Déjà vu? New search for old answers

In contrast to solitude, in which thinking can take place and create space for itself, Hannah Arendt defines aban­donment as a nutrient for totali­tarian thinking in the final pages of Elements and Origins of Totalitarian Rule. People in a state of aban­donment feel pushed out of the world. World­less­ness feeds fear. Power­less­ness spreads, political chaos can spread.

Salzmann and Waldman explore the question of what this analysis by Hannah Arendt means for our present day and what role aban­donment plays in the autocratic structures that are currently spreading around the world.

The Digital Lecture Series examines the thinking of Jewish intellec­tuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries and asks what forgotten answers these authors can give to the current challenges of Jewish existence in Germany.

We invite five intellec­tuals from academia and litera­ture to address this question: Which historical texts do they return to in order to find answers to pressing questions of the present? And how do they read the texts they have chosen?

Sasha Marianna Salzmann is a play­wright and novelist, essayist and curator and was co-founder of the culture and society magazine freitext. Salzmann's theater works have received numerous awards and have been trans­lated into over 20 languages. Salzmann was an in-house play­wright at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin and artistic director of the theater stage Studio Я. Festivals curated by Sasha Salzmann include Der Des­integrations­kongress (2017), Die Radikalen Jüdischen Kultur­tage (2018), Utopie Osteuropa (2023) and What Would James Baldwin Do? (2024).

Salzmann's debut Außer sich was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 2017. Most recently, the volume Gleichzeit was published in 2024, a corres­pondence between Ofer Waldman and Sasha Marianna Salzmann on the world after October 7, 2023. In 2024, Salzmann was the winner of the presti­gious Kleist Prize, which honors the literary oeuvre.

Born in Jerusalem, Ofer Waldman moved to Berlin in 1999 as a member of Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. He graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts and played in several German and Israeli cultural orchestras, including the Rundfunk Sinfonie­orchester Berlin, the Deutsches Sinfonie­orchester Berlin, the Nuremberg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the New Israeli Opera. Waldman holds a doctorate from the Free University of Berlin (German Studies) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Jewish History). He is a freelance author, journalist and active in several civil society NGOs. His literary debut, Singular­kollektiv. Erzählungen, was published by Wallstein Verlag in 2023. In 2024, Suhrkamp Verlag published a corres­pondence with Sasha Marianna Salzmann about the world after October 7, 2023 under the title Gleichzeit.