Before the fall of the Wall, she was celebrated as a pan-German author. Christa Wolf was later vilified as a "GDR state writer". She died in Berlin on December 1, 2011 at the age of 82.
by Bernd Neugebauer
"It is a law that time must misjudge us" - the sentence from Christa Wolf's "No place. Nowhere." (1977) also marks her own writing career. At least since the international success of her novel "Kassandra" (1983) celebrated as a pan-German writer, after the fall of the West German feuilleton, Wolf was only reduced to her proximity to the GDR regime.
The division of Germany is an integral part of the work of the writer, who most recently lived in Berlin and Mecklenburg. Her political commitment determined reactions to the person and work. However, just as little as her closeness to and her conflicts with the GDR regime can be reduced to a single common denominator, Wolf's literature can be reduced to the political aspects.
The divided sky
Christa Wolf in conversation with Konrad Wolf (left) and Hermann Kant (right) on November 25, 1965 in East Berlin.After studying German and working as an editor, Wolf, who was born in 1929 in what is now Landsberg/Warthe, Poland, published her first prose work "Moscow Novelle" in 1961, initially only in the GDR. The novel "The Divided Sky", which was published the following year, also attracted attention in the West.
Wolf, a member of the SED since 1949 and convinced that socialism represents the more desirable form of society, deals with the consequences of the division of Germany in the work. As is to be expected with the subject, it did not meet with undivided enthusiasm from the cultural officials in the GDR:Wolf received the GDR's Heinrich Mann Prize and the book was filmed by DEFA two years later, but "large gaps in the Representation of the republic and its people".
Wolf's "subjective authenticity"
Not only the choice of topic, but also the literary form of the novel does not conform to the prevailing ideology as desired. "The Divided Sky" is criticized as "too modern" - that is to say:not sufficiently designed in the sense of "Socialist Realism".
The subsequent story "Juni-Nachmittage" marks her turn to a more realistic style, which she describes as "subjective authenticity" and which henceforth characterizes her work. The fact that Wolf, in contrast to the objectivity demanded by official doctrine, relies on the subjective element in literature repeatedly brings her into conflict with the authorities - conflicts that Wolf, despite all his closeness to the regime, does not shy away from.
In the sights of the Stasi
Parallel to the artistic differences with the state leadership, to which Wolf himself almost belonged, political differences developed. Wolf, who, by her own admission, had been increasingly disappointed since the early 1960s with the way "actually existing socialism" was replacing her utopian idea of a just society, lost her status as a candidate for the highest election in 1967 after a critical speech before the Central Committee of the SED Party body.
When the married couple Christa and Gerhard Wolf protested against the expatriation of the singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann in 1976, she was expelled from the GDR writers' association, and her husband was also expelled from the party. The couple, who had long been in the sights of state security, were then openly spied on for months.
No country. Nowhere
As a result, Christa Wolf, who now lives in Berlin and Mecklenburg, considers leaving the GDR, but decides against it:she sees no alternative to socialism in the capitalist West. Despite her commitment to Biermann, the government continues to use the writer as a figurehead for socialist cultural progress and privileges Wolf:She is a member of the Academy of Arts, is awarded the GDR National Prize in 1977 and is allowed to travel to western countries.
The problems between the state and the prominent writer become visible in the 1979 publication "Kein Land. Nirgends". Based on a fictional encounter between Heinrich von Kleist and the romantic poet Karoline von Günderrode, Christa Wolf deals with the question of the writer's failure in society. It's hard not to understand sentences like "Since I don't understand cunning and mischievousness, I've learned to remain silent" as a commentary on the author's attitude towards her state.
Recognition in the west
Christa Wolf accepts the Georg Büchner Prize on October 16, 1980 in Darmstadt.The story is also an example of Wolf's literary claim. Avoiding linguistic clichés, the author arranges the characters' voices in a complex web. Anyone who speaks, what is speech, what is only thought, is blurred as deliberately as it is artistically. The honors in the West - among other things, she received the Büchner Prize in 1980, the most important literary award in the Federal Republic - are therefore not to be seen as a "reward" for an attitude critical of the system, but as recognition of her literary work.
The all-German writer - "Kassandra"
The work of the author, who is committed to humanistic values, represents committed literature in the tradition of Brecht. Wolf tries to find a form appropriate to the complexity of her themes. Reducing their concerns to simple black and white schemes is not their thing.
With "Kassandra" (1983) about issues of equal rights and "Störfall" (1987) about the Chernobyl reactor catastrophe, she hits the West German zeitgeist of the 1980s in particular. In contrast to many of her East German colleagues, West German critics regard her as an "all-German" writer.
accusation of being close to the regime
Christa Wolf gives a speech on November 4, 1989 at Alexanderplatz in East Berlin.Wolf's liaison with the Western zeitgeist comes to an abrupt end with the fall of the Wall in East Germany. Wolf hopes that her utopia of a socialist state with a human face can now be realized.
When shouts of "We are one people" have long dominated the Monday demonstrations, she speaks out against reunification with the Federal Republic of Germany, thus resisting the hustle and bustle of unity. That makes them suspicious in the eyes of West German feuilletons. Like many GDR intellectuals who came to terms with the system, she is now accused of being close to the regime.
What remains
Wolf's report on her experience as a target of the state security - the text "What Remains" published in 1990 - earns her the label "GDR state writer" by Marcel Reich-Ranicki, among others, and triggers a debate about the role of East German intellectuals. According to the most popular accusation, Wolf should have published the text ten years earlier, regardless of the personal consequences. In view of the reprisals against critics of the regime, the impairment of Wolf's private life by the activities of the State Security is marginal.
Before the fall of the wall, the publication of the text would have been a sensation, after that it was just "embarrassing", said Ulrich Greiner in the "Zeit". Many who had previously praised their work are suddenly also expressing literary reservations:actually, reading their books was always said to be boring.
In the sense of the Stasi "unusable"
In 1993 it became known that Christa Wolf had been listed by the Stasi from 1959 to 1962, first as a "social employee" and then as IM "Margarethe". As a moral authority, it is then considered by many to be discredited.
After State Security approached them, Wolf apparently tried to come to terms with the situation. Her few accounts of fellow writers contain nothing but positives. Because of the "uselessness" of Wolf's observations, Mielke's secret service ended the author's engagement. In 1993, Wolf himself published her Stasi file from this period under the title "Akteneinsicht Christa Wolf".
Suitable for a bestseller
For a long time it seemed as if the role of the "all-German writer" had become superfluous after reunification. At first, Wolf's works published in reunified Germany did not find the same response as the works written in the GDR era.
She gets the feeling of "belonging to an outdated, dying breed whose experiences are no longer needed," said Christa Wolf, summing up her position in the cultural life of united Germany - apparently wrongly so:in 2010 her much-discussed new novel "Stadt der Engel" (City of Angels) was published Straight into the bestseller lists. In the book, for which she received the Uwe Johnson Prize, Wolf mixed autobiographical experiences, such as her time in Los Angeles in the early 1990s and the discussions at the time about her former work with the Stasi, with fictional content.