The paper discusses Christa Wolf, a GDR author, and the arduous process of her emancipation. Accounting for the young Wolf’s aesthetic views aired in the late 1950s in her first literary criticism, the present discussion centers on the question of “realism” in literature as well as that of the role of literature in a socialist society. The description of Ch. Wolf’s attitude to Anna Seghers is supplemented with some remarks on Wolf’s understanding of literature.