Wolf, Christa (1929—)

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Wolf, Christa (1929—)

German writer from the former German Democratic Republic whose internationally acclaimed novels and essays advocate the humanistic goals of Marxism while promoting a confrontation with Germany's past and present . Pronunciation: VOllff (O as in old). Born Christa Margarete Ihlenfeld on March 18, 1929, in Landsberg-Wartha (today Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland); daughter of Otto Ihlenfeld (a merchant); attended Oberschule in Landsberg, 1939–45, Oberschule in Schwerin, 1946–47, Abitur in Bad Frankenhausen, 1949; studied Germanic languages and literature in Jena and Leibzig, 1949–53; married Gerhard Wolf (the Germanist and essayist), in 1951; children: Annette (b. 1952); Katrin (b. 1956).

Family fled to Mecklenburg (1945); took various jobs, including position as clerk typist for the mayor of Gammelin (1945–46); stayed at a sanitarium for pulmonary diseases (1946); was a member of the SED (Socialist Unity Party, 1949–89); moved to Berlin (1953); was a research assistant for the German Writers' Union (1953–55); was on staff of Neue deutsche Literatur (1954–59); served as chief editor for publishing company Neues Leben (1956–59); made first trip to the Soviet Union (1955); was a member and executive committee member of the Writers' Union, German Democratic Republic (GDR, 1955–77); moved to Halle, worked in a factory, became involved in the Association of Writing Workers, was a freelance editor of Mitteldeutscher Verlag (Halle), and editor of several anthologies of contemporary German literature (1959–62); awarded Artists' Prize of the City of Halle (1962); freelanced in Kleinmachnow near Berlin (1962—); given Heinrich Mann Prize of the Academy of Arts of the GDR (1963); was a candidate of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party (1963–67); awarded National Prize Third Class of the Academy of Arts of the GDR (1964); awarded Wilhelm-Raabe Prize of the City of Braunschweig (1972); Theodor Fontane Prize for Art and Literature (1973); dismissed from the executive committee of the Berlin Section of the Writers' Union of the GDR (1976); granted Literature Prize of the City of Bremen (1977); traveled in Athens and Crete (1981); was a guest professor in Poetics at the University of Frankfurt am Main (1982); granted Schiller Prize, was a guest professor and given honorary doctorate at Ohio State University, and gave readings in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco (1983); went on a reading tour through Italy and Austria (1984); awarded Austrian National Prize for Literature and an honorary doctorate, University of Hamburg (1985); traveled to Greece and Spain (1986); granted Geschwister-Scholl Prize of Munich and was a guest professor at the Technische Hochschule in Zürich (1987); after the fall of the Berlin Wall, withdrew Socialist Union Party member-ship (1989); gave various speeches and essays concerning German unification (1989); awarded honorary doctorates, University of Hildesheim and the Free University of Brussels; granted the Ordre des Artes et Lettres, France; given Literature Prize of the 16th Internationale, Mondello, Italy; received intense attention from the media and faced charges of cowardice after the publication of "What Remains?" (1990); discovery of a file of the Stasi, the secret security service of theGDR, that listed Wolf (1959–62) as secret informer and informal collaborator of the Stasi (1993); given stipend at Getty Center, Santa Monica (1994).

Selected writings:

Moskauer Novelle (1961); Divided Heaven (1963, trans. 1965); The Quest of Christa T. (1968, trans. 1970); The Reader and the Writer: Essays, Sketches, Memories (1971, trans. 1977); Till Eulenspiegel (film script with Gerhard Wolf, 1972); A Model Childhood (1976, trans. 1980); No Place on Earth (1979, trans. 1982); Cassandra (1983, trans. 1984); Accident/A Day's News (1987); The Fourth Dimension: Interviews with Christa Wolf (1988, trans. 1989); What Remains? (1990, trans. 1993); numerous short stories, some published in What Remains and Other Stories (1993); Auf dem Weg nach Tabou (1994, trans. and released in U.S. as Parting from Phantoms: Selected Writings, 1990–1994, University of Chicago, 1997).

