The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was followed by German reunification in 1990. In celebrating the 20th anniversary of the peaceful revolution that brought down the Wall, we will profile over the course of 2009 important East Germans who have shaped beyond all physical borders the cultural, intellectual and political life of postwar Germany and Europe.

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Thomas Brasch at a reading in Cafe Kiryl in Berlin in 1991.

(© picture-alliance / akg-images / Udo Hesse)

Thomas Brasch was a German writer, dramatist, screenplay author, director, and poet. Through his works, he gave voice to the “lost generation” of the GDR, which had placed so many hopes in socialism, only later to realize that they would not be fulfilled. The son of a party functionary, émigré, and hero of the early GDR years, he pressured the system to make good on the promises of socialism and became bitterly disillusioned.

Thomas Brasch was born the son of anti-fascist, German-Jewish émigré parents in Westow, England, on February 19, 1945. The family returned to the GDR to help build up the new communist nation. His father was a functionary in the Socialist Unity Party (SED), serving for a time as deputy minister of culture.

In 1964, Brasch began studying journalism at the University of Leipzig, but was forced to withdraw only one year later for “slandering leading figures of the GDR.” In 1968, he completed his studies in drama at the Babelsberg film academy.

Brasch always took a critical view of the political realities and questions of German identity. Despite – or perhaps because of – his father’s political career, he criticized the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Prague Spring. In response, he was imprisoned in 1968 for “subversive incitement.” He was then released on parole after 77 days in prison. But as a condition of his parole, he was forced to work as a tiller at a transformer plant in the hope that the physical labor would cure him of his oppositional thinking. On intervention by Helene Weigl, the widow of Bertolt Brecht, however, he was able to take up employment at the Brecht Archives in 1971 and starting working as a freelance writer in 1972. In his poems, he deals time and again with the problem of individual freedom in periods of government repression. In doing so, his style is succinct, reflective, explosive, and playfully light all at once.

     Das andere Wort hinter dem Wort.

     Der andere Tod hinter dem Mord.

     Das Unvereinbare in ein Gedicht.

     Die Ordnung. Und der Riss, der sie zerbricht.

     (aus dem Gedichtband: „Der schöne 27. September“)

     The other word behind the word.

     The other death behind the murder.

     The irreconcilable in a poem.

     Order. And the crack that breaks it.

     (from the poetry collection The Beautiful 27th September)

Many of his works were banned or soon discontinued in the GDR because of their topics. Brasch, who actually supported socialism in the way it was supposed to be developed, began increasingly to have doubts about the GDR.

After Wolf Biermann was stripped of his citizenship in November 1976, Brasch openly protested the action. That the GDR could live up to its own claim of sociality was revealed to be an illusion. He was demoralized by the impediments and bans of GDR cultural policy and ultimately turned his back on the GDR. In 1976, he applied for an exist visa and settled in West Germany. There, he published The Sons Die Before the Fathers, in which he describes the attempts by various protagonists to escape everyday life in socialism as it really existed. The book further describes the hope and despair of the former GDR.

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Actor Tony Curtis (left) and Thomas Brasch on the set of the film "The Passenger - Welcome to Germany," which was released in West Germany in 1988.

(© Deutsches Filminstitut - DIF, Frankfurt)

Brasch’s works each stand alone in their own right and yet are also part of a larger whole. His writing is an ongoing narrative about the questions that plagued him about himself, the world, life, and poetry. In an interview about his screenplay The Passenger - Welcome to Germany, which appeared in the daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau in May 1988, he said, “. . . in every description there is something that is both prod and call to change circumstances. It is the task of art to hold vigil over dreams or nightmares; it keeps the flame burning, reveals the differences, the deficits.”

Brasch always refused to be categorized into a particular genre or to commit to certain style devices. The weekly newspaper Die Zeit wrote in Jan. 25, 2008, that Brasch creates “lyrical films” and “dramatic poetry.” In this way, he succeeds in drawing attention, in sharpening and refocusing the view and nerves of audiences and readers.

Brasch died in Berlin on November 3, 2001.

Related Links:

Deutsches Filmhaus - Biographical Information on Thomas Brasch (in German)

"Thomas war ein wildes Tier" - Kathrina Thalbach talks about Thomas Brasch - Die Zeit (in German)

"Der Unbeugsame" - originally published in the Berliner Zeitung (in German)