Zum Erschliessen der Erfahrung von Raum and Zeit in Christa Wolfs Erzaehlung 'Kein Ort. Nirgends' (German text)

The loss, narrowness, absence of a space and a time, experienced as a mutual and communal dimension where man can be and act, is both a recurrent motif in myth and literature as well as an inspiration for writing. The history of exiles, banishments, voluntary and involuntary isolations and the state of abandonment and rejection are impressed upon human memory and poetic imagery and have been highly represented and elevated as leitmotifs in narration.; An attempt by a state's government to silence its intellectual and artistic fringes through expatriation is the origin of the novel Kein Ort. Nirgends: 1976 the GDR's poet and songwriter Wolf Biermann was prohibited from returning to his country after a West German tour. The authorities reacted with reprisals against those petitioners, among them Christa Wolf, who, in an open letter, urged the government to reconsider such a severe measure.; Kein Ort. Nirgends breaks this silence by outlining an analogy between Wolf's time and two historical figures and poets from the era of Romanticism, Heinrich von Kleist and Karoline von Gunderrode, who are well known for their tragic ends. Christa Wolf recalls and reinvents their distance from their society and their conflict both with the age's reactionary and rational spirit and with the political disillusionment following the consequences of the French Revolution.; Against the backdrop of a salon in Winkel am Rhein, the fictitious meeting between Kleist and Gunderrode, two modern outsiders, takes place. They suffer alienation, estrangement and homelessness which they express through their body language and their tendency towards self isolation. Their experience of time and space, their ambivalent attitude towards nature and their conflict against contemporary culture belong to the central poetic dimension of the narration. The novel subtends the point of the role and purpose of literature in the society and whether literature itself can function as a place.