Article:

Reparierend(es) Schreiben. “Der Heizer” von Wolfgang Hilbig

Wolfgang Hilbig’s story "Der Heizer" tells of a boilerman moved by poor working conditions to stages a protest and force his own transfer to a different workstation so that he will have more time for his writing, which he does secretly while on the job. This article shows how Hilbig’s text superimposes various intentions, quotations, and intertextual references and how these literary interferences relate a complex knowledge of repairs in the GDR. My analysis presents the various forms of repair in "Der Heizer" as literary strategies appearing in the text and in the story’s publication history. Processes of repair, I argue, here navigate the tensions between outdated modes of operation and potential new ways of acting. In doing so, I particularly focus on the text’s scene of writing and its theatric effects, in order to highlight Hilbig’s programmatic ways of writing.