Problemzone Ostdeutschland

Abstract

By analyzing Lukas Rietzschel’s novel Mit der Faust in die Welt schlagen (2018) and Nino (f.k.a. Paula) Bulling’s Comic Im Land der Frühaufsteher (2012), this article explores contemporary portrayals of “East German rural space” against the backdrop of current discourses on Germany’s postmigrant condition. Marginalized on a political, economic and symbolic level and construed as the “Other” of German majority society in mainstream media, the “rural East” has recently been discovered by artists as a medium to reflect on urbanormative and (post-)colonial structures of representation that shape the debate and discursive construction process of postmigrant realities. In order to further illuminate this unique position and potential of East German rural space in art and postmigrant discourse, this paper will explore issues of migration, belonging, and (East German) identity in the abovementioned works through the lens of postcolonial theory.