| Summary: | "In the process of negotiating the social and political reality of the GDR, writers played a crucial role. The specific feature of GDR literary texts of the 1960s lies in their attempt at both imagining and representing the emergence of a community that had previously not existed as well as shifting loyalties to promote a sense of common belonging. This study analyses the ways in which Werner Bräunig and Erik Neutsch negotiate this tension in their novels by focusing on spatial and topographical settings. If literary texts map power structures by rewriting cartographies, then the analysis of those spatial dimensions will shed light on the type of societies that are being promoted. Both texts under consideration were written in the 1960s but have been received very differently: while Neutsch's Spur der Steine (1964) became a bestseller, Bräunig's fragment Rummelplatz was only published as a novel posthumously in 2007. Yet they both speak to GDR politics of the 1960s, highlighting the evocative power of literature within the East German context"--
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