Blühende Landschaften. Eine Heimatkunde
Flourishing Landscapes. A Local HistoryGoldmann Verlag, München 2004, 220 pages
It does not begin according to expectation, as in general there is very little expectable in this small German-German ‘local history’, a real stroke of luck. At bottom, the reader marvels the whole time and even regrets in many places that he, born as he is the West Germany, could not experience certain things. Blühende Landschaften, that must be said beforehand, is not a sad or lachrymose book; on the contrary. Nor is it steeped in a nostalgia for former East Germany, although certain achievements of the GRD are avowedly dear to the author’s heart – for example, trabis . [...] Blühende Landschaften is no generation X novel for East Germany and also no ‘zone children’ fantasy. After all the collective confessions, this book shows rather how simple it can be to speak for oneself: [...] ‘In recent years, Dresden has lost incredibly many inhabitants. For example, me. In 1993, I moved to Hamburg’. And it is only there that the narrator becomes something about which he knew nothing before or even that it existed: ‘an East German’.
Peter Richter – Biography
Julia Encke: „Der geplünderte Osten"
© Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12.03.2004
