ABSTRACT
Any topic dealing with matters of translation should give consideration to the general literary environment in which translation takes place. As different societies have different policies about the role and function of their translated texts, the literary and cultural politics of the GDR ought to be examined, in order to defi ne and contextualise translated children’s books and their position within that country’s systems. Contrary to the conventional notion of literature being autonomous, GDR literature took on a different character and value. Underlying this other kind of value system was the belief that literature had immense power in affecting the individual’s consciousness and therefore could be used to bring the people forward in History, i.e. towards communism. Indeed, the Party, convinced of literature’s pedagogical potential, assigned it the task of aiding in constructing this new type of society. This is where East German literary politics differed greatly from its Western counterpart. “Whereas in the West anything was published that promised fi nancial profi t, the East guided, with its Party’s literary politics, what was printed by the publishers” (Mathäs 1992:41). Just as the economy was run by the motto ‘planning, guiding and controlling’, so were cultural matters. What this meant for literature was that nothing was left to chance. On the one hand, GDR literature was severely monitored and controlled; on the other, it was enormously fostered and promoted through designing and drafting its direction and course. The result was a literature which had a very high profi le, which was widely noticed and much debated, but also much manipulated.
