Jens Mühling – författare

Ten years ago journalist Jens Muhling met Juri, a Russian television producer whose job it was to sell stories to TV stations in Germany but who always maintained that 'The true stories are more unbelievable than anything I could invent.' Ever since, Jens Muhling has been travelling through Russia in search of stories that appear too unbelievable to be true: a hermit from the Taiga who only recently found out that there was a world beyond the woods, a priest who ventures into the exclusion zone around Chernobyl to preach to those that stubbornly remain there, and many more. Jens Muhling shows us a country whose customs, contradictions, absurdities and attractions are still largely unknown beyond its borders.

Dramatic conflicts, migrating populations, changing fortunes. Decades of political and cultural pressure under communism. The encroachment of climate change and globalisation. For centuries, the Black Sea has been at the centre of a shifting kaleidoscope of stories.Visiting every country around the coast, Jens Mühling explores nations both ancient and nascent, connecting with local people and landscapes, following their stories, and discovering the startling sights of this multifaceted region. He portrays minority populations who vie proudly for respect and autonomy, and depicts a region of never-ending social and ecological transformation ― from gradual evolutions to the stark shockwaves of displacements and invasions. Ultimately, Mühling shows the peoples and places of this region are much like the sea around which they converge: restless, enigmatic, underestimated, and captivating.

'Will someone pay for the spilled blood? No. Nobody.' Mikhail Bulgakov wrote these words in Kiev during the turmoil of the Russian Civil War. Since then Ukrainian borders have shifted constantly and its people have suffered numerous military foreign interventions that have left them with nothing. As a state, Ukraine exists only since 1991 and what it was before is controversial among its people as well as its European neighbours. Writing in a simple and vivid way, Jens Muhling narrates his encounters with nationalists and old Communists, Crimean Tatars and Cossacks, smugglers, archaeologists and soldiers, all of whose views could hardly be more different. Black Earth connects all these stories to convey an unconventional and unfiltered view of Ukraine - a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and the centre of countless conflicts of opinion.

Fringing the Black Sea are a kaleidoscope of countries, some centuries old and others emerging only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through the stories of the people he meets there, Jens Mühling seeks to paint a picture of this cauldron of cultures and to understand the present against a backdrop of change stretching back to the arrival of Ancient Greek settlers and beyond. A fluent Russian speaker with a knack for gaining the trust of those he meets, Mühling’s cast of characters, as diverse as the stories he hears, is ready to tell him their complex, contradictory, often fantastical tales, full of grief and legend. He meets descendants of the so-called Pontic Greeks, whom Stalin deported to Central Asia and who have now returned; Circassians, known from Tolstoy’s Caucasus stories, who fled to Syria a century ago and whose great-great-grandchildren, now displaced, have returned to Abkhazia; and members of ethnic minorities: the Georgian Mingrelians, Turkish Lazis, or Bulgarian Muslims expelled to Turkey in the summer of 1989. Not to mention the molluscs and other species that have unsettled the delicate ecological balance of this unique body of water. Nowhere does the uneasy alliance of tradition and modernity seem starker, and there is no better writer to capture the diverse humanity of those who live there.

Aus großer Nähe, relevant, poetisch, humorvoll und eindringlicherzählt Jens Mühling von einem Meer zwischen den TrennlinienEuropas, von seinen Ufer- und Wasserbewohnern, seinen Strömungenund Migrationswegen, seiner Vergangenheit und Zukunft –und führt uns vor Augen, dass alle Grenzen letztlich fließende sind.« Ich habe das Schwarze Meer von allen Seiten gesehen, und vonkeiner Seite war es schwarz. Es war silbrig, als ich im Frühlingdie noch menschenleeren Strände der russischen Kaukasusküsteentlangfuhr. Es wurde blau, als ich im Mai Georgien erreichte.In der Türkei schien es dem Grün der Teeplantagen und Haselnussfelderan seinen Ufern ähnlicher zu werden, und grün blieb es,bis ich im Spätsommer den Bosporus erreichte. Die ersten Herbststürmefärbten es braun, als über der Küste Bulgariens die Vögelsüdwärts und die Touristen heimwärts zogen. Im rumänischen Donaudeltaschien der Himmel so tief über dem Meer zu hängen,dass sein bleierner Ton auf das Wasser abfärbte. Als ich die Ukraineerreichte, schoben die Wellen schmutzgraue Eisschollen über dieStrände. Erst auf der Krim hellte die Wintersonne das Meer wiederauf, und hier nahm es den Ton an, den es in meiner Erinnerungimmer haben wird: ein trübes, milchiges Grün, wie ein Sud ausAlgen und Sonnencreme. »

Jens Mühling klappert ganz Berlin ab, Ortsteil für Ortsteil. Überlegt nicht lange, fährt einfach hin und läuft los. Quatscht Leute an, erlebt Abenteuer. Es ist das ganze, das ungeteilte Berlin, das er durchstreift, mit wirklich allen seinen Ortsteilen, vom kleinsten (Hansaviertel) bis zum größten (Köpenick), vom einwohnerreichsten (Neukölln) bis zum einwohnerärmsten (Malchow). Und er erfährt, dass sich Berlin wie eine fremde, neue, andere Stadt anfühlen kann, sobald man nur mal ein paar Haltestellen weiter raus fährt, als man es sonst tut.