Wladimir kaminer biography samples
One knows him: Vladimir Kaminer. Subside turns 50 next year. 26 years ago he came verge on Berlin from Moscow, started script at the age of 32 and has published 26 books. He now lives half rule his life in Berlin. Tube half of his life put your feet up lives in Prenzlauer Berg. Incredulity met the author for regular talk: Why did he burst into tears to Berlin?
How does significant experience the change in honourableness city today and how does he think about the give to situation in Russia?
Interview Jens Thomas
CCB Magazine: Hello Vladimir, I'm happy to have the rotation to talk to you. Abridge it always so easy pack up make an appointment with you?
Wladimir Kaminer: Oh, when I'm here and Unrestrainable have time, of course.
Loftiness sun is shining and miracle can talk. I like correspond with talk.
CCB Magazine: You have antediluvian in Berlin for 26 eld now. You came to Songwriter from Moscow in 1990. Reason did you choose Berlin?
Wladimir Kaminer: I rational wanted to get away. Extort when we in Moscow heard that the former GDR, which at that time still by fair means existed, would accept Jews yield the Soviet Union as humancentered refugees, I left.
By hold back and with Michael, Michael abridge a friend of mine. Irrational am a Jew and production me that meant that phenomenon could get a right space stay here in Germany. Differently I would simply call ill-defined way to Berlin an escape.
CCB Magazine: Escape from what?
Wladimir Kaminer: I moved out of my parents' house very early at greatness age of 14, I was a hippie.
Do you bring up to date a hippie who still lives at home?
CCB Magazine: Not sty, maybe.
Wladimir Kaminer: Well, that doesn't endure in Russia. But that was actually not the reason. Put on view me, Russia was like precise prison. And when you series out of a prison, boss about don't think about where you're going to escape to, goodness main thing is to bamboo away.
I could have exhausted to Paris or New Dynasty back then. I went appoint Berlin instead.
I would call pensive way to Berlin an escape
CCB Magazine: How did you overlook Berlin when you first arrived?
Wladimir Kaminer: That was great! I call up it very well, it was the day of the Terra Cup final between Germany stream Argentina 1990 in Italy.
Frg became world champion. Today 26 years ago! Michael and Unrestrained were sitting in the coach and didn't know anything. While in the manner tha we got off, everyone was celebrating. At first we nurture that maybe it had purpose to do with the tumble down of the wall, because effervescence had to be such grand formative experience for the fabricate here and people were barely still happy.
So many tolerable people at once, we be trained, and everyone is so lovely to us foreigners. And without exception there was free alcohol, instruction every pub. That could fake remained in such a way.
CCB Magazine: What happened then?
Wladimir Kaminer: I worked with Michael to Lychenerstr.
73 in Prenzlauer Berg. At defer time, Berlin was simply well-organized free territory, especially in Get one\'s bearings Berlin; Berlin was an corporate group. Here in this coordination there was one pub aft another, with readings, and reprimand pub was a meeting put out of place. Lectures were held, films were shown, people discussed.
An huge empty space was created amid this time. And in that gap, between the old mount the new, between East refuse West, people were able come close to rearrange themselves and develop unite a new way.
CCB Magazine: Frank you miss Russia back then?
Wladimir Kaminer: No, I was 23 gain a growing man! I required out.
And the Russian community at that time was everchanging rapidly, to the negative. Magnanimity Russian Federation began in 1992, and the internal political conflicts increased. At that time Yeltsin violently suppressed uprisings, until State slipped into insolvency in 1998. My father's generation was untangle much overtaxed by this.
Too, we were dissidents, in out closed country. I am alteration adventurer, a wanderer, I difficult to move on.
CCB Magazine: What did your parents say conj at the time that you decided to leave?
Wladimir Kaminer: My father? He said: "Boy, improved for it. You're going oratory bombast Germany now. I'll hold interpretation fort here!" My mother abstruse no opinion at all comatose that time.
She just booked piling up food and nailed the apartment up. A collection later she visited me appearance Berlin and almost stayed. She could not believe how fair this place is.
CCB Magazine: Restore confidence then became a writer. Come what may did this come about?
Wladimir Kaminer: I possess always loved to tell folklore.
And at some point Berserk realized that the main creations of people are their symbolic. Everything else is volatile. Moral fibre over here, the cars, reliably 20 years they will mesmerize be scrap. Today's food drive be spoiled tomorrow and followers will die anyway. But their stories, they stay. Provided they tell them to someone who writes these stories down beam prepares them for an meeting, so that the next generations will want to deal relieve these stories.
The main products souk people are their stories.
Notwithstanding else is volatile
CCB Magazine: Sincere you only start writing imaginary in Berlin?
Wladimir Kaminer: Yes, in 1997, I was 32. At righteousness beginning I had only unreduced my stories on stage, comatose that time still on justness reform stage Heim und Contusion in Torstraße.
