Felix Ensslin

Felix Robert Ensslin (* 13. May 1967 in Berlin ) is a German curator , playwright , dramaturg , director , university lecturer and philosopher .

Life

Felix Ensslin is the son of RAF terrorist Gudrun Ensslin and the author and publisher Bernward Vesper . His grandfathers are the National Socialist writer and poet Will Vesper on his father's side and the pastor of the Confessing Church Helmut Ensslin .

His mother Gudrun Ensslin was arrested shortly after the department store arson on April 2, 1968 in Frankfurt am Main. Since then, Felix Ensslin has lived with his father, Bernward Vesper, from whom his mother separated in February 1968. His godfather was Rudi Dutschke . In September 1969, at the instigation of Gudrun Ensslin, the child came to foster parents, a couple in Undingen on the Swabian Alb who were remotely known to the Ensslin family. In November 1969, Gudrun Ensslin fled abroad, facing imminent imprisonment. In January 1970 she returned to the Federal Republic of Germany, founded the Red Army Fraction with others and lived in hiding until her arrest in June 1972. Bernward Vesper committed suicide in May 1971 in the psychiatric department of the Hamburg-Eppendorf University Medical Center. Gudrun Ensslin committed suicide in 1977 on the night of her death in Stammheim in the Stuttgart penal institution . According to himself, Ensslin has no memories of his birth mother. As a child, he suffered serious facial injuries in an accident with concentrated hydrochloric acid.

After passing high school in 1987 at the Dilthey School in Wiesbaden , Felix Ensslin studied philosophy and theater directing at the New School for Social Research in New York and received his BA in 1992 from Lang College, New School University, New York. He obtained his MA in philosophy in 1996 with the work The Origins of Modern Self-Consciousness in Luther's Lectures on Romans . Ensslin wrote essays and designed sets.

From 1995 to 1999 Felix Ensslin was an employee and political advisor to the MPs and Bundestag Vice- President Antje Vollmer ( Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen ). In the following legislative period from 1999 to 2002 he worked as office manager and political advisor to the parliamentary group chairman of the Bundestag parliamentary group Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen Rezzo hose .

From 2002 to 2006 Ensslin worked as a director and dramaturge at the German National Theater and Staatskapelle Weimar . In mid-December 2004 he staged his first work Through a mirror there, a dark picture . In 2006 he directed The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller . In October 2009, on the occasion of Schiller's 250th birthday, his production of Don Carlos premiered there.

Felix Ensslin has been working with Klaus Biesenbach and Ellen Blumenstein since summer 2003 on the conception of the Berlin exhibition On the Presentation of Terror: The RAF exhibition in the Berlin art works . The implementation of the project was delayed by a controversial public debate. The exhibition with works by 50 artists took place from late January to mid-May 2005. From June to August 2005 the exhibition was shown in the Neue Galerie Graz of the Universalmuseum Joanneum .

At the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) Karlsruhe, Ensslin curated the exhibition Between Two Todes in 2007 together with Ellen Blumenstein . Between November 2007 and January 2008 the exhibition Berlin Noir, curated by Ensslin, took place in the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York.

Together with Marcus Coelen, Ensslin was co-editor of the theory series Subjectile at Diaphanes-Verlag in Berlin . The series is now being published together with other editors under the title Neue Subjectile in Turia + Kant Verlag. In 2009 Suhrkamp released the band Notstandsgesetze von Deiner Hand. Letters 1968/1969 from Gudrun Ensslin and Bernward Vesper , who documents the correspondence between his mother and father between January 1968 and mid-1969 and to which Felix Ensslin made a comment.

The focus of Ensslin's academic work is the investigation of contemporary aesthetic and philosophical discourses and psychoanalytic cultural theory. From 2005 to 2008 he was a member of the graduate school “Life Forms and Life Knowledge” at the University of Potsdam and the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt / Oder. From 2008 to 2009 he was a member of the Collaborative Research Center 626 of the German Research Foundation (DFG) "Aesthetic Experience in the Sign of the Dissolution of the Boundaries of the Arts" in Berlin. Together with Marcus Coelen, he taught an ongoing seminar for several semesters on issues at the interface between psychoanalysis, philosophy and aesthetics at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . In July 2009 Ensslin received his doctorate from the University of Potsdam with his thesis The Deprivation of the Absolute. A philosophical-psychoanalytic investigation into the subject of nullity in Martin Luther's interpretation of the Magnificat . Since 2009 he has been the theory professor in the newly created chair for aesthetics and art education at the Stuttgart Art Academy .

