Don-Pablo Mulemba on East German Identity, Right-Wing Radicalization, and His Book Hundeheimat

Don-Pablo Mulemba, a member of the fourth generation of East Germans, recounts in his book Hundeheimat an attack in Eberswalde in the early 1990s: after midnight, three masked men in combat boots broke down his family's apartment door, armed with a knife and baseball bats. Inside were his German mother, his father from Angola, and a baby — Mulemba's sister. Police made no arrests, and the perpetrators later received suspended sentences. Mulemba also hosts the podcast Springerstiefel, whose first season examines the 1990s in the new federal states and whose second season asks why young men in East Germany vote for the AfD. In an interview with der Freitag, he explains why he refuses to write off young men drifting to the right, and notes that even his grandmother has adopted AfD rhetoric. The conversation was conducted by Benny K. for der Freitag.