In the Center of Literature:
The Literary Colloquium Berlin
Hans-Joachim Neubauer
translated by Ingo R. Stoehr
THE MANSION AT THE WANNSEE
Literature has many places, for you can read anywhere as long as you have light and quiet. That’s not how it is for writing, and even listening requires its own places. If you are looking for one such place, you should travel to the southern part of Berlin and turn, right across from the Wannsee train station, into the street called “Am Sandwerder.” After less than fifty paces, you will stand in front of the wrought-iron gate with the number 5. You will see a spacious driveway, several parking spots, smaller buildings to the left and to the right, and straight ahead—between trees, built with red brick, and sporting a turret—one of the lavish mansions that have adorned the city’s better, wealthier neighborhoods since the latter part of the nineteenth century. Residing here, the Literary Colloquium Berlin (LCB), however, represents a wealth of a special kind.
When Walter Höllerer founded the LCB in 1963, he planned it as a central point on the map of German-language literature. Today the building at Am Sandwerder 5 is not only an important address in Berlin for authors and readers and a meeting point for international guests, but also “a nerve center of all of German-language literature,” as Peter von Matt, a literary scholar at the university of Zurich, once wrote. The image is well chosen: indeed, the LCB forms a center of what Pierre Bourdieu has called the “literary field,” the force field containing the various individuals and institutions involved in the process of reading and the book.
It all began with a lecture series that was initiated at the Technical University Berlin in the Winter semester 1959/60 by Walter Höllerer, a writer, literary scholar, and editor of the literary magazine Akzente. Günter Eich and Ilse Aichinger, Max Frisch and Ingeborg Bachmann, Günter Grass, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Uwe Johnson were among the first guests at Höllerer’s “Institute for Language in the Age of Technology.” One year later he put together a program that introduced the “crème” of the international Modernism to the West-Berlin audience (who had, in the meantime, been walled in). Berliners came in droves to the Congress Hall in the Tiergarten neighborhood to attend events with Doderer, Butor and Sarraute, with Ionesco, Dos Passos and Gombrowicz. Even these early literary events found a second audience by way of live broadcasts for radio and television. In October 1962—Cuban missile crisis and scandal following the raids on the Spiegel’s editorial offices kept everybody in suspense—Höllerer steered the annual meeting of the Group 47 to the mansion at Am Sandwerder 5, which was found to be “a labyrinth of storage rooms” but also a building with atmosphere and character.
The building at the Wannsee had proven its literary suitability before. Here, in this “imitation castle,” Carl Zuckmayer had lived in the summer of 1925 as the guest of Ernst Goldschmidt, a relative of his mother. Here he had also written his play Der fröhliche Weinberg. “Kitchen and cellar were superb,” Zuckmayer recalls in his autobiography. “Cigars were freely available, and my host was a charming man and, what is more, left every morning for the city, not to return until the evening.” Originally, the mansion was built in 1885 by an industrialist and was then owned by a banker. In 1934 it was bought by Paul Rosin, a Jewish engineer, who had to emigrate the very next year. Building and plot were “Aryanized” (returned in 1953) and were used as a naval testing station: Where authors write today, the navy was developing a one-person submarine. The German navy also remodeled the mansion’s atrium into the big hall, which is used as a meeting room today. After the Second World War, the Allies used the building at Am Sandwerder 5 as a casino and a hotel, and since 1960 the state of Berlin is in charge of the property.
In May 1963 thefoundation of the LCB was established, promising to promote “scholarship and the arts” and make “contributions to educating the people” by presenting young authors, who were to be “in attendance, if possible,” as well as “professionals from related fields.” The LCB, like the Berlin Artists Program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), received its first operating funds from Shepard Stone and the Ford Foundation, from which the divided city, which was losing its economic lifeblood, received many symbolic and cultural transfusions. This was the only way of turning into reality Höllerer’s dream of creating a laboratory for the arts, a space free from the government’s influence, without membership cards, and without aesthetic regulations.
