Reading, Discussion, and Writing Performance
Celebration for 20th Anniversary of Nonprofit Sponsoring Organization of the Philological Library of Freie Universität Berlin with Feridun Zaimoglu and Axel Malik on June 21, 2016
№ 215/2016 from Jun 16, 2016
To mark the 20th anniversary of the Supporters of the Philological Library Nonprofit Association, there will be a celebration in the atrium of the library. The president of Freie Universität Prof. Dr. Peter-André Alt and the head of the library Dr. Klaus Ulrich Werner along with the chairpersons of the Supporters Association Susanne Schäfer, Mara Ruwe, and Tim König will open the event. The writer Feridun Zaimoglu will read aloud from his book Der Mongole and will carry on a discussion with the audience that will be moderated by Thorsten Dönges from the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin. The Berlin artist Axel Malik will conclude the event with a writing performance. The event is public, and admission is free.
The Supporters of the Philological Library Nonprofit Association was founded in 1996 at Freie Universität Berlin as a student initiative to help the library of the German Department, whose budget had been reduced by two-thirds the previous year. Through broad-based recruitment, sponsorships for magazine subscriptions, and especially through the sale of donated books, the Supporters Association largely succeeded in compensating for the budget reduction. When the separate humanities libraries were merged into the Philological Library, the Supporters Association expanded. Today, the funds it provides still make up 12 to 15 percent of its annual budget and benefit all the subjects in the library. The money comes mainly from the proceeds of the Book Bazaar (Bücherbasar), a small used-book store on the main campus of Freie Universität that is run by students on a volunteer basis. More than 20,000 donated books of all types are in stock.
This semester the writer Feridun Zaimoglu is the Heiner Müller Visiting Professor at the Institute of Comparative Literature at Freie Universität. The Heiner Müller Visiting Professor coincides with the Berlin Literature Prize of the Prussian Maritime Foundation (Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung). In his text Der Mongole, Zaimoglu discusses his childhood, language in general, and how he discovered literature and came to be a writer.
In an installation called "Bibliothek der unlesbaren Zeichen" (The Library of Garbled Characters), which the artist Axel Malik set up in the Philological Library during the 2015/2016 winter semester, Malik exhibited books that he had completely covered and redesigned with different types of textual typesetting and characters in different textures. The books had been donated by the Book Bazaar. During the event, Malik will write some of his characters on a picture-framing mat for each visitor.
Location
- Tuesday, June 21, 2016, 6 p.m.
- Atrium, Philological Library, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin; subway stations: Dahlem-Dorf and Thielplatz (U3)
Further Information
Susanne Schäfer, Supporters of the Philological Library Nonprofit Association (Förderkreis der Philologischen Bibliothek der Freien Universität Berlin e.V.), Tel. (mobile): +49 178 5439485, Email: foerdbib@germanistik.fu-berlin.de
www.fu-berlin.de/sites/philbib/05Ueber-uns/buecherbasar-foerderkreis/index.html