Hannes Bohn only wants one thing: to live as an artist. But the GDR is too narrow for such simple desires. Hannes ends up in prison, addicted to drugs and heavily in debt. A short time later, the Stasi discovers his talent and trains him as an art forger. Hannes fails again, this time because of his honesty: he secretly forges a Renaissance painting to save the original from being sold abroad.

Anke Engelmann traces the sad and funny life of a man who stumbles his way through GDR history. He bluffs his way through prison, psychiatry and the underground until he himself no longer knows who he really is: a picture, painted over so often that no one recognizes the original. Is Hannes a tragic genius, a bluff man - or both at the same time?

Anke Engelmann, born in 1966 in Weimar, where she now lives and works, studied linguistics after her experiences in a variety of jobs and trained as a journalist. Since then, writing has been her profession: under the name "Büro für angewandte Poesie" (Office for Applied Poetry), she writes her own texts and edits others, holds creative writing courses and teaches people with disabilities how to read and write. Her short story collection "Eiapopeia im Prenzelberg" was published in 2021.