| Sumario: | After returning from exile in Mexico to Germany in spring 1947, Anna Seghers began to write three historical novellas on anti-slavery revolts in the Westindies around 1800. But the cycle Karibische Geschichten (Caribbean Tales) couldn’t be finished before 1960. Seghers had to interrupt writing the third short story Das Licht auf dem Galgen (The Light on the Gallows). What was the reason? All of the Karibische Geschichten deal with violence and revolution in different times and places: the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the Mexican Revolution and the Russian Revolution (especially under Stalin). Focusing on the original version of Das Licht auf dem Galgen, written in 1948, I will try to show that Seghers had difficulties in coming to terms with the inevitability of violence when a society is formed, i.e. with the question of authority and its legitimation (›Gründungsgewalt‹).
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