Christa Reinig

Christa Reinig (6 August 1926, in Berlin – 30 September 2008, in Munich) was a German poet, fiction and non-fiction writer, and dramatist. She began her career in the Soviet occupation zone which became East Berlin, was banned there, after publishing in West Germany, and moved to the West in 1964, settling in Munich. She was openly lesbian. Her works are marked by black humor, and irony.

Life and career Reinig was raised in eastern Berlin by her mother, Wilhelmine Reinig, who was a cleaning woman. After the end of the Second World War, Reinig was a Trümmerfrau, and worked in a factory. In the 1950s, she obtained her Abitur at night school, and went on to study art history at Humboldt University, at the urging of Bertolt Brecht; she had been working there as an editor. In 1956, her "Ballade vom blutigen Bomme" ("Ballad of Bloody Bomme", first published in 1952) was included in Walter Höllerer's poetic anthology Transit, which brought her to the attention of readers in the West; one writer in 1963 referred to its "strange mix of benevolent cynicism and bottomless sadness". However, she was largely forbidden to publish in the East, beginning in 1951, She was already involved in the West Berlin Gruppe Zukunftsachlicher Dichter (group of future-reasoning writers), and continued to publish both poetry and stories with West German publishers.

In 1964, after her mother's death, and having to survive on a government pension. She felt like an outsider both in East Germany, despite her proletarian background, and in the feminist movement. in the 1979 cycle of poems, Müßiggang ist aller Liebe Anfang (later published in English translation as Idleness is the Root of All Love), she expressed her lesbianism in her work for the first time. At the end of the 1980s, she left the feminist movement; She also translated Russian literature, and wrote audio dramas. Her last publication, in 2006, was a volume of philosophical thoughts titled, Das Gelbe vom Himmel (The Yellow from Heaven). 1968 Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden, 1969 Toucan Prize of the City of Munich (with five others), for Schwabinger Marterln 1976 Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1993 Roswitha Prize of the City of Bad Gandersheim 1999 Brandenburg Literature Prize