Tiefbohrung in Franz Fühmanns Erzählwerk als Leseschlüssel einer menschlichen und literarischen Erfahrung unter Tage

This essay aims to investigate the poetics of mining in the work of the German writer Franz Fühmann from the German Democratic Republic. Throughout his career, Fühmann showed a clear desire to avoid the narrative format of reportage, which was considered the most suitable for promoting socialist realism, according to the prescriptions of the Bitterfelder Weg. By analysing one work, which remains in fragmentary form, namely "Im Berg", we can grasp its romantic implications and its relationship with the trauma of war. A geo-anthropological reading of Im Berg is accompanied by a reference to another, less studied text, "Kabelkran und Blauer Peter", linked to the experience of working in a shipyard, which, like the first, refers to the complex theme expressed in the title of the volume: the action of drilling as a catabasis of the ego.