If we talk about priests and parish priests and look for information about them, unfortunately, as in almost all "trades", we will find good news, less good news and really bad news. Today's is about a parish priest and it's pretty good news, at least for the world of literature and culture in general.
Martin Wescott is a protestant pastor who lives in the town of Clattenburg, Germany. He looks more like a bohemian poet than a priest: long, totally white beard, black hat and scarf around his neck. The last 30 years of his life, he has dedicated among other things to saving and recovering books. How? Rescuing them from the trash ... Why? According to him, to save the memory ...
That's how it all started
According to Martin Weskott himself to the newspaper "The Spanish", «… It all started with the books of the GDR (the now non-existent Democratic Republic of Germany). One day in May 1991 I saw in the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung a photo showing books produced in the GDR that were ending up in the trash, the photo was taken in Leipzig, in Brandenburg, one of the then new Countries of reunified Germany. We went there, collected the books and put them in a refectory of a monastery located nearby ”.
To this day, Weskott has a whole bookstore whose content in books exceeds 50.000 copies, but according to his words, up to 800.000 copies have passed through there. It is the only bookstore in town and it is not that it needs more, since it contains 25 times more books than inhabitants.
According to this "supportive" parish priest, the books are not for garbage and those that are published today are as valuable as those of previous years. The truth: I couldn't agree more with this man. Thanks, Martin Weskott.