Setting an example. Against anti-Semitism

The Regional Group West of PEN Berlin, together with the Cologne Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation and the Literaturhaus Cologne, invites you: Monday, 29 April, 7 pm | Literaturhaus Köln | Großer Griechenmarkt 39

 

 

 

Julian Assange : No victory, just no defeat

Press Release 26 March, 2024: On the British High Court’s decision to suspend Julian Assange’s extradition to the US. »›Julian Assange could not win today; for him it was only a matter of not losing – as so often in the past 13 years’, Menasse said‹. (…) PEN Berlin recalls that Julian Assange has been in prison for over 13 years because of the publications of WikiLeaks. However, no one has yet been brought to justice for the war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan exposed by WikiLeaks.« MORE

 

 

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Round table : Protest farmers, farmers’ protests

The smell of dung is in the air. For months, lines of tractors have been blocking motorways and city centers. The farmers’ anger at the traffic-light government shows no sign of abating. It is no longer just the cut in their subsidies that has upset them. Now the media want to impale them on their pitchforks: ›Lying press, lying press” was the chant in Biberach in Baden-Württemberg, where Cem Özdemir’s official car was damaged and his Ash Wednesday event had to be canceled for security reasons. Between the proponents of a progressive awakening and the right-wingers, where do today’s farmers really stand, what problems do they have? And do they all share them? Are they just a problem for the traffic light coalition or for all of us?

With: Cem Özdemir (Federal Minister for Food and Agriculture), Karen Duve (writer and environmentalist), Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker (writer and farmer) und Nataša Kramberger (writer and farmer). Hosted by: Doris Akrap (journalist and Board PEN Berlin)
Tuesday, 5 March 2024, 7.15 pm
Humboldt Forum, Schlossplatz Berlin 
Admission: from 6.45 pm via Portal 3 (entrance on the left above the revolving door). Free admission
A PEN Berlin event at the Humboldt Forum. MORE

 

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Julian Assange: The Dreyfus of our century

Press Release 20 February, 2024: On the threat of Julian Assange’s extradition:  »The Assange case is an act of arbitrary justice and is already a serious defeat for liberal democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Despite all the worldwide protests, despite the admissions of leading politicians such as Annalena Baerbock (“serious violations of fundamental freedoms under the European Convention on Human Rights”), despite all his prizes and honorary memberships (including in PEN Berlin), Julian Assange’s fate seems to be unfolding before everyone’s eyes like a natural disaster. ​​(…). ​​In its treatment of the Wikileaks founder and journalist Julian Assange, the West is showing just how much its values are really worth in an emergency.« MORE

 

 

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Ronya Othmann uninvited: No to cancellation, yes to conversation – Anytime, Anywhere

Press Release 18 February, 2024: »​​PEN Berlin strongly criticises the disinvitation of the writer and columnist Ronya Othmann, our former board member, from the Karachi Literature Festival. The disinvitation was preceded by a social media campaign and an open letter with over 400 signatories accusing Othmann of ›Zionist and Islamophobic positions‹. It is irritating, even disturbing, that the signatories include many writers and intellectuals who would claim freedom of expression at any time. (…) As PEN, we are convinced that conversation and exchange must remain possible across all political differences«, said PEN Berlin spokesperson Eva Menasse. Every serious debate must include the willingness not only to tolerate positions that are diametrically opposed to one’s own, but to listen to them: ›Otherwise every conversation turns into a soliloquy.‹« MORE

 

 

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Reading in Cologne: »Against Silence. Against Antisemitism«

This event is already fully booked. However, there will be another reading on 29 April.

 

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Reading in Hamburg: »Never Again is Now – Texts Against Antisemitism«

NDR Kultur, Journal, Interview by Katja Weise with Katharina Hagena, January 16, 2024: »It was actually also an initiative of PEN Berlin. We Hamburg members of PEN Berlin said: ›We are the second largest city – there’s no way we can’t organize such an event.‹ So we started getting people together. The difference between our event and the other two is that it was our ambition, or rather our wish, to work together with the Jewish Salon am Grindel, not only to talk about Jewish life or being Jewish, but also to stay in conversation with Jewish people. We are especially happy about this.« LINK and AUDIO (in German)

 

 

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A poet, a founding member and a friend: We mourn the loss of Harry Oberländer

We mourn the loss of our founding member Harry Oberländer, who died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 73.

