Berlinica Publishing LLC

The eminent Lewis Lapham, editor at Harpers and Lapham Quarterly's has passed away at age 89. Here is his foreword for our book "Mark Twain in Berlin".

Across the Atlantic
by Lewis Lapham

It was Mark Twain’s gift for travel writing that first established his illuminating presence on the American literary stage. The ranking followed from the publication in 1869 of “The Innocents Abroad,” Twain’s account of his voyage aboard the steamship, Quaker City, bound for Europe in company with a delegation of American tourists intent upon upgrading their acquaintance with the historic past. Twain duly noted the points of interest while at the same time remarking upon the sense and sensibility of his fellow travelers as they browsed among masterpieces in Italy and France, collected intimations of immortality, and scattered stock phrases of exclamatory rapture. The book owed its success both to the author’s abundant humor and to the formidable powers of observation he had acquired as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River to which he later attributed his angle of approach to the spectacle of the human comedy:

“There is one faculty that the pilot must incessantly cultivate until he has brought it to absolute perfection...That faculty is memory. He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is so and so, he must know it...one cannot easily realize what a tremendous thing it is to know every trivial detail of 1200 miles of river and know it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest street in New York, and travel up and down it, conning its features patiently until you know every door and lamp-post and big and little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you could instantly name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at random in that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will then have a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a pilot’s knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head.”

The exactness of Twain’s perception was further refined by the sightlines of the mid-19th century American frontier, grounded in the experience that Bernard DeVoto, the historian who served as Twain’s literary executor, recognized as that of a young man accustomed to scenes of human squalor and depravity, had “observed night riding and lynching and the flogging of slaves,” was familiar with “commonplaces of lust and corruption,” who as an apprentice printer had been “little better than a tramp,” had joined the surge westward to the Nevada silver mines and the California gold camps, had there to converse “with murderers and harlots, observe a sizeable number of men die” in their boots in his immediate vicinity. A mise-en-scène in which the man who didn’t see clearly didn’t live long enough to hear the punch line and get the joke.

The seventy-five years of Twain’s life (1835–1910) ran in parallel with America’s transformation from an agrarian democracy into an industrial oligarchy. No other writer of his generation saw the country from so many vantage points or became as familiar with so many of its oddly assorted inhabitants. The turn of his mind was democratic. He held his fellow citizens in thoughtful regard not because they were rich or beautiful or famous but because they were his fellow citizens.

He found them plying trades in Massachusetts, building roads in Illinois, selling patent medicines in Iowa, given to believing that across the next stretch of mountains or around the next bend in the river they would safely come home to the end of the rainbow and the pot of gold.

Twain understood America’s moral code to be political, the protection of the other fellow’s liberty in exchange for the protecting of one’s own, the object being to provide all present with the broadest range of expression and the widest room for maneuver. The same generosity of spirit lies at or near the root of all his writing, in his travel notes and satires as in his novels and his letters. He was a man at play with the freedom of his mind, both as an author and as a popular performer on the American lecture stage. For forty years he toured the country to deliver comic monologues for dance hall girls in Carson City, to literary swells in Boston (among them Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes) at banquets attended by presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt. He came to please, to produce laughter in commercial quantity and with it, “the great thing, the saving thing” that makes bearable the acquaintance of grief he knew he could ascribe to most everyone in the theater, the drawing room, or the saloon.

The blessing of Twain’s humor was as gratefully received by audiences abroad as it was by those at home. He traveled forty-nine times across the Atlantic, once across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific—as a dutiful tourist admiring the rubble in the Colosseum and the sculpture in the Louvre; as itinerant sage entertaining crowds in Australia and Ceylon; as attentive bystander in London in 1897 for the pageant that was Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, in Vienna in 1896 for a parading of the plumes of the Hapsburg Empire, “bodies of men-at-arms in the darling velvets of the Middle Ages . . . beautiful costumes not to be seen in this world now outside the opera and the picture-books.”

