Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations

26/06/2023

The Centre invites you warmly to the second online event taking place in conjunction with the display 'Living Memory' at the Wiener Holocaust Library.

Living Memory - In Conversation with Catrine Val
Jana Riedel and Matthew Shaul in conversation with Living Memory artist Catrine Val

When: 27 June, 6.30pm (UK time)
Where: online event, please register to receive the Zoom link, please register here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/living-memory-in-conversation-with-catrine-val-tickets-642924964877

About the event

'Living Memory' showcases artist Catrine Val’s poignant and astonishing photographic portraits of London’s Jewish community. Conceived and produced during the autumn of 2020, 'Living Memory' was made in response to a call by the German Embassy London to ‘Stand Together and Go Virtual’. Made during a time of profound dislocation caused by the pandemic, Brexit and the rise in antisemitism, the project sought to capture the stories of Holocaust survivors and those whose parents arrived as part of the ‘Kindertransport’, as well as Jewish families from all over the world who have made London their home. The project has personal resonance for Val, who is engaged in an ongoing process of seeking context and greater understanding of her own German-Jewish heritage, a history with which she has only recently been able to acknowledge and engage with. Curators Jana Riedel and Matthew Shaul will be in conversation with artist Catrine Val to discuss the development and inspiration for Living Memory and the artist’s engagement across past projects with migrant and marginalised communities.

For full details and to register, please click on the link above.

Jana Riedel and Matthew Shaul in conversation with Living Memory artist Catrine Val

18/06/2023

The Centre invites you to the first online event in connection with the exhibition 'Living Memory', showing at the Wiener Holocaust Library, London, from 19-28 June 2023 as part of 'Migration: a public history festival', marking Refugee Week.

Professor Rüdiger Görner will give the lecture: Migrating into the Past of the Future. Stefan Zweig's Experience and Conception of 'Exile', on:

Tuesday, 20 June 2023, 6.30pm (UK time)
Where: online event

Please register here to receive the Zoom link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/migrating-into-the-past-of-the-future-tickets-643006027337

About the event:

For most parts of his life, Stefan Zweig saw himself as a 'migrant' − physically and intellectually speaking. As a world traveller in matters of literature he detested restrictions of any kind. When political circumstances forced him to recognize that 'migration' had turned into indefinite exile he responded by retracing the past in literary terms. Based on his forthcoming biography STEFAN ZWEIG. A Life in the Future of Yesterday Or: Portrait of a Writer as a European Cosmopolitan, Rüdiger Görner's lecture will focus on this latter period in Zweig's life and the dichotomy between his notion of "the world of yesterday" and "the land of the future" (Brazil).

About the speaker:

Rüdiger Görner, Author and Centenary Professor of German with Comparative Literature and Founding Director of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary University of London. Fellow of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung and recipient of the lifetime award, the Reimar Lüst Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (2016). Was awarded the German Order of Merit for his contribution to British-German cultural relations (2017). Author of some forty scholarly monographs, poetry and fiction.
______

This event is presented alongside Catrine Val's exhibition 'Living Memory' at the Wiener Holocaust Library (19-28 June. 2023). It is hosted by the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary University of London and is part of Migration: a public history festival, series of lectures, exhibitions, workshops and walks around London, supported by the Raphael Samuel History Centre.

More information on 'Migration: a public history festival' can be found here:
https://www.bbk.ac.uk/research/centres/raphael-samuel-history-centre/public-history-festivals

23/04/2023

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/basf-lecture-april-2023-tickets-598314744507

The Centre warmly invites you to its last BASF Lecture in this academic year, so make sure not to miss it (!).

Dolores Sabaté Planes (Santiago de Compostela) on: 'Erna Pinner und Julian Huxley: Konstellationen des naturalistischen Diskurses im Exil.'

When: 25 April, 18:30 (GMT)
The lecture is free and online; please register to receive the joining link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/basf-lecture-april-2023-tickets-598314744507

About the lecture:

Die ersten Jahrzehnte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts waren von der wissenschaftlichen Entwicklung geprägt, ein Phänomen, das sowohl die Politik der europäischen Nationen als auch die Mentalität ihrer Gesellschaften beeinflusste. Leben und Werk von Erna Pinner und Julian Huxley, zwei Persönlichkeiten, deren biographische Wege sich nach Pinners Exil in London kreuzten, sind Teil dieses allgemeinen Wissenschaftspathos. Huxley und Pinner nahmen an den kulturellen Diskursen ihrer Zeit teil, insbesondere an der neuen Auffassung von wissenschaftlichem Wissen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg. In meinem Vortrag werde ich mich auf die Querverbindungen zwischen Huxley und Pinner konzentrieren. Ich werde ihr Leben, die Parallelen in ihren Diskursen und die Art und Weise, wie sie beide wissenschaftliches Wissen konzeptualisierten, untersuchen. Ihre nicht unumstrittenen Ansichten über die Naturwissenschaften spiegeln wider, dass es trotz nationaler Unterschiede ein gemeinsames kulturelles und intellektuelles Erbe in Großbritannien und Deutschland - und im weiteren Sinne in Europa - gibt, auf das beide in ihrer Textproduktion zurückgreifen. - Dolores Sabaté Planes

All welcome.

