“When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see.” Helmut Rücker follows Shakespeare’s instructions and describes images that emerge from the past, relives them, vividly explores them for the reader, who may relish in them equally: inklings of childhood happiness, a rich family life that allows the six-year-old from Sudetenland to view the double displacement, first from his parents’ farm, then from home completely, as an adventure and not just a threat. Then there is a new start in Westphalia, school, especially the school of life during carnival and the “Paohlbürger”, joining the new Federal Armed Forces, and the universities of the sixties. 

Contrasted with the melancholic reminiscing of his father and the mischievous confessions of his brother Gerhard a compass of German history evolves like only the past century could have written it.

Rücker, Helmut: Zweifelsfahrten. Bilder aus der Vergangenheit.
ISBN 978-3-937772-19-6, paperback, 172 pages, 17,90 Euro