Deutscher Herbst

Stig Dagerman (1923-1954) was commissioned by the Swedish newspaper "Expressen" in 1946 to travel through Germany and give a picture of the destroyed country after the World War. A travelogue in 13 stations about Berlin, Hamburg, the Ruhr area, Frankfurt, Heidelberg and Munich, but also about the rural regions in between, about train journeys, politicians' appearances and the countryside.about train journeys, politicians' appearances and court cases was written in this rainy autumn of 1946, which is marked by ruins and hunger, suppressed continuity of National Socialist thinking and the hoped-for awakening through Allied democratisation. Stig Dagerman never meets the people on his journey with moral superiority - but with interest and compassion, in an attempt to understand the social as well as personal situation of each individual. That autumn, Stig Dagerman is just experiencing a breakthrough with his second novel in Sweden: his wife sends him the enthusiastic reviews, and he is ashamed of his success in the face of destruction and suffering. Paul Berf has not only translated the travelogues in all their descriptive density and diversity of thought into a vibrant, unadulterated German, but has also made a supplementary selection from the letters Dagerman sent home from the trip to his relatives - some of them written in German. The Swedish foreigner's account of zero-hour Germany, its external conflicts and internal tensions, gives us a unique insight into a time when it was not clear whether this country would ever get back on its feet.