She married Justus Wittkop, a Nazi deserter, in Paris and moved with him to Germany in 1946 after the end of the Second World War.Her first book, on the German writer E.T.A.
She wrote several highly regarded novels and travelogues.
She also contributed to the art pages of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
After her partner committed suicide, she wrote an account of it in Hemlock (1988).
She herself committed suicide in 2002, after she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Although popular in France and Germany, Wittkop's works are not widely available in English.
The Necrophiliac was translated in a Canadian edition by Don Bapst in 2011, and in a Danish edition by Christina Ytzen in 2018.