Alexa Hennig von Lange reads from her new novel "Die karierten Mädchen" (The Chequered Girls)

Date: 8 November 2022
Time: 19.00 p.m.
Location: Marienkirche Dessau

Ticket price: 6,50 €
Tickets are available at the tourist information offices in Dessau and Roßlau and at the box office.
Organiser: Thalia Dessau in cooperation with Municipal Archives Dessau-Roßlau and JKS Villa Krötenhof

The reading of the book ( Original title „Die karierten Mädchen“) is in German.

Reservix online booking:https://www.reservix.de/tickets-lesung-die-karierten-maedchen-in-dessau-rosslau-marienkirche-am-8-11-2022/e1998778

It is very rare that our region forms the central location of a novel’s plot. This is the case in the recently published new novel “Die karierten Mädchen” by Alexa Hennig von Lange. For her new book, the author was inspired by her grandmother’s memoirs, which she recorded at an advanced age on more than 130 tape cassettes. The novel is the beginning of a trilogy that starts in 1929

Klara, the protagonist of the novel, gets one of the rare jobs as a home economics teacher in a children’s home in Oranienbaum in the middle of the world economic crisis. Soon the home’s economic situation comes to a head. Klara, who now runs the home, seeks the proximity of the new powers-that-be in the hope of salvation. Too late she realises with whom she has become involved.

The National Socialists turn the house into a women’s educational home. Klara is supposed to instil a love of the people and the child in her pupils instead of educating them to become independent-minded women. At the same time, under the swastika flag and the constant visits of Nazi officials, she is suddenly in danger herself, as she protects a Jewish orphan girl.

Alexa Hennig von Lange, born in 1973, became one of the most successful authors of her generation with her debut novel “Relax” (1997). Numerous other novels, short stories, plays and books for young people followed. In 2002, Alexa Hennig von Lange was awarded the German Youth Literature Prize. With her novel “Die karierten Mädchen” (The Checkered Girls), Alexa Hennig von Lange presents a novel set in a time when the National Socialists gradually subjugated all areas of society, brutality increased and freedom dwindled. She spreads this dark chapter of German history in an exciting, authentic way, with a plausible view of the social developments of the 1930s and against a concrete regional frame of reference. In which the Anhalt towns of Oranienbaum and Dessau play a major role.