Our intrepid reporter Helena Fram interviewed Siegfried Lokatis, Professor in Book Science (Buchwissenschaft) at the University of Leipzig, on convincing shops around Leipzig to do something a little different: putting historic books in their display windows to run parallel with the Leipziger Buchmesse.
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Behind the cosy façade of my FRG-passport lies concealed a bubbling volcano of emotion. I am tired of being complimented for Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. I am tired of being asked how I feel about winning the World Cup four times. And I am tired of hearing the words Stasi and Plattenbau.
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"My sudden love affair with Aitmatov nearly made me flunk my German exam in tenth grade. 'Heroes of Our Everyday Socialist Life' was to be the topic of our written compositions. I wrote an essay about Aitmatov’s novel The Place of the Skull. [My German teacher] managed to save me from flunking. But Aitmatov saved
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"In history class, I single-handedly denigrated the Soviet Union. We were sitting with our textbooks open. I felt bored. There was a photo of Lenin on the page. With my ballpoint pen, I drew Lenin an earring and a Mohican haircut... Forty years earlier in Thuringia, a schoolgirl had adorned a portrait of Stalin with
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Part II of this five-part series depicts the beginning of the accidental pen-pal relationship between Diana growing up in the GDR and a girl growing up in the Soviet Union - the pivot of the whole story. We welcome readers to share their transnational cultural experiences with us, as well.
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The idea in this new column is for people to share their transnational cultural experiences that shaped and changed them in some important way; the debut, running as a series for the next five weeks, features a Leipzig novelist's relationship with all things Russian growing up in the old Karl-Marx-Stadt, and the friendship she built
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