When it became known in 1993, after the opening of the files of the former German Democratic Republic's Secret Security Service (Stasi), that Christa Wolf was listed from 1959 to 1962 by the Stasi, first as a secret informer and then as an informal collaborator, a lively debate ensued following earlier accusations of complicity with the former socialist regime. The most prominent East German writer, simultaneously idealized and sharply criticized in both Germanies, was known and respected as a tireless advocate of humanitarian and feminist ideals, personal truthfulness, and collective remembrance, and to many Wolf represented the very ideal of personal integrity and human decency. Her reputation at stake, Wolf wrote in her own defense, addressing some issues and raising only more questions concerning others. She was unable to exonerate herself in the eyes of some critics and readers, confirming the distrust of those critics who had always been suspicious of Wolf's support of socialism and disappointing others who until now had firmly believed in her honesty and integrity.

The discovery that she acted as an informant for the Stasi and had written a report about a fellow writer was the second controversy after the disintegration of East Germany concerning Wolf's ethical and political convictions, and in the eyes of many, Wolf became one of the idols fallen along with socialism and the border between East and West Germany. Wolf had received unfavorable attention shortly after the collapse of the East German State when she published What Remains?, a story chronicling her experience of being spied upon by the Stasi in June and July 1979. Critics wondered why Wolf, who wrote about her ordeal in 1979, waited to publish the story until the East German State no longer existed. Some criticized the delayed publication as a sign of her lack of courage and her complicity with the regime. Was the most celebrated writer of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) claiming to have secretly resisted the repressive regime? Why did she hold back until the party was no longer in power and when it was safe, and even politically correct, to come forward with a story criticizing the methods of the old regime? Did the fact that she was complaining about having been watched by the Stasi for a few weeks not make a mockery of the true suffering of the hundreds of writers and artists who were harassed, blackmailed, jailed, forbidden to publish, or expelled? Why, critics asked, was Wolf now portraying herself as a victim of the system she had supported intellectually for so many years?

Many of Wolf's earlier novels and stories are critical of certain aspects of the repressive East German State, and her subjective and individualistic style of writing defied the official call for an uncritical, non-experimental socialist-realist literature idealizing the life under socialism as the only way to truly achieve justice and equality. Despite her critical stance, Wolf always defended the ideals of socialism and consciously chose to remain in East Germany despite numerous opportunities for defection during her travels in Europe and the United States. Because of the skillful restraint in her explorations of the advantages and limitations of socialism, she managed—despite some sharp criticism from the political establishment—to have her works published and honored in the GDR. Through her work, Wolf promoted a confrontation with Nazism and the German past, thus countering the official East German point of view, which denied any responsibility for the past. Because the GDR was a socialist country, it was built—so went the official party line—upon an anti-fascist foundation and therefore must not share the guilt for the crimes of the Nazis.

Born in 1929, Christa Wolf grew up in Nazi Germany and witnessed the rise and fall of the Hitler regime. The advance of the Red Army toward the West forced her family to flee to the city of Mecklenburg. Within the next few years, Wolf held various jobs, including a clerk-typist position for the mayor of the small town of Gammelin. After a stay in a sanatorium for pulmonary diseases, Wolf completed her diploma in Bad Frankenhausen in 1949. Reading the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, she became

convinced that socialism was the bearer of hope for a new, anti-fascist beginning and a more humane and just society. In 1949, she became a member of the Socialist Unity Party, which was to rule the GDR until its collapse in 1989. Wolf remained a member until 1989.

Her desire to write developed in childhood. During her youth, Wolf wrote letters to friends and jotted down stories, daydreams, and poems. In retrospect, Wolf perceived her early ambitions as grounded in the longing to change and multiply her inner self and observes that her writings represented reality in a naive and carefree manner. Possibly meant to be an act of liberation and a sign of the hope for a new beginning, Wolf burned her diaries after the war. She planned to become a teacher and studied Germanic languages and literature at the universities of Jena and Leibzig. She finished her studies with a thesis on the problems of realism in the works of the German writer Hans Fallada, which she wrote under the direction of the well-known writer and Germanist Hans Mayer. In 1951, she married the essayist Gerhard Wolf, with whom she collaborated in several projects, including a film script entitled Till Eulenspiegel. Their first daughter, Annette , was born in 1952. Having given up her plans to become a teacher, Wolf worked as an assistant for the East German Writers' Union, a reader for the publishing house Neues Leben, and an editor of the periodical Neue Deutsche Literatur.

