Berlin – Moscow. A journey on foot

Berlin – Moscow. A journey on foot is a travel report by the journalist and author Wolfgang Büscher , which was published as a book in 2003 and has received several awards.

• Start and finish of Büscher's hike
• 

  Berlin

• 

  Moscow

content

In the book, Büscher reports on his walk from Berlin to Moscow. He made the trip in the summer and autumn of 2001, it lasted 82 days. Büscher covered around 2,500 kilometers on foot. It ran through Germany , Poland , Belarus and Russia .

During his trip, Büscher visited places steeped in history several times, for example the Seelow Heights east of Berlin, the Bjaresina river in Belarus and the graves near Katyn near the Belarusian-Russian border. The trip followed the historical traces of Napoleon's Russian campaign in 1812 and the German Army Group in the middle of the German-Soviet War from 1941 to 1945. In Belarus, Büscher undertook an excursion off the hiking route to the region around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on the border with Ukraine .

During his hike, Büscher got to know many, sometimes bizarre -looking residents of the regions he was traveling through, which he describes in anecdotes and in detail, often with historical or family references. The hike through Belarus with a stay in Minsk also gives the reader an insight into the special political conditions of this country - which Büscher describes as "tired".

Stations of the journey

•  Germany
  • Berlin
  • Seelow
•  Poland
  • Küstrin
  • Oborniki
  • Żnin
  • Toruń
  • Białystok
•  Belarus
  • Hrodna
  • Nawahradak
  • Minsk
  • Orsha
  • Vitebsk
•  Russia
  • Katyn
  • Smolensk
  • Safonovo
  • Vyasma
  • Moshaisk
  • Moscow

Reviews

The critics praised Büscher, among other things, for his combination of the everyday and the remarkable as well as documentation and reflection. This enables him to express his own observations during the long hike as well as the geographical and historical expanse. In addition, he went to great lengths for his work.

In Berlin - Moscow , Büscher combined journalism and literature in his own way .

Awards and nominations

• 2003: Kurt Tucholsky Prize (Germany) for literary journalism
• 2003: Johann Gottfried Seume Literature Prize
• 2004: Nominated for the German Book Prize , non-fiction category

expenditure

• Wolfgang Büscher Berlin - Moscow: A journey on foot . Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-49800-631-2 .
• Wolfgang Büscher (read by Ulrich Matthes ) Berlin - Moscow: A journey on foot. Reading . Audiobook, 3 CDs, Der Audio Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-89813-293-5 .
• Wolfgang Büscher Berlin - Moscow: A journey on foot . SPIEGEL-Edition 2006/2007, No. 4, Hamburg: SPIEGEL-Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-87763-004-9 .

literature

• Ariel Hauptmeier: Wolfgang Büscher: Berlin - Moscow. A Journey on Foot (2003). In: Stephan Porombka, Erhard Schütz (ed.): 55 classics of cultural journalism. Berlin: Siebenhaar 2008, pp. 241–244.
• Andrzej Denka: Between Peace Poetics and Reconciliation Kitsch. Individualized memory in the travel reports of Wolfgang Büscher and Peter Handke. In: Hans Henning Hahn, Heidi Hein-Kirchner, Anna Kochanowska-Nieborak (eds.): Culture of remembrance and kitsch of reconciliation. Herder Institute, Marburg 2008, pp. 163–179.
• Boris Hoge: Geopolitics and the Power of Maps. The conquest of the 'Russian space' in Wolfgang Büscher's Berlin - Moscow . In: Ders .: Writing about Russia. The construction of space, history and cultural identity in German narrative texts since 1989. Heidelberg: Winter 2012, pp. 120–150.

Web links

• Berlin - Moscow at Perlentaucher.de
• On foot to Moscow - a conversation with Wolfgang Büscher (literaturkritik.de)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Buchmarkt.de: Wolfgang Büscher receives the Kurt Tucholsky Prize 2003
2. ↑ Buchmarkt.de: The winner of the 2003 Seume Prize is Wolfgang Büscher
3. ↑ Stern.de: Börsenverein announces nominations ( memento of the original from November 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.