‘Das War Schon Einmal Da, Wie Langweilig!’?: ‘Hörspiel’ and Narrative in the Work of Gert Hofmann (1931–1993)

Gert Hofmann has received surprisingly little critical attention, given the generally favourable reviews his work has received in the German feuilletons. His substantial radio output (more than forty ‘Hörspiele’, three of which earned him major prizes) is the least researched area of his work. This is partly due to problems of availability; few of the plays were published in book form. But his later plays appear to have been neglected mainly because they were often adaptations of earlier narrative works; they have thus been regarded as mere pot‐boilers. This article examines two examples of media transfer, the radio play Die Überflutung (1979) and its narrative counterpart, Unsere Vergeßlichkeit (1987); and the novel Unsere Eroberung (1984) and its radio derivatives Unser Schlachthof (1984) and Peter und Edgar und der Wolf (1984). It demonstrates that Hofmann’s self‐citation was not proof of ‘Ein‐fallslosigkeit’ but had a serious aesthetic purpose. The fact that he wrote both ‘Hörspiele’ and narrative works based on the same theme often allowed him to play with different possibilities that would otherwise have been mutually exclusive. They thus provide a fascinating cross‐commentary and refute the quotation in the title of this article.