In a joint project, two German and a Swiss literary institution aim to make recordings of organized events from half a century of German and international literary history accessible to the public with an open online sound archive. For the occasion of the 25 year anniversary of German reunification in 2015, the two authors Julia Schoch and Marcel Beyer delved into the sound archive to create an online audiovisual course on the topic »Literature of the Cracks in the Wall.«
Dichterlesen.net is a joint project between the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, and the Literaturhaus Basel. It has been online since October 3, 2015. Together, the cooperating institutions aim to make recordings of organized events from half a century of German and international literary history accessible to the public. The centerpiece of the project is the online sound archive, in which the audio recordings of literary events from the participating institutions are made freely available for listening worldwide. Alongside the digital sound archive, Dichterlesen.net also presents curated exhibition spaces in which various artists take their own stance on the event recordings and develop an online course with visual, audio, and textual exhibits.
Example from the online parcours by Julia Schoch
For the occasion of the 25 year anniversary of German reunification in 2015, the two authors Julia Schoch and Marcel Beyer delved into the sound archive of the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach und the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin. Both of them then created an online audiovisual course on the topic »Literature of the Cracks in the Wall.« In the courses, unique audio recordings can be heard of events by both literary institutions from before and after the turning point of 1989. The recordings are of Oskar Pastior, Ernst Jandl, Sarah Kirsch, Volker Braun, Wolfgang Hilbig, and Elke Erb, among others.
Julia Schoch – born in Bad Saarow in 1974 and raised in Mecklenburg – studied German and Romance philology and has lived for extended periods in Paris, Bucharest, and Kaliningrad. Since 2003, she has been a freelance author and translator and has published her novels Mit der Geschwindigkeit des Sommers (»With the Speed of Summer«) in 2009 and Selbstporträt mit Bonaparte (»Self Portrait with Bonaparte«) in 2012, with the publishing house Piper.
Marcel Beyer – born in Tailfingen/Württenberg in 1965 and raised in Kiel and Neuss – studied German and English philology and literary studies at the University of Siegen. He worked as an editor for the literary magazine Konzepte and published articles in the music magazine Spex. Marcel Beyer is an author of poetry, essays, and novels, publishing his novels Flughund (»Fruitbat«) in 1995; Kaltenburg in 2008; and the poetry series Graphit (»Graphite«) in 2014.