Platekatel Banzkosumirade

Platekatel-Banzkosumirade or The Search for the Lost Pin is the title of a children's book by the author Erich Köhler . It was first published in 1973.

The 5-year-old Roswitha, the protagonist of the book, has to discover that she has lost the pin that she had taken and hidden under her apron ribbon after the needle fell from her grandmother's sewing table. Her search leads the girl through a rural environment, which is very much shaped by GDR- typical conditions. Roswitha is so absorbed in her search, during which she talks to various animals, among other things, that she forgets everything else around her and is soon missed, which triggers a search by the village community. In the end, both Roswitha and the pin are found again. The latter was stolen from a magpie.

Platekatelbanzkosumirade is a term used by the swallow Roswitha speaks to describe the area in which she lives and raises her young from spring to autumn. Since the swallows fly very quickly over the surrounding dwellings, they pull individual syllables of the place names together to form a term. The swallow's winter quarters are called Bungakimangkambalungu, which goes back to the places Bongo, Kampala, Buganda, Kimango and Luganga. The localities that make up Platekatelbanzkosumirade are occasionally indicated in the book, but never fully reproduced.

The swallows use the term Platekatelbanzkosumirade as a homogeneous word, according to the meaning it has for them. When Roswitha uses the term, however, the word is written with a dash . This spelling can also be found in the book title. In this usage, Platekatel-Banzkosumirade stands for the ideal typical image of the rural community described in the book.