Briefe, Briefträger und Postbeamten in Reiner Kunzes Der Löwe Leopold – Fast Märchen, fast Geschichten

Abstract

This essay attempts to relate the fundamental features of Reiner Kunze’s poetry and prose to the book for children Der  Löwe Leopold – Fast Märchen, fast Geschichten (1970), with particular reference to the topic of the post, which can be  found in three of its four stories, as well as in the poem Warum sind Löwenzahnblüten gelb? The essay opens with  biographical events of the author, some of which led him to become an enemy of the State in East Germany by the end  of the 60s. In the same section, thematic cores of Kunze’s works are defined (among those, his interest for the individual  sphere of human existence and for political topics). The second part is largely dedicated to the topic of the post and  contains a detailed comparison between the characters of the mailman and the mail clerk, which occur in the stories  analyzed in the third section of the essay. Finally, the focus of the third section is on the recurrence of the main topics of  Kunze’s works in the book Der Löwe Leopold. An in-depth analysis of the elements related to the post in the two stories  Der Löwe Leopold and Der Drachen Jakob is also provided in the last part of the paper.