Christa Reinig (6 August 1926, in Berlin – 30 September 2008, in Munich) was a German poet, fiction and non-fiction writer, and dramatist.
In 1964, after her mother's death,[8] Reinig travelled to West Germany to receive the Bremen Literature Prize and stayed there, settling in Munich.
[5] In 1971, she broke her neck in a fall on a spiral staircase; inadequate medical care left her severely disabled,[9] and having to survive on a government pension.
[7] Reinig began as a lyric poet, and her voice is frequently allegorical and metaphysical, as well as characterised by black humor,[3] irony,[2] brash, life-affirming sarcasm,[3] and an "extremely refined simplicity".
Her 1976 satirical novel, Entmannung, reveals the patriarchalism in both men's and women's thinking processes,[1] and led to her coming out;[4][12] in the 1979 cycle of poems, Müßiggang ist aller Liebe Anfang (later published in English translation as Idleness is the Root of All Love), she expressed her lesbianism in her work for the first time.