Presents critical readings of 8 contemporary German novels that feature historically documented women as their main protagonist, and that reconstruct women's lives by combining source material and invention. This book examines how historical events are used to substantiate ideological positions, and how this problematic aspect is considered.

Introduction: historical context; problematizing the female subject; history, identity and gender; identification; narrative technique. Figures of fantasy - Karin Reschke Verfolgtedes Glucks: the paradoxes; gender; illness, the body and homosexual desire; Riandres Milena Antotwortet - en brief: ideological concerns; liberating the historical Jesenska; woman and language. Kein Ort Nirgends - a place for feminist deconstruction? authorial desires; gender; the body and the unconscious; privileging the female; deconstruction and the female subject; Derschatten eines traumes: generalization; the victim model; identification. The political as personal Brigitte Struzyk's - Caroline Unterm Freiheitsbaum: ideological commitment; democracy; eros and action; narrative; method; gender; Caroline - marginality and paternal identification; the rejection of Sororean idealism; Theresa - marginality and maternal identification; the de-mystification of history. Striving for the authentic Sigrid Damm Cornelia Goether: ideological motivation; gender and the problem of historical specificity; narratorial identification and idealization; the role of Goethe; Sybille Knauss Achelise: aims and methods; gender; history and invention. Biography as historical novel - Volker Ebersbach Caroline: the narrative approach; gender - the narrator's fashionable concession; the historical Schlegel-Schelling; female rivalry - a vehicle for narrational misogyny; Sybille Knauss, Charlotte Corday: essentialized subjectivities; the eternal male - the eternal female; pure interiority; Marie's motivation and Marat/Sade; the force of history; conclusion - unexpected bedfellows. Conclusion: narrative technique; gender; defending the antagonistic figure; defending utopia; final words.