About the work
Visitation is a novel by Jenny Erpenbeck from 2008, adapted in several stage versions for the theatre. At its centre is a property on a lake in Brandenburg, whose changing inhabitants mirror the turbulent German history of the twentieth century.
Plot
The setting is a house with a garden on a lake in the Mark Brandenburg. Over nearly a century its inhabitants pass through: a bourgeois family of the Weimar era, a Jewish couple who must flee the Nazis, a returning architect under the "Third Reich," Red Army soldiers, citizens of the GDR, and finally the heirs after reunification. The only constants are the place itself and the silent gardener who tends it. Through the history of the house, a century of expulsion, expropriation, guilt, and loss of homeland is condensed.
Cultural significance
Visitation is regarded as one of the most important works of Jenny Erpenbeck, who gained international recognition with novels such as Kairos. Erpenbeck turns a single place into a burning glass of German history, addressing themes of homeland, property, expulsion, and the survival of the past in objects. Its poetic, circling language and artful structure make the text a much-adapted reflection on time and transience.