If we cease to hope, then that which we fear will surely come.
—Christa Wolf

In 1959, three years after her daughter Katrin was born, Wolf moved to Halle, and under the influence of the socialist writers' movement whose goal was to bridge the gap between physical, intellectual, and artistic labor, worked in a factory. The idea of having writers share the everyday lives of factory workers on the one hand and encouraging workers to write about their experiences on the other, was the result of the 1959 Bitterfeld writers' conference, which affirmed the tradition of the programmatic concepts of writing, socialist realism, and considered writing an instrument for the advancement of socialist consciousness. The realization of these attempts to overcome the division of art and life and to involve writers in material production and workers in creating literature failed, because few writers were willing to commit themselves to working in the factories for an extended period of time and few workers were interested in participating in the Circles of Writing Workers.

In 1961, Wolf published her first novel, Moskauer Novelle, for which she received the Artists' Prize of the City of Halle. It is the story of Vera, an East Berlin doctor, who travels to Moscow in 1959 and finds that Pavel, the Russian interpreter for her delegation, is the former lieutenant of the Red Army whom she had met 15 years earlier during the Soviet occupation of East Germany. Pavel's and Vera's love story is a parable of the relations between the Soviet Union and East Germany: Vera feels guilty about the German past and an accident which caused Pavel's eye injury, and Pavel is a model socialist who educates Vera to become a socially responsible member of the new system. Wolf's story, which did not receive much attention, already contained some of the themes important for her later work, including the search for truth, the longing for a new society and new values, and the connection between love and suffering.

Wolf's first success came with the 1963 publication of Divided Heaven. The factory worker Rita falls in love with the chemist Manfred, who is portrayed as an emotionally immature cynic unwilling to integrate himself into the socialist system. Manfred moves to the West and Rita follows him to West Berlin, but returns to the East just before the borders are closed and the Berlin Wall is built in 1961 in order to stop the mass exodus of skilled workers and professionals. In the GDR, the novel was hailed for its commitment to socialism, demonstrated by Rita's conscious decision to return to the East. In the West, the novel was interpreted as a critique of the Wall, and many critics pointed out that Rita's accident at the end of the novel could indeed be interpreted as a suicide attempt.

Wolf's novel The Quest for Christa T. focuses on the narrator's struggle to write about and come to terms with the life of Christa T., who dies of leukemia. The East German teacher Christa T. fails as a writer and ends up leading an ordinary existence as a housewife and mother, and the narrator asks: "How, if at all, and under what circumstances, can one realize oneself in a work of art?" Christa T. does not fit the mold of the socialist individual and does not conform to the pressures of the collective. Instead, she values imagination, spontaneity, and self-actualization and searches for a harmonious coexistence between her emotional and intellectual self. In opposition to the demands of the new system, Christa T. longs for personal fulfillment, and struggles, like the narrator, to find and say the truth. Because of its implied criticism of the socialist state, The Quest for Christa T. was largely ignored in East Germany, and Wolf was criticized for her departure from the socialist-realist model of literature. In the West, the novel enjoyed great success.

Wolf's next novel, A Model Childhood, is partly an autobiographical account of life under fascism and the difficulty of dealing with the fascist past in the present. With her husband and daughter, Nelly returns to her native Landsberg, now part of Poland, and recalls her childhood during the Third Reich. Nelly attempts to come to terms with the past, and the novel suggests that due to their failure to oppose Nazism, both East and West Germans must share the responsibility for the atrocities of fascism. This novel was received well in both Germanies.

In 1976, Wolf and her husband signed an open letter protesting the expulsion of the writer and singer Wolf Biermann from the GDR. She was one of the first 12 writers to sign and more than 70 artists and intellectuals followed within the next few days. The party reacted to this demonstration of solidarity with various sanctions and expelled some writers from the party and/or prohibited them from publishing their works. Wolf's husband was among those expelled, and Wolf herself was dismissed from the executive committee of the Berlin Section of the Writers' Union of the GDR.

