A hundred years of history, artfully linked to the thousand-year-old frescoes of St. Proculus, told in an exciting and entertaining way.

Selma Mahlknecht, who already received the Sir Walter Scott Prize for the best German-language historical novel for "Helena", has now published a second major historical novel. In it, she traces the upheavals, developments and transformations of the past hundred years in Central Europe, using South Tyrol as an example. The novel begins with the consequences of the First World War and progresses to fascism, National Socialism and the Cold War, up to the present day, when the world is once again divided.

Hans, the main character, is an illegitimate child, denounced as a cripple and a scoundrel in the village. Born after the annexation of South Tyrol by Italy in 1919, he has to watch as friends join the war, the Italian fascists and Nazi bigwigs terrorize the population, and his mother marries one of them. But Hans, who becomes a decorative painter, also experiences how the village changes, grows, and becomes more cosmopolitan after 1945. Nevertheless, even the increased prosperity brought about by tourism cannot eliminate inequality.

Mahlknecht succeeds in using sober and precise language to depict the great international history in an exciting and entertaining way through the lens of a small village in South Tyrol. Through the eyes of the decorative painter Hans, who repeatedly finds refuge in the world-famous frescoes of St. Prokulus in the village of Naturns, the thoughts and feelings of the ordinary people become visible, whose actions help shape local history.

The dramaturgy of the frescoes, rediscovered in 1923, with cows, angels, saints and the mysterious motif of the rocker, is woven into the novel as a basic structure: Hans, as a child, sees himself as being beyond the herd, and finds new leading figures and friends. As a young man, he experiences the promises of salvation in the post-war period. In his mature years, he has to say goodbye and recognizes himself as the rocker in the fresco - ready to jump.

The timeless motifs of the frescoes become symbols of human life, which is subject to the turmoil of history – then and now.

“Selma Mahlknecht depicts an arduous climb, flanked by breaks and abysses – told sensitively and ironically, bitterly and brilliantly.”

Hans Heiss, historian

Admission free.