{"product_id":"the-stasi-poetry-circle","title":"The Stasi Poetry Circle","description":"\u003cp\u003eBerlin, 1962. Morale is at rock bottom in East Germany, thrown into chaos by the new Berlin Wall. The Ministry for State Security is hunting for a new weapon in the war against capitalism - and their solution is stranger than fiction. Rather than guns, tanks, or bombs, the Stasi resolve to fight the enemy through rhyme and verse, winning the Culture Wars through poetry - and the result is the most bizarre book club in history. \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eConsisting of 15 secret agents - from WW2 veterans to schoolboy recruits - the 'Working Group of Writing Chekists' met monthly from 1962 until the Wall fell. In a classroom adorned with portraits of Lenin, the spies wrote their own poetry and were taught verse, metre, and rhetoric by East German poet Uwe Berger. The regime hoped that poetry would sharpen the Stasi's 'party sword' by affirming the spies' belief in the words of Marx and Lenin, as well as strengthening the socialist faith of their comrades. But as the agents became steeped in poetry, revelling in its imaginative ambiguity, the result was the opposite. Rather than entrenching state ideology, they began to radically question it - and following a radical role reversal, the GDR's secret weapon dramatically backfired.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWeaving unseen archival material with exclusive interviews from surviving members, Philip Oltermann reveals the incredible hidden story of a unique experiment: weaponising poetry for politics. Both a gripping true story and a parable about creativity in a surveillance state, this is \u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Lives of Others\u003c\/i\u003e meets \u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDead Poets Society\u003c\/i\u003e - and history writing at its finest.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFormat: Oversized paperback\u003cbr\u003e Published: in UK in 2022\u003cbr\u003e Publisher: Faber \u0026amp; Faber\u003cbr\u003e Pages: 201\u003cbr\u003e Language: English\u003cbr\u003e ISBN 13: 9780571373338\u003cbr\u003e ISBN 10: 057137333X\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Philip Oltermann","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39630049116263,"sku":"","price":17.95,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0282\/6066\/3399\/products\/image_b0d5d7c3-507a-46fc-a900-e9e647f5dd64.jpg?v=1644492707","url":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareandsons.com\/products\/the-stasi-poetry-circle","provider":"Shakespeare \u0026 Sons Buchhandel GmbH","version":"1.0","type":"link"}