Rather Without Postmodernism—Kerstin Dietrich’s Exemplary Re-Reading of Four Women Writers of the GDR

Abstract

Dietrich investigates the works of four women authors of the GDR, Helga Königsdorf, Monika Maron, Anna Langhoff and Katja Lange-Müller. She identifies the four writers as belonging to two different generations of women GDR writers and treats their work accordingly. Whereas Dietrich focuses on the signs of a “modern aesthetics” in the works of the older writers, Maron and Königsdorf, she investigates the characteristics of “post-modern aesthetics” in the works of Lange-Müller and Langhoff. However, as Dietrich’s definition of a “post-modern aesthetic” remains rather unspecific and vague, her analysis might have been just as convincing if she had chosen not to include a discussion of the post-modern into her analysis.