We remember the poet, translator and literary mediator as a dedicated member who supported the new German PEN in word and deed with full conviction. He welcomed the founding of a »markedly rejuvenated PEN, for which the word ›diverse‹ is not an angry foreign word and which sees itself as a non-governmental organization for freedom of speech and publication and for the support of persecuted authors«, he wrote after the founding meeting of PEN Berlin, to which he had traveled from his home in Hesse. MORE

 

 

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Interview with Alexandru Bulucz: »Contributing to the socio-political debate«

MDR Kultur, Interview with Alexandru Bulucz, 20 December 2023: »Another PEN in Germany became necessary because the times we live in are fraught with conflicts and their own needs that require a flexible response. 18 months after the founding of PEN Berlin, there are clear differences to the German PEN in Darmstadt: above all, the willingness to contribute to the socio-political debate. This has become clear in the last few weeks (…) There were two resolutions that complement each other: one on ‘Solidarity with Jews in Germany, Israel and everywhere’ and one on ‘Against social polarisation and illiberal tendencies in the cultural sector’. (…) With the latter, we emphasise the need to define the concept of freedom of speech as broadly as possible. This, in turn, is something that touches on so many complex issues in Germany, with its particular history.« AUDIO (GERMAN)

 

 

 

Keynote speech by A. L. Kennedy: »I’m sorry everything is shit«

Keynote speech by A.L. Kennedy at congress of PEN Berlin, 16 December 2023: »When PEN was founded in the UK of 1921, authoritarianism was rising as it is today. An emboldened British ruling class was, as it is today, disproportionately powerful and beguiled by the idea that good fortune is predetermined by blood and soil, that privilege isn’t privilege but divine right. A group of prominent writers took steps to defend writers of fiction, professional liars, if you will. I think, because of the truths central to what we do: all people are people, all have voices, the world is a difficult place and needs mercy, a good life finds its way in pursuing the next loving thing. That sounds weak, unfamiliar, odd even as I say it – but love is the strongest thing. It is to Britain’s eternal shame that, were PEN being founded today, it would be controversial in an energy-sapping way, condemned as an alien contaminant, an example of a self-aggrandising elite.« FULL SPEECH

 

 

Opening speech by Deniz Yücel: »Active despair or: Behind the scenes of PEN Berlin« 

Opening speech of Deniz Yücel at PEN Berlin congress, 16 December 2023: »Even if this is often confused, the debate in Germany is fortunately not about the question ›Israel boycott: yes or no?‹, but about how to deal with artists who support the BDS campaign. (…)

Because, in case of doubt, we are always in favour of keeping spaces for debate as open as possible. Because freedom of speech includes the freedom to say stupid, disturbing, even supposedly scandalous things. Because, like last year’s keynote speaker Ayad Akhtar, we are against any ›climate of digital intimidation‹. Because we don’t just reject Cancel Culture when it suits us. For all these reasons, we, the board of PEN Berlin, do not support a blanket boycott of everything and everyone that is somehow labelled ›BDS-related‹. Which is why we don’t support BDS. It’s logical, isn’t it?« FULL SPEECH

 

 

Speech by Ursula Krechel: »The spirit of freedom of speech« 

Speech by Ursula Krechel at congress of PEN Berlin, 16 December 2023: »Everything is on the decline: The parties are losing members, the churches are standing frozen in horror at the huge numbers of people leaving, sports clubs are complaining that people no longer want to commit to a club, and the voluntary fire brigades are complaining that only a few people want to carry out voluntary roles – at the fire engine or in a burning house. Let others burn their fingers and snouts. And here we are: All volunteers with a job that our parents warned us about. Writers who have come together voluntarily, setting up working groups that try to offer protection to those in need. Branches all over the world, strong in quotas, diverse, super performers. FULL SPEECH (GERMAN)

 

 

 

Debate Adrian Daub vs. Susan Neiman: »What Is Woke, Where Is Left?«  

Impulse speeches at the PEN Berlin Congress »With Our Head Through the Walls« 16 December 2023

»A right-wing battle cry: woke« by Adrian Daub: »There is a suspicion that what is being fussed about in Woke does not exist at all, or if it does, then only in the fussing about it. The criticism, the rejection, is the only thing that is really sharp in the characteristics.« FULL SPEECH (in German)

»Anti-universalist thinking: woke« by Susan Neiman: »As difficult as it may be in some cases to distinguish between justice and claims to power, the fundamental distinction is the basis of left-liberal thinking.« FULL SPEECH (in German)

 

 

 

 

General meeting: New members in the association and on the Board, resolutions

Press release, 16 December 2023: »On Friday, the authors‘ association PEN Berlin held its second general meeting in presence at the Humboldt University of Berlin. The assembly elected 68 new members, 43 of whom are women. Among others, the writers Nava Ebrahimi, Deborah Feldman, Charlotte Gneuss, Navid Kermani and Fiston Mwanza Mujila, the playwright Sivan Ben Yishai, the poet Martin Piekar, the publicists Hamed Abdel-Samad, Bernd Stegemann and Sophie Passmann, the historian Per Leo and the philosopher Omri Boehm were admitted to PEN Berlin. The association has thus grown to around 650 members – and 49 per cent women.« MORE