ABSTRACT
Zwerenz became a soldier in 1943, a policeman in the GDR after repatriation from the Soviet Union in 1948 and a student of philosophy under Ernst Bloch in Leipzig in 1952. Having been associated with an anti-Stalinist group centred on the philosopher Wolfgang Harich which also included Erich Loest he left the GDR in 1957 when some of its members were imprisoned. His first works were about the social upheavals of the GDR in its infancy (Aufs Rad geflochten. Roman vom Aufstieg einer neuen Klasse (1959)) and the uprising of 17 June 1953 (Die Liebe der toten Männer (1969)). His later work consists of a picaresque novel Casanova oder Der kleine Herr in Krieg und Frieden (1966), autobiographical works Kopf und Bauch (1971), Der Widerspruch (1974), Das Groβelternkind (1978), two books on Kurt Tucholsky, a biography (1979) and a short novel Eine Liebe in Schweden (1980), Die Quadriga des Mischa Wolf (1975), on the Guillaume spy affair which led to the resignation of Chancellor Willi Brandt, the book version of the film (directed by Fassbinder) Die Ehe der Maria Braun (1979), two dystopias Salut für einen alten Poeten (1980), in which the government forbids citizens to exercise their memories, and Der Bunker (1983), a vision of nuclear war and its aftermath, and a series of semi-pornographic satires, some written under pseudonyms, Erbarmen mit den Männern (1968), Tantenliebe, Die Zukunft der Männer, Rasputin (all 1970) and the twelve volumes of Erotische Kalendergeschichten (1983). From Zwerenz’s prolific output the stories collected in Heldengedenktag (1964), some auto-biographical, some set in the Second World War, and the notorious Die Erde ist unbewohnbar wie der Mond (1973), on which Fassbinder based a play, on a real estate fraud in Frankfurt involving a Jew, are worth singling out. He has also produced poems, Galgenlieder von heute (1958), Gesänge auf dem Markt (1962) and Die Venusharfe (1985), and numerous polemical essays and diaries, mainly on the division of Germany, Ärgernisse. Von der Maas bis an die Memel (1961), Wider die deutschen Tabus (1962), Der plebejische Intellektuelle (1972), Antwort an einen Friedensfreund (1982) and Die DDR wird Kaiserreich (1985).
