“Values that remain”: With these words, Bayerische Hausbau advertises its work on the rear Salvatorplatz. It can neither be overlooked nor overheard. It rattles, rattles, screeches, after all a luxury hotel in the former state bank next door doesn’t build itself. Certainly, there will be lasting value for investors. But didn’t they once found the poets?
Well, the poets. They may call the stately Literature House on Salvatorplatz their home. However, when they read their books there in the evening, they will be rocked again and again by the construction workers’ techno basses until the end of 2023. The deckchairs for the “summer harvest”, which traditionally takes place behind the house on Salvatorplatz, will not be set up outside this July because of all the containers, but inside. This is what it looks like in the heart of Munich in 2022.
No, this text does not want to give much space to cultural pessimism. You could also put it in a friendly way: Our society is constantly being restructured. And the Literaturhaus has been reflecting these conversion processes, internally and externally, for a quarter of a century.
Joachim Kaiser once feared “simulant genius”.
25 years of the Literaturhaus are to be celebrated this summer, whether inside or outside; that it could come to this is by no means self-evident. Anyone who has followed Munich’s cultural life for decades remembers the resistance that accompanied this project when it was founded. Remembers, for example, an “objection” by the SZ critic Joachim Kaiser: “Literaturhaus: what a thunderous word, what an alibi enterprise, what pseudo-activism in poor times,” he wrote in 1996. And : “Literature house centralization of the intellectual, I feel it has to do with self-importance, with busyness out of restless impotence, with genius-simulantism”. Kaiser’s skepticism vanished over the years, at the latest with the Literaturhaus exhibition in his honor in 2003.
The founding fathers understood perfectly how to silence resistance, win over critics for the project, and the current boss, Tanja Graf, has mastered the art of diplomacy, coupled with the power of persuasion. However, to go back briefly to the past, the foundations for this institute for the “centralization of the spiritual” were laid in the early 1990s by Ulrich Wechsler as chairman of the foundation and Reinhard G. Wittmann as founding director and long-time director. They convinced the city leaders that the range of readings needed to be professionalized and that the former girls’ secondary school on Salvatorplatz should be given up for this purpose. They came up with the foundation type of public-private partnership, in which the city in particular secures the financing – stable again after the difficult pandemic years – but additional donors are important, whether from the Free State or publishers; the lease for the brasserie and rentals are also necessary sources of income.
“The idea of the Literature House caught on,” says Tanja Graf, director of the Literature House in Munich.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
This basis made a “great success story” possible, as Tanja Graf says. One cannot contradict her; the model has caught on across the board, from Basel to Rostock, from Norway to Croatia: “The idea of the House of Literature caught on.” The opportunity to experience high-ranking authors live in a harmonious environment continues to be appreciated by the public. Even if it has its price: A ticket to a reading in Munich now costs a whopping 15 euros, “and it won’t stay that way,” says Graf. The streams, for example, which are to continue to be offered with recently acquired technology – “we have to remain competitive” – are expensive. The fees have also increased enormously; many authors finance their livelihood through reading tours and thus self-marketing. A model not to like; the literary organizer Thomas Kraft, for example, recently called for stock market journal a fundamental change, especially more government support. A pipe dream?
Tanja Graf is dealing with other problems. She and her small team have to manage 200 events a year, co-curate exhibitions and keep a writing academy running. They try to keep the “demanding and well-informed” regular audience and constantly win new, also younger ones, with a wide range of topics and authors, “from Margarete Stokowski to Martin Walser”. However, not everyone will find everything they personally like in the program. It is particularly important to Tanja Graf herself to “include the female perspective to a greater extent”, with readings from Nino Haratischwili to Helga Schubert. Crime novels and children, for example, are more likely to be found in the writing workshops. This autumn, however, you will see how much children’s hustle and bustle feels in the house: At the literature festival, the book show, driven out of the Gasteig, will move into the exhibition hall for the first time. Graf is pleased: “Especially in the anniversary year, this is a statement of unity.”
A statement is certainly also that this year’s literature festival will not only have one forum curated by the Ukrainian writer Tanya Malyartschuk. But, for the first time, a second “Munich track”: the writer Benedikt Feiten is developing a program dedicated to “the networking and rediscovery of Munich authors”. Not only with that, but with several evenings with Munich authors and translators, Graf refutes the accusation that the elitist house pays too little attention to the local scene.
“It was wonderful in the hell of Germanists”: guest book entry by the illustrator Nicolas Mahler, to whom the Literaturhaus dedicated an exhibition in 2019.
(Photo: Literaturhaus)
It’s a tightrope walk, “maintaining the top level every year,” as Graf says, and at the same time opening up to new things – including changing audience expectations. Viewing and listening habits have evolved: the reading that used to be purely water glass is now accompanied by background images on the LED wall; as attention spans shrink, people read less and talk more. Not only the young generation, shaped by social media, wants to get involved and participate, says Graf. Why you choose Anniversary program beginning July 4th, which asked, “What can we give back to our audience?” On the one hand, as always, it can listen to authors live, from Katerina Poladjan to Gerhard Polt. On the other hand, two series are offered with free admission: a backward-looking series with literary “perennials” from the past 25 years. And a seminal one, in which literature fans can read and discuss autumn books in advance in open reading groups, works by Éduard Louis, Dörte Hansen and Martin Kordić.
Of course, a festival is also part of it, under the motto “If we could wish for something…”. With this, Graf wants to evoke the dream of summer carefree, beyond pandemic and war. However, she also has one or two specific wishes. Although far-reaching conversion plans from the amphitheater to the roof garden, poured into a feasibility study years ago by the architects Kiessler+Partner, cannot currently be implemented: Graf wants to have the entrance at least upgraded.
After all, it is interesting to look back and realize how little trust was placed in the Literaturhaus concept 25 years ago: the main entrance to the café was slammed shut, while the friends of literature still sneak through a side door into the stairwell. After all, new lighting technology should soon make the area more inviting. Whoever trudges past the construction machines to the entrance knows that these are values that will remain.