feeLit 2026: Marie-Janine Calic – Balkan-Odyssee

In the organizer's words:

From July 2 to 5, feeLit - International Literature Festival Heidelberg and its authors will be making a guest appearance at halle02 for the second time. Our festival venue is all about books and writing. This year, feeLit presents national and international literary stars and brings authors together with their audience.

feeLit 2026: Marie-Janine Calic - Balkan Odyssey

Language: German

Marie-Janine Calic has written the non-fiction book of the spring. Winner of the Liepzig Book Fair Prize 2026, she has not only written a book worth reading full of exciting stories, but has also closed a research gap on refugee routes. She writes about the theater star Tilla Durieux, the writers Manès Sperber and Ernst Toller, the playwright Franz Theodor Csokor, the painter Richard Ziegler and many others - they all fled from Hitler to south-eastern Europe and found refuge there. But this first Balkan route is all but forgotten today. The book "Balkan - Odyssey, 1933-1941: On the run from Hitler through South-East Europe" brings them back and tells touching stories of courage and humanity, of misery and betrayal, of rescue and downfall. For feeLit. in Heidelberg, historian Marie-Janine Calic recalls the almost suppressed stories of flight - and reports on how historical research can become literature without losing its accuracy.

Marie-Janine Calic, born in 1962, is a German historian and author. She studied history at LMU and completed her doctorate in Southeast European history on the subject of the social history of Serbia during the period of industrialization. She was awarded the 2026 Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the non-fiction/essay category for her book Balkan Odyssey.

"It tells stories of migration that are almost a hundred years old, but touch on contemporary issues that have not changed since then."

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Andreas Platthaus

"Perhaps the best German-language expert on the history of the Balkans in the 20th century."

SWR Kultur am Abend, Rainer Volk

Good to know

• Only cashless payment (EC card, credit card, contactless) is possible at our venue: halle02.de/cashless
• Seated event, free choice of seats
• Local organizer: FeeLit - International Literature Festival Heidelberg