During the last four years of his life, Twain composed his autobiography in the form of a deposition given to a series of stenographers while lying garrulously abed, propped up “against great snowy, white pillows” in a townhouse on lower Fifth Avenue in New York. He employs the approach that in 1859 had shaped his navigations of the Mississippi River, the flow and stream of time caught up in the net of his comprehensive and comprehending memory. The scenes of foreign pomp and circumstance serve Twain as occasions to prefer the simplicity of things American. He does not favor the “showy episodes” of his life, choosing instead the “common experiences” that “bring the past face to face with the present,” and as miscellaneous exhibits he introduces into the record, previously published anecdotes and sketches, newspaper clippings, philosophical digressions, theatrical asides, every trivial detail that he knows with the absolute exactness of a Mississippi River steamboat pilot.

The result is the story of a life that is the portrait of an age, something seen in Calcutta in 1896 reminding him of something said in San Francisco in 1894, his first impression of Florence in 1892 sending him back to Missouri in 1849.
Twain brings the same gregarious and affectionate intelligence to his encounter with Kaiser Wilhelm’s city of Berlin. Andreas Austilat has made of the stories, notes, and observations a joy to read and a wonder to behold.

Berlinica Publishing auf dem Berliner Bücherfest - https://mailchi.mp/e51890caea8a/932185x3xo-8406463

Berlinica Publishing auf dem Berliner Bücherfest - https://mailchi.mp/03cb17dc44d6/932185x3xo-8406471

Kommendes Wochende: Berliner Bücherfest auf dem Bebelplatz!

Auch dieses Jahr ist Berlinica Publishing auf dem Berliner Bücherfest vertreten; auf dem Bebelplatz beim Stand F5. Ihr könnt unsere Bücher angucken und — besser noch! — erwerben, darunter unsere deutschen Longseller Die Kleine Dott, Der Kampf um das Schloss und Unser West-Berlin, das es neuerdings auch auf englisch gibt, aber auch andere englische Bücher von The Berlin Cookbook bis Berlin 1945. Wir haben auch einiges im Angebot.

Das Bücherfest ist am 8. und 9. Juni ab 11.00 bis 19.00 Uhr.

https://mailchi.mp/50e70f100c05/932185x3xo-8406283

"Thirty-five years ago,” writes journalist Eva C. Schweitzer, “a socialist paradise perished almost without a trace.” This utopia had everything: no compulsory national service, minimal private ownership of the means of production – well, hardly any production at all – and a bustling culture scene supported by vast government subsidies and countless leftwing or anarchist political initiatives. Pity about the barbed wire and the militarised police, but hey, this was real existing socialism. An idealistic island encircled by enemies. And its name was… West Berlin."

The Western canon: Why readers need more West Berlin literature - The Berliner Cold-War West Berlin may be iconic to music fans, but its literary afterlife is lacking.

Berlinica Publishing auf dem Berliner Bücherfest - https://mailchi.mp/50e70f100c05/932185x3xo-8406283

Happy Passover!

Von Ulli Kulke.... Unser Buch "UNSER WEST-BERLIN" ist jetzt auch auf englisch rausgekommen. Das ganze Gefühl von damals kommt wieder hoch. Viel Szene und Nicht-Szene. Mit Beiträgen von Gretchen Dutschke, W. Kaminer, H. Martenstein, R.v.Praunheim,
Bernd Matthies, U. Kulke u.v.a.m : "Our West Berlin. Storybook from the Island". Aus Eva C. Schweitzer's Berlinica-Verlag. Natürlich nach wie vor auch in deutsch erhältlich.
(Dieser Hinweis ist mit Biggi Schulz abgesprochen)

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Peter Schickele, Composer and Gleeful Sire of P.D.Q. Bach, Dies at 88 He wrote more than 100 symphonic, choral, solo instrumental and chamber works. But he was better known, and celebrated, as a musical parodist. Who can forget the “Concerto for Horn and Hardart”?

That should be shunned.

Do You Have ‘Bookshelf Wealth’? A TikTok home-décor trend has irked some bibliophiles.