In the movie

In Andres Veiel's feature film Who if not we (2011), which is based on Gerd Koenen's biography Vesper, Ensslin, Baader , Gudrun Ensslin ( Lena Lauzemis ) is shown as a young mother with her son Felix.

Publications (selection)

• Epilogue to: Emergency laws from your hand. Letters 1968/1969 from Gudrun Ensslin and Bernward Vesper. Edition Suhrkamp , Frankfurt am Main 2009
• Enjoy: To knowledge, latency and death drive. In: Stefanie Diekmann, Thomas Khurana (Ed.): Latenz. Kulturverlag Kadmos , Berlin 2007
• Between Two Deaths: From the Mirror to Repetition. In: Felix Ensslin, Ellen Blumenstein (Ed.): Between two Deaths. Hatje Cantz, Berlin / Stuttgart, 2007
• Between Metonymy and Metaphor: On Iterability in Anna Oppermann's Work. In: Anna Oppermann, Ensembles 1968–1992. Hatje Cantz, Berlin / Stuttgart, 2007
• Play instinct - a brief introduction. In: Felix Ensslin (Ed.): Spieltrieb. What does classical music bring to the stage? Schiller's aesthetics today. Theater der Zeit , Berlin 2006
• A dark picture through a mirror. Drama, German National Theater Weimar, 2004

Translations

• Rachael Sotos: Philosopher of Contingency. In: Regine Munz (Ed.): Philosophinnen des 20. Jahrhundert. , Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2004
• Agnes Heller , Ferenc Fehér: Biopolitics. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1995
• Agnes Heller: Is the modern age viable? Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1995
• Manfred Riedel : Heidegger: The Twofold Beginning of Thinking. In: Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal , Vol. 16, 1993.

literature

• Gerd Koenen : Vesper, Ensslin, Baader. Kiepenheuer & Witsch , Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-462-03313-1
• Heike Blümner: I am my parents' brother. An interview with Felix Ensslin about terror in the family and the consequences . In: Zoo Magazine , Edition Germany, 2004, No. 3, pp. 75–79.
• Brigitte Werneburg, Harald Fricke : "The imposition can go very far" . What can art contribute to addressing terrorism? Are there only abstract symbols left from the victims and perpetrators of the RAF? Felix Ensslin co-curated the RAF exhibition of the Berlin art works. A conversation about personal sympathy and the distance between the images . In: taz , January 24, 2005
• “ There is contradiction in the matter!” In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , June 10, 2010; Interview by Frank Buchmeier with Felix Ensslin.

Web links

• Literature by and about Felix Ensslin in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Heinrich Jaenecke: A child from a good family. Gudrun Ensslin - their morals, their passions, their errors . In: Stern , No. 26/1972, p. 20.
2. ↑ Interview with Felix Ensslin
3. ↑ Felix Ensslin directs “The Robbers” in Weimar. ( Memento of the original from April 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. arte.tv; accessed June 24, 2010  
4. ↑ Ute Grundmann: Chess game of domination. Don Carlos - Felix Ensslin dissects Schiller. Nachtkritik.de; accessed June 24, 2010
5. ↑ Klaus Biesenbach (Ed.): To the presentation of the terror: The RAF exhibition. 2 volumes. Steidl-Verlag, Göttingen / KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Kunst-Werke Berlin e. V., Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86521-102-X
6. ^ Announcement of the Neue Galerie Graz , accessed on June 27, 2010.
7. ^ Announcement by the ZKM , accessed on June 27, 2010.
8. ↑ Information ( Memento of the original dated August 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on perryrubenstein.com; accessed June 27, 2010  
9. ↑ Presentation ( memento of the original from June 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on oneartworld.com; accessed June 27, 2010  
10. ↑ Biographical information  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Diaphanes-Verlag; accessed June 27, 2010  
11. ↑ Information about the publisher ( Memento of the original dated November 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; accessed November 18, 2016 
12. ^ Sabine Vogel: RAF & BUCH. With a view of Marbach. In: Berliner Zeitung , March 11, 2010
13. ↑ Felix Ensslin takes on professorship at the Stuttgart Art Academy . Architekturzeitung.com; accessed June 9, 2014