The Quest for Christa T.

by Christa Wolf, Christopher Middleton (Translator)

When The Quest for Christa T. was first published in East Germany in 1968, there was an immediate storm: bookshops in East Berlin were given instructions to sell it only to well-known customers professionally involved in literary matters; at the annual meeting of East German Writers Conference, Mrs Wolf's new book was condemmed. Yet the novel has nothing explicitly to do with politics.

Praise for The Quest for Christa T.

On the surface we merely have the story of a sensitive woman as recalled by her friend. On this level Christa T. was a good citizen who did as she was told and lived a seemingly unexceptional life. But between the lines lies the real story of Christa T. -- the story of an individual crushed by the pressures of uniformity. If you bear in mind it is the first novel of any consequence to emerge from Ulbricht's East Germany, then it becomes something of a literary landmark. - John Barkman, New York Post

The contours of silence and the outline of things articulately left unsaid loom large in the muted brilliance of this novel. - Ernst Pawek, The New York Review of Books

It is a courageous book that breaks taboos and, as we have come to expect from Christa Wolf, it is infused with an integrity and a deep moral concern. . . - The (London) Times Literary Supplement

Genres: Fiction, Germany, German Literature, Classics, Literature, 20th Century, Feminism

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Novelist, short-story writer, essayist, critic, journalist, and film dramatist Christa Wolf was a citizen of East Germany and a committed socialist, and managed to keep a critical distance from the communist regime. Her best-known novels included “Der geteilte Himmel” (“Divided Heaven,” 1963), addressing the divisions of Germany, and “Kassandra” (“Cassandra,” 1983), which depicted the Trojan War.

She won awards in East Germany and West Germany for her work, including the Thomas Mann Prize in 2010. The jury praised her life’s work for “critically questioning the hopes and errors of her time, and portraying them with deep moral seriousness and narrative power.”

Christa Ihlenfeld was born March 18, 1929, in Landsberg an der Warthe, a part of Germany that is now in Poland. She moved to East Germany in 1945 and joined the Socialist Unity Party in 1949. She studied German literature in Jena and Leipzig and became a publisher and editor.

In 1951, she married Gerhard Wolf, an essayist. They had two children. Christa Wolf died in December 2011.

(Bloomberg News)

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1968, Christa Wolf reflected on time.

In a hundred, or no, she corrected herself mid-sentence, in 50 years, she'll be a historical character on a stage herself, to be looked at in the same way she - in 1968 - looked at time past, time finished, time gone. Almost exactly 50 years later, I read her words, and think about how right she was, and how wrong.

Her world, the world of socialist East Germany, had only two decades left, and she outlived the state she believed was built to last forever by another two decades. Her way of life was cut short in the same way her friend Christa T.'s life abruptly ended - in a sudden unpredictable turn.

Her friend struggled with her country and with her body, both of which were destroyed from within themselves, literally mirroring Solzhenitsyn's symbol of disease in the Cancer Ward.

It strikes me that I read Christa Wolf in the same way she writes, moving simultaneously in different eras, back and forth, turning time into a slippery, confusing mindset rather than a chronological scaffold.

Starting with her later mythological works, I jumped into her childhood reflections in Kindheitsmuster, her opus magnum, the Gordian knot of her life - the early indoctrination with Hitlerism, the loss of that belief in her vulnerable adolescent years, the growth of a new state faith to believe in, until it too showed the totalitarian signs she was far too familiar with already. From her childhood memories, written in the difficult 1970s, and told through three simultaneous time prisms, I moved on to Der geteilte Himmel, her early novel, conceived during the odd German era when her state built a wall to lock in its citizens while it tried to convince them that they lived in a perfect utopia.

Only a young idealist, schooled in flag-waving, cheering loyalty to dictatorship already, could choose love for doctrine over love for another human being. The disturbingly doctrinaire protagonist of Der geteilte Himmel deliberately chose the socialist state, and its author stayed within the regime as well, only to see it break down. Christa Wolf stayed in the church, but she lost her faith in the process.

Her account of the slow death of her childhood friend and namesake is the natural bridge between the young idealist and the sad, disillusioned later Christa Wolf. All is in transition, everything moves, there is no control.

Her friendship to Christa T. includes shared memories of a classmate who denounced his own father during the Third Reich, but the memories are kept at bay, held hostage at the back of their minds, not allowed to be fully explored: "We were strict with our memories back then", she writes. And her friend, dying prematurely, leaves her life to be explored by the surviving friend and writer. Owning her memories means controlling her friend: "She moves when I want her to". Memory is powerful.

The alternative is forgetting. Christa Wolf writes against the powerful wish to forget, at least selectively, what life is like. There is no heroism in her account, there is no stringent plot leading to a satisfying dénouement. There is life. And it is cut short.

This is one of the rare books that gain by rereading, especially after engaging in other novels by Christa Wolf. She spins a web of memories around herself, and each thread she starts adds to the whole picture, circling around the tragedy of German history during her lifetime. Born in 1929, she saw states abruptly begin, then as abruptly end, giving birth to new states, equally set to collapse within her memory's range.

In Christa T., she wrote the history of the mortal fight between collective and individual humanity, between imagination and reality, between idealism and reality. She gave her friend a literary monument, and at the same time wrote a parable of the dying of her own beliefs.

"Nothing is as hard as turning to the things as they really are", she says. Especially if you have lived for such a long time looking through a mirror of wishes, beliefs and ideas.

From the insight she gained in her reflections on her friendship with Christa T., she would develop the bravery to move on to face the patterns of her childhood, as they really were. This was the bridge over which the young woman walked to adulthood and disillusion.

Recommended! Again and again and again...

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this 1968 novel out of East Germany reminds me a lot of an LSD trip I took as a college freshman in 1969. Under duress of the mismatch between my sense of self and the world I was to play some role in (it was the Vietnam era and I had a low draft number), I spent many an hour observing people in everyday activities compelled with the basic question: “What do people do?” Here the largely anonymous narrator seeks to accurately reconstruct the reality of a close friend from childhood and youth who died in her 30s, and in the process she ends up circling around the same odd and pregnant question about all our lives. It bent my mind over how hard it can be to about asking the right questions to elucidate another person’s “true” nature.

Why was the narrator drawn to Christa soon after she arrived as a stranger at her rural grammar school in Germany during the last year of the war? Somehow she wasn’t cowed by the teachers and seemed a bit of a free spirit in their gray and regimented world, with the dangers from the war constantly looming. At one point while in line to see a film, Christa uses a rolled up magazine to let fly a loud trumpet sound. From that point the narrator tried to nurture friendship with her:

Rapidly and regardlessly I had broken all other threads; suddenly I felt, with a sense of terror, that you’ll come to a bad end if you suppress all the shouts prematurely; I had no time to lose. I wanted to share in a life that produced such shouts as her hooohaahooo, about which she must have knowledge.

Chista wasn’t really wild or rebellious, but somehow carried herself with a certain self-possession and openness to the new that was enviable:
It always seemed that she’d taken upon herself to be at home everywhere and to be a stranger everywhere, at home and a stranger in the same instant; and as if from time to time it dawned on her what she was paying for and with.

The narrator was close to Christa through secondary school and to a lesser extent during college, where they both shared a love of literature. We hear little about the oppressiveness of the communist regime, but indirectly through both the pull and strain of their trying to grow intellectual integrity in the face of pressures to conform and adapt to a new social order:

What does the world need to become perfect?
This and this alone was the question which wrapped her up in herself; but more deeply still it was the presumptuous hope that she, Christa T. herself might be necessary for the world’s perfection.
…She went to the lectures, sat in her seat in the reading room, followed with her eyes the ranks of book backs and was suddenly afraid that the books might contain the answers to all the questions.
…She didn’t attempt to escape from it all, as many people were starting to do in those years.
But she also lost the capacity to live in a state of rapture. The vehement overplayed words, the waving banners, the deafening songs, the hands clapping rhythms over our heads. She saw how words began to change when they aren’t being tossed out any more be belief and ineptitude and excessive zeal but by calculation, craftiness, and the urge to adapt and conform.

Eventually, Christa moves away to become a school teacher, gets married and has three kids, all the trappings of a good comrade. When she dies, the narrator feels a great loss over their drifting away from each other. In coming into possession of her collection of letters, a diaries, and experiments at poetry, she is moved to formulate what she can of her true nature. The task feels virtually impossible from the start:
Since I’m alive and she isn’t, I can decide what’s to be talked about and what is not. That is the disregard the living show for the dead.

Much points to the ineffable aspects of every one’s existence, the fallibility of memory, and challenges of truly knowing another and being known in turn :
…the dead are easily wounded, it’s obvious. What a live person can tell, being alive, would finally kill a dead person: flippancy. Therefore, one cannot unfortunately, cling to the facts, which are too mixed up with chance and don’t tell much. But it also becomes harder to keep things separate: what one knows with certainty, and since when; what she herself revealed, and what others revealed; what her writings add and what they hide; and what it is one has to invent, for the truth’s sake: the truth of that being who does now appear to me at times, and whom I approach with caution.

The type of “truth” about Christa the narrator homes in on comes from relating new facts from her friend’s life to ways she handles situations later. For example, from a childhood diary from before Christa came to her school, she learns of harrowing experiences she had during the war. We see how an occasion where she experienced encountering the body of a child while a refugee were mentally linked to an earlier witnessing of the cruelty of little boys killing magpie chicks or a later episode of drunken farmer killing a cat in a rage.

A biographer would interview other people Christa knew in her life to get a more “objective” portrait. However, the thought of drawing on the experience of Christa by a particularly influential college teacher seems superfluous to the narrator. She can readily project what she would say and the likely distortions that would arise from her perspective.
”Her imagination”, she’ll perhaps say, “not quite content with herself. She was—eccentric. She never managed to recognize the limits which, after all, everyone does have. She lost herself in everything, you only had to wait for it. Sometimes you had the impression that all the studying, all the book stuff, didn’t really concern her at all. She was after something else. …She had only one interest: people. …There was a trait of hers, too: to disregard the objective facts. Then came the miserable after-effects, talking and talking …”
“Hangover?” I shall ask cautiously.
“More than once. This ocean of sadness! Simply because people didn’t want to be as she saw them.”
“Or”. I shall suggest, “because she couldn’t be as we wanted her to be?”

Eventually the narrator comes to feel some triumph:
The paths we really took are overlaid with paths we did not take. I can now hear words we never spoke. Now I can see her as she was, Christa T., when no witnesses were present. Could it be possible?—The years that re-ascend are no longer the years they were. Light and shadow fall once more over our field of vision: but the field is ready. Should that not amaze us?

The blank you get from the life of the narrator effectively draws the reader into the position of being Christa’s friend. I was reminded of the feelings I got from Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend”, though in that case the narrator was more revealing about the impact of Lina on her life. This book felt deceptively radical to me. I can see why it was included among the collection considered to have advanced the form of the novel in Boxhall’s “1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die.” There is little challenge to reading its spare prose and following its narrative trajectory, but its influence on how one I view the reality of my life was significant as that spurred long ago by LSD.

[Raul · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Every system has its logic, once you've accepted its premises, don’t you find?"

This was a difficult read, it required relatively more concentration than usual and one or two sentences hastily read forced me to go back. A story that is meant to piece together a dead friend and bring to life her story through fragments of her writing and memories of friends.

The second world war is nearly ending as we meet two German girls, our unnamed narrator and Christa T. Christa T. is the new girl in school that stands out for her refusal to blend in and refuses to automatically follow the path laid out. Our unnamed narrator is drawn to her despite initial efforts to be indifferent to the new girl. Years pass, the friends lose touch and find each other by chance in university.

After the war has ended those who've survived the war have to reinvent themselves, remake is the specific word the writer uses. Their system, specifically their school system in this book, had made them unquestionably loyal to a government and system that committed horrors. And so this generation going into adulthood becomes rigid with responsibility, and yet Christa T. still struggles to find her self, "a coming into herself", and thrive amidst a collective sense of duty.

"Nothing is so difficult as turning one's attention to things as they really are, to events as they really occur, after one has spent a long time not doing so and has mistaken their reflection in wishes, beliefs, and judgements for things and events themselves. Christa T. realized that we all had to accept a share in the mistakes we'd made, otherwise we'd have no shares in the truth."

As the narrator works to shape the life of Christa T. we're led to an examination of life, responsibility, individuality, art, work, illness, friendship, accomplishment and failure.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worse than actual events was the fact that not even the horror itself could surprise one now. Nothing new under this sun, only the end, as long as it lasts. And the certainty: that it had to come.

Politics is the first we learn of other countries and the last about our own. Proceed with caution. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Here, there be monsters. We can display the lines along the filled up maps all we like, but there's a history of interlocking hegemonies to be resolved, some of them sensationalized in the profound and the profane, some of them a matter of dentistry. One day, in your own personal bildungsroman and/or künstlerroman or whatever flavor of prelife crisis your existence happens to consist of, you'll reach into your mouth and pluck out all your teeth, raisins in a muffin what with all the accompanying vein and tissue, and thread through the shining bridle of Adulthood. Or Marriage. Or Political Awareness. Whatever you succeed in grasping that you believe to be the Goal you were looking for. Whatever it is that'll fail you in the long run.

This terrible gratitude for the lack of opportunity isn’t something to be forgotten.

I'm not trying to heap contextual intrigue onto this. The back of the book does that well enough. What I'm trying to do is reconcile the facts of the work with my implicit recognition, this super subtle heap of prose banned by East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the number of times I caught myself reading my self. One is not supposed to do that with conspiratorial political works, yeah? One of my particular US breed is supposed to go off into Capitalism Times or Frontierland or even the popularly derided target of New Adult and find satisfaction. Not kin. Not blood with all its sickness and wealth. Satisfaction.

Shouldn’t any time be an equally good or bad time for the attempt to search for yourself, inside and outside?

It may be that I spend too much time with the writers who've been killed and mutilated and excised on the grounds of difference to be able to see East Germany as this dramatic beast of Other that cannot possibly correlate to any of the lines of my contemporary living. Sure, none of that atrocity to our eye actually happens to Christa T., least from what observation of both self and other is willing to tell. Sure, she's got a hell of a standard of living above the majority of those writers to whom I refer, aligning well enough with my own white/cis/het/middle class/socioeconomically endowed enough to acquire literary interest that it's no wonder I latch onto it comfortably enough. Sure, it's all fun and games and White People Diseases, the mental segueing nicely into the Sontag when neurosis sets back to second place in the wake of leukemia, and the fact that the domestic reality was even achievable means one is physically situated well enough to let the political climate wash on over. For all that, there are writers who write to fill that need and writers who write to make it bleed. The past is a foreign country, but it'll still kill you if you step out of line.

...how, if at all, and under what circumstances, can one realize oneself in a work of art.

The thing about post-WWII German female coming of age political/domestic treatises reconstructed on bits and pieces of the dead's legacy and wrapped up in metaphors in order survive the censors and the spies is you get a lot of what you're trained to recognize and much more of what you're trained to ignore. An involuntary image near the end of reading of a classroom going over the nomenclature of Christa T. and Justus in order to get the main "point" of the work made me sick, cause fuck literary sterilization and all that eagerness to let in the quality into the institution so long as it behaves. Take something complicatedly essential enough that it survives the political reality long enough to be published and you can force any sort of meaning onto it. Of course I'm doing the same thing, of course you can't trust the words of something who's going full speed ahead into an English doctorate so as to be able to eat and have a roof over her head, but I haven't been locked in yet. I also haven't achieved that stability of Christa T's later years that I craved at points to the edge of pain, so what does that say about my particular human condition?

He has trained himself to want only as much as he can reach by using all his powers. Otherwise he wouldn’t be alive today, or he wouldn’t be sitting here.

I know I've apologized for not actually talking about the book much in a couple of previous reviews, but if I started being consistent now I'd never get anything done. All I can say that this rips out enough of a chunk of reality to show the holistic enterprise between banal survival and the horror of our lives, lined a bit with poetry and prose and limned a smidge with the theoretical academia of future existence (what's your flavor of Ethical Living cause no can do under Late Capitalism) transitioning over to practicality of death and taxes and censorship (an open mind's a considerate thing but much maligned Communism still has its human sacrifice) so fast, so slow, so incomplete and deadening, survival's the only word for it. Leukemia may have been a mercy killing, outliving the political agenda may have far more thoroughly saved her soul, but here I am nigh fifty years into the future and I can't tell you shit.

That’s my reason for talking about it: bitterness as the fruit of passion. Is that phrase old? Will it seem surprising? Funny? Old-fashioned? Will anyone consider relating it to a hospital corridor, lecture rooms, to work parties moving over the wreckage of cities, violent discussions, conversations, speeches, books? Or will people keep trying to make us believe that passion has everlastingly had to do with the officer with a mania for honor who dies in a duel, or with the rise and fall of monarchs and leaders.

The hilarious part about all this is I could probably squeeze a paper out of this that'd get me some impressive references and a few nods at the university table. Do I care? I don't know. It puts food on the table.

She was for clarity and consciousness; but she didn't think, as many people do, that it takes no more than a little courage, no more than the surfaces of events which are easily called truth, no more than a little chatter about "getting on fine, thank you."

Every so often you come across a book and you go, "What the fuck, fate. I didn't ask for this."

And fate says, "Too fucking bad."

To become oneself, with all one’s strength.
Difficult.
A bomb, a speech, a rifle shot—and the world can look a different place. And then where is this “self”?

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

How can an individual deal with the crushing pressure of society? How to go your own way and not fully adapt to your social environment? East German writer Christa Wolf (1929-2011) knew what she was writing about. This story is set in the communist DDR, in the 1950s and early 1960s, which makes these questions absolutely relevant. Also the writing style is remarkable: Wolf muses aloud about her friend Christa T., who passed away at the age of 35 because of leukemia. T. had a very quirky personallity, walking a tight line between outward conformity and inner authenticity, and that's a very difficult exercise in a totalitarian regime. The author regularly has to admit that she does not succeed in getting a clear picture of T., resulting in a fragmentary style, jumping between times and places, and rather blurring passages. This makes the reading of this book particularly difficult, demanding constant concentration. I must concede it didn't always resonate, but there's no doubt about it: this novel is a strong and authentic quest into what humanity can be in totalitarian circumstances.
(rating 2.5 stars)

[Hendrik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gegenüber Christa Wolf hatte ich lange Zeit starke Vorbehalte. Zu sehr haftete ihr in meinen Augen der Ruf eine unverbesserlichen Utopistin an. Als der Sozialismus in der DDR bereits in den letzten Zügen lag, trat sie noch für dessen "Fortentwicklung" ein. Damit wirkte sie wie aus der Zeit gefallen. Diese Neigung zur sozialistischen Idee hat mir auch die Lust auf ihre Bücher verleidet. Mit ein bisschen Abstand erscheinen die Dinge oft in neuem Licht. So muss ich auch gegenüber Christa Wolf Abbitte leisten. "Nachdenken über Christa T." hat mich in einer Weise berührt, wie ich es zuvor nicht erwartet hatte. Der Lebensweg ihrer Freundin, den die Erzählerin zu rekonstruieren versucht, erscheint recht unspektakulär. Und doch entwickelt der Versuch sich dem ganzen Menschen Christa T. anzunähern, einen unwiderstehlichen Sog.

Einmal wird man wissen wollen, wer sie war, wen man da vergißt.

Es ist ein stetes Vortasten auf unsicherem Grund, denn die Erinnerungen sind trügerisch. Wer war die Freundin wirklich? Was hat sie bewegt? Je schärfer der Blick auf die Verstorbene gerichtet wird, um so ungenauer erscheint ihr Bild.

Wie man es erzählen kann, so ist es nicht gewesen.

Der unangepasste, zögernde Charakter von Christa T. entspricht nicht dem Vorbild des tatkräftigen werktätigen Menschen, der neuen sozialistischen Gesellschaft. In der Darstellung ihrer Figur klingt eher eine Kritik am reinen Kollektivismus an, eine Aufforderung dem Individuum mehr Freiheit zur Selbstentfaltung der Persönlichkeit zu erlauben. Marcel Reich-Ranicki sagte über das Buch: "Christa T. stirbt an Leukämie, aber sie leidet an der DDR." Der politische Subtext ist durchaus interessant, aber insgesamt für mich nicht so wichtig. Denn die Fragen, die sich die Erzählerin über das Leben ihrer Freundin stellt, sind von zeitloser Art und vermögen auch heutige Leser direkt anzusprechen. So verführt das Nachdenken zur Reflexion über eigene Erfahrungen und getroffene Entscheidungen. Vor allem das letzte Kapitel, über das Sterben von Christa T., empfand ich in dieser Hinsicht als besonders intensiv.

[Anna Carina · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 Sterne

Ein Buch, das Christa Wolf zu früh geschrieben hat. Sie ringt um das Ich, die Subjektivierung und kann noch nicht. Der Text liest sich daher ehr als Abwehrgeste, ein Verstecken, Verschanzen hinter vermeintlichen Gewissheiten. Sie riegelt den Text hermetisch ab, einer strengen Ordnung folgend, um ihre Utopie zu schützen. Kühl, nüchtern, distanziert, ernsthaft.
Formal besticht er durch nebulöse, fragmentarische Szenen, die stellenweise so unverständlich gestaltet sind, dass der Lesegenuss und Textfluss ins stolpern geraten.
Da Frau Wolf stark von George Lukács beeinflusst wurde, passt hier seine Definition der Form auf „Nachdenken über Christa T.“ Lukács sieht literarische Formen als Objektivationen, die die subjektiven Erfahrungen und sozialen Interaktionen von Menschen in ihrer spezifischen historischen Zeit verschleiern und gleichzeitig ausdrücken.
In Bezug auf ihre stilistische Umsetzung können wir nochmals Lukács konsultieren:
„Zuständen und Wechselwirkungen unter den Menschen ausgeht, von Verhältnissen, die unter gewissen Umständen zu gewissen Zeiten innerhalb einer bestimmten Gesellschaft zustandegekommen sind.“

Daher lässt sich der Text repräsentativ für viele Menschen der DDR lesen und Christa T. als eine Art Utopie in der bröckelnden Utopie verstehen.

Waren damit beschäftigt uns unantastbar zu machen. Nichts Fremdes in sich aufkommen lassen . Aus Unsicherheit.

Ihre größte Angst – in neue Fragwürdigkeiten und Unsicherheiten zu geraten. Sobald eine vermeintliche Sicherheit ertastet wurde, wird diese verteidigt. Diese Verteidigung kristallisiert sich in ihrem Fall in einer Art Rückzug heraus. Sie verweigert das Gespräch und die Konfrontation mit dieser. Die Freundschaft zu Christa T. wirkt daher auch äußerst unempathisch und fremd.
Dabei wird aber klar – Christa T. ist die Bewegung, jemand der sich scheinbar frei verhält, kommen und gehen kann, wie es beliebt. Wollte keine Abstriche machen. Wilde Auflehnung gegen Todesmüdigkeit. Wirklichkeitshungrig. Voller Klarheit und Bewusstsein. Fand sich niemals mit den Gegebenheiten ab.

Christa T hat sich nichts inniger herbeigewünscht als unsere Welt und sie hat genau die Art Phantasie gehabt , die man braucht, sie wirklich zu erfassen.

Dieser unendliche Möglichkeitsraum wird durch den Tod Christa T’s, Christa Wolf genommen. Daran arbeitet sich die Versuchsanordnung des Textes ab. Ich lese es daher ehr als dokumentarisches Psychogramm Christa Wolfs.

Was ich ihr vorwerfe? sagt Gertrud Dölling da, vom Fenster her, und ihre Stimme hat sich verändert. Daß sie tatsächlich gestorben ist. Immer hat sie alles wie zum Spaß gemacht, versuchsweise. Immer konnte sie mit allem wieder aufhören und ganz was anderes anfangen, wer kann das schon? Und dann legt sie sich hin und stirbt in vollem Ernst und kann damit nicht mehr aufhören. - Oder denkst du, daß sie an dieser Krankheit gestorben ist?
Nein.

Dieser Ernst führt dazu, dass Christa Wolf sie später nicht im Krankenhaus besucht. Sich dafür anklagt und gleichzeit hinter ihren Gründen versteckt. Dem Ernst. Der Tod bringt die Bewegung zum erliegen. Die Utopie der Utopie hinfort und eine Christa Wolf ringt weiter um ihr Ich, ihr Selbst, hängt an den Ketten einer ideologischen Ordnung.
„Meine Generation hat früh eine Ideologie gegen eine andere ausgetauscht, sie ist spät, zögernd, teilweise gar nicht erwachsen geworden, will sagen: reif, autonom. (…) Da ist eine große Unsicherheit, weil die eigene Ablösung von ideologischen Setzungen, intensiven Bindungen an festgelegte Strukturen so wenig gelungen ist.“ [Zitat aus der Biografie von Christa Wolf, Jörg Magenau]

Mich hat das Buch sehr bewegt. Das erste Drittel liest sich fulminant gut und erinnert mich sehr an Arno Schmidts „Aus dem Leben eines Fauns“, inbesondere in den Fluchtszenen.
Im Mittelteil stoßen wir, wie bereits erwähnt auf immer unverständlichere, kryptischere Stellen. Hier verwischt sie zu stark. Die weiteren eingeführten Charaktere wirken leblos, wie Plastefigürchen. Sie schildert Szenen, die unnötig erscheinen, als wüsste sie nicht, was sie zu ihrer Freundin sonst noch erzählen soll. Man kann dem Text durchaus eine gewisse Unbeholfenheit attestieren.
Da für mich hierdurch der psychologische Charakter verstärkt wird und ich dem Buch einen hohen literarischen Wert des Dokumentarischen zugestehe, kann ich das in meiner Beurteilung mit Milde versehen.

[Alexander Carmele · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gemischt-gewürfelt, kaleidoskopisch-chiffriert, eine Erzählstimme, die sich hinter Nebulösitäten verschanzt und versteckt hält.

Inhalt: 1/5 Sterne (freudloses Nachspüren einer Fast-Freundin)
Form: 1+1/5 Sterne (karge Ausweichmanöver)
Komposition: 5/5 Sterne (gelungene, perspektivierte Motivik)
Leseerlebnis: 2/5 Sterne (mühseliges Chiffren-Schieben)

Die Stimmung eines staatlich verordneten Meinungsdiktat spiegelt sich in höchst versperrten Schreibstilen wider. Als Beispiel hierfür mag Herta Müllers Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger oder eben auch Christa Wolfs Nachdenken über Christa T. genannt werden. Beide Texte präsentieren sich hermetisch. Sie betreiben harte Formkritik am Meinungswesen der je sie bedrückenden Staatsform. Betreibt aber Müller implizite Prosa mit Wortzersetzungskunst und exemplarischem Avantgardismus, traut sich Wolf in diesem zum Frühwerk gehörenden Roman nicht selbst über den Weg:

Ihr Geheimnis, auf das ich aus war, seit wir uns kannten, war gar kein Geheimnis mehr. Was sie im Innersten wollte, wovon sie träumte und was zu tun sie seit langem begonnen hatte, lag offen vor mir, unbestreitbar und unbezweifelbar. Jetzt scheint mir, wir hätten es immer gewußt. Sie hatte es ja nicht besonders ängstlich gehütet, nur eben nicht aufgedrängt. Ihr langes Zögern, ihre Versuche in verschiedenen Lebensformen, ihr Dilettieren auf manchem Gebiet deuteten in dieselbe Richtung, wenn man nur Augen hatte zu sehen. Daß sie ausprobierte, was möglich war, bis ihr nichts mehr übrigblieb – das wäre wohl zu verstehen.

Leider wird das Geheimnis nicht genannt, das vielleicht im Verändern-Wollen, in der Rastlosigkeit besteht, vielleicht auch in der Bewegung, der Veränderung, gegen die steinernen Verhältnisse. Was jedoch viel schlimmer wiegt, die Figur der Christa T. erscheint fern, undurchschaubar, wechselhaft, zumal die Erzählinstanz wie eine Art Scherbengericht über sie berichtet, als müsste eine Entscheidung getroffen werden, aber weshalb, wieso, warum? Das wird nicht gesagt. Das bleibt, wie gesagt, nebulös, und das unterminiert die narrative Sequenz und bringt das fiktionale Kartenhaus zum Einsturz:

So entstand um uns herum, oder auch in uns, was dasselbe war, ein hermetischer Raum, der seine Gesetze aus sich selber zog, dessen Sterne und Sonnen scheinbar mühelos um eine Mitte kreisten, die keinen Gesetzen und keiner Veränderung und am wenigsten dem Zweifel unterworfen war. Der Mechanismus, nach dem sich das alles bewegte – aber bewegte es sich denn? –, die Zahnräder, Schnüre und Stangen waren ins Dunkel getaucht, man erfreute sich an der absoluten Perfektion und Zweckmäßigkeit des Apparats, den reibungslos in Gang zu halten kein Opfer zu groß schien – selbst nicht das: sich auslöschen.

Literaturhistorische Wegbereiter für eine freie, nicht dem Bitterfelder Weg völlig untergeordnete Schreibform, über den sozialistischen Realismus hinaus, eine Lanze für Werner Bräunig und Brigitte Reimann? Vielleicht. Aber das, selbst im Rückblick, erleichtert nicht die Lektüre. Sie wankt, spröde, stolpert, holpert durch den mäandrierenden Gang der suchenden, leidenden Christa T., die irgendwie unzufrieden, doch zufrieden, friedlich, doch aufbegehrend gewesen sein mag. Das Ereignis fehlt aber. Das Ereignis selbst, weshalb über sie berichtet wird – das Besondere, es fehlt.

In der Anlage vergleichbar zu Günter Grass‘ Novelle Katz und Maus , die bis kurz vor Ende ebenfalls schwankt, aber durch die Angst, den Schrecken über den Verlust des Freundes ein Ganzes bildet, bleibt bei Christa Wolfs Nachdenken über Christa T. die Pointe aus. Mit erschreckendem Gleichmut stirbt die Fast-, also Nicht-Ganz-Freundin, dieses unbekannte Wesen, die aus unerfindlichen Gründen zur Heldin gemacht wurde.

Die literarische Geste ist eindeutig: Gegen Verhärtung, gegen Urteile, gegen klare Fronten, gegen stichhaltige, angreifbare Beschreibungen, für das Weiche, Unklare, Neblig-Gewaltlose … aber hier ohne die stilistische Gewandtheit, die in allen späten Texten von Christa Wolf zu finden ist, in denen die Form sich zum Inhalt versöhnt, der Inhalt sich dynamisch über sich hinaushebt und Erzählung wird. Hier bleibt sie noch aus.

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Details – ab hier Spoilergefahr (zur Erinnerung für mich):
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Inhalt: Das Leben von Christa T. wird von einer namenlosen Ich-Erzähler wiedergegeben, anhand von Fragmenten, Texten, Briefen und eigenen Erinnerungen rekonstruiert. Sie wird 35 Jahre alt, sie stirbt 1963. Über die Schule, das Kennenlernen, das Fremdsein dort, die Flucht, dann die erste Ausbildung als Lehrerin, dann das Studium, da ihr das Lehrerinnen-Sein nicht liegt, Abschlussarbeit über Theodor Storm, CT beginnt eigene Schriftstellerei, erste Romanzen, mit dem Nachbardorflehrer, der Fall Günter, Kostja, Inge, die Blonde, wieder als Lehrerin, Erfahrungen mit dem Schüler, der Hammurabi genannt wird, Anpassung, Robustheit. Lernt Justus kennen, Heirat, Affären mit dem Jagdgenossen des Ehemanns, Reminiszenzen an Madame Bovary, der Hausbau, Wurzelschlagen. Drei Kinder, das letzte bereits im Letztstadium der Leukämie. Tod, in Abgeschiedenheit. Inhalt teilweise schwer zu erschließen, viele gewollte Lücken, Fragmente, Unklarheiten. Die Erzählinstanz zeigt sich nicht, nimmt keine Stellung, lässt alles in Schwebe. Wer war Christa T.? Eine angepasste Unangepasste? Ein unbekanntes Ich? Vor allem nicht klar, wieso erzählt die Erzählinstanz von ihr? Was war bemerkenswert? Viele Fragen. Keine Antworten. --> 1 Stern

Form: Karge Sprache. Viele Referenzen, Verweise, die teilweise schwer zu rekonstruieren sind. Aus Satzobjekten werden Subjekte, Mehrdeutigkeiten. Die Sprache fließt nicht. Das Erzählen kommt gar nicht in Schwung. Ein paar intensive Stellen, wie Besuch bei der Schulkameradin, die nun Professorin für Literatur ist, Gertrud Dölling, hier das Schemenhafte gelungen, auch in Beziehung auf den Westbesuch. Kurze, uninteressante Worte, zerstörte, verdruckste Sprache. --> 1 Stern+1 Stern nach Update weil das Ausweichmanöver stilistisch durchgehalten wird, also nicht nur karge Bitterfeld-Prosa.

Komposition: Klare Komposition, das Unbekannte, das Ich, das unbekannt bleibt, um das herum geschrieben wird. Ein paar klare, wiederkehrende, sich verstärkende Motive. Der rotweiße Ball am Strand, Justus fährt durch ihr Haar. Die Elsternei-Zerstörung; die Tötung des Katers; das Abbeißen des Krötenkopfes, traumatisch, kehrt wieder, gegen die Gewalt. Das Zusammenballen auf wenige Momente, Malina-Himbeere, die unreifen Kirschen, über den Gartenzaun, das Schäkern mit dem Dorflehrer, die drei Fragen, schöne, gelungene Zirkulation, das Wiederaufnehmen, Weitertreiben des Textes. --> 5 Sterne

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 5 out of 5]

During the last 15 years of her life Jean Rhys, one of the most remarkable writers of the 20th century, often spoke about how much she wanted to "get things right", i.e., to be as true as possible in her writing to place, speech, mood, the taste and texture of experience, and to achieve this precision without--as she once said in a letter--"any STUNTS". Indeed, she never used any words rhetorically, her language does what it needs to do with an elegance and economy which is perfectly natural and easy (Diana Athill).

Christa Wolf, however, could not have written this book without any "stunts". It is in fact one, courageous, magnificent stunt. She demonstrates here the power of the UNWRITTEN words. What is written here is nothing, the real story one can get only by reading between the lines. And there is, of course, nothing written between the lines. So it is like reading an unforgettable novel from a blank page.

Christa Wolf was an East German writer at the time when East Germany was still East Germany: communist, totalitarian and where the State is supreme above all else. Uniformity--as determined by State laws and policies--reigned as the only acceptable conduct. Individualism can get one a death sentence or land him in jail.

The narrator here is a female friend of the principal protagonist, Christa T. From what one reads here, Christa T. has had an uneventful life. She studied, became a teacher, had her early loves, married a veterinarian, bore him three children, had her small circle of friends (including the narrator), scrimped and saved to build her dream house by the lake (which was never completely finished), then died of leukemia at the young age of 35. She lived in East Germany and died sometime in the early 60's.

Behind this seemingly boring ordinariness of this life, however, is the fact that this simple East German, Christa T., is a free soul. She questions things, she does not simply accept things as they are. Her mind is free and wants to express herslf yet she's aware of the danger in this. Cryptically, the author Christa Wolf tried to write about this tension again and again. And you can't help but be in awe witnessing how she did this masterfully: she expresses her thoughts, but ever so subtly, so that while "saying" what she wants to say, she at the same time does not say it. An example is inevitable, otherwise no one will understand what is being stated here:

"She (Christa Wolf) believed that you must work at your past as you work at your future; I find this in notes she made on books she'd read. A publisher had asked her to write something about this; but because of her increasing tiredness and sickness she never got further than making these notes; and I'm sure that she would have kept to the criteria which she sets in them, without fluttering an eyelid. Not that she'd have expected perfection, but she wants everything to be new and fresh, nothing should be colorless and fortuitous and banal as in reality, something else should be there, not always the same old events and worldwide announcements. Originality, she notes, and then: jettisoned, because of cowardice. She wrote: Perhaps in life one can make certain cuts; but not here.

"The happy times of pristine thinking and open minds, always favorable for beginnings, belonged now to the past, and we kinew it. We tipped the last of the wine into the apple tree. The new star hadn't appeared. We were cold and went back into the room, where the moonlight was coming in. Her child was asleep, she went to the bedside and looked at the child for a long time. One can't have everything, everyone knows that, but what's the use of knowing?

"Perhaps in life one can make certain cuts?...But when she was alone, she stood at the front door, looked down the long hallway, felt the silence beginning to clutch her, and she said aloud: No."

The author did everything here. She was even able to criticize her country's rulers but, again, "between the lines":

"But for another six motley months before marrying she (Christa T.) lives in Berlin. The reddish-brown notebook (her diary) simply goes silent; its last pages are filled with recipes and household accounts; it makes me laugh, her allocation of this or that tiny sum of money. She closes the book and says, We're off. Sometimes they travel far, sometimes 'druben'--over there. The trip there is unusual enough to make your heart beat faster: over there is where the opposite ideas for living are produced, where everything is the reverse--people, things, and thoughts; that's the real reason why you fell uneasy when you turn the next corner, full of weird expectation, to find always only the same smiling traffic policeman. But one might just as easily catch oneslef napping: this is a twofold country and, what's more, everyone in it is twofold, one part possibility and the other its refutal. One gets rid of the feeling of confusion at times by doing something violent. She spits on the memorial to 'the stolen territories in the East.' Memory's color is greenish-gold, it mustn't go black, mustn't go dry: black is the color of guilt. She spits on this black stone."

While doing these silent protests Christa T. was aware of the danger:

"To become oneself, with all one's strength.
"Difficult.
"A bomb, a speech, a rifle shot--and the world can look a different place. And then where is this 'self'"?

Under this repressive atmosphere, what's the use of writing at all? Why not just conform and live a safe life? Christa Wolf explains herself by narrating the reason why the principal character Christa T. chose a particular poet to discuss in her school thesis. Through the novel's narrator she explains that the poet was chosen because his (poet's) attitude to the world is "predominantly lyrical" and because:

"a nature like his, in a period of cultural inertia and derivativeness, is especially hard put to produce its proper work. So what interests her is the endeavor: she doesn't overrate the work itself, but she does value its having come to be...What matters is that he really did conquer his realm, against the worst odds."

The author made Christa T. die of cancer, a disease which makes its victims progressively weak and tired, so perhaps she can take a snipe at the country's lack of freedom this way:

"In the last years...There, I've said it, and I won't withdraw it as I've done before now--because these are the last years: in the last years we never saw her otherwise than tired. Today one can ask, to be sure, what this tiredness meant, but at that time the question wasn't asked because it would have been meaningless. The answer would have helped neither her nor us. This much is certain: what one does can never make one so tired as what one doesn't do or cannot do. That was the case with her. That was her weakness and her secret superiority."

"Kung hindi tayo kikilos, sino ang kikilos? Kung hindi tayo ang gagalaw, sino ang gagalaw? Kung hindi ngayon, kailan pa?" So went the battlecry of Filipino student protesters during the Marcos dictatorship. But this may not have been an original. Pretending, again, that she is just talking about Christa T., the author ended this novel with this disguised call to action:

"One day people will want to know who she (Christa T.) was and who it is that's been forgotten. They'll want to see her, and that's only natural. They'll wonder if that other figure really was there, the one we obstinately insist on when we mourn. Then people will have to produce her, create her, for once. So that the doubts may be silenced, so that she may be seen.
"When, if not now?"

This was on the very last page of the novel. But one can be sure there is more to it than meets the eye because earlier, somewhere in the middle of the book, sphinx-like as usual, the author disclosed her hope for a free tomorrow which, she suggests, can be achieved by self-examination and by taking action now:

"It's very funny, she said, that we've all become something.
"Nowadays, I suppose, this feeling calls for an explanation. But first I'll let her go on talking. She went on, or asked: Think--are you really living today, at this very moment? Really living?
"Heavens, I said, where's this leading?
"Today I'd like to be able to give her question back to her. For she was right, now I come to think of it. We never realized one might some day arrive somewhere and that would be the end of it. That one would be something, and think no more of it. We were traveling, and there was always a little wind behind us, or against us. We aren't anything yet, but we shall be one day; we haven't got it yet, but we shall: that was our formula. The future? The future is going to be Quite Different. Everything in good time. The future, beauty and perfection, we're saving them up, as our reward, to be paid some day, for untiring industry. Then we shall be something, then we shall have something.
"But as the future was always thrust along in front of us, and as we saw that it was nothing but the extension of the time that moves with our own movement, and that one can't ever reach it--then we had to start asking: HOW shall we be? WHAT shall we have?
"Time cannot stop, but one day there'll be no time, unless one stops now: are you really living now, in this very moment, really living?
"When, if not now?"

Very clever and brave, this Christa Wolf!

[Dhanaraj Rajan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Book with Many Layers of Stories....

First Layer/Top Layer

It is a story of a person by the name of Christa T. Her life story is narrated by one of her friends after her death at the young age (in her late thirties). Her friend tries to reconstruct Christa T's life from her own memories and in it she is ably (?) aided by some of the letters, diary jottings, some incoherent scribbling, and a thesis done in college of Christa T. Thus, we find a story of an ordinary woman who survived the war and later sought after education, and necessarily fell and fell out of loves, went for the subsequent marriage and kids, nurtured the enduring friendships, and finally fell a victim to leukemia and died.

The Second Layer

It is a story of a person who tried "to become oneself, with all one's strength." It is a story of a person who wanted to mark her identity as an unique individual in the world. Christa T was a person interested in constructing her own I in the world of many and innumerous persons. In other words, she was afraid that she will be lost among many others as one among them and her reason for existence will be nothing other than existing. She was afraid to be like the 'other'. She wanted to be a different and unique person. She wanted "to see life in all its colors." But then in her plan of becoming a particular I and trying out all possibilities she always met with failures. As a young girl she wanted to be different and sought the books for answer. Later she saw herself one with many other students. She sought the life of a married woman and after few years of marriage she saw that any other woman could do the same thing. She wanted to write. But then she was afraid that words will not be able to describe the exact reality. When she wanted to be herself, giving full vent to her desires and imaginations, the world was adamant not to let her to be "herself". The world was more interested in the principle of conformity than on the principle of freedom. She felt the routine life a bore, a real prison and an incurable sickness. Survival in such world meant only deception. That killed her. Because she wanted to be always honest.

Third Layer

This is a book that criticises mercilessly any Totalitarian regime. The whole story of Christa T is an allegory. Through her life story the life under any Totalitarian regime is very subtly analysed. Christa T is asked to life according to the principle of conformity. Anything to be thought other than this/other than the idea of the regime will not be tolerated. "The essence of health," in such society, "is adaptation or conformity." In such societies, the moral aspect and an individual opinion do not and can not exist. Voicing out your opinion can be very dangerous and mortal. If the Rule of Conformity is the Reigning Principle its second in command is: "No more playing with possible variants."

The Fourth Layer

It is also the first book of any literary merit to come out of Walter Ulbricht's Communist (Totalitarian) regime of GDR (East Germany of 1950s). And so, it is also a political book. And it contains very subtle but poignant criticisms of Ulbricht's regime. Naturally after the fall of Nazism, Communism was seen as the saving philosophy. It looked so appealing and very beautiful. Everyone sought in it a paradise.

Christa Wolf writes:

Paradise can make itself scarce, that's the way of it. Make a wry face if you like, but all the same: one must, once in a lifetime, when the time was right, have believed in the impossible.

They too believed in the paradise on the earth - an impossibility. In paper and in thoughts, the 'New World' was very appealing - "an image of human beauty created by longing." And "every love story must come to an end in marriage." The stark reality (the arrival of Communist regime - the marriage) with its hard facts ended the love story. As usual, the facts did not correspond to the picture created in the paper. Christa Wolf writes:

The happy times of pristine thinking and open minds, always favorable for beginnings, belonged now to the past, and we knew it.

There is also an image in the book in which we see initially Christa T planning for a new house and she plans everything in advance (what colour paint, what curtains, what location, etc). She creates her own imagination and her desires for the new house in a white paper. The images are immediately appreciated by her friends and they add minor details. And when the real construction begins, the life becomes hard and when the house is finally ready, it is far from the house created in the white paper.
Just change the image of 'house' with any other ideology and one gets a different message.

Final Note
This is just an example and the allusions are all over the book. Each sentence in the book is pregnant with layers of meanings and stories. A powerful book and Highly Recommended.

[Chenzira · Rating 5 out of 5]

The greatest book ever written! Let me repeat: The greatest book ever written!

If you are someone I care about a lot, you will most likely get this as a Christmas gift.

Also, it requires a lot of concentration and the ability to allow the complexities of the writing style to subdue you. Don't resist it. Don't ask questions like... who's the narrator or what year is it? That's not the point. It's about fluidity. It's about narrative that transcends the basic dimensions of storytelling and communicates with you directly through wonderfully written metaphors. It's got the elements that make you go -- wow, someone has been watching me in my most private moments and also experiences the same things, too!

This book isn't for everyone. This book is about that weird girl on the side that grew up into a woman who sought to live genuinely, express honestly, and feel openly. There's a reason why this book was banned for so many years. It challenges many aspects of patriarchy and societal control... by simply going through the motions of trying to understand this one woman. -- Christa T.

[Armin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lesevergnügen eher ein Stern, Christa T. bestätigt leider sämtliche persönlichen Vorbehalte gegenüber Christa Wolf. Bin gottfroh, dass ich mir das bei ihren Fans verhasste Kindheitsmuster zuerst vorgenommen habe,sonst hätte ich eines der größten Bücher des 20. Jahrhunderts verpasst. Auch wenn einzelne Motive in Nachdenken auf das ganz große Buch voraus weisen, das sonst vielleicht nie entstanden wäre, ist mir in diesen Momentaufnahmen zu viel angedeutet, hingehuscht, dahergenuschelt oder von mir aus auch geraunt, damit es ein wenig poetischer klingt.

Der Plot passt auf den sprichwörtlichen Bierdeckel, attraktive Frau, die zu viel von sich und vom Leben erwartet hat, ist mit 35 an Leukämie gestorben. Einziger Nachlass: drei Kinder und zahlreiche verheißungsvolle literarische Fragmente. Auf Basis eines Tagebuchs und der Zettelwirtschaft bastelt ihre, sagen wir mal, zweitbeste Freundin den Nachruf auf die Unvollendete, die sich letztlich allen und sämtlichen Verpflichtungen entzogen hat.

Der Tod von Christa T hat mich nicht besonders berührt, aber auch nicht wirklich geärgert, dazu ist sie mir einfach nie nahe genug gekommen, das kann auch daran liegen, dass die Erzählinstanz als Person oder Vergleichsgröße nie so recht präsent war, sondern meistens nur durch die Kulissen von Christas Leben huschte. Nebenpersonen wie die später zur Karrierefrau verkommene Kümmerfreundin, Musterschüler Günter oder der zynische Schachspielerfreund waren stärker präsent als als die Nachruferin, die sich wohl nicht so recht traut zur eigenen Geschichte zu stehen. Die Zweifel vor dem Beginn an der Arbeit an Kindheitsmuster werden so noch nachvollziehbarer, das Echo auf das Buch, das unterschweillig eine Kritik am offiziellen sozialistischen Menschenbild und den realen Verhältnissen übte, war ziemlich heftig.
Was Christa Wolf Ende der Sechziger geleistet hat, war schon gewagt, um etwas ähnliches auf die Beine zu stellen müsste ein heutiger Autor wohl die sonst gern übersehenen positiven Charaktereigenschaften eines aktuellen Untermenschen (Pädophiler oder Rechtsradikaler etc.) herauszustellen um damit die Schattenseiten der aktuellen Doppelmoral zu beleuchten und dazu bereit sein, mit den mehr als unfreundlichen Reaktionen seiner Zeitgenossen bis hin zum faktischen Publikationsverbot weiterzuleben. Insofern Respekt für einen seinerzeit gefährlichen Tabubruch, ein Lesevergnügen war es trotzdem nicht.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first heard about Christa Wolf in an article about Elena Ferrante. It turns out Ferrante translates Wolf's books into Italian, and admires her greatly. I can see the influence The Quest For Christa T must've had on The Neopolitan Novels: in both, the eponymous female narrator explores the life of a childhood friend, whose ways of thinking and being are so different from everyone else as to make her fascinating and enigmatic.

This is a very subtle book. Ideally The Quest For Christa T is the type of book you savor, as each sentence holds more than it appears to at first glance--the hidden depths of Christa T are reflected in the prose. This is one of those books that lends itself to a slow intaking of, to reading a few pages a day, so as to have room to think about what is said and perhaps more crucially, what isn't said.

Unfortunately I read the second half in a rushed manner in order to return it to the library in time. I wish I'd read this properly: unhurriedly, carefully . There were so many lines I liked, so many discerning observations. I already feel like I need to reread it. At least I know now that if I read anything else by Christa Wolf (and I would like to, soon) I should buy a used copy, so that I have the time and space to digest what I'm reading, to underline and ponder at will.

[Friederike Knabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having thought more about this novel - The Quest for Christa T. in English - I have revised my overall assessment more positively. Still, I am in two minds about it: taking this as a novel written in 1968 by a young author living in East Germany, in what was then The German Democratic Republic (GDR) or reading it independently from this particular context like a work of literature. In the second case, the novel's story would leave me modestly interested while I would find the author's writing style and language too intricate and cumbersome to enjoy. But, I can't really read this novel outside its historical context. And for that time and place, Christa Wolf's 'reflections' (a better terms than 'quest' I believe) on Christa T. was a politically brave and literary innovative novel to say the least. Deservedly, the book established the author's reputation both in East Germany and elsewhere.

What is it all about? In general terms, the novel is a coming of age story, painting a detailed portrait of a young woman, Christa T., as compiled from letters, diaries and other papers by a lifelong friend of the same age group. The group of friends at the centre of the book were born in the last years of the Nazi regime and grew up in the first decades of new East German State. Christa T. stood out among the group not only for her beauty and intelligence but, even more importantly, for her independent spirit. We know early on that she dies in her mid-thirties from leukemia, leaving husband and three children behind... and massive amounts of notes and other materials that her unnamed friend tries to bring together into a kind of cohesive story. The narrative, however, does not follow any chronological order, the voices switch from the narrator to Christa T. who herself is telling part of her story that is then re-told by the narrator. I have to admit that, reading it in German was at times a challenge, requiring patience and total concentration even by a parent-tongue German.

The most interesting aspect of the novel, given its time of writing, was for me the more philosophical and political undercurrent of Wolf's story. Through Christa T. herself and the narrator, Wolf touches on or even delves into pertinent questions of identity and individualism in the face of the required "Anpassung" (adaptation), imposed by the school and the political system in general of East Germany in the nineteen sixties. How can one maintain a sense of freedom while benefiting from the opportunities offered by the State for those who are actively participating in the society? In that sense, Wolf not only created a portrait of one individual but one of a whole generation. A generation that tried, while adapting as much as necessary, fought for its one space of independence and individuality.

[Käthe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Üblicherweise schätze ich den Erzählstil und die sprachliche Raffinesse von Christa Wolf sehr.
Bei "Nachdenken über Christa T." zog es sich allerdings ein wenig, bis ich der Autorin folgen konnte. Das ist insofern etwas schade, da das Buch, mit 180 Seiten, nicht sehr umfangreich ist und ich gerne schon von Beginn an richtig dabei gewesen wäre und nicht erst nach 50 Seiten. Ich möchte das aber nicht dem Buch zur Last legen, es kann ja auch einfach an mir liegen. Es ist sicherlich kein „Gute-Laune-Buch“ und daher nicht für jede Stimmung passend. Ich kann mir gut vorstellen es in Zukunft noch einmal zu lesen. Einerseits weil ich dann weiß, was auf mich zukommt und andererseits, weil es einer jener Texte zu sein scheint, die sich nicht auf Anhieb vollumfassend entdecken und auf allen Ebenen durchblicken lassen. (zumindest für mich nicht)

Das Buch hält was der Titel verspricht, so wird über das Leben von Christa T. nachgedacht. Wie ich jetzt gelernt habe, nennt sich diese Erzählweise "subjektive Authentizität", für die Christa Wolf und ihre Werke prägend waren. Dabei wird die Betrachtung von objektiven Ereignissen mit der subjektiven Verarbeitung des Ereignisses verknüpft.

Sehr verkürzt lässt sich der Inhalt am besten mit der Aussage von Marcel Reich-Ranicki zusammenfassen: „Christa T. stirbt an Leukämie, aber sie leidet an der DDR“. Seine gesamte Rezension von 1969 ist online zu finden. https://www.zeit.de/1969/21/christa-w...

Ich persönlich würde „Nachdenken über Christa T.“ eher Leser:innen empfehlen, die bereits etwas von Christa Wolf gelesen haben, da ich mir vorstellen könnte, dass dieses Werk als Einstieg etwas abschreckend sein könnte.

[Tarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

christa wolf erzählt die lebensgeschichte von christa t. nach, vermischt stationen ihres lebens mit generellen reflexionen über das menschsein, versucht, anhand einer figur einen menschentypus nachzuzeichnen oder bedingungen des menschlichen lebens überhaupt. das ist stellenweise genial und pointiert, es gibt passagen, die zu dem besten gehören, was ich je gelesen habe (beschreibung von mutterschaft/hausfrauenleben, fluchterfahrungen im 2. weltkrieg). an anderen stellen wiederum ist die geschichte langatmig und nichtssagend geraten. man merkt, dass das buch von einer autorin geschrieben ist, die sich noch finden muss. ein paar bücher von christa wolf habe ich noch im regal stehen, ich freue mich drauf.

[Simon Hollway · Rating 1 out of 5]

I foolishly launched into this immediately after finishing The Tin Drum which is like puffing upon a low tar menthol cigarette after a 48 hour freebase bender. The novella appeared slight and inconsequential in comparison...furthermore, I do wonder if the translation is up to scratch as the language and phrasing was, again, unremarkable. Perhaps I needed to be more sensitive to the sudden pauses, lulls and lacunae and should have been actively searching for those quiet spaces. However, this was a book not a libretto and it sadly left me cold.

[Lee Foust · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't at all sure what to expect from this as I'm always a little suspicious of the Eastern European fiction published in English translation here in the USA during the Cold War--so much of it seemed published less for literary quality and more for the propaganda aspect, because the novels told horror stories about Stalin's gulags or whatever. I loved this because it seemed to share some qualities with the contemporary French Nouveau Roman, being simultaneously a story (here a life story) and a text being built by an author out of memory, text, testimony. I love such novels and the literary act examining itself as it tells a story, still questioning its subject, strategies, philosophy, etc. as it goes. Thus, now, in retrospect, it's interesting to think about the lives lived in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, when we in the West imagined them without freedom, voice, literature, or anything. Yet there they are, just as important, felt, and then lost in the endless stream of generations as our own lives.

[Marcus Ham · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is by far one of the worst Wolf texts I have read and it makes me so happy that I will NEVER have to read anything by her again. As is the case with much of her work, I find her concepts fascinating but their execution poor. Her criticisms of the nascent GDR state, and especially its literary criticism, are, however, compelling and must be read against the context in which she read for them to have full subversive effect. For such an interesting character, in the narrator's own eyes, I found Christa T.'s life fairly boring. The constant reminders that the piece of writing is a "construct" became loathsome by the end which is a shame when Wolf, by employing this technique, does have interesting things to say about constructing and narrating female identities. Not worth the hype in my opinion.

[Tania · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to describe. The author is writing about the life of a woman she knew who is destroyed by life under the communist regime in East Germany. It speaks to the reader about the dangers of totalitarianism, the freedom and beauty of the human spirit, and about relationships. The relationship between the author and the title character is in itself interesting. She is trying to keep the memory of Christa alive, and yet the author seems to say at times that she doesn't know if she even really knew Christa. As usual, this novel has alot of Wolf's brilliant examinations of the nature of memory -- memory is a recurring theme in all her novels. Wolf's gifts for language, imagery, and insight are stunning. The translation is well done. This is one of the best books I've ever read. I highly reccommend it.

[Chythan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

"To become oneself, with all one's strength.
Difficult.
A bomb, a speech, a rifle shot-and the world can look a different place. And then where is this "self"?

In the novel, an unnamed narrator proceeds to reconstruct the story of her friend, Christa T, an East German woman who lives through the end of WWll and dies at an early age in the Communist state. In a poetic, fragmented style, narrator tries to make sense of her friend's life through her notes, lettters and people's recollections. 

Christa T led an unexemplery life in the times that bore witness to the historical upheavals(except for once blowing a trumpet in the middle of the street). There was terrors of war, quietness of peace and later assuredness of a new beginning. Finally there was disillusionment as well. Inspite of having done  nothing extraordinary, Christa T, who gets disillusioned with the Socialist regime, implicitly symbolizes the non-conforming individual within authoritative systems. The individual who remains miserable and slowly decays in the banality of conformity that sustains the system. The individual who stands at the margins who gets entangled in the changing historical ethos.

Ive read one work by Wolf before (Cassandra) found Christa Wolf to be an inquisitive author who tries to the answers to the "political" through the "personal". Wolf had her own share of controversial political life and political disillusionments. I think this novel was banned in GDR. Nevertheless, I find her writing impressive.  

That being said, I dont expect this book to be everybody's cup of tea. The prose wanders, and demands a constant attention from the reader to the memorization that it unveils. Narrative language constantly fluctuates between what the narrator remembers and what the narrator thinks they remember (rather imagines), resulting in sentences that do not voice an organic continuity. Perhaps, this disjointedness or the uncertainty better describes the "self" the narrator attempts to rebuild from the debris of memories.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grandios

[Archie Hamerton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Increasingly convinced that my place in this PhD programme rests entirely on my ability to read an entire novel the night before the class in which we’ll be discussing it

[Justine Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Quest for Christa T. by Christa Wolf (Nachdenken über Christa T) is a novel following a young girl from Hitler’s Germany as she grows up to embrace and later fall into disillusionment with the new order (the GDR). The story is told through Christa’s friend, our unnamed narrator, after Christa death to leukemia at the age of 35. Through conversations, diaries, letters, and memories, the narrator tries to piece together Christa’s life, and understand this intelligent and sensitive individual she has been fascinated by and connected to all these years.

Wolf’s prose is poetic and precise. She writes of politics-- indeed, Wolf is quite famous for her politics—but she also writes of human nature, lines and truths that make you pause. However, The Quest for Christa T., similar to Herta Müller’s The Land of Green Plums (Herztier), is also a book full of layers where much is left unsaid, where time and thoughts jump, and if you lose concentration for a moment, you risk missing something. Because that which is left unsaid, that which is not allowed to be said, often holds equal if not more weight.

It is true that Christa T. died from Leukemia—we are told of her death at the beginning and throughout the rest of the book—but there is more behind her death, more behind the reason her death so deeply touched the people around her. For in many ways, the leukemia is simply a metaphor, a stand-in for the real killer. Because beneath the story written down on the page, amidst the hinted at and unsaid, lies the truth about how deadly a totalitarian regime can be, not just for those who become enemies of the state—both real and perceived—but those who remain dreamers, never able to conform or harden themselves to the harsh bleakness that threatens to suffocate them. And what are we left with when they are all gone?

4.25-4.5 stars

[Isabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Per certi aspetti, Christa T. è un libro che ha bisogno di essere contestualizzato per essere compreso. Christa Wolf inizia a scriverlo a metà degli anni ’60, in un periodo in cui le linee del partito socialista sulla produzione letteraria si facevano sempre più politiche e lasciavano sempre meno spazio all’individualità dell’autore e alla varietà dei personaggi. E così Christa Wolf inizia a chiedersi se all’interno della DDR vi fosse veramente spazio per lo sviluppo autonomo della persona o se gli individui fossero sì liberi, ma solo in quegli ambiti approvati dal socialismo. Da questa riflessione, sentita da Christa Wolf al punto da condurla ad un esaurimento nervoso, nasce Christa T.: un personaggio diviso tra il desiderio di adattamento alla società e alla Storia, e dall’altra dal desiderio di essere sé stessa, anche se questo la porta molto spesso ai margini della società.
Il tentativo di dare la risposta all’ interrogativo universale del prezzo da pagare per voler essere sé stessi porta il libro fuori dalla letteratura della DDR e lo rende sempre attuale. È il libro giusto per aiutarsi a rispondere alle domande sulla propria identità e sulle proprie inadeguatezze nel rapporto con il proprio tempo e con gli altri.

"Diese Atemlosigkeit oder diese Unfähigkeit, tief einzuatmen. Als ob ganze Teile der Lungen seit Ewigkeit nicht mehr mittun. Kann man aber leben, wenn ganze Teile nicht mittun? [...] Wann soll man leben, wenn nicht in der Zeit, die einem gegeben ist? [...] Ich weiß nicht wozu ich da bin. Kannst du verstehen, was das heißt? Ich erkenne alles, was falsch an mir ist, aber es bleibt doch mein Ich, ich reiß es doch nicht aus mir heraus!"

[Susi Sni · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "Nachedenken über Christa T." reflektiert die Ich-Erzählerin über ihre verstorbene Schulfreundin und Kommilitonin Christa T. Im Mittelpunkt steht ihre Schwierigkeit zu sich selbst zu finden und sich in die Gesellschaft einzufügen, während sie sich selbst und ihre Umgebung stets kritisch in Frage stellt und skeptisch gegenüber Allem bleibt, was vermeintlich absolut und abgeschlossen ist. Als sie mit Mitte dreißig langsam 'anzukommen' scheint und wenigstens in Teilen einen Weg findet, sich ihr Umfeld nach ihren eigenen Vorstellungen zu gestalten, stirbt sie jedoch an Leukämie. Sehr einfühlsam und reflektiert schildert Wolf nicht nur die Schwierigkeit der Protagonistin ihren Lebensweg zu finden, sondern ebenso die Problematik des Erinnerns, das immer auch Vergessen und neu Erfinden mit einschließt. Besonders im Vergleich zu seinem Vorgänger 'Der geteilte Himmel' von 1963 wird in diesem Buch Christa Wolfs deutlich veränderte Einstellung zur Kulturpolitik der DDR der 60er Jahre deutlich. Der stark subjektive Stil, der mangelnde Optimismus, kein Aufzeigen von Lösungen und die Frage, wie sehr der Tod Christa T.s in den gesellschaftliche Verhältnissen begründet ist, stellt einen starken Bruch dar, hin zur literarischen Moderne und weg von einer expliziten Bestätigung der politischen Verhältnisse.
Mir hat das Buch sehr gefallen, wobei weder Inhalt noch Sprache geeignet sind, es mal eben "zwischendurch" zu lesen. Am meisten Spaß hat man an dem Buch vermutlich, wenn man etwas Konzentration und Zeit zum Nachdenken mitbringt.

[Janik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein Porträt, eine Lebensgeschichte, wie sie dichter und reflektierter nicht wiedergegeben werden könnte. Unglaublich bereicherend - und für mich ebenso anstrengend. Nevertheless: wärmstens empfohlen.

[Asya · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I've read in too long. Wolf is better known for her politics than for her prose, and that's a pity, because what prose it is! Lyrical, utterly truthful in that sense of revealed truth given to you as a gift from a writer you could have just as well missed. And then the other angle doesn't concern me either, the literary critical/theoretical one that lumps Wolf (or at least this novel) with the likes of Robbe-Grillet and other "metafiction" writers. For me, she is precise and watchful, truthful to a hurt, and aware of every motion of desire, memory, longing, and the minutest impulses that make up a self.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christa Wolf is an East German author (when there still was an East germany.) Her books are complex and layered. Once I read this one I hungered for more of her. In this one she travels with her family while working on research, and discovers things about her past groewing up in Hitler's Germany, and her relationship with her daughter.

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a strange book that touched me in a strange way on multiple levels. It's simplistic and complex at the same time, easy and complicated, poetic and straight-forward. It's one of the books which make you think deeply, and then leave you with a smile although your not sure about what.