"Alchemists of language", "avant-garde of the GDR", "collaborators behind the mask of French theory": Colourful epithets like these give an inkling of the many myths and controversies swirling around the underground poetry scene that emerged in the Prenzlauer Berg district of East Berlin during the twilight years of the German Democratic Republic. At least since the sordid entanglements of some prominent literary figures with the Stasi, GDR's security apparatus, came to light after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there has been a lively debate about whether the "Prenzlauer Berg Connection" really was a clearly definable community or merely an imposed construct.

The monograph "kunst im biotop" by Lukas Nils Regeler (Research Area 4: Literary Currencies & Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies) is based on the thesis that literary community building in 1980s Prenzlauer Berg can be traced particularly well where authors operated as readers, for example by adopting motifs, writing techniques and theoretical ideas from various literary and philosophical movements and transforming them into texts that had little place in the official cultural politics of East Germany. Drawing attention to numerous intertextual references to early modern literatures, the historical avant-gardes, the American Beat Generation and the theories of French poststructuralism in the writings of authors such as Elke Erb, Johannes Jansen, Leonhard Lorek, Raja Lubinetzki, Bert Papenfuß and Rainer Schedlinski, the study, which grew out of the EXC 2020 project Writing Berlin, contributes to a literary history of the GDR that focuses less on schools and generations and more on transtemporal and international connections.

The publication was recently discussed in an interview between the author and the daily newspaper nd – Journalismus von links, which was published on the nd website (in German).

  

Lukas Nils Regeler. "kunst im biotop". Schreib- und Lesegemeinschaften im Prenzlauer Berg der 1980er Jahre. Beiträge zu Literatur und Medien der Gegenwart 4. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2025. (Open Access)