Sibylle Lewitscharoff: Blumenberg
The discussion in English will be moderated by Patrick Fortmann, Professor of Germanic Studies at UIC.
The European Book Club (organized by the Goethe-Institut Chicago and EUNIC Chicago) meets regularly for a book discussion of a bestselling novel in English translation.
Guests who would like to attend, should read the book in advance and come prepared to participate in the discussion.
Large, yellow, laid-back: one night a lion lies in the study of the respected philosopher Blumenberg. The limbs comfortably stretched out on the Turkmen carpet, the eyes calmly directed towards the landlord who doesn't get upset, not even when the lion walks into his lecture the next day, down the middle of the aisle, swaying back and forth. The class room is full, but none of the students seem to see the lion. A clever student prank? Or is it a reward from the highest authority for the last philosopher who appreciates this lion?
© Sibylle Lewitscharoff
Sibylle Lewitscharoff, born in Stuttgart in 1954 as the daughter of a Bulgarian father and a German mother, studied religious studies in Berlin, where she now lives after extended stays in Buenos Aires and Paris. She published radio features, radio plays and essays. Lewitscharoff received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for
Pong in 1998. This was followed by the novels
Der Höfliche Harald (1999),
Montgomery (2003) and
Consummatus (2006). The novel
Apostoloff was awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2009. In 2013 she was awarded the Georg-Büchner-Prize.
Blumenberg (2011) was shortlisted for the German Book Prize.
Sibylle Lewitscharoff is a member of the Deutschen Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung as well as the Berlin Academy of Arts. In 2013/14 she spent one year as a fellow at Villa Massimo in Rome, after which she was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
Patrick Fortmann earned his Ph.D. from Harvard and he is Associate Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
He works in the long nineteenth century and is particularly interested in questions of sovereignty, emotion, and the nation.
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