The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War

In 1982, the East German secret police trained their own writers to use poetry as a weapon against the class enemy. Journalist Philip Oltermann spent five years researching the story and uncovered lost volumes of poetry and surviving members of the Red Poet's Society.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 02 February 2023
Publisher: Faber & Faber

The extraordinary true story of the Stasi's poetry club: Stasiland and The Lives of Others crossed with Dead Poets Society.

Engrossing.

Observer: Remarkable.

The Times: Magnificent.

Phillipe Sands: Gripping.

Literary Review: A history so outlandish and unlikely that you feel it must be true. . . . [A] grippingly well-written book.

Anthony Quinn, Observer: Book of the Week.

In 1982, East Germany's fearsome secret police - convinced that writers were embedding subversive messages in their work - decided to train their own writers, weaponizing poetry in the struggle against the class enemy. Once a month, a group of soldiers and border guards gathered in a heavily guarded military compound in East Berlin for meetings to learn how to write lyrical verse.

Journalist Philip Oltermann spent five years rifling through Stasi files, digging out lost volumes of poetry and tracking down surviving members of this Red poet's society, to illustrate the little-known story in which spies turned poets and poets spies.

Weight: 189g
Dimension: 198 x 129 x 13 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780571331208
Edition number: Main