Lettrétage

House Lindenberg, in which the Lettrétage was housed until 2013

The Lettrétage is a literary house in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg and is a member of the working group of literary societies and memorials .

history

Lettrétage was founded in September 2006 by the author Tom Bresemann, the comparativeist Katharina Deloglu and the Germanist, translator and editor Moritz Malsch in the Kreuzberg Wilhelminian style villa Haus Lindenberg on the edge of the Viktoriapark . Since October 2007 the non-profit association Lettrétage has been offering both the institutional framework and the opportunity to support the work as a friend and sponsor.

Between 2006 and 2017 the Lettrétage described itself as a “young” literature house. But authors like the then 82-year-old Giwi Margwelaschwili already read there. The programmatic spectrum ranges from classic readings, which are usually performed by trained actors (including Denis Abrahams and Elisabeth Sutterlüty ), to readings by contemporary authors, through to art exhibitions, small theater projects and cross-media performances .

As an anchor institution for the independent literary scene, Lettrétage has received basic funding from the city of Berlin since 2018. In its function as an anchor institution, it offers a contact point for all freelance literary workers in the city and supports authors, translators, literary magazines, independent small publishers and organizers of the independent literary scene with infrastructure.

The house of literature promotes young German-language poetry and prose with its own projects (e.g. "Neues vom Jetzt", "Datenschreiber") and book premieres from various publishers. The Lettrétage also regularly offers literary magazines such as Edit , BELLA triste and randnummer a podium for readings.

Another focus is on international authors, with the focus being on meeting and networking. These include projects such as the “Script Samples” conference, which brought Nordic and German authors together, and projects on migration literature.

The networking of the literatures of Europe has increasingly been the focus of the work of the Literaturhaus since 2014. In 2014 the international literature festival "SOUNDOUT!" Was held, at which numerous European and German-speaking authors and artists read and artists such as B. Robert Stadlober performed. Since 2014, the Lettrétage has also increasingly devoted itself to cultural education. During the "¿Comment!" Project, the Literaturhaus worked with students from a Berlin school and authors to develop new approaches to contemporary foreign-language literature.

Since 2014, the focus has been on other ways of conveying literature at events, and projects such as the CON_TEXT reading series testify to this.

Projects of the house were u. a. supported by the program "Creative Europe" of the European Union, the Lotto Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg, the Cultural Office of the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg , the Berlin Senate , the Capital Cultural Fund , the German Federal Cultural Foundation , the Prussian Maritime Foundation as well as the embassies of Uruguay , Spain , Argentina , Luxembourg , Iceland, Denmark and Sweden .

Since 2013, the Lettrétage readings and events have been held in the rooms of Mehringdamm 61. The founders invited them to the 10-year Lettrétage party on October 1, 2016. The rooms in Methfesselstraße will continue to be used as offices.

The Lettrétage was the sponsor of the project “WiSU ​​- Economic Strengthening of Authors in Berlin's Free Literature Scene”. Authors, editors , literary organizers, literary translators and small publishers can work together professionally, support one another or develop new ideas together. It offers one-on-one advice for freelancers in the literature sector, opportunities to use space for freelancers in the sector, an annual "Literature Industry Meeting" and joint organization of ticket sales or marketing. The project has been continued since 2019 under the title Writing and Living , the carrier is still Lettrétage e. V.

publishing company

The author's writing project Covering Onetti emerged from a Lettrétage reading , in which various authors took texts by Juan Carlos Onetti as a template for their own texts. The results were published as a book by the newly founded Lettrétage publishing house. Here, too, the focus is on contemporary German and Spanish-language literature. For example, an anthology published by Timo Berger with the title Neues vom Fluss , which presents young literature from Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, and the Christmas anthology Im Heiligkeitsgeränge with poems by Kurt Drawert , Hendrik Jackson , Björn Kuhligk , Katharina Schultens and Alexander Gumz .

Awards

Lettrétage received the Hartmut Vogel Prize for Literature Mediation from the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Literarischer Gesellschaft und Gedenkstätten (ALG) for 2014. Lettrétage is the winner of the prize for project spaces of the city of Berlin.

Web links

• Lettrétage website
• Lettrétage publishing house
• The Lettrétage on Facebook
• The Lettrétage on literaturport.de
• Review of Covering Onetti in the Tagesspiegel .
• Report on the Lettrétage in the taz by Jan Scheper.
• Economic strengthening of authors in the independent literary scene in Berlin. At: literaturszene.berlin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ What does an anchor institution actually do?
2. ↑ CON_TEXT
3. ↑ Website  ( 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.  
4. ↑ Writing and Life
5. ↑ Press release of the Working Group of Literary Societies
6. ↑ Awards for the award of artistic project spaces and initiatives in 2016.