"Papenburg"

A family caught 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 once did. But perhaps she is wrong: her father and her long-lost mother are determined to bring the family back together, enduring mutual wounds and disappointed hopes for the sake of brief moments of real happiness. Benni has already moved on - he puts his freedom above the illusion of family obligation.

"Papenburg" is a portrait of an unsettled Western society and a group of desperate, resourceful people searching for meaning and forgiveness.

Philipp Oehmke, born in 1974, studied German literature in Hamburg and completed a Master of Science at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 2001. He worked as an editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung magazine, where he also edited the 50-volume book series SZ-Diskothek, before joining the culture desk of Der Spiegel in 2006. From 2015 to 2020 he ran the magazine's New York bureau; he now writes from Berlin.

Oehmke is the author of Am Anfang war der Lärm, a biography of Die Toten Hosen published in 2014 that spent several weeks on the Spiegel bestseller list.