Das Schweigen der Frösche

Seeing animals and plants and hearing their many voices requires special attention. Pauline de Bok sensitively recounts 18 months spent in nature, observing birds, insects, mammals, and amphibians, both through the changing seasons and in a longer-term transformation. The pond next to her house dries up, the frogs fall silent, and other species migrate in. Her beautifully written book revolves around the pressing question of our time: how can humans find a harmonious place in nature?

Nature is often viewed, filmed, and described by an invisible observer "from the outside." In contrast, Pauline de Bok relies on participatory observation, as an animal among animals. In "her" biotope in Mecklenburg, where she has lived for twenty years in a former cow shed, she observes the birth, mating, dying, and death, as well as the eating and being eaten of many animals, eavesdropping on deer, sparrows, grass snakes, and cranes. Her great skill lies in seeing herself as an active part of this biotope, where she nurtures and cares for plants, creates a small replacement pond for swallows and insects, traps raccoons, and integrates herself as a gardener, collector, and hunter into the food chain. Her book is a wonderfully readable school of perception, of seeing, hearing, smelling, and registering other living beings, holding up a mirror to us as a species that is in the process of destroying its own biotope.