Objekt des Monats
Jedes Objekt in der Sammlung des Deutschen Auswandererhauses erzählt eine ganz persönliche Auswanderungs- oder Einwanderungsgeschichte. In dieser Rubrik stellen wir Ihnen jeden Monat ein anderes Objekt vor – eine Fotografie, ein Dokument oder ein persönliches Erinnerungsstück.
April 2023
For World Book Day: Book with dedication, 1987
Historical Context
A day of honor for the book, for the joy of stories and the pleasure of reading: on April 23, the UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day is celebrated. The date not only marks the death anniversary of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare (according to the Julian calendar) but also refers to a Catalan memorial day, the Diada de Sant Jordi. It honors the patron saint St. George – nowadays in Barcelona also with book stalls stretching through the Rambla and the city. In Germany, World Book Day is accompanied by numerous activities from libraries, bookstores, publishers, and schools.
Short Biography
Author, adventurer, and emigrant: Henky Hentschel is born in 1940 in Ulm and begins studying ethnology and sociology in Heidelberg in the 1960s. In his study city, he co-founds a self-managed facility for drug dependents. His experiences in larger media houses, where he starts working as an author – including rejections for his extraordinary film ideas – push him toward migration: “Henky rebelled. He despised and disregarded societal conventions and shaped his life according to his high urge for freedom,” recalls Ulrich Hentschel, who manages his cousin’s estate. From his ‘exit’, starting with emigration to Elba in 1972, Henky Hentschel no longer lives in Germany but in Guadalupe, Mexico, Guatemala, and Cuba, where he also passes away in 2012. Many of his travel and life experiences are processed in his writing.
Significance of the Object
For over ten years, the Mediterranean island of Elba has been home to Henky Hentschel. Initially, he made leather garments there, and later he ran a farm, supplying local restaurants with his products. When his cousin Ulrich Hentschel visited him in 1981, he only saw him briefly: “He had to leave immediately, to the mainland and then to Munich, to a woman. He was gone for two weeks.” The handwritten dedication addressed to him in his book “Tutto pagato. Everything paid,” which recounts three stories from his Italian residence, hints at Hentschel’s unconventional life path and his transience: “Until somewhere and sometime. Henky.”
Henky Hentschel has written about almost every place he has lived. Thus, alongside the accounts from his cousin Ulrich Hentschel, only his books provide access to his adventures and a glimpse into his eventful but poorly documented biography.
Do You Also Have …
… a story of emigration or immigration in your family that you would like to share with the German Emigration Center together with the related objects and documents for its collection? Then please contact Dr. Tanja Fittkau by phone at +49 471 / 90 22 0 – 0
or by e-mail at: t.fittkau@dah-bremerhaven.de