Please join us for an evening of wine and Hors d'oeuvres as we host  author and guest speaker Peter Schneider as he discusses his book, "Berlin Now: The City After the Wall".

Peter Schneider was born in Lübeck, Germany, and has lived in Berlin on and off since the 1960s.  

 

During the 1960s Schneider experienced a political radicalization that led him to become one of the spokespersons and organizers of the Berlin German student movement. In 1967 he was involved in the preparation of the so-called "Springer-Tribunal". He was a member of a group aiming to found a proletarian political party and rouse the working class. For this reason Schneider worked temporarily as an unskilled worker in one of the Bosch-factories. Later he taught in a private school and did freelance work in broadcasting. In 1972 he took his degree, but in 1973 the education authorities in Berlin refused to appoint him as a trainee teacher on account of his political activity. That decision was overturned by a court in Berlin in 1976.

 

Having in the meantime established himself as a writer, Schneider gave up the idea of teaching. His novel Lenz, published in 1973, had become a cult text for the German left, capturing the feelings of those disappointed by the failure of their utopian revolt. Since then Peter Schneider has written novels, short stories and film scripts that often deal with the fate of members of his generation. Other works deal with the situation of Berlin before and after German reunification. Schneider is also a major essayist.

 

Peter Schneider has taught at many American universities-including Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard-and is the author of more than twenty books, including The Wall Jumper and Eduard's Homecoming (FSG, 2000). He has also written for newspapers and magazines, including Der Spiegel, The New York Times, Le Monde, and La Repubblica.

 

 

Common Good Books will be at our event, selling copies of Mr. Schneider's book.

 

Germanic American Institute
301 Summit Avenue

St. Paul, Minnesota 55102

September 11, 2014