Elisabeth Plessen is one of many German writers of the 1970s who attempted through autobiographical works to come to terms with their personal histories and the legacy of Nazism. Accounts of father-son and mother-daughter conflicts flooded the literary market, and historical figures were popular topics in literature. Plessen's novels contributed to the "documentary literature" of the 1970s and 1980s, in which actual public and private records were incorporated into fiction and drama. After the crisis experienced in the 1960s by writers who abandoned literature for political activism, precise documentation seemed to her necessary for historical understanding.

Elisabeth Charlotte Marguerite, Countess of Plessen was born on 15 March 1944 in Neustadt, Holstein, where she was raised on her parents' large estate, Schlolß Sierhagen. She spent her college preparatory years in boarding schools, going on to study history, philosophy, and German philology in Paris and Berlin. She distanced herself from her...