lit.Cologne

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Signet of the literature festival

The lit.Cologne (proper spelling: lit.COLOGNE ) is an international literary festival , which each year since March 2001 spring in Cologne takes place. In 2011 a festival for children and young people was added, lit.kid.Cologne . In addition to the spring festival, the organizers of lit.Cologne have been organizing a lit.Cologne special every autumn since 2011, parallel to the Frankfurt Book Fair and, since 2013, the phil.Cologne , which is dedicated to conveying philosophical questions. In autumn 2017 the lit.Cologne expanded spatially and organized the first lit.Ruhr in the Ruhr area .

The lit.Cologne was very popular with artists and the public thanks to a generally good atmosphere and “enthusiasm”. The event is now considered Europe's largest literary festival.

history

The lit.Cologne was founded in 2000 from an idea by Werner Köhler founded, the former manager of a bookstore company, which he developed in a Cologne ice cream shop with his friend Rainer Osnowski. The book industry colleague Edmund Labonté joined shortly afterwards. You have been the managing director of the festival ever since. The first lit.Cologne took place from March 21 to 25, 2001 and received a total of 30,000 visitors at 65 events; in 2012 there were 172 events with 84,000 spectators. In March 2013, lit.Cologne hosted 206 events that attracted 90,000 visitors. The lit.Cologne events now (2017) take place over a period of eleven days and are spread across different venues and "unusual locations" in the Cologne city area, such as B. "in churches, museums, hotels, cinemas and even in the police headquarters."

The lit.Cologne ended at the beginning and starts now with the award of the German Audio Book Prize at a gala event in Cologne's WDR -Funkhaus. Since 2010 she has been awarding the Silver Pig Prize, a debut prize worth EUR 2,222. The audio book label Random House Audio has been publishing a lit.Cologne Edition since 2007 , which summarizes the highlights of the festival.

Since 2011, a program area has been aimed specifically at children and young people, lit.kid.Cologne . In this context, so-called class book readings take place, in which school classes can take part at reduced prices. Half of all readings at lit.Cologne have been intended for children and young people since 2013. This program is planned and prepared by the trio Angela Maas, Christiane Labonté and Milena Mana de Costa.

In autumn 2017 lit.Cologne expanded spatially and organized the first lit.Ruhr (own spelling: lit.RUHR ) in the Ruhr area . The main venue is the industrial monument Zeche Zollverein in Essen. The makers of lit.Cologne were invited by Anneliese Rauhut, the chairwoman of the Friends of Zollverein . Many authors and artists will be taken over from the lit.Cologne Spezial , which is taking place at the same time . This met with the discontent of the regional literary scene, which now fear less funding from private sponsors, although the literary events there have so far only been publicly subsidized. Inquiries from other cities regularly failed because of the program makers' desire for autonomy or because the cities demanded a say.

The lit.Cologne 2020 was the opening day because of the 19 pandemic COVID- canceled. On August 13, 2020, the catch-up dates that had been postponed to autumn had to be canceled. The events were all sold out. They cannot be carried out due to the general corona protective measures. The next lit.Cologne is planned for the period from May 30th to June 13th 2021.

Conception

For Werner Köhler, the motivation for this literature festival was his annoyance at the careless treatment of authors: «  No pick-up from the train station, bad hotel, in the bookstore the motto is: sit down, read! After that no care.  »“ That has fundamentally changed the 'lit.Cologne': It relies entirely on the authors and treats them like stars. ”According to Rainer Osnowski, the basic idea of ​​the literature festival is“ the encounter of great authors with actors, artists. ”In addition to the author readings Dramaturgically staged versions of texts are also offered, which are performed by actors, reciters and other speakers in front of themed sets .

“16 years ago, Werner Köhler and I wanted to make a cultural offer, not a purely literary one. We wanted to combine literature with music, art and various forms of literature and fill in the existing rifts between E and U. In Germany, culture has to be serious. What is not serious is an event. "

- Rainer Osnowski, 2016.

The start is the literary marathon organized by the radio station WDR5 , a 24-hour reading.

