Herkunft

In the organizer's words:

"'Origin' is a book about the first coincidence in our biography: being born somewhere. And what comes afterwards. 'Herkunft' is a book about a country that no longer exists, a fragmented family that is mine. It is a book about the question of what belongs to me, a self-portrait with ancestors. And a failure of the self-portrait. 'Origin' is a farewell to my demented grandmother. While I collect memories, she loses hers. 'Herkunft' is a book about my homelands, in memory and invention. A book about language and shame, arriving and coming to terms, happiness and death."

This is what Saša Stanišić, one of the most eloquent and idiosyncratic voices in contemporary German literature, writes about his novel, which was awarded the German Book Prize in 2019. A curriculum vitae for the immigration authorities is transformed into a grand, autofictional narrative that leaves behind all simplistic discourses on home and identity. 'Origin' only exists here in the plural, as fragmented memories, as fragment and fiction, as a game of different possibilities, of which the successful arrival at the end - in view of the inhuman exclusion policies that can now even be chosen - is actually the most unlikely variant.

Saša Stanišić was born in Višegrad in 1978. At the time of his birth, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that he would one day be said to be from Bosnia. He was born in a country that no longer exists: Yugoslavia. When the multi-ethnic state broke apart, the family managed to flee to Germany in 1992. Today, Stanišic' lives in Hamburg. His novel "Vor dem Fest" was brought to the stage of Thalia Gaußstraße by Charlotte Sprenger in 2019. "Herkunft" is now also being performed here, directed by Sebastian Nübling, who recently staged Navid Kermani's "Die Nacht der von Neil Young Getöteten" as a musical trip at Thalia.

Duration 1:50h, no intermission
Premiere on August 22, 2021, Thalia Gauss