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In this volume,
Volker Braun publishes new poems that are a critique of German society seen
from the perspective of a former GDR writer ten years after reunification. Tumulus is a collection of poems written
between 1995 and 1997. The epigraph that follows the first poem articulates his
agenda not only for the book but also as a writer in a reunified Germany.
Quoting Brecht, Braun writes of failures that must be addressed: “Vergiß nicht, dies sind die Jahre / Wo es nicht gilt zu siegen, sondern
/ Die Niederlagen zu erfechten.”
Braun’s poems speak of failure: of the failure of the socialist ideal and of the failure one has to face if left without hope. What is it that Braun sees buried on the hill of the dead, on Tumulus? Ultimately it is hope for chance that has vanished after the fall of a socialism that never really came into existence in the first place. Thus he writes: “Wir waren zu lange wach / Überwach vom Warten auf den Morgen / Bis uns dämmerte, daß er vergangen war.” What he is left with is a society that turns the human being into a product: “Warum soll ich Mode werden / In der Wegwerfgesellschaft,” Braun asks in his last poem, ending with the line: “Sehn Sie nun das Finale ICH ODER ICH / Salute, Barbaren.” And in “Die Bucht der Hingeschiedenen,” he writes that the crime that he had committed was the desire to change the world. With the burial of hope for change, Braun sees the human being as limited and confined: for him to be human is to have hope.
Braun’s collection is composed of three sections. The first part starts with “Traumtext,” one of two short prose texts in the volume. He writes about a dream in which the individual has to come to terms with his or her responsibilities and involvement in history. Awaiting his interrogation and possible execution, the subject wishes for three things: that history had never existed, that history had not yet started, or-the most unusual wish in Braun’s opinion-that history might continue. His poem “Das Nachleben” opens the second part, comprising a total of nine poems and one prose piece. Here, too, the author puts the individual confronting his historical time at the center of his text. The face of the poetic “I” disappears into a death mask, where he experiences “die lange Zeit nach mir,” until he himself holds the death mask in his hand. The poem “Lagerfeld,” referring both to a camp and to the fashion designer, makes up part three and concludes the volume.
Braun’s fear of being reduced and confined without hope to the private realm alone creates the tension of the poems and determines the form of the book. In his writing, Braun wishes to overcome confinement to a private sphere in a society that values commodities more than human beings. By quoting Brecht, Büchner, Plinius, Kafka, and Rimbaud, he places his poems into an historical context and quotes voices of an historical memory which enables him to break out of the merely private. Braun’s language thereby oscillates between the abstraction of markets and wars and the concreteness of individual biographies. Thus, he describes breaks and ruptures which separate the private and the public and at the same time bring them together brilliantly. His poems also juxtapose historical events in order to expose the repetition of history and the relevance of the past in the present. In “Der Totenhügel,” he writes: “Cäser sah fern vom Tumulus / Der Seeschlacht zu Barbarenschiffe Angstschweiß / Eines Großen der Geschichte macht Es kam dann / Auf die Tapferkeit an . . . / BELLUM GALLICUM der gewohnte Golfkrieg / . . . Ein Lidschlag der Geschichte gegen die Verblendung / Taumelzaudernd DER TANZ AUF DER MAUER / Die Mauerspechte mit den kleinen Hämmern / . . . Eine Minute in Meiner Zeit.”
In his lyric collection, Braun compares the era of “real-existing” socialism with present-day capitalism: two systems that, according to Braun, do not differ a great deal. He sees history repeated in a reunified Germany, because socialism did not overcome the division of labor, a quality it shares with the capitalist system. In “Lagerfeld” he writes: “. . . Man wird euch zeigen was Arbeit ist / Eine Maschine mit Gliedmassen geschlechtsneutral / . . . AM ENDE DES TAGES BIST DU EIN PRODUKT.” The fashion designer becomes the epitome of a time that is commodity-driven. By screaming “letzte Schreie,” Braun draws a parallel between present-day commodity society and the final days of ancient Rome.
His hope for real socialist change thus remains unfulfilled: “Auf den Korridoren der Macht, meine Sanftmut ist hart / Erarbeitet in der Zementfabrik SOZIALISMUS die Frage / Die keine Antwort zuließ bzw. die Antwort / Die keine Frage zuließ. . . .” His mother, whose death is portrayed in the poem “6.5.96,” is the metaphor for his hope for real social change; however “. . . sie hatte / Einen Moment den Mut verloren und war müde geworden / Gelegenheit, sie RUHIGZUSTELLEN . . .”
One does not have to share Braun’s view of history and his defiant insistence on changing society to find these poems convincing. The precision of the poems exposes without sentimentality real fears of missed opportunities and the possibility that life might be over sooner than we think without our having taken chances that were before us. in this volume, Braun calls German society to account from the perspective of a former GDR writer and testifies to his continuing skills as a poet.