Work Book I

Volker Braun has been keeping a journal of his work since January 1977. The first volume, comprised of both brief and longer entries, reveals more than an illuminating insight into the workshop of the author. The notes from his day-to-day life also show how Volker Braun views himself, his work, his contemporaries and the political situation in Eastern and Western Germany.

Sometimes venomous or ironic, his observations, reflections and stories expose the art of his work in plays, lyrics or prose in a new light; with each sentence, be it teemed in humor or sadness, he heightens our understanding of both the need and the imperative to improve our situation.

This body of life, literature and work reveals how Volker Braun brought his dramas to stage and print in the GDR in 1975 and the FRG in 1977 following the publication of the Unvollendete Geschichte, how he cunningly published his Hinze-Kunze-Roman in Frankfurt and then in Halle, what mischief he met within the West, what motivated him to write the play Lenin's Death in 1988, as well as why the first volume of his complete works was released in 1989. His path brought him to take stock of things on December 31st, 1989, to »draw a hard-and-fast line beneath the old truths, beneath the old future.«