Around and after the "Wende": Five representative poems (Volker Braun, Hans Magnus Enzensberger and German poetry after 1989)

The phenomenon of the German Wende of 1989 has elicited various responses, both literary and otherwise. Especially illuminating are those of two autho rs Volker Braun and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, arguably the leading poets in former East and West Germany, respectively. Braun's "O Chicago! O Widerpsr uch!" and Enzensberger's "Aufbruchsstimmung" concur in that they voice crit icism and serious doubts concerning German reunification and what it entail s, whereas the two writers differ markedly, with one exception perhaps, in their commitment to international, indeed global, problems and events, as w itness the remaining three poems. The discussion of these three texts is su pplemented by a brief look at the concomitant prose publications of Braun a nd Enzensberger; also, general questions of intertextuality and translatabi lity thereof are discussed, if only in passing.