Nachdenken ueber Christa T. by Christa Wolf

This book, first published in 1968, is said to be the novel that first brought the German writer, Christa Wolf, international acclaim. It’s about the life of her friend, Christa T., who tragically died of leukaemia at the age of 35. Set against the background of the end of World War 2 and the first years of the German Democratic Republic, it’s an account of growing up in that era, too. But it’s also an exploration of memory, of the challenges of writing a life, when you feel the person you recall slipping away from you, when what you’re left with are childhood diaries, scraps of writing on envelopes, a Titelliste for future writing projects, little of substance.

We’re pulled into the intensity of the narrator’s feeling for Christa T. from the beginning when she describes the moment she first really saw her. It wasn’t when Christa first joined their class, a 16 year old, from a rural area, with its pine trees, broom and heather, all too familiar, but when walking through the town some time later, she rolled up a newspaper and tooted loudly through it, like a trumpet, making heads turn and attracting wisecracks from soldiers taking a break outside the barracks. The narrator feels a grin spreading across her face as the sound wiped away the greyness of the day for just that moment, and lifted the sky for her.

From that moment, the narrator is smitten with her new friend, also known as Krischan, who  opens up the world for her: she makes her aware there’s a world beyond her town, the market square, her school. She’s daring and brave, making the two hour trip to Berlin to hear a friend play Beethoven in her flat- in the summer of 1944, amidst the air-raid sirens. In the long winter break she longs for a letter from her, her longing more real to her than the many refugees and people in uniform flooding their town.

After their school days there’s a seven year gap until they next run into one another as students. The narrator notes that Christa seems changed, she’s lost some confidence and as this section progresses, we see a young woman at odds with the demands of life in the new communist state. On one level she’s a flaky participant in student work groups, not turning up, being late, worrying her friends that she’ll bring their marks down with her lack of contribution. But on another, deeper level she’s reluctant to engage with the language and idealism of the time: she can’t say what profession she wants to take up after university, she teases a committed young teacher for his love of the term Vollständigkeit– completeness, together with the narrator she rejects the neue Welt der Phantasielosen. Der Tatsachenmenschen. Der Hopp-Hopp Menschen- (the new world of those with no imagination. The facts people. The chop, chop people). She’s a person who wants time to observe, to look, to dream, who values the world of the imagination.

We see her inability to fit in more when she eventually becomes a teacher and has to mark her class essays. The title is one typical for the time: Am I too young to make a contribution to the development of our socialist society? One boy writes about his participation in a youth organisation, which Christa T. knows he’s not a member of, and threatens to give him a poor mark for lying. The school students can’t see what she’s bothered about and there’s a vividly painted scene where she’s hauled up in front of the head teacher on account of her marking. He’s described as a committed materialist historian, educated also by his time in prison—many people in positions of authority in the GDR had been imprisoned for their communist beliefs under the Nazis—and represents an utterly different world view from that of Christa T.

One of the many areas in which Christa T. remains silent, seems elusive, and hard to pin down, is that of relationships. One or two early love affairs are described and then she meets Justus, a vet in rural Mecklenburg, whom she marries and with whom she has three children. We know from the beginning that she will die at the age of 35, and from about half way in to the book the narrator brings us back to this time and again, by reminding us how many years and months she has left at particular points. This becomes even sadder after her marriage to Justus, her efforts to make a success of a very different life in the Provinz, her plans for the new house they build by the lake, her third pregnancy, when we the readers know that this new life will be short-lived.

Many scenes in the novel paint a vivid picture of Christa T. However, there are others, and I found this with the sections describing her student life, where I felt she was mysterious, elusive and beyond my grasp. I think this was partly because I found some of the commentary and speculation by the narrator in these sections rather obscure, in particular around the student ideas of the time. But it may also have been a deliberate technique to reflect not only the elusiveness of Christa T. but also the impossibility of ever really knowing, and pinning down in text, another person. And this idea is reiterated in the narrator’s use of a range of sources- her memory, random bits of Christa’s papers, Christa’s diary. And also in her inclusion of scenes and conversations, which she freely admits, are erfunden-invented.

Despite these challenges, I found this a very moving and compelling text. The language is hugely powerful- the description of the Mecklenburg landscape, the vivid images of people on the move in cities at the end of the war. And the illness and death of Christa T. is absolutely heart-rending. I read it in German, so can’t comment on the English translation, except to say the novel was translated in 1982 by Christopher Middleton, and called The Quest for Christa T. ( rather than, for example, Reflections on Christa T.) And what I am left with is the feeling of elusiveness, of the slipping away, of the porosity of memory at the very same moment as, in writing and reading, we try to hold onto things.