Christa Wolf (edit name/settings)

Christa Wolf, besides Günter Grass, Germany’s best known author, was awarded the first Deutscher Bücherpreis (German Book Prize) in 2002 for her lifetime achievement. The jury lauded her for “courageously confronting the great debates of the GDR and reunified Germany.” But Wolf’s probing texts and courageous public stands had long since made her a unique and valued writer who spoke to the concerns of readers in both East and West. Her deeply reflective works cause the reader to become engaged with the moral and political questions of the time—from the reconstruction era of the early GDR to its end and beyond.
At first celebrated as a new talent of GDR literature, Wolf came to be viewed from the 1960s on as a “loyal dissident,” critical of the regime but maintaining her belief in socialism as a better alternative to the capitalist west. Eventually she extended her critiques to the deforming effects of technology and patriarchy, always concerned to defend the human subject—in her works usually female—against any form of instrumentalization.