Uses and Misuses of Language: Uwe Johnson’s \u3ci\u3eIngrid Babendererde\u3c/i\u3e as a GDR Novel

Uwe Johnson is seldom discussed as a GDR author, for it was not until after his 1959 decision «to relocate,» as he put it, to the West that Johnson became established as a literary force. Literary historians often mention Johnson along with Gunther Grass and Martin Walser when they discuss the important novelists that burst onto the literary scene in West Germany at the end of the 1950’s. But Johnson’s work—from Mutamaßsunmgen über Jakob to Jahrestage—is unthinkable without his education and experiences in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR. With the posthumous publication of his first novel Ingrid Babendererde. Reifeprüfung 1953 we have the oppor tunity to examine how the young Johnson strove to portray and to come to terms with the society he ultimately chose to leave