Volker Braun

Volker Braun is a political poet with distinct aesthetic qualities, whose significance in writing spans all genres. His extensive oeuvre, though multifaceted, centers on the question of political emancipation. Within the GDR, he critiqued the path of "real socialism" but never abandoned hope for a better future, achievable partly through literature. Braun's poetry often identifies with an unrealized possibility, where the discrepancy between utopia and reality is expressed within the language itself, marked by internal tension and dialectical relationships.