Oskar Negt counts himself as lucky. Indeed his life reads like a success story: born the youngest of seven children and raised on a small farm with little formal education in the East Prussian village of Kapkeim, Negt became a noted representative of the Frankfurt School and is today a respected philosopher and professor of sociology on the world stage. And yet his childhood and youth were shaped by painful events and experiences: his flight with two adolescent sisters to the “city of the dead” Königsberg and over the Baltic Sea to Denmark, where he lived for years in a displacement camp before his family reunited near Berlin. And then a new flight – this time to West Germany. Only in 1955, a decade after leaving East Prussia, did Negt feel like he had truly arrived.

In this revelatory book Negt takes his particular life story as an occasion to pose universal questions about autobiographical writing, social orientation and individual identity. He seeks to discover and understand what is necessary to prevent adverse conditions and traumatic experiences dictating one’s sense of being a lifelong victim. Negt’s personal search for traces transcends his own fate and explores the role of self-determination in enjoying a fortunate life.