Christa Reinig (6 August 1926, in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

– 30 September 2008, in

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

) was a German poet, fiction and non-fiction writer, and dramatist. She began her career in the

Soviet occupation zone The Soviet occupation zone in Germany ( or , ; ) was an area of Germany that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a communist area, established as a result of the Potsdam Agreement on 2 August 1945. On 7 October 1949 the German Democratic Republ ...

which became

East Berlin East Berlin (; ) was the partially recognised capital city, capital of East Germany (GDR) from 1949 to 1990. From 1945, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet occupation sector of Berlin. The American, British, and French se ...

, was banned there, after publishing in

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

, and moved to the West in 1964, settling in Munich. She was openly

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

. 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.Madeleine Marti, tr. Joey Horsley
Christa Reinig
Biographies, FemBio After the end of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Reinig was a ''

Trümmerfrau Trümmerfrauen ( rubble women, singular Trümmerfrau ) were women who, in the aftermath of World War II, helped clear and reconstruct the bombed cities of Germany and Austria. Hundreds of cities had suffered significant bombing and firestorm dam ...

'', and worked in a factory. She also sold flowers on the ''

Alexanderplatz (, ''Alexander Square'') is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from in the north-ea ...

'' in the 1940s."Vergessene Ikone der feministischen Literatur: Zum Tod der Schriftstellerin Christa Reinig"

Deutschlandradio Deutschlandradio (DLR; ) is a national German public radio broadcaster. History ''Deutschlandfunk'' was originally a West German news radio targeting listeners within West Germany as well as in neighbouring countries, ''Deutschlandfunk Kultur'' ...

, 6 October 2008, revised 15 April 2009 In the 1950s, she obtained her

Abitur ''Abitur'' (), often shortened colloquially to ''Abi'', is a qualification granted at the end of secondary education in Germany. It is conferred on students who pass their final exams at the end of ISCED 3, usually after twelve or thirteen year ...

at night school, and went on to study art history at

Humboldt University The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public university, public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III of Prussia, Frederick W ...

, after which she took a job at the

Märkisches Museum The Märkisches Museum ( Marcher Museum; originally Märkisches Provinzial-Museum, i.e. Museum of the Province of the March f Brandenburg is a museum in Mitte, Berlin. Founded in 1874 as the museum of the city of Berlin and its political region ...

, the museum of the history of Berlin, and the Mark Brandenburg, where she worked, until she left Berlin for the West. She made her literary début in the late 1940s in the satirical magazine ''

Ulenspiegel ' was a bi-weekly German Satire, satirical magazine published in Berlin after World War II. The magazine was an important cultural outlet in the new era of democracy and freedom following the fall of the Third Reich. Its first issue was publish ...

'',Katrin Hillgruber
"Nachruf: Christa Reinig—Ich träume von meiner Verkommenheit"
''

Der Tagesspiegel (meaning ''The Daily Mirror'') is a German daily newspaper. It has regional correspondent offices in Washington, D.C., and Potsdam. It is the only major newspaper in the capital to have increased its circulation, now 148,000, since reunificati ...

'', 7 October 2008 at the urging of

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

; she had been working there as an editor."Lakonische Lyrikerin: Christa Reinig ist tot"
''

Der Spiegel (, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

'' 6 October 2008 In 1956, her "Ballade vom blutigen Bomme" ("Ballad of Bloody Bomme", first published in 1952) Martin Lüdke
"Von schnodderigem Charme: Die vergessene, große Dichterin Christa Reinig ist tot. Sie starb im Alter von 82 Jahren"
''

Frankfurter Rundschau The ''Frankfurter Rundschau'' (''FR'') is a German daily newspaper, based in Frankfurt am Main. The ''Rundschaus editorial stance is social liberal. It holds that "independence, social justice and fairness" underlie its journalism. In Post-wa ...

'', 7 October 2008 was included in

Walter Höllerer Walter Höllerer (19 December 1922 – 20 May 2003) was a German writer, literary critic, and literature academic. He was professor of literary studies at Technische Universität Darmstadt from 1959 to 1988. Höllerer was a member of the Group 4 ...

