Morgner

Irmtraud Morgner (1933-1990)

Irmtraud Morgner was a feminist writer who pioneered the genre of magic realism in East Germany (GDR). She was from a working-class background in Chemnitz in Saxony; her father was a locomotive engine driver. From 1952-1956 she studied German literature in Leipzig. In 1958 she moved to East Berlin and spent the rest of her life there.

Her third novel (and perhaps her most radical one), Rumba auf einen Herbst (Rumba in Autumn) was finished in 1966 but was banned by GDR officials; it was later published posthumously in 1992.

Morgner’s breakthrough success came with her third novel to be actually published, Hochzeit in Konstantinopel (1968, Wedding in Constantinople). It focuses on the dysfunctional relationship between Bele H., a taxi driver and tram conductor, and her fiancé, Paul, an atomic physicist. While on holiday in Yugoslavia and preparing for their wedding, Bele and Paul gradually drift apart. Paul is an ambitious Leistungsethiker (i.e. a man with an extremely strict work ethic). He declares: ‘Physik ist eine vitale Wissenschaft für vitale Männer’ (Morgner, Hochzeit in Konstantinopel, Munich: Luchterhand, 2011, p. 137; ‘Physics is a vital science for vital men’). His extreme patriotism gets on Bele’s nerves: ‘Pauls Nationalstolz befremdete sie bisweilen’ (p. 138, ‘Paul’s national pride disconcerted her sometimes’). Happy memories of Bele’s amazing grandmother help her to forget her overbearing fiancé. Towards the end of Hochzeit in Konstantinopel, Paul plans a wedding party which is described as a ‘Henkers- beziehungsweise Hochzeitsmahlzeit’ (p. 206, ‘a hanging feast or rather a wedding feast’) – marriage is presented here as a kind of death sentence. Bele has the good sense to leave Paul before they reach the registry office.

Morgner is best known for her fantastical picaresque novel Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz (1974; English translation by Jeanette Clausen: The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice, 2000) – the only one of her books to be translated into English. It has been described by Nikolaus Markgraf as ‘so etwas wie eine Bibel aktueller Frauenemanzipation’ (‘something like a bible of current women’s liberation’; cited in Marlis Gerhardt (ed.), Irmtraud Morgner. Texte, Daten, Bilder, Darmstadt 1990, p. 153), Morgner’s decision to write a novel about a pícara (a female pícaro) was highly innovative, as the picaresque novel is generally reserved for male authors and characters (Grimmelshausen’s Courasche is a rare female picaro, but of course written by a male author). Beatriz is a medieval trobadora (the female equivalent of a troubadour) who wakes up in 1968 in her castle in Provence after having slept for eight hundred years, somewhat similar to Dornröschen (Sleeping Beauty) in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. She arrives in Paris and witnesses the events of May 1968. Then she decides to live in East Germany because of its optimistic dream of building a better world for everyone including women. Lyn Marven writes that the opening sentence of Morgner’s Trobadora Beatriz: ‘“Of course this country is a land where wonders happen” was a plea; the GDR was not in fact a place for fantasy’ (see reading list below, Marven 2007a, p. 165). Marven continues:

For Morgner the literary mode stood in a wider sense for utopian thinking. She brought in the fantastic, in the guise of the reincarnated trobairitz Beatriz de Dia, as a means of reinvigorating literature, and, through it, the GDR. Her use was political and, specifically, feminist: fantasy was both counterpart and corrective to technology, the posited motor for progress in socialism, and based on masculine, rationalist thinking. (Marven 2007a, p. 165)

In 1989 Morgner was awarded the Kassel Literary Prize for Grotesque Humour in 1989. In a radio broadcast in 2014, Carola Wiemers described Morgner’s ‘aesthetic of laughter’ as an antidote to the militarization of the world: ‘Für sie ist das Lachen ein Lebenselixir, um in einer Welt, die von Militärmaschinerie starrt und erstarrt, überleben zu können.’ (hyperlink below, Wiemers 2014, 88:06-88:46; ‘For Morgner, laughter is an elixir of life in order to survive in a world that is becoming rigid and paralysed by military machinery.’)

Morgner died of cancer in 1990. Some of her works were published posthumously, including a short story, Der Schöne und das Tier (1991, Beauty and the Beast) and a novel, Rumba auf einen Herbst (1992, Rumba in Autumn), and Das heroische Testament (1998, The Heroic Testament) – the unfinished final volume of her ‘Salman’ trilogy. According to Patricia Herminghouse (see reading list below, p. 58), the final volume of the trilogy signals a loss of faith in the socialist utopia of the GDR; instead it situates hope in ‘the love of two human beings for one another’. As Morgner writes:

Millionen umschlingen wollen ist leicht, weil nicht nachprüfbar. Aber einen einzigen Mensch glücklich machen [...]. Nur wer das kann, ist legitimiert und mitunter sogar befähigt, Völkern Ratschläge zu erteilen oder mehr. (Morgner, Das heroische Testament, Munich 1998, p. 99)

It is easy to want to embrace millions, because it cannot be verified. But making a single person happy [...] Only those who can do that are legitimised and sometimes even qualified to give advice to peoples or more.

Among Morgner’s other posthumously published texts, Der Schöne und das Tier (this could be translated as ‘Beauty and the Beast’ or ‘Beauty and the Animal’) begins with the phrase ‘Guten Morgen, Du Schöner’ – an ironic reference to Maxie Wander’s famous interview book, Guten Morgen, du Schöne (1977). While Wander’s book featured women as speaking subjects, Morgner depicts a female gaze upon a male body. Now it is the male who is the object of investigation (and desire).

As Lyn Marven shows (see reading list below Marven 2007a and 2007b), Morgner’s trailblazing feminist work continues to inspire younger generations of German women writers including Kerstin Hensel, Kathrin Schmidt and Kerstin Mlynkec.

Morgner’s works include:

Hochzeit in Konstantinopel (1968) (Wedding in Constantinople)

Her magnum opus is ‘the Salman trilogy’, about the character Laura Salman:

1: Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz nach Zeugnissen ihrer Spielfrau Laura (1974) (The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura, 2000)

2: Amanda. Ein Hexenroman (1983) (Amanda. A Witch’s Tale)

3: Das heroische Testament. Ein Roman in Fragmenten (published posthumously in 1998) (The Heroic Testament: A Novel in Fragments)

Der Schöne und das Tier (1991) (Beauty and the Beast)

Rumba auf einen Herbst [1966] (1992) (Rumba in Autumn)

Erzählungen (2006) (Stories)

English Translation

Irmtraud Morgner, The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura, trans. by Jeanette Clausen (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2000)