LIT WALK: Max Czollek reads from "Zweifelssohn"

Description

6:30 PM: Short tour of the Zeppelin Museum through the exhibition "Felt Truths. Zeppelins and National Socialism"
From around 7:15 PM: Reading at Kiesel in k42 The exhibition "Felt Truths. Zeppelins and National Socialism" at the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen and the debut novel "Zweifelssohn" by Max Czollek share a central concern: the critical questioning of memory and its impact in the present.
The exhibition shows how Zeppelins were not only technological achievements but were also deliberately used for propaganda in National Socialism – and how these entanglements were beautified or suppressed after 1945. Memory appears here as something constructed that must be questioned.
Czollek addresses this issue literarily: In "Zweifelssohn," the past permeates the present as subconscious violence. The protagonist experiences a Germany in which history is not closed but continues to influence – beyond smooth, reassuring narratives.
Both work with a mistrust of such "felt truths." While the exhibition deconstructs historical narratives, Czollek shows their subjective aftermaths. His significance for the culture of remembrance lies in making these breaks visible and understanding memory as a current, political practice. About the novel "Zweifelssohn"
"When the wind gusted around the corners, he believed he could hear the present struggling for air."
The protagonist Zweifelssohn – like the Jewish Enlightener Mendelssohn, but with doubt – travels from Vienna through various German cities to Rügen and is always also fleeing from a world that can no longer escape its own violence. "Zweifelssohn" is the poetic, witty, and desperately optimistic debut novel by Max Czollek.
On his journey, Zweifelssohn follows traces of violence, whether on the train, at dinner with strangers, on vacation with his girlfriend, or alone in hotel rooms. This relates to a Jewish perspective on Germany, from which Zweifelssohn cannot detach himself, yet he is also exposed to it. He is tempted to cling to surfaces – fashion, music, excess – as he travels north. But the violence grows louder, pressing in as if it were the view into an approaching future, even when one tries to close one's eyes.
Similar to the prophet Jeremiah, in whose life Zweifelssohn does not want to find himself and yet recognizes again, whose visions of doom he rejects but also updates. Max Czollek wrestles in his first novel with a present between pop literature and apocalyptic visions, like hardly anyone else can. Emotionally, full of bitter humor, and highly topical! About Max Czollek
Max Czollek, born 1987, is an author living in Berlin. He is co-editor of the magazine Jalta – Positions on Jewish Present, a member of the poetry collective G13, and curator at the House of World Cultures Berlin, city writer in Rheinsberg, and DAAD Distinguished Chair in Contemporary Poetics, New York 2024. "Zweifelssohn" is his first novel. An event by the Office for Art and Culture Friedrichshafen in cooperation with the Zeppelin Museum.

Highlights

• Reading by Max Czollek from "Zweifelssohn"
• Short tour of the exhibition at the Zeppelin Museum
• Thematic focus on memory and National Socialism

General Information

The event begins at 6:30 PM with a short tour of the exhibition "Felt Truths. Zeppelins and National Socialism" at the Zeppelin Museum. From around 7:15 PM, Max Czollek will read at Kiesel in k42, addressing the critical questioning of memory and its effects in the present.

Location

Karlstraße 42, 88045 Friedrichshafen, Germany

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