Hinrich Lobek, an employee of the East Berlin Communal Housing Administration, who has been laid off for three years, suspects Morgenluft. The weekly horoscope of “Hello Berlin” urges him to take initiative. Heartily, Lobek applies to a west German company for indoor fountains and in his old application he deletes the tried and tested formula of “convinced representative of the socialist order.” He courageously writes: “Many years of sales experience”. And so, in front of the astonished eyes of working wife Julia and the somewhat naughty shepherd dog “Friday”, begins the unstoppable rise of Hinrich Lobek to the successful representative for room fountains in East Germany. Like a Schweik of the sales industry, Lobek unknowingly stumbles from success to success.
With this burlesque novels novel Sparschuh has managed the feat to take on all the comic and tragic aspects of the East-West split and without sentimentality. A humorous parable of nostalgia for East Germany, which has become a classic of German-language literature.
