“Sun worshipper”—that was how a journalist from the “Schweriner
Volkszeitung”
1
once called me. I was born in Plessa, in the heart
of the brown coal region of Eastern Germany, not far from the
legendary Horno.
2
At the age of 4, I began to absorb ‘the know-
ledge of the world’, which my father had kept over the war years,
and I
wanted to become a scientist. At the age of 10, I installed
father Franz Kießlich—an artist and teacher—and I, armed with
sketch-pads, ...