In the tension between East and West: The great poet of divided Germany in dialogue with important contemporaries. Sarmatia, the land between the Vistula and the Volga – Johannes Bobrowski has turned it into a literary cosmos. At the beginning, there are fifteen lost years: labor service, military conscription, military service, and Russian captivity until the end of 1949. The East-West tension of the era gives his letters their fundamental tone. With the first book publications in the West, the sudden fame of the East Prussian living in East Berlin begins. When he receives the Group 47 prize in West Berlin in 1962, the Spiegel affair is escalating, and the world holds its breath during the Cuban crisis. The editor Jochen Meyer has compiled over 1,200 letters from the years 1937 to 1965. In his explanations, he makes the undertones audible and understandable.