On September 12th at 7 pm we invite you to get a closer look at Franz Kafka - at the Schwartzsche Villa in Berlin-Steglitz, which was Kafka´s neighbourdhood where he spent the winter of 1923.
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) spent six months in what is now the district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf – and lived in Grunewaldstraße, one could almost say opposite the Schwartz villa, in the winter of 1923.
To mark the occasion, Michael Kumpfmüller will be reading from his novel ‘The Splendour of Life’ at the Kulturhaus, which sheds a bright, almost cheerful light on the famous poet and his time in that very place. Kumpfmüller lovingly portrays a man who finds great love in his last year and takes his life into his own hands before it is too late. This is juxtaposed with two settings of Kafka’s texts that could hardly be more different: On the one hand, two songs by close Kafka confidant Max Brod and on the other – fifty years later – Ruth Zechlin’s ‘Early Kafka Texts’ for medium voice and five instrumentalists*. While Brod’s songs attempt to show ‘ways of hope and ways of redemption’, much like Kumpfmüller’s novel emphasises lightness, Ruth Zechlin’s highly complex sound world congenially complements the charm of the absurd in Kafka’s early texts.
Alice Lackner and the Zafraan Ensemble rediscover Zechlin’s work as a spatial composition in the atrium of the Schwartz Villa.
Michael Kumpfmüller – Reading
Alice Lackner – mezzo-soprano
Zafraan Ensemble and guests (flute: Liam Mallett, clarinet: Miguel Pérez Iñesta, oboe: Juan Pechuan, cello: Alice Dixon, percussion: Alex Babel)
Katharina Landl – piano
‘Franz Kafka and music’ – short introduction with Maximilian Hagemeyer, Programme Coordinator Music, at 6.30 pm
Schwartzsche Villa, Large Salon
Organiser: Steglitz-Zehlendorf Department of Culture
Free tickets at www.pretix.de/kultur-berlin-sz
The event is partially seated.
In cooperation with the LiteraturInitiative Berlin.
