The Goethe-Institut de Nancy, in partnership with Le Livre sur la Place, is hosting an exceptional literary evening on Friday February 7, 2025, at 7 p.m., on the occasion of the publication of the French translation of Marseille 1940, When literature escapes (Graset editions).
The author Uwe Wittstock will dialogue with Olivier Mannoni, translator of the work, around this poignant book which plunges into the heart of occupied France, where intellectuals, artists and writers hunted down by the Gestapo took refuge, hoping to find a way towards freedom. The discussion will be accompanied by Cornelia Geiser, interpreter.
Uwe Wittstock's book highlights the intersecting destinies of emblematic figures like Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Anna Seghers and Heinrich Mann, refugees in Marseille in the middle of the Second World War. Faced with the merciless pursuit of the Nazi regime and the growing collaboration of the Vichy government, these intellectuals found a fragile glimmer of hope thanks to heroic figures like the American journalist Varian Fry.
In captivating writing, Wittstock brings this moment of cultural and political collapse to life, while paying tribute to those who dared to resist and offer aid, despite the perils.
Practical information: Goethe-Institut Nancy, 39 rue de la Ravinelle, Nancy; Friday February 7, 2025 at 7 p.m. Free entry, upon registration via this link.
June 1940: in the zone occupied by the German army, the Gestapo hunts down Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Anna Seghers, and even Heinrich Mann, in addition to countless German and Austrian citizens who have taken refuge in France since 1933.
-Relegated to the rank of pariahs by the Vichy regime, intellectuals, artists, political activists and writers fled to the largest port in the free zone, Marseille, hoping to obtain a visa for freedom. When they are not interned in the camps in the south of France, the greatest minds of the time rub shoulders there in a climate of extraordinary excitement, worthy of a provisional capital of culture. But the Marseille city quickly transformed into an open-air prison with the intensification of collaboration, the adoption of anti-Jewish measures and the tightening of police surveillance. Suddenly, in the midst of tragedy, an American journalist named Varian Fry offers a glimmer of hope…
With Marseille 1940Uwe Wittstock makes us relive the collapse of a world alongside its victims and its heroes.
Born in 1955, Uwe Wittstock is a journalist and literary critic. His bibliography includes Books on Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Karl Marx, and contemporary German literature. He also served as a newspaper correspondent The world in Paris for several years.
His previous work, February 33was published by Grasset in 2023.
France
Books
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