A look through binoculars into “the world of yesterday”: Sieglinde Geisel talks to editor Gernot Krämer about the novel Gabriele, a literary epochal painting of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Gabriele Radecke provides insights into the Akademie der Künste’s Paul Wiegler Archive, and Max von Pufendorf reads from the first published volume of the estate of the co-founder of the magazine SINN UND FORM. In German.

The resting places of famous women in art and culture are the focus of this guided tour of the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof (Dorotheenstadt Cemetery). It tells of the writers Christa Wolf and Annemarie Bostroem, the artists Beatrice Zweig and Doris Kahane, the opera director Ruth Berghaus and many others. Thematic guided tour in German.

“Through books that will come into being here, I want to help prevent the mistakes of the past from ever being repeated”, Anna Seghers said after she arrived in Berlin in 1947. She had returned as a world-famous author from exile to Germany. For many authors in the young GDR, including Christa Wolf and Heiner Müller, her multi-layered work offered a source of literary inspiration. In German.

After the National Socialists seized power, the director of the Mannheim Kunsthalle Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub was immediately dismissed and was henceforth barred from entering his institute. The explosive family letters between him and his son Felix Hartlaub about the political upheaval in Germany were published in SINN UND FORM in 2017. Editor-in-chief Matthias Weichelt talks about them with the author Durs Grünbein, well-versed connoisseur of Felix Hartlaub's works. In German.

The following have been nominated for the public reading of the Alfred Döblin Prize, donated by Günter Grass: Andrea Rea Arežina, Sophia Merwald, Martin Piekar, Lina Schwenk, Janna Steenfatts and Karosh Taha. The finalists will present their texts to the audience and the experts. In the late afternoon, the jury will announce the recipient of the prize, which will be awarded the following day at the Akademie der Künste. In German.

In its fourth appearance at the Akademie the trans-national KULA Compagnie presents her version of Der Dibbuk, setting the 1920 Yiddish classic into a contemporary, interreligious context. Despite the war’s breaking out during rehearsals, the mutual goal remained: to continue talking and performing with one another, to seek bringing about communication. In Dari, Algerian-Arabic, German, French, Hebrew, Russian and Yiddish with German and English surtitles.

The Alfred Döblin Prize, donated by Günter Grass, is awarded for a longer prose manuscript in progress. The award winner will be announced the day before in a public reading at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, where the finalists will present their texts to the audience and experts. In addition to a reading from the winning manuscript and a discussion with the award winner, Jan Kuhlbrodt, winner in 2023, will give a speech on Döblin. In German.