Herta Müller and Ulrich Matthes read against anti-Semitism
Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller and actor Ulrich Matthes have taken a stand against anti-Semitism with a joint reading. At the invitation of Pen Berlin, they came to the Deutsches Theater on Friday evening under the motto ""Never again" is now!".
"We want to show solidarity with our Jewish fellow citizens living in Germany," said artistic director Iris Laufenberg beforehand. "We must continue to visit Jewish cultural institutions, museums or restaurants and stores, we should do so now more than ever and thus set an example against fear, for solidarity and peaceful coexistence."
Müller quoted several poems by the Austrian Jewish poet Theodor Kramer (1897-1958), Matthes read from "Der Rabbi von Bacherach", which Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) began in 1824 and never completed. The reading also featured the writers Nora Bossong, Thea Dorn, Seyran Ates, Düzen Tekkal and Katja Lange-Müller, the authors Ralf Bönt and Marko Martin and the journalist Michel Friedman.
Ates, co-founder of the Ibn Rushd Goethe Mosque in Berlin, quoted from a text by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), who wrote: "Anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem, it is our problem."
The reading at the Deutsches Theater included Ulrich Matthes reading from Heine's unfinished work "Der Rabbi von Bacherach," which serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing conflicts surrounding anti-Semitism. The event, organized to combat anti-Semitism, also featured readings from works by authors who were either Jewish or addressed the issue of anti-Semitism in their literature, such as Theodor Kramer and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Source: www.dpa.com