National and international authors read from their books, in recent years including TC Boyle , Bret Easton Ellis , Julia Franck , Jonathan Franzen , John Irving , Daniel Kehlmann , Doris Lessing , Henning Mankell , Eva Menasse , Susan Sontag , Zadie Smith , Tomas Tranströmer , Martin Walser and Juli Zeh , as well as artists such as Charles Aznavour , Herbert Grönemeyer , Karl Lagerfeld , Patti Smith and politicians, e. B. Stéphane Hessel , Kofi Annan , Michail Gorbatschow and Garri Kasparow . The German translations of your texts are read by actors such as Mario Adorf , Senta Berger , Iris Berben , Matthias Brandt , Hannelore Hoger or Christoph Waltz .

In addition to classic readings by authors, lit.Cologne arranges encounters between authors, musicians, artists and actors; so met z. For example, in the 2006 program Robert Gernhardt with Marcel Reich-Ranicki or Elke Heidenreich with the Cologne opera director Christian Schuller on an opera boat trip. It is also important that unknown authors are introduced by well-known artists.

A special feature of lit.Cologne is the production of literary programs in which actors and presenters turn to literary subjects in a dramaturgical form, e.g. B. lies ( Roger Willemsen and Dieter Hildebrandt ), hypochondria ( Cordula Stratmann , Gustav Peter Wöhler and Ingo Naujoks ), masturbation (Hannelore Hoger, Richy Müller and Andreas Platthaus ) or kitsch ( Senta Berger , Jürgen Tarrach and Dieter Moor ).

organization

A program editorial office with the three managing directors and three other permanent employees begins reading and selecting books. The most important selection criterion is your own liking for the respective book. About a third of the authors go back to the publishers' spring program, another third deal with current topics. The program reviews begin on September 1st and take place once a week until the festival.

The organizational planning of the events was taken over by 15 employees in 2016, plus additional employees for the program and press work. Shortly before the festival, around 50 to 60 reading supervisors were hired to take care of the invited guests. The production offices are located throughout the literature days in Cologne 5 Star - Hotel in the water tower , the lodge also in this hotel, which is open to all writers and artists. A so-called shuttle service picks up the authors; since 2017, the vehicle fleet has only consisted of electric cars from a sponsor.

The lit.Cologne has been addressing the topic of social inclusion since 2013, and numerous events have been barrier-free since then . There are also sign language interpreters and induction loops for the hearing impaired .

In March 2018, Traudl Bünger took over the program management of all lit.Cologne festivals and Rieke Brendel took over the management of the organization and production of all festivals.

financing

The literature festival is designed as a private-sector cultural event and is financed through tickets and the support of sponsors and partners. The main sponsors (2013) include RheinEnergie AG , Lanxess AG and Thalia Holding . Media partners are the WDR and the Kölner Stadtanzeiger . The vehicle fleet for transporting guests was funded by Renault in 2017 . The sponsor of lit.kid.Cologne is the Imhoff Foundation . The Action Man and the Kämpgen Foundation in 2017 funded the sign language interpreter and tablet computers with a voice interpreter application.

Awards

  • 2006: Guinness Book of Records for the largest German lesson in the world in the sold out Lanxess Arena
  • 2010: Cologne Culture Prize for the 2009 cultural event
  • 2012: Marketing Prize Germany at its best from the Ministry of Economic Affairs in North Rhine-Westphalia for the largest literature festival in Europe.
  • 2013: Cologne Culture Prize for the cultural event of 2012.
  • 2013: Order of the ears of the civil society Cologne.
  • 2013: Commendation of the City of Cologne as part of the Cologne Innovation Prize for Disabled Policy for the efforts to make lit.Cologne accessible.
  • 2016: Cologne Culture Prize for the 2015 cultural event

   Source: 

Movie

  • Westart Reportage: What can, should, and should literature? The LitCologne 2019 television documentary, Germany, 2019, 39:19 Min, written and directed. Susanna Schürmanns, Eric Brinkmann, Production: WDR , Editor: West style , first broadcast: March 25, 2019 at WDR television , Summary of ARD , online video available until March 25, 2020.

