This article examines how three authors with GDR backgrounds, Wolfgang Hilbig, Brigitte Struyzk and Reinhard Jirgl, exploit the literary potential of the railway network in recent novels which take stock of the situation in Germany since 1989. In using the railway as a setting these writers are engaging with a topos whose cultural significance has its roots in the material presence of the railways as a major form of communication in Germany since the 1830s. That significance has not diminished to mere nostalgia in the meantime, as is seen, for example, in the role trains have played during times of transition, such as after 1945, or in the literature of the GDR in general. The three books under discussion demonstrate that the period of transition after 1989 also attracts writers to the railways as a potent setting for an examination not only of where Germany is headed and where it has been, but also of the role of literature itself.

Reconnections: Railways and the East German Revolution of 1989

The railways were always a potent symbol of both connection and division between the two Germanies during the Cold War. The practical consequences of that division became all the more apparent when social and political developments in the Warsaw Pact countries began to accelerate in 1989. One of the most striking images from that period was the train-loads of East Germans en route from the embassies in Prague and Warsaw to the Federal Republic.