Children playing 'Building the Wall,' West Berlin, Germany" [1962] by Raymond Depardon

Advent, Advent! Here is, as promised, the beginning of a story from Egon Erwin Kisch's "Paradise America" This is a preliminary translation, as the book is still in the works.

Evening, Day, and Night of the Presidential Election.

Jimmy Walker, mayor and the best-dressed man of New York (being well-dressed is just as important in the State of Equality as it is in the German students’ corps). Jimmy Walker stands in Times Square and speaks in a voice that travels, with impressive gestures and nicely twisted phrases in favor of Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith.
Mounted policemen maintain order while thousands crowd to see the speaker, to hear the speech, and to either to liven it up with cheers or disrupt it with heckling.
Jimmy Walker does not react to these objections nor the applause; he delivers his speech, and when it is over, he begins again with a new one, again with unquestionably broad tones, with exactly the same impressive gestures, and with all the same beautifully devious phrases.
He does this all night without getting tired because he is not physically in Times Square, he is only in Times Square in effigy. He was filmed and vitaphoned while giving this speech, and now his image is projected onto the screen and his voice projected through the speaker over the evening square.
At noon, the Democratic candidate holds a “parade” by driving through the city. First a row of policemen on motorcycles, then policemen on horseback, then two empty buses with bands playing on the roofs; the gentlemen of the press and the gentlemen of film stand on the deck of the following buses with their gadgets.
Then: an open car with the candidate perched on the raised back seat, like a throne. He wears the light brown Derby hat, which made him popular and which he has made so popular that the windows of the hat shops are filled with light brown hats with straight brims. Al Smith rolls by, waving his right and left hand alternately, regardless of whether the crowd is cheering or whistling. After him is the suite of paid and unpaid electors in cars and carrying large signs.
It’s a big parade. The newspapers have written about it in column after column before, and in the evening they will report about it, also in column after column. What is it that happened? A candidate drove, accompanied by music through the streets of New York.
“... through the streets of New York.” That is what happened. The fifty-story, three thousand windowed monolith houses with their flat roofs, towers, and cornices unprotected from dizzying heights are filled by people who are happy to be away for a few minutes from the kiosk, the addition machine, the work desk, and are happy to look down, cheer, and throw real American paper streamers or confetti onto the street.
These streamers are the endless strips of paper from receivers that are set up in every office for stock quotes and business news. The confetti, however, came from the telephone directories for New York City, Brooklyn and New York suburban areas for previous years; contrary to regulations, they were not returned to the telephone company, but were kept so that they could be shredded and thrown by the handful when a channel swimmer, an ocean pilot or at least a presidential candidate was present. This tinsel made from printing paper hangs, floats, and blows from the straight facades down into the desert street canyons, which in no time at all are covered ankle-deep with obsolete stock exchange prices and telephone numbers of the previous year, while the candidate believes he is on the path to power and glory. Banners with the names of the pretendants are stretched across the streets, flags with the image of one of them hoisted on some gables, garishly colored light bulbs form flaming slogans at the clubhouses, leaflets are distributed at all street corners in English, Italian, French, Russian, German, Yiddish, Polish and Greek. (In that order.) The posters are only written in one language, naturally different for each district.
In the evening, a parade rages in Harlem in favor of Herbert Hoover, the “party comrade of Abraham Lincoln”. (A good slogan, since Lincoln is sacred in the Negro district, as the president that liberated the slaves.) The parade rolls past the hundred cinemas, the singing halls, the Speakeasies, the music shops and the Lombard shops of Lenox Avenue, with the garish, suspended cars, which funded the finely dressed Negro masters and finely dressed Negro ladies who sit and whose footboards the poor, black bastards swing the banners and roar “Vote for Hoover”, “Vote for Hoover”. Between the passenger cars is a truck with a band. Peculiar or normal? It is a band without a saxophone, banjo, not a single instrument of a jazz band, just violins, violas, French horns and cymbals. The musicians hired by the Negroes are all white!
A large corner shop on Broadway has posters on the windows: “If you doubt that it is the Ku Klux Klan conducting the incitement against Smith, come and see the evidence.” We come to see the evidence. Newspapers that mock Smith for his Catholicism. Caricatures: the Pope rides into America on Smith’s shoulders; from the window of the White House, Smith calls for a procession of Jesuit rats to come to him. Slogans on the walls argue belligerently that nobody should be attacked because of his religion.

