Christa Wolf’s short novel Nachdenken über Christa T. (1968), translated into English by Christopher Middleton as The Quest for Christa T. (1970), is still considered a landmark text of East German literature and one of the author’s most important works of fiction. Following her debut with Moskauer Novelle (Moscow Novella, 1961) and her 1963 novel Der geteilte Himmel (translated as The Divided Heaven by Joan Becker, 1965), which allegedly follows the tradition of Ankunftsliteratur (literature of arrival), Nachdenken über Christa T. is said to be Wolf’s first book to break with this tradition. It is often considered a literary breakthrough (Sabine Wilke terms it a “Durchbruchserzählung”, literally a “breakthrough narrative” (23)) and “thought of as the first GDR novel with emancipatory tendencies” (Martens 27). Without a doubt, this 1968 novelepitomizes Wolf’s pursuit of the new writing style she described in a conversation with Hans Kaufmann, published under the title “Subjektive Authentizität” in 1973 (“Subjective Authenticity,” 1988). In her view, “subjective authenticity” aims to engage with objective reality in a productive manner that is meaningful to the subject and at the same time avoids an unfettered subjectivism, which could obscure rather than illuminate reality (781-82). This mode of writing presented a clear break with East Germany’s official demand for socialist realism, i.e., with representing the everyday life of workers and farmers in the socialist state in an idealized manner. Wolf’s decision to renounce socialist realism in favor of “subjective authenticity” may also explain this novel’s complicated publication history.

Completed in March 1967, Nachdenken über Christa T. was slated to appear with Mitteldeutscher Verlag in the GDR (German Democratic Republic, aka East Germany) in 1968, yet censorship delayed the publication by a year. Finally published in a small print run and dated back to 1968, Nachdenken über Christa T. was quickly criticized, censored, and banned. Reissued in 1972, it became a bestseller in the GDR—as it also did in the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany, aka West Germany), where it was published with Luchterhand in 1969 to immediately sell quite well. In May of that year, the influential West German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki declared in an article titled “Christa Wolfs unruhige Elegie” (Christa Wolf’s Uneasy Elegy), published in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit: “Christa T. stirbt an Leukämie, aber sie leidet an der DDR. Was bleibt, ist Kapitulation” (Christa T. dies of leukemia, but she suffers from the GDR. What remains, is capitulation). The famous but controversial critic’s misleading statement that turns Christa T. into an anti-socialist, diagnosed with an illness induced by the GDR,is likely the most influential assertion made about Nachdenken über Christa T. The novel garnered a great deal of attention, if not praise, in the west, but it also sparked disagreement among GDR officials and critics that most likely impeded its publication in the east. Max Walter Schulz’s speech at the GDR’s Sixth Writers’ Congress held in May 1969 (71) or Heinz Sachs’s self-criticism regarding the publication of Nachdenken über Christa T. (55), for example, speak to the negative influence Reich-Ranicki had on the novel’s reception in the GDR.

In a letter to Lew Kopelew, published posthumously in her Moskauer Tagebücher (Moscow Diaries), Christa Wolf reveals that West German criticism of Nachdenken über Christa T., which she characterizes as shallow and ignorant regarding the realities of daily life under socialism, made her a black sheep in the GDR (149). Moreover, in part it probably hindered translations of Nachdenken über Christa T. from being published in other socialist countries, even after its success in the GDR, as Christa Wolf’s letter to Wladimir Steshenski, also published in her Moskauer Tagebücher, indicates (101). A Russian translation of Nachdenken über Christa T., for example, could only appear in a volume titled Isbrannoje (Selected Works) in 1979, as “Gerhard Wolf zur vierten Reise”, her husband’s commentary on Christa Wolf’s fourth journey to Moscow, highlights (97).

At the center of Nachdenken über Christa T., Wolf places the protagonist Christa T. and her confidante, the nameless narrator who gains little depth of characterization throughout the course of the novel. This narrator deals with the short life, illness, and death of her friend Christa T. based on the letters and manuscripts she left behind. After World War II, the narrator and Christa T., high-school friends from a village east of the river Oder—in today’s Poland—become separated as they flee from the Red Army. They meet again accidentally in Leipzig, where both are studying German literature to become teachers. At the university, they are friends with other young socialists, all of whom lack Christa T.’s idealism. A committed socialist, for whom the capitalist FRG does not offer an alternative, she remains an outsider and suffers depression due to the events surrounding the East German Uprising of dissatisfied citizens in June 1953, which was violently suppressed by the GDR government with the aid of Soviet tanks. For a short time Christa T. retreats to the idyllic village she called home before moving to Leipzig. After her recovery, she returns to the city, finishes her exams, and begins working as a teacher. Still, she continues to suffer from the discrepancies she perceives between her utopian socialist ideals and the realities of life in the GDR. The historical events of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly the 1953 uprising and Prague Spring in 1968, challenge her belief in the demands of socialist society and leave painful traces on her psyche and body: her repressed feelings of rebellion and disagreement surface repeatedly in a variety of psychosomatic maladies. When she finally meets and marries the veterinarian Justus, she quits her job and dedicates herself to her husband and children, whom they raise in the rural, northern regions of the GDR. Bored with village life, she has a brief extramarital affair; plans and starts building a house; and, during her third pregnancy, develops leukemia from which she dies shortly after the child is born.

The project of building a house, followed by Christa T.’s death, has repeatedly been interpreted as a retreat into the private realm and a rebuff of the GDR (see Hilzinger; Mohr; Raddatz; Stephan; Wiegenstein; Zehm). However, it is important to read the novel as an extension of Wolf’s most important political conviction. In “Unerledigte Widersprüche” (Unsettled Contradictions, 1987/88), an interview with Therese Hörnigk, the author explained that despite its flaws, she considered socialism the only feasible way to create a better future after the catastrophe of the Nazi past. Keeping this statement in mind, one can consider the dwelling as merging the private and public realms. It was built in 1961, the year the Berlin Wall was built, which is often considered the real founding year of the GDR, because the Wall compelled GDR citizens to come to terms with daily life under socialism and required the regime to pursue legitimacy by increasing the standard of living. Therefore, the construction of Christa T.’s house can be understood as resembling socialism in the young GDR: despite observable deficiencies, both projects are hard to realize; must be defended against all obstacles and objections; can provide shelter and the security of a new home; and appear to offer space for (individual) development and for severing all ties with the past (for more information, see endnote). In building her house, Christa T. is breaking with the constraints imposed on the subject by hegemonic ideas of assimilation. Like her unfinished place on its way to perfection, the GDR will provide the socio-economic conditions for dedicated socialists to thrive, and it serves as the optimistic legacy Christa T. leaves behind when she dies.

Despite these observable indications of support for the socialist state, Nachdenken über Christa T. is also a novel about the author’s deceased friend, Christa Tabbert-Gebauer (1927-1963). The ways Wolf covers Christa’s life during the years 1943 to 1962 vexed officials in socialist countries. The narrative technique Wolf employed in Nachdenken über Christa T. explicitly aims not at reconstructing, but instead at constructing Christa T.’s life for the future (Nachdenken über Christa T., 8). The narrator asks questions, invents episodes, and makes use of the subjunctive to convey possible paths the protagonist might have chosen. This fictional continuation of her personal and public life is vital for the narrator’s aim to reveal the tensions her friend experienced as a result of her idealism, which was incompatible with the social realities and possibilities in the GDR in the 1950s. By focusing on the discrepancy between the young woman’s claim to life, happiness, and socialist idealism on the one hand, and the propagandized normativity of real-existing socialist society on the other, the narrator fosters empathy for Christa T. This technique, which allows the author to relate the individual’s conflicts by means of a narrative voice that is clearly not omniscient (and thus contradicts the formal demands of socialist realism), is consistent with Wolf’s aesthetic program since the late 1960s. This narrative strategy corresponds with the author’s belief that literature has a responsibility to support social and political developments in the GDR, as she put it in “Lesen und Schreiben” (“The Reader and the Writer”). It fulfills this duty by developing prose that allows readers to imagine possibilities for life in a socialist nation.

At the same time, this construction of Christa T. allowed Wolf to verbalize her own doubts with regard to the development of socialism as she perceived it after 1965. Particularly if read with Der geteilte Himmel in mind, one cannot overlook the decisive shift in mood that underscores the altered political situation in the GDR: the narrative tone changes from the optimism of Der geteilte Himmel, which expressed the confidence associated with reform communism in the so-called “thaw years” following the building of the Wall in 1961, to distress (although not utter despair) in Nachdenken über Christa T. This shift can be explained by the experience of the infamous Eleventh Plenum of the Central Committee of the ruling SED in 1965, also known as the Kahlschlag-Plenum (clean-sweep plenum). At this Socialist Unity Party event, Erich Honecker, who later became the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED (1971–1989), announced that skepticism and the development of socialism were mutually incompatible. His words officially put an end to any policies he and his comrades associated with liberalism and the west, and justified the banning of numerous films and books. When Christa Wolf spoke out against the attacks on writers, artists, filmmakers, and intellectuals, her status as a potential member of the Central Committee of the SED was upended. [On the influence of Eleventh Plenum of the Central Committee of the ruling SED in 1965 on Nachdenken über Christa T., see Drescher, Hartinger, Hörnigk, Magenau, Tate, and Wolf, “Jetzt musst du sprechen”.] Magenau also relates the effects of the novel’s publication history on Wolf’s health (218-30).] Her hope that the building of the Wall in 1961 would lead to democratic socialism also waned after 1965. This explains why Wolf’s fictional character Christa T. suffers from the discrepancy between her personal desires and social expectations, and seeks to resolve this struggle by developing a quasi-religious faith in the future of a “humane socialism” as expressed in the building of her house.

While recent Christa Wolf scholarship has tended to focus more on the author’s works written after the fall of the Wall, particularly her first major prose text composed after 1990, Medea: Stimmen (1996; Medea: A Modern Telling, 1998) and her final novel, Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud (2010; City of Angels, Or the Overcoat of Dr. Freud, 2013), a few new approaches to Nachdenken über Christa T. can be distinguished. They range from investigations of the influences Wolf’s novel has had on contemporary literature (Ławnikowska-Koper; Klocke) and analyses influenced by memory studies (Schmidt) to studies of her innovative approaches to autobiographical writing (Tate, Nunan). Most recently, Klocke demonstrated that the novel—if read with a focus on the protagonist’s ill body and the ways she is treated in a variety of medical institutions—offers new insights into the GDR, its history, and the significance of literature in a country that lacked independent, critical mass media outlets. While the mass media broadcast official decisions there, reflections on problematic and socially pertinent topics tended to take place in small groups and were conveyed to the public by means of literature and film. Nachdenken über Christa T. participated in this process in a variety of ways. For example, it became one of the first narratives to initiate a discussion about depression as a mental health condition and to contribute to the discourse on problems in GDR psychiatry, such as its condemnation of Freud’s depth psychology and psychoanalysis. These subjects achieved a more prominent position in GDR fiction in the late 1970s and 1980s. Such an approach reveals that, in addition to appreciating Nachdenken über Christa T. for its literary value, readers can also gain new knowledge about daily life under socialism by engaging with this early Wolf novel.

Note:

1. For documentation of the view that 1961 is the real founding year of the GDR, see Emmerich 178. The image of the house as a symbol for the young GDR is not uncommon. Uwe Kolbe echoes the description of Christa T.’s house in his notion of socialism as the “Vorstellung, daß man gemeinsam an einem neuen historischen Gebäude arbeitet, und habe es auch seine Mängel und Schwierigkeiten, aber daß es doch das Bessere sei, speziell das bessere Deutschland” (vision that, collectively, one works on a new historical building, and even if it has its deficiencies and difficulties, it is still the better [option], especially the better Germany; Kolbe cited in Dröscher, Subjektive Authentizität 16)