Soon after establishing the LCB, the house began to fill with life: writers and film makers, authors of radio plays and scholars of the media, critics and theater people came together to listen to each other and to work together. Thus came into being the legendary “collective novel” The Guest House, written collaboratively by fourteen authors—among them Nicolas Born and Hubert Fichte. A group around the film maker Wolfgang Ramsbott (1934-1991) experimented with documentary films and provided the foundation of the German Autorenfilm. The Living Theater visited from New York, Roséwicz und Herbert from Poland; Lawrence Ferlinghetti met with Andrej Wosnessenjkij. In addition to Walter Höllerer, who served as the LCB’s director until 1983, two young authors—the late Wolfgang Maier and the Austrian Gerald Bissinger—were in charge of the LCB Editions, which were international in scope. Renate von Mangoldt began her work with photographic portraits. In the context of the 1960s mood of renewal, one goal was to redefine literature’s place in relation to the other arts. At the same time, however, the traditional literary canon was extended. This had, at least during the Cold War, a politically subversive component. After all, whenever authors from Eastern Europe met with their colleagues from the Western hemisphere, the LCB proved that the borders of the political world were not valid in the literary world.
The history of the Literary Colloquium has always been one of its funding. The beginnings—made possible with the help of the Ford Foundation—were continued and extended under the financial care of the state of Berlin. Yet without close cooperation with many other cultural institutions, the LCB would not be one of the crucial coordinating points of literary life in today’s Germany. Its partners include the Goethe Institut/Inter Nationes, the DAAD and its Berlin Artists Program, the Foreign Ministry, the Preußische Seehandlung Foundation, the television and radio network ARD, Deutschlandfunk, the Leipzig Book Fair, and numerous foreign cultural institutes and embassies.
The Cooperative of Literary Societies and Memorials was established at the LCB, where it is still headquartered and where—since 1997—the German Translators Fund has also found a home. But the work with the symbolic capital of literature cannot not be organized without cost, and even a network of the present magnitude cannot, by itself, meet the financial obligations for the program of events, which are covered only in part by state funding. As a consequence, the LCB generates its own revenue—through rentals, cover charges, and last but not least sponsors. Today the LCB finances a considerable part of its budget through outside funding that was procured through the efforts of the LCB itself.
AN ADDRESS FOR AUTHORS
The LCB has become a symbol of a cosmopolitan city for hundreds of international authors. Its genius loci is based on concrete and thorough work on the program. After all, in contrast to what some listener may think while listening to an author at the Wannsee, the house is more than just one of many venues for authors to read from their work. The LCB’s by-laws establish “promotion of the arts and scholarship” as the institution’s goal. “Promotion,” however, means in the first place to make encounters and conversations possible—on the one hand, between authors and translators; on the other, between these individuals and other literary professionals, such as publishers, critics, journalists—and, last but not least, also between the writing guests of the LCB and their audience, the readers.
The mansion at Am Sandwerder 5 is a guest house, a convention center, and an academy in one. The top floors offer eleven rooms for authors, translators, and other guests of the LCB; short-term guests and grant-recipients stay here. Some become friends, on evenings in the rotunda at the lake or high on the roof:
| Willkommen | Welcome |
| auf der gemeinsamen Feuerleiter | on the shared firestairs |
| im letzten Dachziegel unter der Rauchfahne | in the last roof tile under the trail of smoke |
| (um nicht zu sagen: Fahne | (not to say: trail |
| aus Bier und Frieden) | of beer and peace) |
| wo Berlin verschwindet in einen Himmel ohne Vogelflug | where Berlin vanishes in a sky without birdfight |
it says in Christoph Meckel's poem for Günter Bruno Fuchs.
| Hier oben | Up here |
| sind wir die lustigen Vögel, meinetwegen | we are the funny birds, for all I care |
| die letzten Störche, unbezahlbar. | the last storks, priceless. |
| Wer sich als Singvogel ausgibt, soll | Whoever pretends to be a songbird, shall |
| nicht im Unrecht sein - willkommen | not be in the wrong - welcome |
| auf der gemeinsamen Tonleiter oben. | on our shared ladder, setting the tone, above. |
Everybody who comes to the Wannsee feels the history and special flair of the house. The packed schedule of events always guarantees new occasions for experiencing these feelings. In 2002, for example, 116 events took place; many of them were open to the public; others targeted a specific audience. It is thanks to the numerous meetings of authors, professional conventions and colloquia that the LCB has gained its reputation; for here the background of writing and reading, production and criticism are being explored.