Konstellationen der populären naturwissenschaftlichen Literatur bei Erna Pinner (1890 - 1987) und Julian Huxley (1887 - 1975)

10/03/2023

We would like to warmly invite you to our next BASF Lecture that will be given by Professor Alexander Regier (Rice University) on the 'Origins and Afterlives of Robinson Kreutznaer: Anglo-German London in the Eighteenth Century'.

When: 14 March 2023, 6.30PM (GMT)
Where: Online event (please register to receive the link)

About:
This lecture is about the polyglot and multilingual character of eighteenth-century London, paying particular attention to its Anglo-German dimensions and communities. Departing from the example of Robinson Kreutznaer —Robinson Crusoe’s given name— we will explore a rich tapestry of cultural, literary and religious practices that allow us to reconsider the role of multilingualism at the centre of the often supposedly monoglot British empire.

Please register with the link below:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/basf-lecture-tickets-576206277487

All welcome!

13/12/2022

The Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations is delighted to invite you to its Angermion Annual Lecture 2022/23.

The lecture will be given by Prof. Timothy Garton Ash (University of Oxford), entitled: 'From Post-War Europe to Post-Wall Europe - and Back'.

When: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Time: 18:30 (GMT)
Venue: Skeel Lecture Theatre, People's Palace, Queen Mary University of London

Registration is free but essential:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/angermion-annual-lecture-20223-tickets-469152035367

About this event:

Drawing on the argument of his new book Homelands: a Personal History of Europe, Timothy Garton Ash will explore – with special reference to Germany – how and why Europe descended from the high hopes of the post-1989 era to the depths of the largest war in Europe since 1945.

Timothy Garton Ash is the author of ten books of political writing or ‘history of the present’ which have charted the transformation of Europe over the last half century. He is Professor of European Studies in the University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books. He writes a column on international affairs in the Guardian which is widely syndicated in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Location:
Queen Mary University of London, Skeel Lecture Theatre, People's Palace, 327 Mile End Road, London E1 4NS

All welcome.

Please register here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/angermion-annual-lecture-20223-tickets-469152035367

Prof. Timothy Garton Ash (University of Oxford) - ' From Post-War Europe to Post-Wall Europe - and Back'

13/12/2022

TONIGHT: BASF Lecture with Prof. Dr. Peter Sprengel: 'Kulturmission und Entsagung oder Rekonstruktion einer Briefliebe: Karl August Varnhagen und Charlotte Williams Wynn'

When: 13 December 2022, 18:30 (GMT), online

Please register to receive the Zoom link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/basf-lecture-tickets-474688645517

About the lecture:

Three years after the death of his wife, the salonniere Rahel Levin, the writer, critic, collector and former diplomat Karl August Varnhagen von Ense (1785-1858) met an Englishwoman 22 years his junior, with whom he remained in close correspondence until the end of his life and whom he almost married. Hundreds of letters, which have only recently emerged from private British possession, paint a touching picture of an intercultural encounter including German lessons of a special kind. For Charlotte Williams Wynn (1807-1869), the daughter of a long-serving member of the House of Commons and a member of the Welsh landed gentry, learned German from Varnhagen and for his sake and, supported by numerous book parcels from Berlin, trained her language skills in excessive reading that did not even stop at Kant and Hegel.

All welcome!

Kulturmission und Entsagung oder Rekonstruktion einer Briefliebe: Karl August Varnhagen und Charlotte Williams Wynn

29/09/2022

We are delighted to return to our BASF Lecture series for the academic year 2022-23. Please feel warmly invited to:

'Dresden and the Landscape of Remembrance' with Sinclair McKay (London/The Dresden Trust) on:

18 October, 18:30 (UK time) - online event - please register to receive the Zoom link here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/basf-lecture-tickets-423948791247

About this event
On the night of Feb 13th 1945, in the final weeks of WW2, the baroque city of Dresden was destroyed. Incendiary explosives dropped by 796 RAF bombers created an inferno that rose a mile into the freezing sky. 25,000 people were killed in the firestorm. The city that we see today is a revenant.

