Bonn from the point of view of a deadly sad parliamentarian: Wolfgang Koeppen's "Treibhaus" is one of the most important political novels in German literature. Published in 1953, it deals with reconstruction, the Cold War and the loneliness of a member of parliament. The Greenhouse" is a dark satire on the post-1945 utopian mandate to start anew with democracy. Benedikt Wintgens' book traces the crooked paths along which a pluralistic public sphere emerged in the Federal Republic. Based on Koeppen's novel, in the mirror of the greenhouse metaphor and by reconstructing the debate that journalists and intellectuals had about the "greenhouse", a multi-faceted picture of the political culture in the transition from the "Third Reich" to the Bonn Republic emerges.