Stefan Heym: Die Architekten
Peter Hutchinson hails a new masterpiece by Stefan Heim, for which his admirers have had to wait thirty-five years

Stefan Heym (born 1913) has, since his schooldays, repeatedly courted danger. Expelled from school for an anti-militaristic poem, a refugee from Hitler for his left-wing views, an exile from McCarthyist America for his communist sympathies, and then (as we now know from the Stasi files), fortunate not to be driven out of East Germany, he continues to write and to give interviews which are unwelcome to the undemocratically-minded or the illiberal. The Architects, now published by C.Bertelsmann Verlag after an exceptionally long gap, was one of his most troubling and courageous investigations of the East German state, conceived in the mid-sixties at a time when the GDR remained one of the most Stalinist territories in the Soviet bloc. Shortly before its composition Heym had deplored Stalin's dreadful legacy in two of his best known journalistic pieces, 'Die Langeweile von Minsk' and 'Stalin verlässt den Raum' (both of which appeared only in western publications), and it was the research for these which was to inspire a full novel. The first outline was probably completed in mid-1963, the third by the end of the year. The intervening period witnessed much research into victims of Stalinism, principles of architecture, the problems of the famous 'Stalinallee' in East Berlin, and personalities of the period.

The plot is set in the late 1950s, shortly after Khruschev's famous 'Secret Speech' which denounced Stalin and his methods, introduced a 'thaw' in the Soviet bloc, and saw the release of many innocent victims of Stalinist brutality. Daniel Tieck, a Communist exile from Hitler who had been accused of 'treachery' while he was in Moscow, returns to Germany after years of imprisonment. A brilliant architect, he is taken on by his former colleague, Arnold Sundstrom, who had also been in Moscow exile but who managed to survive that period and had since become Chief Architect of a major East German city. Arnold has married someone far younger than himself, the orphan child of a couple who were also in Moscow and who were likewise victims of Stalinist 'justice'. She too has trained as an architect, and works on the same grand project, one in which, as a fully committed socialist, she has full confidence. But Julia's secure world is slowly eroded by Daniel's presence and his revelations, by doubts about her husband and about the value of the (symbolic) project on which they are engaged. Daniel's final revelations, following a research trip to Moscow, prove Julia's parents were innocent of the crimes of which they were accused: they were simply denounced by someone anxious to preserve his own life. He, Daniel, had also been denounced. How did Arnold survive?

In the mid-1960s such a theme would have proved devastating to a society in which information was state-controlled, in which the penetration of western media was still primitive, and, most importantly, where so many of the senior politicians had survived exile in Moscow. It would raise basic questions on how they had managed to triumph while so many others had been imprisoned, tortured, shot, or sent to a labour camp where the chances of survival were poor. It would also have raised questions about the practice of denunciation then common in the GDR, and the fear mentality encouraged by (what was then actually a relatively modest) secret police service. The novel steadily exposes the lack of trust created by a system dependent on an ideal perverted by opportunism and sustained by fear. Had it been published at the time it would have been political dynamite.

The final manuscript must have been completed towards the end of 1965, a turning point in GDR cultural politics. Uneasy over recent developments in the arts, Erich Honecker launched a vicious public attack on Heym and his circle, while the Politburo secretly decided Heym must be isolated. He was denied publication outlets, refused permission to travel outside the country, study of his work was forbidden in universities. The ban hit Heym at a crucial point. Ever since exile in the USA, he had composed in English which he had then had translated (or translated himself) into German. The Architects too had been written in English, and the next natural step would have been to translate it into his mother tongue. It was clear, however, that publication in the East would have been impossible, and that his family would have been under serious threat if he had sought publication abroad. He therefore put the task of translation aside and turned, for his next novel, towards the past, to the figure of Lassalle, first President of the German Workers' Party. That novel was published in 1969, by which point the cultural restrictions had eased, and so Heym now sent The Architects to his British publisher. To his dismay, it was turned down by (to judge from the report now available in the Stefan Heym Archive in Cambridge) a reader who had failed to grasp key issues of both plot and theme. Heym queried the decision, but noted in his letter that there was no hurry to reply: he was already engaged in a new novel on a subject from the Bible. That novel, The King David Report, was to prove his undisputed masterpiece. Its subject: the ancient antecedents of the Stalinist state, the most elementary forms of state coercion, and the rewriting of history for political ends.

Die Architekten is a novel in Heym's traditional style: third person narrative; clear authorial guidance; suspense; outstanding scenes of confrontation; impeccable motivation; enormous care with detail. But why should the author have chosen to publish it now, some thirty-five years after its original completion? First, perhaps, because it is his only successful manuscript which has never been published. Second, it is a useful, if painful, reminder of the dark times under which so many of Heym's generation had to suffer and which many are now tempted to forget. And finally, because it has allowed a workaholic author, even in his late eighties, to engage in a task in which he remains outstanding: the German version reveals no diminution in the powers of one of the best self-translators of our time.

Peter Hutchinson is Vice-Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. His book, Stefan Heym: the Perpetual Dissident, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1992.


For information on availability of rights contact

Mohrbooks AG
Klosbachstrasse 110
CH-8032 Zurich
Tel: +41 1 251 1610
Fax: +41 1 262 5213