YoungPoetry on the topic of resilience: "If the World Were Ours"

1945, 1988, 2025—these dates mark significant moments in the lives of three protagonists in Christian Linker’s young adult novel *Wenn die Welt unser wäre*. At the invitation of the House of Science at the University of Siegen, the author was a guest at the Esther-Bejarano Comprehensive School in Freudenberg as part of the YoungPoetry series. This time, the reading series “Mental Health as Reflected in Contemporary Young Adult Literature” focused on the topic of “resilience.” The ninth-grade class was present in the cafeteria. For a full 90 minutes, the room was filled with rapt silence. 

The three episodes from the youth of Harald, Jennifer, and Nadiem pack a punch. Linker began his reading chronologically in the present—with Nadiem. He is at the outdoor pool with his classmate Ayla. A scuffle breaks out among a group of young men, which is filmed. Nadiem, the “model refugee,” is taken to the police station. His foster mother, Jennifer, has to go pick him up. During this critical phase, Nadiem—who fled from Afghanistan to Germany—recalls the coping strategies his therapist taught him. They help him keep his composure and maintain control of the situation.

Jennifer’s hands are shaking, and her eyes are filled with fear as she goes to pick up Nadiem at the police station. Her reaction stems from a trauma she experienced in her youth. Jennifer grew up in the former GDR in a family devoted to socialism. Her uncle Achim recruited her as an informant for the Stasi. She is supposed to spy on a Protestant youth group. The plan goes well until Jennifer falls in love and no longer wants to betray her friends. At her uncle’s instigation, she ends up in the secure Torgau Youth Work Center, where she is mistreated. While in detention, she escapes in her thoughts to her friend Nicole. This fantasy world enables her to endure the conditions at the youth work camp. On her 18th birthday, she is released from Torgau as “incorrigible.” A few months later, the GDR collapses. Jennifer goes to the “West” and lives there with her aunt Frieda, who fled the violence of Soviet soldiers after the war ended and found a new home near Essen together with Harry.

At the age of 15, before the end of the war in 1945, Harald (Harry) enlists in the “Werwölfe,” a Nazi organization tasked with continuing the fight in already occupied territories. In a showdown with advancing U.S. soldiers, he is seriously wounded due to the negligence of his SS superior. Their paths cross once more after the war ends. Harald defuses the situation on his own by drawing on conversations he’d had with the British youth officer Bill Almonds, who had instilled in him not only a love of jazz but also the fundamentals of democratic communities and peaceful coexistence.