Menschen neben dem Leben

A wildly gripping rediscovery. Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, SRF. Following the spectacular literary rediscovery of "The Traveler," the first novel by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz is now appearing in German for the first time. Set in 1920s Berlin, "People Next to Life" portrays the little people who, after the war and the Great Depression, have nothing left to laugh about yet still refuse to stop celebrating life. The protagonists in Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz's debut novel do not have it easy. They are the true losers of the economic crisis: war veterans, beggars, prostitutes, the insane. Yet every evening, they are drawn to the Fröhlichen Waidmann. Some come to drink, others for music and dance. They are driven by a longing for a few carefree hours before the gray reality rises again the next morning. But then, suddenly, the wife of the blind Sonnenberg dances with Grissmann, who is looking to catch a woman at the Waidmann and underestimates the wrath of the horned husband. Thus, fate takes its course in the Fröhlichen Waidmann, until new romances have blossomed, enough beer and peppermint schnapps have been served, and dawn breaks on the next morning. Through a magnifying glass, the then just twenty-two-year-old author dissects the Berlin rag proletariat of the interwar years.