Wolf, Christa Ihlenfeld

1929 - Christa Ihlenfeld Wolf, born on the 18th of March in Landsberg an der Warthe, then in Germany. She is one of the best-known writers to emerge from the former East Germany. She is a literary critic, novelist, and essayist.

1945 - She and her family were expelled from her home across the new Oder River border and they settled in Mecklenburg, in what would become East Germany.

1949 - She joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

1959 - 1961 - She had worked as an informant (Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter).

1963 - Her breakthrough as a writer came with the publishing of Der geteilte Himmel (Divided Heaven).

       - Received the Heinrich Mann Prize.

1980 - Given the Georg Büchner Prize.

1983 - Kassandra is perhaps her 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.

       - Received the Schiller Memorial Prize.

1990 - Was bleibt (What Remains), describing her life under Stasi surveillance.

1997 - Auf dem Weg nach Tabou (translated as Parting from Phantoms) gathers essays, speeches, and letters written during the four years following the reunification of Germany.

2003 - Her latest work, Leibhaftig, 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.