MARIANNE PEYINGHAUS In 1941, a teacher, just 20 years of age from Cologne, came to the Village School in Gertlauken which she found to be a very small community in North East Prussia. She wrote regularly to her parents in Cologne and, in her letters, told them about her life in the countryside that seemed so peaceful and so far away from the war. At the begining of 1945, the advance of the Red Army commenced and brought to a brutal end the supposed idyllic Gertlauken, and, Marianne Peyingaus returned to Cologne. "What a book" - Marianne Peryinghaus has succeded as a novelist and, perhaps, she was not aware of it."