ONcE

ONcE — Protokolle der Störung, Band 2

A man. A book. 88 printed copies. And the question of whether Rammstein, Scooter, and the Hamburg Criminal Investigation Department happen to be listening to the same playlist.

Tim Kraef, electrician from the Hunsrück region of Germany, has been writing everything down since 2008. Date. Time. Exact wording. All of it. Not because he is paranoid — but because he learned early: what is not documented does not exist. His father was a civil servant. Things that are not recorded cease to be real.

ONcE is the second volume of the series Protokolle der Störung — Protocols of Disruption. It is an autobiographical thriller, an archive, and a punk rock diary in one. It follows a man who manufactures hardcover books and sends them to music managers, publishers, federal ministries, and prisons — and systematically documents what comes back. Or doesnt. And whether any of it is coincidence.

Rammstein releases an album. Three singles, three layers. Deutschland is the scandal that generates distraction while the real thing happens. Radio is the forbidden broadcast. Ausländer is the traveller who never quite belongs. The YouTube algorithm delivers FiNCH. The Hamburg LKA opens the mail. The lawyer recommends the casino. The health insurance sends a cross in a box. No comment necessary.

The books America runs through the speakers. The Bloodhound Gang taught a generation that vulgarity and intelligence are not mutually exclusive. Eminem invented a character, killed him twenty-seven years later, and in between said more about class and rage than most sociologists. Little Big took the absurdity of the internet age and turned it into a kind of genius. Big Underwear Social Tour — the kind of thing that only makes sense if you were there, on a bicycle, somewhere between Hunsrück and Istanbul, in 2006, with a copy of a Romani studies book in your pannier and no plan beyond the next border.

These are not references. They are coordinates.

ONcE is also the first half of Big ONE, the complete work. Readers who want both volumes — ONcE and Mein Amoklauf — will find them collected in Big ONE. Practical. Complete. And in hardcover, the most elegant option for people with a bookshelf and taste.

For readers who know Rainald Goetz and still listen to Scooter. For people who understand that the fear of surveillance is greater than its actual power — and find that interesting rather than reassuring. For anyone who wants to understand how an electrician from the Hunsrück simultaneously flies completely under the radar and keeps turning up everywhere.

No novel. No theory. Just what happened.

And that is enough.