Elsner then lived as a freelance writer in various places: Lake Starnberg, Frankfurt, in Rome from 1963 to 1964, in London from 1964 to 1970, then in Paris, Hamburg, New York, and finally in Munich.
In her 1970 novel Berührungsverbot (The Touch Ban or The Prohibition of Contact), several couples try to transcend the limits of the bourgeois sexual mores of their middle-class background by engaging in group sex orgies.
[4] She was an ardent supporter of the government of East Germany, and left the German Communist Party in June 1989 due to their pro-Gorbachev tendencies.
[5] She returned to the party in October 1989 as a highly critical and "uncomfortable" member, as a display of her strong communist convictions.
[8] Elsner's mental health began to decline due to a mix of economic problems, lack of literary success, and loss of political perspective after the fall of the Berlin Wall.