Journalist Gabriele Hennicke has a knack for spotting people with extraordinary biographies. In her new book, "Real Black Foresters," she tells the stories of women and men who have turned their passion into a profession, realized their dreams, and creatively utilized the unique living conditions in the Black Forest, through 25 captivating, richly illustrated reports.
There's the woodcarver who designs and produces masks for centuries-old and newly founded carnival guilds. Anti-nuclear activists who went from being part of a citizens' movement to running a green energy provider. A business graduate who became a miso producer. An agricultural biologist who built a tea company. The young farmer for whom preserving a breed of livestock is more important than high milk production. The ranger who dedicated his life to the Wutach Gorge . A chemical technician who turned her garden into a business. The shepherd who practices his profession purely out of idealism and his love of nature and animals. A young couple who, on their world tour, realize "that we have traded our culture for a globalized, impersonal way of life where everything always has to be more efficient, faster, higher, further." With the simplest of means, however, a shepherd boy becomes an Olympic champion and a young man searching for his purpose becomes the cheesecake king.
Gabriele Hennicke is a freelance journalist. She lives in Münstertal and works in Staufen, the town of Faust. Also published by Rombach Verlag: "Beyond the Bollenhut and Cuckoo Clock : Inventors, Pioneers, and Originals from the Black Forest." http://www.schwarzwaldgeschichten.com
