"Schlesisches Himmelreich" ("Silesian Heaven"), published in 1968, during the run-up towards a pragmatic and cautious easing of political tensions between East and West Germany, was the first of her novels to achieve success on both sides of the Cold War barrier dividing the two Germanies. Strongly autobiographical, in this 700 page novel ("Bildungsroman") the author recalls the Nazi delusions that destroyed the cohabitative lives of Germans, Poles and Jews, and the ensuing ethnic cleansing. Twelve years later another strongly autobiographical novel, "Fische auf Zweigen" ("literally, "Fish in the branches"") dealt with the personal development of a young woman who has grown up in the conservative Silesian middle-class milieu of the 1920s coming to terms with the challenges and family tensions presented by life in the Soviet occupation zone and the German Democratic Republic in the later 1940s. Gender and discrimination issues feature particularly strongly in this book.