Overcoming the Present with Max Czollek

Register for Zoom link or watch live on Youtube or Facebook.

Author Max Czollek’s essay collection Desintegriert Euch transformed the debate about the integration of minorities in Germany when it appeared in 2018. His perspective on the roles of contemporary Jews in German society and its “theater of memory” struck a nerve not just among Jews, but other minority groups as well. “The threat from the right has created a new kind of solidarity,” he recently told the New York Times, speaking about the potential for alliances among various minority groups in Germany.

As a poet and theater-maker, Czollek has also found creative and provocative ways to to express his ideas through art, including several volumes of poetry and projects such as the "Radical Jewish Culture Days" in 2017 at the Maxim Gorki Theater's Studio Studio Я which resulted in the satirical newscast, Jews News Today.

Join LBI live online for an exclusive discussion with the author, who will discuss his view of contemporary Jewish life in Germany today and how Jewish experience has informed his poetry and theater work. The first 50 registrants will have the opportunity to participate in a Zoom call, which will also be live-streamed to the public on YouTube and Facebook.

Read [in English]:

• Max Czollek, “Gegenwartsbewältigung [Overcoming the Present],“ in TRANSIT vol. 12, no. 2, UC Berkeley, 2020. Translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi
  This essay originally appeared in Euer Heimat ist Unser Albtraum [Your Homeland is our Nightmare] (2019), a collection of essays by 14 German-language authors on racism, antisemitism, and xenophobia in contemporary Germany.
• Max Czollek, “Of Return” in Jewish Currents, April 10, 2020. Translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi
  A poem by Max Czollek recently published in German and in English Translation.

Watch [in German]:

• Jews News Today—a project of the Radical Jewish Culture Days at Maxim Gorki Theater, 2017

Max Czollek lives in Berlin, where he was born in 1987. After studies of political science at the Technical University (TU) of Berlin, he earned a doctorate at the TU's Center for Research on Antisemitism. Since 2009 he is member of the poetry collective G13, which published books and organized lectures. 2013–2018 he was curator of the international project “Babelsprech.International” for the connection of the young German-speaking and European poetry scene. Together with Sasha Marianna Salzmann he was initiator of “Desintegration. Ein Kongress zeitgenössischer jüdischer Positionen” (2016) and “Radikale Jüdische Kulturtage” (2017) at Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Studio Я. His lyric books Druckkammern (2012), Jubeljahre (2015) and Grenzwerte (2019) were published at Verlagshaus Berlin. 2018 his non-fiction book Desintegriert Euch! was published at Carl Hanser.