Mischka

Jewish Culture Weeks
Reading and Discussion with Barbara Honigmann, Moderated by Anat Feinberg

Barbara Honigmann talks about the lives and survival stories of her parents’ friends, who escaped the Nazi camps and the Gulag. Young Jewish communist intellectuals who paid dearly for their ideals—and yet some of whom still managed to find a way out time and again. “Mischka”—the title of her new book—for example, brought together poets and dissidents who defied the Soviet regime in her Moscow apartment in the 1970s. Set against the backdrop of the 20th century’s murderous world history, these captivatingly told memoirs stand out above all for their kindness, warmth, and wit. Barbara Honigmann, born in East Berlin in 1949, worked as a dramaturg and director. In 1984, she emigrated to Strasbourg, where she still lives today. Honigmann’s work has been honored with numerous awards, most recently in 2024 with the Schiller Memorial Prize from the state of Baden-Württemberg.
In collaboration with the Jewish Cultural Weeks