SOURCE: “The Silencing of a Voice: Christa Wolf, Cassandra, and the German Unification,”¹ in Differences, Vol. 5, No. 2, Summer, 1993, pp. 92–115.

In the following essay, Postl examines Wolf's attempt to reconcile socialist ideals with Western-style postmodern feminist concerns.

In the early summer of 1990, four months before the German reunification, a little book was published in Germany, initiating a heated debate not only about the political integrity of its author but also about the role of literature in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), the inter-relatedness of writing and politics, and the status of German intellectuals in general. The book was Christa Wolf's short narrative Was bleibt (What Remains), an account of a period in the author's life in which she was put under surveillance by the secret police. According to Wolf the text was originally written in 1979, never published, and revised in 1989.

Immediately after the publication several articles appeared in...