Susanne Schädlich

Susanne Schädlich (born 29 November 1965) is a German writer and literary translator. She is also experienced as a "ghost writer".

The daughter of a high-profile East German dissident intellectual, she came to wider prominence with her 2009 book "Immer wieder Dezember. Der Westen, die Stasi, der Onkel und ich" (loosely "December, always December. The west, the Stasi, the uncle and I") in which she tells the story of her childhood in the two Germanies during the Cold War, and the impact of discovering that her trusted and loved uncle (who later killed himself on a Berlin park bench) had been spying on her family through much of her childhood in order to report on them to the widely detested Ministry for State Security apparatus (Stasi).

Early life and education Susanne Schädlich was born in Jena, in the southern part of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The family relocated while she was still small. Until December 1977, she and her younger sister Anna grew up with their parents in Köpenick, a quarter near the centre of East Berlin. Hans Joachim Schädlich, her father, is an author. Her mother, born Krista Maria Hübner, worked as a publisher's editor. Susanne Schädlich's maternal grandfather, Arno Hübner, was a university law professor.

"Like many children of East German intellectuals I ... was always on my guard. At home my parents always spoke openly about writers critical of the government. We watched West German television. My father hosted meetings between East German and West German authors and co-signatories of the petition against the deprivation of national citizenship right inflicted on the poet-singer Wolf Biermann. So I knew how you had to conduct yourself outside the house." "Wie viele Kinder ostdeutscher Intellektueller war ich ... immer auf der Hut. Zuhause sprachen meine Eltern immer offen über regimekritische Schriftsteller. Wir sahen westdeutsches Fernsehen. Mein Vater war Gastgeber des Treffens ost-westdeutscher Autoren und Unterzeichner der Protest-Petition gegen die Ausweisung des Dichters und Sängers Wolf Biermann. Ich wusste also, wie man sich außerhalb des Hauses verhalten musste." Susanne Schädlich was twelve at this time. She was aware in general terms of the problems her parents were having with the authorities, and although they assumed their telephone was bugged and that they were under some level of surveillance, Hans Joachim and Krista Maria Schädlich still discussed the issues of the day in the presence of their children. Her father had been one of those who had been so enraged by the unjust treatment of Wolf Biermann the previous year that he had signed the petition objecting to Biermann being stripped of his citizenship. Although she was surprised at the speed of the family's expulsion to the west when it happened, the cause of it was clear to her even at the time. In 1996 she obtained a bursary from the University of Southern California which enabled her to study modern German philology. She returned to Germany in 1999 and has lived in Berlin since then, undertaking regular assignments in the United States.

Although the shock of her father's discoveries about Karlheinz Schädlich's betrayals was enduring, it was only after her uncle stuck a revolver in his mouth while sitting on a park bench in Berlin and killed himself at the end of 2007 that she felt compelled to record the whole affair in an autobiographical work which was published in 2008/9 as "Immer wieder Dezember. Der Westen, die Stasi, der Onkel und ich" (loosely "December, always December. The west, the Stasi, the uncle and I").

Books "Immer wieder Dezember. Der Westen, die Stasi, der Onkel und ich" "Herr Hübner und die sibirische Nachtigall" ("Dietrich Hübner and the Siberian Nightingale") 2014 "documentary-novel", in which the eponymous protagonist shares her mother's maiden name. "Briefe ohne Unterschrift": Wie eine BBC-Sendung die DDR herausforderte, 2017

Recent awards (selection)