SOURCE: Robinson, David W. “Chronicling the Cold War's Losers and Winners.” In Deconstructing East Germany: Christoph Hein's Literature of Dissent, edited by James Hardin, pp. 181–219. Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1999.

In the following excerpt, Robinson explores Hein's post-unification literature and how it indirectly attacks capitalism and Western culture.

In early 1989, two major events in Hein's career took on larger significance as the political ground began to shift. The first was the publication of Der Tangospieler, a book that would have stood out as a remarkable event even had it not been Hein's last novel of the GDR era. The novel's most obvious message was its condemnation of a now-familiar Hein figure, the Aussteiger, the social outcast or drop-out—the sort of person, usually an intellectual, who becomes the perfect servant of the state precisely because he thinks himself “free” from political entanglements. But Der Tangospieler was also problematic...