Maxi Wander

Wander, Maxi (Vienna, 1933-77, Berlin), left school before completing her grammar-school education and until her marriage to the writer Fred Wander (b. 1917) earned her living in a variety of jobs involving factory, office, and household work. In 1958 the couple settled in East Germany, where she worked as a photographer and journalist. She died of cancer in November 1977, having earlier that year seen the publication of her feminist book Guten Morgen, du Schöne. Protokolle nach Tonband (as Guten Morgen, du Schöne. Frauen in der DDR, 1978 BRD). It instantly became a best-seller which by the originality of its conception added new perspectives to the debate on women's emancipation. It consists of individual interviews with 17 women who had agreed to speak freely about their personal life, their hopes and frustrations in partnerships and marriage, in the family, and at work. Their occupation varies as much as their age, which ranges between those still at school and women in their forties; one is in her seventies, and the last is an engaging nonagenarian. According to Wander's prefatory note they are not meant to represent a cross-section of society, but should be respected for their worth as individuals: ‘Ich halte jedes Leben für hinreichend interessant, um anderen mitgeteilt zu werden’. She shows both empathy and skill in the presentation of these interviews with their amazing variety of experience and attitudes, including some frank criticism of the regime. The emphasis is on the search for identity and self-realization, the prerequisite for one's identification with society as a whole. That this was an intensely personal concern emanates from Wander's diaries and correspondence. Edited after her death by Fred Wander, they first appeared as Tagebücher und Briefe in 1979 (DDR), then as Maxie Wander. Leben wär' eine prima Alternative. Tagebuchaufzeichnungen und Briefe (1980 BRD). They cover the last nine years of her life (but are not arranged in chronological order), which are overshadowed by the death of her daughter as the result of an accident, and finally by her own fight for life. The volume is an unusual literary document revealing her urgent quest for self-discovery with the same openness which she encouraged in others. It contains letters to Christa Wolf, a friend to the end.