Readings IN DIALOGUE
Tickets
A literary series to accompany the exhibition
February 20, 2025, 7 PM
March 6, 2025, 7 PM
April 10, 2025, 7 PM
May 15, 2025, 7 PM
Monthly readings will take place to accompany the current exhibition IN DIALOGUE — Hasso Plattner Collection: Art from the GDR, inviting visitors to engage in a literary examination of the GDR and its critical resonance in the present day.
Building upon the exhibition’s idea of bringing works by GDR artists into dialogue in order to illuminate different perspectives, authors will offer insights from literature, explore new narratives, and place the stories about the GDR in a contemporary context.
Renowned authors such as Charlotte Gneuß, Carolin Würfel, Annett Gröschner, Peggy Mädler, Wenke Seemann, Paula Fürstenberg, and Peggy Kurka present their books in a variety of ways.
The readings, moderated by Maria-Christina Piwowarski, take place once a month in Café Hedwig or in the foyer of DAS MINSK. The event ticket includes a visit to the exhibition from 5 PM. The events are in German.
Dates for June and July 2025 will follow. Further information will be announced shortly.
Charlotte Gneuss, Photo: © Alena Schmick
Thursday, February 20, 2025, 7 PM
Charlotte Gneuß: Gittersee, 2023
Set in 1976, the novel vividly describes the life of sixteen-year-old Karin in the GDR in the 1970s. Karin lives in the working-class neighborhood Gittersee, a suburb of Dresden. She experiences the oppressive control of the socialist state as she develops her first yearnings for freedom and self-determination. When her boyfriend Paul leaves for a trip and doesn’t come back, two uniformed men turn up at the door one night and Karin’s world falls apart at the seams. The Stasi, omnipresent in its invisible surveillance, plays a central role and shapes the mistrust and the pressure to conform in her surroundings.
In this haunting debut novel, Charlotte Gneuß tells of a world that no longer exists and the question of whether innocence is possible. The winner of several prizes, the work sparked a debate was about whether an author born in 1992 in “West Germany” could write about the GDR at all.
The author will read from her novel and talk with Maria-Christina Piwowarski at Café Hedwig about new questions surrounding the exhibition’s theme: Who can legitimately speak about the GDR? To what extent do collective memories influence our image of the GDR today? And who is even permitted to capture these memories?
The novel has since been adapted for the stage and is currently being performed at the Berliner Ensemble.
Short biography
Charlotte Gneuß was born in Ludwigsburg in 1992 after her parents left the GDR. She studied social work in Dresden, literary writing in Leipzig and scenic writing in Berlin. She is a guest author for ZEIT Online, winner of the Leonhard Frank Scholarship for new drama and editor of the anthology Glückwunsch, which was published by Hanser Berlin. Her debut novel Gittersee was longlisted for the German Book Prize 2023 and was awarded the Literature Prize of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation 2023 as well as the “aspekte” Literature Prize for “the best German-language debut”. In 2024, Charlotte Gneuß received the Nicolas Born Debut Prize of the state of Lower Saxony for Gittersee.
Short biography Maria-Christina Piwowarski
Maria-Christina Piwowarski was born in Haldensleben in 1982 and grew up in a small village in the Magdeburger Börde. She is a trained bookseller and most recently managed the Berlin bookshop ocelot. Together with Ludwig Lohmann, she has been running the blauschwarzberlin literature podcast since 2019, which has been broadcast as a livestream from the Staatsbibliothek Berlin since the fall. She moderates readings and events in the cultural sector and writes. In fall 2024, she published the anthology Und ich - 20 Geschichten von Wendepunkten des Lebens.
Maria-Christina Piwowarski © Andreas Schmidt