Barbara Honigmann (born 12 February 1949 in Berlin) is a German author and artist.
Barbara Honigmann is the daughter of German-Jewish emigrants, who returned to East Berlin in 1947 after a period of exile in Great Britain. Her mother, Litzi Friedman, was the first wife of Kim Philby and her father, Georg Honigmann, was the chief editor of the "Berliner Zeitung". From 1967 to 1972, she studied theatre at Humboldt University in East Berlin.
In the following years she worked as a dramatist and director in Brandenburg and Berlin. She has been a freelance writer since 1975. In 1984, she left the GDR and currently lives with her family in Strasbourg.
According to Emily Jeremiah from The Institute of Modern Languages Research, "Honigmann’s texts are also paradigmatic of post-exile writings by German-Jewish authors. In addition, they offer examples of literary reactions to the demise of the GDR by its decamped intellectuals, and represent the articulations of a new generation of women writers"