ABSTRACT
Christa Wolf’s short novel, ‘No Place on Earth’ (1998), stages a fictional encounter between the German Romantic writers Heinrich von Kleist and Karoline von Günderrode, both of whom are individuals in conflict with society. In the case of Kleist, his difficult relationship is with Prussia and the Prussian authorities. He has come to experience Prussia as a country to which ‘he is attached against his will’ (1998:229):
The first time he crossed the border, he says, he realised that his native land looked better and better to him the farther away from it he got; that he was gradually ceasing to be weighed down by a self-imposed obligation to his country which he could never live up to…
(1998:229)
Across the border, Kleist is able to think things which were previously impossible. He thinks beyond the question of his obligations to the state, to consider the matter of its responsibilities towards him. And ‘[i]f the state rejects the demands I place upon it, let it reject me as well’ (1998:230). ‘To be sure, he says, he finds many of this world’s institutions so unsuited to his needs that it is impossible for him to participate in the labour of maintaining or developing them further’ (1998:231). Now he is able to think beyond his old ideal image of the state and to raise the question of what it would be to live in a true commonwealth. That night, it was in December, when he crossed the border, Kleist felt as if he were ‘stepping into a new life’ (1998:230).