Web links

Commons : Lit.Cologne  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Retrospectives

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ dpa : "Lit.Cologne Spezial" celebrates its premiere. In: Main-Echo , September 5, 2011.
  2. ↑ a b c Hannes Hintermeier : "lit.Cologne": The greatest of all reading festivals. In: FAZ , March 8, 2006.
  3. ↑ Clemens Victor Henle: Reading Festival with Donna Leon In: Rheinische Post , March 10, 2019.
  4. ↑ Martin Oehlen: Lit.Cologne boss Osnowski: "The success is great, the proceeds rather low". In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , March 12, 2014.
  5. ↑ a b Silke and Tobias Büscher: The festival maker: Werner Köhler in portrait. In: Cologne Reporter , February 11, 2016.
  6. ↑ Werner Köhler : People: Round birthdays - Edmund Labonté (60). In: BuchMarkt , January 24, 2017.
  7. ↑ Litcologne: over 90,000 visitors expected. Prelude to the literature frenzy. In: Buchreport , March 6, 2013.
  8. ↑ Max Florian Kühlem: “You should see how smoothly everything works.” In: Börsenblatt , March 6, 2013, interview with Lit.Cologne maker Rainer Osnowski.
  9. ↑ Award of the German Audio Book Prize. In: tagesschau , March 20, 2005.
  10. ^ The Audiobook Gala 2012. In: Deutscher Hörbuchpreis , June 14, 2012.
  11. ^ Lit.Cologne. In: Random House Publishing Group .
  12. ↑ Michael Melles: 22nd ear medals (2013). In: Bürgergesellschaft Köln , May 4, 2013.
  13. ^ Doreen Reeck: Great reading festival for children. In: Duda.news , children's news , March 7, 2017.
  14. ↑ a b Guido Schweiss-Gerwin: Prelude. “There is no way around Zollverein.” ( Memento from October 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) In: Zollverein. Das Magzin , No. 4, 2017, interview with Rainer Osnowski, (PDF; 4.4 MB).
  15. ^ A b Christiane Hoffmans: Readings in the Ruhr area. The literary festival that nobody wanted. In: Welt online , October 3, 2017.
  16. ^ Anne Burgmer, Nina Klempt: Due to the coronavirus, the Cologne Literature Festival lit.Cologne completely canceled. In: ksta.de. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , March 10, 2020, accessed on August 13, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Final cancellation: Literature festival Lit.Cologne will be canceled in 2020. In: ruhrnachrichten.de. Ruhr Nachrichten , August 13, 2020, accessed on August 13, 2020 .
  18. ↑ a b c d Sabine Schwietert: Cool, Lit.Cologne! In: Börsenblatt , March 13, 2016, interview with Rainer Osnowski.
  19. ^ A b c Martin Oehlen: Culture in Cologne. This is how the lit.Cologne Festival 2015 comes into being. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , March 5, 2015.
  20. ↑ a b c d Uli Kreikebaum: lit.Cologne 2017: A look behind the scenes at Europe's largest literary festival. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , March 9, 2017.
  21. ↑ Personalia: lit.Cologne "sets the course for the future" - lit.Cologne: Dr. Traudl Bünger and Rieke Brendel with more responsibility in the future. In: BuchMarkt , March 27, 2018.
  22. ^ Lit.Cologne: Europe's largest literary festival. ( Memento from September 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) In: germanyatitsbest.de , 2012, accessed on September 18, 2017.
  23. ^ Review of the Cologne Culture Prize 2013 ( Memento from October 11, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) In: Kölner Kulturrat , June 2013.
  24. ↑ 22. ear medals (2013). In: Bürgergesellschaft Köln , May 4, 2013; Jürgen Roters : Award of the ear order as part of the 150th anniversary of the civil society Cologne from 1863 on May 4, 2013. In: City of Cologne , 2013, (PDF; 18 kB).
  25. ^ Nicole Trum: Cologne Innovation Prize for Disabled Policy 2013. In: City of Cologne , December 3, 2013.
  26. ↑ About us. In: litcologne.de , accessed on September 18, 2017.