RECENT POST-GDR NOVELS often do not portray the GDR per se, but feature symptomatic bodies to reveal vestiges of the GDR lingering in contemporary German society. Precisely because the socialist state has long since ceased to exist, the protagonists at the center of these fictional prose texts are taken by surprise when the specters return to haunt them— even outside the territory of the bygone country. As Antje Rávic Strubel explains, “ich siedle gern meine Texte, die sich immer wieder … mit dem Thema beschäftigen, wie weit wirkt eine Gesellschaft noch in die andere hinein, außerhalb von Deutschland an” (I like to choose settings outside of Germany for my texts, which time and again deal with … the topic, to what extent does one society still affect the other). Strubel's decision to deal with the remains of the GDR in her prose texts by choosing locations outside Germany may be unusual; depicting the ongoing effects of the socialist state on post-unification Germany is not. In particular, the socialist state's idiosyncrasies and specific means of exercising power remain a topic in East German writing.

The ongoing portrayal of the late GDR, and especially its effects on post-unification Germany, confirm that the bygone state still plays a crucial role in post-GDR writers’ cultural and historical memory. Specific practices in hospitals and in medical research, as well as the power of former Stasi officers, all point to the ongoing influence of GDR structures. At the same time, the fictional texts analyzed here highlight both similarities and differences between the GDR and post-unification Germany in exerting control over individuals. They demonstrate ways in which FRG laws and customs in institutions lend themselves to being utilized for maintaining configurations of power that originate in the GDR. Portraying the GDR roots of these control mechanisms and their influence on the health and the bodies of East German individuals in the twenty-first century, post-GDR writers like Antje Rávic Strubel, Kathrin Schmidt, and Kerstin Hensel show a desire to contribute to collective memory beyond the immediate GDR experience. This is not to say that they claim the right to speak the one and only “truth” about the history of the socialist state and the GDR's influence on the present.