Julia Franck: Ich ertrinke in den Wassern meiner eigenen Liebe. Rilkes letzte Geliebte

In the organizer's words:

The story of a female obsession

"For you seem and are the way, the way to paradise ..."

In 1920, the painter Baladine Klossowska met the poet Rainer Maira Rilke again. She, the divorced mother of two adolescent sons - one of whom is the painter Balthus - falls passionately in love with him. After a brief amour fou, Rilke increasingly distances himself from his lover. While she seeks unconditional closeness and companionship and loses herself in her love for him, he needs distance and peace in order to be able to write. They write longing letters to each other, always searching for the right balance between closeness and distance. Rilke tenderly calls his girlfriend "Mouky". A letter to her will be the last one he writes shortly before his death ...

Julia Franck takes a literary approach to Rilke's last lover.

Julia Franck, born in Berlin in 1970, has received numerous awards for her work, including the Schiller Memorial Prize, the Marie Luise Kaschnitz Prize and the German Book Prize. Two of her novels, "Lagerfeuer" and "Die Mittagsfrau" have been made into films. Her novels have been translated into forty languages. Most recently she published "Welten auseinander" (2021).

Admission: 18 €

Tickets at the Peterknecht bookshop, all Ticket Shop Thüringen advance booking offices and at www.peterknecht.de

Photo Julia Franck © Thorsten Greve