Christian Baron

“My father may have drunk away our last money in some dive, he may have beaten my mother bloody several times: I always wanted him to stay. But differently.”

Kaiserslautern in the 1990s: Christian Baron tells the story of his childhood, his beating father and his depressive mother. He describes what it means to grow up in poverty in this rich country. How it feels to experience male violence as a boy. What it means to become a class refugee as a teenager. What remains of all the memories and how he managed to find his own way. Baron’s novel explains nothing and yet reveals much of what is wrong with our society.

Christian Baron was born in Kaiserslautern in 1985. He studied political science, sociology and German studies. His articles have appeared in the Rheinpfalz as well as Neues Deutschland; he has written for nachtkritik, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and Theater der Zeit. Since 2020, he has worked as an editor at the weekly newspaper Der Freitag.

In cooperation with DGB Heidelberg Rhein-Neckar and GEW Heidelberg.