'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, while she was still a student.Neuer Vorlass in Marbach: Die Schriftstellerin Christa Reinig hat ihre Papiere dem Deutschen Literaturarchiv Marbach übergeben
, Press Release,

German Literature Archive The Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (DLA – German Literature Archive), established in 1955, in Marbach am Neckar, is one of the most significant literary archives in the world. Its collections span literary and intellectual history from 1750 ...

, 8 August 2008 She was already involved in the West Berlin ''Gruppe Zukunftsachlicher Dichter'' (group of future-reasoning writers),Madeleine Marti
Christa Reinig
Biographien, FemBio and continued to publish both poetry and stories with West German publishers. In 1964, after her mother's death, Reinig travelled to

to receive the Bremen Literature Prize and stayed there, settling in

. She had

ankylosing spondylitis Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a type of arthritis from the disease spectrum of axial spondyloarthritis. It is characterized by long-term inflammation of the joints of the spine, typically where the spine joins the pelvis. With AS, eye and bow ...

; she left her desk at the museum empty, except for an X-ray of her crooked spine. In 1971, she broke her neck in a fall on a spiral staircase; inadequate medical care left her severely disabled,Ricarda Schmidt, "Sockelfigur am 'gußeisernen Paradepferd der Weltgeschichte': Christa Reinigs autobiographischer Roman ''Die himmlische und die irdische Geometrie'' als 'Weibsgeschichte' aus der Zeit des kalten Krieges", '' The German Quarterly'' 72.4 (Fall 1999) 362–76
p. 362
and having to survive on a government pension. She could not use a typewriter again, until being fitted with specially made prismatic spectacles in 1973, after which she wrote her first novel, the autobiographical ''Die himmlische und die irdische Geometrie'' (The Heavenly and the Earthly Geometry), which she completed in 1974. Reinig died on 30 September 2008 in the Catholic care home, where she had moved at the start of that year. She left her papers to the

Marbach am Neckar Marbach am Neckar (, ) is a town about 20 kilometres north of Stuttgart. It belongs to the district of Ludwigsburg, the Stuttgart region and the European metropolitan region of Stuttgart. Marbach is known as the birthplace of Friedrich Schiller ...

Themes and types of writing

Reinig began as a lyric poet, and her voice is frequently allegorical and metaphysical, as well as characterised by black humor, irony, brash, life-affirming sarcasm, and an "extremely refined simplicity". She was known as a rebel, who went her own way."Die Freischwimmerin"
''

Süddeutsche Zeitung The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (; ), published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest and most influential daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of ''SZ'' is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and ...

'', 5 August 2006 She felt like an outsider both in East Germany, despite her proletarian background, and in the feminist movement. Her first published short story came in 1946, "Ein Fischerdorf"; and between 1949 and 1951, she wrote stories about women living without men; however, for 25 years after that, until the autobiographical ''Die himmlische und die irdische Geometrie'', a "pre-feminist" work in female voice, men were at the centre of her work. For a decade beginning in the mid-1970s, she was an avowedly feminist writer. Her 1976 satirical novel, ''Entmannung'', reveals the patriarchalism in both men's and women's thinking processes, and led to her

coming out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBTQ people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. This is often framed and debated as a privacy issue, ...

; 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. Reinig said of herself in an interview at sixty, "I am a lesbian writer just as much as I am a woman writer", but she found herself marginalised by the literary establishment as a feminist writer, and a lesbian; ''Entmannung'', which means "emasculation", has been described, by a conservative German historian, as "a grotesque spearpoint of feminism". At the end of the 1980s, she left the feminist movement; in ''Müßiggang ist aller Liebe Anfang'', she had written: "Sometimes the gay shirt is closer to me than the feminist skirt." She also translated Russian literature, and wrote

audio drama Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatised, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine ...

s. Her last publication, in 2006, was a volume of philosophical thoughts titled, ''Das Gelbe vom Himmel'' (''The Yellow from Heaven'').

