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How does the West talk about the East? And what does it mean to be forced into an East German identity that is also blamed for growing social tension? The West is still seen as the norm and the East as a deviation, according to Dirk Oschmann. Whether it's populism, a lack of understanding of democracy or conspiracy myths: the list of deficiencies for the East is long. According to the writer Juli Zeh, the West saw reunification in 1990 primarily as a problem. Juli Zeh, born in Bonn in 1974, studied law in Passau and Leipzig, studied European and international law, and earned her doctorate. She spent long periods in New York and Krakow. Her debut novel Eagle and Angel (2001) was a global success, and her novels have now been translated into 35 languages. Juli Zeh has received numerous awards for her work, including the Rauris Literature Prize (2002), the Hölderlin Prize (2003), the Carl Amery Literature Prize (2009), the Thomas Mann Prize (2013), the Hildegard von Bingen Prize (2015), and the Bruno Kreisky Prize (2017) as well as the Heinrich Böll Prize of the City of Cologne (2019). In 2018 she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. In the same year she was elected judge at the Constitutional Court of the State of Brandenburg. Dirk Oschmann, born in 1967 in Gotha, is Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Leipzig. An event organized by the Brandenburg Literature Office in cooperation with LIT:potsdam.