Gazing at the Sky. LIT:potsdam Visits Friends

In the evening light of St. Johannis Church, Ulrich Woelk presents two books that circle similar questions from different angles - while the light streaming through the church's large glass facade, renovated in 2013, gradually gives way to the first stars of the night.

In "Die Einsamkeit des Astronomen", astrophysicist Frank Zweig comes to terms with impermanence after his father's death. Childhood and youth pass, love is fleeting and ends in loneliness. He turns to scientific thinking as a way of coping - but can reason actually change how we act? In this science novel - or is it a parody of one? - Woelk shows with psychoanalytic precision that the act of observation changes what is observed.

In "Der Sommer meiner Mutter", Woelk weaves together personal and political awakenings. While protests against the Vietnam War fill the streets, eleven-year-old Tobias waits on the outskirts of Cologne for the first Moon landing. At the same time, his parents' seemingly happy marriage begins to crack. When a politically engaged left-wing couple moves in next door, the family grows close to them, and their thirteen-year-old daughter Rosa - headstrong and sharp - introduces Tobias not only to pop music and literature, but also to touches and feelings almost as thrilling as space travel.