Tussen informatie en ideologie

In the so-called ‘Leseland DDR’ anthologies of foreign literature played an exceptionally important part in making available foreign texts and in disclosing new literary worlds to the GDR reading public. Moreover, these anthologies could function as a proving ground for introducing new authors and literary schools without censorial objection. The anthologies contain peritexts by the publisher or editor – mainly blurbs and afterwords – that focus on the representative and innovative character of the texts and inform about the selection of authors, the general themes and content, the aesthetic quality and – in case of anthologies from western countries – provide critical remarks on the condemnable developments in capitalist societies. In this article I investigate and compare four GDR anthologies of literature from the Netherlands and Flanders, all published between 1976 and 1984. This will make clear that the ideological comments after the cultural and political ‘Wende’ in the GDR at the beginning of the seventies can no longer be considered obligatory bows for the censorial authorities.