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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
Amerika, du hast es besser
als unser Kontinent, der alte,
hast keine verfallenen Schlösser
und keine Basalte.
Dich stört nicht im Innern zu lebendiger Zeit
unnützes Erinnern und vergeblicher Streit
Benutzt die Gegenwart mit Glück!
Und wenn nun eure Kinder dichten
Bewahre sie ein gut Geschick
Vor Ritter-, Räuber und Gespenstergeschichten.
[America, you're better off
than our continent, the old one
you have no castle ruins
and no Basalt deposits
In your vital moments you are not deeply disturbed
By useless remembering and futile strife
So happily sieze the present!
And when your children write their own poems
May a glad fate help keep them away
From by-gone tales of knights, robbers and ghosts.]
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Den Vereinigten Staaten” (“To the United States”)In Christa Wolf's final novel, Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud (City of Angels or The Overcoat of Dr. Freud, 2010), a very recognizable dissident writer from the former East Germany is invited as a guest artist of the so-called “Center” near Los Angeles. The narrator initially intends to use her year in America to further her writing, but instead she must watch helplessly from across the ocean as her reputation is destroyed by revelations about her connections to the former East German Stasi (short for Staatssicherheitsdienst, or State Security Service).
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