Three friends, a kitchen table, the night outside the window: Annett Gröschner, Peggy Mädler and Wenke Seemann talk. They talk about themselves as ‘East German women’, whatever that pigeonhole means, about the happiness of crooked lives, about the present with its constantly encroaching past. They drink, laugh and wrestle, talk about scraps of memories and contradictions, about the complexity of imprints and about ideals that have become alien over the years. In Buddhism, there are spirits that are born from carelessly discarded things – ‘what would the thing spirit of the GDR look like?’ the three ask. Their book is as witty and warm-hearted towards remembering and reinventing oneself as any great social discussion deserves.
Annett Gröschner, born in Magdeburg in 1964, has lived in Berlin since 1983 and is a writer and journalist. In 2021, she was awarded the Grand Art Prize Berlin - Fontane Prize and the Klopstock Prize of the State of Saxony-Anhalt. Peggy Mädler, born in Dresden in 1976, has lived in Berlin since 1994 and is an author and dramaturge. In 2019, she received the Fontane Literature Prize from the Fontane City of Neuruppin and the state of Brandenburg for her second novel Wohin wir gehen. Wenke Seemann, born in Rostock in 1978, has lived in Berlin since 2000 and is a freelance artist and social scientist. Her works have been exhibited at the Kunsthalle Rostock, the Albertinum Dresden and the Sprengel Museum Hannover, among others.
