Winterberg’s Last Journey
follows its two main characters on an eclectic, tragicomic train journey through Central Europe – ‘the beautiful landscape of battlefields, cemeteries and ruins’. When Czech nurse Jan Kraus is charged with the care of 99-year-old Wenzel Winterberg, a Sudetenland German expelled from his Bohemian homeland after the Second World War, he believes that their time together is limited. But a casual remark from Kraus one night – ‘it’s interesting; your name is Winterberg, and I came from Winterberg, from Vimperk in Bohemia, which used to be called Winterberg’ – sparks a new life in the old man, who becomes obsessed with uncovering the fate of his lost love, Lenka Morgenstern. Kraus is then dragged along by Winterberg on a winding train journey from Berlin to Sarajevo, all the while dealing with Winterberg’s regular ‘historical fits’. Their only guide is Winterberg’s Baedeker for Austria-Hungary from 1913 – the last edition ever issued.