I wrote this text with the help of a voice assistant. That means I dictated it, and everything I said was directly turned into words and sentences laid out on paper. Of course, I then reread the text. I mention this for transparency, and the fact that I’m putting it here is probably—mostly for myself—to prove it. It’s strange, but I hope you’ll see how, in reality, I have little time in my daily life left to put thoughts about Europe into words. To think, in general. I’m an artist, and my thoughts are fanciful, unclear, and frenetic. They jump from one thing to another, and sometimes linger on things that seem as seemingly insignificant as a cloud. Here are already the first boundaries I often reflect on: who exactly has the capacity to think about Europe? At what moment and in what way? If I were someone who kept an asylum for old dairy cows, if I ran an alpine pasture, if I were the Minister of Finance, would I think about Europe differently? Do I only think about Europe? I can only conduct this reflection in the form of imitation. I can only imitate, that is, show with this text how Europe presents itself to me in my daily life, in my life. Europe as it floats in my life, or conversely, Europe as it encloses me, as I must imagine myself once escaped from its embrace.
When I was a child, when people asked me what Europe was, I only knew Germany, Austria, and Italy. The Austrian Tyrolean region borders directly the town where I grew up. One simply walks down the main street for ten minutes toward the southern first mountains of the Alps, then passes in front of the cable car station that climbs up to our mountain. A few more steps, and you reach the border, which would today be nearly invisible if it weren’t for the old customs post, which has since become a rental hut. The customs post resembles a small chapel, with its curved roof. In the past, just a few meters away along the road stood a glass-fronted booth in which a border guard sat, with a red and white barrier.
In theory, if one wanted to continue on by car, one had to present a passport to the border guard. But we, who came from the neighboring village, were usually waved through. In a way, we knew one another. When we crossed the border to enter Austria, it was only to continue toward Italy, toward the Adriatic or to the island of Elba, where we spent Pentecost holidays every year. The Italian border lay somewhere before the Brenner Pass. Each time, I remember my heart leaping as we crossed the border. Again, we were usually waved through. We were tourists, easily recognizable. We bore no ill intent, and we did not smuggle.
Over the forty-five years since my last vacation trip with my parents, a lot has happened. The barriers and border booths have been dismantled, but for some time now they’ve reappeared. Perhaps not the barriers in the material sense, but every time I take the train, my passport is checked. Heavily armed police officers traverse the carriage, and every time, it seems to me that border controls are much more extensive than those of the era when I traveled to Italy with my parents, and we were almost always waved through. It seems that everything has become more dangerous. Nothing is like it used to be, when it seemed to be only a mere formality (of course, when I was little and we crossed the border into Austria and Italy, I still knew nothing of the border that divides Germany from within).
I recently learned through a podcast that the European Commission has issued a recommendation to Germany and eight other EU states to reduce these border checks and to curb their routine application. Because free movement prevails within the Schengen area, and border controls run counter to European law. The podcast explains that, in any case, the asylum system is changing, and for that reason, border controls will soon change their nature.
I don’t know how all this will evolve. Was the joy I felt then naïve, at the moment when borders seemed to crumble in every direction and something like utopia seemed to take shape? An utopia that resembled almost the childish thoughts I once had when I imagined that it would be better if countries no longer existed. That the entire Earth should belong to its inhabitants, and that we would share it as I shared my candies with my friends, girls and boys alike.
But let us return to my childhood. At that time, Austria wasn’t “the foreigner” as Italy was: it was the same language, even if it sounded a little different.
By contrast, Italy was very far from home, and it was another language, another cuisine. On our way toward the sea, when we stopped in Florence, there, we really experienced (at least that’s how it felt to me) people from all corners of the world, who had skin colors and clothing styles I had never seen in our small town lost in the mountains. And then there was the money. In Austria, money was different from that in Germany too—but we spent nothing there. It was only once we reached Italy that my parents untied the many crumpled lire banknotes. It fascinated me to notice that two scoops of ice cream cost so much that, to reach it, I had to proudly place a bundle of banknotes on the counter. Each time I told myself I must be incredibly rich with all that money.
