Sixth awarding of the Casa di Goethe scholarship of the Karin und Uwe Hollweg Stiftung in Rome

 

Bonn/Rome, 9 February 2024

For the sixth time, the jury for the Casa di Goethe scholarship of the Karin und Uwe Hollweg Stiftung (Karin and Uwe Hollweg Foundation) has selected scholarship holders for a working residency in Rome. Since 2013, the scholarship has enabled cultural professionals, such as authors, academics or translators, whose work is dedicated to German-Italian cultural exchange, to live and work for two months in the Museum Casa di Goethe in the historic centre of Rome. The museum is organised by the Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Institute e. V. (AsKI). 

The German-Italian jury (Francesca Melandri, Rome; Prof. Dr Dieter Richter, Bremen; PD. Dr Susanna Brogi, Nuremberg) selected eight scholarship holders who will be guests at the Casa di Goethe from summer 2024:

·       Wolfgang Adenberg, author, develops a 10-part television series as a “sitcom” about the life of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

·       Mohamed Amjahid, journalist and author, investigates the history of Italian workers in Germany and their culinary culture

·       Dr. Sibylle Benninghoff-Lühl, literary scholar, researches the importance of the botanical garden and herbarium in Rome for Goethe’s botanical studies

·       Radek Krolczyk, author and art critic, goes in search of traces of the writer Peter O. Chotjewitz and writes an essay about his time in Italy

·       Dr. Theresia Prammer, author and translator, conducts a research into Italian dialect poetry

·       Stefan Weidner, author and translator, translates the ancient Arabic, pre-Islamic Mu’allaqat poems anew into German

·       Levin Westermann, author, writes a cycle of poems dealing with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire

·      Laura Helena Wurth, journalist and curator, creats a radio feature reconsidering the architecture of Rome with a focus on Plautilla Bricci, among others

We would like to thank the Karin und Uwe Hollweg Stiftung for its long-standing support of the scholarship programme.

For further information please contact: AsKI, Prinz-Albert-Str. 34, 53113 Bonn, Tel. 0049/0228/224860;  info@aski.org
Casa di Goethe, Via del Corso 18, I – 00186 Rome, Tel. 0039/06/32650412;
info@casadigoethe.it


From 24 March 2024

The Museum Casa di Goethe in Rome is celebrating its 25th anniversary by opening up new perspectives on its permanent exhibition. Students from the Weißensee Art Academy Berlin were invited to design creative interventions to introduce contemporary takes and new observations into the presentation of the institution’s collections, thereby connecting the museum with contemporary society.

The Director of the Casa di Goethe, Dr. Gregor H. Lersch, sees his mission in reinvigorating and reexamining the role of the museum as a cultural link between Italy and Germany against the backdrop of European history and modern developments. In November last year, the Casa di Goethe cooperated with students on the Visual Communication program of the Weißensee Art Academy Berlin, who were invited to work together with on-site experts to analyze the museum and its collections. A workshop conducted with students from the “Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma” also integrated Roman and broader Italian perspectives into the conceptual process. The students developed a special formal vocabulary for the new exhibition elements and interventions.

“The ‘intervenzioni’ are an important first step in this transformation, linking Goethe’s Italian journey much more closely with the here and now. In the apartment in the Via del Corso, in which Goethe and other artists lived from 1786 to 1788, new, innovative perspectives on the Italian journey, the German enthusiasm for Italy, and the complexities of contemporary European history are being developed,” explains Gregor H. Lersch, the museum’s director. The ‘intervenzioni’ can be experienced directly by visitors and are highly visible. It is just a short step from Goethe’s studies of nature to a tactile sensory cabinet, from his surviving travel descriptions of southern Italy as a contact zone to encounters with North Africa, or from historical travel guides to the Lonely Planet. Central questions concerning contemporary Europe are woven into the exhibition on Goethe’s life and times, such as the tense relationship between North and South, the question of the significance of women for Goethe, or the memory of National Socialism. In the ‘intervenzioni’, the story of the Jewish father Guido Zabban are told for the first time: he survived the German occupation in 1943/44 hidden in the mezzanine floor on Via del Corso 18.

For installation works in occasion of its 25th birthday the museum will be closed from March 17 to 23.

Stories about travelling, the yearning for Italy, artists’ and other people’s stories about their stays in Rome, their encounters and experiences – a storytelling project of the AsKI e.V.!

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