ABSTRACT
Kant’s experiences as a young army recruit at the end of the war and as a POW in Poland from 1945 to 1949 were eventually to form the background of his novel Der Aufenthalt (1977). From 1949 to 1952 he was a student and teacher in the Faculty for Workers and Peasants at the University of Greifswald (see Die Aula). He then moved to Berlin, where he taught at the Humboldt University and worked as a journalist, becoming a free-lance writer in 1962. From 1978 to 1989 he was president of the GDR Writers’ Union in succession to Anna Seghers and thus occupied a key position in his country’s cultural life.
