In the organizer's words:

From 5 pm
Joint exchange with experts in Café Müller (club room)
Free admission
Registration at cafe-müller@adk.de

7 pm
Reading and discussion in the plenary hall
€ 11,35/7,50

For Heiner Müller, the past was not only not past, it was also the storehouse from which insights into the future could be gained: "You have to dig up the dead, again and again, because only from them can you draw the future." This "virulence of ghosts" (Durs Grünbein) is reflected in Müller's work in the presence of the dead, in the excavations in the material of history, from which they emerge as living revenants. The crumbling empires of yesterday provide the patterns of variation for the political developments of tomorrow.

As a playwright and poet without hope, but also without despair, Heiner Müller took up the contradictions of his time and transformed them into lasting images. The self-suffered experience of the foreign is central to his work; expulsion and exile form the main lines in his plays, poems and essays. "For a long time, he was almost the only person to address almost all the experiences of flight in the 20th century in his work." (Achim Engelberg) A departure from ruins, for which his notebook, begun on January 1, 1945, also stands, from which an excerpt is presented for the first time in SINN UND FORM 1/2026 and read by Martin Wuttke at the Akademie der Künste.

On this evening, Achim Engelberg, Annett Gröschner, Katja Lange-Müller, Mark Lammert and Simon Strauß will talk about how Heiner Müller, who always appeared as a historian, never as a prophet, was able to become a global classic, why we are missing a public intellectual like him today, which of his assessments of a reunified Germany were correct, what makes the fragments and fragments of this writing form an overall picture.

In the "Café Müller" in the club room, there will be an opportunity to discuss the author with experts at various tables from 5 pm (registration: cafe-müller@adk.de).

From 7 p.m., the 1945 notebook will be presented at a reading and discussion in the plenary hall (reading by Martin Wuttke) and the facets of his work will be discussed.

An evening for Heiner Müller, in which his notes from the winter of the war in 1945 will be presented for the first time and companions and experts will discuss the enduring significance of his work.

With Achim Engelberg, Annett Gröschner, Mark Lammert, Katja Lange-Müller, Simon Strauß, Matthias Weichelt, Martin Wuttke

Price information:

From 5 p.m. Joint exchange with experts in Café Müller (club room) Free admission Registration at cafe-müller@adk.de