Monika Ewa Pross is co-author of Dicke Luft. She brings to the book not only her own life story, but also a particular form of perception: the ability to sense rooms, moods, and burdens early and to take them seriously.
She describes herself as sensitive and strong at the same time. Sensitive because she notices more than others sometimes want to see, smell, or understand. Strong because she has learned to assert herself, set boundaries, and weigh when a place, a situation, or a person is good for her and when it is not. She would not enter a bad room without compelling reason. Her life was repeatedly shaped by this balancing act: staying healthy and still doing what has to be done.
Her strength is not hardness. It arises from a near-religious love of life. From curiosity, stubbornness, survival instinct, and the desire to truly understand people, spaces, and connections.
For her, Dicke Luft is not a book written from a distance. Without her path, her experiences, and her perception, this book would not exist in this form. Without Andreas, not the self she is today; without Monika, not this Andreas; and without both of them, no Dicke Luft.
Detailed Biography
I was born in Poland in 1977 and spent my early childhood in Gdańsk. As a child, I was a free spirit. I did not go to kindergarten and spent a great deal of time outdoors, in the city, on walks, at the open window, or with my grandmother in front of Hala Targowa, where we sold flowers. With the money, I could buy myself ice cream. I had friends, and later even more at school, and yet I was always drawn back outside: to gardens, to the beach, to places where I could breathe freely and be by myself.
From an early age, I perceived rooms, moods, and burdens more intensely than many others. At around seven years old, I experienced nights in which fear, images, and bodily reactions intertwined. At the time, much of it was interpreted as childish fantasy or illness. Today I see it differently. Perhaps my childhood imagination was trying to show me a threat for which I did not yet have words. Only in the writing process of Dicke Luft did I begin to place those early experiences in a new context.
At school, I asked many questions, sometimes too many, or the kind adults did not want or could not answer. Then I would sometimes end up sitting in front of the class. Things were not always easy at home. During my school years, I was often a latchkey child, but I liked that independence. I sat at the open window, watched people, and wrote my first poems.
At twelve, I came to Germany with my family. Many things changed all at once. I was a stranger in the new language, in the new environment, and for a long time the only foreigner at my school. At the same time, I also lost a part of my sense of belonging in Poland. There I suddenly became the German girl who had left, sometimes even the traitor. That created a state of in-betweenness that hurt for many years. Especially at the beginning, I often cried myself to sleep and hated this new world into which I had not grown voluntarily.
What carried me through that time was my curiosity. I never stopped wanting to go outside, meet people, and understand the world, even when I did not yet understand the language. Friends played an important role in that. With them, I did not have to explain myself. They accepted me as I was. It was often more difficult with adults. There I experienced judgment, expectations, or incomprehension more often.
Professionally, I took many paths. I completed training in the IT field and later worked in more than twenty different professions, including in industry, prototype construction, IT, assembly, field service, and correctional service. To me, these many positions do not tell a story of stagnation, but of curiosity. Every new profession, every new task, and every new environment meant a possibility: to learn something, meet people, understand relationships, and grasp more of the world. Sometimes it felt as if each time I was getting to know a new species.
A particularly formative stage was my work in correctional service. There I felt effective. I took on responsibility, represented the market superintendent, and had tasks that contributed to the order of the city. I felt needed, and I was no longer afraid. That work gave me the feeling of having a place where my strength, my eye for people, and my sense of order were needed.
The reason I left that path was not a lack of strength or a lack of perspective. It was Andreas. With him, something was different. He was like me. He sensed me. He saw me. I no longer had to keep explaining or translating myself. For the first time, closeness did not automatically feel like adaptation, and honesty did not feel like betrayal.
I did not see in Andreas the damaged person others had made of him, but a kindred spirit. The world had long told him he was inferior. I never saw him that way. If I myself was not inferior, then he could not be either. In him, I recognized another half of my own being, not as possession, but as recognition.
My life was repeatedly marked by health setbacks, pain, psychological strain, and unexplained complaints. And yet I do not want to be described as helpless. I have gone my way, often alone, sometimes with companions who helped me. My strength was never only struggle or defiance. It was and is a near-religious love of life. No more and no less.
Only later did I learn to trust my own perception more again. As a child, I had often sensed that something was wrong. But that perception was gradually trained out of me through punishment, detention, and adaptation. For a long time, setting boundaries did not feel like liberation, but like betrayal: of family, friends, and everything I knew. Only with Andreas did I experience a relationship in which boundaries, closeness, criticism, withdrawal, and independence could coexist.
After Day Zero, our perspective changed. Suddenly it was no longer only we ourselves at the center, but also the rooms in which we lived, slept, and worked. Many memories, complaints, and behavior patterns appeared in a new light. Not everything was explained by that, but for the first time much of it became questionable at all.
In Dicke Luft, I am not only involved editorially, but as co-author I am part of the story. I was counterpart, witness, corrective, and co-creator. I compared Andreas’s memories with my own, questioned formulations, examined connections, and made sure that personal experience did not turn into hasty judgment.
Without one part, there would be no whole. Without my path, my experiences, and my perception, this book would not exist in this form. Without Andreas, there would be no present self of mine; without me, no Andreas as he is today; and without us, no Dicke Luft.
For me, this book is an attempt to let something emerge from a difficult life story, but not a meaningless one. I want to help ensure that people look more closely when complaints remain unexplained, and that indoor spaces are no longer regarded as neutral scenery. Because sometimes it is not only decisive what happens within a person, but also what kind of environment that person lives in.
And if this portrait is meant to leave one feeling behind, then it is this: every person is valuable and has the right to feel that too.
