BACHMANN PUR | Texts on feminism | Simonetta Solder

 

 

Event on the occasion of the current exhibition at the Museum Casa di Goethe Ingeborg Bachmann “I only exist when I write”

“Fascism is the first thing in the relationship between a man and a woman” says Ingeborg Bachmann in Gerda Haller’s documentary film from 1973 (featured entirely in the exhibition). In fact, the relationship between man and woman was a recurring theme for the Austrian writer, which she explored in many of her works. It is often about gender roles, the exploitation of power relations, infidelity, abandonment, but also about the search for autonomy and a new female self-confidence.
During the event, the Italian actress Simonetta Solder will read selected texts by Ingeborg Bachmann on the relationship between the sexes and on feminism – from Im Himmel und auf Erden to Undine geht and Malina, thus bringing us closer to an important aspect of the Austrian writer.

Simonetta Solder (*Klagenfurt) is a trained translator and actress. After studying in Vienna, she attended the HB Studio in New York and the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. In the theatre she worked with Giorgio Pressburger, Israel Horovitz and Francesca Comencini, and also took part in The Walks by Rimini Protokoll. Together with director Paola Rota and musician Teho Teardo, she worked on the theatre project Illegal Helpers by Maxi Obexer and directed the theatre lecture Gertrude, Lucia e le altre. Le donne del rivoluzionario Manzoni by and with Eleonora Mazzoni and Il fu Mattia Pascal with Giorgio Marchesi at Teatro Ghione. Her theatre translations include the American playwright Israel Horovitz, Roland Schimmelpfennig, Robert Woelfl, Kevin Rittberger, Azar Mortazavi and Bernhard Studlar. As an actress, she has appeared in TV and cinema productions directed by Giacomo Campiotti, Giacomo Battiato, Riccardo Milani, Marco Tullio Giordana, Ivan Cotroneo and Michele Soavi.

In collaboration with

Federico Italiano and Jan Wagner are among the most interesting poets of their generation. Their lecture and dialogue focus on their reflections on contemporary poetry, which they published together in the volume Grand Tour. Reisen durch die junge Lyrik Europas, as well as on their mutually translated works.

Sieben Arten von Weiß (Hanser, 2022), a collection of selected poems by Federico Italiano, was translated by Raoul Schrott and Jan Wagner, while Jan Wagner’s anthologies Variazioni sul barile dell’acqua piovana (Einaudi, 2019) and Autoritratto con sciame d’api (Bompiani, 2022) were translated by Federico Italiano. The two poets will take us into the borderland between sense and sound, words and music – poetry – and discuss the creative possibilities of translation.

The event will be held in Italian and German, with consecutive translation.

Federico Italiano, born in 1976 in Galliate in the province of Novara, lives in Rome, where he teaches comparative literature at the University La Sapienza . After his debut with Nella costanza (Atelier, 2003), the poet, translator and essayist published five further volumes of poetry: L’invasione dei granchi giganti (Marietti, 2010), L’impronta (Aragno, i domani, 2014), Un esilio perfetto. Poesie scelte 2000-2015 (Feltrinelli, zoom, 2015), Habitat (Elliot, 2020) and La grande nevicata (Donzelli, 2023). His poems have been included in various anthologies in Italy and abroad, translated into several languages and awarded numerous prizes. For the German publisher Hanser, he published an anthology of contemporary Italian poetry, Die Erschließung des Lichts (with Michael Krüger, 2013) and an anthology of young European poetry, Grand Tour. Journeys through the young poetry of Europe (with Jan Wagner, 2019). Hanser also published a selection of his poetic work, Sieben Arten von Weiß (2022), translated by Raoul Schrott and Jan Wagner. As an author of essays on poetry and translation theory, he translated Variazioni sul barile dell’acqua piovana (Einaudi, 2019) and Autoritratto con sciame d’api (Einaudi, 2019) by Jan Wagner.

