Aperitivo at Camaro Haus

“Whoever it strikes is lifted up

as if by a giant crane and set down

where nothing matters anymore,

where no road leads from yesterday to tomorrow.

The buttons, the jewelry, and the color

are swept from their clothes as if with a broom…” Hilde Domin

With a sensitive literary-musical program, Ila Raven and Uwe Streibel—with piano, narration, and recitation—set out on the trail of the Jewish author Hilde Domin, who was awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize and the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, among other honors, for her poetry written in exile.

Born in Cologne in 1903, Hilde Domin, née Hilde Löwenstein, was in constant flight from the fascists starting in 1939, along with her husband Erwin Palm, who was also Jewish. After stops in Italy, France, Spain, and Canada, the couple finally settled in the Dominican Republic. She later derived her pen name “Domin” from the capital, Santo Domingo.

Despite the decades Hilde Domin spent in exile, she never lost her courage. Her unshakable faith in life and in people enabled her to survive the horrors of the past century and allowed her “nevertheless” hope to grow and mature unstoppably.

Shaped by her time in exile, Hilde Domin’s writings also give a voice to those who, upon returning from labor and concentration camps, desperately seek a place of safety: a lost homeland.

And although Hilde was robbed of her homeland due to her Jewish heritage and forced into a 22-year exile, she embraced her fate at every moment of her life: “I set one foot in the air, and it carried me.”

Admission incl. drinks & snacks: €10

IN GERMAN