Presenter, journalist and author Christine Westermann loves books. Her new discovery this week: “Steinhammer” by Jörg Thadeusz. And yes, author and protagonist are related.
He was a relative and grew up on Steinhammerstrasse in the 1950s. However, it never really belonged. He wanted to be a painter, but his relatives in Dortmund agreed that art is a lucrative business. You were better off as a miner or bricklayer. The boy, who according to his relatives “just painted around a bit”, later became one of the greatest representational painters of the 20th century, a master student of Joseph Beuys, and later an art professor himself. He made a career that he didn’t even know was possible. The author Jörg Thadeusz has made a novel out of the fascinating life story of Norbert Tadeusz, one of his father’s cousins.