An editor’s sole return-demand came at the nadir of the Heimat’s physical decay

Evidence

Depression overtook Hoffmann-Rehmie in the mid-1950s, the years of greatest decay and least reconstruction in the former L ü ben; comparing an image of devastation in 1956 with a pristine prewar shot of the same street corner, she made her only explicit demand for the right to return to the Heimat. 109 But already in 1957, the images of devastation reminded her that she was yearning for a former realm. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 974