Angelika Klüssendorf " The GDR was like a huge children's home "

Angelika Klüssendorf is a kitsch annihilator. A conversation about discarding, breaking away, the hideousness of Frankfurt and about her new novel "April". Interview : Wiebke Porombka

Three years ago Angelika Klüssendorf was nominated for her novel The Girl for the German Book Prize. The story about a cruel growing up in the GDR - between flogging, drinking mother and the children's home - was precisely of deep sadness because Klüssendorf renounced any kind of sentimentality . But only through this resignation was probably possible that this lean , nameless and constantly rebellious girl appeared never undignified.

The new novel by Angelika Klüssendorf , April, starts from a where The Girl ends . A young woman gets her first own room. Although this is only assigned to sublet by a gruff old man and the youth welfare, as well as her job as an office assistant at high-tension power plant it still feels like a step towards freedom- at first. For breaking away is not easy for someone like April. A suicide attempt and a subsequent stay in psychiatry show how desperately April is actually, even if she shows herself rough outside.

ZEIT ONLINE : After reading your novel April ,creeps the feeling that you shouldn’t be asked any questions . What is special about your book is precisely its laconic. Everything superfluous is deleted. That’s why questions appear suddenly a bit superfluous.

Angelika Klüssendorf : I like that ! I think anyways that a writer should rather be invisible. The questions that you open up should ask the readers themselves. But this is quite generally the case with April or with any other books In this respect: ask questions calmly.

Angelika Klüssendorf was born in Ahrensburg 1958. Since 1961 she lived in Leipzig, until she moved to West Germany in 1985. Today she lives near Berlin. She has published, among other things, the narrative volumes From all the heavens and Amateure, as well as the novels All live this way and The girl with whom she was on the shortlist for the German Book Prize 2011 . Klüssendorfs new novel April was published by Kiepenheuer & Petrovich ( 224 pp , € 18.99) .

ZEIT ONLINE : Is April a continuation of your novel The Girl of the Year 2011?

Klüssendorf : When I was about to write The Girl , I had not planned a sequel. When I had finished writing The Girl, I thought the story would actually need to be continued. Yet both books are self-contained. But is nice of course if you read both.

ZEIT ONLINE : The young woman , the protagonist of the novel gives herself at the beginning even a name : April . Why this one?

Klüssendorf : She was dissatisfied with all the names that have been applied from the outside. And April of Deep Purple is her favourite song. Of course you can also think of the month, which represents quite well her mood . She also calls later her own son Julius. With the seasons she has somehow a connection.

ZEIT ONLINE : Giving yourself a name is an act of emancipation ?

Klüssendorf : In any case is so. is above all Especially towards The Girl that hadn’t got a name. Now it’s also possible to put together the two names: The Girl April.

ZEIT ONLINE : But can this symbolic emancipation bring actually a real liberation? Will April ever be able to make really what she wants?

Klüssendorf : How far can a man ever do what he wants ? April has, I believe. Even more difficulties than other people because she has no idea or fewer ideas of herself than other people in her age. But I certainly hope that she can make it a day or will do what she wants. That is the task that you have in your life before you die, to find your own identity: Why was I there at all ? I have lived according to me? Have I fulfilled my dreams and desires?

ZEIT ONLINE : In this novel she still doesn’t reach them. Rather, one has the impression that April is caught in a vicious cycle. She has not been treated well as a child from her parents, has never experienced security. And now maybe not the same thing happens, but something similar, as it is mother. It seems that she cannot establish a real relationship with her son. Also, the alcohol problem of her parents continues in her life. Is that an inevitability, from which one can hardly escape, even when his own past was painful?

Klüssendorf : I do not think that you can generalize . And in April, there 's also this: you going on always two steps and one back. But she goes one step forward even at when she falls. That's the important thing: the ever - again - try. Then she gets back one on top or they are themselves one on top of it, but then it goes on. And at the end she is twenty steps forward and ten declined. But then remain at least ten steps.

