Everything about Christa Wolf totally explained
Christa Wolf (born
Christa Ihlenfeld on
March 18,
1929) is a
German literary critic,
novelist, and
essayist. She is one of the best-known writers to emerge from the former
East Germany.
Wolf was born in
Landsberg an der Warthe in the
Province of Brandenburg. As a result of
World War II, Wolf and her family were
expelled from their home across the new
Oder-Neisse border in 1945 and they settled in
Mecklenburg, in what would become the
German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. She joined the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany in 1949 and left it in 1989-90. She studied
literature at
Jena and
Leipzig. After her graduation she worked for the German Writers' Union and became an editor for a publishing company.
Stasi records found in 1993 show that she'd worked as an informant (
Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter) during the years 1959–61. The Stasi officers did, however, criticize her "reticence", and lost interest in her cooperation. She was herself then closely surveiled for the next 30 years.
Wolf's breakthrough as a writer came in 1963 with the publishing of
Der geteilte Himmel (
Divided Heaven). Other subsequent works include
Nachdenken über Christa T. (
The Quest for Christa T.) (1968),
Kindheitsmuster (
Patterns of Childhood) (1976),
Kein Ort. Nirgends (1979),
Kassandra (
Cassandra) (1983),
Medea (1996), and
On the Way to Taboo (1994).
Christa T. was a work that --while briefly touching on a disconnection from one's family's ancestral home-- was concerned with a woman's experiencing overwhelming societal pressure to conform.
Cassandra is perhaps Wolf's most important book, re-interpreting the
battle of Troy as a war for economic power and a shift from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society.
Was bleibt (
What Remains), describing her life under Stasi surveillance, was written in 1979, but not published until 1990.
Auf dem Weg nach Tabou (1995; translated as
Parting from Phantoms) gathers essays, speeches, and letters written during the four years following the
reunification of Germany. Her latest work,
Leibhaftig (2002) describes a woman struggling with life and death in an 80s East-German hospital waiting for medicine from the West. Central themes in her work are German fascism, humanity, feminism, and self-discovery.
Wolf received the
Heinrich Mann Prize in 1963, the
Georg Büchner Prize in 1980, and the
Schiller Memorial Prize in 1983, the
Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in
1987, as well as other national and international awards.
During the era of East Germany, Wolf was openly critical of the leadership of the communist state, yet she maintained a loyalty to the values of
Karl Marx and opposed
German reunification.
Wolf lives in
Berlin with her husband, Gerhard Wolf. She isn't related to the Stasi spymaster
Markus Wolf.
Further Information
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