unisg.ch

Artist in Residence: Ursula Krechel

October 29 and 30
Writer, Poet and Essayist

Ursula Krechel is one of the most significant voices in contemporary German-language literature and has been awarded, among others, the German Book Prize and the Georg Büchner Prize. Her work spans fiction, theater, radio drama, and essay, always marked by linguistic precision and historical depth.

At the heart of her writing are questions of memory, exile, violence, feminism, and social responsibility. With novels such as Landgericht and Shanghai fern von wo, she brings the repressed into visibility and opens up new perspectives on German and European history.

For many years, Krechel has combined literary work with public debate. She has taught at international universities, worked as a dramaturg, and remains committed to literature as a place of critical reflection. Her powerful texts combine poetic force with political alertness, analytical and of great social relevance.

The events are public and free.

Das Programm

October 29expand_less

Vom Herzasthma des Exils: Talk with Ursula Krechel

6:15 pm, SQUARE Stage, 2nd Floor

What does it mean to lose a home, and what does it take to arrive somewhere else? In her book «Vom Herzasthma des Exils», Ursula Krechel looks at the history of flight, migration and exile, from the Huguenots to refugees of the present day. She tells of people who had to leave, of societies that take them in or turn them away, and of the traces that exile leaves behind. In doing so, migration becomes visible not only as a political or social phenomenon, but as a deeply human experience: as loss, as a new beginning, as a search for belonging.

In conversation with Ursula Krechel, we ask what we can learn from the history of exile for the present. How does migration change a society? What does «arriving» mean, for those who come and for those who are already here? And what stories do we tell when we talk about migration?