13 Attempts to Become a Rooster - 7

The series "13 Attempts to Become a Rooster" dates back to the years 1977/78.

The series may be considered a surreal Curriculum Vitae.

Wolfgang Lettl writes:
"I remember the first few postwar years (World War I) as a happy time. There was something in the air: freedom, peace, hope. And the art of the expressionists spoke of a new beginning towards a new humanitarianism.

Then came the night of the barbarians and the monsters."

In Image Seven the rooster loses his colours. Locked up inside a dark room and deprived of his freedom to move, he casts a dark shadow. His head is missing, revealing that he is just a hollow empty shell now. Life and spirit have abandoned the rooster.

School having been shortened by one year, Wolfgang Lettl graduates from high school in 1938. Hitler needs soldiers. After half a year of Labour Service he is drafted into military service and remains a soldier in the German Army until the end of the war in 1945. This is followed by half a year in the Lüneburg Heath as a British prisoner of war.

The years between the ages of 20 and 30 are normally decisive for a person's life. Wolfgang Lettl 's generation is therefore often called the "lost generation".

Before the war they attended school, after the war it was too late for vocational training.