I work at a bookstore currently, and am paid in books. On my first day, this was one of the novels I was paid in, and I picked it spontaneously, without any expectations of it, only that I had been to Berlin last November, and had been studying superpower relationships within the Cold War before that summer. 

I’m so glad I did. ‘Siblings’ has a deeply interesting social context, in that it is a novel inhibited by censorship, in essence fundamentally propaganda, and with its own didactic message, that one should not leave the GDR, and support the brain drain, because it is composed of all different people, striving to the communist ideal, none perhaps perfect. Like Uli and Elisabeth say, what kind of people are the party members? 

There’s Bergamann with volumes of Lessing strewn across his bedroom floor, Jocahaim with a nude inspired by Renoir’s paintings on his wall— and it’s obvious that Lessing wants us to see these people as still holding ideals, simultaneously whilst being alive and aware of their own failures. “You could have saved him.” It’s a tender awareness, a painting in a good light, and it doesn’t reflect Soviet Germany on the whole; but Reimann is aware of this. 

She is not a camera, she observes and writes to her own feelings, like Elisabeth or like Isherwood in his note to the text of ‘Goodbye to Berlin’, so whatever she puts down, it is subjective, but it is true to her, to her encounters. It is this faithful depiction that gives such depth and personality to her characters, and makes them more than just archetypes, right or wrong. 

Reimann does create a nuanced debate, on the place of art in the GDR, on bourgeoisie tendencies, on tradition— the juxtaposition between “Do you believe in tradition?” and her brother’s denial before offering her his coat was beautiful— on that all have ideals, all hope for the future, analogised through cybernetics, even if it makes us afraid in how it could be mutilated— “verse machines”. It is a thought-provoking novel, that requires reflection, notwithstanding its didactic elements. 

That is a testament to Reimann’s belief in socialism, that her readers would understand Uli’s decision, because they would realise that to her socialism is not about a kind of people, but about what ties humanity together: hope. Whether this was misguided, is history’s to decide— the achievement of a future is always fragile in the present, and Reimann doesn’t ignore this, she does represent the potential fractures, the loss, that one has to let people go. Either way, it’s personal in a time where so much was impersonal, and therefore it’s a novel to be cherished. 

In addition, her prose is gorgeous and symbolic, the chronology deeply individual, and conveying the funny lack of importance time has when you’re with someone you’ve known your entire life. It was an incredible use of the stream of consciousness form, and a tightly written novella of love, tenderness, hope, against divide, fracturing, and despair. Reimann was aware of the duality, and knew she could only pick what was better, even if it wouldn’t always live up to its name, even if it wasn’t always right.