Learning Years on the Path to Dissidence: Stefan Heym's Friendship with Robert Havemann and Wolf Biermann

The major East German dissident Stefan Heym has often been described as having permanently dissented against all countries and political systems – the Weimar Republic, National Socialism, the United States and the GDR – in which he lived. As this piece argues, however, Heym’s development into the most significant GDR dissenter of the 1980s is anything but monolithic. Through Heym's secret service files, literary writings and autobiographical texts, the article traces Heym's twisted path to becoming East Germany's major dissident of the 1980s. This reading of Heym and his close associates allows new conclusions on the role of Jews in GDR culture and politics by challenging the established argument of the generally loyal Jewish population within the GDR.