Aufbauliteratur (literally: construction literature) is the name given to the literature produced in Eastern Germany between state foundation and construction of the Berlin Wall, that is between 1949 and 1961, by authors close to the state's ideology and congruent with the ruling party's political program. It was aimed at the intellectual construction of the Socialist state. The area is preceded by the less directed and only marginal literature produced post the Second World War, and followed by Ankunftsliteratur, the literature written to internalize a sense of arrival which was much less ideological but practical and realistic, still aligned with the SED.[1]
Between 1949 and 1961, the East German communist party (SED) was keen to establish its newly founded "proletarians' and peasants' state", in a program called Aufbau des Sozialismus which involved a promotion of Marxist-Leninist ideology not only in economic but more so social means dominated by literature (Aufbauliteratur). This is to be understood in a general context of nation building and hence Aufbauliteratur functions to "educating citizens for loyalty towards the state and its socialist ideology".[2]
- ^ Emmerich, W., 1996. Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR. Leipzig: Aufbau Verlag.
- ^ Weigert, A., 1999. Das öffentliche Bibliothekswesen der DDR im Landkreis.. In: P. Vodosek & K. Marwinski, eds. Geschichte des Bibliothekswesens in der DDR (Wolfenbütteler Schriften zur Geschichte des Buchwesens Band 31). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, p. 87 f.