Friday, 20 May 2022 | Start 18:00 h, Admission 17:30 h
Tickets in advance at 15 euros (reduced 13 euros)
“A man is made …”
“If you call me Goethe, I’ll call you Schiller” – that’s one of the secret rules of the German-language literary business. Denis Scheck knows this literary business like the back of his hand, ever since he founded a literary agency at 13 and began translating literature from English. In his reading at the Faust Museum in Knittlingen, he will reveal why he included Goethe’s “Faust” in his canon of the hundred most important works of world literature and invite the audience to one of the great adventures: to follow him on Goethe’s footsteps to Italy. Goethe’s “Italian Journey” is the archetype of all travel narratives for German literature. This text continues to have an impact on the literature of our present day. But the Italian journey is also Goethe’s search for a new life, a so-called trip of self-discovery. That is what makes this travel narrative so relevant even today. Goethe was a dropout with a 1st class ticket.
Denis Scheck, born 1964 in Stuttgart, is a German literary critic. He has worked as a literary agent, radio editor, translator and publisher (of Michael Chabon, Robert Stone, Harold Brodkey, Ruth Rendell, David Foster Wallace, among others) and studied German, contemporary history and political science in Tübingen, Düsseldorf and Dallas. Today he is a freelance critic and has been the presenter of the ARD literature magazine Druckfrisch and the SWR programme Lesenswert since 2003. He has received many awards for his work: Julius Campe Prize 2015, Hildegard von Bingen Prize 2014, Bavarian Television Prize 2013. He also received the special prize for the Hajo Friedrichs Prize 2012 and the German Television Prize 2011. He is the author of various non-fiction books, most recently “Schecks Kanon: die hundert wichtigsten Werke der Weltliteratur von Krieg und Frieden bis Tim und Struppi” (Piper) and together with Anne-Dore Krohn: “Hungrig auf Berlin” (Merian).
The Corona regulations valid on the day of the event apply.