The first time I truly felt European was when the euro was introduced. I found it wonderful, and not only because it spared us the tedious exchanges and conversions. The common currency stirred in me a strange, almost tangible happiness. Or rather, it wasn’t the currency itself, but the act, the gesture accomplished together by so many European countries. I found it cool, I don’t know how to express it differently. A kind of enthusiasm for progress. An indescribable happiness, a joy oriented toward the future, in which we suddenly felt we stood.
Long before that, in 1985, I went to London with my then-boyfriend. We spent three weeks at Crystal Palace campsite, because any other accommodation was too expensive for us.
Again, I remember money. I liked coins from a book, thick and heavy. If they weren’t so heavy, they could pass for those chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil that I was given every Christmas, in a red plastic net. I still remember our difficulties with money, our endless calculations and, as time went on, our growing awareness of the high cost of living. Thus, during those three weeks in London, we fed on canned macaroni, soft, not-toasted bread, and a multitude of orange jams (a British specialty, as I experienced). Jams full of orange rind pieces, large or small, or without any pieces at all, or with small pieces full of seeds. Yet not finding this kind of jam in Germany did not necessarily allow me to conceive a broad notion of what Europe is.
It was only at the end of our vacation that this notion gradually clarified, in the form of an American who came from the United States. A young man our age, Adam, who waited with my current boyfriend and me at a bus stop to head to Gatwick airport. We stayed for about an hour at the stop before any bus arrived, then I went into one of the nearby shops to ask for information. All that time we had waited at the wrong stop. My boyfriend and I walked to the correct bus stop and took the young man with us. During the trip to the airport and while waiting for our respective flights, we got to know each other and, before heading to our boarding gates, we exchanged addresses. We then often wrote to each other—these light-blue letters, thin paper, sent via air mail.
A year later, he came to spend six months in Germany to study philosophy in Marburg. He wished to begin his stay with a long journey through the country and other European destinations. From Marburg, he first went to Munich where I lived at the time. We had planned to spend a few days together. Adam explained his itinerary to me: he would go from Munich to Hamburg, from there to Vienna, then on to Frankfurt, West Berlin, Cologne, from where he would return to Munich passing by my place, then Amsterdam, Florence, the North Sea coast in East Frisia, and finally Paris before returning to Marburg.
“What a zigzag itinerary!” I said to him, advising him to travel first south, then through the center to reach the West, before heading north.
But Adam did not see at all what I meant. For him, Western Europe was so small that distances didn’t matter. They were as leveled, almost everything at roughly the same distance. It did not matter which direction one took, or when one went. Adam traversed our little slice of Europe with the feeling that a giant has of space: a single step was enough to go very far, so to speak almost anywhere. I learned that in Europe, apparently, we have a different sense of space, geographic distance, and extent. What seems far to us is near to the eyes of inhabitants of other continents.
In recent years, this sense of what is near or far has taken on a troubling dimension for me. I have become aware of the proximity of the Ukrainian borders, whereas I had always thought Ukraine was very far away. And yet, no. This terrible war of aggression waged by Russia is, in truth, so close. The threats as well. Notably those bearing on neighboring countries—Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia—which, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, moved closer to us—at a completely different level, in terms of politics, ideas, and culture. Countries that, over the years, had become increasingly familiar to me. Countries in which my novel had been published, countries in which my poems had been translated. I have already participated in several readings in Poland and the Czech Republic. For a long time, this proximity carried a happy connotation for me, filled with joy and curiosity, and the sense of a shared belonging that would grow.
Today, this proximity gives rise to a very different feeling in me. Less the threat of a concrete and personal danger (not yet) and more a diffuse fear. First for the Ukrainians, then for the neighboring countries geographically closest to Eastern Europe. To that adds another fear that I can describe only in these terms: that we are denied again this sense of shared belonging and neighborly proximity. Not that barriers return, but tall fences themselves. That we might even go back to a situation worse than the borders of my childhood, where no one would be permitted to pass with a mere wave of the hand.
