My Weimar

Weimar – »Athens on the Ilm« and »Goethe City« with the neighbouring town of Buchenwald. In this book, composer, musicologist and writer Peter Gülke, descendant of the Vulpius family, recalls the defining experiences of his life: the childhood in the city »the Führer« liked to visit so much; adolescence in the Stalinist GDR; the musical profession in the controlled state; the decision to leave the country in 1983, because the pressure exerted by the Stasi had become unbearable; the return to his »faraway, close-by, defiled, beloved Weimar«, which had become a different city, in 1990.

Time and again, we gain a view of the past; Goethe, his wife Christiane Vulpius, along with Herder, Schiller, Schopenhauer make an appearance, but also Schubert, Bach, Mendelssohn – while portraits of musicians and brilliant descriptions of music form another focus of the book. A recurring motif are the visits to the Ettersberg and the attempt at explaining »the unfathomable« of the crimes against humanity.

»This interest for the individual case is the most beautiful feature of the book because it contains an unprogrammatic humanity.« Stephan Speicher, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Gülke, the perceptive intellectual, first examines the possessive pronoun ›mine‹ and then immediately follows it up with the question of what the phenomenon of memory is all about.« Wolfgang Schreiber, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»[Peter Gülke] combines childhood memories, GDR-jokes and theatre gossip with observations about Weimar’s traditional high culture. The narration has a charming, amusing and spirited sound and is carried by great literacy […].« Claudia Müritz, Sächsische Zeitung

»Gülke strolls through a private-public intellectual cosmos. And in doing so he reveals his great literacy […]« Michael Helbing, Thüringer Allgemeine

»Amidst a plethora of anecdotes with a personal thouch and historic excursions, Gülke recalls illustrious names and moments of German cultural and intellectual history, that emphasise Weimar's exceptional position as a national beacon.« Badische Neuste Nachrichten

»Gülke approaches the emotionally charged history of the city and his own experiences among long strolls through parks, musical socialisation, visits to the Ettersberg, National-Socialist and Stalinist heritage, the history of ideas and aesthetic cognisance in an entertaining, eloquent and decisively personal manner.« Martin Hoffmeister, rotary.de