Luisa Neubauer: »Gegen die Ohnmacht. Meine Großmutter, die Politik und ich«

Harbour Front Literaturfestival

This event has already taken place! 12 | 18 | 18 | 22
This event has already taken place! 12 | 18 | 18 | 22

What can we do to fight our sense of helplessness?

Dagmar Reemtsma is almost 90; she was a child during the war. Her granddaughter Luisa Neubauer grew up in peacetime, but her future is under threat from the destruction of the environment. They are both committed to fighting the helplessness they feel in the face of all the crises and wars around the world. Luisa has always discussed everything with her grandma since she was a child – both personal things, and the big issues in history, politics and society.

The two of them started to think early on about what privelege means, and how one can do justice to it. They were born in very different and in each case very difficult times, and had to find out where they stood at a young age. Dagmar Reemtsma's father was murdered in a concentration camp; she married young, only to find out too late that her new father-in-law from the Reemtsma family had cooperated with the Nazis. Luisa Neubauer in turn had to understand that the country she was growing up in couldn't protect her generation from the climate crisis. She had just started to attend university to learn more about the impending ecological disasters when her father died. But it was never an option for either of them to give in to a sense of helplessness.

In her book »Gegen die Ohnmacht. Meine Großmutter, die Politik und ich«, Luisa Neubauer asks herself the old and new questions, the eternal questions. The war against Ukraine broke out during the talks about the book. Neither of the two women had ever expected to experience war in Europe again. So once again they have to consider where they stand, they have to think about responsiblility and about how to resist the feeling of helplessness.

Performers

Luisa Neubauer reading and talk