Und wo mein Haus?

Frankfurt main station, platforms, tracks, the railway to Gießen. As always in Peter Kurzeck's flowing memoir prose, the sight of the trains causes inner images to rise. Here he takes us on train journeys with his mother to the destroyed Gießen, even before the currency reform. The five-year-old comes from the village and is the refugee child there. Giessen means ruined landscapes and black markets, frightening and exciting at the same time. At home, the sister learns to write, the father reads "Faust", the mother sews incessantly. The family is always tolerated, dependent on the goodwill of the landlords, Bohemian songs in their ears. Later, the narrator joins the US Army with Eastern Europeans in absurd activities, and so begins a completely different life.
In this novel, edited by Rudi Deuble with original notes from his estate and intended as volume 8 of the "Old Century", Peter Kurzeck tells exciting and witty stories of post-war Gießen and the displaced persons in the US Army.