Over there

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Over there. When your parents were little and Germany were just two is a picture book for children from the age of seven. The family and story book describes the everyday life of two families in the Federal Republic and the GDR in the 1980s until reunification with a look back at the time of National Socialism and the division of Germany . The protagonists , two elementary school children, are cousin and cousin; Max lives in the west, Maja in the east. The book was published in 2018 by the Leipzig publisher Klett Children's Book. The text was written by Franziska Gehm , the illustrations are by Horst Klein . Reviewers rated the work consistently positive.

background

The author and translator Franziska Gehm, born in 1974 in Sondershausen (Thuringia), found the turnaround to be a stroke of luck: “I wasn't a working class child , my parents were both doctors and not in the party. I shouldn't have taken a high school diploma. ”The fall of the Berlin Wall allowed high school diplomas and studies in Jena, Great Britain and Ireland. The graphic designer and illustrator Horst Klein, born in Remscheid (North Rhine-Westphalia) in 1965 , graduated from high school in Leer (East Friesland) in 1984 , trained as an advertising clerk and from 1989 studied visual communication in Krefeld , where he has lived since then. The title of the book, which stands for East and West, comes from him: “Hüben” means “here”, “over there” “there”. Hübendrüben Gehm, who moved to Munich for a job at BMW , was a heart project, also for the sake of her own children: “After I arrived here, I realized that we always knew a lot about life in the West. Especially because we all watched western television, even when it was forbidden. Conversely, interest in how we lived in the GDR was probably limited. I wanted to tell you about it. "

Gehm and Klein appear in their hands-on readings with quiz games up to tearing up a wall of paper stretched through the room, including 2019 at the invitation of the Göttingen Literary Center in the nationwide "Week of Language and Reading" in the Göttingen Hermann Nohl Elementary School.

content

The first double page introduces Max, who lives with his parents and sister Maria in the FRG on the left, Maja from the GDR with her brother Maik and parents on the right. The two children share a preference for ice cream, Winnetou and pranks on the bell - "but some things are different".

Max's father works in a small hardware company, the mother is a housewife. Max has his own room in the family's house. In the garage is the VW Golf I , in the garden a porch swing . Max thinks that is “really strong”. Maja's family has just moved into a small apartment in a new development. Now they have a toilet in the apartment that has heating, the Trabi is in a row garage a little further away. The parents take the Ikarus bus to the company, Maja goes to kindergarten and Maik goes to day care .

At the start of school, Max receives a school cone, Maja a sugar cone. His satchel has reflectors , Majas is decorated with a picture of a dog. Maja writes with a Heiko fountain pen , Max with a pelican . For good performance, Max receives a hardworking card from the teacher , Maja a hardworking bee in her mother's book .

After school, Max is expected by his mother for lunch (fish fingers, mashed potatoes and spinach). When he has done his homework, he reads Mickey Mouse notebooks or, for example, he watches Maya the Bee films on television. Maja gets her lunch at school and then goes to the after- school care center , where she does her homework or plays. Often the parents come home after her. Maja reads Abrafaxe comics, listens to records or watches television - mostly Western television , although it is forbidden.

Outside, Max prefers to play soccer with his friends, or he rides through the settlement with Stefan and Michael on BMX bikes. The girls are on roller skates , they play with their Barbie dolls. Ice cream is available from the ice cream truck that drives through the settlement. Maja has a folding bike and a self-made skateboard . Exciting are their trips to the dilapidated old building district. There are three types of soft ice cream at the kiosk : vanilla, strawberry and chocolate ice cream .

Max attends communion classes and has to go to church on Sundays. He's still a wolf with the boy scouts . His mother is happy that he takes recorder lessons once a week . Maja goes to the pioneer afternoon , where the children do handicrafts, sing, hear fairy tales or learn something about the class enemy . They sing pioneer songs to the grandmothers and grandfathers in the People's Solidarity Club or they visit their sponsor brigade .

