"'Liebe Mitstreiter', he says. Dear comrades in arms. Today we are going to learn about the sonnet. Berlin, 1962. Morale is at rock bottom in East Germany, thrown into chaos by the new Berlin Wall. The Ministry for State Security is hunting for a new weapon in the war against capitalism - and their ...
Books can be reserved online for later collection and payment at Hibernian by adding to cart and marking it as "store pick up". If books have not been paid for online then they will be kept aside for a maximum of three (3) work days only. If you want them held longer, you can pay for them online.
Details
Book binding :Hardback
Preservation state :3. Good
Publication Date :09/07/2024
Year of edition :0
Authors :Philip Oltermann
Number of pages :201
"'Liebe Mitstreiter', he says. Dear comrades in arms. Today we are going to learn about the sonnet. Berlin, 1962. Morale is at rock bottom in East Germany, thrown into chaos by the new Berlin Wall. The Ministry for State Security is hunting for a new weapon in the war against capitalism - and their solution is stranger than fiction. Rather than guns, tanks, or bombs, the Stasi resolve to fight the enemy through rhyme and verse, winning the Culture Wars through poetry - and the result is the most bizarre book club in history. Consisting of 15 secret agents - from WW2 veterans to schoolboy recruits - the 'Working Group of Writing Chekists' met monthly from 1962 until the Wall fell. In a classroom adorned with portraits of Lenin, the spies wrote their own poetry and were taught verse, metre, and rhetoric by East German poet Uwe Berger. The regime hoped that poetry would sharpen the Stasi's 'party sword' by affirming the spies' belief in the words of Marx and Lenin, as well as strengthening the socialist faith of their comrades. But as the agents became steeped in poetry, revelling in its imaginative ambiguity, the result was the opposite. Rather than entrenching state ideology, they began to radically question it - and following a radical role reversal, the GDR's secret weapon dramatically backfired. Weaving unseen archival material with exclusive interviews from surviving members, Philip Oltermann reveals the incredible hidden story of a unique experiment: weaponising poetry for politics. Both a gripping true story and a parable about creativity in a surveillance state, this is The Lives of Others meets Dead Poets Society - and history writing at its finest"--Publisher's description.
This website stores data as cookies to enable the necessary functionality of the site, including analytics and personalization. You can change your settings at any time or accept the default settings.
Necessary cookies help make a web page usable by activating basic functions such as page navigation and access to secure areas of the web page. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
Personalization
Personalization cookies allow the website to remember information that changes the way the page behaves or the way it looks, such as your preferred language or the region in which you are located.
Analysis
Statistical cookies help web page owners understand how visitors interact with web pages by collecting and providing information anonymously.
Marketing
Marketing cookies are used to track visitors on web pages. The intention is to show ads relevant and attractive to the individual user, and therefore more valuable to publishers and third-party advertisers.