Hans-Joachim Schädlich
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Censorship is the "fighting machine in the realm of the spirit", was how Hans-Joachim Schädlich, Professor of Brothers Grimm Poetics at the University of Kassel, answered the question of his first lecture on December 17, 1988: "On the conditions of writing in the GDR and the Federal Republic - or: What is censorship?" The fact that the truth - even this one - is concrete, as Schädlich said, was conveyed to the packed lecture hall of the art department of the GhK in the equally sober and emphatic self-disclosures about the experiences of an "East-West German writer" who moved from the GDR to the Federal Republic in 1977 and now lives in West Berlin.
Image: Udoweier (Wikimedia Commons; CC BY-SA 4.0)Censorship in the GDR, as Schädlich made clear using his own example - but not only this one - is still dictatorial and is aimed at existence. In this respect, it cannot be compared with that in the Federal Republic. However, the fact that it is also rampant in this country - and to an increasing extent - was also one of Schädlich's concrete truths.