While the media usually feature detailed reports on public events, the long process of preparation, discussions, and decisions takes place behind the scenes. This observation applies to the entire program of the LCB. On average, the LCB uses just about a third of its budget for activities that address the public; the lion’s share of the budget goes into the organization of workshops and meetings for authors, into the promotion of translation and grants for writers. The LCB counts up to six authors annually among its guests, who receive a grant from the Berlin Senate, the Foreign Ministry, or the Preußische Seehandlung Foundation.
For a wider audience, however, the abbreviation “LCB” means “Lecture Club Berlin,” because the institution presents itself to these guests, the readers and listeners, primarily through lectures and readings. The LCB offers series of events each with a thematic focus, such as “European Narrators,” “The Knowledge of Literature,” and a series of literary newcomers. The “Studio LCB” has strengthened the institution’s visibility far beyond Berlin. Since October 1990, listeners of Deutschlandfunk have been able to follow monthly readings and discussions with authors and critics. In the two-hour broadcasts of “Studio LCB,” authors read from their unpublished manuscripts and then, together with two critics or writers, discuss their work in detail and how a text becomes a book—a literary sound stage that is unique in its kind and continuity. Year after year, the LCB’s summer festival is a climax of the literary calendar for many thousand visitors.
WORKSHOPS, GRANTS, AND AWARDS
All promoters of culture need to offer events that reach a large audience. Just as important as the preparation of public literary discussions, however, is the work for literature that goes on behind the scenes. In 1997, after a longer hiatus, the “Authors Prose Workshop” revived the old tradition of LCB workshops. The participants not only receive a grant but also the opportunity to work in peace and quiet on their texts together with experienced colleagues and to discuss issues such as theme, craft, and poetics in the prose genre. It is certainly helpful for this process that many of today’s mentors and teachers have themselves participated in LCB workshops as students. In this way, slowly but surely, a kind of the LCB’s genealogy of the teaching of writing has emerged—a school of literature that reaches back to the early 1960s.
All those who have explored the world of fiction in poetological lectures and literary readings also have found their place in this tradition of instigating creative writing at the LCB. Among them were authors and scholars, such as Alfred Andersch, Ingeborg Bachmann, Ernst Bloch, Johannes Bobrowski, Günter Eich, Wilhelm Emrich, Günter Bruno Fuchs, Ernst Jandl, Hans Mayer, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and John Steinbeck—to mention but a few of the guests from the early period who have since passed away.
Another means to promote authors consists of the literary prizes that are awarded at Am Sandwerder 5. The LCB administers several nationally and internationally prestigious literary competitions, such as the Alfred Döblin Prize and the Prize for Poetic Debut. Most of these awards honor young authors so that their work in the field of aesthetics also bears economic fruit. Above and beyond the monetary value, all public recognition supports the author on his or her way to the market.
THE BRIGHT LIGHT OF PROMOTING TRANSLATION
The LCB is host to the world. In addition to the authors, their translators also continue to come. After all, the contact to the great and to the unknown voices of world literature is made possible by translators as the true go-betweens of literature. If the LCB is indeed, “viewed from abroad, an irreplaceable model, a bright light,” as Paul Nizon wrote, then one of the reasons is that the LCB has consistently sponsored literary translation for years. A particular target has been the cross-border transfer of literature and literary translation—in both directions. For this end, the experienced tutors of the Berlin Translators Workshop look after their younger colleagues in specific projects. Regular weekend seminars give translators the opportunity to exchange their ideas about problems and experiences involving their work. And the Translators Colloquium for Lesser-Spoken European Languages provides a forum for those who translate literature from countries and regions that lie at the fringes of the German public’s awareness, such as Albania, Galicia, Iceland, Catalonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus. Since 1997 the LCB has also been home to the German Translators Fund, an institution that operates nationwide with the single goal of promoting the art of translation.
The publishing houses also benefit from the LCB’s activities. The Program for Promoting the Translation of Fiction from Central and East European Countries, which is financed by the German Foreign Ministry and the Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia, specifically supports the publication of new books from those regions that had been behind the “Iron Curtain” until 1989, because bringing former political enemies together is not only a cultural but also an economic issue. In the meantime, since 1993 the library of sponsored translations has grown to over 150 volumes. This program provides far-reaching impulses for how readers welcome these literatures across former borders. What is more: The example of the Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész shows that the path to international recognition begins with the translation of these authors’ books into German.
