ABSTRACT
"Christa Wolf", the most prominent woman writer in postwar Germany, is today at the center of a literary and political storm. Critics and writers who used to celebrate her work are using Was bleibt to launch an attack on Wolf. The turnabout of the West German literary establishment, the vehemence of the attack and the suspicious unity of voices in various media are perplexing, until they are fit into the larger picture of post-wall German politics. Wolf's literary delving into the past might therefore uncover some Pan-German skeletons in the closet, jarring Germany's collective memory. The "literary" campaign against Christa Wolf has the simultaneous effect of discrediting her political message, of erasing facets of East German identity and history that Wolf and authors like her articulate, and of depriving critical East Germans of a potential voice in the united Germany.
