WHEN LEIBHAFTIG APPEARED IN GERMANY in 2002, literary critics and scholars often equated the protagonist with the author, and hastily interpreted the book as Wolf's final farewell to the GDR and to illusions about the socialist model underlying the state. The novel relates the medical history of a nameless female writer in a GDR hospital, which is—according to the medical personnel—a mirror image of the depleted society (173). Without doubt, Leibhaftig presents a defining moment in Wolf's oeuvre, but can it be considered a good-bye? In order to answer this question, we must briefly consider Wolf's work from the 1990s.

In the first decade after unification, Wolf published primarily essays, speeches, letters, and short stories, in addition to her novel Medea: Stimmen (1996; Medea: A Modern Telling, 1998). Her first major prose text composed after 1990 rewrites an antique myth, much like Kassandra (1983). The two books are linked by the protagonists’ feelings of alienation: they feel connected to their communities despite the lack of empathy they receive. Medea, particularly, feels hurt, betrayed, and exiled in her country. Not unlike Wolf following the so-called Literaturstreit, she is turned into a scapegoat. Medea appears as an indirect reproach to the West German media that had projected an exceedingly unfavorable image of Wolf. The GDR author emerged as the personified abject in the new political and social system based on her characteristics as East German, female, intellectual, political, critically engaged, and—after 1993—alleged Stasi collaborator. Aimed at silencing the author and her support for socialist ideals, the campaign ultimately failed since the abjected intellectual refused to be mute. After her brief cooperation with the Stasi from 1959 to 1962 was revealed, several of Wolf's accounts from 1992/93 demonstrate that the author experienced the media attacks corporally. In “Abschied von Phantomen,” she describes her physicality as if it were one of the damaged bodies so abundant in her fictional oeuvre. She relates the physical sensation of being replaced “Stück für Stück, Glied für Glied … gegen eine andere Person, die in die Medien paßte” (330: piece by piece and limb by limb, by another person who was built to suit the media; 297). In Stadt der Engel (2010), Wolf's fictional alter ego expresses her feelings even more radically.