Website about Wolfgang Herrndorf's “Tschick” | EUROtoday

FAs many as 4 million copies of “Tschick” have been bought up to now. 3.8 million, to be precise, as of April 2024, fourteen years after the novel was printed. But since Wolfgang Herrndorf's story about two Berlin boys who steal a automobile to be able to run away to Wallachia and search for their place on the earth has instantly grow to be faculty studying, it’s most likely solely a matter of time till the following 200 thousand copies . And so on.

The faculty studying factor roughly began by itself. Soon after “Tschick” was printed in fall 2010, the primary academics contacted the writer who had studied Herrndorf’s novel of their German class and have been now asking for instructing supplies. Since then, “Tschick” has been on the curriculum in German faculties.

There is now a brand new web site, “Tschickucation”, which solutions many questions on the e book and its writer (though not all of them, that will be even nicer, it’s literature). Questions like: What is Marzahn? What is Wallachia? How does a watch work as a compass? What is Risi-Pisi? And who was this Wolfgang Herrndorf, what else did he write and why did he must die so early?

The literary and juvenile legal regulation background to the story in regards to the automobile stealers Maik and Tschick can be defined. “Tschickucation” was created on the initiative of the Herrndorf household and is taken care of by Herrndorf’s widow, the Berlin writer Carola Wimmer. She had arrange a biographical web site, ueberwolfgang.de, a very long time in the past. “Tschickucation” is extra practice-oriented, extra playful, the solutions come as a video clip, encyclopedia and quiz.

“The idea came about during the Corona period,” says Carola Wimmer, “when it became clear that digital educational offerings were rather poor. That has now changed, but most of the better learning options are chargeable. For me, 'Tschickucation' was about the old Internet ideals: well-processed and easily accessible information for everyone. That's why 'Tschickucation' is also optimized for smartphones.”

This textual content comes from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Herrndorf used the Internet as a social and inventive device like no different German-speaking writer of his time. So it's becoming that there’s now this web site that explores the audiovisual prospects of digital. If you need, “Tschick” belongs precisely there, on the Internet, as a result of it will also be a classroom if issues are going nicely.

But that's not the one factor that matches. “Tschickucation” treats the story itself throughout borders, taking a more in-depth take a look at it as a novel, a play and a movie. That's why Herrndorf's dramaturg Robert Koall, who tailored “Tschick” for the stage in 2011, and Fatih Akin, who filmed it in 2016, have their say. But above all, “Tschickucation” is spoken by younger people who find themselves the identical age or barely older than Maik, Isa and Tschick. Their names are Clara, Sava, Oda, Nora and Elli, they usually ask the questions right here. And the adults – Herrndorf's mom Katrin can be there through phone – reply.

After the publication of “Tschick,” Herrndorf himself acquired letters from all around the nation; 14 and 15-year-olds requested about Maik and Tschick and Isa, about their motives, about Herrndorf’s motives – questions that the terminally ailing writer of this immortal story can now not reply might, needed. In February 2010, a tumor was found in his mind. Herrndorf took his personal life in August 2013. He needed to make use of the time he had left to jot down. This unhappy aspect of the basic “Tschick” can be mentioned.

“Even for those who don’t like to read”

To this present day, college students write to Carola Wimmer if they’ve questions in regards to the e book, “I try to help with discreet tips,” she says. “It's important to me that 'Tschickucation' also reaches out to those who don't really like reading. But the people who are curious are just as important to me; the interviews with the experts are primarily intended for them.” And as a result of 2024 is now not 2010, the gender relationships within the novel additionally come into focus, analyzed by the literary scholar Julie Miess.

One might say that “Tschick” is a aspect chapter of Isa’s story, which Herrndorf continued within the final novel he was nonetheless in a position to work on, “Pictures of Your Great Love,” printed posthumously in 2014. Is there additionally a separate web site deliberate for this? Or the difficult thriller “Sand” from 2011, which poses so many mysteries? “No. That’s an excessive amount of work,” says Carola Wimmer. “And with 'Tschick' the benefits are pleasingly concrete.”