"Papenburg"

A family between love and selfishness

Emilia Papenburg has left her husband Benni and moved to New York with the children. A fresh start away from the family she believes she has failed - just as her own parents did before her. But perhaps Emilia is wrong. Her father and her long-lost mother are determined to bring the family back together at any cost. They endure mutual hurt and disappointed hopes for the sake of brief moments of real happiness. Emilia's husband Benni has already moved on: he places his freedom above the illusion of family obligation.

"Papenburg" is a vivid portrait of our unsettled Western society and a cast of desperate, resourceful people searching for meaning and forgiveness.

Philipp Oehmke, born in 1974, grew up in Bonn, studied German literature in Hamburg, and spent two years as a trainee at the magazine Tempo. In 2001 he completed a Master of Science at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. From 2002 to 2006 he worked as an editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung magazine, where he also edited the 50-volume book series SZ-Diskothek. In 2006 he joined the culture section of the news magazine Der Spiegel. From 2015 to 2020 he headed the magazine's New York bureau; he now writes for it from Berlin.

Oehmke is the author of Am Anfang war der Lärm, a biography of the rock band Die Toten Hosen. Published in 2014, the book spent several weeks in the top ten of the Spiegel bestseller list.