Advent, Advent! Time flies, at the end of the year even more so. Kurt Tucholsky, the great Weimar author, wrote a series on stories on the afterlife while he was living in Paris from 1924 to 1926. They are collected in the book "Hereafter" ("Nachher") in German. Here is a story about time, named "The Trace of Things".

What time … ?”—but his hand was already flopping back down. “Oh,” he said. I smiled. When I noticed the expression in his eyes, I straightened my laugh lines again.
“No time,” he whispered. “Still getting used to the fact that there’s no time anymore. Yes, the good old apriorist … ”
I diverged. “Down there, did you picture time geometrically too?” I asked.
“No, how … ?” he said.
“Like you were living forward in space,” I replied. “Like you could slide back and forth in space-time, forward and backward, playing with everything in space: when someone appears back there, he’s small; when he comes toward us, he gets bigger, and then his form diminishes, disappears—you know?”
“Not really,” he said.
“No?” I asked. “It’s like this:
“The little house I used to live in is standing still. Now it starts moving. At night, when we can’t sleep, we can hear what it’s doing. It’s traveling through time. It’s moving forward so fast that the water of time froths up high in front, off its bow; the house splits time, which flows to the right and left of it, whooshing by all around, and we’re lying in our little bedchambers, carried along, helpless, powerless, ever onward. Now and then a hand slides off the bed, dangling limply, and moving—backward? There is no backward. Sometimes the sleeper flinches in the face of what’s yet to come—but it’s all riding along with him. Premonitions don’t help. When you wake up early in the morning, the house has already stopped somewhere else.”
“Yeah, I did feel something like that,” he said. “No one’s very happy about it though.”
“No,” I said. “No one’s very happy about it. In the end, you’re left with the vague sensation of a host of impressions; it would be fun if you could hit fast-forward and the whole life you’re doomed to live came thundering down all at once. But you couldn’t do that.”
“Did you long to … to come here?” he asked.
“Often,” I said. “I was hungry every livelong day. Hungry for money, then hungry for women, then, when that subsided, hungry for stillness. So hungry for tranquility. And more: hungry for completion. Not having to—not having to travel through time.”
“You pass away without a trace,” he said.
“No,” I said, “you don’t pass away without a trace. No, I’m not talking about monuments—that’s ridiculous. And I know what you’re about to say: immortal works. Please … No, something else. I left something there—yes, I did leave something there.”
“What?” he asked, somewhat ironically.
“I left something for the things,” I said. “Since that day when I saw the ancient piano player in Paris, who my father had seen twenty years earlier in Cologne. He was still playing the same pieces, that wandering virtuoso—the very same ones. And I felt like my dead father was speaking through him. And I told the things something as well. I sent my regards through many things that have endured longer than you and I. I attached a greeting here and a wreath there, a curse here and a defensive silence there … and as I did, I noticed that the things were already full of similar greetings from those who had passed away. Almost every one of them had held onto matter, left traces behind; when you roamed by, pleas, supplications, curses, and blessings rained down from those things that people say are dead. I did not pass away without a trace. Except—”
“Except what?” he asked.
“Except people are illiterate,” I said, ”They can’t read it.”
He looked at me and touched the place where his wristwatch used to be. “Come on,” he said, “Let’s go have that afternoon coffee.”