Max's summer vacation is six weeks long. The family flies to Spain - there is still free hot food and proper cutlery on the plane at the time - and spends two weeks in a large hotel with a swimming pool. Max is excited because the children are allowed to stay up late. Maja's family would like to go to the Baltic Sea. Because she doesn't get a vacation spot there , she goes on vacation to the Mecklenburg Lake District like every year , where the VEB Saxonia, where the parents work, provides bungalows for its working people . In the facility you will meet people who you already know from home. Of the eight weeks vacation Maja spends two more weeks in the summer camp .

In the FRG, summer means bombing the ass in the outdoor pool, jumping around naked under the spray of the lawn sprinkler, watching the ZDF holiday program, having a holiday pass, being bored and mosquito bites. Getting blisters from rowing in the GDR, picking blueberries and boiling them down, boredom and mosquito bites.

Max's favorite dishes and delicacies include grilled chicken, french fries, burgers, Jägerschnitzel, pizza, worms , double biscuits, air chocolate, shower bars, edible paper, negro kisses and cheesecake. Cola? He is not allowed! Maja likes most Broiler , peppering meat , grubs , Hotellokekse, spa wafers and Russian bread . Crispy flakes? Doesn't exist.

Max wants to be an astronaut , Neil Armstrong is his hero. Max and Maria dream of becoming a pop star or BMX star, having a great car or helping children in distant countries. They are scared of the Russians, environmental disasters, wolves, the strict school principal and that their parents will split up. Maja's idol is Yuri Gagarin , she wants to become a cosmonaut . Maja and her brother Maik dream of a western denim jacket, a Walkman , winning an Olympic medal or helping starving children in Nicaragua . They are afraid of rowdies, of saying the wrong thing, of the Americans who could trigger a nuclear war. Most of all, Maja wishes to visit Max - that is not possible. She wonders why it is.

Before Majas and Max's parents lived there was a great Germany, whose leader Adolf Hitler started a war in which terrible things happened. Other countries wanted to end that, they fought back, occupied and defeated Germany. Two countries emerged.

The people on both sides of the border speak German , but the countries developed differently. The residents of both states consider themselves better than the other and argue about where life is better. "With us all people are FREE!" Is the saying in the West. “ We are the good guys!” And “With us all people are the same!”, People in the East are certain. Some there still prefer to be free, building escape tunnels to the west on the heavily guarded border. Many people die trying to escape. There is a cold war . Max and Maja are afraid of a big bang.

If Max and family want to go to their relatives in the GDR, they need their invitation, and at the border they have to fill out a mountain of papers. Max can't phone Maja, but he sends her a Walkman, for example. When a parcel from relatives arrives at Maja's family - some don't arrive at all, sometimes something is missing because the customs officer would also like to have a Walkman - Maja's father unpacks jeans, yes! -Coffee, and a magazine is hidden in the bottom of the chocolate box. “ No problem”, they say in the West, “straight out”, “you take off your seatbelt”, and when a punk demands “No power for anyone”, he gets to hear “Then go over there!”. “Are you still crunchier?” “Make the flakes” is the motto in the east, and people joke: “Why is the banana crooked? Because it steers clear of the GDR !!! ”An unripe orange from Cuba is commented on with“ Fidel's revenge ”, which leads to the rebuke“ You are not here at Fritz Heckert ! ”.

Then Mikhail Gorbachev can be seen on television talking about glasnost . The reaction is the same with Max's and Maja's parents: "Crazy!" "Do you think ...". The people in the GDR are becoming more courageous and take to the streets, even Maya's parents demonstrate. More and more people are traveling to Hungary in order to get to Austria from there.

Erich Honecker does not want to change anything in the GDR, but he can no longer determine the citizens. When Günter Schabowski spoke of freedom of travel on television in November 1989 and the border was opened, Maja's family drove west, Max's family met them. "Crazy" cheer the people, two border guards on a watchtower are at a loss: "And what's going on, colleague?" "Weeß och nich." Max and Maja can finally play bell pranks together, "even if they are almost too old for that" .

reception

"In pointed, short texts and sometimes hilarious pictures," wrote Stefan Locke in the Frankfurter Allgemeine , Gehm and Klein tell the story of Max and Maja, who grow up separately. Despite all the obvious differences, it quickly becomes clear when reading and looking at how little the "system question" played a role in everyday life. When asked by children why there were two countries at all, the book answers "child-friendly, but clearly with the world war that Germany triggered". Locke emphasized that Hübendrüben was "the third very successful book" from the young Leipzig Klett children's book publishing house, which was dedicated to the topics of German division and the Peaceful Revolution of 1989.

