BBC Radio 4 Extra will be serving up a literary accompaniment to BBC Radio 4's major new documentary series Germany: Memories of a Nation. A partnership with the British Museum and presented by Neil MacGregor, this six week series will explore the fascinating and complex history of Germany from the origins of the Holy Roman Empire right up to the present day.

Programmes on BBC Radio 4 Extra will include work by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Bertolt Brecht, Franz Kafka, The Brothers Grimm, Gunter Grass, Heinrich Boll, and Thomas Mann.

Neil McGregor reflects on the importance of the writer Christa Wolf in the first week of the series. Anne McElroy introduces an extract from her acclaimed work, The Quest for Christa T. It is translated by Christopher Middleton and read by Sian Thomas.

Christa Wolf was one of the foremost post war German writers. Born in 1929, she grew up under the Nazi's and lived most of her adult life in East Germany, until the Berlin Wall came down. She was born in 1929, was a member of girls' division of the Hitler Youth. At the end of the war, her family tried to flee the Red Army but ended up in the Russian zone anyway. She died in 2011. The Quest for Christa T is considered one of her finest works. It is about a young woman who turns against the shallowness of the West but struggles in the East.

Perhaps it is not surprising that the role of fate and the power of ideologies to change the course of our lives permeate all her work.

First broadcast on Radio 4 in 2009. Show less