Novels, it is said, convey a secret, while autobiographies show the truth of a life. A contrast that Ulrike Edschmid's stories have long since left behind in their austere, yet observant narrative style. The characters - women with guns charged as terrorists, a man who dies in an exchange of fire with the police - existed. These are true résumés, reported by Ulrike Edschmid, who in the seventies and eighties asked herself questions about the real life in a left-wing radical milieu in Berlin, but did not want to go underground. Levy's Testament, the fourth novel that has just been published, follows a young Briton who trades urban warfare in London for political activism in factories in Frankfurt.The tenderness with which Ulrike Edschmid, the cautious yet central self in the novel, follows in the footsteps of her lover and unravels his family history, is great. As in the previous novels, she not only traces the life of an individual, but also unfolds the panorama of a time. Up to the present, so that mystery and truthfulness shake hands.

You recently celebrated your eightieth birthday and published a new novel.

All of this under pandemic conditions.

How do you experience this exceptional time?

Ulrike Edschmid: My life has hardly changed.

It's very home-focused and work-driven.

I didn't start publishing until I was fifty and I have big plans.

I'm already working on my next book.

"Levy's Testament" is now the third, autobiographically inspired novel about the lives of the men you once loved yourself.

How do love and literature relate to one another?

I don't think in terms or in theories.

I am a craftsman.

My only rule is that I largely avoid adjectives.

Adjectives always get in my way.

And you avoid naming your characters in a novel.

Yes, if I gave names to the people in my books, I would be on you and you with them. But I'm not looking for companionship, but rather respectful interaction. I need a distance from these characters, although I also knew everyone I am describing. I don't want to be involved with them. In “Levy's Testament” I only call the character “the Englishman”, and I want him to stay that way. When writing, you are always on the verge of betrayal. With all their intimate knowledge, my characters have to become strangers again. That sharpens the eye.

You met the "Englishman" in 1972 on a trip to London.

You wanted to get away from the Berlin radical left scene, the constant house searches by the police and the arrests of your colleagues.

The “Englishman” accompanies you back to Germany to organize uprisings or strikes in factories from within.

Later he founded the first Frankfurt migrant theater and rose, a little later, to an internationally acclaimed opera director.

The real person behind this story is easy to research with the clues you provide.

Nevertheless, I am not retelling the biography.

I am describing what he does.

The results of what he did.

I also work off historical facts;

what i experienced.

These are more like pictures that are strung together.

Images that are connected by a narrative self that remains very subtly in the background.

It is already my sensory perceptions that are part of it.

Many say that my narrative style has something cinematic about it.

You actually studied film at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin.