Self-Experiment: Appendix to a Report

Abstract

In many respects Christa Wolf's works may all be understood as experiments with the self, as attempts to explore the possibilities for self-growth within the development of socialism in the German Democratic Republic. Wolf has asserted the claims of individual fulfillment as a necessary aspect of socialism. Like other GDR writers, she views her works as performing a specific socialfunction within their society, both criticizing existing conditions and encouraging change. As she put it in her essay volume, The Reader and the Writer (1971), I see in this the deep roots of conformity between genuine literature and socialist society: both have the purpose of helping man (sic!) to realize himself (sic!). I In The Divided Heaven (1963), the heroine chooses East over West Germany as providing greater opportunities for selffulfillment, despite apparent dangers of bureaucratic rigidity. In The Quest for Christa T. (1968), the narrator attempts to comprehend the life and early death of her friend Christa T., whose disappointments at opportunities for self-growth within GDR society derive from the hidden and unfulfilled history of GDR socialism, a history compromised by political and economic pragmatism. In Kindheitsmuster (Childhood Mosaic, 1976), Wolf attempts to understand and appropriate the Nazi past from the standpoint of a subject in contemporary GDR society, thus situating in a larger historicalframework the difficulties of creating a socialist society in Germany today. The questions raised by Wolf have often brought her into conflict with the GDR leadership, her public criticism of Wolf Biermann's expulsion occasioning increased criticism. Attacks against her have stressed her fascination with problems of the individual to the neglect of social and historical relationships.2 Nonetheless, the important function of her works has generally been recognized, if not always at once. Within and outside the GDR she is considered one of the country's leading writers. Unter den Linden (1974), the volume of stories in which Wolf published