News from Berlin

Book Release: A Japanese man at the Baltic Sea

June 16th, 2014
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News from Berlin - Christoph Peter’s novel ‘Mr. Yamashiro prefers potatoes’ is a mischievous take on introducing the teachings of Zen into North-Germany and tailoring them to German circumstances.

The book is devoted to Peter’s friend Jan Kollwitz who is a great nephew of Käthe Kollwitz, and who is actually using an anagram-oven on the Baltic sea to produce beautiful Japanese inspired ceramics , which can be seen in various museums and exhibitions. The 54 year old Jan Kollwitz had a traditional oven built in Germany 25 years ago by a Japanese oven builder, which is very seldom to say the least. Tatsuo Watanabe is the name of the living example of Peter’s Mr. Yamashiro. And the path from the stove fitter to Germany, the land of Mettbrötchen, Schweineschnitzel and Schinkenhäger, the japanophile novel deals with the path of finding inner Zen , that however cannot be identified as such as it is hidden in art and self-reduction, resulting in a self-disappearance – A commitment to Zen rather than a building of self and art.

Christoph Peters/Götz Wrage: Japan beginnt an der Ostsee. Die Keramik des Jan Kollwitz

Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster/Hamburg 2013; 98 S., 19,90 €

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