Jan Wagner, born in Hamburg in 1971, lives in Berlin. In addition to poetry (recently published Steine & Erden, Hanser Berlin 2023), he publishes translations (Charles Simic, Margaret Atwood, Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas, Simon Armitage, Matthew Sweeney), essays and radio plays. Variazioni su un barile di pioggia (Einaudi, 2020) and Autoritratto con sciame d’api (Bompiani, 2022) were published in Italian translation by Federico Italiano. His poems, which have been translated into forty languages for anthologies, magazines and collections, have been honoured with the Leipzig Book Fair Prize (2015) and the Georg Büchner Prize (2017), among others. In 2011 he was a Rome Prize winner at the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo.

With the kind support of the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo

The author Francesca Melandri presents her book Piedi freddi (Bompiani 2024), in conversation with the writer Thomas Brussig, current Rome Prize winner of the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo.

Francesca Melandri masterfully interweaves human destinies with the great history of Europe. Andrei Kurkov

What does war mean? And what happens when you fight on the wrong side? Francesca Melandri tells the story of her own father – and gives voice to the silence of an entire generation. A deeply personal search for clues: an indispensable book for understanding our present.

A military hospital in Venice. Disinfectant, feverish sweat, the unbearable stench of gangrene. The son lies in the farthest bed, asleep. The mother lifts the blanket at the bottom. Two legs, two feet. One, two, three, she counts the toes – up to the tenth. She carefully puts the blanket back: at last she can faint.

In the winter of 1942/43, Italian soldiers fled from the Red Army in shoes with cardboard soles, tens of thousands froze to death. The ‘retreat from Russia’ is etched as a trauma in Italy’s collective memory – including in Francesca Melandri’s family. Her father survived it.

But it is only when images and places of war in Ukraine become omnipresent at the beginning of 2022 that she realises that it is primarily Ukraine where her father has been. What did he really experience there, why was he there at all?

Francesca Melandri’s ‘Cold Feet’ is a touching dialogue with a loved one: an unflinching book about what war does to bodies and minds yesterday and today, about storytelling as an art of survival – and our historical responsibility in the face of the attack on Ukraine.

The evening will be held in Italian and German.

 

Francesca Melandri, born in Rome in 1964, is one of the most highly regarded Italian writers of our time. She has made a name for herself in Italy as an author of scripts for film and television. Her first novel Eva dorme also brought her to the attention of a large German-speaking readership. Her second novel Più alto del mare was shortlisted for the Premio Campiello and was hailed as a masterpiece by Italian critics. Her third novel, Sangue giusto from 2017, which won the Premio Sila ‘49 and was shortlisted for the Premio Strega, was named International Novel of the Year by SPIEGEL and has been the subject of numerous reprints. Francesca Melandri works with the ‘Guardian’ and other European newspapers. Her books have been translated into many languages.

Thomas Brussig, born in Berlin in 1964, had his breakthrough in 1995 with the novel Helden wie wir. This was followed by Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee (1999), Wie es leuchtet (2004) and the musical Hinterm Horizont (2011). His works have been translated into 30 languages. Thomas Brussig is the only living German author who has reached an audience of millions with his literary work as well as with a cinema film and a stage work. His most recent novels are Das gibts in keinem Russenfilm (2015), Beste Absichten (2017), Die Verwandelten (2020), Mats Hummels auf Paarship (2023) and Meine Apokalypsen (2023)
He has received several awards and prizes. In 2024/25 he is fellow of the Rome prize at the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo, in 2021 he has been fellow in residence at Casa di Goethe. He is a member of various juries and is also a founding member of Lübeck’s ‘Gruppe 05’. In the summer semester of 2012, he was the holder of the Poetics Lectureship at the University of Koblenz-Landau. Thomas Brussig was the initiator of the German national writers’ football team in 2005.

In collaboration with the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo

On the last day of the exhibition Max Liebermann. An Impressionist from Berlin, we invite you to a guided tour with exhibition curator Alice Cazzola and celebrate the finissage together.

The exhibition presents, for the first time in Italy, the entire artistic career of Max Liebermann (1847-1935), one of the greatest innovators of late 19th-century German painting. During the guided tour, visitors will be able to learn about his relationships with Holland, France and, above all, discover a hitherto lesser-known aspect: Liebermann’s ties with Italy, where he traveled at least six times. Between 1878 and 1913 he visited Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples and had close relationships with leading figures on the Italian art scene. From the beginnings in 1895, he was one of the protagonists of the first International Art Exhibitions in the city of Venice, today’s Venice Biennale, and participated in numerous group exhibitions in Italy. Several of his works then became part of famous Italian museums, some of which are gathered at the Casa di Goethe, such as: Self-portrait of 1908 on loan from the Uffizi Galleries (Florence), Ragazzi al bagno of 1899 from GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna (Milan).

