Material Müller

Few authors attracted as much public attention in the first half of the 1990s as Heiner Müller. The interviews he gave during this time achieved cult status. As the artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble and president of the Academy of Arts/East, he was one of the key figures in the literary scene after 1989. His connections to the state security were one of the central subjects of the so-called German-German literary dispute. When he died in 1995, his funeral was broadcast live on television. His immense popularity coincided with a period when Müller was hardly productive as an author. Quantitatively, he was more engaged in commenting on his work than in continuing it. The moment of his greatest popularity coincides with the moment of his historicization. The contributions in this volume start from the observation that the number of Müller references in theater productions, dramatic texts, novels, poems, radio plays, and interviews is overwhelming, and they question what remains or is discarded from Müller’s texts, statements, productions, and self-presentations, and how criticism and approval, continuation and historicization relate to each other. Contributions by Kai Bremer, Birgit Dahlke, Andreas Degen, Norbert Otto Eke, Helen Fehervary, Hans-Edwin Friedrich, Terry Galloway, Robert Gillett, Bernadette Grubner, Jost Hermand, Hannes Höfer, Torsten Hoffmann, Astrid Köhler, Alexander Löck, Robert Miessner, Stephan Pabst, Patrick Primavesi, Anja Quickert, Jan Röhnert, Kristin Schulz, Marc Silberman, Janet Swaffar, and Heribert Tommek.