Concern about the health of German literature is nothing new. Firstly, in comparison with Britain or the USA, literature and literary life in Germany have been more frequently linked with questions of national status and prestige. How far back this kind of concern reaches can be seen from the references to efforts to create a national theatre as a kind of compensation for the lack of political unity in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung. Almost two centuries later, in the postwar period, such concern was particularly visible in the case in the GDR for which the acknowledgement of literary achievement was part of the overall search for legitimacy and recognition, the policy pursued in so many areas ranging from diplomacy to sport. Moreover, it has been a feature of German literary life that writers and intellectuals themselves have been concerned to analyse the condition of literature at a particular time. On many occasions, the diagnosis has been far from positive. Most famously in recent decades, at the same time as the student movement was at its height, literature was apparently pronounced dead, and there was a widespread public perception that this was indeed the case. As early as 1965 Peter Schneider had wondered whether it was a time for writing political manifestos rather than traditional works of literature. It was, however, two essays that were published in the journal Kursbuch in 1968 that sparked off the most intense debate.