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With the Cinquecento along the Amalfi Coast
Photo: Daniel Etter / Prestel
As long as one cannot travel properly, travel books are a substitute, especially books about the desire to travel.
Because in times when the sentences begin with "in times of", it is even bigger than usual.
The author Marco Maurer, 40, tells of such a longing journey in his new book.
A journey through time too.
The speedometer ends at 110.
Shortly before the first lockdown, Maurer drove a Fiat Cinquecento Giardiniera, 18 hp, over country roads from Sicily to Hamburg, once across Italy, the land of longing for Germans.
Nobody speaks of a "longing for France" and "a longing for Spain", not even in these times.
»Italiensehnsucht«, however, has its own Wikipedia entry.
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Reporter Maurer (left) in a workshop that "looks like the stage set for a worker's play" to him
Photo: Daniel Etter / Prestel
Maurer spent a lot of time in workshops on the way;
the Cinquecento was built in 1968. But it spends even more time in the kitchens of its hosts.
"You can't get any closer to this country than at the kitchen table." He meets olive growers in Calabria, saffron growers in Abruzzo, a nun in Rome.
He's looking for the best pizza in Naples and the best Bolognese, sorry: the best ragù in Bologna.
All of this is often close to the cliché, but even closer to the heart.
Because the book has a second level.
Through the
Italy of mums and nonnas
Maurer has written as a reporter for the »Neon«, »Zeit«, the »Süddeutsche« and worked for Jan Böhmermann's »Neo Magazin Royale«, but he is also a trained dairy specialist, grew up in a small village in Bavaria, his mother is a hairdresser, his father chimney sweep.
In 2015 he wrote his first book about his educational advancement and German educational injustice: »You stay what you are.
Why with us still the social origin decides «.
His new book is now also a book about origins, but completely different.
In the first book, Maurer highlighted the problems that can come with coming from so-called simple circumstances.
In the new book, his view of these simple relationships is thoroughly positive.
Maurer, one could say, gives himself wholeheartedly to the romanticism of the Italian workers and peasants.
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This is the highlight of the book: Maurer searches for his own origins, but he doesn't find it in Bavaria, for example, he finds it in Italy in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the Italy of mothers and nuns, a simple country with simple ones Enjoyment.
His first love was Luana, writes Maurer on the first page, a holiday love.
But after 240 pages, the reader suspects that it was a bit of a fake, his first love was his grandmother, a Bavarian farmer and café owner who would also have cut a good figure as an Italian Nonna.
Maurer meets his grandmother again and again on his travels.
It is also a journey into the realm of fantasies and memories.
The longing for yesterday is often the greatest.
It's a longing for the good, old, simple life.
For down-to-earth people and dishes that ground us.
No frills.
Maurer noticed on the way that his grandmother's farming village is still closer to him than he thought.
"Also closer to Milan than to Hamburg, the city in which I currently live."
Talent for the grand gesture
Maurer is now continuing his book in this Hamburg.
Because not only trips to Italy are currently almost impossible, but also reading trips and book premieres, not to mention appearances at the canceled Leipzig Book Fair, Maurer and his publisher have considered putting the budget that was once earmarked for a museum of longing .
In the rooms of a corona-related orphaned boutique that Maurer rented on Lehmweg in the Hoheluft district of Hamburg, he is setting up a pop-up store in which only one book is sold: his own.
But above all, it makes the book accessible in the shop.
You can see the pictures of the photographer Daniel Etter, who accompanied Maurer on his trip, as well as mementos of the people they met on the way: a clothesline from Naples;
a rolling pin from Liguria;
the transistor radio used by an olive farmer in Calabria to scare away wild boars.
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The restaurant "Sora Margherita" in the Jewish quarter of Rome
Photo: Daniel Etter / Prestel
Maurer calls it “Little Italy in Hamburg” - and thus proves that he is blessed with a downright Italian talent for a grand gesture.
"At a time when culture is having a hard time, we want to administer a cultural antidote." On Instagram there will be a series of talks with prominent guests at @marcoeamici: the theology professor Johanna Haberer, the baking book author Melissa Forti, the musician Francesco Wilking von the »Crucchi Gang«.
Maurer's one-book store is only a few steps away from the “Trattoria Mama”, a system catering shed that used to be home to Uncle Pö, a legendary club.
But that's another story, full of longing and nostalgia for them too.
Maurer creates a place that depicts longing - and ideally satisfies it a little.
The goal: Italia to go.
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