Sleeping Boy

This unusual allegory, set in pre- and post-war Berlin, is essentially a recasting of Sleeping Beauty.

Herr and Frau Rosen joyfully celebrate the birth of Knabe Rosen with everyone they know - except the terrible Major Krieg. Arriving anyway, he snatches up the sleeping boy and predicts: "On your sixteenth birthday you will hear the drums drumming as the army marches by. Off to war you'll go - and you will not come home." However, the boy's aunt hasn't given her blessing yet. "Instead of going off to war," says Tante Taube, "Knabe Rosen will only sleep...sleep through poverty and war, bad times and sadness, until PEACE comes to Berlin."

And indeed, one day a persistent tap tapping heralds the fall of the Berlin wall, and Knabe Rosen's long sleep is over.