[1] She moved in 1951 from West to East Berlin with her stepfather, Karl Maron, the GDR Minister of the Interior.

She studied theatre and spent time as a directing assistant and as a journalist.

Her works deal to a large degree with confrontation with the past and explore the threats posed both by memory and isolation.

Her prose is sparse, bleak, and lonely, conveying the sensitivity and desperation of her narrators.

Her published work exhibited increasingly conservative political views.