Works Cited

Behn, Manfred, ed.Wirkungsgeschichte von Christa Wolfs “Nachdenken über Christa T.” Königstein: Athenäum, 1978.
Drescher, Angela, ed. Dokumentation zu Christa Wolf “Nachdenken über Christa T.” Hamburg: Luchterhand, 1991.
Dröscher, Barbara. Subjektive Authentizität: Zur Poetik Christa Wolfs zwischen 1964 und 1975. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1993.
Emmerich, Wolfgang. Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR. Erweiterte Neuausgabe. Reprint. Berlin: Aufbau, 2000. (orig. 1996)
Hartinger, Walfried. Wechselseitige Wahrnehmung: Heiner Müller und Christa Wolf in der deutschen Kritik—in Ost und West. Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen, 2008.
Hilzinger, Sonja. Epilogue to Nachdenken über Christa T. by Christa Wolf. Vol. 2. Ed. Sonja Hilzinger. München: Luchterhand, 1999. 211-38.
Hörnigk, Therese. “‘… aber schreiben kann man dann nicht’: Über die Auswirkungen politischer Eingriffe in künstlerische Prozesse.” Kahlschlag: Das 11. Plenum des ZK der SED 1965. Studien und Dokumente. Ed. Günter Agde. Berlin: Aufbau, 1991. 413-22.
Klocke, Sonja E. Inscription and Rebellion: Illness and the Symptomatic Body in East German Literature. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015.
Ławnikowska-Koper, Joanna. “Selbstfindungskontexte in Marlene Streeruwitz’ Der Abend nach dem Begräbnis der besten Freundin unter Einbeziehung von Christa Wolfs Nachdenken über Christa T. und Christoph Heins Der fremde Freund.” In Konstrukte und Dekonstruktionen: Aufsätze und Skizzen zur österreichischen Literatur. Ed. Edward Białek, Arletta Szmorhun, and Iwan Zymomrya. Dresden: Neisse-Verlag, 2013. 403-415.
Magenau, Jörg. Christa Wolf: Eine Biographie. Berlin: Kindler, 2002.
Martens, Lorna. The Promised Land? Feminist Writing in the German Democratic Republic. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
Mohr, Heinrich. “Produktive Sehnsucht. Struktur, Thematik und politische Relevanz von Christa Wolfs Nachdenken über Christa T. (1971).” In Christa Wolf. Ein Arbeitsbuch. Studien – Dokumente – Bibliographie. Ed.Angela Drescher. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1989. 32-62.
Nunan, Anna. Autobiographical Progression in the Writings of Christa Wolf: Nachdenken über Christa T. (1968), Kindheitsmuster (1976), and Ein Tag im Jahr (2003). Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2011.
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Sachs, Heinz. “Verleger sein heißt ideologisch kämpfen.” In Wirkungsgeschichte von Christa Wolfs “Nachdenken über Christa T.” Ed. Manfred Behn. Königstein: Athenäum, 1978. 54-56.
Schmidt, Nadine J. “‘Warum nicht schweigen, wenn man sich für befangen erklären muß?’: Zur literarischen Konstruktion von Erinnerung in Christa Wolfs Nachdenken über Christa T.” In Christa Wolf. New and rev. 5th ed. Ed. Nadine J. Schmidt. Text + Kritik 46 (2012): 51-60.
Schulz, Max Walter. “Das Neue und das Bleibende in unserer Literatur.” In Wirkungsgeschichte von Christa Wolfs “Nachdenken über Christa T.” Ed. Manfred Behn. Königstein: Athenäum, 1978. 70-72.
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Wiegenstein, Roland. “Verweigerung der Zustimmung.” In Wirkungsgeschichte von Christa Wolfs ‘Nachdenken über Christa T.’ Ed. Manfred Behn. Königstein: Athenäum, 1978. 77-80.
Wilke, Sabine. Ausgraben und Erinnern. Zur Funktion von Geschichte, Subjekt und geschlechtlicher Identität in den Texten Christa Wolfs. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1993.
Wolf, Christa. Die Dimension des Autors: Essays und Aufsätze: Reden und Gespräche 1959–1985. Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1987. Excerpts translated by Jan Van Heurck in The Author’s Dimension: Selected Essays, edited by Alexander Stephan (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1993); excerpts translated by Hilary Pilkington in The Fourth Dimension: Interviews with Christa Wolf (London: Verso, 1988).
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Zehm, Günter. “Rückzug ins private Glück im Winkel.” In Wirkungsgeschichte von Christa Wolfs ‘Nachdenken über Christa T.’ Ed. Manfred Behn. Königstein: Athenäum, 1978. 81-83.

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Citation: Klocke, Sonja. "Nachdenken über Christa T". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 April 2016 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=22571, accessed 08 July 2025.]