Amerika Haus NRW Lecture

»This Must Be the Place«

with Anna Winger, author, Berlin and New York City

In her lecture "This must be the Place" as part of the seminar Books and the City by Professor Hanjo Berressem the American author Anna Winger read from her latest novel at the University of Cologne and afterwards dicussed the changes of American society with the students.

"Those who loved the old New York should go to Berlin...." said Anna Winger disappointed by the once trend-setting and creative-innovative Big Apple. Europeans love New York as the most unamerican city of America - but shows like "Sex and the City" have displaced the cool elegance of Woody Allen's Manhattan long ago..

Five years ago, Anna Winger moved to Berlin and every time she goes back to New York, she wishes to conjure back "her old" New York. The "old" New York is the New York of artists and intellectuals who talk all night long about love and life, the New York of dinner parties, where lively discussions about politics went on instead of the real estate market. After a short boom on Wall Street in the eighties the glamorous city sank into a recession and with the boom died the flair of creativity and political engagement, the progressivity and artistic innovation, laments Anna Winger. A city as symbol for a society and its change?!

Anna Winger became by choice citizen of Berlin and processes the changes of "her" city New York - and with it of the American society - in essays for German and American newspapers and her recent novel "This must be the Place". Recently essays by Anna Winger were published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Editions: January 26th, 2010 and April 3rd, 2010).