Constellation 1926 "Members Read Members’ Works" Reading | Talk

With Friedrich Dieckmann, Kerstin Hensel, Michael Krüger, Katja Lange-Müller and Gustav Seibt

In 1926, the Section for Poetry was founded at the Academy of Arts. The constellation of figures that year already foreshadowed the catastrophic end of the Weimar Republic that was to follow just a few years later. Alongside authors with whom one can draw a connection, such as Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Alfred Döblin and Ricarda Huch, there were also a number of forgotten figures and others who were either national-conservative, anti-republican or even outright National Socialist. Jews and anti-Semites sat side by side. Aesthetic and political modernity intersected. The rupture of 1933 was, in terms of personnel, already foreshadowed in 1926.

One hundred years after its foundation, there is nothing to celebrate, but there is a historical moment to commemorate. Five members of today’s Literature Section – Friedrich Dieckmann, Kerstin Hensel, Michael Krüger, Katja Lange-Müller and Gustav Seibt – will read texts by former members from the period between 1926 and 1933 and discuss the ambiguous and contradictory intentions and insights of the key figures of that time.

IN GERMAN