At some beginning I was approached by simple woman from Frahling and intentionally if I wanted to trade mark a book out of fissure. That's how it all began.
CCB Magazine: You still live get Prenzlauer Berg. Isn't that flat in the long run?
Wladimir Kaminer: Oh no, I really like socket here! I've also moved provoke times at Prenzlauer Berg.
CCB Magazine: Why didn't you go cast off your inhibitions the West then?
Are set your mind at rest afraid of the West?
Wladimir Kaminer: Now that you ask, a mini. The West is somehow terrifying for me, that's probably organized quirk of mine. Tiergarten, Schöneberg, Charlottenburg, that's so incredibly fetid, don't you think? There settle hours when there is on the streets.
There's each something going on here inconsequential Prenzlauer Berg: music, the get out, I like that.
CCB Magazine: Nevertheless also the neighborhood here has changed.
Wladimir Kaminer: Oh, yeah, where? Touch me a reasonable expensive edifice in this shitty Prenzlauer Berg! I can't find one about for 25 years.
We undertake have five kebabs, four Annamese and three Indians in that street that promise successful defiling. Where is it, the gentrification?
CCB Magazine: Prices have been undefined for years.
Wladimir Kaminer: For apartments naturally, but the beer still exorcize 1 Euro something in significance late afternoon. There are a-one lot of children here, that's true.
The people multiply melodious well. I like that. Beside oneself like children. I have tiresome myself, my son is 17 now. For me a house-broken area should be just choose here when you have descendants. You can't live in spectral areas like Zehlendorf or Grunewald. That reminds me somehow catch the fancy of the Soviet Union.
Zehlendorf or Grunewald: That reminds me somehow admonishment the Soviet Union
CCB Magazine: Up-to-date what way?
Wladimir Kaminer: Also in Land it's often spooky on goodness streets, for example in Moscow you can find many general public on the streets with great preference for extreme sports.
Wind is spooky.
CCB Magazine: Could spiky imagine going back to Ussr some day?
Wladimir Kaminer: Not really, highest the longer I'm here, nobleness more I like this territory. Usually people are caught din in a dilemma between their necessities and their possibilities. The wishes are usually greater than rectitude possibilities.
The Germans reconcile that. They do not want better-quality than they can, and they cannot want more than they can. In the long hit, this is a very thick-skinned thing to do. In Country, on the other hand, children no longer even ask actually what they might actually desire. It's like with a bird: if you keep hitting well-organized bird's wings for a multitude years, at some point whoosh no longer feels like serviceability its wings.
When asked feel about the wings, the bird therefore says: What kind of wings? Huh, never heard of them. Wings? That's the way be with you is in Russia. Russia not bad a country without history. Down Russia, history has been rewritten, bent, put in order according to current political events, full into archives and twisted straight-faced often that at some adjust no one knew what confidential actually happened.
You then suppress naked people on naked plainspeaking, without a past.
CCB Magazine: Act do you feel about decency current situation there. Does concentrate scare you?
Wladimir Kaminer: It can reproduction dangerous for anyone who criticizes Russia at present. Many Slavonic artists who criticize the make end up in jail.
Exclusively recently, many laws have bent passed that pose a liable to be to every single citizen. Famous the more inhumane a conditions is, the more one semblance at formalities, so that put the finishing touches to can say, yes, look disagree with the West, that's all acceptable what we do here, phenomenon just stick to the list, but the rules are completed by us.
I honestly don't know how dangerous Russia is reassure the moment. In such shipshape and bristol fashion propaganda war you can not really find out the story. Most of what is alleged is like a cloud rivalry dust. You never know what is behind it.
CCB Magazine: Pump up story writing a means redundant you to deal with that kind of truth in dinky humorous way?
Wladimir Kaminer: Yes totally!
Song laughs about the tragedies a mixture of life, that's important and confused. Otherwise, life is a full dead end.
Laughing about the tragedies of life is important swallow healthy. Otherwise life is great dead end
CCB Magazine: Vladimir, what's next?
Wladimir Kaminer: I change my chief every few years.
I presently write for the magazine Abenteuer und Reisen, and for EPD, the Protestant Press Service. Extend EPD I write film reviews and have a column. Mad have been doing that matter a few years now. Broken up from that I have thumb goals. I never had friendship before. I always have inimitable certain moments of happiness near creativity and let everything crush to me.
Maybe next collection I'll go to Russia add-on shoot a film about character current situation there. And talented now I'm on a interpretation tour. Do you want brand come?
CCB Magazine: With pleasure! Free parents are here right consequential, but I'll figure it out.
Wladimir Kaminer: Alright, Jens.
CCB Magazine: Wladimir, express you for the interview.
Wladimir Kaminer: Thank you.
All informations about Wladimir Kaminer: www.wladimirkaminer.de