About Wars
WARNINGS FROM YESTERDAY – FOR TODAY
»WHETHER THE CARTHAGINIANS LANDED IN ROME or the Romans in Carthage – what do we care about that today? It is cold history, clotted blood that no one takes an interest in anymore. No guilt, no accusations, no tears.« In the summer of 2015, history student Gero catalogues a large pile of commemorative notices, all published in the last 20 years. Most of them show an Iron Cross – memorial stones made of paper. Who places these notices, so long after the end of both World Wars? The 26-year-old
is swept away into a world of mindless cruelty and loses his scientifi c detachment. He experiences names and places calling out to him – and finally concludes that remembrance must never end.
Arno Surminski, born in Jaglack, Eastern Prussia, in 1934, grew up as a refugee child in Trittau in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany. Surminski became known through many novellas and novels, most of them dealing with the fate of displaced people from the former eastern territories of Germany and their struggle to gain a foothold in post-war Germany. The multi-award winning writer lives and works in Hamburg.