Friday 18 November 2011

Celebrate/Commemorate Kleist

On Monday, 21 November it will be 200 years to the day since the German writer Heinrich von Kleist killed the salonnière Henriette Vogel and himself on the shore of what is now Berlin's Kleiner Wannsee. All sorts of commemorations have been taking place in Berlin and the rest of Germany for "Kleist Year". Theatre, as you might imagine, but also exhibitions visual and acoustic and a new gravestone for the two of them at the spot where they died, as suicides were not buried in churchyards. I rather like the look of this docu-drama screened on TV in March, which of course I missed: die Akte Kleist.

Anyway, if like me you've missed out on everything already - or in fact are not actually physically present in Berlin - you still have a chance to join in the fun and frolics. Because Monday sees an amazing number of Kleist readings all day long, all around the world. From Togo to Kazakhstan, there are literally way too many for me to list here, so please go to the list of readings. The ones in the English-speaking world are in Oxford, Cambridge (UK), Galway (Ire), Sydney (Aus), Auckland, Wellington (NZ), and Albuquerque, Williamstown,  Long Beach, Fayetteville, Washington DC, New York and Pittsburgh (USA). I may have missed some. The one in Berlin is at the gravesite.

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