Children of ‘The Cloud’ and Major Tom: Growing Up in the ’80s Under the German Sky
In the sky you could watch history happen as though on the world’s most massive TV, and history’s wreckage could rain down on you at the park with your friends.
My grandparents’ house lies on the Betzenberg in Kaiserslautern, in a quiet section of town. The Betzenberg consisted of suburban 1960s constructions—heavy, dark buildings among towering trees. And above it, the rumbles of another world entirely.
We listened for differences, distance, altitude. It only occurred to me later how perverse it was that my grandparents, who lived through the bombings that had laid Germany’s cities to waste, had placed themselves (by choice or by chance) into the flight path of planes that had to trigger their fight-or-flight response with each flyover. Something about their mode of acute listening had transmitted itself to my parents, born during the air raids, and then to my own generation.
designed
Earth below us, / drifting, falling, / floating weightless, / calling home.

Christiane F,

Hetschmühle


The Last Children of SchevenbornFalloutThe Cloud,Schevenborn


Adrian Daub is a writer and academic living in San Francisco. His work has appeared in The New Republic, n+1, and Longreads. He writes regular articles for newspapers in Germany and Switzerland. He is on twitter as @adriandaub
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