Don Pablo Mulemba

Home of the Dog - The East, My Family, and Other Mysteries

As a child, Don Pablo Mulemba—the son of an Angolan contract worker and an East German woman—constantly had to explain the color of his skin. He naturally identified as German. He spoke the same dialect as everyone else, knew nothing but the Brandenburg countryside—and yet was repeatedly treated as an outsider. His parents had met in the GDR, but the East after reunification was no longer a safe place for them and their children. These were the “combat-boot years”; their friend Amadeu Antonio was beaten to death on the open street in Eberswalde. The family was torn apart: His parents saw no future for themselves and emigrated to Angola. Pablo, however, wanted to stay. At age twelve, he attended a sports boarding school in Cottbus and, as a Black teenager, had to find his own way.

Today, he grapples with the fundamental questions of identity, home, and belonging—questions that lead him on a journey with his father all the way to Angola. – Don Pablo Mulemba’s story is also the story of reunified Germany: with its wounds, fractures, and the determination to forge a future nonetheless—told in a gripping, intimate, and authentic way.

Don Pablo Mulemba, born in Eberswalde in 1995 to an Angolan father and an East German mother, is a journalist, reporter, and podcaster. He is the host of the podcast *Springerstiefel* (with Hendrik Bolz) about violence in East Germany after reunification, which won the German Audiobook Prize in 2025, and hosts the NDR program *Atlas*, which received the Grimme Prize in 2025. For his journalistic work, *Medium* magazine named Don Pablo Mulemba one of the “Top 30 Under 30.” *Hundeheimat* is his first book.

Moderator: Aron Boks

Aron Boks is an author, slam poet, and host, and writes for the *taz* and the *taz.FUTURZWEI* column “Stimme meiner Generation” (Voice of My Generation). In 2019, he received the Klopstock Prize for New Literature. His published books include “Nackt in die DDR” (Naked in the GDR), about his great-great-uncle Willi Sitte, and “Starkstromzeit – Vom Leben in einem Staat, den es nicht mehr gibt” (High-Voltage Times: Life in a State That No Longer Exists).

The event will take place at the Waschhaus Klub (1st floor) and, unfortunately, is not wheelchair accessible.