Works

Poetry

* '' Die Steine von Finisterre''. 1961. Partial trans. Ruth and Matthew Mead, '' The Tightrope Walker''. Edinburgh: Rutherford, 1981. * '' Gedichte''. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1963. * '' Schwabinger Marterln. Freche Grabsprüche für Huren, Gammler und Poeten''. Stierstadt im Taunus: Eremiten, 1969. * '' Schwalbe von Olevano''. Stierstadt im Taunus: Eremiten, 1969. * '' Papantscha-Vielerlei: Exotische Produkte Altindiens''. Stierstadt im Taunus: Eremiten, 1971. * '' Die Ballade vom Blutigen Bomme''. Düsseldorf: Eremiten, 1972. * ''Müßiggang ist aller Liebe Anfang''. Düsseldorf: Eremiten, 1979. . Munich: Frauenoffensive, 1980. . Trans. Ilze Mueller. '' Idleness is the Root of All Love''. Corvallis, Oregon: Calyx, 1991. * '' Sämtliche Gedichte''. Düsseldorf: Eremiten, 1984. * '' Die Prüfung des Lächlers: Gesammelte Gedichte''. Munich: DTV, 1970, 1984.

Stories

* " Eine Ruine" (1949) and " Ein Fischerdorf" (1951) in '' Anthologien der DDR'' * '' Der Traum meiner Verkommenheit''. Berlin: Fietkau, 1961. * '' Drei Schiffe: Erzählungen, Dialoge, Berichte''. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1965. * '' Orion trat aus dem Haus: neue Sternbilder''. Stierstadt im Taunus: Eremiten, 1968. * '' Das grosse Bechterew-Tantra: Exzentrische Anatomie''. Stierstadt im Taunus: Eremiten, 1970. * '' Hantipanti: zwölf Kindergeschichten zum Nachdenken und ein Nachwort''. Weinheim: Beltz, 1972. * '' Clever Elsie, Frederick and Catherine, and The Goose Girl Meets The Four Bremen City Musicians''. Weinheim:

Beltz & Gelberg Hans-Joachim Gelberg (27 August 1930 – 17 May 2020) was a German writer and publisher of children's books, who received several awards. Biography Gelberg was born in Dortmund and later lived in Weinheim, Baden Württemberg. Gelberg founded ...

, 1976. * '' Der Wolf und die Witwen: Erzählungen und Essays''. Düsseldorf: Eremiten, 1980. . Munich: Frauenoffensive, 1981. * '' Die ewige Schule''. Munich: Frauenoffensive, 1982. * '' Nobody and other stories''. Düsseldorf: Eremiten, 1989. * '' Glück und Glas''. Düsseldorf: Eremiten, 1991. * '' Simsalabim''. Düsseldorf: Eremiten, 1991. * '' Der Frosch im Glas: neue Sprüche''. Düsseldorf: Eremiten, 1994.

Novels

* '' Die himmlische und die irdische Geometrie''. Düsseldorf: Eremiten, 1975. * '' Entmannung: die Geschichte Ottos und seiner vier Frauen''. Düsseldorf: Eremiten, 1976. * '' Die Frau im Brunnen''. Munich: Frauenoffensive, 1984.

Audio plays

* ''

Kleine Chronik der Osterwoche Kleine is a German and Dutch surname meaning "small". Notable people with the surname include: * Andrea Kleine (born 1970), American writer, choreographer, and performance artist * Christian Kleine (born 1974), German musician and DJ * Cindy Kleine ...

''. 1965 * '' Tenakeh''. 1965 * ''

Wisper The Wisper is a river in Hesse, Germany, right tributary of the Rhine. Its source is in the western Taunus, Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis district, near a small village named Wisper (municipality Heidenrod). It flows southwest through a densely forested ...

''. 1967 * '' Das Aquarium''. 1967

Non-fiction

* '' Das Gelbe vom Himmel: Betrachtungen''. Düsseldorf: Eremiten, 2006.

Translations

* Marina Zwetajewa. '' Gedichte''. Berlin: Wagenbach,

968 Year 968 ( CMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * Emperor Nikephoros II receives a Bulgarian embassy led by Prince Boris (the son of Tsar Peter I of Bulgaria), wi ...

Honours

* 1964 Bremen Literature Prize, for '' Gedichte'' * 1965

Villa Massimo Villa Massimo, short for Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo (), is a German cultural institution in Rome, established in 1910 and located in the Villa Massimo. The fellowship of the German Academy in Rome, often referred to as the German Rome P ...

Fellowship * 1968

Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden The Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden (War Blinded Audio Play Prize), also known as the Kriegsblindenpreis (War Blinded Prize) is the most important literary prize granted to playwrights of audio plays written in the German language. The award was e ...

, for '' Das Aquarium'' * 1969

Toucan Prize The Toucan Prize () is a literary prize given by the city of Munich to the best new publication by a Munich author. It has been awarded since 1965 and is endowed with 6,000 Euros. Recipients *1965 Paul Mommertz, Georg Schwarz, Roland Ziersch, ...

of the

City A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

(with five others), for '' Schwabinger Marterln'' * 1973

Literary Award A literary award or literary prize is an award presented in recognition of a particularly lauded Literature, literary piece or body of work. It is normally presented to an author. Organizations Most literary awards come with a corresponding award c ...

of the

Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts Bavarian is the adjective form of the German state of Bavaria, and refers to people of ancestry from Bavaria. Bavarian may also refer to: * Bavarii, a Germanic tribe * Bavarians, a nation and ethnographic group of Germans * Bavarian, Iran, a villag ...

* 1975 German Critics' Prize, for '' Die Prüfung des Lächlers'' * 1976 Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany * 1984 SWR-Bestenliste Prize, for '' Sämtliche Gedichte'' * 1993

Roswitha Prize The Roswitha Prize () is the oldest German language prize for literature that is given solely to women. The Roswitha-Medal has been given almost yearly since 1973 by the city of Bad Gandersheim. In 1998 it received its modern designation along wi ...

of the

Bad Gandersheim Bad Gandersheim (Eastphalian dialect, Eastphalian: ''Ganderssen'') is a town in southern Lower Saxony, Germany, located in the district of Northeim (district), Northeim. , it had a population of 9,492. Bad Gandersheim has many half-timbered hou ...

* 1999 Brandenburg Literature Prize * 2003 Kester-Haeusler Award of the German Schiller Foundation"Ehrung für Reinig: Schillerstiftung würdigt Lyrikerin"
''Süddeutsche Zeitung'', 8 October 2003

References

Sources

* " Abgestorbener Raum". Interview with Jo Wünsche. ''

Alternative Alternative or alternate may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Alternative (Kamen Rider), Alternative (''Kamen Rider''), a character in the Japanese TV series ''Kamen Rider Ryuki'' * Alternative comics, or independent comics are an altern ...

'' 20 (April 1977) 68–72 * Peter Horn. '' Christa Reinig und das "weibliche Ich"''. In '' Frauenliteratur: Autorinnen, Perspektiven, Konzepte''. Ed. Manfred Jurgensen.

Bern Bern (), or Berne (), ; ; ; . is the ''de facto'' Capital city, capital of Switzerland, referred to as the "federal city".; ; ; . According to the Swiss constitution, the Swiss Confederation intentionally has no "capital", but Bern has gov ...

: Lang, 1983. . pp. 101–22 * Sibylle Scheßwendter. '' Darstellung und Auflösung von Lebensproblemen im Werk: Christa Reinig''.

Doctoral thesis A thesis (: theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: D ...

University of Siegen The University of Siegen () is a public research university located in Siegen, North Rhine-Westphalia and is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, a society of Germany's leading research universities. The university was founded in 1972. ...

, 2000
pdf

External links

at the

German National Library The German National Library (DNB; ) is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its task is to collect, permanently archive, comprehens ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reinig, Christa 1926 births 2008 deaths German women poets German women short story writers German women dramatists and playwrights German short story writers German radio writers Women radio writers German LGBTQ dramatists and playwrights German lesbian writers Lesbian dramatists and playwrights Lesbian poets Recipients of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany German LGBTQ poets 20th-century German poets 20th-century German women writers 20th-century German short story writers 20th-century German dramatists and playwrights People with ankylosing spondylitis 20th-century German LGBTQ people 21st-century German LGBTQ people