Christa Reinig

The Völklingen Ironworks flooded in red light
Copyright: Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hütte | Oliver Dietze

Christa reinig upscale

Christa reinig upscale
Copyright: Christa Reinig | CC BY-SA 3.0

Born in 1926 in Berlin, Germany
Died in 2008 in Munich, Germany

Works

Desk by Christa Reinig with X-ray image

056b2 I8N

056b2 I8N
Copyright: © Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hütte

In 1964, writer Christa Reinig left the GDR to attend an award ceremony in West Germany and never returned. On her desk at the Märkisches Museum, reconstructed here, she left nothing but an X-ray of her spine, which was curved due to Bechterew's disease. ‘Inside, she was more upright,’ critic Wulf Segebrecht aptly remarked in 1996 on her 70th birthday. The X-ray on the desk represents the pointed irony of a resistant woman who showed backbone and did not allow herself to be bent despite a publication ban in the GDR that had been in place since 1951.