![Satzwende: Ulrike Sterblich (1/2) [EN]](/_assets/9ebe51156f8229bdb6dd8b3e7a310c1f/Static/magazin/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
Night is when the place where we are, on the sphere on which we live, is turned away from the star that forms our solar system. Somewhere it is always night. And somewhere it is always day. In between there is twilight. When we look up at the sky at night, we see alien suns, but not our own. Instead, we see celestial bodies that are illuminated by our sun. Planets, satellites, our moon.
In a comic strip by cartoonist Martin Perscheid, who died in 2021, a man falls into the clutches of a vampire. They are in a castle, it is night, the moon is shining brightly through the window. The vampire already has the man by the scruff of the neck when he says: "The moon doesn't shine by itself, it reflects the sunlight." The vampire stumbles, and then he crumbles to dust in the old vampire tradition. The work is subtitled with the words: Knowledge can save lives.
The vampire needs the night, and apart from a few grotto elms and deep-sea creatures that carve out their existence in constant darkness, most living creatures need the alternation of day and night. We change during the night. The pineal gland turns on, releases melantonin and we power down into a minimal mode, the sleep. A strange, wonderful state, physically inactive, but interspersed with mental images and stories that we have mostly forgotten by the time the earth has turned so far that the sun rises for us in the morning.
But there is no more night. Around two hundred years ago, city streets began to be systematically illuminated, first with gas, then electrically. Since then, a tsunami of light has been rolling around the world. The urban night is so attractive because its darkness is broken by light in all colors. Light that flashes and sparkles, light that is reflected in the water. Satellite images of the earth, one can get them on the cell phone and rotate the sphere and zoom in on areas, show the night side covered in sparkling dots and areas.
Translation: Kevin Behrens
![#77 Ulrike Sterblich: „Es ist auch gut, wenn man mal anders schreiben muss“ [33:56]](/fileadmin/_processed_/f/e/csm_sterblich_ulrike_teaser_c_sabine_kieselbach_1400x1400_f99d0f06da.jpg)
Ulrike Sterblich
lebt in ihrer Heimatstadt Berlin, wo sie als Gastgeberin der Talk- und Lesebühne Berlin Bunny Lectures bekannt wurde. 2012 erschien ihr erfolgreiches Mauerstadt-Memoir Die halbe Stadt, die es nicht mehr gibt. 2021 veröffentlichte Ulrike Sterblich ihr vielbeachtetes literarisches Debüt The German Girl. Mit Drifter wurde die Politologin und Autorin aus Berlin für den Deutschen Buchpreis 2023 nominiert. Mysteriös und wunderbar fantastisch erzählt Ulrike Sterblich in ihrem Roman die Geschichte von Wenzel und Killer: Alles ändert sich, als Vica in ihr Leben tritt: eine Frau in goldenem Kleid, meist begleitet von zwei treuen Adjutanten und einem riesigen Zottelhund. Bei jeder Begegnung mit Vica ploppen neue Fragen auf. Sie kennt unerklärliche Geheimnisse und ihr Einfluss bringt Unruhe in die Welt der Freunde. Als Vica schließlich auch noch den Wohnblock ihrer Kindheit in Beschlag nimmt, gerät die Welt von Wenzel und Killer ins Wanken.
