Provizorium – Hilbig Wolfgang (2014)

Wolfgang Hilbig (1941–2007) was originally an East German writer who left for West Germany in 1985. This dual experience is largely reflected in his novel Provisorium (Das Provisorium, 2000). The hero of this expressive, strongly subjective prose is an East German writer named C., who has received a long-term visa to the Federal Republic of Germany. However, he feels dissatisfied here, unable to live or work intensely. He perceives his place in this world as a provisional one, as a place 'between zones' - there is no freedom in the East, and the West is too dominated by consumption. The novel can also be read as a unique testimony to the feelings of East Germans after the revolution, about their disillusionments caused by excessive expectations and inadequate notions of freedom, as well as their inability to reconcile past and present existence. The protagonist's split is also purely individual: he is recognized but unable to work, he dreads public readings just as much as literary criticism, increasingly succumbing to alcohol, incapable of love, teetering between two women... The novel tells the tormenting journey of a rootless person, circling between two worlds, ultimately leaning towards the lesser evil. At the same time, it serves as an allegory of a person who...