Russland Kontainer

Russia and Germany were and are as distant as they are connected, not only via a currently disputed pipeline, but also over centuries of exchange and repulsion. The political present seems critical, the signs point to conflict and polarity. In this situation, Alexander Kluge makes Russia the exclusive subject of a new large volume. In a decidedly poetic manner, not with an imperious will to synthesis, he approaches the immense terrain of the largest country on earth and the majority of its souls. He is concerned with the "unkneaded" material that leaves the reader and the materials "free to breathe." This freedom is realized in polyperspectival presentation: from the historically shaped point of view of German patriots of the wars of liberation as well as from the narrative point of view of a Franz Kafka and a Heiner Müller, from messianic longing and utopian expectation in the 20th century. But also - and possibly above all - from the decidedly female empathy of a Svetlana Alexievich and the love of Russia of his sister Alexandra: "It is on her behalf that I am writing this book.