After the war there were six more books, some of which could be classified as novels and some more directly as autobiographical works, based on the author's own experiences. The Oelfken's hopes for some major literary rehabilitation, or a wider acceptance of her reformist ideas on education remained unfulfilled during her lifetime. It was nevertheless striking that, with Germany now divided, she was one of relatively few authors who found their work accepted by the authorities and by (some) readers in both the western occupation zones (after May 1949 West Germany) and the Soviet occupation zone (after October 1949 East Germany. Her most successful book in the immediate aftermath of the war was probably "Fahrt durch das Chaos" (1946), based on her war-time diaries. In what remained of , the municipality/suburb where she had lived as a child, there was particular interest in "Maddo Clüver: Die Konturen einer Kinderlandschaf" (1947), a reissuance of her 1941 novel "Tine" which the National Socialists had banned. Through its careful study of the lives of Polish workers employed - allegedly during the nineteenth century - at the town's cotton mill, "Maddo Clüver" provided the townsfolk with a vision of their own respectable municipality, viewed through Oelfken's bluntly critical yet insightful prism.