Bargfelder Ausgabe. Werkgruppe I. Romane, Erzählungen, Gedichte, Juvenilia

Arno Schmidt was the first writer to make the divided Germany a literary theme with his novel "The Stony Heart," even before Uwe Johnson. Although the story about the machinations of a book collector was already published in a sexually, politically, and religiously toned-down version, the German literary critics exclaimed in horror: "God protect German literature!" As part of the Bargfelder edition, one of the most entertaining and linguistically powerful novels of post-war literature is presented here for the first time in its uncensored version. The two capriccios "Tina" (1956) and "Goethe" (1957) - delightful pieces in which one can enter an underground Elysium of not-so-dead poets through a poster column in Darmstadt or learn about a nighttime visit from Goethe to his colleague Schmidt - were described by Arno Schmidt as "satyr plays of empty hours, when the whole scene, whether local literary nonsense or big city fuss, stinks so much that I don't know how else to help myself." In playing with elements of the science fiction novel, Schmidt presents in "The Republic of Scholars" (1957), a dark utopia, the image of an atomically contaminated Earth populated by love-hungry centaur females and murderous spiders.