Image: Max Liebermann, Self-portrait, 1908, oil on canvas, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence © Gabinetto Fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi

OPENING: 12.3.2025, 7 p.m.

Introduction:

Gregor H. Lersch, director of the Museum Casa di Goethe

Teresa Indjein, director of the Forum Austriaco di Cultura Roma

Andreas Krüger, head of cultural affairs of the German Embassy Rome

Massimiliano Smeriglio, councillor for culture of Roma Capitale

Exhibition 13.3. – 31.8.2025

She is an icon of 20th century literary history and inspires readers worldwide to this day: Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973). The extensive exhibition shows her life and work and focuses on the places that shaped her: the Klagenfurt of her childhood, the Vienna of her early fame, Munich, Zurich,
Berlin and, again and again, Rome. Books and documents are presented, alongside her relationships with Max Frisch, Henry Kissinger and Marie Luise Kaschnitz, as well as numerous photographs from all phases of the life of the equally self-confident and vulnerable writer.

An exhibition of the Literaturhaus München and the Literaturmuseum of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in collaboration with the Museum Casa di Goethe

                      

 

With kindkly support of Forum Austriaco di Cultura Roma

Music by Gustav Mahler, Ilse Weber, and Robert Kahn, performed by teachers and students of the Conservatorio di Musica “Santa Cecilia” of Rome

An event of the Giuseppe Levi Pelloni Foundation

Actually tracing a clear identity of what was called ‘Entartete Musik’ (Degenerate Music), the object of the Nazis’ attacks, is rather indefinable. The Nazis’ attacks were directed against all music that they felt did not belong to the deepest German musical culture, which they assumed to be “pure” and uncontaminated by any other influence. The repressive system adopted towards Jewish artists (but not exclusively) silenced two generations of composers.
The modernity that had apparently destabilised 20th century German society was the reason why the Reich had armed racist policy, as innovative musical tendencies were an omen of social degeneration. Yet if we pause to think about the concept of art that the Reich advocated, it had points of contact with what was being promulgated at the time: just think of the music of Kahn and Mahler. Their compositions, in classical form and with a late romantic flavour, were not unlike those of Brahms, Wagner or Strauss in either character or harmonies. We cannot undo the injustice these composers suffered, nor can we give them back their lives. But we can give them a gift, which may have mattered more than others: reproduce their music and disseminate it; by keeping it alive, along with that of the other victims of totalitarianism, we deny the regimes of the past a posthumous victory.

PROGRAMMA

Gustav Mahler
Quartettsatz (1876)
Liliana Bernardi, violin (teacher Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia Rome)
Michela Marchiana, viola (student of class M° Sanzò)
Marco Osbat, cello (student of class M° Chiapperino)
Marina Cesarale, piano (piano accompanist Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia Rome)

Ilse Weber
Fünf Lieder für Singstimme und Klavier
Miriam Fußeder, soprano (student of class Camera del M° Ferrara)
Marina Cesarale, piano (piano accompanist Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia Rome)

Robert Kahn
Jungbrunnen Op. 46 for voice, violin, violoncello, and piano
Miriam Fußeder, soprano (student of class Camera del M° Ferrara)
Liliana Bernardi, violin (teacher Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia Rome)
Luca Peverini, violoncello (1st Violoncello Orchestra del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma)
Marina Cesarale, piano (piano accompanist Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia Rome)

Although it is an early work by Gustav Mahler (1860 – 1911), the result of only one year’s study of composition, the Quartettsatz (quartet movement) shows a remarkable mastery of compositional technique. The sonata form structure and the interesting piano writing show Mahler’s familiarity with the great piano repertoire, from Beethoven to Schubert, Chopin, Schumann and Brahms.

