Award-winning German comedian and author Hape Kerkeling presented his book, I’m Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago, a best-seller in Germany and just released in English translation, to a capacity audience at the German Embassy in Washington, DC, on Thursday, September 3.  

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Bertram von Moltke, head of the Cultural Department, introduces Hape Kerkeling.

(© German Embassy, Washington, DC)

Kerkeling is known to German audiences as a popular talk-show host, performer and maker of comedy films. Currently, his alter ego Horst Schlemmer is “campaigning” for Chancellor in a film parody of the political and journalistic worlds. Schlemmer is one of numerous characters and impersonations Kerkeling has created over the years and has become something of a media sensation this summer.

But in his book, I’m Off Then, Kerkeling is himself. The book is the diary of his journey on the over 1,000-year-old European pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. A self-proclaimed couch potato who refused to take the stairs to his second-floor apartment, Kerkeling shares the story of his transformational journey on the over-500-mile pilgrimage trek through the French Alps to the Spanish Shrine of St. James.

A lapsed Catholic, Kerkeling was drawn to the idea that the pilgrimage would help him find his own spirituality and thus himself. The diary, containing a blend of Kerkeling’s famous humor is filled with his observations, lessons learned and the real life characters he meets along the way. The book became a sensation in Germany, has been translated into over 11 languages and is even credited with increasing pilgrim traffic on the Camino de Santiago.

The English translation by Shelley Frisch was released in the US in June by Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

The event at the German Embassy was made possible by the generous sponsorship of Simon & Schuster and is organized by the Embassy in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Washington.