WZ: Paula Emmrich and Michael Grosse read from “Love Letters from the War”

Reading in Krefeld

Paula Emmrich and Michael Grosse read from “Love Letters from the War”

By Christian Oscar Gazsi Laki

Often they were the only, and not rarely the last, connection to a beloved husband, father, son, brother or friend: the field-post letters that soldiers sent home from the war. Always carrying the hope of return, of reunion, a hope too often overtaken by bitter reality.

A reading at the Villa Merländer on Monday, 6 July, at 7 p.m. centres on exactly such field post, which the writer’s grandson has cast into an artful form and turned into a remarkable book. The readers are actress Paula Emmrich and Michael Grosse, general director and himself an actor at the Theater Krefeld und Mönchengladbach.

Letters from the war interwoven with photographs and AI images

Nearly a thousand pages of field-post letters, written between 1943 and 1945 by Karl to his beloved Grete in Krefeld, are the basis for the book “Love Letters from the War,” published in late 2025 by Kehrer Verlag. When his grandson reads the letters, he finds far more than war: he finds love, hope and the deep wish to preserve one’s humanity, as the announcement of the reading puts it. The book’s author is Karl’s grandson Hanno Ketterer (born 1967). He found the letters one day in a box from his grandmother’s estate.

In this artfully designed book, Ketterer gathers not only his grandfather’s field post but sets it alongside photographs and images created in a particular way: with the help of AI. The original texts merge with these AI-generated images into an overall impression that feels moving and gives the letters an added emotional frame. (See the book’s cover. Photo: Ketterer.)

The project follows Ketterer’s grandfather Karl over a period of two years, from 1943 to the end of the war. “We see how he, a thirty-year-old teacher, is called up for military service. He is married, and his daughter is two years old at the time. We follow him to the Eastern Front, where he works as a cartographer. We read of his worries and his curiosity, of his inner conflict with the rules of the military, of the loss of freedom and the grief of having to leave his family behind,” says the text accompanying the reading. His words reflect both a doubt about the system and a clear aversion to the war. In small anecdotes the reader meets “an ordinary man who keeps searching for beauty in everyday things, who holds on to home and love.” At the same time, one is confronted with the cruel reality of war: Karl is the sole survivor of his unit.

Glimpses into the past, especially those conveyed through contemporary witnesses, hold a special value of their own. For between the personal perspective, behind the writer’s individual view, significant insights sometimes open up into how people thought and experienced their world. And what else does this field post tell us today? “Although these letters were written more than eighty years ago, they feel astonishingly current today, in a time once again marked by uncertainty, conflict and a growing sense of powerlessness,” reads the website of the NS-Dokumentationsstelle. “They remind us gently but insistently that even in the darkest moments we remain free to decide how we act.” The book, it says, is more than a personal Krefeld love story; it is “a homage to the power of small gestures, a declaration of love for humanity.”

Ketterer worked in management consulting before beginning to study photography in 2022. His book “Love Letters from the War” is his first work. It was first presented at Paris Photo.

Admission to the reading at the Villa Merländer (Friedrich-Ebert-Straße 42) is free. 

The Villa Merländer support association welcomes donations in support of its educational work. 

Please register in advance at ns-doku@krefeld.de.

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