Ilse Weber (1903 – 1944) was a child prodigy. She composed children’s songs, lullabies and poems, which were a great comfort to her as a girl after the death of her father. She was first deported to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz, where she died. In Theresienstadt, she used the time she had available during the night watch and after work to create a small space for herself and others in which she wrote around sixty poems during her imprisonment, all in German. She set many of them to music, accompanying herself on the guitar and using ‘deceptively simple’ melodies and images to describe the horrors she and her fellow prisoners had experienced and to keep the music alive despite everything.

Jungbrunnen by Robert Kahn (1865-1951) contains a series of songs from the collection of poems of the same name by the German poet Paul Heyse.The music is in the late Romantic style and is an outstanding example of Kahn’s mastery in the integration of instruments and voice. Kahn met Brahms, who supported him informally, and although his work shows his influence to some extent, Kahn is an eclectic and independent composer whose music has its own originality.Robert Kahn, who taught in Berlin and was a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, emigrated to England in 1939 because the National Socialist regime had banned the publication and performance of his music.

Images: Gustav Mahler © CC0 (E. Bieber), Ilse Weber © CC0 (anonimo), Robert Kahn © CC0

INCONTRI AL CORSO 18 is a series of events in which the scholarship holders, who live and work in Via del Corso 18 for two months, present their projects in an open conversation with Gregor H. Lersch, Director of Casa di Goethe, and the audience.

As part of her scholarship at the Casa di Goethe, literary scholar Sibylle Benninghoff-Lühl will follow Goethe’s botanical traces in Rome; Goethe speaks of his ‘botanical speculations’, as he describes them in the text ‘Italian Journey’ under ‘Rome, 2 December 1786’:
“… now began my botanical speculations, which I continued to indulge in the other day on a walk to Monte Mario, Villa Melini and Villa Madama. … The strawberry tree (arbutus unedo) is now flowering again as its last fruits ripen, and so the orange tree shows itself with blossoms, half and fully ripe fruits … There is enough to think about the cypress, the most respectable tree, when it is quite old and well grown. At the very least I will visit the botanical garden and hope to learn something there …”

The project focuses on Goethe’s description of trees, woods, flowers and leaves. It is a cultural and literary study of the traces that his diary-like travel notes lay out between literature and botany. Roaming through Rome, reading and leafing through the book of nature, the poet encourages the reader to reflect on a rhetoric of reading traces: his special collecting and archiving of flowers and leaves, literary shreds and shavings.
In Rome, the project also leads into concrete archives, above all the herbarium and the botanical garden. Here it becomes important what Goethe actually inspected, what he ‘speculated’, how and what he collected. The thematic arc is also drawn from Rome to Weimar when the project makes reference to Goethe’s natural history collection, especially his herbarium and his wood collection.

The event will take place in German language.

Dr Sibylle Benninghoff-Lühl (*1954 in the Lower Rhine region) is a literary and cultural scholar at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
She has been a visiting professor at several universities in Germany and abroad, including in Canada, Thailand and the Czech Republic.
Her current research interests lie at the interface of botany and literature as well as in the field of colonial literature and quotation research.

We would like to thank the Karin and Uwe Hollweg Foundation for supporting the scholarship programme.

The Museum Casa di Goethe and the German Embassy in Rome organise a conversation on the occasion of the Frankfurt Book Fair. Some Italian women writers who participated in the Buchmesse are invited to discuss their experiences and the books presented in Frankfurt. In this way we will bring ‘the guest country’ home and also give the Roman public a more concrete idea of this important literary event.

Giulia Caminito, Igiaba Scego, and Maddalena Vaglio Tanet in conversation with Karen Krüger (FAZ Milan)

Giulia Caminito was born in 1988 and lives in Rome. Her first novel La grande A (Giunti, 2016) won the Bagutta Opera Prima Prize, the Berto Prize and the Brancati Giovani Prize. She has written novels, short stories and children’s books. He has published Un Giorno verrà, L’acqua del lago non è mai dolce (winner of the Premio Campiello 2021 and finalist for the Premio Strega 2021) and Il male che non c’è, (2024) for the publishing house Bompiani. Her books have been translated in over twenty countries. She collaborates with magazines and newspapers and works in the publishing world.