In the 1970s, Wolf began to explore 19th-century German Romanticism, an enterprise allowing her to turn from contemporary events to an exploration of historical figures of German literature. In an interview, she described the period following the Biermann incident as a time when she felt obliged to examine the preconditions for failure and "the connection between social desperation and failure in literature. At the time, I was living with the intense feeling of standing with my back to the wall, unable to take a proper step." In 1979, Wolf published the story of a fictional encounter between the writer Heinrich von Kleist and the poet Karoline von Günderrode , both of whom eventually committed suicide. No Place on Earth is a novel critical of modern life and the consequences of technological advances and rationalized forms of human interaction. Kleist and Günderrode long for a life of passion, truth, and friendship, but despite their momentary closeness, their dialogue ultimately fails, both finding no place on earth for the fulfillment of their desires. Because of its thematization of issues of gender and its inherent critique of patriarchal society, No Place on Earth has been well received among feminists and was instrumental in a renewed interest in the role of women during the Romantic period.

The critique of patriarchy is the focus of Cassandra (1983), which develops a utopian vision of a female existence freed from male violence. Awaiting her death at the hands of her Greeks captors, the mythological figure of the Trojan Cassandra—who was able to foresee the future, but whose predictions were not believed—recalls the path of war and destruction and reflects upon the possibilities and impossibilities of a humane life under male domination, for which Greek culture stands as a paradigm.

For the Greeks there is no alternative but either truth or lies, right and wrong, victory or defeat, friend and enemy, life or death. They think differently than we do. What cannot be seen, smelled, heard, touched, does not exist. It is the other alternative that they crush between their clear-cut distinctions, the third alternative, which in their view does not exist, the smiling vital force that is able to generate itself from itself over and over: the undivided, spirit in life, life in spirit.

During the many years of war, however, the Trojans adopt the attitudes of their enemy, and the decline of its culture turns Troy into a repressive, corrupt society willing to sacrifice its own standards of liberty, justice, and morality for a chance to defeat the Greeks. As a woman, Cassandra becomes subject to the will and cruelty of both the Greek enemy and the men ruling Troy. After the fall of Troy, Cassandra chooses to die rather than to escape: "I had to reject at the cost of my life: submission to a role contrary to my nature." In both East and West Germany, Cassandra became a bestseller and instant classic; it is still Wolf's most successful novel.

One year after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union, Wolf published Accident/A Day's News, which explores the advantages and dangers of modern technology. The news of the nuclear accident confronts the narrator with the terrible consequences of technology, while she realizes simultaneously that her brother, who suffers from a brain tumor, depends upon medical technology to save his life.

After the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the publication of What Remains? in 1990, Wolf was at the center of a controversy involving East and West German intellectuals. In many ways, this controversy is an exemplar of the German dispute over morality and aesthetics, the role of the intellectual within society, the relationship between the German past and East German socialism, the loss of a utopian vision, and the reception of East German literature by West German critics. The intense debate over Wolf also testifies to the continued distance, the mistrust, and the failed efforts to come to an understanding between East and West. Although the border between the two countries has fallen, the border in the minds of the German people still exists and continues to divide.

Wolf's Auf dem Weg nach Tabou (1994) documents the doubts and uncertainty following the collapse of the GDR and the unification of Germany. It is a collection of Wolf's essays, speeches, diary entries, and correspondences with renowned intellectuals in East and West.Auf dem Weg nach Tabou testifies to Wolf's continued concern about the future of humanity and raises uncomfortable questions concerning the future of a unified Germany. It fails, however, to explain the author's personal involvement in the socialist regime.

Many critics insist that Wolf's claim to have forgotten and repressed her collaboration with the Stasi contradicts her efforts to counter the collective repression of the Nazi past by the German people. Her relationship to her own past brings to mind her critical analysis of the repression of history and memory in A Model Childhood: "What is past is not dead. It is not even past. We separate ourselves from it and pretend to be strangers."