Background
Gunter Kunert was born on March 6, 1929 in Berlin. Born four years before the Nazis took over Germany, Kunert as a child suffered religious persecution because his mother was Jewish.
Gunter Kunert was born on March 6, 1929 in Berlin. Born four years before the Nazis took over Germany, Kunert as a child suffered religious persecution because his mother was Jewish.
After attending a Volksschule, it was not possible for Kunert - due to the National Socialist race laws - to continue his high school education. After World War II ended, Kunert studied in East Berlin's Academy of Applied Arts from 1946 - 49, but abandoned his studies.
Gunter's first literary publications appeared in the magazine Ulenspiegel in 1948. His early epigramic and uncomplicated work reflects the influence of Bertolt Brecht, Carl Sandburg, and Edgar Lee Masters, as well as his political interests.
Kunert's first volumes of poetry. Wegschilder und Mauerinschriften ("Road Signs and Wall Inscriptions," 1950), Unter diesem Himmel ("Under This Sky," 1955), Tagwerke ("Daily Chores," 1960), and Das Kreuzbrave Liederbuch ("The Weil-Behaved Songbook." 1961), were written in the tradition of songs, ballads, and sonnets. As his commitment to consciousness raising grew, his poetry became more complex and paradoxical. He experimented with fragmented sentences, irregular verses, and longer, epic forms in the poetry volumes Der ungebeten Gast ("The Uninvited Guest," 1965), Verkundigung des Wetters ("Weather Announcement," 1966) and Warnung vor Spiegeln ("Beware of Mirrors," 1970).
Kunert enjoyed the rare privilege of travel beyond the Berlin Wall. He took advantage of his experience and wrote a number of travel books, the first being Ortsangaben ("Indication of Places," 1971). Kunert's travel pieces are not amusing anecdotal tour guides but rather social critical analyses and historic-philosophic meditations. In 1972 he traveled to the United States as a visiting associate professor at the University of Texas in Austin. While in the United States, he wrote the satiric travelogue Der andere Planet ("The Other Planet," 1974). After a year spent in England as a writer-inresidence at the University of Warwick in 1975, Kunert wrote another autobiographical book of essays, Ein englisches Tagebuch ("An English Diary," 1978), and a volume of poetry, Verlangen nach Bomarzo ("Longing for Bomarzo," 1978).
Kunert is also known for his numerous Kafkaesque short stories and Brechtian prose sketches, found in the collections Tagtraume ("Daydreams," 1964), Die Beerdigung findet in aller Stille statt ("A Private Funeral Will be Held." 1968) and Tagtrame in Berlin und andemorts ("Daydreams in Berlin and Elsewhere," 1972). Kunert employs parables because they can illuminate abstract ideals without explicit political didacticism. He avoids clear ideological stances, instead focusing on "recurrent themes and images - the pilot, for example, as a symbol for man's cosmic aspirations, as opposed to the buccaneer who perishes in his search for El Dorado - emerge in ever new variations to express a dialectical tensions between the ideal and the real, between hope and disillusionment," according to Helene
Scher in the Encyclopedia of World Literature. Kunert's satiric, grotesque, surreal, and ironic works are sometimes listed as science fiction; however, though they are concerned about the dehumanizing effects of technology, they do not center primarily around technology as much as they do around social and political life.
Though cultural authorities became disturbed as Kunert's writing grew critical of socialism and more pessimistic, he still received the Johannes R. Becher Prize in 1973. His 1977 expulsion from his political party, the SED, followed his signing of a letter distributed among East Germany's literary community protesting the revocation of singer/poet Wolf Biermann's citizenship. Increasing official harassment in the late 1970s further impeded Kunert's work. In 1979 he obtained a longterm visa and left East Germany for Itzehoe in West Germany, where he became much more productive. In 1983 he worked as a writer-in-residence in the town Bergen-Enkheim. He also worked as an editor for Literaturmagazin and was inducted into the German Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt.
Less critically successful are the author's longer fiction works, such as his long story "Gast aus England" ("Guest from England," 1973), his radio play Der Kaiser von Hondu ("The Emperor of Hondu," 1959), and the novel hn Namen der Huete ("In the Name of Hats," 1967).
In 1949 Gunter joined the Socialist Unity party (SED) with the faith that socialist humanitarianism, progressivism, and justice could defeat the evils of fascism.
Quotes from others about the person
According to Valerie Greenberg in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Kunert considers himself not an 'East German author' but a 'German author.'"
Kunert married Marianne Todten in 1952, and he grew to depend substantially on his wife's criticism and help throughout his career.