SOURCE: “The Good Old Bad Old Days,” in New Republic, July 20–27, 1998, pp. 38–40.

In the following review, Herf discusses Wolf's disillusionment over the German reunification and criticizes Wolf's failure, or refusal, to acknowledge the inadequacies and transgressions of the former East German government.

Though communism collapsed everywhere in Europe in 1989, the German Democratic Republic was the only one of the communist nation-states to disappear completely and become absorbed into another country, the Federal Republic of Germany. In the essays, the lectures, and the interviews collected in this book, Christa Wolf, the most prominent novelist and essayist to emerge from East Germany, and a leading member of the loyal opposition to the old communist regime, expresses her regrets about that disappearance. In her treatment of the collapse of communism, she conveys the sense of the utter defeat of her political hopes, lashes out in anger and defensiveness at the victors...