[4] Rein wrote literary criticism that was published in 1947/48 in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (GDR) magazine Einheit - Theoretical Monthly Journal for Socialism.
In 1950, according to preliminary remarks on behalf of the chairman of the Cultural Advisory Board, Erich Weinert,[6] an attempt was made to survey the narrative prose that appeared in Germany after the war and was published under the title The New Literature.
Initiated by Johannes R. Becher,[7] a campaign was launched against the new literature in GDR magazines,[8] which led to the publisher taking the book off the market[9] and Rein's membership of the Cultural Advisory Board was suspended.
His books on the end of the war and the immediate postwar period in Berlin, made him an East German representative of rubble literature (Trümmerliteratur).
In 1952, it was published by MW Books as Finale Berlin in an abridged translation by David Porter, representing about one-third of the German text.