Antonia Heesen

Franziska Linkerhand, published in 1974, is a novel written by the East German author Brigitte Reimann (1933 – 1973). Among other things, the book deals with the conflict between the socialist vision of just, equal cities and the actual implementation as lifeless, uniform residential areas, which the author viewed very critically. The plot follows a young architect, Franziska Linkerhand, who starts her job in the new city of Neustadt, which has just been built close to a combine. She just finished university and is full of ideas and ambition. At her new job, she is confronted with the reality of the office’s strictly regimented, unimaginative planning. Her supervisor, Horst Schafheutlin, works strictly in line with the government and is not open to new ideas or projects. Franziska is one of the few women working in the office and has difficulty establishing herself in the male-dominated environment. Her desire to create not only cheap and fast but also livable housing is also shaped by her own situation: she lives in a small apartment in one of the newly created apartment blocks and experiences how the monotonous apartments with no potential for identification and no opportunity for distraction during free time cause the residents to become depressed and unhappy. As a woman, she suffers particularly from the mood in the neighborhood, which quickly turns from boredom and indifference to violent anger. Her critical attitude is deepened by discussions with her lover Ben, a former academic who drew negative attention for his criticism of the regime and now works at the combine as a driver. She meets him by chance, as he reminds her of her brother. The two begin a passionate but also very fragile affair, complicated by Ben’s marriage. In the end, he decides to stay with his wife and leaves Franziska. Despite everything, she remains in Neustadt, continues to work in the office under Schafheutlin, and does not give up hope of finding a way to combine socialist housing practices with the demands of a livable city. Since the author died in the writing process and could not finish the book, only fragments of the ending have survived. The exact plot remains unclear.

Some parallels can be drawn between the plot of the book and the life of Reimann, who was raised in Burg near Madgeburg and moved to Hoyerswerda in 1960, staying there for eight years. The city’s new housing district was marked by the GDR’s efforts to quickly create a large amount of housing for the workers of the Schwarze Pumpe gas combine. Reimann struggled with her new surroundings and became engaged in advocating for a more humane city by writing articles in the regional newspaper. During her research, she entered into close correspondence with Hermann Henselmann (1905 – 1995), one of the GDR’s most famous architects, and exchanged ideas with him on topics of architecture and urban planning. A basis for the character of Franziska was probably provided by the architect Iris Dullin-Grund, who was one of the few women in the architectural scene of the GDR to achieve prominence.

During the writing process, Reimann’s frustration with the conditions in her neighborhood and the failed socialist planning approaches increasingly led to an estrangement with the socialist regime. Franziska Linkerhand’s negotiation of these conflicts from the point of view of a young, ambitious architect makes it an important contemporary testimony from a rarely portrayed perspective.