Freiheit in Form

Wolfgang Hilbig undoubtedly saw and staged himself as a modern author. But which concept of modernity is decisive here, and in what ways Hilbig connected himself to modernity? In contrast to a frequently claimed “GDR-Modernity”, I will concentrate on traces leading back to the discovery – or should we say: invention? – of modernist literature in the field of literary history in the old Federal Republic of Germany. This essay answers the question for modernity by focusing on Hilbig’s elf-positioning in the modernity discourse. As I want to show, this modernity discourse as a part of historiography of German literature since the 1950s marked the frame in which Hilbig's authorship developed from his first publications.