Yet even amid the horror of that carnage – as conveyed so movingly by the Jewish academic Victor Klemperer, and later by former Prisoner of War Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse 5 – there was also extraordinary resilience. And across the years and decades, through the efforts and struggles to rebuild and recreate the city, Dresden has acquired talismanic prominence: a living memorial to the obscenity of total war.

Here, in these extraordinary streets, architecture, art and music intertwine, as they have done since the 18th century (this, after all, has been the city of Caspar David Friedrich, Richard Wagner and Otto Dix). Yet this rich aesthetic landscape also raises fascinating questions about history’s claim upon us all, and about our responsibility to face that darkness.

17/06/2022

Our Visiting Research Fellow, Dr Jana Riedel will give a lecture to the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft Rhein-Main on her recent doctoral research: Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as Collector, Educator and Cultural Transferant.

When: 23 June 2022, 18:00 (Germany)/ 17:00 (UK), online

The lecture will be given in English. It's an online event, so please register to receive a joining link. For more information, please click the link below.

https://www.debrige.de/en/termine/prince-albert-of-saxe-coburg-and-gotha-as-collector-educator-and-cultural-transferant/

15/05/2022

You are warmly invited to our next BASF Lecture, which will be given by Dr. Miranda Stanyon (University of Melbourne) on:

Divided by a common tongue? Hoffmann and De Quincey on a European smash-hit aria

When: Tue, 17 May 2022 (online event)

Please note that this time the lecture starts at a later date (!): 20:00 – 21:30 BST

For more info on the event and Miranda and to book a place to get the event link, please follow the link below:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/basf-lecture-tickets-336387232267

17/03/2022

The 2022 London Kleist Lecture is now a HYBRID event!

We are delighted to now be able to offer The 2022 London Kleist Lecture as a hybrid event. Please register to receive the joining link. For those who can attend in person, we look forward to welcoming you to our campus once again. Please register using the link provided below.

The 2022 London Kleist Lecture - At the Bar: Kleist’s Views on Early Modern Courtroom Scenes' given by Professor Alexander Košenina, University of Hannover.

When: 21 March 2022, 18:30 - 20:30
Where: Arts Two Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End campus and online

Please register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-2022-london-kleist-lecture-tickets-230302780817

About the event:

Heinrich von Kleist’s comedy of deception, if not deliberate errors, The Broken Jug (1808) is about three different legal claims. Marthe Rull’s property action against an unknown defendant is obvious. Eve’s claimant of sexual harassment is more implicit as it turns out during the trial. These two cases – the broken jug and the threatened virginity – are conducted under a third, even more fundamental lawsuit: It is the legal proceeding itself, controlled by the legal inspector Walter, assisted by clerk Licht. It matches the self-referential structure of a meta-courtroom-drama and illuminates – in Kant’s terms – ›the preconditions, or terms, of possibility‹ of jurisdiction. To date, this third, implicit trial has not been sufficiently considered. The presentation will focus on earlier traditions of courtroom-scenes in fine arts and literature which seem to be mocked in Adam’s provincial court in Huisum. Beyond a mere jug, the legal system on the whole is broken in Kleist’s drama.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-2022-london-kleist-lecture-tickets-230302780817

At the Bar: Kleist’s Views on Early Modern Courtroom Scenes, given by Professor Alexander Košenina

02/03/2022

The 2022 London Kleist Lecture

We are delighted to be able to invite you to The (in-person) 2022 London Kleist Lecture - At the Bar: Kleist’s Views on Early Modern Courtroom Scenes' given by Professor Alexander Košenina, University of Hannover.

When: 21 March 2022, 18:30 - 20:30
Where: Arts Two Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End campus

About the event:

Heinrich von Kleist’s comedy of deception, if not deliberate errors, The Broken Jug (1808) is about three different legal claims. Marthe Rull’s property action against an unknown defendant is obvious. Eve’s claimant of sexual harassment is more implicit as it turns out during the trial. These two cases – the broken jug and the threatened virginity – are conducted under a third, even more fundamental lawsuit: It is the legal proceeding itself, controlled by the legal inspector Walter, assisted by clerk Licht. It matches the self-referential structure of a meta-courtroom-drama and illuminates – in Kant’s terms – ›the preconditions, or terms, of possibility‹ of jurisdiction. To date, this third, implicit trial has not been sufficiently considered. The presentation will focus on earlier traditions of courtroom-scenes in fine arts and literature which seem to be mocked in Adam’s provincial court in Huisum. Beyond a mere jug, the legal system on the whole is broken in Kleist’s drama.

Everyone is welcome and the event is free, but please register by clicking on the link below.

At the Bar: Kleist’s Views on Early Modern Courtroom Scenes, given by Professor Alexander Košenina