Gregor Eisenhauer & Sven Hanuschek

In the organizer's words:

In the end there was loneliness - on the 50th anniversary of Erich Kästner's death

2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Erich Kästner's death. His books, including Pünktchen und Anton (1931), Das fliegende Klassenzimmer (1933) and Das doppelte Lottchen (1949), were loved, sold millions of copies, made into many films - and are unforgotten.

His life at the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s can be told as a comedy. He wrote three volumes of poetry in a short space of time, which made him a favorite among readers - and especially female readers! - readers! With Emil and the Detectives (1929), he became world-famous overnight and earned a lot of money.

But what hardly anyone knows is that in the last years of his life, Erich Kästner was a deeply sad man who became increasingly petrified.

Gregor Eisenhauer talks to Sven Hanuschek about this time. How did it come about that someone who had every reason to be happy died alone?

Gregor Eisenhauer studied German language and literature in Heidelberg and Berlin; he wrote his doctoral thesis on Arno Schmidt. He published his first literary work in 1994 in Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Other Library. He writes novels, short stories, short stories, essays and radio features; he has been writing obituaries for the Berliner Tagesspiegel for over 20 years.

Sven Hanuschek is one of the most important experts on the work of Erich Kästner. In 1999 he published Keiner blickt dir hinter das Gesicht - a comprehensive biography of Kästner, followed by an edition of Kästner's letters and his secret war diary. He is one of the editors of Elias Canetti's letters(Ich erwarte von Ihnen viel, 2018) and wrote a 1000-page biography of Arno Schmidt (2022). He teaches at the Institute for German Philology at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.

Price information:

Normal € 11.90 Reduced € 9.90 Members € 6.90 Surcharge at the Box Office