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Posted: 08 Apr 2022

Taken: 07 Apr 2022

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Germany - Memories of a Nation •
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Christa Wolf

Christa Wolf
Christa Wolf at her writing desk in the 1980s


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christa_Wolf
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
‘Der geteilte Himmel (Divided Heaven), written by the East German novelist Christa Wolf, was published in 1963, two years after the Berlin Wall went up. It made Christa Wolf’s reputation, and has long been seen as the most thoughtful, poignant account of the divergence of the two Germanys as seen from the East. It tells the story of Rita and Manfred, young lovers living in the East before the Wall was built, when travel from East to West Berlin was still easy. Manfred becomes disillusioned with the East and does not return from a conference in West Berlin, where he feels the opportunities for his career are greater. Rita visits him but does not warm to the crowded consumerism of West Berlin. She decides to end her relationship with Manfred and to continue with her life in the East. She knows it is flawed, but she feels more at east in a society where people at least aspire to work together. The couple, ideally matched in every other respect, founder as the two Germanys diverge.

“At least they can’t divide the sky,” says Manfred at the climax of the novel, when Rita chooses the communal ideals of East Germany over a life with him in the individualist West. “The Sky?” thinks Rita, “This vault of hope and desire, love and sadness.” “Oh yes, the sky is what gets split first,” Throughout the novel, the sky -- in German “Himmel” means both “sky” and “heaven” -- stands for aspirations, and ideals, for what a society strives to be. The divided heaven: two separate and separated political structures, two irreconcilable ways of organizing hopes and desires. A couple that should be together, growing apart. ~ Page 20/21

Germany ~ Memories of a Nation
2 years ago. Edited 2 years ago.

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