War without battle – Wikipedia

War without battle – Live in two dictatorships – an autobiography is the full title of the most extensive text by the dramatist Heiner Müller (1929–1995).

After a long urge and the promise of a “beautiful advance” (Ziemer), Müller committed himself to working on an autobiography at the 1990 Frankfurt Book Fair in 1990. In a letter from the chief lecturer Helge Malchow (now publisher) to Heiner Müller, dated May 7, 1990, the first written mention of the project can be found in the archive of the Akademie der Künste Berlin (which houses Heiner Müller’s artistic estate). The letter shows that the book was planned from the outset as an autobiographical interview.

At the end of January, early February 1991, Heiner Müller, Helge Malchow, his secretary Renate Ziemer and his former sister-in-law, the writer Katja Lange-Müller in the holiday home of Kiwi publisher Neven du Mont met La Palma for fourteen days to get the autobiographical interviews to lead. These conversations provide the primary material basis for the development of War without battle but.

The interview marathon was followed by the transcription of the ligaments. The tape transcripts were subjected to a first editorial team by Helge Malchow, Katja Lange-Müller and Renate Ziemer. The raw version was revised in several work steps in the spring of 1992 to Lanzarote and in Berlin. In addition to Helge Malchow, Müller moved his director assistant, Stephan Suschke.

Heiner Müller’s resignation shows a handwritten letter draft to Helge Malchow in view of the upcoming task of the final editor. At times he considered to give up the project. He wrote to Helge Malchow: “I pay the money back to the publisher + we make a press release (which may bring a better press than the book) + forget the whole.” (HMA 4480) The crucial point for Heiner Müller, To release the text for the publication may still be justified in this letter itself. The wording of doubts and the explicit admission of failure in the afterword War without battle go back to this letter. They made it possible Müller to operate on a field “beyond” of literature without having to give up their own artistic claim.

In the final word of the print version, Müller explicitly refers to the collective process of creation in a thank you War without battle . In terms of the importance of editorial cooperation, it seems more conciliatory than the draft letter to Helge Malchow, but does not do not do without the problematization of the concept of literature. “I thank Katja Lange-Müller, Helge Malchow, Renate Ziemer and Stephan Suschke for their work. You have reduced more than a thousand pages of conversation, which was also chatter over long distances, to a text that I revise, even if in the time available to me could not make literature. ”( War without battle , S. 366f.)

The book came onto the market in mid -June 1992. After the paperback edition of 1994, which was expanded to dossier with Stasi documents, translations published in France (1996) and Brazil (1997). In autumn 2005, war without battle was published as volume 9 of the work edition at Suhrkamp. In addition to the appendix to the first edition and the dossier of the extended edition of 1994, the Suhrkamp band contains material history for the first time. In addition to a foreword draft and the synopsis of two earlier text versions of the later chapter “Die Power and Glory”, editor Frank Hörnigk commented in a “editorial note” on a variety of notes and documents from the context. The name register was supplemented by a work register in this issue.

The title quotes a romantic title by Ludwig Renn. Renns Roman War without battle Was in the publisher in 1957 The new Berlin appeared. A relationship that seems to have grown in Müller’s title rather than persecution of the wrong track of Arnold Friedrich Vieth von Golßenau (so the bourgeois name of Ludwig Renn from a Saxon noble family) can be found at Gilles Deleuze, who, looking at his own work Philosopher of a “war without battle” ( Negotiations , P. 7) speaks.

Another quote is preceded by autobiography as a motto: “Should I talk about me, who / who is talking about when / I talk about me, who is that”. It comes from Müller’s play Break shore medium material landscape we argon cars (1982).

At the time of its appearance War without battle A book of the hour and not only the most extensive, but also most read text Heiner Müller. This is primarily due to the interest in a person of public life that comments on Germany’s association in turn. As President of the Academy of the Arts (East) and director of the Berlin Ensemble, Müller enjoyed full attention in press and television in the early 1990s. Added to this is the hysterical outcry of the media when Heiner Müller accused the absurd allegation of being-information.

The relevant research is War without battle mostly used as a valid evidence of the Müller writing intention. The poetic dimension of the text is insufficiently reflected or completely disregarded. This results in the incorrect reception of the text as a protocol of a life. Such a perspective must avoid the fundamental poetic and poetological (Müller’s texts at the same time) realignment of self-reflection or self-aesthetization in the late work of Heiner Müller, especially since the self-analysis at Müller never takes place independently of the historical-social predispositions of the individual.

• Heiner Müller: War without battle. Life in two dictatorships . Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlag, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-462-02172-9.