Advent, Advent! On December 10, in the year 1520, Martin Luther and his friend Philip Melanchthon met at the Elstertor, one of the gates of the city of Wittenberg, where Luther lived. They burnt the Corpus Iuris Canonici, the law of the Catholic Church, or as it was then know, the Church, and also the papal bull Exsurge Domine where the Pope threatened Luther with excommunication unless he recanted his Ninety-five Theses he had previously nailed to the door of the Castle Church. Needless to say, Luther did not. This did not only set the Reformation in motion, it also gave us the opportunity to publish "Martin Luther's Travel Guide."

https://berlinica.com/leipzig-and-luther

http://www.berlinica.com/berlin--berlin--.html

Berlin! Berlin! Über dieser Stadt ist kein Himmel! Von Kurt Tucholsky. Vorwort von Mark Twain Berlin! Berlin! von Kurt Tucholsky, ist eine Sammlung satirischer Texte über die Heimatsstadt des Autors, von dem Mann mit der spitzen Feder und den genauen Ton, der die Stimme des Berlins der zwanziger Jahre war. Dieses Buch ist die erste, chronologische Zusammenstellung von Tucholsky-Texten über...

One Life and Three Biographies

Today, on January 9, 131 years ago, Kurt Tucholsky was born, the famed German Jewish journalist, satirist, poet, novelist, and playwright. The staunch pacifist was a witness to the Weimar Republic and the rise of the N***s. Here is his — not entirely serious — biography, from the book Berlin! Berlin! Dispatches from the Weimar Republic.

Three Biographies

Peter Panter, Die Weltbühne, June 1, 1926

“You’re the unborn Peter Panter?” asked the Good Lord, stroking his white beard, which was flecked with gray here and there. I was a bright blob floating in my test tube; I hopped up and down in affirmation. “You have three options,” the Heavenly Father said, squashing a bedbug in infinite benevolence as it scurried across his wrist. “Three options. Please consider each one and tell me which you choose. We’re particularly interested in not favoring either party in the current dispute between Determinists and Indeterminists. You figure out up here what you’d like to be someday; down there you won’t be able to do anything about it. If you please. . .” The Old Man held a large box lid up to the tube, on which I read:

I
“Peter Panter (1st Draft). Born on April 15, 1889, son of poor but well sanitized parents, in Stettin on Lasztownia Island. Father: Given to quarterly episodes of binge drinking, with five quarters each year. Mother: Subscribes to the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger. Studies veterinary medicine in Hannover and becomes a municipally licensed exterminator in Halle in 1912. Two wives: Annemarie Prellwitz, classy, in flannel, with her hair in buns (1919–1924); Ottilie Mann, meticulous, proper, tremendously fertile, in balloon cloth (1925–1937). Four sons; then acquires a German Persian rug. 1931: Cleans Hermann Bahr’s beard; Bahr survives, and P. converts to Catholicism. Summoned to Vienna in June, 1948, to eradicate the bedbugs accumulating at the Neues Wiener Journal’s cultural desk. When the operation naturally fails, exterminator P. becomes depressed. In this state of mind, attends a Keyserling lecture on April 20, 1954. Dies: April 21. Panter departs from life, with the consolation of the Catholic Church, immediately after voraciously devouring a bowl of matzo balls. Burial weather: partly cloudy with a light southeasterly wind. Headstone (designed by Paul Westheim): 100.30 marks; marble price: 100 marks. Forever cherished in our thoughts: eight months.”
“Well?” asked the Almighty God.
“Hmm. . .” I said. And read on:

II
“Peter Panter (2nd Draft). Born May 8, 1891, eldest son of senior civil servant Panter and his wife Gertrud, née Hauser. The premature child is so hard of hearing in his left ear as a young boy that he already seems destined for a career in justice. Joins the fraternity corps, in which a certain Niedner is an alum—” God Almighty made the sign of the sw****ka. I continued to read: “—and soon adopts the properly boorish behavior expected in such circles. 1918: War assessor, just in time for the Kaiser’s birthday. Swears eternal loyalty to him. 1919: Junior assistant to the state commissioner of public policy; State Commissioner Weismann, in accordance with traditional Prussian frugality, does not sit in an armchair but remains on a wooden bench day and night. District Court Councilor P. achieves great things for the Republic and its president. Swears him eternal loyalty. Participates in the Kapp Putsch in 1920, advises Kapp in judicial matters and swears eternal loyalty to him. Panter’s frequent swearing calls attention to the talented jurist, and he is transferred to the post of chief legal counsel to the Reichswehr. Meanwhile, Rathenau is murdered, and the Republic imposes a constitutional court on itself, in which decisions are made without due process. Transfers there as judge; sprains his arm signing jail sentences for Communists in 1924. No funeral is held, as a German judge is irremovable and can still fulfill the duties of his office even after death.”
“How could anyone sink so low?” the Good Lord asked. I, meanwhile, had crept to the bottom of the test tube. I wagged my little tail, and God Almighty correctly guessed “No,” made the sign of the Star of David, and held up number. . .

