Wie Netty Reiling zu Anna Seghers wurde

In the organizer's words:

The Anna Seghers Museum in Berlin-Adlershof houses the world-famous writer's living and working spaces, which have been faithfully preserved, including her estate library with around 10,000 volumes and many personal mementos. In a small permanent exhibition on her life and work, photos, documents and the precious first editions of her books are on display, and Seghers' voice can be heard in original recordings.

After 14 years of exile during the Nazi era - in France and Mexico - Anna Seghers returned to Berlin in 1947. It was here that the young writer from Mainz had her first great successes in the 1920s. She was drawn here when the war was over and she finally wanted to speak her mother tongue again and write for German readers. She lived in Adlershof from 1950, initially in Altheider Straße. In 1955, she and her husband Laszlo Radvanyi moved into the upper floor of a newly built three-storey apartment building at Volkswohlstraße 81, now Anna-Seghers-Straße. This apartment was the place where she lived for the longest time of her life, until her death in 1983. Even later, when she was president of the Writers' Association of the GDR, she deliberately did not want to swap it for a prestigious villa in Berlin-Niederschönhausen.

There are two places in this apartment that make me happy: a corner in the window of my small bedroom - Ruth says Kajuete - a corner window from which you can see far out and imagine that behind it lies the sea and the ships or something else. And it's also good to lie on the tiny balcony, and I look at the birds in the evening and wonder why they fly around and I also think that people haven't invented such a flight yet. ... And above all: I can write a lot and hopefully some of it well.

Anna Seghers to Lore Wolf, around 1972/73, Anna Seghers Archive, No. 3752

Anyone walking under her balcony could often hear the clacking of her typewriter in good weather. This often windy place, surrounded by the treetops of the lime trees, reminded Anna Seghers of writing on board on her Atlantic crossings. On the return voyage from her second trip to Brazil in 1963, she had begun the story Überfahrt. A Love Story, which she then finished in Adlershof in 1970/71. In a letter to her friend Wladimir Steshenski in 1956, she called the balcony in front of her apartment her "mast basket".

After her death, the writer's living and working spaces became a museum, which is now run by the Academy of Arts. In addition to the furniture and travel souvenirs from all over the world that have been preserved in their original condition, the collection of stones and sea snails, the ceramics and musical instruments from Mexico, Anna Seghers' library is particularly impressive: around 10,000 volumes, including books with dedications from the writer's friends from many countries, are spread across the four rooms and the hallway. Photographs and documents from the life of Anna Seghers and her family are on permanent display in a showcase exhibition. Also on display are the first editions of her books, such as The Seventh Cross, which was published in English in the USA in 1942 and became a worldwide success, or editions from the exile publisher Querido in Amsterdam, as well as her dissertation from 1924 at the University of Heidelberg.

Price information:

A visit to the rooms is only possible with a guided tour. Please register for a guided tour via e-mail at annaseghersmuseum@adk.de.