Brigitte Reimann

Brigitte Reimann (born 21 July 1933, Burg bei Magdeburg, d. 22 February 1973, East Berlin) was a German writer who is best known for her posthumously published novel Franziska Linkerhand.

Life

Brigitte Reimann wrote her first amateur play at the age of fifteen. In 1950 she was awarded the first prize in an amateur drama competition by the Berlin theater Volksbühne. After graduating with the Abitur, Reimann worked as teacher, bookseller and reporter. After a miscarriage in 1954, Reimann attempted suicide. In 1960 she started to work at the brown coal mine Schwarze Pumpe, where she and her second husband Siegfried Pitschmann headed a circle of writing workers. There, she wrote the narrative Ankunft im Alltag, which is regarded as a masterpiece of socialist realism. She received the Heinrich Mann prize in 1964.

When troops of the Warsaw Pact states invaded the ČSSR on 20 August 1968 as a reaction to liberalisations during the Prague Spring, Reimann refused to sign the declaration by the East German Writers' Association approving of the measure.

On 22 February 1973, Brigitte Reimann died of cancer at the age of 39.

Works

• Katja. Eine Liebesgeschichte aus unseren Tagen (1953)
• Der Legionär (1955)
• Zwei schreiben eine Geschichte (1955)
• Die Frau am Pranger (1956)
• Die Kinder von Hellas (1956)
• Das Geständnis (1960)
• Ein Mann steht vor der Tür (1960)
• Ankunft im Alltag (1961)
• Sieben Scheffel Salz (1961)
• Im Kombinat (1963)
• Die Geschwister (1963)
• Das grüne Licht der Steppen (1965)
• Sonntag, den ... (1970)
• Franziska Linkerhand (incomplete novel, 1974)
• Das Mädchen auf der Lotosblume (incomplete novels, 2005)