The Triumph of the Obituary: Constructing Christa Wolf for the Berlin Republic

When Christa Wolf died in 2011, the German media commemorated her in numerous, largely similar obituaries that echo statements issued by liberal-conservative politicians and reference allegations generated during the literary debate (1990/1991). Ambivalent, ironic or hostile, they downgrade or defuse Wolf’s political stance, render the author and her politics futile, or work to streamline her with the ideologies dominating unified Germany. A comparative analysis of obituaries and texts by Wolf exposes the rationale behind the majority of testimonials, namely to devaluate the socialist idea in order to legitimize contemporary politics in a time of global crisis for the capitalist system.