A first-time guest at the ilb in 2002, Hertha Müller has since repeatedly graced our podium at readings and discussions. With her literature and political insights, she has shaped contemporary German literature and the festival’s history like few others. Now, in the anniversary year, she returns to the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Together with literary scholar Norbert Eke, the Nobel laureate will talk about various facets of her work: from early prose, poetry, and essays to her internationally acclaimed novels. Eke’s keynote speech will focus in particular on the aesthetic dimension of her work.
An Evening with Herta Müller is an attempt to approach the hypnotic metaphors of Müller’s prose, the enigmatic beauty of her collages, and the analytical acuity of her essays. It is an evening about the intertwining of life and writing, about dictatorship and repression, and the subversive power of literature. In times of growing authoritarian tendencies, Herta Müller’s work feels more urgent than ever.
»Whoever reads her enriches their life: Herta Müller is a linguistic magician who does not allow the world to be dictated to her.« [FAZ]
At the beginning, the film »Das Alphabet der Angst« [dir. John Albert Jansen, 2015] will be shown, a documentary about Herta Müller, her collages, her fears and traumas with intimate insights into her literary work and her life: her father’s service in the German SS during the Second World War, her mother, who was imprisoned in a Soviet labor camp after the war, her own youth overshadowed by the repression of the Ceausescu regime, and her adult life.
6 – 7 pm film screening: »Das Alphabet der Angst«
break
7:30 pm impulse Norbert Eke: Herta Müller – an approach
7:45 pm Norbert Eke in conversation with Herta Müller
With Herta Müller, Norbert Otto Eke
The event will be held in German.
With sign language translation of the conversation in DGS.
The anniversary program is made possible by the LOTTO Foundation Berlin.
