Reading with Claudia Wenzel as part of the 23rd Ahrenshooper Literaturtage
From division to unity? On the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, popular actress Claudia Wenzel takes an emotional and critical look at her life in the GDR and the reunified Germany.
"Why don't you just stay over there?" is a question Claudia Wenzel is familiar with. During guest performances in the Federal Republic of Germany, she had numerous opportunities to "cross over" to the West - and yet the actress always returned to her East German homeland. After all, what would she have wanted in a country without family, friends and familiar places? At the same time, the political situation in the GDR increasingly worried her.
As an East German who grew up behind the Wall, Claudia Wenzel forged her own path in a divided Germany. Together with her husband, the actor Rüdiger Joswig, who made a different decision at the time and left the GDR, she now fights against forgetting and for the memory of a time that had a lasting impact on the entire country.
