“We were stopped at the gates. A sergeant came to the stagecoach and asked: ‘Who are you? Where are you from? How long are you planning to stay here?’”…
...that was the series of questions posed to anyone arriving at the gates of Berlin in the age of Goethe. Bags were searched and a pass was issued – but no sooner had visitors reached the inn, than they had to fill out the next customs form – this time for the police.
When you travel through time with Bruno Preisendörfer you’ll watch as Goethe’s coach rolls over the pavement. You’ll visit a philanthropic reform school and sit among the peasant children in the pews of a village school. You’ll listen to the lectures of Kant and Fichte and you’ll survive a boating accident on the Oder with a young Eichendorff. You’ll also assist the maid of a countess who cannot dress herself without help, or slink into the dissecting room of Jena, where those who drowned themselves in the River Ilm in Weimar were autopsied. You’ll be pilfering grain with farmers or as a servant you’ll clash with your master.
Bruno Preisendörfer read through hundreds of books, novels, personal accounts, letters and diaries. He takes the reader on a long journey to the age of Goethe and allows us to experience what life was really like back then.
