Un Sedicesimo 31

Nora Krug’s Sedicesimo is a visual investigation of memory. At a Berlin flea market, the author collected images and artifacts that, to her, intrinsically represent her homeland, Germany. She has compiled them to tell the story of a group of hunters, volunteer soldiers, who leave their homes and their beloved forest to serve their country. The forests featured in these beautiful illustrations, much like the desire to hike, and to experience and wander through nature, represent an important part of German psychology, as well as Nora Krug’s childhood memories. Un Sedicesimo 31 is a striking collage through which Krug tackles the discomfort that comes with visualizations of German nostalgia, expressing the author’s ambivalent attitude towards Germany’s past. The text is taken from a poem called The Hunters’ Farewell by German novelist Joseph von Eichendorff.

Nora Krug is a German-American author and illustrator whose drawings and visual narratives have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde diplomatique and A Public Space.
Her visual memoir Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home (foreign edition title Heimat), about WWII and her own German family history, was chosen as a New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2018 and one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of 2018. Krug’s illustrations have been recognized with gold and silver medals from the Society of Illustrators.
Krug is Associate Professor of Illustration at the Parsons School of Design in New York.