Lecture with Dr. Michael Braun: “Walling in and Walling out”. Telling Germany in Post-Wall Literature and Film”

Join us for a luncheon lecture in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Washington, D.C. honoring Germany's national holiday and the 30th anniversary year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the entire iron curtain that separated Western Europe from Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe.

Dr. Michael Braun is the head of the Department of Literature at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin, and a professor at the University of Cologne.

Drawing on Mann's  "The Great Irritability" from the novel "The Magic Mountain" ("Der Zauberberg"), published in 1924, Braun connects literature with current political issues of importance and spans the bridge from the past to the present. "The Magic Mountain" has been part of the U.S. educational canon for decades, and the late actress  Liz Taylor once accused her ex-husband Richard Burton that he forced her "to read this damned book." Perhaps surprisingly, the novel indeed foreshadows the "great irritability" caused by modern populism and protectionism. Dr. Braun theorizes that literature and film can help understand these politics of indignation, especially in 2019, 30 years after the fall of the iron curtain in Europe, by reviewing the so-called "Erinnerungskultur" or culture of remembrance. Shakespeare's would-be tryants, Michel Houllebecq's passion heroes, and Günter Grass' fallen angels are alerting us about fake news and alternative truths in the age of digital media and the resulting flood of information. They teach us how to deal with an "indifference to the truth, shamelessness and hyper-inflated self-confidence" (Stephen Greenblatt), and they tell us that when building a wall we should ask ourselves "who I was walling in and walling out" (Robert Frost).

A light luncheon is included. This event is free, but RSVPs are required by emailing [email protected]. Please respond by 5 pm on Monday, Sept. 30, 2019.