Hermann Kant

Kant's first book was published in 1962 as a collection of short stories entitled, A Little South Seas. The book showed stylistic influences adopted from the American Short Story genre and authors such as O. Henry, giving the East German literature a new satirical and a plainly ironic style.^[4]

In his first novel, The Aula (1965), Kant described his own experiences at the "Workers and Peasants Faculty." In the book, the closure of the faculty is an occasion for a graduation, for which the main character is to deliver a speech, which determines the fate of their fellow students and thus a part of their own lives in the early days of East Germany. "Kant's most famous and best novel"^[5] made him famous overnight in both the East and the West, while the book also being considered controversial in both German states. In East Germany most viewed the book as a "partisan commitment" of Kantian protagonists devoted to the "socialist movement",^[6] Marcel Reich-Ranicki remarked that Kant was too timid to write about the real conditions that existed in East Germany.^[7]

In 1972, the novel was published in a second edition, where he perfected his writing style. The publication was always seen as a false depiction of parts of the East German cultural bureaucracy, and Kant was criticized for painting a misrepresentation of the social conflict.^[8] In 1976 he began developing the novel Der Aufenthalt in the Bildungsroman style. He tells the story of Mark Niebuhr, mistakenly labelled as a German war criminal. With the protagonist socialist Roman left Kant's "hero" with nothing to do. The story describes a "conversion" or "enlightenment", but also knowledge of "disenchantment".^[9] The writing was depicted in the 1983 DEFA film The Turning Point.

In addition, Kant wrote occasionally scripts and screenplays, including for Günter Reisch's feature film Ach du fröhliche... (1962 - with supporting role) and, based on his own novel, turned into a made-for-TV movie; Mitten im kalten Winter (1968).

From the 1970s, Kant took despite its rather narrow view a "weighty significance" in the contemporary literature of East Germany, and had "helped shape minds."^[10] Heiner Müller described Kant's narrative Bronze Age (1986) in his autobiography as "the sharpest East German satire" which he had read in recent years. For many other colleagues, literary and social critic Kant was opposed to the "pattern and quintessential as maneuverable as windy compromise literati"^[11] become the bridge between conformism and confrontation; an impression that was reinforced by his vacillation as a literary functionary. So Kant remained in East and West "one of the most controversial figures in East German literature".^[12]

• Media related to Hermann Kant at Wikimedia Commons
• Hermann Kant at IMDb