ZEIT ONLINE : April once betrays her tactics to avoid having to cry : She analyses a man when he confronts her , into his component parts . She dissected him. Is that her narrative tactics? Disassemble, reduce, rather than embellish and illustrate ?

Klüssendorf : It is most important to me , not to judge . Any assessment of what I tell there should be eliminated from the outset. Apart from the reduced is also quite simple to me proper language for this figure. It can be just as life for right or wrong, so also the language of a figure can be right or wrong. Finding this correct language for a figure is my work.

ZEIT ONLINE : How would you describe this work ?

Klüssendorf : This is a discard. discarding and then again discarding. It has required at least thirty rewriting. I 'm like a sculptor who worked his stone . Here's something away and then again. I have deleted pages, omitted whole chapter.

ZEIT ONLINE : Where are all these things you discard ? Is there an archive?

Klüssendorf : This has all gone ! I do like this with all my books: If a book is finished, all the documents will be destroyed. Otherwise my whole errors would sometime come to light. Or my kitsch. Nope, everything away immediately!

ZEIT ONLINE : What a pity ! Her books are so, their just for their cool look - estimated brittle language - in the best sense. And then one day you find in your basement, the large Kitsch box. That would be great!

Klüssendorf : That would be horrible!

ZEIT ONLINE : Is the decision to write April in the third person connected with this ?

Klüssendorf : The third person allows a distance that is very important to me . From the outset , even when approaching a character , I need this distance , the same yes also allows a high degree of accuracy . It is much easier for everything that happens there and is said to check again.

ZEIT ONLINE : Is April a tale of Eastern Germany?

Klüssendorf : While I would say that the story of The girl could have been set anywhere , I think that for April, the figure in the West would have been another .

ZEIT ONLINE : April decides then to go to the West .

Klüssendorf : Not in the West ,to West Berlin . West Berlin, then in 1984, was not the Federal Republic, which was the only place where one has found a bit of the East. That was a great time. That was the best time in my life.

ZEIT ONLINE : In your life ? Now you have told us! As a reader, the throwing together of author and character indeed considered the biggest faux pas ever . In April you will be placed properly in this regard to the test. Definitely superior to many critics, whether they had better do so, as they would not notice the overlap with your biography.

Klüssendorf : April is fiction with many biographical details from me . That does every writer in one way or another. Otherwise we're a different person. But anyway: The most authentic moment is the one in which I wrote the book. This is more authentic than anything that has happened 20 , 30 , 40 years ago .

ZEIT ONLINE : Do you think that East Germans perceive the image of the GDR , they are characterized as too negative ?

Klüssendorf : Is not it the other way around ? My view is but a bright and positive. April has often damn lucky. You will be brought to justice. But then there's this Mr. Bluemel from the collective to help her. It comes in psychiatry, because it has a great doctor. Then she goes a bit to rack, then she meets Irma, who helps her out there again. These people are all flukes and at the same time also provide authorities, who belonged to the GDR. But it's clear East nostalgia in my view is not at all natural. I do not think also that April would have been easier in the West at that time with its toughness and all that she does.

ZEIT ONLINE : So, is no exemption for April , when she finally goes to the West ?

Klüssendorf : On the one hand , on the other hand . On one hand, she leaves her home . It is in the GDR that she really felt as home. On the other hand, it is because the tightness in her head is also a corner in this country. You just want to have the choice. That's just what constitutes freedom. With the idea of ​​the Western countries also was a bit scary. For me was so in any case as I went to the West.

ZEIT ONLINE: How so?

Klüssendorf : I thought at the time , I have to ask this departure from the GDR , because I want to develop myself . But at the same time I just imagined the West as cold. I thought the roads are all tiled, the people are cool - because I am facing the capitalist! The GDR was like a huge children's home when one is released from, then you have to find your way.

ZEIT ONLINE : Have you ever really over done , not only to West Berlin , but in the real west ? After Paderborn,for example?

Klüssendorf : Frankfurt am Main , twice three years. That was the horror. Even the sidewalks are somehow artificial. In the six years that I lived there, I was only happy when I closed my eyes and I imagined : I am now back in Berlin.