It took some time for Schädlich to settle in the west. In the 1970s an easterner attending a school in Hamburg was unusual. At home the East German Ministry for States Security (Stasi) did not leave the family alone. There were, according to Schädlich, attempts to kidnap her father and force him back over to the east. Her father developed psychological problems and her parents split up. Only when she moved to West Berlin where her father was living from 1979, did she begin to feel "at home in the west". In 1985, when she was trying without success to find a teaching job in the west, her uncle found her an apprenticeship in clothes manufacturing in East Berlin. She went for an interview and found herself ending up in an office of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) where she was urged to renounce her West German citizenship. Realising in time that she was in danger of being trapped again behind the wall Schädlich turned down the job and hastened back to the west. It would be another seven years before she joined the dots and realised that there had been more to 's support with her search for work than she had understood at the time.