Sven Hanuschek

What began in 1921 as an amicable dining club in London is today the only international writers' association in existence. The present volume is an institutional history of the West German PEN club from the division of the all-German centre in 1951 to the reunification of Germany in 1990. The study concentrates on literary sociology and draws on conversations and ample archive material to outline the development from an elitist 'drawing-room society' in the 1950s to the prestigious and representative club that had emerged from this by the 1980s. It portrays the PEN club in all its involvements with the historical events of the age, its achievements, its self-image, and its self-delusions, personified by the club's protagonists from Kdstner, Edschmid, Neumann, and Bvll to Jens, Gregor-Dellin, and Amery. The history of the Federal Republic is eloquently reflected in the history of this fellowship of writers and the responses of its leading intellectuals to the Cold War, the building of the Wall, the Spiegel affair, the year 1968, and German unification. But frequently the really intriguing insights afforded by a close history of the PEN club derive not so much from analysis of the zeitgeist or of major historical events but reside in the illuminating, sometimes micro-historical details.

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