Don Pablo Mulemba: Hundeheimat

In the organizer's words:

The East, my family and other wonders

As a child, Don Pablo Mulemba, the son of an Angolan contract worker and an East German woman, constantly had to explain the color of his skin. He considered himself to be German as a matter of course. He spoke the same dialect as everyone else, knew nothing other than the Brandenburg province - and yet he was always made to feel like a foreigner. His parents had met in the GDR, but the post-reunification East was no longer a safe place for them and their children. It was the "Springerstiefel years", their friend Amadeu Antonio was beaten to death on the street in Eberswalde. The family was torn apart: The parents no longer saw any prospects and emigrated to Angola. But Pablo wanted to stay. At the age of twelve, he went to a sports boarding school in Cottbus and had to find his way as a black teenager. Today, he asks himself the crucial questions about identity, home and belonging, questions that lead him on a journey with his father to Angola. - Don Pablo Mulemba's story is also the story of a reunited Germany: with its wounds, ruptures and the determination to create a future nonetheless - told in a gripping, close and authentic way.

Don Pablo Mulemba, born in Eberswalde in 1995 to an Angolan father and an East German mother, is a journalist, reporter and podcaster. He is the host of the podcast Springerstiefel (with Hendrik Bolz) about the violence in the East after reunification, which was awarded the German Audiobook Prize in 2025, and presents the program Atlas for NDR, which received the Grimme Prize in 2025. Medium magazine voted Don Pablo Mulemba among the top 30 to 30 for his journalistic work. Hundeheimat is his first book.