Book Club
German Book Club Reads Theresia Enzensberger

06/18/19
6pm
Goethe-Institut New York

At the June German Book Club meeting we will discuss Theresia Enzensberger's Blaupause (Hanser, 2017, €10,90 ISBN: 978-3423146715).

Luise Schilling is young, inquisitive and has a promising future ahead of her. At the beginning of the turbulent Twenties, she arrives at Weimar’s Bauhaus University. She takes classes with professors such as Gropius and Kandinsky and throws herself into the dreams and ideas of her epoch. Luise has ambitions of achieving a great deal in life – but little of it has to do with paying homage to great men.

First, Luise falls in love with the dazzling art student Jakob, then in the politicized graphic artist, Hermann. But these are just two of the figures she meets during a heady period. From technology to art, communism to the avant garde, populism to the youth movement, Luise encounters the social utopias that still shape us to the present day. As if looking at the headlines of today’s newspapers, what becomes clear is that the greater fight for freedom never stops at our own individual lives. Fast-paced and highly topical, Theresia Enzensberger’s story depicts a young woman in the throes of life: from brutal conflicts between right and left, to a pair of young lovers leaping into a river at night, almost one hundred years ago.

Kindly RSVP via email to library-newyork@goethe.de if you plan to attend.