The "Sammlung Kratschmer/Würtz" and the poetry of adolescents in the GDR

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Gregor Streim
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 451455687

Jena’s university library ThULB houses the "Collection Kratschmer/Würtz, Jugendlyrik der DDR" archive, containing approximately 80,000 mostly unpublished poems, letters, announcements and reports from more than 13,000 adolescents from the former GDR. This collection, as yet never academically researched, is a unique resource for studying adolescent poetry in the GDR as a mass movement between state control and emancipatory aspirations. The archive was initiated by the teacher and publicist Edwin Kratschmer, who collected students’ poems for the anthology series "Offene Fenster" ("open windows") from 1964 until the end of the GDR. He collaborated with Hannes Würtz, who curated his own adolescent poetry section as a publisher in the FDJ newspaper "Junge Welt" ("young world"). These publications were connected to the so-called "Poetenbewegung" ("poets movement"), a state organized initiative which coordinated writing groups, literary competitions and poetry seminars for adolescents across the nation. The academic study of this phenomenon is a void both for German literature studies and social history. The aim of this project is to study the institutional context and the literary practice of adolescent poetry in the GDR through the materials of the "Sammlung Kratschmer/Würtz" collection. The research will be guided by the question regarding relationship between institutional control and individual expression. In the first phase of the project, wish will be completed in February 2024, the history and composition of the collection and the history and organisational structure of the “Poetenbewegung” were reconstructed. In the second phase of the project the source material for the years 1973/74 and 1984/85 will be evaluated as case studies. Here the project investigates the degree to which the individuals associated with the “poets movement” were able to exercise autonomy of expression within the politically controlled institution of the FDJ talent program. For this purpose, publications, letters, reports and prefaces, will be analyzed as well as the poets’ letters and in particular the poems themselves, evaluating their language, themes and roles of the speakers. The results of this research will be published in the form of a monograph.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants