Eugoogly

Christa Wolf Dies at 82

Christa Margarete Ihlenfeld was born on March 18, 1929, in Landsberg, a Silesian town that was renamed Gorzow when it was incorporated into Poland after World War II. Her father, Otto Ihlenfeld, a grocer who had been a Social Democrat before Hitler took power, joined the Nazi Party. She herself was a member of the girls’ version of the Hitler Youth.

After the war, the family was expelled from their home. In “A Model Childhood” Ms. Wolf described a refugee life of sleeping outdoors or in attics and of being rescued from that fate by the Russians and the German Communists who had taken over East Germany.

She joined the Socialist Unity Party in 1949 and studied German literature at universities in Jena and Leipzig.