Writing poetry in East Germany
From our US edition
Readers of The Spectator World probably think they are quite au fait with the culture wars. J.K. Rowling, Joe Rogan, even Dr. Seuss — writers and celebrities who have been canceled quickly roll off the tongue. But what if “cancellation” had more dramatic implications than just a Twitter account bursting with notifications? In 1975, the unpublished poet Annegret Gollin encountered a rather different kind of culture war: she was arrested at a music festival and told that she could either spend two years in a prison cell or become an informant for the Stasi. Gollin chose to become an informant, but was a brilliantly ineffective one — she told over a hundred of her friends that she was supposed to be spying on them — and she ended up in prison seven years later.
