Reviews 439 Sonja E. Klocke: Inscription and Rebellion: Illness and the Symptomatic Body in East German Literature. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. 248 pp. $ 80.00. In this interdisciplinary monograph on the representation of illness in East German literature, Sonja Klocke probes depictions of symptomatic bodies in works published before and after 1990� The first two chapters examine Christa Wolf’s preand post- Wende works (i�e�, Der geteilte Himmel , Nachdenken über Christa T. , Leibhaftig , and Die Stadt der Engel ), whereas the latter two chapters foreground East German writers such as Thomas Brussig, Kerstin Hensel, Kathrin Schmidt, and Antje Rávic Strubel, whose post-unification narratives appear inspired by Wolf’s linking of illness and political malaise� Klocke takes an innovative approach to medical discourse in fiction as she interweaves political commentary and literary analysis, while incorporating pertinent essays and interviews� Taking as a starting point Wolf’s emphasis on attaining “subjective authenticity” in writing, Klocke reads her depictions of illness as informed by Wolf’s “life-long belief that the sick body functions as the site where contradictions between the individual striving for authenticity and the demands of society become manifest” (37)� Klocke traces the ways in which the eponymous Christa T� reacts to the state’s demand for adaptation to societal norms� She accepts Wolf’s implied argument that the protagonist’s ailments (culminating in leukemia) are the result of such political pressures� Although one might question Wolf’s somewhat simplistic belief (psychosomatic ailments notwithstanding, somatic ailments such as cancer are multi-factorial), Klocke’s argument is convincing and further contextualized by means of research on the GDR healthcare system� In particular, she emphasizes the GDR’s paternalistic pressure on patients to comply even as they were kept in the dark about diagnosis and prognosis� Against this historical background, Klocke aptly highlights the effects of psychological tensions between socialist idealism and the “adaptation” demanded by the realexistierender Sozialismus , which are resolved in a quasi-religious salvation narrative surrounding the idealistic Christa T� The second chapter examines the contributions that Wolf’s post-unification texts Leibhaftig and Stadt der Engel make to cultural memory, underscoring Wolf’s attention to the GDR’s antifascist legacy and her concomitant critique of global capitalism� In Klocke’s view, both works present a counter-narrative to the West German media’s “hegemonic interpretations that disparage GDR antifascism” (100)� The autobiographically-inspired protagonist in Leibhaftig struggles to find a healthy position vis-à-vis her personal and political past, a 440 Reviews healing process that Klocke finds more fully realized in the fictionalized autobiography Stadt der Engel � At the same time, research on the GDR’s legal and moral pressures on patients to comply offers new perspectives on everyday life pre-1990� The personal dimension, such as Wolf’s own illness and the gray areas of her privileges in the GDR (e�g�, foreign travel), may be the subject of another study� Instead, Klocke’s focus lies on the “passive patient” found in various Wolf narratives, which conveys the existential dimension of political pressure visited upon East German bodies-- a pressure Klocke in fact compares to the attacks by the media post-1990 on Wolf’s biography and person� In a stimulating discussion of post-Wall narratives by East Germans-- Thomas Brussig’s Wie es leuchtet (2004), Kathrin Schmidt’s Die Gunnar-Lennefsen-Expedition (1998), and Kerstin Hensel’s Lärchenau (2008)-- Klocke traces several interconnected themes� On the one hand, she reads these narratives as alternative histories that arise from the portrayed symptomatic bodies, while on the other, she inquires into the ways in which these novels incorporate, challenge, and satirize post-unification media imagery regarding the former GDR� In particular, she points towards the preponderance of alleged scandals published by Der Spiegel and other outlets (e�g�, regarding pharmacological testing on East Germans or psychiatric hospitalization of political dissidents), which make their way into the narratives under discussion� While not blind to the political abuses in the GDR, Klocke offers convincing evidence of anti-GDR bias in representations of the East� Interestingly, for example, the lives of transsexuals (as shown by Brussig) may have been in some ways easier in the GDR; the pressures on women to submit their bodies and children to preand postnatal care (seen in Schmidt) did in fact reduce infant mortality� Klocke suggests that these narratives subvert dominant discourses of unified Germany with regard to gender, sexuality, and medicine, by offering images of male-dominated abuses of medical power (see Hensel’s text) and disruptions of various gender binaries� Altogether, these younger authors, like Christa Wolf, depict characters whose bodies have inscribed “archived knowledge” (128) that contributes to collective memory of East Germany� The last chapter examines the “spectre” of the GDR that haunts characters in various ways, from Stasi interference to continued paternalism on the part of medical staff� Klocke refers to Peter Sloterdijk’s pronouncement on the end of humanism as she dissects the abuses of a former GDR geneticist (Hensel’s Lärchenau ), whose actions are rooted in his Nazi childhood� Furthermore, Klocke discusses the portrayal of aggression by medical staff who perpetuate the East German powers over patients even in the FRG (Kathrin Schmidt, Du stirbst nicht , 2009)� Another facet of violent post-unification behavior is evident in the destruction of a woman’s life by a former Stasi official (Antje Rávic Reviews 441 Strubel, Sturz der Tage in die Nacht , 2012)� These narratives recall Wolf’s images of symptomatic bodies that are denied agency but read their own inscription to find truth about the past, whereas the post- Wende protagonists, as Klocke argues, encounter heightened aggression but little resolution� A readable and informative study, Inscription and Rebellion illuminates East German medical discourse and reminds readers of the continuing impact of the GDR past on unified Germany, establishing the “relevance of the GDR past and GDR institutions in post-unification Germany” (185)� Klocke also sheds light on the issue of social control present in the FRG, which, as she suggests, often self-servingly demonized GDR practices as the “abject other�” Highlighting both the constructive and detrimental aspects of socialist medicine (perpetuated due to personnel continuities), this monograph delivers important insights about the “inscription” of symptoms onto the human body� Ultimately, the discussed narratives may be less about “rebellion” than about the reading of physical suffering, alterity, and experience in the service of humanism� Miami University of Ohio Nicole Thesz Leif Weatherby: Transplanting the Metaphysical Organ: German Romanticism between Leibniz and Marx. New York: Fordham UP, 2016. 462 pp. $ 35.00 It has become a commonplace of German literary and intellectual history to term early Romantic metaphysics “organic,” and we might- - facilely- - construe this term as meaning “synthesizing” or “nature-based�” But what did the term “organ” mean to the Romantics themselves? And how did each individual thinker uniquely construe and deploy it? With Transplanting the Metaphysical Organ Leif Weatherby sets himself the ambitious task of tracing organological thought, not merely beginning from Fichte, as the subtitle states, but within an array of philosophers, scientists, and literary writers too extensive to enumerate� He traces the concept from Aristotle and Galen, to Descartes and Leibniz, to Schiller, Kant, Herder, and Vaihinger� Then, with a focus on early Romanticism, he devotes a chapter each to Hölderlin, Schelling, and Novalis, followed by a chapter on Goethe’s revision of organology� The final section, entitled “Instead of an Epilogue,” contains the seeds of a book unto itself� It leaves Romanticism behind and considers a later version of organology: the “economic metaphysics” of Karl Marx (318)� In the introduction, Weatherby requests that readers suspend their contemporary understanding of the term “organ,” and stresses that “ organology is not