"The Unfinished Story," published in 1975 in Sinn und Form, has been available as a book since 1977. It became a bestseller and a school text. The narrative depicts the impossible love affair between the eighteen-year-old daughter of a GDR official, the chairman of the district K., and one of those typical "asocials" who rejected the state through their lifestyle. Twenty years later, in 1996, after reviewing his Stasi file, the author writes "The End of the Unfinished Story." He learned that the model for his Karin had reported this contact to the Stasi as an informant named "Martina." Volker Braun uses this revelation as an opportunity for a critical reflection on his own role as a dissident, an intellectual nonetheless connected to the GDR through the utopia of socialism.