But the transnational exchange of literature is not a one-way street. As a consequence, the LCB also pays attention to those colleagues who translate German texts into the language of their own countries. Every year the LCB invites a group of them to attend a summer academy for foreign-language translators. These meetings not only allow for work with texts but also provide the translators with the opportunity to get to know the “literary field” of Berlin: The guests meet with authors and journalists from Berlin, attend readings, and collaboratively explore the newest German literature.
In this way the LCB has come to play a role as a mediator of international cultural policy that is hard to overestimate—for this reason it is highly regarded as a contact address by the German Foreign Ministry. Over the years, the LCB has woven a close net of contacts covering all continents. This network serves to promote German literature abroad as well as to encourage international cooperation.
SPRACHE IM TECHNISCHEN ZEITALTER
The mansion at Am Sandwerder 5 is a meeting point and a center of literary discussion; at the same time, it is an address for publication, because it is home to the editorial offices of the magazine Sprache im technischen Zeitalter. The magazine title, which translates as “Language in the Age of Technology,” is abbreviated as Spr.it.Z. for all practical purposes and lovingly referred to as Spritz. The title’s quirkiness can be understood in terms of its history of over forty years. It harkens back to the academic circumstances that surrounded the LCB’s foundation. Without Walter Höllerer and his professorial appointment at the Technical University of Berlin there would be neither Spritz nor the literary playground at Am Sandwerder today.
Since its inception in 1961 as a journal of scholarship for literature and language, Spritz has found different publishers; however, the editorial offices, the magazine’s heart, has been at the Wannsee since 1974. Today Spritz serves as an informal chronicle of the LCB’s ongoing projects and discussions: it is the place where the meetings of authors, workshop, meetings of critics, and other events at the LCB leave their immediate traces.
At the same time, Spritz gives room to the analytical consideration of literary and poetological issues. Its essays, again and again, address central questions of literary scholarship, cultural sociology, language philosophy, and media studies. Each issue of Spritz has a different focal point, for example, showcasing an author, such as Peter Huchel in issue 150; considering political aspects, such as “Perceptions of Germany” in issue 154; presenting literary cross sections, such as “The Future Writers? German-language Literature of Fissures in the Wall” in issue 111 (from September 1989!); and taking inventory as did issue 151 with its “Stories from Germany 1989-1999,” a retrospective of the first literary decade of the united Germany. Indeed, the issue on the Zurich Literary Debate still provides, to this day, the best documentation of that attention-grabbing discussion.
Since the magazine, in spite of its poignant analyses, has always remained “objective and decidedly anti-ideological” (as the weekly newspaper Zeit observed), it continues to be after decades an important chronicle of literary life, an “organ of an intelligence that is aware of crises and remains unknown” (as the daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted). With a run of 1,500 copies per issue, one can rely on Spritz, which has now been published by the SH-Verlag in Cologne for several years, to find continued interest on part of its readers in Germany and internationally—after all, Spritz counts six hundred university libraries among its worldwide subscribers.
THE IMAGE OF LITERATURE: AN ARCHIVE
Only a few photographers have been able to shape the image—and, with it, the memory—of young German literature since the 1960s to the extent that Renate von Mangoldt has. She belongs to the great chroniclers of her generation. For a long time now, her portraits, which are filled with both poignancy and atmosphere, have molded the “inner” image of the last several literary decades. If you think of such authors as Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, Uwe Johnson, and Heiner Müller, then you will have her portrait before your inner eye.
Typically, Renate von Mangoldt uses the LCB to stage her black-and-white photographs. Her stars are the individual authors, but her subject is literature. Mangoldt’s portraits of guests at the LCB have accompanied the institution’s history up to the present day—not least by way of their publication in Spritz and other journals. If you witnessed even once how she prepares even clumsy and camera-shy authors for having their pictures taken, you would begin to understand the difficult art of making faces talk. Renate von Mangoldt is counted among the most distinguished photographers of Germany, and some of her pictures are considered the ultimate interpretation of even the hidden sides in the face of literature. Others of her pictures transform the suspense of literary debate into suspenseful photographic scenes. The fascinating archive of her work constitutes a documentary and historical treasure that will continue to appreciate in value.
