{"id":23935,"date":"2026-01-28T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/?p=23935"},"modified":"2026-01-16T10:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T09:57:12","slug":"weltenwechsel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/2026\/01\/28\/weltenwechsel\/","title":{"rendered":"Weltenwechsel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you have been following poco.lit. for a while, you may have met Marion Kraft at some of our events or heard of her as a translator. The Afro-German literary scholar, born in Gelsenkirchen in 1946, has now published her first novel. Under the somewhat abstract title Weltenwechsel<\/em> (Change of Worlds), Kraft tells the story of a Black girl growing up in southern Germany shortly after the end of the Second World War. With this perspective on the post-war period, Kraft fills a gap in the German literary landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On over 400 pages, Kraft shows how her protagonist Julia grows from a child into a young adult and finds her own way. Julia is the daughter of Margarete, a white <\/em>German woman, who works as a waitress in an officers\u2019 mess on a US military base shortly after the end of the war. There, she meets Julia\u2019s father Robert, a Black American GI stationed in Germany. While her often absent parents work and go out, Julia grows up with her warm-hearted grandmother Berta \u2013 probably the sweetest character in the novel. Julia\u2019s grandmother tries to do her best,  but her childhood and youth are quite lonely. As soon as the white<\/em> people around her \u2013 from kindergarten manager to school director to neighbors \u2013 see the Black child, they close doors for her and keep her away from opportunities. The family clearly feels the racism, even though they lack the language to describe it and live largely isolated from other people with similar experiences, not least because of the tragic fortunes of Julia\u2019s parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berta and Julia spend the best years of their lives in the \u201ccolorful house,\u201d where a group of outsiders is able to build a home and a community. These years are marked by coffee and cake and remind me of the coziness represented by my grandparents\u2019 generation, which might seem a bit old-fashioned today. At first, Julia appears to follow in her mother\u2019s footsteps, both professionally and in her choice of partner, until she decides to pursue a degree through adult education. The older she gets, the more Julia finds herself, through the people she meets and a cautious curiosity to question things and travel abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weltenwechsel <\/em>is a quiet novel that does not resort to sensational extremes, but rather closely observes the everyday life of a family and their environment. Some events drive the story forward, car accidents, divorces, and relocations, and certain circumstances cause the characters concern and contribute to their development, financial worries, class differences, and everyday racism. However, moments of joy and comfort, self-reflection, and Julia\u2019s growth are just as central to the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Weltenwechsel<\/em> has not been translated into English)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under the somewhat abstract title Weltenwechsel (Change of Worlds), Kraft tells the story of a Black girl growing up in southern Germany shortly after the end of the Second World War. With this perspective on the post-war period, Kraft fills a gap in the German literary landscape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2416,103],"tags":[830,571,2798,2215,3126,28,1189,452,3205,2650,3203,3206,3207,3204,3213,3201],"class_list":["post-23935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","category-review","tag-black-german","tag-black-german-history","tag-black-german-literature","tag-coming-of-age-2","tag-coming-of-age-novel","tag-deutschland","tag-novel-2","tag-orlanda-verlag","tag-post-war-period","tag-racism-en","tag-second-world-war","tag-southern-germany","tag-weltenwechsel","tag-world-war-ii","tag-zweiter-weltkrieg","tag-zweiter-weltkrig"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23936,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23935\/revisions\/23936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}