Mittler - Tip: Podcast on U 96

Podcast on U 96 with bestselling author Gerrit Reichert

Exclusive release of veteran audios

From Friday, 20 December, selected original voices of the veterans of U 96 ("Das Boot") will be heard in public for the first time. Bestselling author Gerrit Reichert ("U 96 Realität und Mythos") has made them exclusively available for a new podcast series: "Between 1981 and 1990, veterans of U 96 met a total of five times. At the instigation of the chief engineer ("LI") of U 96, Friedrich Grade, each of the 30 participants recorded a five-minute audio piece on an old cassette about their time on U 96, the subsequent war years and civilian life afterwards. In addition to Grade, who comes from Büdelsdorf (Schleswig-Holstein), and the commander Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock ("the old man") from Bremen, veterans from northern, southern, western and eastern Germany as well as Austria can be heard on the tape.

As with his private diary from U 96, Friedrich Grade (107), the last living crew member to die in October 2023, also made the veteran audio recordings available to Reichert for his work on the "Das Boot" complex: "Friedrich Grade considered himself an "Oldenburger at heart" because he spent his childhood and youth here. So I published the private diary from the 7th "Feindfahrt" U 96, the model for Lothar-Günther Buchheim's world bestseller "Das Boot" (1973), for the first time in 2016 with the Nordwest-Zeitung Oldenburg (NWZ). We are collaborating again for the six-part podcast series on U 96."

The new six-part podcast series from the NWZ "The search for U 96 - the last secret" starts on Friday, 20 December and on the five following Fridays. It will be available on all podcast platforms (Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music etc.).

Gerrit Reichert was the main author of the catalogue "Buchheim 100" for the exhibition of the same name at the Buchheim Museum Bernried (2018). A year later, he published "U 96 Realität und Mythos" ("U 96 Reality and Myth"), covering the entire history of U 96 in the war and post-war period. In 2023, exactly 50 years after the first publication of the novel, Friedrich Grade's private diary was published as a "Limited Edition" in the original reprint. In the new 4th edition (November 2024), Reichert reveals the last resting place of U 96, Wilhelmshaven, in the additional chapter "Finding 'Das Boot'".

Gerrit Reichert (59) is a journalist and author. He lives in Worpswede near Bremen.