BRAUN, VOLKER

born May 7, 1939, Dresden, Ger. German author and Marxist whose plays, fiction, and poetry reveal deep divisions and oppositions in socialist East Germany. Initially forbidden to attend a university for political reasons, Braun became a member of the communist Socialist Unity Party and studied at Leipzig University (196064). He then wrote and produced plays for the Berliner Ensemble (196566), City Theatre, Leipzig (197172), and Deutsches Theatre, Berlin (197277). The alienation of workers, the threat of political and economic stasis, and the failure of dull-witted leadership to achieve social ideals are the themes for his writings. Kunze and Hinze, a party hack and his chauffeur, are recurring Braun characters, appearing in the play Hinze und Kunze (1973), the story collection Berichte von Hinze und Kunze (1983), and the novel Hinze-Kunze-Roman (1985). Braun examined the role of women in East German factories in the plays Tinka (1975) and Schmitten (1981); the early years of the Soviet Union are the subject of his plays Lenin's Tod (1983; Lenin's Death) and T. (1989). As the East German government came to an end in 1989, Braun was among the writers pleading for its persistence as a socialist alternative to debased Western values. His later works include the short-story collection Lustgarten, Preussen (1996; Lustgarten, Prussia).