War ended in May 1945 and the twelve year National Socialist nightmare ended with it. Ina Seidel immediately resigned her membership of the Prussian Academy of Arts, which by this time would have been discredited by its close links with the pre-1945 government. She herself faced strong criticism because of her record of strong public support for the Hitler government. However, within the American, British and French occupation zones her books very soon returned to favour with the reading public, and they continued to find plenty of buyers and readers till well into the 1960s. During the 1950s she produced two further major novels with which she sought to rescue her reputation. In "Das unverwesliche Erbe" (1954: "loosely, "The inalienable legacy"") the expanded on the Christian aspects of her work. In her final novel, "Michaela" she expressly accepted, on behalf of herself and of the upper-middle class more widely, a share in the responsibility for National Socialism. Despite fierce rejection by mainstream literary critics in West Germany (as the western occupation zones had become in 1949), her last novel was another major success with readers. As a result of the postwar division of Germany the old Prussian Academy of Arts was effectively replaced by two institutions. In 1955 Ina Seidel was admitted to membership of the western Academy of Arts in West Berlin. Long before she died, in 1974, her principal works had been translated into a number of foreign languages. A less than flattering obituary in Die Zeit nevertheless described the report of her demise as one of those to which one's first reaction is surprise that the deceased had not already died many years earlier ("Ja, hat sie noch gelebt?").