The fear, on one hand, of a terrifying despot, but beyond that, the fear of the forces of the far right in Germany and of the AfD. The fear of far-right parties present in many countries of the Union, who want to rush us out of this future in which we had found ourselves, to cast us back into an era that no longer exists.
I am not an expert in politics, and that is why this fear can only be diffuse and undefined. Yet, it is certainly not unfounded.
I have the sense that twenty-five or thirty years ago, we were on the right track. That at that time, an idea of what Europe is was precisely taking shape, becoming more intense, more joyful, that the utopia was becoming reality. A utopia that—in a time when Germany, like Europe, was divided—I was not even capable of imagining, so impossible did it seem.
All the advances that, at the time, even though I wasn’t particularly politically engaged, I nonetheless felt every day, all those advances now seem to dissolve, crumble, and that fills me with sadness. It also brings me back to my own finitude and to the vanity of our brief human life.
Once I am no longer of this world, what will my daughters feel in this Europe? How will they travel within this space? What threats will they be exposed to?
I devote a substantial portion of the money I earned from the German Book Prize and from the sale of my novel Hi, Are You OK? to funding my daughters’ travels across Europe. In the past I could not afford to do this, but now I want them to discover Europe (and also other regions of the world), as long as it remains possible. It’s really the feeling I have: one day travel will be very difficult.
As for me, to date I have left Europe only once. It was in 2015, during a stay in Israel as part of a poetry translation program bringing together German and Israeli authors. In Israel, I was, of course, less European. In Israel, I was German. In a certain way (which was painful), I never felt as German as during those five days. I think that calls for no further explanation.
Aside from that, my German identity is perfectly indifferent to me.
I do not even know if I feel European. More European than German, at least. But since I live right in the middle of Europe, I’m unable to say what this Europe looks like. I would need to step back, to have an outside view, to stay outside Europe for extended periods.
Returning to my novel Hi, Are You Okay?
Me too, like Junon, I lied in responding to scammers. It was around 2019, so quite a long time ago. I told these scammers that I was a wealthy German widow who had emigrated to Dubai and kept snakes there. At that time, most of them found my supposed fortune so enticing that they wanted to believe me. Dubai wasn’t Europe, but I was Europe. There was also a scammer who—quite common—pretended to be a dancer at a dance school in Ivory Coast. Through my connections with the world of dance, he was trying to obtain an invitation to travel to Europe. At the time, it was still fairly easy to see that the photos and videos he sent me were deepfakes.
It had already been a while since I felt like lying. I told the so-called scammer-dancer that if I invited him as a dancer to perform for a production, he would only obtain a short-term work visa. Beyond the visa’s validity, he could remain in the country only illegally. Of course, he was aware.
He was aware that he would not be allowed to work, that he might have to deal drugs, that he would not have much choice. That he would probably have to live ten to a two-room apartment. That he would have no access to medical care or state aid. But that did not seem to bother him. Either he didn’t believe me, or, in his eyes, all this was worth more than his life in Ivory Coast.
It is important to note that this “scam world” has changed since then. Online scams are less and less the work of isolated individuals, like those I dealt with before the Covid-19 pandemic, who, according to statistics, often came from West African countries. Since then, the countless forms of online scams have relocated largely toward Southeast Asia—especially Laos—where they are carried out on an industrial scale by organized networks, through forced labor and abductions. Thus, people from African countries are lured with restaurant job offers, their plane tickets are paid for, and then they must begin paying back this advance by working in scam factories. It has long ceased to be about scamming Europe alone; now it targets the entire world. Likewise, these individuals no longer seek to join Europe; they live very well from their activities in Southeast Asia.
Were there other moments when I truly felt European? Again, probably in the presence of my American friend at the time, Adam, for whom Europe was so tiny that one could not feel distance. But he did not come here to feel Europe’s smallness or because distances were reduced, but to study philosophy—the vast field of European philosophy, from Plato to Hegel, Descartes, Heidegger, and Foucault.
