Cherrypicker | Literature  Chronicle of a Failure

Christoph Hein presents a comprehensive history of the GDR. In it, his characters guide the socialist German state, which he calls the "Narrenschiff" (ship of fools), toward its final cliff.

Born in 1944 in Heinzendorf, now part of Poland, Hein is considered one of Germany's most important contemporary authors and one of the most significant chroniclers of East German history. He has written dozens of plays, stories, and novels. Now, with Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools), Hein presents a monumental 750-page work dedicated to the history of the GDR—from its founding in 1949 to its demise in 1989 with the opening of the Berlin Wall. Hein borrowed the title from Sebastian Brant, whose late medieval moral satire of the same name was published in 1494. Both works depict a community that increasingly reveals itself to be an absurd, disoriented construct.

Opportunists and idealists

At the center of the novel are two families: the Goretzkas and the Emsers. After World War II, they return from exile to East Germany and take on central roles in building the new state. Johannes Goretzka is an opportunist who is all too typical of the system. He has no qualms about transforming himself from a Nazi to a communist, and he uncritically adopts the party line without much reflection. Opposite him is Karsten Emser, an idealistic socialist and professor of Marxist economics whose deep convictions prevent him from recognizing the fatal weaknesses of the socialist system. Another important protagonist is Benaja Kuckuck, an artist and close friend of Karsten Emser. A free spirit with little loyalty to the system, Kuckuck's comment that the GDR was probably "a ship full of fools" during a conversation about the events of the Prague Spring in 1968 explains the title. The biographies of the women in the families, especially Yvonne Goretzka, who was initially cheerful but later became desperate, and her daughter Katharina, also show the inevitable tensions that life in an authoritarian state brings with it.

The chronologically structured story is anchored in historical events, such as the aforementioned Prague Spring, the popular uprising in the GDR in 1953, and the coup-like removal of Walter Ulbricht in 1971. The story cleverly weaves in lesser-known insights into the political life of the East German state, such as the ideological re-education of people whom the state sought to bring back into line.

Gray bureaucracy

Christoph Hein's narrative style is striking: a sober, factual account with the feel of a memo. Even in the dialogues, he remains true to his style. His characters are wooden to the point of absurdity; the author does not attempt to make them seem human. Such distance has an effect. The cliché of the GDR as a gray, bureaucratic institution, where the Central Committee's directives were carried out unquestioningly and uncomplainingly with utmost precision and narrow-mindedness, is portrayed with unsparing brutality by Christoph Hein. The state, founded as an anti-fascist countermodel to the Federal Republic but which soon sank into repression, bureaucracy, and ideological rigidity, comes back to life in the reader's mind. It disappears just as quietly, and it becomes clear why: the country lacked a soul. Its ideology was a meticulous set of rules dictated by a small group of power-hungry older men, and blind obedience was the only way to survive in this country. Over time, ideals such as justice, solidarity, and anti-fascism were perverted by a system that reduced itself to absurdity.

Empathic analysis

Nevertheless, Das Narrenschiff is not a reckoning. The characters are not caricatures, and their motives, fears, and hopes remain understandable. The "fools" are driven individuals who must find their way in a system that leaves them little room to maneuver. The question arises again and again: When do compromises become complicity and convictions become opportunism? Hein illustrates how individuals adapt to an authoritarian system — out of fear, convenience, or genuine conviction. He does not shy away from the dark side. Intrigue, surveillance, betrayal, and the omnipresent presence of the Stasi permeate the book like an invisible web. In Das Narrenschiff, Christoph Hein creates a literary monument to the lost state, analyzing it in a nuanced, empathetic, and intelligent way without glorifying or demonizing it. The novel reads smoothly and pleasantly but seems linguistically distant and, at times, awkward. Ultimately, readers gain a deep understanding of how the socialist German state came into being, what ailed it, and why it was doomed from the outset. It is a great novel.
 

June 2025