

The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War

By: Philip Oltermann
Imprint: Faber & Faber
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: Export - Airside ed
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 16mm
Weight: 289g
ISBN: 9780571373338
ISBN 10: 057137333X
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 12 April 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Philip Oltermann was born in Schleswig-Holstein in 1981 and moved to England when he was 16. He has written for Granta, the LRB and the Guardian, for whom he is now the Berlin Bureau Chief. He is the author of Keeping up with the Germans (2013) and tweets at @philipoltermann.