In the organizer's words:

Die Möglichkeit von Glück (Klett-Cotta, 2023) is a novel that sheds light on the ambiguity of the lives of children at the turn of the century - and the entangled family dynamics that perpetuate seemingly gratuitous violence in the most intimate relationships between father, mother, daughter and son. These situations, which only exist for us because the author Anne Rabe had the courage to explore the unspoken aspects of her own childhood, are unsparing and harrowing.

Born in the GDR, growing up in reunified Germany: Stine is three years old when the Wall falls. But her family remains trapped in a system whose truths and self-images continue to have an effect. With captivating clarity, Anne Rabe tells the story of a generation whose origins are both formative and intangible.

Stine grows up on the East German Baltic Sea in the mid-1980s. Too young to understand the change of system, but old enough to bear the ideological traces of her family. While her relatives shroud the vanished world in silence, questions arise in Stine that can no longer be suppressed. Rabe paints a clear-sighted, disturbing picture of the wounds of a generation caught between dictatorship and democracy - and questions the origins of racism and violence.

In this conversation with Boussa Thiam, Anne Rabe talks about the long-lasting effects of silence, about the traumatic legacy from the Second World War to the GDR era - and about how these stories live on to this day

PARTICIPANTS

Anne Rabe (April 1, 1986 in Wismar) is a German playwright, poet, screenwriter and essayist. She became known to a wider audience with her debut novel Die Möglichkeit von Glück, published in 2023, which was shortlisted for the German Book Prize.

In 2025, she published the book of essays Das M-Wort. Gegen die Verachtung der Moral, in which she argues for a renewed social understanding of basic moral values.

Boussa Thiam

Born in Berlin with Senegalese roots, Boussa Thiam began her artistic career in ballet and theater, later also in music (piano and singing). After a traineeship at a youth radio station, which was nominated for the Grimme Prize in 2011, she started working at Hessischer Rundfunk in 2012. She has been a presenter at Cosmo_ARD since 2018 and at Deutschlandfunk Kultur since 2020. She also regularly appears on stage as a presenter for socio-political and cultural events. Her focus is on diversity, feminism and family policy.

- free of charge

- from 14 years

- Mechanical arena in the foyer

- Belongs to: Conceal or tell?