Liao Yiwu & Wolf Biermann - „18 Gefangene - Fluchtgeschichten aus China, dem größten Gefängnis der Welt" // zwei Künstlerfreunde im Gespräch

In the organizer's words:

Freedom around the world is in greater danger than it has been for a long time. Chinese dissident Liao Yiwu presents his new book "18 Prisoners - Escape Stories from China, the World's Largest Prison". It ranks alongside famous dissident literature such as Solzhenyzin's "Gulag Archipelago". However, "18 Prisoners" not only tells of 18 biographies of often political prisoners, but also of 18 escapes. Because 18 times they manage to escape over the mountains or across the sea: love of freedom, ingenuity and the sheer will to survive are stronger than any political oppression.

The Harbour Front Literature Festival has invited Wolf Biermann and Liao Yiwu, two poets who have paid a high price, even risked their lives, to fight for freedom. This is the first time we are bringing these poet friends on stage together. What do the two artists have to say about the central issue of our time? Is freedom a utopia that always fails? Must it fail? Or is it indestructible?

The epochal year 1989 played a huge role for both of them: it was the year of the peaceful revolution in the GDR, but it was also the year when the students' demand for freedom on Tiananmen Square was suppressed: they were shot. Liao Yiwu wrote the poem "Massacre" at the time and was imprisoned for years, tortured and persecuted from then on. He lived underground, wrote about the lives of the humiliated and made street music in order to survive. In the summer of 2011, he finally managed to flee into exile in Germany via Vietnam. This was preceded by a ban on performing at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Once in Germany, he was awarded the Geschwister Scholl Prize (2011) and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (2012) and gave the highly acclaimed opening speech of the Lessingtage 2013 at the sold-out Thalia Theater: "Snowed onto the world stage."

Wolf Biermann, the Jewish communist child from Hamburg, once went to the GDR full of hope, was banned from performing there and finally expatriated in 1976 - in retrospect the symbolic beginning of the later end of the GDR: in the very year 1989, when the students were shot in Beijing.

About the book "18 prisoners - escape stories from China, the largest prison in the world":

"I became a writer behind bars." Liao Yiwu

During his time in prison, Liao Yiwu - winner of the Geschwister Scholl Prize and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade - collected the stories of prisoners. These come from the most diverse strata of society as well as from different decades and eras of Chinese history. Like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, he documents the horror of the "largest prison in the world". He provides a cross-section of society and gathers the stories into an alternative history of China.

However, "18 Prisoners" not only tells of 18 biographies of often political prisoners, but also of 18 escapes. Because 18 times they manage to escape over the mountains or across the sea: love of freedom, ingenuity and the sheer will to survive are stronger than any political oppression.

About Liao Yiwu:

Liao Yiwu, born in 1958 in Sichuan province, grew up as a child in great poverty. In 1989, he wrote the poem "Massacre", for which he was imprisoned for four years and severely mistreated. In 2007, Liao Yiwu was awarded the "Freedom to Write" prize by the Independent Chinese PEN Center, which was prevented from being awarded at the last minute. In 2009, his book "Miss Hello and the Peasant Emperor" was published. In 2011, when "For a Song and a Hundred Songs" was published in Germany, Liao Yiwu managed to leave China. Since his departure to Germany, he has published "The Bullet and the Opium" (2012), "The Dongdong Dancer and the Sichuan Cook" (2013), "God is Red" (2014), "Three Worthless Vitas and a Dead Passport" (2018), "Mr. Wang, the Man Standing in Front of the Tanks" (2019) and the novel "The Rebirth of the Ants" (2016). Most recently, his documentary novel "Wuhan" was published in 2022. He has been awarded the Geschwister Scholl Prize and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his work. Liao Yiwu lives in Berlin.

About Wolf Biermann:

Wolf Biermann, poet and songwriter, was born in Hamburg in 1936. He was the voice of resistance in the GDR and was expatriated in 1976. Since then he has given concerts in many countries. He has received many awards for his poetry, including the Georg Büchner Prize, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Hölderlin Prize.

Price information:

Ticket prices: 29,95 EUR / 24,95 EUR