III
“Peter Panter (3rd Draft). Born January 9, 1890, in Berlin, with gigantic nostrils. His Aunt Berta looked in his cradle and said so immediately. Succeeds with minimal effort in becoming a decent man, then falls into the clutches of publisher S.J., who employs him in a variety of tasks; at the beginning of their acquaintance, P. writes articles and poems, and after just fifteen years, he’s allowed to put stamps on letters on his own and execute other important clerical tasks. January 19, 1913: Contracts with the publisher for a monthly honorarium. December 8, 1936: Notice of first installment. Assumes the pseudonyms Max Jungnickel, Mark Twain, Waldemar Bonsels, and Fritz von Unruh. Can never convince anyone that there’s more than one author behind these names. Painted in oil by Professor Liebermann; gives him a Paul Klee original in return, though Liebermann doesn’t eat it up. S.J. bequeaths Panter his son; P. knocks large holes in the expensive heirloom’s head in the very first week and doesn’t handle him very gently in other ways either. Dies on July 4, 1976, while attempting to tear the publisher back out of his grave.”
“Well?” the Good Lord asked.
“Hmm,” I said again, “Can’t we combine all three biographies? Maybe I could be the son of a senior civil servant, and exterminator at the Weltbühne. . .”
“Hurry up!” Father God said sternly, “I don’t have much time. I’m presiding over three field services at ten o’clock: Poles versus the Germans, Germans versus the Poles, and the Italians versus everyone else. I must go be with my peoples. So choose.”
And so I chose.

Frohe Weihnacht und ein gutes Neues Jahr

Berlinica Publishing wünscht allen Lesern und Leserinnen, Autoren und Autorinnen, Buchhändlern und Buchhändlerinnen und allen anderen fröhliche Feiertage und ein neues Jahr 2021, das hoffentlich besser wird als 2020.

Allen, die sich in unseren Newsletter eintragen, schicken wir eine Geschichte aus dem zweiten Band von "Wunderbare Fahrten und Abenteuer der kleinen Dott", von Tamara Ramsay, über Weihnachten im Erzgebirge:

„Um drei Uhr in der Nacht aber beginnen die Glocken zur Christmette
zu läuten, und wenn der Wind nach unserer Seite weht, dann
können wir es bis hierher hören“, setzte das Mädchen hinzu. Und
dann schwiegen die beiden Kinder. Sie dachten daran, dass Karlemann
schon seit Jahren zu Hause bleiben musste, wenn sich die anderen
auf den Weg zur Christmette machten. Denn der Weg zur Kirche
ging durch den verschneiten Wald, und es war bitter kalt...
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Die kleine Dott im Tagesspiegel

Dotts Verzauberung durch den vermaledeiten Rennefarre hat nicht nur ihre Unsichtbarkeit zur Folge, sie beherrscht nun auch, ähnlich wie Nils, die Sprache der Tiere, kann sogar in der Zeit zurückreisen. In Sanssouci den Alten Fritz treffen? Kein Problem. Und wie Selma Lagerlöf die Flugreise des kleinen Nils als Porträt ihrer Heimat samt seiner Mythen und Legenden anlegt, so geraten auch Tamara Ramsay die drei Bände zu einem abenteuerlichem Schnellkurs zur Geschichte und Sagenwelt Brandenburgs und Berlins. Noch nie von Frau Harke gehört, der mächtigen „Herrin der Winde und Wolken“, der großen „Frau der Moore und Flüsse“, der „Beschützerin des Wildes und der zahmen Tiere“? Dann wird es aber Zeit. Die große Stadt an der Spree besucht Dott im zweiten Band und erblickt sie zuerst aus der Vogelperspektive: „Wie Brunnenschächte waren die Höfe und die Straßen wie tiefe wasserlose Kanäle, in denen zweistöckige gelbe Omnibusse fuhren und lange, klingelnde Straßenbahnzüge und Kraftwagen und Fahrräder, und alles wimmelte und lärmte durcheinander, und es dröhnte wie in einem vollbesetzten Bienenkorb.“