Eva-Christina Meier praised the story of the division and reunification in the daily newspaper , as Eva-Christina Meier praised the story of the division and reunification . "The narrative picture book also provides understandable and concise information on German National Socialism and Russian perestroika, without which the beginning and end of the GDR could not be understood in children's books either."

"Why was Germany a divided country?" Was the title of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung when reviewing several children's books by Manuela Kalbermatten. Many parents of today's children would have experienced real socialism, but the subject of the lesson was apparently hardly (was) the division of Germany, “especially not in Switzerland”. Over there put children's life in its normality at the center, without judging or romanticizing.

The Deutschlandfunk presented Hübendrüben 2018 as one of the 7 best December books for children: "How different and sometimes similar the everyday life of children was in the 1980s in the FRG and GDR is contrasted in many colorful crayon sequences." Very well drawn and very, very vivid, ”said the reviewer Kim Kindermann in an interview with Frank Meyer at Deutschlandfunk Kultur . The book is "great fun and provides factual knowledge about when there were two Germanys".

Sonja Zellmann rated Hübendrüben in the Badische Zeitung as “great” and recommended: “The whole family should go on this journey through time together, on which there is a lot to discover (band salad in TKKG cassettes!). To remember, to tell, to explain. "

literature

  • Franziska Gehm, Horst Klein (illustrations): Hübendrüben. When your parents were little and Germany was just two. Velcro children's book. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019 ISBN 978-3-95470-184-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Barbara Hordych: In the shadow of the wall. Süddeutsche.de. April 11, 2019, accessed January 16, 2020.
  2. ↑ Horst Klein , klett-kinderbuch.de, accessed on January 16, 2020.
  3. ^ Horst Klein in the catalog of the German National Library
  4. ↑ biography . Kreativfeld.de, accessed on January 16, 2020.
  5. ↑ Neele and Kaja: Children's book "Hübendrüben": When the wall was still standing. shz.de. October 9, 2018, accessed on January 16, 2020 (Interview with Franziska Gehm).
  6. ^ Franziska Gehm and Horst Klein "Hübendrüben". Literary Center Göttingen. May 22, 2019, accessed January 16, 2020.
  7. ↑ Norma Jean Levin: Authors convey to elementary school students BRD and GDR. Göttinger Tageblatt. May 25, 2019, accessed January 16, 2020.
  8. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, first double page (unpaginated).
  9. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, second double page (unpaginated).
  10. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, third double page (unpaginated).
  11. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, fourth double page (unpaginated).
  12. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, fifth double page (unpaginated).
  13. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, sixth double page (unpaginated).
  14. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, seventh double page (unpaginated).
  15. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, eighth double page (unpaginated).
  16. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, ninth double page (unpaginated).
  17. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, tenth double page (unpaginated).
  18. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, eleventh double page (unpaginated).
  19. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, twelfth double page (unpaginated).
  20. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, 13th double page (unpaginated).
  21. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, 14th double page (unpaginated).
  22. ↑ Hub over. Leipzig 2018, 3rd edition 2019, 15th double page (unpaginated).
  23. ↑ Stefan Locke: It continues after the fall of the Berlin Wall. faz.de. March 8, 2019, accessed January 16, 2020.
  24. ↑ Eva-Christina Meier: Of crises and moments of happiness. taz.de. December 2, 2018, accessed January 16, 2020.
  25. ↑ Manuela Kalbermatten: "Why was Germany a divided country?" nzz.ch. June 5, 2019, accessed January 16, 2020.
  26. ↑ The best 7 in December. Deutschlandfunk . December 1, 2018, accessed January 16, 2010.
  27. ↑ In the west one wrote with Pelikan, in the east with Heiko. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur . November 20, 2019, accessed on January 16, 2020 (Kim Kindermann in conversation with Frank Meyer, podcast).
  28. ↑ Sonja Zellmann: "When Germany were still two". Badische-Zeitung.de. September 24, 2018, accessed January 16, 2020.