Lüdenscheid is a dead-, dead-provicincial town in darkest provincial Germany, quite close to where I grew up (in a virtually identical location). When was Lenin in Lüdenscheid?
He was not. It's an autobiographical book by Richard David Precht, a German philosopher journalist type of person, who wrote a book of this title - and it seems a film based on the book will come out on 5 June. But it's archetypally German, full of references to a particular time and place; not sure how marketable it will be outside Germany.
Precht was born in Solingen 9 years and 29 days after me; Solingen is not so far from where I grew up, and if he describes this as 'provincial' he does not know 'really provincial'! His parents were left-leaning, to the degree of communism , which in the 1960s and particularly the 'terrorist' 70s was not necessarily the best move. But since his father worked in private industry, rather than for the state, it was ok.
Given his parents' left-leaning sympathies the family was involved in all sorts of leftish activities, like the 'Naturfreunde' which seems to be a leftish-leaning environmental organisation, various communist outfits, but also with Terre des Hommes, through whom the family was one of the first in Germany to adopt Vietnamese war orphans. The children's reading material was strictly censored (oh God, don't remind me!) though with a slightly different emphasis than my censorship was - though it seems both he and I were not allowed cartoons. The musical tastes tended to be anti-establishment, and when he was allowed to bring an LP to school to listen to during art lessons, it lasted a whole two minutes. The mother toyed with the idea of the 'Summerhill' style of raising her family, but only in as far as 'her nerves could stand it'. Nevertheless, it seems that things like cleaning teeth, clean and unrepaired clothes, and behaving well in school did not have the highest priority in the family; on the contrary, the parents seemed to be quietly pleased when bolshy young Richard stood up to the sometimes very elderly teachers (I should have tried that - I would have been dead!). This made it difficult for the Precht children to fit in with the average Solingen provincial crowd - the mother's way of dressing the children, often in cast-offs regardless of the gender of the previous wearer did not help either (I notice that on the cover photo the about 6-year-old Richard appears to be wearing a girl's vest).
He writes about the confusion caused in his leftist worldview when the Baader-Meinhof group and its associates started murdering people, and when, at the end of the 70s all sorts of people, former commies or otherwise, suddenly moved to the Green end of politics.
I can relate to a lot of the feel of that period, even though by 1975 I was out of Germany. Some of the aspects of the upbringing were similar, like the absence of a TV, the censorship of reading materials and music (though I would not have dared reading or listening to anything that might not have been approved), the move to dull grey houses in the 'burbs, the music lessons (despite appearances to the contrary, his mother was surprisingly bourgeois).
It's quite an interesting book, though I find it a bit hard work trying to understand all the ins and outs of German politics; quite often he goes into the politics to such a degree that I wonder if he is padding things out a little - after all, the book was supposed to be about him. I also wonder how the present-day generation of young Germans will be able to relate to this rather interesting and exciting period he is describing, which is now long-gone. The rot set in with the year after mine at school, when the young ladies all became very conservative.....
Lenin and Lüdenscheid? It seems that Lüdenscheid was the furthest west point reached by 'Young Pioneers' type camps....Never knew it had that in it!
He was not. It's an autobiographical book by Richard David Precht, a German philosopher journalist type of person, who wrote a book of this title - and it seems a film based on the book will come out on 5 June. But it's archetypally German, full of references to a particular time and place; not sure how marketable it will be outside Germany.
Precht was born in Solingen 9 years and 29 days after me; Solingen is not so far from where I grew up, and if he describes this as 'provincial' he does not know 'really provincial'! His parents were left-leaning, to the degree of communism , which in the 1960s and particularly the 'terrorist' 70s was not necessarily the best move. But since his father worked in private industry, rather than for the state, it was ok.
Given his parents' left-leaning sympathies the family was involved in all sorts of leftish activities, like the 'Naturfreunde' which seems to be a leftish-leaning environmental organisation, various communist outfits, but also with Terre des Hommes, through whom the family was one of the first in Germany to adopt Vietnamese war orphans. The children's reading material was strictly censored (oh God, don't remind me!) though with a slightly different emphasis than my censorship was - though it seems both he and I were not allowed cartoons. The musical tastes tended to be anti-establishment, and when he was allowed to bring an LP to school to listen to during art lessons, it lasted a whole two minutes. The mother toyed with the idea of the 'Summerhill' style of raising her family, but only in as far as 'her nerves could stand it'. Nevertheless, it seems that things like cleaning teeth, clean and unrepaired clothes, and behaving well in school did not have the highest priority in the family; on the contrary, the parents seemed to be quietly pleased when bolshy young Richard stood up to the sometimes very elderly teachers (I should have tried that - I would have been dead!). This made it difficult for the Precht children to fit in with the average Solingen provincial crowd - the mother's way of dressing the children, often in cast-offs regardless of the gender of the previous wearer did not help either (I notice that on the cover photo the about 6-year-old Richard appears to be wearing a girl's vest).
He writes about the confusion caused in his leftist worldview when the Baader-Meinhof group and its associates started murdering people, and when, at the end of the 70s all sorts of people, former commies or otherwise, suddenly moved to the Green end of politics.
I can relate to a lot of the feel of that period, even though by 1975 I was out of Germany. Some of the aspects of the upbringing were similar, like the absence of a TV, the censorship of reading materials and music (though I would not have dared reading or listening to anything that might not have been approved), the move to dull grey houses in the 'burbs, the music lessons (despite appearances to the contrary, his mother was surprisingly bourgeois).
It's quite an interesting book, though I find it a bit hard work trying to understand all the ins and outs of German politics; quite often he goes into the politics to such a degree that I wonder if he is padding things out a little - after all, the book was supposed to be about him. I also wonder how the present-day generation of young Germans will be able to relate to this rather interesting and exciting period he is describing, which is now long-gone. The rot set in with the year after mine at school, when the young ladies all became very conservative.....
Lenin and Lüdenscheid? It seems that Lüdenscheid was the furthest west point reached by 'Young Pioneers' type camps....Never knew it had that in it!
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