Carolin Würfel reads from her book about Maxie Wander, Brigitte Reimann and Christa Wolf
"When the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, it was the official beginning of the end of East German cultural history," writes author and journalist Carolin Würfel, who was born in Leipzig in 1986, in the epilogue to her book "Drei Frauen träumten vom Sozialismus" (Three Women Dreaming of Socialism), published by Insel Verlag in 2024.
Contrary to the undifferentiated devaluation of socialist concepts from a dominant political and cultural perspective in the West, Würfel uses the example of her protagonists, Maxie Wander, Brigitte Reimann and Christa Wolf, to show that the GDR wanted to be more than a dictatorship, but also the destructive aspects of the project that finally failed in 1989.
Through the very close and honest description of the three lives, Würfel succeeds in illustrating what, in a broader perspective, drives people to this day to work for a radically humanistic dream of humanity, without concealing the fact that humanism also contains the danger of renewed tyranny.
"We little humans can't achieve socialism, unfortunately we're just not capable of it," her paternal grandmother once said after the fall of communism, the author explains. On the other hand, in the face of a growing global cult of misanthropy, we have no alternative but to continue thinking about post-capitalist social concepts against the odds.
The author will be presenting her favorite readings at the Kulturhaus Schlowe for discussion with the audience. Heike Lorenz and Jens Mühe will support her on the podium and add their own thoughts and questions.
The reading is kindly supported by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
From 6 p.m.: Tickets, cold drinks, coffee and a book table from the bookshop "Reingelesen", Blutstraße 33, Parchim in Café Wahrheit.
