Christoph Dieckmann (writer)

[1][2] Christoph Dieckmann was born in Rathenow, a small town in the flat lands to the west of Potsdam and Berlin.

[3] Hans-Joachim Dieckmann, his father, was a Lutheran pastor, a man of strong principle who never allowed himself or his family to be seduced by the party's "socialist" group-think.

As a result of these contacts, when in 1990 Christoph Dieckmann, by this time an ambitious young journalist, needed to improve his English fast, he was tutored in the language by Herlind Kasner (born Herlind Jentzsch), a retired specialist English teacher at the East Berlin Missionary House.

[4] As a teenager he was prevented from undertaking his school leaving exam (Abitur) which under other circumstances would have opened the way to university level education.

[5] When the family had lived in the little village of Dingelstedt am Huy the fact that the pastor's son never joined the Free German Youth ("Freie Deutsche Jugend" / Young Communists) or the "Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation" was not an obvious problem.

[6] The education officer at the school refused him permission to take part in the Abitur exams, regardless of recommendations submitted and the good marks achieved in class.

[9] His first reports and essays covered topics such as rock music, literature and "life" during the final years of the German Democratic Republic.

[9] In 1990, through great good fortune (according to his own assessment) Dieckmann, a 34-year-old theologian with uncertain career prospects, received a stipendium from the World Press Institute which enabled him to spend six months in the United States of America.

His thought-provoking newspaper pieces and books are wide-ranging, but he returns repeatedly to the subject of East Germany and the so-called "New states" ("neue Bundesländer") which replaced it.

Among intellectuals from what had been East Germany, something approaching an informal Dieckmann fan-club emerged, though the wave of enthusiasm has receded during the early 21st century.