Born in a small Bosnian town in 1978 and fleeing to Germany with his parents in 1992, Saša Stanišić is now one of the most renowned German authors of his generation.

In recent years, he has received numerous awards for his texts, which often deal with the themes of origin and identity in an autobiographical tone, including the Leipzig Book Fair Prize ("Vor dem Fest", 2014) and the German Book Prize ("Herkunft", 2019).

Since 2021, Stanišić has also been publishing children's books, which are also very popular. The read-aloud book "Panda-Pand" was published in 2023 and became a bestseller, while Stanišić received the German Youth Literature Prize for the children's novel "Wolf" in October 2024. Both texts will be performed at the Junges Schauspiel des D'haus.

In his speech in April, the author will reflect on the influence we can have on the character, democratic and emphatic thinking of future generations under the title "Bedrängnisse anderer". He will talk about the war of origins, the place of resistance against their fetishization and about crisis management as a pedagogical concept.