Sich Heimat erschreiben
Zur Konstruktion von Heimat und Fremde in Einar Schleefs »Gertrud«
[To write one's home. On the construction of Home and Foreign in Einar Schleef's “Gertrud”]

Einar Schleef is one of the most outstanding theatre directors of the 1990s. His plays polarized, were uncomfortable and demanded maximum concentration from the audience. He was both celebrated and cursed. Less well known, however, was the fact that he was also active as a writer and that here too he was overflowing and uncompromising. It was only after his death in 2001 that his epic works became increasingly known to a wider audience. Einar Schleef's »semi-documentary family or homeland novel« Gertrud, written in the years after his “escape from the Republic” in 1976, is the sheer endless stream of memories of an old woman born and living in Sangerhausen, Gertrud (Trude) Schleef, born Hoffmann, who has spread over almost a thousand pages. She is the author's mother, who (through Schleef's mouthpiece) tells her life in a constant succession of monologues, letters and diary notes. When the first volume is printed in front of him, Schleef writes in his diary: “Mother, I have built you a pyramid, just gravel on top of each other. For a German family tragedy.”