Lesung & Gespräch

»This Must Be the Place«

with Anna Winger, author, Berlin and New York
moderated by Julie von Kessel, ZDF-Morgenmagazin.

"Americans are embracing a new era, but the upswing after the shock of the crisis is only noticed at the discount markets. Otherwise the country shuts itself away." says Anna Winger with trepidation of the country's disposition. The American author moved five years ago from New York to Berlin and regularly goes back to the United States. On her last visit at the beginning of this year she experienced a different, changed America whose way of life did not fascinate positively anymore. "It is cold in America: My first visit home under President Obama showed me, that now I am proub to live in Germany. The United States have to learn so much more" wrote Anna Winger disillusioned in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Anna Winger ist citizen by choice of Berlin and has as an expatriate a critical and very personal view of her home the United States of America. In her essays for German and American newspapers in her latest novel "This must be the Place" the author raises questions about changes of "her" city New York and especially American society.

In conversation with Julie von Kessel (ZDF-Morgenmagazin) accompanied by readings from her novel Anna Winger talked in the Literaturhotel Iserlohn about her impressions of American society and how it changed. She spoke of the "old" New York, the city of artists and intellectuals, and discussed what Americans can learn from Germany.

Anecdotes: For Anna Winger, the process of writing is a process of exploring a new city, i.e. Berlin in the case of her book. With Berlin, she felt a sense of familiarity, as it seems like the New York of the past. Different to her is, that Berlin is a city that lives in the now. It is constantly transforming itself. It is not beholden to any legacy and there is no cover up of the past. New York’s legacy of its past tends to be glorified by Americans. For Anna Winger there seems to be an ingrained value a city has on the lives of its citizens. The father born in 1932 that grew up in New York had an upward life trajectory, in his past was the Great Depression, but his future was filled with possibility. The father born in 1932 that grew up in Berlin had a troubled life trajectory, WWII, the partition of Berlin, the wall, all in all a life of hardship, but this father had the opportunity to understand all facets of life.

Anna Winger is an American emigrant to Germany. She met her German husband in South America. She had a total ignorance for German pop culture, whereas her husband used all the same references to American pop culture. This to her is a sign of a sort of colonialism by the United States during the Cold War. When she moved into her apartment in Charlottenburg, there were layers over layers of Raufasertapete (wallpaper), they stripped it down to the bare wall last seen in the early 1930s, when her building was still occupied by Jewish families. In the children’s room they had paintings of fairy tale characters. It made her realize the memory of those who came before, which she celebrated with Passover. This made it also into her book.

When she came to Berlin, she experienced it in light of being from New York, shortly after September 11th. She felt a certain sense of guilt for leaving, and felt as an outsider. Now Anna Winger says, this has tipped. She feels at home in Berlin, and feels a sense of disconnection to New York City life. In New York, people have unequality but do not care. Still there is a community gefühl in New York, she does not have in Charlottenburg. On September 11th, the people of New York went outside their homes just to be in company: sitting on the streets in shock. For Anna Winger, this American superficial friendliness is the lubrication of daily life and one of the things which are harder to come by in Berlin.

Asked which education system she prefers, Anna Winger says, she profited immensely from the American college elitism. Her classes were small and she had the best education one could think of. But this all hinges on the parents. When leaving school, students are in debt by the hundreds of thousands of Dollars. The German university egalitarianism impressed her immensely but obviously the style is lacking somewhat. She still has an appreciation for the openness of this system.