Lesung mit Max Lobe: "Ein Funky-Makossa für die Freiheit"

Max Lobe

Max Lobe (he/him) was born in Duala in 1986; he lives in Geneva as a novelist, poet, and cultural activist and is the author of seven novels. Themes that run through his work include migration, postcolonialism, and queerness. His novels published in German to date include *Vertraulichkeiten* (akono Verlag, 2022, nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize) and *Drei Weise aus dem Bantuland* (Austernbank Verlag, 2019, Best Independent Books of Bavaria).

Silvia Abiyeme de Bertolini

Silvia Abiyeme de Bertolini (she/her) is a scholar of language and media culture, a filmmaker, and a community organizer. Since 2024, she has been a master’s student in Media Culture Analysis at HHU Düsseldorf.

She is particularly interested in Black (queer) stories, cultures of memory, and the question of how lived realities can be made visible and passed down across generations.

These perspectives shape both her academic work and her filmmaking practice, as well as her involvement in Black community contexts. Since 2024, she has been active with Black & Queer NRW and other initiatives focused on networking, visibility, and exchange within Black (and queer) communities.

Azizè Flittner

Azizè Flittner (she/her) completed her acting training in Ulm and spent her first professional engagement at the Theater Konstanz before moving to Cologne in 2006. Since then, she has performed at the Theater im Bauturm, the studiobühne köln, and with various ensembles, as well as developing her own productions.

She has also been engaged at the Staatstheater Braunschweig, the Grillo Theater Essen, and the Theater Paderborn. She also enjoys taking on film and television roles when the opportunity arises, most recently as “Claudia” in the ZDF series “Hungry.” Her novel “On the First Truly Hot Day of the Year” was published in 2022.

Fatim Afra Engstfeld

Fatim Afra Engstfeld (she/her) is currently studying African Studies and Social Anthropology at the University of Cologne. She loves to read—she’d love nothing more than to read entire libraries at once.

But she enjoys bringing her areas of focus—racism and postcolonialism—to the streets and lecture halls, discussing them in plenary sessions, or writing about them in articles. After completing internships at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne, a television station in Dakar, and Missy Magazine in Berlin, she will now be reading aloud from Max Lobe’s book *Ein Funky-Makossa für die Freiheit* for our event.