As West Germans, Stefanie Wally and Klaus Stenzel deal with German-German history. as West Germans. They are both connected by an intensive (letter) contact with a person from the former GDR, who, however, could not be more different. They each write about their experiences in their books, which they will present this evening in the Haus des Gastes. Freedom, oppression and new beginnings in both a divided and a reunited Germany are topics that the two authors and their pen pals have dealt with intensively.
"Luftballon Akte" by Stefanie Wally: A small yellow balloon overcomes borders and gives six-year-old Stefanie from West Germany a pen pal of the same age from East Germany in 1977 - and thus a friend for life. In countless letters, the two girls connect their lives. They reveal similarities and differences in their ways of life, but where the division and separation of the two German states comes between them, their unconditional friendship becomes a bridge.
The "East-West structures of thought" contain a correspondence that has been ongoing since the mid-1990s between Hans Christange (b.: 1934, d.: 2013) from Cottbus, a staunch GDR citizen and former public prosecutor with SED membership and later a member of the Left Party, and Klaus Stenzel (b.1960), a native Berliner (West) who was and is politically influenced by Willy Brandt's SPD, who moved to the southwest as a politics teacher and has been a member of the SPD for over 40 years. The subject of this exchange of letters will be the problems and opportunities of growing together the parts of Germany that have been separated for so long.
You can look forward to an interesting evening and a constructive exchange with our guests Stefanie Wally and Klaus Stenzel.
