Ein Abend mit Daniel Kehlmann

June 18, 2026 / 7.30 pm / Garden / Hall

Daniel Kehlmann's latest novel "Lichtspiel" tells the story of film director G.W. Pabst, who worked with Fritz Lang and made Greta Garbo and Louis Brooks famous with his own films. The "red Pabst" had even made it to Hollywood and celebrated success in France, but now he returned to make films in Nazi Germany. Each individual justification or self-justification of his actions in dictatorial circumstances is perhaps still comprehensible, but on the whole he gets caught up in seductions and compromises that are questionable in their effects and damage his own life and work and the lives of other people.

The novel was a resounding success in Germany. - And also in the USA, where it soon appeared in translation under the title "The Director" and was read as the book of the hour. It is the first translated book for many years to be on the list of the ten most important novels of the year in the USA; now "The Director" has been nominated for the Booker Prize.

Since then, Kehlmann has written the screenplay for ARD's Kafka series, a book on Immanuel Kant together with Omri Boehm, one on Leo Perutz, whom he has admired for many years, a great essay on Joseph Roth, whose novels his father Michael Kehlmann has made into films ... Daniel Kehlmann is active in an incredible number of fields and will share some of his endeavors with us.

Admission: 10,- / 7,- EUR ǀ Event organized by Literaturhaus Leipzig e.V.

Discounts are available for disabled people and their accompanying person (only if listed on the disabled pass), unemployed people, schoolchildren and students (up to 35) as well as holders of the Leipzig Pass or an honorary pass, in each case only on presentation of the pass).