Literaturfest: »DER GEKÖPFTE HAHN« INGO SCHULZE, MICHAELA NOWOTNICK, DANA GRIGORCEA

In the organizer's words:

The life and work of the Transylvanian Eginald Schlattner impressively show how dictatorships leave their mark on biographies. An evening about writing against hostile narratives.

Eginald Schlattner (born in 1933) is one of the most important literary witnesses of the communist dictatorship in Romania. The Romanian-German pastor, who still lives and works in Rothberg in Transylvania, has received numerous awards for his work and remembrance work (*Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon* and others). In the 1950s, under pressure from the Securitate, he himself became a denunciator; in his novels "Rote Handschuhe" (Hanser, 2001) and "Der geköpfte Hahn" (dtv, 1998), he deals with this in a powerful way, telling of his own and others' guilt and the struggle for inner freedom.

We will talk about writing in (and despite) dictatorships: Ingo Schulze, President of the German Academy for Language and Poetry and one of the most important voices in German literature after reunification, and Berlin literary scholar and Schlattner expert Michaela Nowotnick.

Literature Festival curator Dana Grigorcea will read exemplary passages from Schlattner's novels; the moderator will be the German-Romanian journalist and political scientist Robert Schwartz, director of Radio România