Igiaba Scego, born in Rome in 1974, graduated in Foreign Literature at La Sapienza in Rome and did a PhD in Pedagogy at Roma Tre University. Of Somali origin and an expert in transculturalism, her writing focuses mainly on the relationship between the two cultures, that of belonging and that of origin. Among others, she collaborates with “Il Manifesto”, “Internazionale”, “La Repubblica” and “Nigrizia”. Her debut novel, for children, is La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock (2003) and with La mia casa è dove sono (2010) she won the Monello Prize in 2011. Igiaba Scego is also the author of several short stories that have appeared in anthologies. Her other works include: Rhoda (2004), Oltre Babilonia (2008), Adua (2015), Caetano Veloso. Camminando controvento (2016), La linea del colore Africana e Figli dello stesso cielo (2020), the anthology Il razzismo e il colonialismo raccontato ai ragazzi (2021), and Cassandra a Mogadiscio (2023). In 2024, in collaboration with C. Piaggio, she edited the anthology Viaggio nella storia letteraria del Continente.

Maddalena Vaglio Tanet, born in Biella in 1985, studied at the University of Pisa and at the Scuola Normale Superiore. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from Columbia University in New York. She lived in Berlin for a long time and recently moved to the Netherlands, where she works as a literary scout. She is the author of award-winning children’s books: Il Cavolo di Troia e altri miti sbagliati (Rizzoli, finalist for Premio Strega Ragazze e Ragazzi 2022), Casa Musica (Room Italic, Premio Orbil 2023), Rim e le parole liberate (Rizzoli, finalist for Premio Strega Ragazze e Ragazzi 2024). Tornare dal bosco, her debut novel, was nominated for the Premio Strega 2023 and translated into several languages (in German it was published by Suhrkamp under the title In den Wald).

An event organised by Casa di Goethe and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Rome in cooperation with the Goethe Institute Rome and the Frankfurt Book Fair

 

 

Picture: Eröffnung Ehrengast Forum Italien – Rundgang © Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024, Photo Zino Peterek

 

A new look at the architecture of Rome

INCONTRI AL CORSO 18 is a series of events in which the scholarship holders, who live and work in Via del Corso 18 for two months at a time, present their projects in an open dialogue with Gregor H. Lersch, Director of the Casa di Goethe, and the audience.

The scholarship holder Laura Helena Wurth will create a detailed radio feature in Rome about the influence of the architect Plautilla Bricci on the history and thus also on the legibility of Baroque Rome. Plautilla Bricci (Rome, 1616-1705) not only demonstrably erected buildings in the city, but also painted. In comparison to the architect Astra Zarina, who worked in Berlin in the 1960s, a parallel will be drawn and a new view of the city and who built for whom will be offered.

The event will be held in German language.

 

Laura Helena Wurth, born 1989 in Berlin, is an author and critic. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Art and Culture from Maastricht University and a Master’s degree from Humboldt University in Berlin. She writes regularly about contemporary art and architecture for the FAZ, FAS, NZZ and is an editor at Deutschlandfunk Kultur. She is co-founder of the project space FKA SIX, which addressed the topic of contemporary ruins in a shopping centre in 2023. Together with Louisa Hölker, she publishes the monothematic art magazine One to(o) Many, which unites many different voices into a single work of art.

We would like to thank the Karin and Uwe Hollweg Foundation for supporting the scholarship programme.

 

On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, the Casa di Goethe is organising various lectures and a conference on 6 December 2024.

Professor Ernst Osterkamp will give a lecture on the meaning and role of Lotte, one of the protagonists of the novel.

The event will take place in German and will be translated into Italian.

 

Ernst Osterkamp, born in 1950, was Professor of Modern German Literature at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin from 1992 to 2016. Visiting professor at New York University and Washington University in St. Louis, among others. Full member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, and the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. President of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung from 2017 to 2023. Most recently published: Der Dichter und der Risches. Leben und Werk des Michael Beer (1800-1833) (Göttingen 2024); Sterne in stiller werdenden Nächten. Lektüren zu Goethes Spätwerk (Frankfurt 2023, 2nd edition 2024); Felix Dahn oder Der Professor als Held (Munich 2019).