Hans-Joachim Schädlich
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Censorship is the "fighting machine in the realm of the spirit," was how Hans-Joachim Schädlich, as Brothers Grimm poetics professor at the University of Kassel, answered the question of his first lecture on December 17, 1988: "On conditions of writing in the GDR and in the Federal Republic - or: What is censorship?" The fact that truth - even this truth - is concrete, as Schädlich said, was conveyed to the packed lecture hall of the GhK's art department in the equally sober and forceful 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 with his own example - but not only with this one - is still dictatorial and aims at existence. In this respect, it cannot be compared with that in the Federal Republic. The fact that it is also rampant in this country - and to an increasing extent - was also part of Schädlich's concrete truths.