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/verzaubert-durch-brandenburg-und-berlin-das-wunderbare-remake/26698768.html

Das wunderbare Remake Ein Berliner Verlag hat „Die Abenteuer der kleinen Dott“ neu aufgelegt. Vorbild der Erzählung ist die Geschichte von Nils Holgersson.

Wer wollte nicht immer schon auf dem Rücken eines Reihers über eine Landschaft voller glitzernder blauer Seen, alter Schlösser und dunkler Wälder fliegen, in denen Elfen und Elliken leben? Oder einen Kobold im Feuer sehen, der einem die Krone des Schlangenkönigs verspricht, sich von Frau Harke drei magische Grashalme schenken lassen oder in die Zeit zurückreisen, um die Leipziger Messe oder die Silesier zu sehen, die vor tausend Jahren nach Breslau gewandert sind?

Natürlich geht das nicht wirklich, aber nun gibt es ein Buch dazu: "Wunderbare Fahrten und Abenteuer der kleinen Dott", von Tamara Ramsay. Es ist ein Abenteuer- und Entwicklungsroman im Reich der Sagen und der Fantasie, der die Leser durch Deutschland und weit zurück in die deutsche Geschichte führt.

Die Heldin ist ein zwölfjähriges Mädchen, die kleine Dott, die zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen in einem Dorf bei Berlin lebt. Als Dott sich hinausschleicht, um das Lagerfeuer der Mittsommernacht zu sehen, fällt die Blüte einer magischen Pflanze, die Rennefarre, in ihre Schuhe. Dadurch wird sie unsichtbar und kann mit Tieren und magischen Kreaturen sprechen. Und gelegentlich wird sie in die Vergangenheit zurückversetzt.

Auf dem Rücken von Gurian, dem Reiher, und Cornix, der Krähe, fliegt sie über das Land und erlebt Abenteuer, von denen andere nur träumen können. Sie spricht mit Friedrich dem Großen in Potsdam, wird Zeugin der Tempelritter an der Grenze zu Polen, betet mit der heiligen Herzogin Hedwig von Schlesien, gerät mit dem Berggeist Rübezahl aneinander, begegnet Elfen und Kobolden und erlebt den Einmarsch von Napoleon in Dresden. Und sie rettet Klaus in Berlin, einen Jungen, der von einem Wassernix in der Spree verzaubert wurde.

Die drei Bücher, die sich an Jugendliche im Alter von 10 bis 16 Jahren richten, sind jetzt im Berlinica-Verlag neu erschienen, mit den Originalzeichnungen und Umschlägen von Alfred Seidel, die lange Zeit verschollen waren. Die drei Bände sind leicht gekürzt, ohne etwas von ihrem Inhalt zu verlieren. Die Sprache wurde behutsam modernisiert. Das Buch fördert die Freundschaft und Verständigung zwischen Kulturen und Völkern, und den Schutz der Tiere.

Wunderbare Fahrten und Abenteuer der kleinen Dott sind überall erhältlich, wo es Bücher gibt. Buchhändler bekommen sie von der GVA in Göttingen, von Libri und KNV. In den USA ist die Soft-Cover-Version auf Amazon und bald auch auf Barnesandnoble.com erhältlich
http://blog.berlinica.com/2020/11/wunderbare-fahrten-und-abenteuer-der.html

Wunderbare Fahrten und Abenteuer der kleinen Dott "A blog about berlin books, novels, history, movies, and music"