17 July 2026 | Friday 4:00 PM
Thomas Mann House
WORD PROGRAMME
Guest: political journalist Jochen Buchsteiner (Germany)
Moderator: Ruth Leiserowitz
At the 30th International Thomas Mann Festival, renowned German journalist and writer Jochen Buchsteiner will be a special guest. The meeting with the author and discussion of his book Wir Ostpreußen. Eine ganz gewöhnliche deutsche Familiengeschichte (We Were East Prussia. An Ordinary German Family History), taking place on 17 July at 4:00 PM, will offer Lithuanian and international audiences an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of East Prussian history and its place within European memory culture. The event will be moderated by historian Prof. Ruth Leiserowitz.
Portrait of a Forgotten Province
“It was 26 January 1945. The war in Europe would continue for more than three months, but for my grandmother, as for most inhabitants of East Prussia, the old world had already collapsed. She did not want to wait for the revenge-driven Russian soldiers to enter her homeland and take control.”
Drawing on his grandmother’s detailed diary, Jochen Buchsteiner revives in We Were East Prussia a long-silenced past that remained on the margins of German historical consciousness for decades.
By recounting the forced flight of one East Prussian landed family to the West, the author also opens up a much broader historical context, recalling the experiences of the fourteen million German-speaking inhabitants who, at the end of the war, were forced to flee or were expelled from various territories across Europe.
Buchsteiner approaches East Prussia not with nostalgia, but with the insight of a contemporary observer. He masterfully intertwines personal testimonies with profound historical analysis, presenting the region not only as a victim of war, but also emphasizing its historical and cultural distinctiveness.
The book offers a mature reflection on how the shadow of a lost region and the traumas of the past continue to shape German identity and contemporary generations, at a time when Europe is once again reconsidering its historical narratives.
Jochen Buchsteiner (born 1965) studied political science and rhetoric. He worked as a parliamentary correspondent for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and later spent two decades reporting for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from South Asia, India, the Pacific region and the United Kingdom. He currently lives in Berlin and serves as a political correspondent for Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
Buchsteiner is the author of several books, including Die Stunde der Asiaten. Wie Europa verdrängt wird (The Hour of the Asians. How Europe Is Being Pushed Aside, 2005) and Die Flucht der Briten aus der europäischen Utopie (The British Escape from the European Utopia, 2018). In 2025, his book Wir Ostpreußen. Eine ganz gewöhnliche deutsche Familiengeschichte attracted significant public attention.
Historian Prof. Ruth Leiserowitz teaches at Humboldt University in Berlin and conducts research at the Institute of Baltic Region History and Archaeology at Klaipėda University. For many years she has been a member of the curatorial board of the Thomas Mann Festival in Nida and chairwoman of the Friends of the Thomas Mann Museum Association.
Festival organiser:
Thomas Mann Cultural Centre
Partners:
Neringa Municipality
Neringa Museums
Goethe-Institut Lithuania
Förderverein Thomas-Mann-Haus e.V.
The festival is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture