Christa Wolf
Christa Wolf (18 March 1929 – 1 December 2011) was a German novelist and essayist. She was one of the best-known writers to emerge from the former East Germany. Wolf was born the daughter of Otto and Herta Ihlenfeld, in Landsberg an der Warthe, then in the Province of Brandenburg;[3] the city is now Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland. After World War II, her family, being Germans, were expelled from their home on what had become Polish territory. They crossed the new Oder-Neisse border in 1945 and settled in Mecklenburg, in what would become the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. She studied literature at the University of Jena and the University of Leipzig. After her graduation, she worked for the German Writers' Union and became an editor for a publishing company. While working as an editor for publishing companies Verlag Neues Leben and Mitteldeutscher Verlag and as a literary critic for the journal Neue deutsche Literatur, Wolf was provided contact with antifascists and Communists, many of whom had either returned from exile or from imprisonment in concentration camps. Her writings discuss political, economic, and scientific power, making her an influential spokesperson in East and West Germany during post-World War II for the empowerment of individuals to be active within the industrialized and patriarchal society