"Mending What Was Shattered” – a series of readings and talks

 

Second instalment of the German-Israeli reading and discussion series: In Berlin, Federal Foreign Minister Steinmeier spoke to two authors and an artist about traumas and taboos.

 

Recollections took to the stage of Maxim-Gorki Theater in Berlin on 5 May, namely memories of personal destinies, taboos and traumas - in the context of the Shoah and the Nazis. It was to honour these memories but also to discuss how to deal with them that Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich, German author Ursula Krechel and Israeli artist Dani Gal met for the second instalment of the German-Israeli round of talks: “Mending What Was Shattered” (Zersprengtes zusammenfügen) was the title for the evening. The subject they discussed was what society should be like to ensure that over and above the official commemoration of things, individual destinies can be addressed in a way that fosters a sense of community.

The books of Svetlana Alexievich have been translated into more than 40 languages and have received many prizes. She is said to have created a literary genre of her own, a documentary style featuring a “chorus of individual voices”. In this documentary prose, which is based on hundreds of interviews, she skilfully interweaves the voices of her interlocutors to paint an intensive panorama of the human soul. “I try to capture the spirit of the time from such talks. This is the only way I can complete the picture of the past,” explained Alexievich.

Ursula Krechel read from her novel “Landgericht”, for which she won the German Book Prize in 2012. The narrative hinges on Jewish judge Richard Kornitzer, who in 1947 returns to Germany from his exile in Havana to fight for his name. Kornitzer is based on an actual person: judge Robert Bernd Michaelis.

 

Dani Gal is one of Israel’s most famous artists. In many of his works he addresses the gaps in history, and repeatedly focuses on the culture of how Jewish history is remembered. In the Maxim Gorki Theater he described how he works: “I begin with a story, which has been forgotten, a minor event. Then I talk to people who were connected with it. Then I use this collected material to compose a mosaic piece by piece.”

An Israeli artist talking in public with a German minister – something quite natural in 2015, as are the strong diplomatic relations between the two countries. However, the German Foreign Minister also recalled “that the initiation of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel was nothing short of a miracle at the time.” As Steinmeier said, it was “almost inconceivable that the country of the victims should extend the hand of friendship to the country where the ghastly acts were perpetrated.”

 

With a view to the future Steinmeier said that given the history of the 20th century – and leaving aside its relations to Israel – Germany had every reason to contribute to “preventing the world from falling into conflict” and to make every effort worldwide for peace and stability.

“Mending What Was Shattered” was the second event in the German-Israeli series of readings and talks organized by the Federal Foreign Office in cooperation with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The first took part in January 2015, “Two Senses of Home” (Zweierlei Heimaten), and at the same time marked the official launch of the anniversary of 50 years of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel. Opened by Minister Steinmeier, filmmaker Edgar Reitz and author Meir Shalev discussed questions of home countries, identity and emigration.