Engel

The book begins with a letter from the artist to the publisher:

"Dear Joseph,
I'm sending you these angels. They are angels from the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), carved wonderfully round so that you can easily and endlessly multiply them; so endlessly round that you could effortlessly double the individual body parts: a double belly, a double ass, etc., etc.
In the past, when I was still a child and we lived in Leipzig, my mother always put them up at Advent. They lasted until Christmas and were then locked in a dresser.
I associated the memory of these angels from the Erzgebirge with the sweat of my compatriots, who carved them incessantly in a laborious cottage industry for very little money.
This year I learned from Jvo, a young art historian from Munich, that ‘my’ angels had mainly been made in the People's Republic of China.
And so, my beautiful legend of the sweating Erzgebirge-dwellers all the way up there in the mountains had been thoroughly spoiled. I decided to avoid Jvo for a while.
And then, when I looked closely at the faces of these angels in the quiet chamber, I noticed that their eyes are slightly inclined..."