Her writings discuss political, economic, and scientific power, making her an influential spokesperson in East and West Germany during post-World War II for the empowerment of individuals to be active within the industrialized and patriarchal society.

[3] She joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1949 and left it in June 1989, six months before the Communist regime collapsed.

During the Cold War, Wolf was openly critical of the leadership of the GDR, but she maintained a loyalty to the values of socialism and opposed German reunification.

Christa T. was a work that — while briefly touching on a disconnection from one's family's ancestral home – was primarily concerned with the experiences of a woman feeling overwhelming societal pressure to conform.

[6] Kassandra is perhaps Wolf's most important book[citation needed], reinterpreting the Battle of Troy as a war for economic power and a shift from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society.

Auf dem Weg nach Tabou gathered essays, speeches, and letters written during the four years following the reunification of Germany.

In Accident, the narrator's brother is undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumor a few days after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster had occurred.

[11][12] Nicholas Shakespeare (novelist and biographer) wrote that in East Germany "writers such as Christa Wolf became irrelevant overnight once the Berlin Wall was broached".

[14] Fausto Cercignani's study of Wolf's earlier novels and essays on her later works have helped promote awareness of her narrative gifts, irrespective of her political and personal ups and downs.

The emphasis placed by Cercignani on heroism of women in Christa Wolf's works has opened the way to subsequent studies in this direction.