Returning to a destroyed Germany, Anna Seghers campaigned for a new political beginning. For her personally, it was a time in which she herself was in great danger. She was a young woman from a bourgeois family, emigrated to Mexico, married to a Hungarian who had contacts with communists in his country of birth who had been persecuted or murdered in the meantime. Each of these facets could offer opportunities for attack. The complex post-war situation with its many contradictions and conflicts is present in her stories. Even more than in other creative periods, the author bundles the stories into cycles, which gives them a strong, common message. The most beautiful and important collection of individual stories is "Der Bienenstock" (The Beehive), which harks back to classic collections of stories, but modernises such models thoroughly: The stories are arranged chronologically and supplemented by previously unpublished texts from the estate ("The Grave", "The Grenade", "The Voice from Above"). Inner connections between the individual stories thus become comprehensible. The appendix with notes and commentary provides reception aids for historical, biographical and work-historical text references. The description of the contemporary reception in East and West includes adaptations for theatre plays and film adaptations. Ute Brandes is Professor of German at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.