We did not speak about it very often. Yet I felt that Adam carried within him a form of melancholy. That this centuries-old thought gave him a glimpse of dimensions he did not know. If Europe had no spatial existence for him, it nonetheless possessed a temporal dimension that could easily awaken a kind of pathetic frisson of eternity.
Elsewhere, intellectual history is just as old, complex, and it leads just as much to questions where one confronts eternity.
I actually have on my desk a volume devoted to philosophy in Africa, and I know at least that on the African continent there existed and still exist complex concepts of orality, while there are fewer for the culture of the written word. Thoughts there have traversed centuries just as much, simply less often in the form of written or printed sentences, but more in the form of thoughts humans have, in the form of words spoken and told to one another. At some point, they could only be formulated within the constraints of European colonial domination. I sometimes wonder whether our venerable history of European thought is not merely a concept designed to preserve our power, a desire, for us Europeans, to have importance. And, in turn, whether it is not a form of self-deception, a lie we tell ourselves.
The locality of the Bavarian Alps where I grew up is near a very famous castle, Neuschwanstein. I went to school nearby, in a small town from which tourist coaches departed. Every day I watched tourists pouring into the town, stopping there for the night. They came (and still come) mainly from Japan and Korea but also from the United States. For these visitors, Neuschwanstein Castle remains one of Europe’s quintessential symbols. Like Heidelberg Castle. Like Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Like the Semperoper and the Elbe banks in Dresden. Like the Eiffel Tower. Like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Like St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, and many more besides.
In the past, by a strange game of mirrors, I realized that sometimes a strange feeling of significance rose in me. I lived precisely in a place in Europe that held great importance in the eyes of visitors from Asia and America. And yet Neuschwanstein Castle was a part of my daily life. I passed by without even glancing at it. While these people had traveled so far to see this castle where a king who suffered from a serious mental illness had lived, a king who, historically, did not hold great importance for Europe.
Recently, I visited Paris twice within a short interval. It was my very first time in France. Until then, Paris had been for me a strangely blurry place. Probably because there is so much written and spoken about Paris, because Paris appears in so many novels and films, because so many important people have lived or work there, or still live and work there. Paris slips behind all these attributes, behind all these images and fantasies.
The first time, I stayed with my younger daughter who accompanied me, because she, too, had never been to Paris or France, in a hotel in the 13th arrondissement. We especially enjoyed wandering around this neighborhood, which we found almost more interesting than the major tourist sites. The 13th arrondissement—or at least what we saw there—felt like a mix between what one might call a working-class neighborhood and a bourgeois-looking district. And, finally, a blend with the new elegant glass buildings around the François-Mitterrand National Library, with their restaurants and their beautiful buildings surrounded by trees and lawns. There is also this immense Chinatown, which we crossed only once. I know this is only a brief glimpse, nothing substantial. I know we did not have real access to everyday life. That said, I felt that this place was indeed European, in the sense of how we imagine Europe, in the sense of the idea of Europe.
In any case, I had the impression that it was more European than our small Leipzig, which felt empty by comparison.
That this place was more European than East Germany, empty and sparsely populated. From time to time, I reflect that it is one of Europe’s most homogeneous regions. So I wonder why, precisely here, people are so opposed to a Europe of diversity and why they want a dull Europe, a white Europe.
I must probably confess that once I was this Western European. Today, I don’t know what I am anymore. In fact, I live in Leipzig, a city that once belonged more to Eastern Europe, which now seems odd. Yet, everywhere, this reality has left its marks.
This small part of Europe, so young, has also produced its own neuroses. Even if, now, all of Germany votes for the AfD, it is certainly in central Germany that all this has appeared. And that it is much more present and dangerous than in the rest of Germany.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the state next to us, there could soon be a far-right government that rejects any idea of a common Europe.
I would like this not to happen.
I am determined to preserve this broad and open Europe. I do not think it out of a sense of national pride taking on a broader form, but simply for the joy of the idea of a community in which, all of us who live here, find ourselves gathered together, as if thrown together. With, undoubtedly, all the problems this entails—but to borrow Angela Merkel’s words, “We will manage.”