Dangerous Creations: Papers from a Roundtable Discussion - Paperback

by Aoife Ní Chroidheáin (Editor), Henrike Lähnemann (Editor)

The 'samizdat' ('self-publication') sphere that flourished between c.1980-1990 in former East Germany produced an extraordinary flowering of hundreds of tiny magazines and graphic/poetry journals that evaded the strict censorship of the state. The artists, musicians and writers who produced them lived mostly illegally in the rundown housing stock of the major East German cities (especially Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin) and created a Bohemian enclave within the dictatorship.

This volume presents the proceedings of the 'Dangerous Creations' roundtable discussion, which brought together key international scholars of the GDR 'samizdat' scene, along with writers and artists who were once active in the scene, and researchers of Russian 'samizdat'. The event provided researchers and artistic practitioners alike with the opportunity to discuss and compare the potentially transnational forms that literary creativity and subversion took in the repressive East German state and beyond.