Prince Dr. ASFA-WOSSEN ASSERATE
8th August 2007
LITERATURE meets FINE ARTS - Athiopian perspectives from Germany
The ART CENTER BERLIN invited to the reading of Athiopian Prince Dr. Asfa-Wossen Asserate. The setting made the exhibition "THE SECRET" of the artist Engdaget Legesse with his impressive paintings and magic sculptures. Born in 1971 in Addis Abeba, he could begin his classical education at the "Fine Arts University" in Addis Abeba at the age of 16. The discussion with the Western modernity from Italy to the United States shaped his work in the following years. Like the prince, Engdaget Legesse found the center of his life in Germany.
Prince Dr. Asfa-Wossen Asserate, son of the last president of the imperial crown council and grandnephew of the Athiopian Emperor Haile Selassie is know through his book "Manners" and was asigned the Adalbert-von-Chamisso-Preis in 2004. On this evening, he introduced his new book "A prince of the house David and why he remained in Germany".
His host country Germany, where he studies, becomes the place of exile over night. It begins in 1974: the generals of the revolution take over the country, execute his father, his mother and his siblings are captured, their belongings are confiscated.
Prinz Asfa-Wossen Asserate tells about the gloss of the emperor's court, his future at the German school in Addis Abeba and about the suffering of the revolution. He tells, how he fought for his family for years, how he started a new life in Germany and how he get to know and to love Germans during that time: the stranger, who stayed.
The management consultant for Afica and the Middle East, born in 1948 in Addis Abeba, made his A-levels at the German school in the capital of Athiopia, studied in Tübingen and Cambridge history and law, and eventually did his PhD in Frankfurt / Main.
