The Wall falls in Berlin on 9 November 1989. It is one of the happiest moments in German history.
Ines Geipel had already fled to the West in the summer and experienced the rupture of time, the hopes and new beginnings as a student in Darmstadt. 35 years later, she remembers: How did it feel, this historic moment of happiness? How do we tell each other about East and West and reunification? Where does all the anger come from, where does the denial come from when it comes to the current state of the country? With great clarity and candour, Ines Geipel goes back to the past. Back to the political landscape of upheaval after 1989, back to her own family, back to all the obscured, occupied spaces of memory, back to the trivialisations and legends that so poison the present. A captivating, no, a liberating book that points to the question: Can the Germans gamble away their luck?
"Clever, intellectually precise, stylistically as sophisticated as it is wonderful and very personal." - Süddeutsche Zeitung, Joachim Käppner
"An important contribution to the current lively discourse on the self-image of East Germans" - MDR Kultur, Bettina Baltschev
"An extraordinary book in style and language, which delves deeper into the history of mentalities and is therefore more instructive for the situation in the Federal Republic of Germany than the usual East German racket." - taz FUTURZWEI
"[The book] exposes the narratives that hinder both German-German integration and overcoming the trauma of dictatorship." - Deutschlandfunk “Andruck”, Catrin Stövesand
"Her book broadens our view and offers the chance to learn from the past." - Freie Presse, Welf Grombacher
